013 - Building a Business While Working Full Time, Delayed Gratification and Reading

[0:00] Welcome to Build Horizons, a show about picking the life you want to lead and how to make it happen. We have a lot to get started today. We're going to talk about what are some challenges with Bravely, our company, the AI effect on jobs and why we still think reading is important and whatever else we come up to. But first, we're going to do the intro.

[0:58] out the subscription thing i haven't even got to that yet i'm jeff that's katy subscribe uh and yeah we we have a fun uh fun episode today glad to be recording yeah it's been a minute i'm gonna remember to hit the thing yeah hit auto oh there we go there we go there's katy um all right so we have completed our first quarter of podcasting katy it's kind of crazy actually i thought it'd be fun to check in how how did it meet or not meet or exceed expectations what's different than you expected i want to know it's been more fun than i thought it was going to be and i do feel like we've had some really good conversations here and you know people are probably thinking you're married you guys talk all day but i mean and we do but i'm not sitting down for an hour yeah and talking about things that maybe we wouldn't have talked about because i think you get into the i don't know the hustle and bustle of the day and honestly kind of go a little bit into survival mode yeah oh and a lot of conversation ends up being about life logistics and you know there's a lot of that with two kids and stuff yeah yeah and i think it's really cool because it kind of is a little

[2:14] bit of self-reflection because the things we talk about on this podcast are still things that we're trying to figure out too. We're not like experts at all. Um, definitely trying to be real on this podcast of how struggles are real. Um, and trying to become, you know, like you said, living the life you want to lead. That's what we're trying to do too. And I don't know, I think it's been more fun than I thought it was going to be less stressful. I think I was always wondering like what in the world we would talk about which you know we still struggle sometimes coming up with show note ideas but we always manage to pull something well and this one was a little bit interesting katy decided that she's done she's retired from career questions i didn't say i retire from career questions i just think that's a lot of what we talk about and it's so funny to me because i never thought i would even be working in the job like field in the job force um for those of you who are just now listening i've been working um basically since covid um in a more career focused job and i genuinely thought i would be a stay-at-home mom my whole life so

[3:30] it's been, I don't feel like I'm qualified to talk about job and career things when I didn't even think that was going to be my path. What, um, I mean, just to go down that, we don't have to spend too much time on this, but I'm, I'm kind of curious, like when you reflect back on like making that shift, I mean, you know, you said you thought you would always be a stay-at-home mom obviously ended up doing more job stuff um like just speak to that like identity because it's a bit of an identity oh for sure yeah um i'm trying to put myself back in 2020 katy uh so when i i know so when i was offered to come back to work it was just a part-time thing and the kids were still really young. And one thing that I thought would be doable with it is that it was a full remote job. And that felt like I wouldn't be sacrificing time with my family as much, which honestly, and I'm still, I still work full remote and I'm not sure I

[4:46] could work full-time without being full remote but for the identity part of that I think having that as an option for me has made me feel like I can still be a mom and I can still be at all the things but I can still provide for my family in this way too um it has its challenges and there are times where I feel overwhelmed just because I have a lot going on in work um and then also there's just a lot going on with kids but I actually think it's been a really for me personally a really healthy thing to have my own thing and to grow in that space um and I I genuinely don't think I could now at this point in my life not have a job of some sort um because I do enjoy having challenges there's challenges and I enjoy um I don't know I enjoy meeting people too and I think that's been yeah honestly and talking a little bit more about identity is one thing my job has opened doors to is meeting people from all over the world which has been so cool and learning about

[6:02] you know different cultures um different countries that and I am so so grateful for that um experience that I've been given because I don't think and I don't know if it's necessarily as unique as it used to be just because I do feel like the internet has opened up a lot of doors for people to be able to you know work together from different parts of the world but with my job specifically I do get to do that a lot and I am so grateful because I feel like being here in Kansas especially being like born and raised here in Kansas. I, you know, growing up definitely put us in a little box and like, didn't really even understand the world. Um, not saying that I'm an expert by any means, but I am so grateful for that. Um, those life experiences that the, the jobs have opened up for me that I've been able to meet people from all over the world. That's been really cool. Yeah, it is really cool. And you know, I think to me, what stands out is just the importance of not letting a prior version of yourself box yourself into a, you know, a way to live life just because that's what you used to believe or that that was used to be what you thought how

[7:17] things would go. I think it's, um, it's a little bit scary to break out of that. Um, but, but like, and intimidating because there were times where I would meet someone and I was so scared I was going to say the wrong thing or not be respectful in any way, but I don't know. It can be, but it's been, it's just been, I'm so grateful for that experience. Yeah. And I just, I think there's a lot to be said for a willingness to intentionally take a little bit of a different path and figure out if this is something that I want to do, or is this something that I find fulfilling in a way that maybe I didn't think about when I started down this other path, you know, years before. Yeah. And, and just, just not boxing yourself and being willing to try and figure it out and embracing, you know, a new identity and what that can look like. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, it's, it can be hard and, and yeah. But I'm very grateful. Um, I'm grateful for, you know, being able to work remote and still getting good at, to do all the mom things, but still also getting some really, really cool life experiences through, um, my work that I've been able to do over the last few years yep all right well shall we go into some of our topics today sure i will

[8:33] do you want me to um just kind of number one or did you want to talk about it like it's it's a little bit different than what we usually do yeah questions um so i don't know that you have to be our question burden bearer yeah um but yeah i'll i'll just take a stab at kind of this is more focused for you i think yeah because we don't we don't have any questions this week necessarily i mean some things that were inspired unless tiktok if you have questions shoot them our way we would love to talk about something live on the podcast i think that'd be so fun like maybe a little stressful but nah not at all zero percent i think it'd be really fun but the uh yeah so the thing that we are um going through right now is the the business is now uh seven months we're completing summer months of, uh, of bravely. And so moving into month number eight, and one of the things that has been on my mind is just the, the changing of the dynamic of the stuff that we have to do and the problems that we have to solve. And I have a quote here, actually, you, um, when we were kind of trying to put some of this together, you, I had balled that quote and picked it out. Um, And I liked it. It is from Alyssa Seeley, which is a, uh,

[9:51] para-athlete and the quote is, and she won gold at two Olympics, two different Olympics. Every day I would tell myself, just do what you can. And little by little, everything will come together. And it is, um, I feel this in my soul right now. Yeah. You want to speak to that a little bit? Um, well, I feel like I'm still waiting for that. Everything to come together, but it is. um it's just hard because you do have to show up every day and it is the consistency and it can be hard um when it's not an instant gratification of oh yay something exploded because I don't think that's the normal story of success no it's not um so I do think I don't know there's a lot to be said for showing up. And I think this could be, I don't know, it literally any part of someone's life they're wanting to see. Yeah. Anything. I mean, um, it wasn't where I was intending to take this, but honestly, a really big part, whether it be business or other big changes that you're wanting to make in your life is a willingness to do or handle or live

[11:07] with delayed gratification. Almost nothing is going to be solved overnight. That's meaningful. That's going to be worth doing. I mean, you can start down a path, but it's going to take a long time of showing up every single day to get to cool places. Um, and that could be making a big change in your life or that could be chasing a big dream. Um, but it really, I mean, not that there's not other things to it, but one of the most important things I would say is a, a willingness to delay gratification and being okay with that. Because with the business, there's going to be a long time. The thing you mentioned of wanting things to all come together one day, that may not happen for years. And that has to be something that you're still willing to put in the work knowing that that's the case and not knowing what that will even look like. And it'll probably be something unrecognizable to today us. Um, but you know, as, as we show up every day, you know, there's problems before us that we have to solve and be willing to be flexible and figure out the path and, and just keep adapting to, you know, as things change, present themselves as data shows

[12:23] up and that helps us make decisions. Um, but as also as our skillsets change over time too. Yeah. And I know you, uh, wrote down here, like your general challenges. How do you want to talk to some of those a little bit? Sure. I mean, like in the early days of the business, the, the, the challenges were very, um, I don't, I mean, straightforward maybe as a way to say that, like they were much more obvious perhaps. So for example, if you want to sell something online, Um, you have the choice of, do you want to figure out how to do all the taxes and sell the stuff yourself? Or do you want to find someone who can be your merchant of record and handle all the tax side of things and stuff like that? And, and so you have to, you know, go down the path. And then, uh, if you go down the merchant of record path, you have to figure out like, how do I integrate that into all the various ways that people can buy things and get it all tested and make sure that it works and make sure money moves. but in that way it is very very um straightforward with what you have to do like i have i do not have this thing and i need this thing and so i uh i need to make that happen um and and so in that way like with the simplicity it's really

[13:41] obvious like what next steps need to be and so therefore it's really easy especially if you're willing to you know push yourself a little bit it's easy to work really long hours and like, keep at it because you're not having to necessarily think about the more meta side of like, what actually should I be focused on right now as the business matures and starts to have some traction in various areas and certain apps that we've built have, um, have started to like show a little, um, exciting life and, um, and also being able to see like, okay, if this is what it looks like now, uh, then this is what we could see easily changing in the future with that. And there's one, a lot more things on the table that are interesting levers to pull or little things to poke at. So there's a larger number of them. Uh, but also those larger number of them, none of them are at least on the surface. And maybe I'll unpack this a little bit live and realize it's a little bit of a fallacy, but I, it feels like on the surface, they require a lot more, uh, I don't know, creative thought,

[14:57] longer amount of time thinking about the problem and planning and writing things out and, and coming up with a strategy around it and then coming up with experiments to run and, uh, figure out how to test things um has there been more strategy to this than you thought there would be i don't know uh i mean because of my profession like i i know what it i know what strategy looks like for a you know 500 to a thousand person company would look like um so i definitely know what the, you know, much further down the road, larger organization, um, strategy stuff entails. So in that, as you know, in that respect, I know, especially from like the finances of the business and stuff like that, that there's a lot of meat on the bone, um, that had to figure out. I mean, I also have a, a background making things. Um, and so from the development side, I also know that it can be quite in-depth with the different things that you can do to make sure that you're building robust apps and stuff like that.

[16:14] I think the thing that I probably have underestimated the most is the amount of knowledge that you have to have on the marketing front and the amount of experimentation that really is nigh infinite on that front as far as getting people to become aware of your thing and then ultimately make a purchase. those uh it it stops coming becoming a it stops becoming a technical problem and becomes much more of an adaptive challenge like behavior and figuring out how people are gonna click on things or what what because every person's a little different on how their reaction will be to the apps. And yeah, yeah, that's really interesting. Um, is there an app? Uh, I'm just curious that you are most excited for one that's been surprisingly more successful than you anticipated. Um, I mean, I, I think on two fronts, I'd answer that a little differently. I think the thing that I'm enjoying working on internally for business is our data analytics app, just because I do, um, I do think that that is

[17:29] such an incredibly important part of our business is really, truly understanding at a really granular level, the things that are happening. And if we make changes, being able to measure and track what the impact of those changes are rather so that we're not making a best guess and then hoping that it was right, but can more scientifically lean on like this has this effect. And so we're going to move forward in this direction and taking those little things and learning and applying them to bigger things. Um, I think the thing that I found maybe the most, um, like when I reflect on, I'm glad I started down that path sort of thing. Um, our remote desktop app, Scry, the first time that I started down that road, I ended up giving up and then found myself being like, man, you know, I use these other apps and like, surely I can figure this out. Like surely we can make something, um, that, that can make these things happen. I mean, it's, it's not easy, but it's not rocket science either. Um, and so, you know, went back to the well and, and ultimately started to get a little bit of traction and, um, we got that, uh, to be functional and then out into the world and then on all the various different

[18:45] platforms and then, you know, figuring out little things here there to make life easier and better and you know now it's to a point where i can i can hang my hat on that like it's a it's a good remote desktop application it's a good option for people um and i think that's cool to have had something that i did give up on at one point and then came back to and and realize like okay yeah it is hard but it is achievable if you know i don't give up and and figure out what specific technical pieces are things. Cause at the end of the day, if it is a technical problem, like I feel very confident on being able to eventually get that figured out. If I, um, if I see the, like what that end goal end state can look like, um, in the development space, there are certain pieces of that, that I'm less familiar with or was less familiar with it. Maybe now, um, I, I think of the bar is a lot higher than maybe where I used to, as far as what i would probably give up on now and it's some of that is a little bit of like i'm just going to self-select things that i think are within our wheelhouse and things that we can do well um but even if it was something that we had a higher aspiration for like there's not

[20:00] much that i would consider completely off the table um other than maybe like enterprise database uh you know uh, coming up with Oracle 2.0, probably not going to be, uh, what our niche niche niche niche, whatever niche niche is. Um, so yeah, that that's the, the two different slants on that, that I would, I would, that I think of that. Yeah, no. And I know yesterday when we were talking about topics and things, I mentioned that. And I, and I don't know if it's just where we are in our season right now with school starting and just the busyness of that um but how it's got a little harder to do our day jobs during the week come home and then tackle bravely work again and like you said you kind of like it seemed a little easier maybe at first because of you know it was a very black and white task um but I know that you said you know weekends are still productive and things but you want to speak to that a little bit more as a like new business owner and and how you balance that and how maybe some good advice for people that might be in the same boat yeah are trying to figure that out and especially being a parent too that can

[21:16] also add another layer of it but it can be can be tricky yeah and you know for for me for the probably the first six months of the business. I mean, we didn't watch a single TV show. We, um, like it truly impressive. I mean, uh, hours spent working, uh, between, um, a day job plus bravely. And I think that recently, um, as the problems have gotten more complicated, um, and do require longer thought, I think it has underlined the importance of, you know, refreshing a little bit, um, or maybe this is just a season. Um, but yeah, I, the, we've watched a couple TV shows, there's football on nowadays. So have something to at least, um, have on in the background for the, uh, you know, the Sunday games and then, you know, make, make some time to watch the chiefs play and stuff like that as any good Kansan, um, especially nowadays. But the, the, the thing about that is, you know,

[22:31] you gotta, gotta figure out how to navigate the season that you're in, whether that's life or business or whatever. And, uh, I think, I think for me, it's probably a mixture of, I need to figure out how to break down the more complicated things into smaller bite-sized pieces so that I can, even if I'm tired, make things, you know, move things through, um, and get them progressed. Um, but on a Saturday, let's say like where I do have, you know, more cognitive capacity to apply to it using that, you know, there's always going to be technical things that I want to move along. Um, I can't help myself, but being a little bit more intentional about planning out what I want to achieve during the week so that it's not like staring at the 50 things that I could work on on a Tuesday night and hoping that I'm just going to magically find the golden thing to be able to spend the energy I have. Like the, by the time I would figure it out, I'd be pretty exhausted. And, and if some of these things do take, you know, two, three hours, then it's going to be pretty unlikely that I'm going to make meaningful progress on that. Um, so

[23:48] planning out what I want to focus on and, and, you know, and being okay with the occasional TV show here or there, as I kind of regroup and figure that out and not beating myself up too much about that. Um, I mean, I there's still literally every single day I'm doing stuff. So it's not like, um, I'm taking complete days off or anything like that, um, at this point still, but I, I don't know, I, I feel happy with the ebbs and flows. And, um, I think having moved our kind of workstation set up into, uh, our bedroom also is helpful to be able to kick things along without having to come all the way downstairs. So I'm still figuring out what that looks like exactly. Um, but I, I feel like even, um, the last couple of days, mornings, evenings, been able to make some good progress. So finding, finding our path a little bit. Yeah. And it's interesting. You know, we talk a lot about, um, planning our day. Like we only have so many hours in the day and how, I don't know. And I don't really have any good question. This is just really me just, um, stream of consciousness talking, but you know, we all have been watching more

[25:04] shows and we haven't been running as much and we aren't running long runs on Saturday anymore. I just think we have a lot of shifts going on right now. And it's been interesting to try to navigate that a little bit. Yeah. I mean, absolutely. We've not, you know, from a fitness standpoint, um, the amount of hours spent going on three hour long runs, definitely taking a, I don't know, this is probably just a, you know, as the fall weather rolls in, just taking a little bit of a season of rest. Um, I, I'm sure we'll be, you know, I'm sure that it will change, um, back over time and yeah. And we'll train, you know, we'll have something that we'll be looking forward to a race or you know just wanting to or even a half marathon um that will get us back out there but yeah it's been interesting because i feel like we spent hours running each week to now i almost feel like we've filled that time in with watching shows yeah well and i i think it's just okay you know yeah i mean i i don't i don't think i would like look back on this in um a month or two

[26:19] if we were still going down that road and feel good about it. I think I would feel like you guys, you people from the past who made these choices, you've been resting a little bit too long. But I do think that it's important to be willing to take a step back so that you can take two steps forward occasionally. Yeah, yeah. Definitely need some recharge time. And I think that's a little bit, I don't know. I feel like for me with the kids' busyness, that's kind of where i've been at with school starting and then having um extracurriculars and all the things and getting them to all the things but that's where i my focus has shifted a little bit but also trying to still make sure that you have your time to be able to focus on the business and yeah just a lot of balancing and figuring out how it is funny like we had such big aspirations for the sydney video we keep talking about it um but i mean the sydney video so bad you guys i know we're gonna get it maybe maybe this weekend the the problem is is it basically will take probably three to four hours of actually sitting down focused and working through it and that's with a good like editing brain ready like and and that's just hard to come by i basically get like

[27:35] one or two of those per week and right now i've focused them on other parts of the business which i don't regret that other than it would i just it was a really fun it is fun time it is a fun time to go back and like when we have started editing it or just like kind of kicked it down just a little bit uh down the road uh it's like oh man i this is a lot of fun oh so fun it'll be it'll be fun to turn into a video yeah you need to get it done i've done my part guys my part is i've gotten all the videos into vi and jeff needs to go do his little magic editing and he's not done it yet it's true but it's the bones are there just needs to get finished what do you think about the um like okay so we have a tv series we're watching now we'll finish that and then um probably back to trying to focus more of our time on business stuff oh oh oh yeah what tv are you what are you gonna i'm just wondering where you're going with this yeah i'm getting there that was what the sentence that i was speaking was that you interrupted um and i'm curious if you think that the problem is an energy problem or is the problem that i'm not breaking down the things into small enough pieces

[28:50] or some other third thing um like what do you think is going to be the shift to get back to the first six months of feeling like a really driving the thing forward which i will say like what's funny about it is i say all that but like if you look back a month ago things have changed quite a bit um so it's not like it's not for not i mean it's not like it's stalled entirely i just i feel like that there's another gear that we're missing out on and i'm curious if what your perspective as someone who's kind of been a part of this journey what you think the the challenge is going to be and maybe we'll reflect on that when we if we ever of feel like we're on the back on the other side of that yeah i don't know i think it's maybe a little bit of both because you definitely are undiagnosed adhd and like to go squirrel on the next thing and sometimes without completing another thing and i definitely think as we've built more apps i say we you um and there's an erin yes part of the bravely team yes um and

[30:06] shout out to aj for always doing our short editing so thanks aj you're the best um oh yeah i guess you'll be listening to this aj thanks potentially but so i think so i think there's a couple parts to this. So you definitely have a little bit of, um, I don't know, you need to work through when you need to focus in, but it's interesting. ADHD is so strange because I feel like when you do hyper-focus, you like super focused, but then when there's so many different things to focus on, you can get really distracted. Um, and when there's more things, we have more apps. It's not like we just have three apps. You have a lot of apps you're working through can be hard to focus in on the things that need to be driving things forward. Um, and, and honestly, sometimes there's times where I'll be like, Oh, Hey, what are you working on? And you've started a new app. And I'm like, what about all this other things? But I know, I know it's building upon each other and that your brain is, well, I got to have this app so that I can be able to do this thing for the company.

[31:21] But then I also think it has just been a busier season. But I don't think that we are optimizing our time best maybe right now. So maybe we figure that part out. So energy-wise, I don't know if that's a problem because we're not running as much. so i feel like we should have more energy than we yeah are sounding like we have i don't even really know if i answered any a single question there but those are my those are my initial thoughts um one of the man the having the the old tiktok up on the background is sometimes very distracting yeah yeah i try to make a just check sometimes to make sure we're not missing anything but not not really we're not missing much um what we were talking about i had i had a point that you had adhd you had you have adhd and all the apps and yeah thanks um the the thing that i have found as more of a just a strategic decision at this point of if there's something that I like a tool that I would use that I would pay for rather than buy it, not

[32:39] from a, like trying to save money standpoint, but from a, like, if, if, if this is something that there's a market for, I want to try making it myself. Even if it doesn't see the light of day, I, I want to learn how it works. And then I either end up with something like a tool that I can use internally, uh, or it, you know, if it does turn into something that like, I see a path forward for it to be available to others, then, you know, we can see about adding that to the offering that we have. And so, you know, so we have a, like a internal project management app, uh, projectly that right now is, and I don't have any plans to change this just because of how we've changed it over time, at least at this point, um, to be anything other than an internal tool. Um, in fact, I, I had a cool idea for that. I didn't even tell you about this this morning, but like, I have a cool thing that I think will help with how we do website development and have that being built out in projectly this morning and i think if we can get that to work that'll have really uh that'll streamline some of our processes and and

[33:57] so in that essence there's no there's no way that a a third-party tool could do what i'm like what i have in mind for this thing and so you know i i am going to spend some time every once in a while continue to improve it because i think it's a part of the you know internal systems of our business um you know a different example is we've started down the path of building bellwether which is our analytics tool and i i think that will be something that we like ultimately end up um selling right now i the reason why we're going down that path is i have a very strong data background um that's a big part of my career story is um leading a data analytics team and so i i'm i'm good at sql and data visualization and stuff like that and maybe talk because like i didn't even know that was a thing um what bellwether is you want to talk to it a little bit more and maybe people that perhaps will stumble upon that might find it interesting i know this isn't going to be everybody's cup of tea but it might be interesting for somebody who well i could

[35:12] just i mean maybe we'll explain a little bit of my like line of thinking a little so um we have tools and services that uh give analytics for like app downloads or um installs or purchases or refunds or trials or et cetera. Um, but to me it, it doesn't work the way that my brain works. And I think that there's a, a bit of a magic when you have someone who can help inform decision-making in a business who understands the data that is being used to drive those decisions. And so for me, it's really important for me to be able to understand and be able to have visually the data in a way that makes sense to me so that then I can use that to make decisions. And to me, it's not helpful how a lot of these, I mean, they give you the numbers. And so like, if you wanted to have metrics on, you know, total number of whatever, or, you know, amount sold or whatever, like you can get those uh that you can get that information but for me i need to

[36:28] be able to walk it through like almost as a story and at the beginning of the story might be you know we have this um website build out that we've done that we're kind of like in the middle of working on now so we're currently like revamping our website and really it's a pretty major overall yeah and And so I want to be able to track clicks on certain pieces of this and I want to be able to track them over time. And then if we make a change, I want to split test it. So I want to be able to measure what the one half is getting versus what the other half is getting and what the click through rate is. And I also want to be able to, you know, ultimately in the same tool through the same pane of glass, making sure that it's all validated and tested. I want to be able to measure all the other downstream metrics as well. And for me, that quickly became more of, you know, I could just rely on all these different disparate data sources and pull up, you know, the seven different dashboards that I have to across seven different systems. I could use someone else's

[37:44] tool and maybe get something that is 90 percent of the way there or i can combine my background and expertise in the data space plus what i've learned in the last seven months on app development and build my own thing and i i can definitely say it would be or it will be something that is like 100 perfect for what i'm looking for and then it just becomes a matter of you know how many other people out in the world can i help find the thing that would also be perfect for them too and for me even if it if that second half fails i need it internally yeah for us so therefore that's how I end up going down the path of, and we started another thing. Um, but I don't feel like there's definitely value and focus, um, like in limiting the number of things that you work on at a given point. Um, but to me, and maybe this is just revisionist, uh, way of thinking about this, but I am building a development company. Um,

[39:02] or, you know, maybe, maybe I described that a little bit differently through a couple of different lens to be a little bit more broader, but like we're, we're building a company. And one of the things we do is we offer apps that we've built and I see all of this in service to that singular vision. So it does sometimes maybe on the surface look like sprawl but it is not like i'm not just chasing something for no reason right um especially in this instance maybe i've got distracted on little things here there but like but like even like another example um you saw it today but like um so i have like a little mac utility monitor monitor and it started out because i have a nice new widescreen ultra wide um in our upstairs um setup and i wanted to be able to like tweak some of the settings and like honestly there's just so many random things out there and i'm like i don't i don't know which of these are going to be any good um and so i'll just i'll make my own it's not that complicated and then i'm like well you know i also am much happier with how like windows does like you hit the windows key and arrow right away and you can snap windows really easily and there's a few different good apps

[40:19] that do that on mac too i'm like well let's just make these be the same thing and and so you know and then i also have like certain ways that i just want to like that nothing does which is or at least nothing that i've ever seen which you can like you have a bunch of windows that you want to like cascade uh i have like a little thing you can do the first window the second window and then you're like okay i want all my terminals now to follow this cascading pattern and like nothing nothing does that it's a very specific thing, but it actually works really, really nicely along with, um, uh, with terminal tags to be able to like label all these different things. And, uh, you got to see it this morning. You're like, what does this thing even do? Yeah. I didn't even know it was yours. I really didn't. Um, but I don't know. And I think it even kind of just to circle back to the quote, little by little, everything will come together. And I definitely think, you know, the little things we do every day um it all adds up it's not for not every day we learn something every day we're getting a little closer we're you know moving things forward even though it might feel like it's a step backwards even if we might have a refund and you know it wasn't the most like profitable day um we are still moving the

[41:34] dial forward um even if it doesn't feel that way yeah and if you think about it you know if seven months ago the business didn't even exist right so a lot can change in a year's time we haven't even hit a year yet um we're barely even over halfway we're just a baby company still still baby company um so i want to skip to the the books thing i think okay okay yeah because i know we talked about that for a long time yeah um the well i think i think it ties into it so one thing that's been on my mind has been the, the, the thing that I've noticed about myself is I, I feel like my perspectives have changed a lot as like, if I think about the last five or maybe 10 years, um, my, my perspective has changed a lot in a lot of different ways. Uh, like for example, I'm still a people pleaser by heart but i'm less like i i agonize less if there's like some unhandled issue with like someone in my day job or something like that like i'm i'm more able to at least get some sleep i might not sleep the best and i might be a little anxious about it but like it's not life ruining um in a way that like i i literally would wake

[42:50] up with like anxiety or panic attacks and now i just don't cares much um and do you feel like that's been just age and time in it or do you feel like it's been a real perspective shift and like attitude change of it well perhaps both yeah like i i think that you have perspective shifts that come with experience um that make it a little bit like you're you realize enough times that it's fine that eventually you're like okay with like just you know what i it's not that i don't care like i that's i said that and that's not what i meant um i i still do care very much right but no yeah if anything you but i think i care too much i am okay i'm comfortable in situations that i'm not comfortable or i didn't used to be comfortable so like i think you know early on in my life i would give that as an example of public speaking i would have thought that to be untenable when i was you know like in high school let's say now doesn't bother me at all like it can be fun and no big deal similarly you know

[44:06] you play that forward um you know like i mentioned conflict i still don't love conflict but i'm not afraid of it. And I'm also not afraid to understand like, you know, some things are not going to be solved in a day and not every single person has to go to bed liking me. It's like, it's okay. And it's not that I, you know, when I say I don't like, it is not fair to say I don't care. Cause I still want to make those things right and make sure that I'm not leaving things unaddressed, but it like the time that i'm willing to sit in that is longer than it used to be by a pretty significant margin without it like ruining my life and messing up other people's perspective on that also our tv turned off over there it's very sad can't see the things anymore oh my gosh it did turn off why did it turn off probably uh who could say sorry tiktok we can't still there but we just can't see any questions but i see you guys hanging out but not not a lot of comments happening that's okay it's fine it's all good it's early well at least it was earlier central time when we started um anyhow so i i think it is partially just time and age

[45:25] um but i also know that i can fast forward that a little bit at least or to some degree maybe sometimes in some areas a lot of bit by reading. Um, and I, I can definitely point to like, if I go back through and look at the books that I've read over the last, you know, let's say five years, um, there's a handful of them that had really outsized impacts on stuff like this. And I think more than anything else, that is maybe a because i i guess let me let me back up just a tiny bit sorry i i really like that i'm able to handle some of the things that i didn't use to handle well now like i'm really glad that i am able to know that like yes there's a problem but also it'll be fine and we'll sort it tomorrow or whatever, and not have it ruined my entire evening. Um, still sometimes not perfect, but more often than I used to, that's for sure. And what I was reflecting on this morning and yesterday when we were kind of doing some of the prep is the thought of, you know, how do I,

[46:40] how do I get more of that? Like, how do I not have to wait till I'm 60 to have some of the perspective that i would have by that time that i am that age and and you know how do i how do i add the knowledge that i would need in order to have some of these shifts happen and and to you know make some of these things these dreams into reality quicker and and to me it's it's reading books so like you know one of the i'll just give a really cool snapshot of an example of just how my perspective from the entrepreneurial journey side, I think is fast forwarded because of a lesson from a book. As we have expanded the number of apps that we have built, the temptation and the way that I think about things is to make it so that everything is a standard. And then if we ever need to make a change, it's going to be, I'll be able to roll it out in the masses. So and on the surface, I think it makes a lot of sense. So let's say we changed how people authenticate i don't want to have to change how people authenticate to our apps you know like at this point across all the different platforms um that would be over 50 times um so like the 50 different code bases would need to change across you know ios and android and mac

[47:57] and um windows and linux and the web and that ends up being a lot of surfaces to change and so i want that to scale right right and so when we've made some of these changes that are not necessarily simple changes but it's across the board that we're doing that so like we've changed how trials work and each app is a little bit different in like how onboarding functions because every app is a little bit different so it makes sense to onboard a little bit differently depending on each one and so like the last week and a half or two weeks almost has been um making that shift with um Aaron, who mentioned before, um, on the team and the, that's taken a long fricking time to do through this, uh, through reading a book about someone's, you know, honestly, just kind of their reflections on their journey and their company. Uh, one of the things that they found helpful was not always thinking that way, not always trying to make everything into a giant assembly line and instead be willing to pick a small subset get it really really really really good and then roll it out and like honestly in hindsight it makes a lot of sense but i

[49:13] you know in the spirit of like trying to like okay we're just gonna roll this out to all the things or like getting something like 80 or 70 good and then roll it out to all the stuff but like the problem is going to be and i already know this and but and with the data stuff that we're not quite there yet i don't know that i would do anything different in this instance but part of the part of this that will be hard is if through this and we do get the data and we learn if there's something that we need to change we're ultimately going to end up needing to change all 50 things again i think if i could go back in time or us in the future and speak to us in the future one thing i would counsel on is what do we need to do to be able to figure out how this functions and is a success, uh, quickly, but thoroughly within a, uh, a subset of these 50 so that you can like, one of the things that we have is like a 24 hour timer that you can use a trial for without any credit card. And then you can do that again one time. And then it's more of a hard paywall after that. Um, that may not be the best path forward. Uh, and, and also right now it's a hard paywall, but the hard paywall has a trial, but we're already giving away 24 hour trial. So maybe it would make sense to just to make that a, not a seven day credit card trial, but actually have people pay. I

[50:29] don't know what actually would perform best. Um, I do think that it will be important for us to figure out the answer to that question. Uh, but how we've set it up now, if we were to make any changes, we would be like, okay, let's see. And then either we'd be happy with the numbers or we'd be unhappy with the numbers and then make a change to everything and do it all again. And in reading through this book and the examples that were given for how this works or could work, I'm realizing like, you know what, if I can get it all set up right and have all the tracking available to it, I do think it would be best, even if we ultimately didn't make the change, even if it's something that's like a curiosity on how it would perform, pick an app that we know gets at least enough organic traffic that we can see. Maybe it's not so much on conversions, but at least the click through on the different options and start to see like, does this scare people off or are people more attracted to one or another? And, and just see how people start to flow through that. And then the other piece of it is, you know, maybe there's not enough organic traffic, but I can throw ad traffic at it, even if it's not for the purpose of, um, the, the purpose

[51:45] of getting conversion sales, but just to experiment, like just to understand what is the right direction for this so that I can make an informed choice on how we roll that out to all of our apps. So, you know, maybe it's spend 500 bucks on traffic to send at the experiment so that I can have enough information so that I'm making an informed choice to roll out to everything else. Yeah. So what is mystery book here you haven't said the book yet um someone else wants to go and read it uh my phone is over there um maybe we'll follow up next episode yeah i don't know um actually i think i can see it hang on let me look it's the guy who made the company in view i think um which is a very strange app the guy is uh the lean startup by yeah yeah eric grease yep there you go. Lean startup. Yep. And that's one of the concepts that he talks about. Yeah. Thank you. Anyways. So that was a long story to say a short thing, which is, I think for me, one of the things that I find incredibly valuable is finding these books that can fast forward

[53:02] parts of, uh, you know, whatever it is that I'm, I'm trying to, to tackle in life. And I, man, I am such a sucker for reading about the thing that I'm interested in. I think that is one of my ADHD superpowers is like if there is a topic that I am currently wanting to or am obsessing about, I just, I love hearing other people's stories and learning from them. Like I've always just found that so fascinating. And I think that's a good skill to be able to learn from other people and how to apply it. That is a skill in itself because I think a lot of time people can listen to stories, listen to other people's experiences and then to actually be able to apply that to their life or decision-making is a skill in itself. Yeah. And, and like, honestly, the, the book itself, uh, I typically listen to things around one and a half to two and a half speed. Like I know that sounds like a pretty big range. And I think most people do that are audio book listeners listen to things quickly. Um, so the, the amount of time that I'm going to spend listening to this book is about five hours. And in that five hours, at least so far, I'm almost done. I actually only have like a half hour left. So I'm pretty sure that this is going to be true. Um, there's one thing for me that I took away, which is

[54:18] the small batch, uh, philosophy for certain things within product development. Um, now that means that literally the entire rest of the book was nothing more than an interesting story. Um, but I think that the return on time investment is still like astronomical in my favor. So, um, Eric Reese, thank you for the one thing. Um, enjoy my $12 or whatever. And I, I think that is a more than fair exchange of dollars and time to get that one thing that can have a really outsized impact on how I think about business stuff. And so I'm, I don't know. I just, I'll, it's like a little Christmas morning every time that I start a new book to try to figure out like what is the little nugget here sometimes there's a handful of things um sometimes it may just be one thing sometimes it's no things um but it i i get so much from it and i do think that that is a way to fast forward so it's not just relying on you know time and experience as the only ways that you learn but also learning from other people's time and experience do you have your next book picked that you're going to listen to um i am a little can you i'm going to go over here and slide this thing real quick but the uh the i have like a list of them well here

[55:34] i'll slide it over is it just like a puzzle piece thingy it's like a are you a robot yeah it's are you a robot thing all right let's see katy is doing yeah this is riveting podcast things i gotta go she's matching it up oh unable to verify we're probably timed out here we go you did it we're not robots we're not just AI generated people talking about books but yeah what book is next for you or do you have one picked out yet um I haven't I haven't decided on which one I'm going to read I have like a list of like 10 of them that honestly come from other people like I if I watch enough shorts then And eventually my algorithm knows that sometimes I like when people I like do book lists and then I just take the ones that sound interesting and put them on the list and then I read them all. I'm sometimes really jealous that you love nonfiction so much because I am a fiction girl through and through and I have a hard time listening to nonfiction. Honestly, the one- When is the last time you tried? No, no, no. I did. I was in a book club and I did nonfiction. But that is, I think for non or for fiction girlies or, or guys or whoever,

[56:49] um, um, but I, uh, definitely think being in a book club helped me appreciate the nonfiction more. How good of one of my books would I have to think it would be before I would cross a threshold that you would be willing to read it? I don't think so. just no so my question was what how good of a book and you said I don't think so so maybe that's an answer enough I don't know I want to like there's this it's like it's like the part of me that really wants to like seafood I want to like it I just when I started I get so bored and it's I feel like I'm more of a non-fiction movie girl there we go so if you ever have something you want me to learn from that's a non-fiction story non-fiction movie girl that's just like a documentary well i i don't know maybe you mean non-fantasy because like i don't know like when yeah i guess like documentary most movies are fiction um i don't know this is hard i do wish i liked it better watch liked it more but well i'll enjoy them you learn a lot and

[58:04] i always like when you tell me of the things you've learned from them i find that part interesting maybe i just like to hear your voice instead of a audiobook reader's voice i'm certain that that is definitely it yep thank you katy you're welcome all right any final things or are we ready to do outro i think it's outro time i can hear little feet running around upstairs and it is yeah 20 minutes before the bus they need to get their little feet to school so all right let's do some housekeeping um first and foremost if you made it to this point of the show we appreciate you thank you so much for watching if you're watching online live um also thank you and if you'd like you can hit subscribe um if you've found this somehow and would like to get more of it if you would like to email us any questions you can do so at uh us at buildhorizons.com uh you can send us topics you can send us questions you can send us hellos whatever you'd like uh you can also follow us um at jeff schesser and katy schesser or other things on if you google us you'll find us we're gonna go to horizons.com to find all the things and links to things um but yeah with that i'm going to turn it over to katy to send us out thank you for building with us and we are cheering you on