Transcript for:
Insights from Stan Co-Founders on Creating

I recently had the pleasure of speaking with John Hugh and Vitali doov who are the co-founders of Stan for those unaware Stan is a Creator platform it is the simplest way to start an online business and I can testify for that because I've been using it for the past four or five months now the thing here is that they have 60,000 plus Creator entrepreneurs using Stan so here's what we're going to talk about the exact steps you can take to become a full-time Creator what to write or create content around and what to sell the most important thing about growing authentically on social media even if you have multiple interests and then we transition beyond the onep person business and talk about how John and Vitali plan to become A1 billion company with only 10 engineers and their motivation for doing so the most important levers for going from 0 to 30 million ARR in 3 years profitably how to find a players and 10x Engineers that want to work with you even when you're new and much more in between I hope you enjoy this conversation with the Stan co-founders from their office in Los Angeles I want to start with the big picture so for those that don't know we went over in the intro what Stan is who it helps so for those that want to become a Creator if you can just think extremely big picture super high level what are the steps people need to take in order to go from okay I have this skill set or interest to I have this many followers and I'm making this much money so it's actually never been easier I'll go first I guess and you fill in I immediately think it it's literally never been easier and it's almost just a mindset shift that's required as in what we've learned we have 60,000 customers now we were about to cost $250 million made for our customers and they're all people similar to our stories like came from nothing like I was immigrant single mom didn't have connections all that kind of stuff like it's permissionless now we have some sort of value to give and so I guess I'll give the example of me and hopefully it's helpful for people um when I first started creating content a couple years ago I was just like Doom scrolling Tik Tok during covid and asking myself like how do I like what value do I have to give and we all have some version of that and so for me you know I C call my way to a job on Wall Street back in the day it was something I was really passionate I was like how do you help um any other underrepresented kid get their first dream job and so I was just like oh I'll just make content about something I'm passionate about which is like helping financially Empower other people with what I'm really good at which is like how do you write a great resume or how do you get a cold email to actually convert into an informational interview like I would just make content about that so just writing basically I was thinking about what kind of content I could write for the younger version of me and I think that's just step one and where I think a lot of people get caught up is like oh my God I got to build a business and how do I monetize and all this kind of stuff what I've learned at least through the entrepreneur journey is the steps actually one has to take are really easy we actually are the ones who make it harder on ourselves because of the emotion the insecurity would have you and so the the the written formula this is like literally all someone needs to do this is this is it like this is the success pipeline that we see for all of our successful customers it's everyday show up and iterate so in this context step number one is like figure out what kind of content you should make and that's the intersection between what you're really passionate about and what you're really good at so AKA what is something you would talk about for free and not get paid for and then every single day all you need to do is just show up and push yourself to post and use that as a learning don't take it personally use it as a learning however it performs and I I always guarantee people if you sit there and you post for an entire year every single day like I guarantee you will be successful cuz you will SE to see the patterns and like okay I posted 30 times 25 of them 27 of them flopped and got crickets and I'm so embarrassed but there were like one or two that did well and you just double down on whatever that is and so the next step of that of how you build a business is like if you just show up every day for a year you will build an audience like you're such a testament to that I'm a testament to that you're now a testament to that in terms of the audience You're Building like everyone that we see is a testament to that if you just show up every single day and then once you have that you have a good sense of like your audience is your customer base and all you have to do figure out your first digital product or your first course or your community whatever you want to host um it's just giving them more value so like you'll have a customer base and literally they will tell you what they want to buy because they would be commenting on your stuff and dming you with specific questions and all you have to do is just figure out how do I productize or monetize that specific question and so for me the the first example I gave was like I put up a viral video unintentionally I just green screen my old uh resume from my junior internship I had to like recover my Dropbox pass Dropbox password to like find that resume I was like this is these are literally the bullets I did and then the very first version of Stand I built for my own account all I did was I just uploaded that same file I didn't change anything of it it's like the 2016. dox or whatever it is and I just sold that for $10 and I that's how I made my first $10,000 of passive income because it was just it was authentic to what my audience wanted which was help on their resumes and they wanted a template so that's my answer at least um okay I I I have a slightly different story and my way into content was like a much more long-term and it's like tiptoeing um into this um and it comes from me just having a very conventional mindset around it's like you go to work and we building this company it's like I just don't have time and I think that's the challenge that most people are struggling with and then a couple years ago I was curious about storytelling and and one idea that's really resonated is um in order to be um a great Storyteller like and to tell interesting stories you need you need to live an interesting life and I was like I don't know my life is kind of boring it's like I'm heads down like do like doing the same things for for 16 hours per day but then what I realized over time is that my life is actually in wearing at all and it's very interesting if you learn to notice like the interesting things and then you learn to just organically talk about them and I think one of the most important skills and mindset shifts that all of us will will come to realize over time is just leaving your life the way you want to and then sharing its story and then just finding what is that people look up to you for and productizing it over time is the path that that I think is resonating because as you start telling your stories then people start knowing you for something and that start being curious about you like on on the topics that you touch on and then that the product ideas would come the platforms would come um but you discovering yourself and what is that you're actually good at authentically passionate about and it's like what just you think about in your free time this is the most organic kind of transition into content that I think a lot of people can can can learn to take without like making pivotal changes to their life all at the same time yeah makes a lot of sense for in in my audience there's quite a few people that resonate with the topics and interests around philosophy things that are kind of abstract and high level and they get interested in business and when they go to start posting content it is usually like when you read the posts it sounds like a philosopher speaking it sounds like a philosophical quote And while I don't think those things are bad I also don't think they lead to sales or something that will allow you to sustain that thing so when you're starting on a specific platform what are you looking for when you're writing a piece of content to kind of uh give yourself a mental checklist to know that that will perform well because people don't know what well is when they're starting oh what an interesting question about creating content um also what a privilege like study and think about the science of content in that way um I think how I would describe it is it comes down to how much your content can make someone feel something right it's the I I think I can speak towards even my own journey I think I've always approached content historically from a very cerebral lens like I I I I pride myself on trying to be as thoughtful as possible and trying to be as intellectual as possible and I think in some cases that works really really well but if you think about us as a base cases like human beings scrolling a feed and you think about like what is the lowest common denominator of all of us it's us we're literally animals we're like meat boxes and we feel emotions and so if you think about the work required to care about your content so if you think about not yourself but always put yourself in the customer shoes the audience's shoes what it is is like are they more likely after a long day of work and think about what you're competing with in an algorithm you're competing with naked hot people and funny dumb memes and so if you do want to approach things like you should never um you should never be inauthentic to your style and what you want to do but it's up to the artist and the entrepreneur to decide how much they want to play the market game and so you have to figure out how within that world of the algorithm and all those other things that we could could be you know like I could stare at some awesome food or stare at a really good-looking person like what are you going to do to emotionally or personally hook me in to actually have me give you my attention and so the work required in purely being philosophical you have to really think through how you're going to hook people in because it takes more work and so my recommendation for people starting out is to try to be as tangible and concrete as possible I hate giving blanket advice but I I would just push you to be like how can I make this as relatable as possible as maybe the better Framing and so for me or actually I'll give Stan as an example when we Market stand what we're learning and and I learned this from the Red Bull team I've been like obsessively studying Red Bull and talking to the brand team they they are the best in the business at making content and one of the guys at Red Bull was like John you know what your problem is you don't have a physical product I can just put this Red Bull you guys can like imagine this Red Bull can here versus I'm going to sit here and tell you like stand like literally is the best value product in the market it's literally the simplest and EAS way to start an online business but like what does that mean to people and so you have to break it down and like well it's cuz you can host literally a course a community a digital product calendar booking literally everything which would cost hundreds of dollars a month and then instead stand is like $29 a month but like think about how much time that took and how much attention you'd have to give me on content versus like Red Bull this is a can it gives you wings and so maybe that's a great example of the philosophical to the tangible divide and trying to find your balance and style of that is maybe my advice one thing I'll add there in term to make being tangible more tangible one thing that I always found help me is like okay what can I do is there it doesn't have to be a specific set of steps but is there a different way I can think about something a different way I can go about my life and if you can tie what it is that you're talking about to just simple Behavior changes that people can experiment with if those experimentations get results then are going to remember you for that just think James Clear Atomic habits you start implementing those anytime you hear the word habits you think James clear and it's just like that did you have anything you wanted to add in terms of just how to make the content less quote like like to build that connection with the audience um what what what what I've learned in my content it actually to great degree comes to to the storytelling because um when when we read content and the content that we remember you can you can position it like you would start with the hook and then you would try to explain something first principles and then you you would make a case uh so this is kind of philosophy esque but then an alternative way to do this is like you still need to to start with a hook and with something memorable that is like a quotable piece of it but then what I'm noticing is that if you f follow up with a story that is very personal like it's those stories that I think make people feel in a very part particular way um that sent out that that do remarkably well and and that are actually organic and and unique um I I think that's that's actually probably the biggest differentiator yeah how would you how do how do you think about writing a story for something that can be so short like a LinkedIn post a Tik Tok whatever it may be because when people at least for me when I was didn't know what storytelling was like to a deep extent I always think oh I have to write a book it's like tell a story okay write a book that's where my mind went so how do you think about that is there a specific framework or um not not necessarily frame work but it starts with with intention one of the things I I think is true is you can write a story of any length in like any format like you can reduce a book to one pager you can reduce one pager to like a LinkedIn post with with five lines um your your particular like original style is you know one sentence one liner uh that that is very dis in its own way cuz like even folks who who kind of do this they still stick with like maybe couple line paragraphs like you're you're very intentional about this and it kind of starts with um with um making a choice to do this and then finding your way to to express it CU um you know uh qu quotable phrases if I had U more time I would have written you a shorter letter and I think the great concise like content can be five you know lines long but you need to really spend time figuring out how to say and what to say to actually communicate that um so to to make it tangible like it starts with intention and then it goes with consistent practice and then you'll find it way eventually it's so interesting how we have different Frameworks and approaches to life and maybe it speaks for as why we work so as partners because the way I was immediately approaching it was around just the I was like what is the formula I can distill down for everyone and I think the shortest possible Story the framework is just look at every successful story that's propagated through the age is just you all you need is tension and conflict and ideally some sort of resolution but if you think about like what is the hook it's just tension in some sort of way right and so if you can just tell that sto just story arc which can be a sentence half like three sentences like that's all you need and that to me is a story yeah I agree I always personally whenever I fall off track with writing it's always okay just train my mind to think in terms of pain points where it's like I have an idea okay what's the pain point that kind of it makes it a lot more possible to make tangible after that at least for me so that's something to try just think of a paino especially if it's in like a paino that's happened to you in the past so you can write to that person more effectively um the the piece that I wanted to share here that that actually made a a big difference on me as someone who is like reasonably early stage in uh in the Creator journey is it sounds so simple but but it's makes such a big difference who the focus of your content is like whether it's you or whether it's your um your audience cuz to to John's earlier point is like you're trying to kind of talk to yourself like to your younger self and teach them but you still have to do that in a way where the other person sees themselves like in the younger you uh because it's like one the the pieces of content that that I've created that didn't do well at all and and and when I'm looking at folks who just starting out and um also not not resonating yet it all comes down to like let let me try to find that authentic self let me talk about about myself like me me me this is how I think this is like how I express and the world is just I don't care why would they um they care about themselves and learning how to write in a way where it's like you're writing about yourself like to your younger self but in a way that others see themselves in it like just the simple change of focus and learning to do that consistently with intention makes a world of difference I think the Mantra we've built standoff of and I think our approach to content as well and my personal philosophy on it is just give give give like when you say paino I think of it the same way as like how can I give as much value as possible and one of the ways for sure every single person who wants to make content can think about that lens is always like what is the problem someone has how can I offer to solve that and that to me is like if you give give give like you will receive back in some sort of way yeah just problem solving in general is such a good mindset to have like in in any stage of business especially at the beginning that's kind of just what you have to train yourself into to transition a Time tiny bit or even go backwards a bit in terms of the opportunity you see to start as a Creator right now I feel like you guys have front row seats to what's going on and how that happens so a few things like it's just very noisy right now in the Creator space AI space every space and what are your general thoughts on it all frame I I'll potentially give you a little hook to grab on to in terms of the 4u pages and in interest graph and us moving towards that and away from like follower count more very personal personal Brands sure there's never been a better time to start like and the reason why is cuz people are all realizing that social media content is no longer social media it's just the new marketing channel every like we're not paying attention to newspapers and Legacy TV and there will eventually be Alpha in those channels at some point but the way that all of our attention is consuming we're all now just consuming through YouTube or through Tik Tok like I barely even watch my Netflix anymore because I'm I'm watching a TCO video instead right your thumbnail title is just way better than whatever I'm watching on Netflix and so in that context you have to think about okay every single small business owner who wants to actually like break out from the competition needs to be where the user attention is and there's never been a better time to just start talking about things especially with what you're applying on the interest graph like some of our most successful creators who make the most income come have like 5,000 followers and it's because they're being connected with their core Niche and you don't even need a large follower account now to be seen as credible you just need to be in front of the Right audience and so I'd actually personally say from the data especially that we see like there's never been a better time our success rates are going up like more and more people are succeeding because also the audiences are more maturing and understanding like there's more of an a social acceptance around buying things online from Instagram or from YouTube like that's our consumer behaviors are changing and so with macro Trend ideally you would also position yourself to be like in favor of that Tailwind which is like TR just trust me just start posting in whatever way is authentic to you keep iterating and I promise you you will succeed so um one thing I would I would add to that and I I I don't know to what degree it applies to to other social media platform Instagram I think operates a little bit differently but for LinkedIn for example Twitter I think would would X now uh would would have a similar Dynamic it's it's not just about the content and for you page but but also who you associate with because if you think about how the content gets surfaced and presented to others it's like if someone gives you their vote of approval which is like a comment like any form of Engagement then you're effectively getting exposed to Their audience and if your content is authentically good and it's like what you get there is an opportunity for more people to look at you and then they will make a decisions like do they want to hang around by by following or do do they want to move on to um to something else so another dimension that I think is important to recognize when um when we are considering embarking on the this Creator journey is like content is bread and butter like to to be a Creator you need to like you need to create but there's also all the other work that you need to do like you need to figure out who are the people that you associate with you need to learn to engage and kind of be present um around their content whether it's like commenting as soon as um they post something um and just kind of find your group and um and grow with it yeah that's one thing I had to do at the beginning a lot and I was going to I'll follow up with this question and kind of answer it myself in the meantime um in terms of building a tribe and that being the one thing that a lot of creators miss out on and what uh keeps a lot of them from seeing that initial success because they think okay content creator write content that's all I do and then they only write the content they may see like a few fluctuations in likes and Views and Etc but they're missing the tribe they're missing okay who knows who who is a part of my greater Circle and am I known to these people are they going to share me are they going to support me etc etc so when I was first on Twitter I wasn't replying to people just to reply to people I was replying to them to form this tight-knit tribe of people that could support me we could share strategies etc etc so in terms of the thing that you see that prevents creators from seeing that success can you pinpoint what that is I think it's just a mindset and awareness gap which I think you just help solve for people like I think it's just the Journey of a human being where we start first in our silos we like me me me me me cuz like I need to like find success for myself I literally need to put food on the table and so it's like climbing up Mao's hierarchy of needs where you start to think about oh wait I have the success and people are commenting on this stuff and I think my journey personally was like oh there's like these really nice people like leaving super nice comments and then you know a couple being like super mean for for no reason but specifically those people I like felt so grateful I was like thank you so much for the kind words what have you and it was just my own human nature I was just like I want those people also to feel seen like I almost feel bad that you're commenting on my stuff like please don't take the time to do that and I think that's the that's just like relationship building in general you start to learn like oh wait there are other humans out there who also want to connect and also care about the same thing and you start to feel some like giddy almost like childhood like joy and passion to that and I think the next step of that awareness is like oh wait um and you can make it really utilitarian too it's like you can build a a more effective business is one where more people are more bought into what you're doing and so then you're starting to like you're waking up to the majority of like oh this whole Instagram app is actually an ecosystem right like in the ecosystem of Dan there's you know all these other creators who are also really successful and we can actually work together towards a mission or we can um you know I have a you know 100,000 people that are in My Tribe but like how close do they feel to me in that like every follower isn't worth the same it's like s some creators who have lots of followers who have people with like die for like I would there's so many people out there including myself like I would die for Emma Chamberlain Like That Girl Is Awesome right but I'm also a subscriber to like 17 other people that I can't even name off the top of my head because they're not as like personally relevant to me and that's because I think she's built such a great community and built such a great brand and so it's just like for me I think it's just the mindset and awareness of like you're not just sending your content into the void there are real human beings on the other end and the more you can make them feel seen and heard and like hey there's they're part of something greater the more effective I think you like just purely rationally will be so yeah um one more thing to to add to that I'm just now realizing how much of this kind of tribe and Community like actually matters and and it works I I think one of the one of the early signs that I've that I've noticed that actually helped me believe in in this direction it's like continue and persevere is when I just started posting couple months just do raw ideas probably not any good and and then I go to um to a community event entrepreneurial thing in Toronto and three people that I had distant connection with just approached me and it's like V tell this this thing that you shared it's like it resonated with me I was like you've seen this like you you you remembered it to to bring this up and um and and I and then I've learned that creating Quant is one of the things that it enables you to do allows you to stay in touch with people like who you personally know are somewhat connected and it's just you just organically sharing with the world like what are you up to like what are you thinking about what's on your mind and it allows them you may not be as connected with them because you don't know as much about them but they know a lot about you and it creates more opportunity for just you to have a conversation like when someone leaves a comment like do you reply to a comment or do you not reply to a comment and if you do reply to a comment this is like um they connect with you you connect with them you create that relationship that they continue to support you like with like on your journey going forward and all of these compounds I I I don't know if you see a lot of kind of virality and overnight success I I I don't believe that that that's the main thing like in content it's just consistent actions performed over and over again and it's like building and compounding and then it might happen overnight but there's like years building up to it yeah to to touch on that uh even if you were to get a million views on one YouTube video if you're starting from zero subscribers I think you'd be kind of disappointed with how many subscribers that led to or how many retained viewers or even just fans that leads to it's all to me it's about it's less about funnels like funnels matter we'll briefly touch on that uh but it's more about like building a world like you're putting out all of this content not because it's just one piece of content that you're sending out they're all the more content people are exposed to from you the more they can read your content from a better context so the more they see the more they're like oh Dan is saying this and your content you can be a lot more flexible at that point because you can say James Clear can say habits and 100 million people will like it when someone else could say it and it's going to get zero views right so things like that before we go into uh more about like Stan startups Etc I have two other things for uh I want to talk about niche I want to talk about first product or the first products that you see that do really well so let's start with Niche the most confusing you search Niche on YouTube you get a billion different videos how do you think about finding creating developing a niche as a beginner this is a really polarizing topic for some reason so I would just share my take which you should take with a grain of salt and then interpret it for yourself so I think the overarching theme is you are the niche people are like oh my God there's so many Fitness creators out there there already so many philosophy writers or whatever it is and I'm like sure that's fine that's true but there's there's none of you and so the nval quote I will always hold in my head is escape competition through authenticity like you might be a fitness trainer which there are already hundreds of thousands who aren't even on social so like the Market's already mature and complex and competitive there but they're specifically definitely not you know someone who's had your story specifically with maybe the the set of physical ailments you've been given and then with two kids and you've specifically learned how to lose weight in this specific way like while picking up your kids while also staying saan and running a 9 to5 like whatever your story is at that level of authenticity and specificity no one else will beat you with that so that that is the learned and earned Insight that you particularly have that is like your Niche but I'd caution people to be hyper intentional about not being as broad as possible when they first start and this is just my and this is where it can get polarizing my take is specifically when you're first starting out like you just me when you have zero subscribers the best way to think about it is like think about all the memes you've sent to your friends over the like in your DMs or random Tik toks you sent to people do you remember any of those people's faces or probably even the meme itself of the hundreds you might remember like one or two with like a subconscious recall so you don't remember the faces and so you need to consistently show up for people because they don't know who you are and they won't remember and they don't care who you are until you consistently show up and a really consistent way and the more specific initially early on that you are in that like you're known as the um beekeeping guy or like the crochet person like whatever that these are all literal examples on stand that make like tens of thousands of dollars but like if you're known for that particular thing or like I specifically a personal trainer for moms over 40 who want more time back like after they 9 to5 like that specificity if you show up three times you'll be remembered and so that's my caution on the niche piece is like my personal opinion is that you should find an in wedge and differentiate maniacally at that specificity and then expand over time and allow yourself to like be more of a full person over time so that's my take yeah at the at the risk of uh potentially discouraging action for people what I find beautiful about the polarizing topics is that two successful people can do two different things and get very similar results or get results nonetheless right where but I agree you are the niche I say that all the time when I what I recommend or like what I did is I have one Focus area but I make a lot of noise on the site as well it's like I'm showing up consistently maybe every other day on Twitter you can post a lot so I'd say like maybe once a week I would show up uh in one specific way around web design and then I would talk about self-improvement mindset here and there and I'd have wider data points where I can notice more anom between different topics and then start to like merge them so either way I think it's it really depends but for the people I would say for the people that know what it is they want to wedge themselves into absolutely do that I didn't really because I was like I'm in web design that's what I help people with that's what I charge for but it's not what I want to do in the future and I need to I don't want to get too deep into that because it's not what I want to do and so maybe for the like hyper poly mass that just don't know just make a lot of noise see what works and then stick with one thing for a bit if it does work did you have any additions one thing that that I would I I fully agree with um um with John on the authenticity and how you need to find it and create it and actually don't think that they like for example if you approach Niche selections like hey here's a range of topics on which I can talk about um I just want to invest in for them next year to you know create content about it and like create digital products like that sounds like work and anything that sounds like work tends to not work out in the long run so so there is tremendous weight into finding something that you feel playful about and and doubling down into that D to your point around kind of sparkling different pieces of content I do think this is incredibly important as well because if all you talk about is a single kind of area and kind of position yourself as you know like this you know Book of Knowledge just about this one thing that's not very different from just picking up a textbook because I don't think people follow well first of all people follow people in my opinion not necessarily people follow topics and and there is much more Nuance to to a personality that makes a person interesting that actually inspires followership where it's like this is my area of expertise and 70% of my content is going to be about that but there's also some personal and there's also some observations and there's something like here they and the other thing that makes your world personality attractive so whatever whatever Niche we are choosing it's important to stay consistent with it because in the end of the day people needs to know what you're about and it's like everyone needs to be able to describe what is that you actually do and specialize in um but if that's the only thing you do then that's going to be boring um so we got to stick to it but we got to do so much more yeah I think the glue um between these different perspectives is the story overall like your story you are the niche okay even if you talk about one thing what makes that unique it's how it applied to your life and how it helped you that's what the way that I like to frame it when people ask like oh okay well other people are talking about this too how do I stand out from them if I'm giving the same information right because there's maybe a few ways to weave a basket but let's say there's one way to weave a basket what makes me different from the next person talking about this and it would be your story and who you relate with so tying all those things together it's okay interests combined with the pain points in your life that those solved and led to the story that you have now combined to bridge into what product or service people should start with I want to these May combine I'll let go into both of these questions at the same time what product should what product or service should people consider doing doing first and if people don't know what interests or topics to pursue what do you recommend you'd have to start with the latter question before you can answer the former because you can't start monetizing until you actually have a clear understanding of who you are in your value proposition I think that first point just goes back to You' got to do what you re just if you're a polymath and you have 15 different things try all of them to a varying degree and you'll see what hits both from a market perspective but also an internal alignment perspective and so you've got to do that work first to understand who you want to be and that can change at any time but initially you've got to do that work and then from there if I were to give if I were to attempt to give a prescription on how someone might monetize because we're all just looking for a formula I would give the shest BET way to build a long-term sustainable business is actually to start with just booking coaching calls or some sort of Consulting and so what we'll see a lot of successful people on stand do is stand has an integrated calendar booking feature right people use it for digital products courses Community what have you but the people who really set them up themselves up for Success will say hey I don't know what to productize yet I'm going to do the hard work to really understand my customer and specifically really understand what they will pay me for so they'll throw up like a 30 it doesn't have to be a lot of money it's it's not even about the money it's about G it's about the feeling of first of all G like someone on the internet randomly giving you money and like holy crap that's amazing crazy why would they do that but then beyond that it's about the learning right you're getting paid in the learning insights because what you're doing is you're booking your first five clients in some sort of way whether it's web design that you want to productize later or it's career coaching or it's um you know Fitness training it's like I need to talk to someone and go through the Journey with them of like helping them through whatever the Journey of transformation I'm giving them and understand like why they're trying to buy for me what their exact pain point is and then I'm going to use the pattern matching because I'm going to book five to 10 clients and then I'll be able to say oh wait three out of five of these clients came to me for X specific reason this is now what I'm going to productize and so that would be my personal recommendation on first of all because the other friction pie is like if you want to sell a product you got to make it like making a course making a guide making an ebook whatever you want to do takes effort I would rather you instead get started today make some money get some easy wins and then use that to scale over time and so from there the the skews like the options in which someone can sell a product or a service at scale is like almost infinite and so what we sorry guys SEC and so what we'll see and so what we'll see pretty often is is um sorry I just got cut up and so and so what we'll see pretty often is anything from like a short little mini course and like a video course which you offer for example um or it's something like a community because hey like I worked with a couple clients and I actually really enjoy the person person interaction how do I scale this over time I can start with group coaching cohorts or I can do a hosted Community with insan like whatever that is you can do all of those things um but it's really just like where you want to take your business but the SKS are courses ebooks um communities I really personally love templates like we all have some sort of right like to me cortex is like your process in template for how you've created stuff and you can swear by that process and the same way for me like my resume was my template it was like proven um credibility like I literally use this resume to get a job at Goldman Sachs like I'm not saying it's the best one it's just like my personal resume template and it'll help get you started so those would be my recommendations yeah I'll I'll tack on to that uh list Dan the one thing I I discovered it this year when you or last year when you guys reached out but I wish I discovered it earlier if it was around when I was starting but the one thing I really like about it is almost the first thing you see when you log in is just you have like five or six options you have digital product you have the coaching call you have the community you have whatever it may be you give people the options where people aren't going into stripe checkout and uh building something else on the side and it it's just so easy to go in and it's like oh okay I can name this coaching call write the copy for it just paino what I offer and then just start testing the waters it's as simple as that right the simplest way to start a business which I really like and the people that I've referred to it have also really liked it so Props I will undying support Link in the description but along with that like just go log in Stan find something that you want to create name it write something for it don't over complicate it if you need help with like a framework for writing the copy just Google copywriting Frameworks just try it out experiment from there that's kind of your source of Truth for the main interest that you're talking about you need to teach more around that build Authority around that thing hit pain points around that thing and then pitch and that's a difficult part for a lot of people but you just you just do it and then eventually you get used to it you get a payment and you're like oh crap that worked but back to that topic if you can if you had something to say I could remember after my R um uh there's something I've been I've been thinking about um um was recently catching up with with Conrad from from teachable and um one of the things he shared that that's really stuck with me is he said vital you know one of the most irrational things people do they finish recording a course before they start selling it he said you do it completely the other way you make a first few lessons you sell it you drip it over time where the lesson comes out like every week you survey your customers like after the first like lectur it's like hey like did you like it what do you think is coming next what they think is coming next is what you make content about um and then you finish the product and a lot of people go into like I need to do this you know two months incentive and it's like record this 15,000 module thing and it's like no you start with a two page PDF like you see who is going to trust you by leaving their email and it's like getting something for free for 20 bucks like you you like you don't start with anything complex to begin with and then you see what what people are willing to pay anything for and then you build up on that over time beautiful that's exactly what I do I think it blows a lot of people's minds when I tell them like what my strategy is and it's like I I have the outline of what I want to sell but I know from experience that that may not be the right thing and I don't even know if people will pay for it so the first thing that comes for me is the landing page which can be complex if you want to go that deep into it but I'll go straight for the landing page cuz then I know that I control the offer there right cuz that's what people are buying it's I can create the copy for the landing page make it very enticing of course within the realm of what I can build and then start selling that and then once I get a payment and I have a deadline for when that thing needs to be out like it's going out I don't have any other option right A lot of people they don't have that deadline urgency so they like build something for 2 months and then they never end up even telling people about it when it can be the complete opposite way it's just like start selling and then build it this actually goes back to your point around building community and a tribe I think I grew up as an only child and so maybe this informs it for me but like I think we're so used to working in isolation maybe it's our perfectionism like I have to make it perfect and work on it for 3 months before anyone can see my baby but if you have the awareness around like wait there are people in my corner there literally people that follow me that clearly want to hear something from me like how can I get them more involved in the process earlier you end up being more successful you accelerate your timelines so that's that's how I draw that back nice yes okay to transition into something that I feel like a lot of people will get value out of even just to think about we're going to we we just talked about okay you have if we actually boil it down you have everything you need to make it as a Creator we went over that now once people have an audience we're in this space this digital space where distribution is extremely important and if you have distribution you have a lot of Leverage you can do something more if you want to so for the people that want to take it further startup software physical products something where you need a team you need to expand that's what we're going to dive into when we visited you in Toronto you told us or first you turned us on to your engineering Manifesto and I believe this was part of it but I just know it's a goal of yours that you want to build a billion dollar company with 10 Engineers let's dissect that but first what's the motivation why why a billion is it just cuz like unicorn that's what I want to get to or is there something deeper um it's uh the the the billion as a number is frankly trival I don't know if it means um more than that to you it's like like in some ways like like it's a currency described kind of the degree of achievement um but but John and I are investing the best years of our life into into doing something and one of the things we want to do is we create as much value like as much value like as possible um and and I'd like to make you know the most of it and billion sounded like a good number to to start with um so that that's where the Blan came from uh the 10 Engineers um is is a little bit more involved because um I've I I formulated a very strong opinion because I've seen a lot of things that um that are done wrong in in tax specifically and um uh well first of all it's hot take um I think companies tech companies are extremely overstaffed um what Twitter did uh couple years ago at this point reducing the the 90% you know head count and staying afloat and innovating from there at a much more rapid Pace like at at its fundamentals I think it sent a very strong first principle signal of what it actually takes to build software and then if you start building from there and it's like well how does it actually the process of building Works um you you would actually realize that like at the most foundational level you just need one person to build software like these days software engineering is so straightforward like you really need to know so little to build software uh it's incredible so it like you just start with one person um and then because you wanted to take care of kind of reliability and redundancy and make sure that you know something happens you have systems and plays that will ensure that the business continues to prosper 10 feels like a good number and kind of coming back to to our track record I think we have one of the most feature reach software that we built in uh three years like allinone Creator store we have all the features that matter and we buil we still don't have 10 Engineers by the way eight to this day uh two slows open so if you know Engineers are watching hiring um so we are just being very very intentional about understanding what does it actually take to get to the goal and not being distracted by solving arbitrary problems such as like let's hire a big team and let's spend time managing them and let's like deal with all this HR situations and it's like we know what we need we know how to get there we focus on hiring Best in Class and it works remarkably well awesome I question around that uh I have a lot of questions around that for how do I frame this when you're trying to get to that 1 billion with the constraint of 10 Engineers I know you mentioned this briefly but how do you go about uh identifying and narrowing in on those main things that will lead to where you want to go like the problems or what you need to build rather than cuz I think a common problem is just like okay let's not solve this problem let's just go it's just features features features putting in features how do you avoid that you start with the customer first um I think the M mistakes that um a lot of companies do they they are overly passionate about the customer and like especially technical leaders around teams they like get excited about technology not realizing that technology is just the means to the end and like in the end of the day like anything worth existing exists to serve humans um our number one cultural value is Creator first and very intentionally uh very intentionally the number one value because everything that we do comes from spending so much time in the presence of the customer like and being creators ourselves so we we really understand what the pain points are and we listen to We we listen to creators a lot we don't do most of the time everything that's being being asked but we try to understand what paino and problem that they they're having um and then we kind of put our judgment and understanding of the world around it and translate it into software uh one of the very tactical examples there is like for years um folks have been asking uh us to build more flexible landing pages um and if you notice like our our landing pages are extremely simple and it's like literally reach text editor like that's it you can't even move the order around number one because we optimized everything out like we just know that those pages convert the best believe it or not um and and number two because we tried to build Flex page Pages twice at this point and what we've seen is the the one thing that happens is that people spend so much time trying to perfect their landing page and move things around they don't finish it they're like death by complexity uh like it hurts them uh and we just like well I mean we can build the world's best you know landing page editor except the world doesn't need another one so we are focused much more on what the customer is actually trying to do and for us like we are in business of making them the most of money possible so it's like let us solve that problem and let our track record to to speak for itself um and and once you adopt this mindset you actually eliminate a lot of work for yourself because it's like we are not here building features we are here solving problems um and we spend more time thinking about the problems that are worth our time solving um that allows us to just save a lot of time and go much farther by not doing things and by doing them well how do you filter for what C customers want and what customers need like how do you how did you make that decision was it only was it just trial and error and data and seeing what happened with uh the complex landing pages not leading to results therefore leading to potential churn or is it more so like you holding a a firm belief in just sticking to those guns being polarizing in software in a sense there's there's two two things I think are foundationally important number one you need to have an opinion on what good looks like because like John and I kind of come from from from the world of understanding software and it's like having a vision of what it like what good software experience is so we're kind of coming to to every conversation with like with that Foundation um and um the the second thing is such a straightforward point so so many people Miss to do this right is like really spending excessive amount of time in the presence of the customer talking to them cuz like for example if you if you start taking shortcuts and it's like let me just do a popup or let me send a survey and like let me give them a multiple choice or it's like a long form doesn't really matter so much information can be gathered in the Nuance of the conversation and it's like what people not just what people say but how people say it what they don't say like the tone that they're using and it's like even if you're just watching someone setting up their stand store like for the first time life and just seeing them and it's like you they just duplicated the page and it's like it appeared at the bottom and they need to scroll it and then they like get get lost they would never mention it because it's a minor point to them but it's like we just wasted 10 minutes trying to find something that needs to be like literally in front of you let's go and fix that um so so number one to to have an opinion of what good looks like and intentionally spending time into educating yourself on how to get get that better like we we don't leave any cave the world evolves and number two spending excessive amount of time like listening in the presence of your customer and number two is now attention that you and I both struggle like we have to be hyper intentional about still having because the challenges and you'll see this with like United Airlines or comcast like when you think of like awful customer support experiences or customer experiences in general that like want to make you blow your brains out I would argue one of the reasons why is because the organization is stratified to such a hierarchy which comes with hiring too many people and not being efficient as an organization but how often is the CEO like literally in the pain gutters talking to customers and that's something that we think about very often as we think about leadership CU you have you have so many stakeholders at some point in scale it gets really complex and a fun but hard way where you start to think about like what is the most scalable use of my time right how do I have the most leverage or impact and when you kind of think about oh I can affect these 20,000 people by spending my Zero Sum time and attention to focus on this specific initiative versus like I should go talk to like one person in the trenches and spend 30 minutes really thoughtfully getting to know them it's it's hard to make that equation often balanc but it goes back to that old startup saying it's like do things that don't scale in order to scale there are certain things that we make sure to do in our time to make sure that we have unscalable time because we believe that that anchor and that route is worthwhile to take us back to our customer so whether that's interviewing customers or us taking the inefficient unscalable time to make content ourselves cuz like we live and breathe this like we bleed with our customers we understand how you feel cuz we're literally right there next to you like that is so worth it to us so and and one more thing to to add to this is you got to use your own product like then you're using cordex uh cordex every day John and I use use 10 every day and um there's just nothing comparable to this experience where you're just kind of going in and you're trying to do something like you have an intent and then you have tension like tension created by software it's like I want to get things done at the speed of my thought and it's like if I need to open an app that's already difficult enough that brings up the core product principle you talk about very often which is the core job to be done which really answers your true question which is like how do you tease out which features on the infinite list of features that you could ship for cortex how do you pick which one you want to ship and so because people will be like I want custom landing pages and I totally go away because like I'm like dude I want custom landing pages right but but it's like what is the core job to be done and for us the core job to be done is our guarantee that you will there is no platform out there where you will make more money and so if that is why people sign up for us and we are going to optimize the heck out of your business for you and that is our job to be done that also gets you Clarity on like when you cuz you mentioned software like we get so obsessed with the technology but the software is actually friction the software is a medium through which to achieve the core job to be done I would argue that if we completely wiped out the software and just like had an AI agent who did everything for you and just made you money like you would probably sign up for that over having to set up the software yourself that's like another way to think about how should I prioritize my feature set in my roadmap nice I really like that I'm taking that to our core job to be done okay to so along with that with just amount of features that you can build and which ones you have to build I'm assuming that with the Restraint of 10 Engineers that's one of the things and you only have so much manpower to do those things so you're even more F forced to be focused with that since there are so few in con conventional terms um they have to be good so I want to talk about hiring a bit but I want to start by demystifying it because knowing my audience and knowing my past self hiring was the scariest thing for me I know that I became like the one person business guy for a decent amount of time on YouTube the main reason behind that is because I just didn't know how the [ __ ] to hire like I didn't I didn't know what to do right so I'm like I that was my constraint and I think it helped me a lot because I put it off for the longest amount of time is I just didn't know how it's like okay Fiverr upwork probably not going to get me anywhere for big tasks or things that I need people for so let's start with a question when should people think about hiring if we're going from Creator one person business to okay I have a more complex product that I want to put out when along that Journey you will feel it it you will literally feel the pain of it you will feel so overwhelmed and it's that moment that I think we all get a little frazzled and by the way you'll feel the pain in different stages as your organization grows um but you will hit this moment where you're like just too overwhelmed and the first few times you will persist through that but at some point something will feel like it's breaking and that's where it's really important to ask really intentional questions about hiring so that well all make everyone I think you have to earn your stripes on hiring you have to make a ton of mistakes to to really but ideally to help people eat [ __ ] a little bit less sorry can I swear like like I think this will help you eat like a little bit less [ __ ] is get hyper intentional on once again on what are the jobs to be done by these new hires as in your job as a Creator and the founder and entrepreneur of your own business is to maximize the value you give to your business AKA operate within your zones of genius and so one of my zones of Genius is not like you know making canva Graphics or like responding to specific kinds of emails and so what we should think or like scheduling calls right so like whatever that thing is basically if you write the top two things you're fantastic at doing I say two inter not even three those are the things you should maniacally be obsessing over H those and how you can spend all of your time almost all of your time doing those and then you write out the 177,000 things that you I know for a fact you dislike doing whatever those are and then those are what you should hire for and so very tactically speaking from a solopreneur Creator job perspective I think one of the first key hires is just some sort of executive assistant and that can take the form of anything whether it's if you don't like writing captions yourself or it's you don't like checking email or booking like whatever that is or negotiating what have you there's so many random things like the crud of running the back end of a business that we don't even think about when we start it just write those down and then get hyper clear like do the visual exercis close your eyes and be like if I hired someone what would success look like like and literally describe it to like a joyful degree like they are so good at responding emails that they respond to it like immediately with the exact copy and tone and whatever that I'm looking for like whatever that is and write those out as job characteristics because the first time we hire often times we're like we don't know what we're doing and we're overwhelmed like this random friend like please come help me or like whoever is like the first person raising like please come help me but ideally you're hyper intentional about number one will I get along with this person which is what we talk about like do do we share the same core values do I respect this person in terms of the values that we share because that means we'll probably want to work together like you don't want to work with someone you dislike it's just not going to work and then are they functionally the best person possible that I can hire that will actually do these job requirements to the degree that I specifically need and so that'll help you minimize your chances of failure with a hire because hiring can work out like beyond your expectations or it can really not work out so yeah I I I I have a ton of thoughts on this so I'm I'm going to he does he has a ton of thoughts I I spend 70% of my time thinking about hiring um and practicing it in in in different manifestations um I'm going to say something that I might regret saying for all the other customers that that I'm working with uh but then I had the best experience ever on boarding something uh of your caliber is on boarding UT 10 and I think part of that reason is actually how you operate and it's like how small your your your team is like on the content front because to my understanding it's just yourself and it's when we working with someone who who is of your um of your size there's usually like a lot of bureaucracy like there is talk to my assistant and then we're going to review and then we're going to like all learn together and then we are going to like hand off and then it will like take a month and then we'll have to do a lot of heavy lifting um and and and when we got we got connected like I I still remember I had tremendously busy weekend and it's like we we got connected Thursday Friday and it's like we we shared some ideas it's like what what to do the the loom conversation and then I'm I'm checking up first things on Mond it's like okay I need to get back to Dan and it's like help him through the next steps and I'm just logging into your account and it's like three products $10,000 like everything is firing I'm like what is going on there and and I think the reason is because you're I I think people have this very strong misconception that more people is the better like more people is not the better um growth is not proportional to headcount like by a long shot in in my opinion reversely proportional after a certain threshold um and for example when when we had experience and um hopefully you felt good about how quickly we turned uh the the loom embeds for you and if like you think about how things like this get done is because when when John told me that that you wanted Loom I just picked up the phone called the engineer that I knew like spend a lot of time in this area and like hey I need this in 2 hours can we get it done it'd go down in two hours we um did the thing for you and then we just like just let's [ __ ] go I thought we were so badass for that by the way for everyone's for your context for everyone's context D was basically just like I want to make sure I have Lumin beds in the course I was like oh and I remember you telling me that and I was like cool I'll run that by Vitali and then Vitali just shipped it like literally that day and that speaks towards the agility of an organization we would like to keep as we continue to scale and that's the that's like the cultural organizational question that we're asking now at 40 something people you know eventually hundred something people for different reasons and different organ like parts of the organization um but like we're really proud of that kind of agility that we' like to bring so and it's in the culture it's a choice to operate that way many people intentionally choose not to operate that way partly because they don't know any better but to to tactically kind of answer your question like how do you get into hiring is like you needs to get dragged into it like if you're like let me just hire because I feel like I need help like you will spend more time educating and it's like servicing that help uh then you actually need so you you you hold back as long as you need to awesome let's let's go over so you say um 40 employees total break break down the structure of those so eight 10 or Engineers what are what are the rest yeah it's all about so I'm getting everyone a mental model that I think a lot about which is just like a factory line or like the concept of bottlenecks and so the reason why we can be so thoughtful and and paired back on engineering is because how much leverage does code have theoretically one person like we lot about now in AI like one person billion doll businesses might occur I think some version of is totally true with agents like theoretically a single person can write code that scales to the entirey of humanity right that's just like technically possible and so code we can be hyperd disciplined because we have really clear Clarity on like how we can scale and so the rest of the organization ends up being the things that are harder to scale the things that are more human are closer to the human so require more Nuance that are harder to therefore systematize or programma tize and so the answer there is um you've got the engineering team you've got some product help right someone's got to design the wireframes and think about how do we build the most beautiful store themes for folks and so that organization is what how many people total the product organization like a dozen yeah a dozen and so you do the math on a dozen minus 4 basically two-third of the organization is on the business side because like you alluded to before distribution is everything and so when it comes to how we work with humans it's a marketing sales and support and service question and so one of the things we're really proud of for example and it's just like it comes from my experience working client service like that kind of job is like I'm really proud of how great our support and services like you can email them a question anytime they'll get back to you in less than an hour and it's a real human being it's not one of those Auto Journey tickets and that's just like a hill we've chosen to die on like we could run a much more profitable efficient business in whatever way if we just like had a shitty clunky AI agent or a call center or whatever that was outsourced um so probably at least a third of our employees are on the support side purely just like supporting our customers you're getting started oh more than a half like probably like actually the same amount as the number of employees we have a lot of support folks yeah yeah so it's so it's the full-time support folks are like 15 or so and then yeah sorry you want to give context uh um okay so so so just building on John's point that the support organization is something we are incredibly proud of and been very intentional about and and actually what I'm realizing is is a big differentiation for Stan yeah because and it's like any competitor like if you have a problem how many organizations can just with confidence tell you we're going to get back to you in an hour not with like a random hey we're going to get back to you sometime never but like with a solution like a personalized Loom literally solving your problem so the the the internal team of support is about kind of 10 folks and this is kind of the the brain of the support operation that that run the support systems uh and we have a few dozen contractors that kind of work in different time zones so we can um hold up to that promise totally that's a that's a good Nuance so basically the 40 is full-time employees that are salaried and payroll and of that still like you know a third of those employees are just to focus on service and support because we got 60,000 people and our job is to help them be as successful as possible so it's not just like the triaging of like a technical thing that they need help with but also like one of our favorite is just like hey you need help monetizing yeah we'll help you come with a strategy and we'll do that for people that are just starting and so that's a third so a third or third twoth thirds basically and now you have the last third which is focus on growing the company and so this is the lens of like the content team so we've got incredible creators who are on staff who like make content for stand like if if you don't follow us on Instagram like I think it's worthwhile like you'll learn a lot about how to Market actually um that is probably half of that team and then the other half is our team that works on like larger Partnerships so getting to work with you um getting to work with other creators that we respect from both a success perspective but also like a values and Mission alignment perspective is something that's really important to us and so that's the organization today and so as we think about scaling ideally we anchored a just a tempers engineering team because you have the thing about a 10x Engineers they're a thousand X better than the average employee right because the leverage of code you can also say the same about creators and creative talent in that way um and so where we'll start to scale from let's say 40 to 100 we'll be in a lot of these like operational things that we haven't figured out how to automate yet in some sort of way yeah uh to to to introduce um um maybe another way to to break this down is that what scales and definitely is technology uh John's first point what doesn't scale at all actually is is human connection and The More Humans we we are in service of right now 60,000 it's going to be 600,000 then it's going to be 6 million onwards like this is where the humans like needs to come in and this is where the organization is going to indefinitely grow to provide the level of service that we needs to I think there's a lot of um I don't want to call it uninformed opinions but but opinions that I don't agree with that like for example AI is going to solve like a ton of problems then I don't know if if you ever tried like introducing AI to your content in some shape or form to like maybe get more like very like questionable outcomes and there's like plenty companies trying to solve the support function by introducing the AI and they're kind of solving for a customer that asks like a stupid thing that you can look up on Google com customers that matter to you don't ask those kind of questions and it's like you can scale it this way um so stand will continue to grow from from the headon perspective in in the human connection kind of areas whether it's content whether it's marketing whether whether it's support but the technology part and this is um um the the vision of it is likely going to stay like small closer to the size like it will grow as needed but significantly at a slower Pace than than the other organizations yeah what what I've noticed with AI is it's very helpful for inspiration and creativity at least in like writing content creating content but to even think about it taking over my content for for me and just being like someone who acts in the background even an agent I don't really care how good it gets that takes a lot of the joy of it away from me and right now it could absolutely not do what I do cuz I've tried like my prompts are insane for me trying to replicate What I've Done um so I I agree I don't know where it's going to go it'll be fascinating it be really cool but I like that for let's talk about where to find the 10x Engineers or just 10x people in general cuz for I I guess for creators as we grow you have a very wide Network that you can kind of throw a net into but either with that or alongside it how do you go about that finding people I'll start with the broad and then I bet you've really great advice on specifically finding 10x Engineers so we'll talk the problem the way that we always try to talk problems which is from a first principles basis so the question you posed is how do you find 10x people and so I'm going to work backwards and be like well so the question is like how do we attract them to next people and convince them to join this organization and so then I'm like if I think about if I put myself in the shoes of my ideal customer Persona in this case which is the 10x person what what are the what are the attributes they're looking for in terms of the work they want to do and so they want to work with the very best people they want to work on something that's meaningful fulfilling to them and they want to make a ton of money and have a ton of financial upside and so we've reverse engineered those things to offer that to the market right because for us nowadays the way that we make the most impact and actually help our customers the most is hiring like our job is about hiring people even better than us who can do an even better job for our customers like it's it's a crazy way to think about the world rather than like I need to solve a problem it's like no I actually my job now is to go find awesome people that I want to work with that like also will just do incredible things for people and so in that when we think about our marketing message for um actually like going out and hiring to next people the number one thing that everyone knows Us in the market for is we Pay topof Market cash and Equity compensation like for anyone we guarantee you that there's no other company of our size and Stage what have you that pays better than us like if you can find someone let us like if you work at stand you can find anyone who has a higher salary like let us know we'll comp you better because our belief is that if we're doing a good job hiring 10 next people who really truly care who are good kind people who work really hard really talented like it'll pay for itself dude like we're not worried about that and so that there paired with the mission of what we do like we're really really miss forward and Mission first and like everything we think about like it's why we still wake up and hustle the way that we do like dude this is so cool like the amount of random people that we get to see who are just hardworking passionate people who get to succeed like this is the joy of like even the content you created and the outcomes you've created for people and so that is fulfilling work and then on top of that just like the ownership we give people to like yo just come join be your own entrepreneur create your own legacy like be really proud of what you've done that's kind of like the value prop if you think if if if we're selling St as a product like working at stand as the product the value prop are are many of those attributes and so from there then it's once again a marketing problem right you're just marketing the company working at and so how do you get the voice out like you can either go outbound traditional sales oneone cold emo what have you or you can Market in different ways so it's like whether I'm talking about our company in my content what have you it's just like you're productizing a company not on the product level but on the company level and marketing that to the very best people that you want to like work with that's like a highle way to think about it battal have even better advice so like to summarize that you're kind of thinking of Stan as the offer for these people yeah that's a good way to think about it yeah um the the thing that I that I want to add is before we talk about finding the 10x let's define 10x people and I'll intentionally steer higher level from from engineering because the concept of a 10x person I think applies to like to every industry out there um and my definition of it is so number one is a 10x person has range meaning that they are not like single threaded people who can do just one one part of the job like often times that's like that's very limiting that doesn't allow them to contribute to to to the degree necess and and I'll share an example uh in a moment um another property that that is important for a 10x person is when I am in the room with someone at the very least they needs to be an expert that I'm going to learn from like no no one works at stand that that we get to spend personal time with that that we are not not learning from um back to to to the range example design is a very interesting uh space so maybe let let me share a few few few ideas on with designers design is one of the easiest Industries to get into you just take a course on udem me uh sign up for figma and then you can call yourself a designer um most people in the world are probably like half X designers or just like 3x designers because once you start talking to them about solving a problem that is design related you just start to see very quickly that there's just a lot of things that they don't notice that are obvious to kind of your trained eye that that like an expert or 10x person should be should be aware of and there is many skills kind of involved there like between UI and ux like I I firmly believe that designers needs to be both UI and ux and really understand both well because one doesn't exist without another um for designer score 10x they would also be exceptional at copy for example because for you to get down to something that you can actually like as an engineer to take over and ship you can just let me work with the designer and then coordinate with the copywriter and then something is not going to work out because the copy is so long so they're going to get back and it's like hey if you're in charge please be in charge of the like of the whole thing so that I can kind of take it over and Implement um engineering same idea about Range Front End backend infrastructure Cloud security like all of this needs to be within the skill set of a person operating in something because this ability allows you to get things done quickly the most important thing and I think you would appreciate with this because I I I might have read this particular term from you actually it's it's time to Value how long no not me okay um how long does it take you to get from an idea to like the thing that is actually like life applies to any area 10x is about that 10x is about that in minutes 10x is about that in hours 10x is that by the end of the day people who are not 10x would need weeks months whatever yeah would you uh so apart of valves valve the company's uh employee handbook they say they only hire t-shaped people what that means is like they're specialized in one thing but they're also generalists they have like the umbrella of the surrounding skills that makes them exceptional is that kind of how you define someone that's 10x cuz I know you also I don't know if you only or you only hire full stack Engineers right yeah um there's a I never thought about it in terms of like like the t- shape but it does come come down to the t- shape because you have to have a significant vertical part of the T to to be an expert in your area of of The Craft but you also needs to have an extremely wide horizontal part of the te to be able to be competent and like get other things done um like that are actually required to to to complete this entirely like in a way by yourself um so very much so nice Okay let's round hiring off with just the general hiring process right when how do you filter people is there questions interviews do you do anything different unique is there anything that you hate about traditional hiring processes that you just avoid so I'll start with first this term of process should we would you mind sorry all right just a leaf blower I I realized that I didn't answer what the question was actually about is where to find like where to find the 10x fooks um on finding 10x people I I was actually reflecting on how we met um maybe a story for another time but John and I knew each other for a month before we decided to do stand together like we basically got you we got married yeah didn't even realize the time um and uh and well in my opinion John is like not even 10 a THX person like incredibly capable in so many areas um and you know 3 10x people at least around um around this table but but the way that introduction came about like we didn't know each other didn't hear of each other uh a shared customer introduced us I was building another software product at the time uh John started working on Stan and one day I got to call and it's like hey um I know this guy John he's building something similar looking for a technical co-founder would you like to have a conversation um and then and then we had a conversation um and um I think saw something um very impressive in each other that made us um make a bet to at least Explore More and and spend more time uh but the foundational idea there is 10x people are extremely hard to come like to come across like it's not just you saying it's like hey I have all these expectations and requirements like apply here people want apply like people who are actually 10x don't even have time to apply like opportunities come to them you need to go after them um and and the most certain way to get there in my opinion is through introductions and it's like introductions and referrals is is the work that you need to put in because every single person like literally every single person knows at least one 10x player which is like might not necessarily even be in their area of expertise but it's like someone who is so so so impressive I am so grateful to know them um and hiring those people just comes down to you establishing a discipline and consistency like like with everything around just going around and pinging your network and it's like I'm looking for this do you know someone you are thinking highly of um and being very committed to the process one of the most impressive things that our support team actually done recently um Q4 hired 15 folks 13 of them came through referrals the highest retention and success rates we are we are seeing absolutely remarkable referral straight up tactically what that is is literally you just ask the friend you're most impressed by hey who are all the smartest people you know that you're impressed by and you like his people you go out and you talk to them and some of them like most of them likely won't be a fit for some certain reason but then you ask them the same question and you just compound that flywheel so that's the Tactical answer yeah and I mean it probably becomes a lot easier when the offer of Stan join is is right if you're trying to do that when you don't have something to give or something that's better or something worth their time then may not turn out how you like it and that's the initial hump of Entrepreneurship is you're just fighting up batt and then over time as you're recing more value to your value prop then it like gets a little easier to roll the ball that makes sense uh one thing that I do in my free time this like my guilty pleasure is is just reading self-help books on the routines of creative people like really dissecting like okay here's all of these successful people what are their routines how often do they work what do they do at certain times of the day what do they do what have they produced so there there's clearly way two different sides of the spectrum there's someone like Charles Darwin who would work in like two-hour blocks separated by long walks and he produced 19 books in his lifetime and developed the theory of evolution I'm assuming he was like on his own by himself then there's uh the very some people call it whatever you want to call it hustle culture or just like working all the time uh super long days you live in a box like the memes about the like all dudes need is like the TV and the lawn chair I completely agree but and that's like what you do you get up you work and then you go to bed um so where do you guys fall in the Spectrum how long do you work and has it changed over time I think I can answer this in a way that will be even more helpful to people which is I would tell them what I all the things that I do that are not good for me for my routine as in what what you're implying through that spectrum is everyone has a different style in a creative style whether it's literally the rhythm of the cating rhythm of like when they should be creating it in the morning like or like 2:00 a.m. at night like some people are like dude I needed to be completely quiet everyone's gone what have you um for me personally I'm one of those people the best way to describe it is in college I could I never understood how someone could just like rail an Aderall and write an entire essay the night before like I just I literally can't do that I would just be like this is and so what I would have to do is I would write like two sentences every day on an essay for like three weeks and that's just personally my creative process I just work best that way and so how that translates in the real world is like every single day I need to basically ideally start my day without my phone without checking slack without checking email what have you and instead it's spend the first two hours um internalizing the idea that like hey what's going to happen is I'm going to have 10 minutes of creative spark and that's going to be four weeks worth of effort but like I just need to like have the repetition of going about that every single day so that's my process and so I'll share with you where I get in my own way which is one it is so easy to just get sucked into the urgent and this is something V's been a great partner on he's always pushing me on this is like John do you really need to be taking this call yourself or do you need to be thinking higher level for us um and so slack and email we like develop this dopam mean addiction especially when you come from the trauma the industries I came from in finance and working all day but you start to have this um Sinister Outlook where hustle culture is very important to some degree of like I I do believe in order to have Outsiders outcomes or something worth having you have to work hard but it's up to a certain degree where my mental model for too long has been an input output thing of like work hours where like I just because I used to work 100 hour weeks in finance cuz I was doing like drone level stuff I I equate with like oh I need to be grinding and plugged in for 100 hours to have output and instead if I had like the scale I'm operating at now where it's almost entirely about creativity in some ways um I would be better off just going to Bali for 3 weeks and surfing and not working at all and then like randomly like after paddling back from a wave having 2 minutes of an Insight cuz that's how much Leverage The creativity that I create now has obviously am I doing that no I'm like hustling a little bit too much in some ways and so I would share that as a paradigm for people to think about is like um there's a quote once again from Nal it's like work like a lion not like a cow yeah um and finding your balance with your reality of the moment of what that relationship should be and then being really maniacal about saying no to things and focusing that would be the formula for Success that I personally wish I followed more so awesome yeah um for me perhaps unpopular opinion these days I work all the time like I work days I work nights I work weekends um I think that's why we get along so well in Le it's like one of the things we have a lot of mutual respect for so um but but but but there is a detail to this and I think that's that's an important enabling detail because I work differently from from most of people and over time I've learned to um hold myself accountable to where the value actually is because what what I the way I Define War work is not just you know 15,000 items checklist it it's like making concrete measurable and tangible progress in the areas that matter and everything that you do in your life should be supporting uh your ability to do that um this morning for example I woke up before my alarm at at 5:30 and I was like let me just go for a drive I love driving driving in La is like super fun especially like before the traffic like morning sunrise and it's like I took our morning half drive just around the area and I spell all this time kind of morning dreaming let's call it just thinking and envisioning and just being in my zone thinking about what the future could look like if if we get those things and and they helped me build Clarity like do you call this work like I call this work it it informs um the work that I'm doing and it kind of puts you in different context that allow you to be productive from the point of view not of like how much actually things you complete but how much prog progess you make in the direction that you've established for yourself another component that I think is interesting that that enables me to to do this is um the the topic of work life balance is very difficult and I've struggled with this when I tried to actually find that balance and it's like there needs to be personal things and there needs to be professional things I was like my my life is work and I my identity is very tied to like what I create and the impact that I'm making um and and repositioning yourself to doing things like because you want to and how you want to and structuring your life that enables you to do this one of the Prest for me was learning how to trust people to make mistakes because everyone who is any good at what they do have incredibly high standard for the quality of their work and then as you start leading and managing people and you have like dozens of people at different levels of skill set to do things on your behalf it's like some of this is just not good enough and you can say well let me just go in and like with my hands just do it better because I can but then you're taking away an opportunity from a person to learn and then learning is what creates down thee line leverage for you that enables you to do even less work of that kind so you can do even more work of the kind that is truly fulfilling so you got to build a skill of Tolerance and feedback loops and how you work with people where they actually work for you so you know tangible tangible work I probably do like couple hours per day the rest is just working with people and kind of helping them see how to be productive and the rest of the time is just me thinking about the world and just living life in a way that helps me get get to my goals F faster yeah the there's a few things I'm noticing here where um it it depends on the the value that you provide like and what you do to provide the value and those two things alone if they're aligned with you if that's your life's work then everything else kind of Falls around that and as you said uh everything in your life kind of fuels that and so it's all considered work for the longest time uh I have a few videos on YouTube that are called the 4-Hour workday there's a lot of philosophy behind that it can go over four hours or under it's just like a constraint to determine okay what's uh what's the most effective amount of work I can do in this time and what's moving the lever but everything outside of that like me going on a walk and pretty much doing research for my cont content by listening to things and writing things down I I started to like unpack everything and even my walks even um like at the gym and other things it was all done to fuel what I considered the my best work so that's kind of what I'm noticing and so the value that you provide is a given you it has to be there because there's Stark differences between how much time people work right the creative people it it may not seem like they're working that much but they kind of have to structure their day that specific way in order to deliver the value that they can and for people that are doing different things that might involve sitting and doing the actual work longer but they wouldn't rather be doing anything else right because they're not doing the creative work or want to do the Creative work so their life is structured differently that's what I got out of it at least do you have something uh I U one of the most impactful ideas that that I've read in your 2hour writer course which I think is is absolutely incredible so if um if you guys want to learn about writing uh toour writer the the the core the core principle that that you've said is you have to set up your life in a way that enables what is that you actually want to accomplish and when it comes to to being a writer and living a lifestyle where you like have space to be creative like you can't hustle for 14 hours and be creative at this like maybe some people can but conventionally this is like not how it works and it's like you exercising getting the the the blood flowing and it's like being maybe present in like the place with the sunshine and being mentally uncluttered and like you know whether it's meditation or social activities like whatever gets you in that state like it's all part of the process and and and everyone needs to find for themselves what that lifestyle is that actually enables them to be um to be that version I I thought it was incredibly incredibly impactful nice thank you um to go Same Same Direction with work life balance one thing I've struggled with a lot because I'm a new co-founder Matt's a new co-founder Joey's a new co-founder we're all new to this thing and there's a lot of value in figuring it out as you go but how how do you think about um employees work days and and structuring those because that's another thing that really fascinates me in reading on that is like how do you go about it is is is it just the typical 9 to5 is it something different is it a certain amount of hours per week is it what people like however much people want if they deliver a certain amount of value how do you how do you think about all of that uh we definitely don't track hours or anything like that I think we're just entirely focused on outcomes at the end of the day to get the kinds of outcomes we all hold ourselves a bar to like you got to put in the work but but the reality is if we find someone who's like 100x and can just like chill for the whole week and then just like ship at the outcome level that we're looking for which is always best in class cuz everything we do we trve to be the very best version for ourselves like if you can do that and chill somewhere and then like come work for 20 minutes like awesome cool come come hang out come join um but at the end of the day the kinds of people that we look to hire and that we attract and that are our tribe aren't people who ever want to be in a 95 like if you're counting down the time until you clock out at stand then like stand's on a good fit for you you also probably aren't performing at stand from a functional and also a cultural level so like we would be having conversation like hey like what role actually Sparks you up like at whatever company or whatever organization like we'll help you get there but but like for us it's not about the hours we know that it's a clear input for the success level we have we're not measuring that it's purely about outcomes and that comes from one of our core values which is like we're only hiring people who have ownership is what we call it it's like this deep level of responsibility in them of like hey I'm going to do the best job possible for myself and also this organization so so that's how at least how I think about it um definitely not counting the hours the unlimited vacation policy kind of also come comes from that perspective where the minimum by the way so we offer unlimited for your contexts unlimited vacation policy which can be taken like poorly and so we also do a minimum so we ask that you take a minimum of at least 15 days and then at least three per quarter so we're like no like actually go take that like take the month off if you've been like you have to build the trust of course and the ownership but then it's like no go be a human being and figure out the har of it sorry John and I set set a good example there by taking a couple months off a year at least so it's like hey leadership by example we we do what to preach um this is actually so so important um culture culture and knowing who your people are uh one of the things that I'm noticing consistently is that people who are Best in Class never count the hours they work through completion they just um very similar to us Define themselves by the quality of the the output of their work um there's a numerous scenarios where it's like did multiple all nighters in office just because the team is working on something and it's like 11:00 and we're like looking at each other it's like we are close we are not down like are we doing it we are doing it and it's like we would just go go through completion um builds a lot of camaraderie this way I was like maybe a little bit toxic for some people not if you're having fun like you're having a ton of fun drinks Pizza like whatever Keeps Us entertained and it's like just you know play hopefully living life in a way where we get to like do what we love doing like get paid tremendous amount um and just have fun while edit but another component that's interesting about culture and once you you bring those people is culture is not what you say like you you stand for and definitely not the values that are written but it's but it's the actions and behaviors of people like on the team if you ever been kind of part of a running club for example you would probably notice that you know people run at different paces and it's like some folks run significant faster and others kind of take their time and and a good analogy there is like our team runs at a very particular Pace like one cultural component is our duration cycle is 24 hours and it's like don't come talk to anyone if you haven't made any progress in the 24 hours and the things that youve said you're going to get done 24 hours ahead of time you better come prepared to kind of report from the accountability point of view like to the team on that and um when when we make hires that for example aren't successful and um hiring is is very difficult we we we make a good amount of mistakes what you effectively see is that everyone is running at the same Pace but there's like one person like that that keeps falling out and you can have a conversation and share feedback and it's like hey those are the things you can improve but at the end of the day they will either keep Pace or they won't um and if they do keep Pace at least in that Arena they are your person if they don't keep Pace then you have to correct a mistake yeah I want to talk about structural changes like as you were growing because you mentioned before all of this like working out of a wework and then eventually moving into a place how how did things change as you grew is there specific like number of employee Milestones or what are the big phases yeah I can start first from when it was just me being a Creator and then talk about how that's evolved from a Creator business into what we're hoping to build which is an organization of lasting impact and Legacy um so when it IT people always use this term scale and everyone's like I'm always like at least like what the [ __ ] does that mean it's such an abstract term like oh you just need to scale and it's actually so unhelpful I think and so I'll walk you through what people mean by scale and I'll try to make it as physical and visceral as possible um things are really easy when it's just you you don't have to catch up anyone on your context and there's all these things that you take for granted inside you that you don't even recognize you're good at that you just like do like if I just want to make content I'm just go pick up the phone film this script it in my head what have you and then like go post that and then I'm going to going to go like call a customer or DM a customer myself and then go talk to them and like figure out how we can help them with their business and then like have them on board and then have them be successful and then I also know the picture of what kind of product I specifically want to build for my own Creator account that can be helpful for everyone else so I just mentioned actually in that like 25 different jobs that I do when I started and then if you think about the reality of that now it's like I wish I could do all those things but at the scale that we're at it's like 60,000 people that we're supposed to help and be responsible for like I literally couldn't all of those things and so you have to hire people to do those things and then you have to make sure they're all on the same page not and so you think about all the different kinds of personality types right making sure that they all have the same kind of core value set so they all get along then they all have like our definition of success like my definition of success could be very different from vali's or someone else's so to talk through like the the as specific of a Clarity is possible to get 25 people synced like the best way I can describe this is like you know when you go on to solo travel it's so chill and then like at four or five people when you have a bunch of friends or family it just becomes chaos it's like why is it so hard to get over and like an 11:00 lunch right it's like you don't even realize the Nuance of like a person into a family and just the chaos of coordination that creates and so the or an organization follows that path where like first it's just like John in his dorm room just like posting content um working through the product then it's finding an awesome co-founder who we have a ton of Mind sync but you got to catch up like every every single day to make sure you're you're on Pace but the issue with that is like the Network Comp like the complexity of the network grows exponentially as you add more nodes on the network so you get to 10 people it's still pretty chill you still feel like a team we're all still on the same page we can all still talk every week everyone can share their input they're all like Rockstar people and then as you get to 50 people say 50 is the number where it breaks and we're getting close to that but the real structural change we've had to make and this is on me for limiting the business longer um and vali's really helped us grow through this is um I think the curse of an individual contributor is maybe they don't end up being a good manager and a leader the typical example you hear all the time is like not your best salesperson won't always be your best VP sales and there's some people who just like wired to be like the best like single player engineer single player salesperson and I think in some ways I was wired that way and basically we had built for so long I got us from Zer to you know close to 30 million AR just off of like my insights alone with like an awesome Scrappy team colleagues are amazing but it was mostly like John making every single decision and giving every direction and that was the way that it could work at that time but things really started to break down for us the last few months and we finally gotten outad is and the organization is really succeeding now in a different way but it was like a painful period of evolution for us where we got to success and then we just hit this Flatline because we had hit the limits of the structure of the organization which is if you imagine it it was like John at the top and then like a bunch of people doing what John said but John can only make so many decisions in a day and at some point we hit that threshold and so now structurally you think of the organization of the nodes what we've restructured into and just just seen incredible benefit to it is like we've gone from a single Noe here of John which is I think a Creator based business is like personality driven business to like a real organization of incredible people who are owning their own nodes and then we're all my job and vali's job is to make sure we're all rowing to the literal exact same point but every single one of those nodes is better than us at whatever it is and they're building their teams and so you're just literally 10 Xing the three-part of the capacity of the organization so I say that's the major structural learning that we've had over the last few months and it was a really big personal learning for me as well got it the thing that is most important to pay attention to when when you're are scaling and and the thing that that breaks is alignment um as we're thinking about the the networks and exponential complexity it becomes increasingly more difficult to keep everyone on the same page um we did a survey and um someone like literally went and asked a number of people on the team were 30 people at the time what are we doing and why are we doing it you would not believe how many different versions of reality we've heard in those conversations I spent so much time in the business leaderships meeting talking about product and like what we are doing as like how and the why and then when I got the feedback from the engineer it's like hey why are you build like they were literally building it and it's like why are you building this it's like I'm not quite true Italia told me we need to get it done so I was like we we kind of get it done as a company but it's like it's embarrassing how little alignment there was um in people's mind and it's like this is when when it was like a Discovery Point for me it's like we need to really step up our communication game and it's like how information flows through the company from the top nodes down the tree you got to be intentional about it like it's about all hands it's about what your managers are talking about it's about what U Business review meetings uh um are going into like it's a very intentional topic and and us not being eager to like grow the headcount is just realizing that you can no longer focus on the job to be done like on the customer on the product you need to put increasingly more time into like the systems of operating this machine that has actually nothing to do with your business so that was as a firsttime Founder like that was a discovery I was like okay well there's a whole new world that we now need to understand so that's alignment the number one thing what's like a a most impactful tip for maintaining that alignment or or like the biggest thing that you found for keeping people on the same page because I'm ours isn't bad like we can easily talk between 10 people but once it expands what should I should I start implementing something now should I wait until it's a problem like the hiring process or if you said something less than 10 times you haven't said it enough when it comes to Big like one of the things we started doing is like we're going to start literally every single big company meeting with like this is what we are doing this year you've heard it multiple times you're going to to remind everyone and it's like this is where the north is all the conversations that stem from this needs to be in some shape or form related to this topic so kind of when you're communicating is like nothing is too much broken record just repeat repeat repeat one of the things that I think John and I have done particularly well in the in the early days is one of the things we we do we we have a Sunday meeting uh 3 p.m. Toronto uh lunchtime lunchtime La where we have two hours on structured just in the presence of each other catching up because we we our worlds are connected to to a significant degree but also very disconnected and we observe each other all the time and it's like things that happen without context like often times we would not agree um and and in order and and and things are complex to a degree where no decisions are necessarily wrong decisions but they require a lot of understanding and it's like what is going on to to get there back in the day it was every single day now it's uh much less frequently once a week but just having conversations with your most important people so for you with your co-founders down the line uh with with the company in some ways just it's like hey let's get on the same page and let's just talk about what is going on because what you don't talk about people will assume and those assumptions often times would be incorrect the best way to put that Sunday conversation it's just every single week him and I just get on the phone and we just have sometimes an agenda and sometimes we're just arguing to all hell and sometimes we just like are just catching up broadly on it but like the point there is it's important to have meta time on top of doing time cuz Monday through Friday we're just drinking from the fires executing day and day out there's no time to like go above and go higher level and just like we're using this buzz word of alignment I'm like trying to be more concrete for folks just to like connect to make sure we're on the same page and on the same like mental wavelength and so you asked for some tactical thoughts tacal thoughts on how you can make sure to create as much alignment as possible early on AKA it's just like everyone thinking about the same thing and knowing exactly where we're all going it's like it's the difference like they talk a lot about like if everyone's one degree off like you wanted to go to Boston but you ended up in New York like whatever that travel is across the Atlantic um it's the same thing like it magnifies its scale and complexity and so one of the things we do is we this sounds really simple we have a weekly All Hands every single week and so on that call the leaders are all talking about what is most important for the company and we do this is a very tactical thing but it's really helpful we just came up with this gimmick one day like for fun I just like one day I like put at the end of one of our presentations hey guys Pop Quiz because I just gone over the entire Year's worth of goals and then pop quiz at the end I was like what's our year and goal and I counted to three and then we all tried to say it and all came out wrong and we all missed the words and then the next week I just completely forgot to take those slides out and it became a thing for us that I've realized is super super helpful that we all kind of look forward to where now I can say Pop Quiz what's our goal for 2025 3 2 1 everyone in in acquire voices will say acquire and serve 200,000 entrepreneurs and that piy short goal is our high level organizational goal but it's stuff like that that seems so silly because you would never need to tell yourself that you just know your goal but with you know 50 different people on different pages like you've got to find these specific ways to maximize share time together which is like why one of my hot takes and people can you know disagree with me on is like if you're going to build an organization of success I think you need to be in person for a lot of it um but why that share time together that ambient time just spending time together is so important and then being really intentional you as the leader of the organization to make sure that everyone knows exactly where they're going and you can do that through like content whether that's like live calls and as a group or through other forms of content you have to share and communicate yeah uh uh I want to take us on the tangent a little bit but to of build more and uh fundamentally agree with John on um on building in person very unpopular opinion these days but would leave and die on the hill of leing in person um working remotely has its advantages it can be extremely productive um we spent tremendous amount of money first on we work now for for paying for for all the offices and um the reason you do this and the reason it works is because what you effectively are creating you are creating a systems and the environment where good ideas can and Thrive building a company is not you about efficiently moving like in a particular direction at the fastest way possible like the hardest thing about building a company is actually figuring out what is it the right thing to do and and and those ideas come about in random catch apps they come by the water cooler conversations they come one of the traditions we have uh Toronto n la like we have lunch together like all the 20 people try to find themselves spes like we move like we would move tables and we would just eat and talk like sometimes work related sometimes not work related and then like after this like some ideas would spark in we would go like try this out or it's like have another conversation we would build Clarity it would never happen if for you to talk about something you need to schedule a zoom call and and slack make things like easier and other communication platform where it's like you can build a culture around this but there's absolutely nothing that comes even close to just being shoulder-to-shoulder with the people that you think extremely highly off where you can just like hey what do you think about this and then you see where it takes you yeah I love that that's one thing that uh Matt's really good at in Toronto is one everyone's there it's me and Joey and then Stephanie girlfriend support down here and so it's really cool to see that they one are four of them are roommates and then they all like go over to the same house they uh like kitchen counter and like an extended counter they just have like the desk set up there and they're all working around the same place so it's it's really cool to see and it's fun to go up there but I wanted wrap things up with kind of like a selfish question of ours is what were let's say three for the sake of throwing out a number what were the three levers that you had to move and if we can tie those to like the the points in your business where you saw those like jumps and growth like what took you like I'm assuming first one is product Market fit like when you see that what kind of brought you there is it social media is it traffic is it product hitting a certain feature set or Milestone or all of the above I I think I I I would start post the point of product Market fit so Stan fundamentally has product Market fit where it's we are successful not because of how many customers we have but because of how much money those customers are making because by by seeing really individual success stories where it's like you see it like end to end from from the place where I didn't create content like all the way to I made a million dollars what we are doing like fundamentally works so so it starts there and on that Foundation then there is style that allows us to amplify the impact of it as much as possible one of those levers I believe is service and the fact that Stan is not a software company like we are a people company and we we use software to to to deliver on the promise that we are making to folks um and that promisees if you work with us you'll make the the maximum amount of money possible um and the component that that we are actually offering there is like what we do with them the second piece uh I think is is speed um I think stand fundamentally moves much faster than most of the companies out there when it comes to the specific like one equation time from the idea to value I go to so far it's so interesting observing the angles you look at the business versus mine and it speaks towards like the partnership of it like we think often like I have so much appreciation now for the yinyang model it's like same core values but different perspectives cuz I was thinking about the things that I do and I would say the three that I can come up with number one is post product Market fit I agree as well it's like I think product Market fit very rarely comes like as one big yeah I Market fit that's probably if you're lucky you're deeply intuitive product Market fit comes from a lot of painful iteration Cycles like it it's super on glamous and it's just literally about like you ship a product you go out and talk to people that actually really like it and you ask them why and people who didn't really like it but kind of liked it what would make them really like it and you just keep improving that way and it's like kind of unsexy and maybe for some products it just shoots off but for us that wasn't like a it wasn't like a step function thing we'd always kind of had some version of it and it just has compounded to get to some point where it's really really good it's just fundamentally the best thing out there now and we there's so many ways we need improve it still um so the three levers I would think about is um there's that quote that I think most people are now recognizing if you build it they will come is not necessarily true for most people takes a lot of marketing and distribution and like getting rejected even it's like the most amazing idea in the world no one cares I don't care you have to make people care and so the first lever for us was distribution like one of the first reasons we got off the ground was the novel Insight that just came from like me vlogging in public because everyone there were we started St like San was such a bad idea in a business I was in business school it was like the opposite of a good idea which was like there were 500 competitors multiple Legacy incumbents who raised hundreds of millions of dollars and I was I remember using them I'm like these are so shitty and clunky and so overpriced for like [ __ ] software and so I built stand but it initially it wasn't like a 10x better product it was like two or 3x better but it was like wasn't enough but the so you think about like then how have we how has every other one of those companies like flatliner gone under hundreds of them raised tons of funding and Stan has been a rocket ship and it starts first with the key Insight is distribution all those people were just Tech Bros trying to make money on a hot economy and a hot Market no I [ __ ] bled this [ __ ] I [ __ ] posted content all day long and deeply like these aren't just my customers they're my friends they're just like I like we are friends outside of work and I'm so like grateful for them but that's that's like that's the first thing it was like I started posting content and that was our Insight that no one else was doing of like oh the best way to talk to your customers is through the content that they consume and that the place that they're already at and so that that was the first unlock for us was like the floodgates first open because we realized that distribution should come inbound through content and we started first with my content and then your question as an entrepreneur leader should be okay how do I 10x and scale this and so the obvious answer is then you hire more creators to make more content for you and you blow out your content and so that's the first lover it was distribution the next one the next two are the last year and I think it's really going to push us to the next phase um the next one is going to sound as silly as truly understanding who you are and I'm still trying to understand in process what this actually means but I I know it's so powerful it starts with buzzwords like values what I mean that is like through one of the reason I'm so grateful to the entrepreneur journey and and why I think it's so powerful and why we should give it to more people is it really forces you to look at yourself in the mirror you get punch so [ __ ] hard but if you persist for long enough you learn a lot about what your values and what value you can give in this world AK you actually start to learn what your differentiation is you understand like what do you care about who are the kinds of people you [ __ ] with and also like how can you make a living for yourself and so basically through the process of just like trying to build this company making so many mistakes on hiring learning how to hire better getting to work with the awesome people we get to work with like you get to understand like oh these are our people AK these like for us our values are pretty simple like you have extremely high integrity unquestioned Integrity good kind person also exceptional a lot of nuances from there but like you get a sense of like oh so this is who I am and this is then allows you to answer the next question which will be the next level we'll talk about is like how do you horizontally scale that but for us like the who we are question isn't just from a hiring perspective and building organization it's also from a brand differentiation perspective like we have such Clarity on why people come to us and what they resonate with and that takes years years pattern matching years of just showing up every day and doing boring stuff and then like 3 years later you wake up and it's like oh like the reason why none of our competitors are going to come close to us is because they don't understand content and brand and will'll never care about our customer as much as we do and you start to like cement these principles for yourself and everyone's are different and you start to realize like oh this is because you've worked with somebody because like you understand like through almost intuition like oh this is the lever to pull and so for us you just like understand after like four years of commitment Who You Are and how you differentiate and that's a persistence game and an observation game cuz then that allows you the last thing and I allude to this but this is the lever that we're really starting to push now and I'm hopeful but really excited that it'll work out which is um how to build an organization rather than like doing a thing which I I think before I was doing a thing for us but like this is about going from a Creator based business where like a single person here is doing something John versus like how cool would it be if we could 10x the number of creators who are even more successful than me so it's about how do you build this organization this like abstract entity this engine that goes about replicating and finding more people that are way better than me at 100x the volume and training them how to be successful and letting them just go do their own thing and be proud of it and that like literally from a volume perspective is just going to outweigh literally anything I could do myself and so that's the next level of problem that I'm starting to think about and I think it's a really key lever for us in the future um one way I I think to to to reward one of the John's earlier point is Stan's brand is um for creators by creators and a started with John being a Creator himself and then it's like he gets it we as a company get it many folks on the team started creating contents we are now hiring hiring uh creators and uh the truth is most companies out there just don't have any business being like in the business therein uh and this kind of founder market fit is is incredibly important to just set yourself like up for Success because like when you're building for yourself you just understand the inside so much more deeply so that you just feel what's the right thing to do as opposed to just doing a formal version of like three month research to find out what customers are objectively trying to tell you um the the other thing that I've just realized as I'm looking back and and reflecting on on our journey is we've actually been very consistent and very selective at the one thing that we've done well for for distribution that's about partnering with creators and and what kind of creators and that was the only thing that we've done for like literally four years never spend a dollar on marketing Stan is not on Twitter yet not on Facebook either and it's like we we are staying in Lane of what we know works and it's like once in a while we'll talk to growth F it's like you guys should be on Twitter or it's like you guys should be like elsewhere or you should do this that and the other thing and every time we have this conversation it's like yeah but we are not because we know what we are doing and we are good at it um and then as as time goes on these things are going to evolve and grow but finding that one thing that works for you and sticking with it and actually like giving it time uh to succeed because like most of the things that are worthwhile in that scale like don't happen overnight like you need to let them time to grow um like that consistency and and belief that is founded in data and and insights um I think was transformation one of the big reasons we are here today awesome to and last question super quick what are the main channels just Instagram Tik Tok Instagram Tik Tok YouTube okay you will not find a better converting store on social media and mobile first which is like where all of us are going um so our customers literally like we've run the case studies experiments our customers literally make more money switching to Stan um so test to that yeah more and more LinkedIn and newsletters oh I completely forgot yeah we just started on LinkedIn and people are crushing it there too yeah nice yeah I'll uh I'll say it like for a lot of the people that do have a product or service like just try stand like what 14-day free trial super simple and it's dude it's so much I was on redacted before and it's what 30 bucks a month or 99 a month compared to something that's ever increasing up to like 1 2,000 a month like just yeah start War say but I think we killed it that was a lot anything you want to leave off with anything you think I left out any wise words something on your mind lately a quote I think people often ask me like how to just be successful and I've now met a couple dozen billionaires or very successful famous people and some of them you meet you're like wait what um and I mean that with all due respect many of them are extremely like hardworking and and and very intelligent in all these ways but what I can tell you about all of these people and I have immense respect for all of them for this trait the only thing that matters is that you just persist and so for everyone that like watch the fact that you watch this whole video like I'm sorry that sucks um but like you're clearly deeply invested in your own success just show up every single day and never ever give up and I promise you you'll look back in five years and I'll get to say I told you so like you're going to be successful so yeah I have a quote two one after another firmly believe in this um live by this every day nothing is impossible and your level of confidence defines your level of achievement beautiful we in there awesome that's it cool thanks questions I don't have fun in um a lot of podcast interviews but I actually had a lot of fun yeah I think you had a good flow