016 - How to Build Courage and Stay Consistent When Progress Feels Invisible

[0:00] Welcome to Build Horizons, a show about picking the life you want to live and how to make it happen. I've scared Katy today. We're going to talk about courage and progress and builds and giving stuff away for free. But before we do that, the intro.

[0:55] the iPhone duo that is apparently going live right now as it was complete silence as the intro finished and we have YouTube live going. Hi, YouTube live. So I'm Katy. This is Jeff. Yeah, keep doing this stuff. You're doing good. We're almost done. Click subscribe if you missed it with the graphic that told you so. Jeff usually does this part, so I'm not very good. So we are Built Horizons. We're a show about picking the life you want to lead and how to make it happen. Jeff is still currently busy purchasing iPhone duos and trying to... Yeah, it's going pretty good. How's it going over there? How about you give us a real-life status? It's not going to be here until November 9th. That's so long away from now. How horrible. You have to wait. I tried so fast. I clicked it as soon as it popped up. Which color? Or is there only one color? There's two. white and black did you choose white no i went with black you went with black i know how boring i know i feel like i feel like you had like this moment i had a white phase you had a white phase and then you're like yeah no it's just not me i i like white phase stuff but i don't know i've i've gotten a little bit back into the

[2:11] black so yeah i like black i mean i like both yeah we'll see how that ends up playing out it's just my my thing is my rationale we talked about this morning a little bit oh we talked about it this morning i gave you plenty of heads up i told you that it's not a foregone conclusion yet there's still 10 minutes till it releases uh yeah yo you came in and said have you accepted the fact that i'm going to be purchasing an iphone duo that's kind of how that conversation went look actually we we run a development company and it is a change to one of the most popular devices on the planet i know i understand okay i i get it it's such a good support life ouch um okay i feel like i really botched the intro do you want to like take it over one more time i mean did you say our names yes okay i mean that's really the most important part people need to know uh who they're listening to yeah um so the uh it is well and proper uh cold outside oh and i haven't said what we're talking about today i said it at the top oh you did yeah the part where i was talking about yeah this is a mess don't don't ever let me do it again okay yeah it's cold yeah finally finally

[3:27] um and kind of cold you've made uh an appointment I did. Do you want to share what our appointment is? Yeah. So I have officially booked our Christmas light, outdoor Christmas light decor. And you told them to wait until Thanksgiving. No, no, no. I didn't say anything about waiting, Jeff. I said the sooner the better. And so they said, well, how about next week? and so my question is is october too early to put christmas lights on the house my opinion no i mean that's why i told them the sooner the better because here's here's my rationale um i am definitely one of when it's november i want to get my christmas stuff out um because reason being and i know there's really strong opinions about this it's a lot of work to put up christmas decor And I want to enjoy it more than three weeks. Like I want to really want to come out into the living room and I want to drink my coffee with the Christmas tree out and it makes me happy. It brings me joy. And so if I can have that joy inside and outside, I figure that it's, it's a need.

[4:42] So I do have some good news. I don't know if you've come to this realization, but last year we had the idea of doing the christmas lights on the back porch instead of our normal white lights we have like strings of lights and we switched out the white lights with christmas color lights um and uh and i kept the the box in the garage with the old lights so that when we were done with the season we could swap them back out um and i have put off doing that long enough i think now officially there is no in fact i'm on top of things yeah i'm i'm ahead of the game you thought ahead i have beaten our christmas lights guy i have gotten the back porch lights which are my job ready for the season yeah so they're ready for you as soon as you're ready to let them so proud i'm so proud thank you oh my gosh see sometimes you know we talk about trying to be on top of things here on the show and uh all the you know all the value that you can get just by like starting in something and and how beneficial that can be but i feel like you're stretching this a little bit dude today is a good day for procrastination um but yeah i'm sure we'll talk about christmas uh because we love it's so fun holiday season's always really fun um you've

[5:59] done cupping twice now i want to talk about whoa that like was quite the yeah topic segue list topic change um i so ever since i think it was like i some olympics i felt like there was a bunch of people that showed up with the well it was like swimmers i feel like and um since then i thought that they're all a bunch of weirdos and now you're a weirdo i'm a weirdo um no actually explain yourself genuinely so i i mean i think all of us anybody that is sitting at a desk all day or working or honestly anybody that's you know i think even if you're not that physically active you end up getting knots on your back like just really tension i don't know i guess maybe not everybody that might be like way too broad but um my massage ladies had recommended cupping um and by golly i have to say i'm a believer like i have already felt so much looser in my back um and it looks cool cool i was really funny though when i um when i had it done the first time and i got to show the kids and they were yeah right at my back in horror rightfully

[7:15] horrified so uh i actually i have barely even looked into what it even how it even works something to do with fire and and like things fire is it yeah what how does it work oh my gosh did you really think it's no all it is is it's a cup and they suction it up and so it helps i thought the suction up was like with like it burned the oxygen or something is this not how it works i mean i don't actually do it and i don't know how to do it but okay explain how it works while i look up cupping and fire and see if that's um okay so my understanding of course i'm face down on a table is they put they what she does she kind of feels around it to find the tightest tension places and then she'll put essentially a suction cup on it and then she has a little i don't know device that like sucks it like gets all the air out of it um so it pulls up your muscles and pulls up the tissue so it kind of allows my understanding again i'm not a professional in this that blood flow can then get into the areas and the fascia and the tissue um and because when it's like tight onto the muscle it can't do that so it like suctions it up

[8:31] so i want you to look over here i have it pulled up uh so originally how it worked is you would burn something inside of a cup to heat it up so that it would create like a vacuum effect and then you would put it on your back and like remove the cotton ball at the last second or whatever yeah that's not so they don't do that no dang it that would be way cooler yeah you know this whole time i thought you were just some kind of cool fire lady uh i wish i was a cool fire lady but no yeah it's it's definitely um it's helped me a lot uh i've told jeff to go do it so we'll see pbd on if he does it well we both learned something new today all right you want to do our first question let's get started okay so question number one comes from okay ocelot 774 oh yeah i gotta make sure you get all the numbers and stuff i gotta dox these people okay fine i won't do that next time okay how to develop courage as much uh as much as to develop the ability well i totally botched how I thought you just paraphrased it. Yeah, I think it's basically coming up to, like, how do you develop courage intentionally, I think is what it said. So you have a summary here.

[9:49] So basically, this individual decided to leave the workplace tied to their internship after a dispute with a manager. And now they want to work for themselves, but they keep falling back on internships and regular jobs. And they're asking how to develop courage, um, alongside the ability to act with intention. Yeah, there you go. Um, yeah, good job. Flawless execution, 10 out of 10, no notes. Uh, so I, I actually, um, I thought it was a pretty cool question. Um, and not, not really a way that we talk about things necessarily a lot on the show as courage. Uh, but it, it, a lot of the things we do our courage courageous um i was i was kind of curious on your thoughts on this you are our question selector uh what what stood out to you about this and and what are your like initial thoughts on the topic like how does this apply in your life um so i think this is something I personally am trying to, you know, grow in. Um, and I think it kind of depends on the situation too. Um, so like, for example, things, I

[11:06] feel like I have a lot of self-confidence and courage, which I think kind of go hand in hand a little bit, because I think if you're really confident in something, then you're going to have the courage to do the thing that it is that you want to do um but like for parenting and things with our kids and um whereas like of course as a parent I make lots of things I could be I could do better um but it's I don't know I feel like I just naturally know a lot of the times what my kids need or how to give them that attention so that isn't a place where I have a lot of you know self-confidence issues I feel like I mean obviously still room to grow. I know I mentioned before, I've been working since about 2020. I never really thought that was going to be a path I would go down of having a career and getting to work with big companies. That is actually what I have had the opportunity to do now. I think that's a place I feel like I maybe lack courage like I lack the self-confidence just because I don't feel like I've been in the field long enough to have the knowledge to be able to do

[12:23] things as well as others but then again that's just that's also just life and yeah and as I but as I've been in it longer I do feel like this is something that I've improved in but still have a lot of room to grow So, I mean, one thing you're describing is, you know, doing like, or the feeling of discomfort that you get when you are asked to do something that you're not as familiar with doing and the, you're, you're looking at things. Yeah. Sorry. I'm trying to read questions. There's like, but does it? Yeah. Sorry, everybody. We're having a hard time being able to see the questions. Yeah. Yeah. You can ask them into the void. We'll address them at the end maybe, or something like that after the show um if you stick around the the the thing i was gonna ask though so what you're describing is getting more comfortable like as time goes on with things but you still like there's like the first time that you do anything um and i and i know like in things that you've been asked for over the years uh for like professional things tasks you definitely have a sense of i can't do this the first time yeah that you're up

[13:38] against it what have you found like as you reflect back on that that has been helpful to go from i've never done this before to at least i'm trying it or i'm taking the first steps in something what what helps you get moving past that initial like paralysis that comes in those moments I mean I think asking for help is great you know if you really don't understand it and you need help I don't think you should feel like you can't ask for help um so I think that that's one thing I've gotten more comfortable with is asking questions or if I don't understand something being like telling them I don't understand this whereas so that's one place I've gotten more comfortable And then I also think just doing the thing, even if you don't completely understand it, just start. And it's funny, I see just the parallel with courage and even the kids. And this is what kind of came to mind is I think of Averyn and Alice whenever we take them somewhere and there's like a big slide. And they're so nervous to go down this big slide. And they sometimes they'll get to the edge of it. they'll walk away and then they'll walk to the edge of it again. And then they'll finally convince

[14:54] themselves to go down the slide and they love it. And then it's, it's, it's just repeat, repeat, repeat, and they get more comfortable and more comfortable and more comfortable. And I just think that's a kind of a nice visual of, you know, that's, I think that can relate to a lot of things in, um, life and, and, and building that courage and how I think if you can just do the thing ask for help they ask for help sometimes for mom and dad to get down the slide um and it just gets easier the more you do it but i think one of the things that um that i find with this is we oftentimes make the situation to be much higher stakes than it really is, uh, like failure or the, the negative outcomes. One, it never happens as badly as we think it does. Like I think it could be, uh, like it almost never is as bad. Um, but also it, not only is it not, uh, nearly as bad, sometimes it's nearly nothing. Uh, like sometimes none of the negative outcomes happen. Uh, in fact, a lot of the times, none of the negative outcomes happen. Sometimes A lot of the times going down the slide

[16:09] is just fun. It's just fun. There are no bad parts. You're not going to fly off the edge. Yeah. And then, and so my point in saying that is what you can do in moments like this, like when you feel like that anxiety at the top of the slide is how many times have I done something like this and it turned out completely fine and letting that also have a seat at the table. Yeah. That it is probably not going to be all those bad things. And in fact, a lot of times it can be a lot of fun once I actually get started. And the more that you are able to get repetitions at doing things for the first time and getting okay with that, the easier and less scary it becomes and i like it it really is a practice skill like i i can i can say pretty confidently like i'm i'm not intimidated by you know trying to learn some new technology thing uh because over my career i've had to do that so many times so at this point it really like if i had some new coding language or dialect that i would need to learn uh it wouldn't be a

[17:26] matter of like oh man i have to like go through this whole process like that's something that i've done a dozen times no big deal and if you if you do apply that i do think it's something that you can get a lot better at but i there's you know that that that sometimes can be limited to just the domain that you're getting that those repetitions in uh or at least unless you're intentional about thinking about it more broadly. Um, because, you know, taking, you know, that, that courage step is a willingness to take a step when you don't really know what the outcome is going to be. Uh, and, but I, I do think that you can still lean on those experiences and be intentional about realizing that, okay, yes, maybe I, I have this experience in coding, but that also can be true of, um, figuring out what I could do to improve at my marathon time. And the, you know, the imposter syndrome you have walking into, uh, or like if you're starting running and the imposter syndrome you get when you walk into a running store for the first time and you're picking out shoes, um, like it almost like you think of all the things that other people are

[18:41] going to think and all the reasons why it'll be awkward and weird. And then it's literally a non-event. And then it's something that you've done before and then you can, um, you know, build upon that in that specific domain. But yeah, I don't know. It's an interesting question. And I do think now, and even when you said that, I think there's so many applications cause it's like going to the gym for the first time, going to group exercise for the first time, starting something new. I mean, it is, it gets easier and easier the more times you do it. And the other part I thought for you that I thought honestly could, you know, relate to a lot of people as well is you used to be terrified of public speaking and now that's you, it's so comfortable for you and you do it literally all the time. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's another good example, um, that just doing the thing, um, I mean, even starting the show, like in, in getting in the rhythm of recording a podcast with your partner like yeah there's an element of courage that you have to go through to be like okay i'm we're gonna spend the time and effort to do this thing and maybe it's not gonna feel like it makes a lot of sense at first and maybe we'll feel particularly silly doing it but the best way to get past

[19:58] that is just getting started doing the thing and do the thing and then realizing it's not that big of a deal and that i guess the other thing i would say too is even when the bad things do happen that like bad stuff happens all the time and it's okay like you make it through the day goes on the new day comes um yeah very few things are actually big deals and even the things that do become big deals like you can also navigate those two just so so much of the, the, the anxiety that we get about outcomes, theoretical outcomes is, I hate to say a waste of time, but it really like ruminating on that and letting that be a limiting factor in what you decide to do. Um, I, it is kind of a waste of time. Like the, you're not going to know the specific ways that it's going to be challenging. Uh, but those things that are challenging you'll also be more than capable of moving past almost assuredly yeah yep and don't be afraid to ask for help and don't be afraid to ask for help yeah um okay yeah i think that was a good all right i want to yeah you do you want to do question number two yeah i do actually so um

[21:14] i mean i definitely want to do question two this is actually one of my favorite questions we've ever had on the show oh really yeah you did a good job yay um so okay so this comes from user big film 5259 and the question is how do you keep going when progress suddenly turns invisible and so they go on to say um someone learning something new solving improvements every week at first and then hit a stretch where the same effort feels completely flat and they're asking how other people stay consistent through weeks where there's no measurable gains. So the question is, how do you stay consistent during those weeks where you feel like you aren't making any measurable gains? Yeah. How do you keep showing up when you don't have the, uh, external reinforcement that the thing that you're doing is the thing that you should be doing. I think that is probably one of the most, uh, important things to figure out for yourself, uh, anywhere from trying to start habits and become like, you know, like doing fitness stuff or whatever, or starting a business. I, man, the, the ability to keep down a path when you don't have something showing you that this is

[22:29] the right move. Um, and, and, and then like the questioning of, should I be doing something else? Is this even the right path and the natural, um, amount of times that that's going to pop into your head. And the unfortunate part of it is occasionally that's going to be right. Like sometimes not seeing measurable results is because you aren't going down the right path and you need to make a pivot. Um, but a lot of times also the, um, the, the lack of results has nothing to do with the fact that you're not on the right path. In fact, maybe it's just, you know, part of the journey, a lot of, a lot of really nice looking graphs of successful looking things. I don't know, just stock market or whatever. Um, there's still lots of ups and downs. And if you ask somebody how they're feeling, you know, early on in that process at the, you know, middle of a down point, probably not very good, probably a lot of questioning. But if you zoom out and look at the totality of it, it's like, oh, well, clearly you were going on the right path. Yeah. So I don't know what, what are your, what are your thoughts on? Yeah. So I had written on this one that progress is not linear. It's not going to be, and I know you kind of hit that, like, it's

[23:46] not going to be this thing that just constantly is going in the right direction i mean it is gonna have fluctuations and but they're even in the moments where there's you know a dip and you need to pivot like that in my mind is still progress because you've you've figured something out and um you're making a change for it to hopefully have, um, a lasting input and, you know, I think it's, it's all kind of measurable gains in the end if you're, if you keep, um, keep at it. Um, but yeah, I think even, I think there's so many different ways that this can be applied to fitness, to weight training, to companies to building your company business or even uh relationships so like oh yeah um you know making deposits in a in a relationship yeah and how that doesn't always get reciprocated right away yeah but you really do that on the path of like well if i if i do this i i trust that that

[25:02] will be worth it in the end. Um, and you know, that can be, uh, you know, a spouse that could be in friendships, um, that could be in work relationships. Um, yeah, it, it really does have a lot of different applications for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Um, the, the thing that really stuck with me is trying to really work out what is the ways that you can know, are you on the wrong path or is this just part of the journey? Um, like do I need to pivot because I'm not seeing results or am I just being, do I just need to, uh, practice patience in this moment? uh and so i first off i would say by and large most of the time not all the time most of the time though it is a patience problem yeah not a not a not an actual problem with the original premise and and so that's that's kind of where i i when i was thinking about this i wanted to break

[26:18] it down is if you are going down this path and you're not seeing the the results that you are that you know that would really confirm to you like okay yes i'm definitely on the right path um you know maybe you're just not seeing the numbers go up quite yet um the the thing that you have to do is like review your original premise like is and like ask yourself like is this wrong like does this still make sense and and then also because so much of our our bias toward how this is going is so um internally conflicted because we we don't want to feel silly we don't want to feel like we're doing stuff for no reason and so we're going to be way more critical toward our own things and more questioning of our own path. And so in doing that, um, questioning of the original premise, I also think it's helpful to think of it as if you were counseling somebody who was, uh, asking you, um, like, Hey, I want to run a marathon, but I have been

[27:33] running for a couple of weeks and it's still really hard to run a couple of miles. I don't think that I'm doing something. I don't know that I'm ever going to be a person who can run a marathon and it would be so like for them, that's a very real feeling. I would say like from our perspective, as people who have ran a bunch of crazy marathons and stuff, uh, if you had somebody starting out and they're like, I don't know that I could ever do this. This is really, really hard. Um, I've been trying this for a couple of weeks now and it doesn't seem like it's getting any easier. We would both tell them like, Oh buddy, like that's very normal. Do not worry. Like the you're on the path. The thing is you just got to keep doing it and just keep doing it and just trust me. Like it'll work out in the end. Um, and, and so like when you're going through these things, that's like the lens that I would have you look through it is like if somebody else who has already done this if they were to look back and counsel you would they say like like oh well you know you definitely have to follow this exact thing and make sure you're running exactly these things or like would that person have the perspective of like oh you're you almost can't even mess this up you

[28:49] just like the only thing that you can do wrong is to stop right right if you keep trying it'll work out eventually you'll figure it out. Um, and more often than not, that's the case. Cause the thing of it is like, there are a thousand different ways up the mountain. There is not one singular way that is the way that you're going to go from. I, I don't run at all to, I run a marathon. You can, you can do that a billion different paths. And the, again, they, I really just comes down to like, you just have to just keep doing it. Like just keep going. Now there are obviously more optimal ways than others. And there's little tweaks that you could do that would make the experience faster or, um, a little more enjoyable or, um, you know, optimized in some way or another. But at the end of the day, like there, the, the name of the game is like, you have to be in the game you have to be present to win like yeah you have to be in it and and that is so applicable across so many different things yeah i do feel like there's just this is endless to the amount of things that you could apply this to um but yeah i think that that was

[30:05] really good just i mean consistency and keep at it and understand that it's not going to be a linear path yeah and the other thing i would say too um sorry just kind of a bunch of random soapboxes here, but the, the thing that is really helpful is, I mean, one being able to delay the gratification that will come when you achieve like a big milestone along the process. Um, and, and being okay with like, Hey, I might not get that thing. I might not get that feeling for a year or two years or three years. Um, and the way that you do that is by enjoying the journey. So enjoying the fact that it's cool outside and while we're not running today, cause we're recording the show, um, you're welcome everybody. Um, the, you know, tomorrow, uh, if we wake up early enough, cause of some other life things, um, if we wake up early enough, we'll be able to go outside and enjoy putting on, uh, you know, long sleeves and maybe some pants and going on a nice little run on a Saturday morning when it's, you know, fit 40, whatever degrees outside or whatever it's supposed to be tomorrow. And that, that

[31:21] in and of itself, um, yeah, maybe that's in service of a goal someday to run a, you know, someday I do want to qualify for Boston. Um, I'm not really working directly toward that at this moment. Um, we just finished, you know, running a couple marathons. Um, this is more of a, you know, a, a slower season, but I, I, you know, that is a goal and also just the general fitness that comes from it. But in the moment I'm going to enjoy just going on a run and it, it has, it, it is in service of other things that I want to achieve, but I also just enjoy the day to day as well. And, and so much of what we do is going like anything that's worth doing is going to have, you know, a ton of days that you're going to have to put in when you're not really seeing the direct results. And if it wasn't that way, then everybody would just do all the best things. If you could decide one day, like I want to lose 20 pounds and then you just do a really good job of working out and eating healthy for the day. and then you lost 20 pounds everybody would do it would just be so great it would be so great or if you could be like all right i'm gonna build a business and then we make a million dollars a month because i worked really hard this afternoon like everybody would do it

[32:36] right yeah that's just not how it works yeah it requires doing a ton of days where you don't really see the progress yeah i was actually gonna ask you about that in this and how you can because i feel like you're in the you're in the deep part of this with bravely, uh, what's your perspective there? Cause I feel like with running work, we could see the other side of it, but right now with bravely, we're kind of deep in it. So do you want to, yeah, well, you hear me say it sometimes. Um, but one of the funny things that I tell myself as a reminder is cause like right now, as we build this to forward, to be successful we have to be able to continue to find um ways to make the world know that we exist right marketing yay um and it and that is hard and also it does not happen overnight and there's a lot to all that and we're not marketers and not by trade and there's like there's moments where you get that feeling inside of you that is kind of what we described of like is this even like like is this even

[33:52] possible like that like is this i i'm not sure this is even a thing that exists like do people even run marathons do people even freaking sell anything ever um like there's there's that feeling yeah um but then you know you here and here's the thing just the same way with running same way with you know building a company there are like little pieces of indications that are like okay there's like a little bit here there's a little bit there that like shows that we're on a path that's something right yeah um and the the funny thing that i tell myself is like there's a lot of people who have built successful businesses um i don't know where the line for capability is for, um, where you can build a business or you're just like, well, this person, they're just never going to get it together. Um, I just, I don't think I'm the dumbest person that's ever existed. Like surely, you know, I, if I stick with this long enough, like I I'm above this line, there's all kinds of crazy, terrible people who figure out all kinds of ways to make money uh in business i'm sure that i'm not you know worse than the worst person

[35:08] that's ever figured this out yeah um and and people who are willing to put in the time and effort i don't think you are either and so for me it's just a reminder of like i i don't know how long some of this stuff will take and i don't know how much work it's going to be but i do know that if I keep taking steps forward every single day that we will be farther down the path and eventually that path leads to somewhere worthwhile. Um, and I'll, I may not know what decisions I need to make, you know, miles down the road, but I'd know by the time that I get to those, I will have a whole heck of a lot more information. And so, you know, you, you see the, the fun thing, fun thing, uh, about some of this stuff is, you know, let's go back to running. Um, it's a little less real for what I'm going through right now. Um, but you see people like making choices about running workouts and stuff like that. Yeah. And that is hard because then you see like, oh, well I need to optimize in that same way. In reality, the answer is if I want to run, uh,

[36:23] a sub three hour marathon and qualify for Boston. Um, I just have to run like 60 miles a week for a long time. And so like all the other stuff sort of matters, but really that's just all it is. It really is. I just got to put that in my schedule and do it. Uh, and you will get fast. Now, if I want to, uh, you know, qualify for the Olympics, that's a whole nother game. There are questions that you need to have the right answers to in order to qualify for the olympics but if you just want to run a sub three hour marathon and qualify for boston you can do all that stuff but really the answer is just got to run six miles a week and that's it like the and like maybe have to start that two weeks earlier two weeks later like then what you would think but like the the actual thing of it it's not that complicated just in the same way like if we wanted bravely to be a 10 billion dollar company yes we would need to do a lot of things extremely right and we would need to go do some fundraising and we would need to have you know huge investors huge presence all this other stuff like a lot of things would need to go crazy right um but to build a just a successful business you you don't need to

[37:40] have a whole lot of things just be completely perfect like you can get uh you can get pretty far down the road and uh not have to you know have a freaking seed round and have all the you don't need to do that yeah yeah no that's really good i think we should move to our third question okay i actually think you know we've kind of touched on this a little bit but i think that this is kind of a little bit different angle to think about it so this comes from user false excitement 886 and they say i've been documenting my build for six months and here's what's actually moved the needle and so if you just want to skip down to the actual like question part of it because i don't think we need to for people documenting a build when you look back how much of your effort actually mattered versus felt productive and I know they said that they've for them they had kind of like done lots of little tweaking here and there and and kind of got in the weeds I guess is kind of what I would say and how to like what what was productive and what actually mattered which I mean again I think we've kind of talked on this a little bit but can look at it in a little different angle yeah so the the

[38:56] thing that has been fun here lately is you know i've read a few different books and one common theme that is uh that has been a through line through them has been that when you are starting out especially someone with my background you know with the developer type background you are really laser focused on how do we make the best products possible. And the, the, the correction to that is yes, that obviously does matter and is important. Uh, but you should really be spending 50% of your time on how to make the world know you exist. And that was probably more close to like 5% and it should be closer to 50%. And so the, the thing that has been, uh, interesting is figuring out like okay um so i need to correct on that i've spent a ton of time on product almost no time on traction and so how do we how do we remedy that and also with someone with like a you know a coding developer engineering type background of course all of my ways i

[40:12] think about it is like how do I do this stuff that is done in such a way that I could scale it to infinity, like that, that we could, you know, have, you know, 10,000 people email us their problems and we would just be able to work through all those things. And it's a perfect process with no issues or anything. Um, and that's not really the role in the early days of figuring out traction. It really, uh, I think it's been eyeopening and just hearing the actual stories of companies and how they start getting things going. And it's like, just do a bunch of unsustainable things, which is reach out to people individually, one by one and find people out in the world and start building goodwill with them. And so, uh, I've taken that to heart and, um, you know, I, I have a little thing that will help me, um, find people talking about problems they have that we have solutions for. And, um, and then I've, uh, gone and hit those people up and been like, Hey, look, we have this thing. It's for sale. Uh, if you want it, uh, I want to give it to you for free. Uh, you

[41:28] mentioned your problem and we're just trying to get this out in the world and let people give us some feedback. So, uh, if you want, let me shoot me your email that you signed up with. I'll copy the thing. Uh, my only ask is if you have any cool ideas, you have to let us know, um, and, and do stuff like that. And so have found, uh, some, some fun interactions, um, out on the internet and, um, yeah, it, it, it is a thing and you could kind of like feel that compounding, build goodwill. I, um, I, one of the, one of the people I reached out to was a, um, a student in India and he's going to school for computer science. I, my day job at work with a lot of people from India, been to India once. Um, and so kind of have like some connection and some fun back and forth there. Uh, but when I told him, so the thing he was wanting was, uh, a dictation software, uh, but he didn't want anything that he had to pay for cause he's a student and didn't have any money. And, um, and so he was asking for some free options and I'm like, Hey, I'll give you a free option. Ours typically isn't, but, uh, I'll, especially as a student, I want to give it to you. And in fact, uh, you seem pretty enthusiastic about technology stuff. I just want to give you all of our apps

[42:43] lifetime for free, try them out, have fun. Um, and he was like so blown away by that and was so excited and he gave me like a plan of like all the things he was going to like you know which which ones he was going to prioritize kicking the tires on and giving some feedback and um that was just a fun opportunity to just you know build some goodwill out in the world you know have have fun making some people's days yeah that was so fun i love it so much it's like my favorite story this week yeah and anyways the back to the like original premise of the question um i i think often we like to conflate like if this is not something that is going to be you know if i if i have envisioned five years from now and what does success look like? The success does not look like me DMing individual people and giving away our product for free. And so, um, that, you know, maybe I'll still be doing that just for the fun of it. Right. It is kind of fun. Um, but

[44:00] that's not a, like, that's not moving the needle revenue wise for the business directly. Um, but is it all right. So like in that way it does like on the surface would feel like you're not um not actually doing something that matters like productive but i can tell you that you do enough of those things and this is just what like this is where i have to trust the the experience shared by people who are farther down the road um you do enough of these things enough times and eventually that that builds a cumulative amount of traction that does start to get you mentioned and random places that you're not going to expect. And then people, uh, will try it that you didn't directly talk to who will then, you know, if you build a good product, we'll share that with their audience or their friends or whatever. And, uh, and it is through those like initial, like, you just got to find little pockets of places that know about your thing and, and then see what happens. And maybe the answer is nothing. Uh, but if you do enough of those, the point is you do enough of those things. Eventually some of those start to blossom

[45:15] into other things and you just have to do that on faith that it's going to work out. Also, my throat has decided to stop working. Um, and I don't know how applicable this necessarily to this question, but maybe even more so with the one above. But we also have started to send out emails and testing that out, seeing how that's going. And it's been exciting because we kind of talked about it forever. Yeah. And now we're actually doing things and testing that out. And I think it was kind of interesting. So we'll actually see if this is what moves the needle, you know, getting emails out. and, um, but we didn't like, we'd never done emails before. So it was kind of this scary thing to get out into the world. But now again, that we've started doing it, um, see how it goes and, um, learn from that too. Yeah. Um, I mean, from the business standpoint, it really is just a matter of like, how do we, how do we make people more aware we exist? And then when they do know we exist and are trying our stuff, how do we, you know, keep them moving through, like actually seeing the value and part of that is you know the the journey email stuff that we've

[46:32] done and and again you know a lot of this is hard because the the you know sales and successes that you get along the way right now feel like semi-random like we're not dealing with sample sizes where we have you know a hundred sales a day that would like help you like make the graphs look really easy to look at and see what's working and what's not working. It just feels random right now. Um, and we'll get like a handful of spikes of sales and don't know where that came from. And then it'll be dead for a while and then they'll spike again, dead for a while, spike again, stuff like that. So, um, you know, that, that makes it hard to understand exactly what's driving things. But again, like if you look at the early parts of any graph that, that goes, um, the, the, the beginning of that is you know lots of like little ups and downs um but it's like how how are you progressing down that path and um i don't know if you looked at actually any of our metrics for like any of the google stuff i actually also um i don't yeah i don't think i actually looked at that so you should so i'll share a story and then you can look at it afterwards um but like looking at how much Our site gets, um, referenced, uh, in

[47:49] answers like on like chat GBT and Claude, as well as like how many times does bravely show up in Google searches, like as one of the results on the first page and the, the, I mean, there's ups and downs, but in reality, like the, the graphs go up big and, um, especially on some of the leading things. so like the thing that like in in our type of business the exciting thing is sales sales come from visits to your website or in app stores and stuff um which come from clicks which comes from views and so views is the leading metric and then you have clicks underneath that and then you have um actually people downloading the app that's what i meant to say earlier kind of mess that up and then you have people who actually purchase from there and so it's a it's a funnel like you you have a thousand people see your thing. You have a hundred people click your thing. Uh, you have 10 people download your thing and you have one of them that buys. Um, so the, the leading metric is, is views like how many times you've shown up and, and that graph for us is an exponential looking curve. That's really cool. And, and so like you would just play that

[49:05] forward. Is that going to, um, you know, revolutionize things overnight. No, it needs to keep going. Uh, we need that to be a much bigger funnel over time. Uh, but from there, like enough people see your thing, enough people will click on it and enough people will click on it, which is also starting to like creep its way up a little bit now too. Um, in a little exponential looking curve, then enough people will download your thing. And then enough people will download your thing they'll eventually you'll have a more consistent number of people buying it but uh it it just requires time and continued effort getting it out into the world yeah and one thing i was pretty happy to see is our on app at the apple app store at least is scry has five stars so that was exciting yeah i haven't looked at android which i probably should it gets a lot of downloads yeah yeah so it'd be interesting to see what people think about it on there but yeah i was really excited to see five stars on scry yeah that is awesome yeah all right um well you need to go because you have a workout here in soon amount of time the kids are off and yeah i can hear all that they've done a good job though i don't we didn't even tell them that we were recording a podcast they're getting yeah they're getting they're getting good

[50:21] about knowing our kids are older now so yeah you sent me a very adorable oh thank you i got a little bit i was down the rabbit hole of looking at old that's a dangerous game man oh but it was so sweet i loved it so much but yeah so sad i know all right um anyhow thank you all for listening we really appreciate it uh if you haven't already um and you've gotten to this point you should definitely hit subscribe uh if you have any uh questions or like topics you want to cover uh or just want to say hi you can email us at buildhorizons.com you can follow us on socials i think that's about it so katy i'm going to turn it over to you to send us home thanks for building with us and we are cheering you on