startups

Rob: In this Taberrific episode of Startups for the Rest of Us, Mike returns to the show. This is Startups for the Rest of Us episode 458.

Welcome to Startups for the Rest of Us, the podcast that helps developers, designers, and entrepreneurs be awesome at building, launching, and growing startups, whether you’ve built your fifth startup or you’re working on your first. I’m Rob.

Mike: And I’m Mike.

Rob: And we’re here to share our experiences to help you avoid the mistakes we’ve made on our journeys. Mike, it’s been a long time.

Mike: Hi. Yeah, it has. What? 10 episodes?

Rob: Ten episodes. I don’t think either of us realized that it would be that long. Just so listeners know, you and I had literally not spoken verbally. We’ve texted since that episode, but we have not spoken since episode 448.

Mike: That’s true.

Rob: We’re not talking that much. We tend to text and email a lot.

Mike: I hear that from people when I talk to them at MicroConf. They have the expectation or the inclination to believe that you and I talk either everyday or at least a couple of times a week. That’s totally not true. We’ll email back and forth. We will sometimes go for a couple of weeks without talking at all.

Rob: Yeah, if we don’t record the podcast. Ten episodes. What have you been doing with the enormous amount of free time you had not had? Showing up every week to record this and all that.

Mike: I’ve come to the realization that I was probably recovering from a pretty massive dose of burnout. I feel like I’m at the tail end of getting over that. How do I put this? There were times where I would just take an entire day off just because I felt like I needed it. Then, there are other times where I would just sit at my desk. I really wouldn’t feel like I was getting any work done. I would say that was the early stage when I started to take the time off.

I got to the point where I realize just sitting at my desk wasn’t actually doing anything. If I wasn’t actually being productive in any ways to perform, I’ll just get up and go do something else. What’s the point of sitting there if it’s not doing me any good? Because then, I’m just going to feel bad about it later and that’s not good for me either. It was rough to get through, but it was probably necessary, too.

Rob: It’s nice to have the luxury to be able to take that time and did not have to show up everyday for a season. It’s like over the course of years, you need to show up everyday in general, but when you’re burned out, you have to take time off. There’s really no other way to get around that. You have to get away from it. It’s hard to show up even once a week and be like, “All right. I’ve got to sit there and talk on the mic about stuff that I don’t really feel great about.” I’ve gone through months of time when I felt that way. When I listen back to the show, I can hear that in either one of us at a given time when they’re burned out.

It’s great you have that time to step away. You just got to give yourself permission to do that. That’s the thing. I often feel guilty when I do it, but you come back the next day or the next week assuming it’s not a long term depression or a chemical imbalance, which is totally very valid and real thing. But assuming it’s not that and you are just burned out because of the work or whatever it is, it’s super valuable. Each of us should give ourselves permission to do that.

Mike: Yeah. That was a good realization for me is just giving myself permission to walk away then come back later either when I felt like it or maybe the next day if I didn’t feel like it. Sometimes, there were definitely a couple of periods where I would take two or three days just because I didn’t feel like doing anything and I wasn’t being productive. You can’t beat yourself up all the time because that’s really what was happening to me. I don’t know how long it was going on, either.

When you’re sitting there trying to get work done, it’s like you’re concentrating more on beating yourself up about why you’re not getting things done, not focused, and not moving at all forward. Then, you are about taking a larger view of things saying, “How long does this been going on?” I try to forgive myself, I guess, for those periods of not being able to get stuff done. Like I said, things just has gotten a lot better over the past month or so.

Rob: We’ll dive into that. That’s the whole point of this episode. I have a couple of questions for you before we get into what you’ve been thinking about, how things have been with your health, your progress, and what’s going on. Have you been listening to the podcast?

Mike: I’ve not. I’ve gone into hermit mode.

Rob: Yes. You haven’t been on Twitter at all, right?

Mike: Aside from logging in very briefly on Twitter and Facebook just for authentication purposes for a couple of different things, I haven’t gone on either one of them. Nothing. No social media. I don’t even really watch the news or anything like that. There’s stuff going on. I’m just like, “I have no idea what’s happening in the world.” It’s just hermit mode.

Rob: Mike, do you miss it desperately and feel like there’s a huge Twitter-shaped hole in your heart?

Mike: No, not really.

Rob: Not at all?

Mike: I do miss some of the playful interactions and stuff like that. At the same time, I know they’re also distracting for me. I miss reconnecting with people just to shoot them a message here and there, and just make a comment on different things that are going on. At the same time, a lot of those doesn’t necessarily add any real value for me. I guess there’s a social contact, but I’ve tried to find personal social contacts outside of the internet.

Rob: That makes a lot of sense. I find it fascinating you have been listening to the podcast at all. The listeners who’ve been listening, they know the format. I’ve changed the format. I’ve been doing a lot of interviews, really trying to dig in and not just do the same old. We never wanted an interview show. There were enough interview shows. I’ve been trying to dig into people’s stories and the struggles. Done several Q&A episodes. I did a Q&A episode where Tracy Osborn came on and co-hosted with me. Jordan Gal came on for one.

That’s been actually the cool part for me. It was almost an excuse/motivation/force to me to figure out how I run the show on my own. It forced me to innovate. It’s the mother of invention to sit here, stare at the mic, and be like, I don’t just want to do what a lot of solo hosts do which is interviews. I don’t just want to monologue on the mic. Heaven knows I can sit and talk for 30 minutes. How do I try to up the game?

I’ve been spending a lot more time on the podcast than I used to. Over the course of the last several years, we show up and we talked about on the mic, but I’ve been trying to be really deliberate about trying to craft stories, just experimenting with new ideas, and new formats. It’s been cool. You can go back and listen to them now, I think your hermit mode is great, and it’s probably what you needed at this point. Someday, go back and listen, and let me know what you think.

The response I have asked in some of the episodes for folks to write in, or write me personally, or tweet, or somehow give their thoughts on the new format are overwhelmingly positive. I probably got 20-25 responses saying, “Yup, this is great.” “Keep being creative.” “Keep changing it up.” Some folks have mentioned that they missed the Q&A episodes probably the most. We used to do it every other episode, this Q&A.

That’s easy enough. I did one that went live today when we’re recording this. It was just me doing Q&A. I listen through it and it’s good. I think that works. I also like bringing experienced folks like Jordan Gal or Tracy to co-host with me on the Q&A. I think I’m finding my groove here in a way to keep it going.

Mike: Yeah. It’s interesting that you bring up the forced innovation. There’s a couple of things that come to mind in terms of just the podcast in general. I call it a general success and general longevity. The fact that we show up all the time, I guess until 10 episodes, we show up every week. Then, the past 10 has just been you showing up every week. The fact that it’s there and people can rely on it is not just a testament to the show, but it’s one of the reasons why it has been successful.

The other thing that you look at is you can continue to do the same thing over and over again, but eventually, maybe it gets boring. Maybe you decided that there’s other things that you want to do or there’s other ways to innovate on this show or whatever it is you’re working on. Those things don’t get done sometimes unless you force it because you’re either afraid to make changes or you decide, “I’m comfortable now. I don’t want to go through the…” I don’t want to call it pain but the uncomfortable mess of trying to change something that is already working. That applies in not just the podcast but in a lot of other places, too.

Rob: I would agree. I actually have a snippet from one email that we received from […]. He had a couple of comments, but one thing he said, it was indicative of what a lot of folks said. He said, “You asked for feedback about the new format. I’m really enjoying the in-depth nitty-gritty interviews with entrepreneurs who are in the trenches and openly talk about their successes, failures, and what they’re currently working on. It’s so valuable to hear what people think through the challenges, problems, and decisions. You’re a great interviewer because it doesn’t feel like you’re an interviewer, if that makes sense.”

I really appreciate that piece because I’m trying to deliberately do that. I’m not trying to be an investigative journalist. I’m trying to be a founder who’s just having a conversation with another founder much likely we would have whatever, at a bar, or at a conference in hallway track or something.

Back to his email, he says, “I also appreciate how you introduce the guest’s background yourself so you can go right into the good stuff with your guest.” That’s been very deliberate. The first 2-3 minutes, I hammer through their history so that we don’t have to sit there for 20 minutes talking through, “So, when did you become an entrepreneur?” Nobody really cares about that, in general. We really want to know what’s this pivotal piece of your story and let’s dig into that; that element of it.

His emails continues. He says, “I’ve learned so much from the topic-focused/listener-questions episodes as well.” That’s some more of the older format. “There’s so many concepts I’ve incorporated into my own thinking that have made me vastly more productive and effective.” It’s cool he rattles up a bunch. He said off the top of my head, relentless execution, road blocks versus speed bumps, almost all decisions are reversible, good glucose, moving a business forward, I could go on. He says, “I like the new format. I like the new voices, I like the stories, but the previous format is also great and it has taught me a lot.”

I appreciate that email. That was in general, indicative of the feedback that I saw. There was one person who wrote in and said, “I like the old format better.” That’s not super helpful without more description, but yeah, in general, it’s been a fun adventure.

Mike: That was cool.

Rob: How about the website? Have you been to the website? I’m about to announce it today, but about a week-and-a-half ago, brand new, Startups for the Rest of Us website went live.

Mike: I did see that.

Rob: It’s a new WordPress design. I’m sorry that I had to deprecate our 9½ year old WooTheme that we customized. Oh Mike, the humanity.

Mike: That was so hard to work with.

Rob: It’s not because it’s a WooTheme, it’s because it’s 9 years old. It was so crafty. Everything was breaking. We have plugins that were deprecated six years ago. Thanks again to Rich Staats at the Secret Stache who jumped in. The podcast feed would have died three months ago. We weren’t able to get new episodes in. He jumped in a day’s notice and hacked something in a plugin to get that going. That was cool. It keeps us going.

I don’t know if you know, but we’re now on Seriously Simple Podcast hosting which is Craig Hewitt’s WordPress plugin. We were in ProdPress and it hadn’t been touched in six years. Craig did us a favor, jumped in, and spent several hours migrating us over. We were just bailing the water out of the boat, in essence, to keep the podcast going. That’s cool. Now, we have a new theme. My hope is that we’re in a much better situation now.

Mike: Yup. In 2027, we can update it again.

Rob: It’s the thing I was thinking. It was like, “Oh my. We need to do this a little more often.”

Mike: It might be a good idea, but I think we both just got busy doing other things. It’s still work and it’s functional, it’s a little along the priority list.

Rob: Yup, that’s right.

Mike: That happens.

Rob: I was motivated by the fact that the momentum carried through were I was like, “Okay, here I am doing this show on my own, setting up interviews.” I kept going to the site and being just like, “I’m so bothered by this website.” The copy’s out of date. The greatest hits ends at 220, it’s like half of our podcast feed had been analyzed for greatest hit, and just the design and everything. It’s never fun to redesign a site, but it’s fun to have redesigned it. Now that it’s done, I’m glad that it’s all taken care of.

Mike: Now that it’s over and it looks nice, then it’s much better off.

Rob: Yeah. Episode 448 really struck a nerve. We received north of three dozen comments on that episode, tweets, emails to myself, emails to questions@startupsfortherestofus.com. It is the episode that received the most feedback, perhaps, of any episode in our 450 episode run.

Mike: Yeah. You can probably at least add 50%-75% to that. I’ve got a ton of things that came directly to me through email as well. I don’t know if anybody has tweeted at me. If they did, I apologize because I have not logged into Twitter since 2½ months ago. On top of that, I’ve got a ton of personal direct emails to me, as well.

Rob: That’s cool. Thank you to everyone who reached out, honestly. I’ve responded to a lot of them, but I read every single one of them. I know you did as well, the stuff that came to you, Mike. In general, it was just super encouraging. There was a voicemail last episode that I felt like it had a couple of questions. He had a piece that I felt summed it up nicely. He said, “I wanted to take Mike for his immense courage in being so open and vulnerable in sharing his Bluetick blues with the podcast community. As a fellow, still struggling in Boston area, B2B SaaS founder, I empathize with him in the challenge he’s facing and I deeply appreciate his willingness to share them in public. I wish him the best in deciding what’s next.”

I felt that was, in general, like, “Thanks for coming in the mic and doing this, both of you.” “Thanks for diving into this difficult topic in front of 20,000 listeners,” and, “This is helpful.” That’s what I keep hearing is, “This is helpful for me to hear as a founder to know that I’ve gone through this, I am going through this.” It really humanizes it and a lot resonated with a lot of people that we were able to dig into that for 40 minutes, 10 episodes ago.

Mike: Yeah. When that episode went live, I got inundated with a ton of emails upfront. Then, they just kept trickling in. They tapered off after three or four weeks. It was hard for me because I wanted to respond to every single one of them, but I just really wasn’t in a place where I could. I apologize to anyone who I didn’t respond to. I started replying to them and I got to a point where I just couldn’t. It was like I was seeing the same things over and over again to people which is continuing to beat me down, I guess. Apologies to anyone, but I do want to say, definitely, I want to thank anyone who did email me. I did appreciate it.

Rob: Mike, when we last left our hero, we were talking about […] of things. I have seven or eight bullet points here to cover and revisit. You don’t need an answer to all of them. Some of the answers maybe. I don’t know. I haven’t figured that out yet. To take 2½ months off and expect that everything is thought through, everything is fixed, I don’t think is realistic. I am curious and I’m sure the listeners are, too. Did you give this particular bullet a thought? What’s your conclusion? Where do you stand now? Where do you see it heading over the next months and years?

To start high level, a question I brought up a couple of times in that episode was, “Do you still want to be an entrepreneur?” and you said, “The answer is absolutely yes.” That’s cool. The other question towards the end, “Should you be an entrepreneur? Do you feel like this is what you should be doing? Or do you feel like you should—not want to, but should—take a step back? Do some consulting? Build up the bankroll? Take a salary job?” because healthcare is so expensive. I know salary jobs make both of us sad. They make me depressed, but they are so stable, they’re so much less stressful, and there’s less need for that intrinsic motivation. Did you have a chance to think through that stuff?

Mike: I did think about it. Coincidentally, it was maybe four or five days ago, I got an email from a recruiter who was asking me. He’s like, “Hey, I saw your job experiences and stuff on LinkedIn. There’s a position over here at Amazon that you’d be really good for.” I looked at it and I thought for eight or ten seconds, “Oh my God, No. I just can’t do that.” Not just the fact that it would be all the way up for in Summerville. It’s taken me an hour to get there, so no. Absolutely not. That’s part of why I went out on my own anyway.

The thought of going back to a full time employment, there is an attraction from just the healthcare standpoint, but at the same time the lack of flexibility. The past couple of months, we’ve been able to make things work because I’m working at home. My wife’s got her business. She’s in and out. We just tag team on all the stuff with the kids during the summer. It’ll be so much harder if I had a fulltime job. Yeah, I could probably make it work if I were working remotely, but it’s still just the hassle of working for somebody else.

I saw this Dilbert comic. My wife and I actually talked about this, me going back and working for somebody else. I remember coming across this Dilbert comic very recently that really summed it up. The boss comes in and he says to Dilbert, “Hey, good news. We just won this nationwide contracts to roll out a wireless network.” Dilbert says, “Newsflash: We don’t know how to roll out a wireless network nationwide.” The boss says, “How hard could it be to not roll out wires?” That completely sums up exactly why.

Don’t get me wrong. Not every company is like that. But there are some things that I see that companies done where you’re just like, “This is the dumbest thing ever.” Yet, it’s hard to say something in those situations. Then you come off as an adversarial employee, you’re not working with the team, it’s just like, “Come on. This is a dumb idea. I can’t believe you don’t see it.”

Rob: Did you just quote a Dilbert comic as a reason not to get a full-time job?

Mike: I think so.

Rob: I hear what you’re saying. Honestly, if you were to get a job, it should be for a startup. It should be for 10, 20, 30, person company. Probably, with funding so they have good benefits and it should be remote.

I get it. I’m not saying you should do this, but I think that not wanting to go back to the cubicle form or the hour commute, I get that. Neither of us should do that. But I don’t think you need to in this day and age.

Mike: Yeah, I totally agree. I could probably find something that’s remote. I thought a lot about it. Even if I had all the money in the world, I would still build stuff. The problem with that is that money isn’t necessarily a main driver for me. That’s the problem that I’ve run into. I have enough money in the bank and I have enough income coming in where I don’t have to work my ass off in order to have the things in life that make me happy. The problem is I’m not really making a ton of forward progress on a lot of things.

It really comes down to an existential question of, “What is it that actually drives me if it’s not money?” It used to be money because I was the only one in my household who was working and now I’m not. My wife is able to help out with the income side of things. It’s great because now I don’t have to push myself nearly as hard. But as a direct result of that, the question is, if I don’t have to work nearly as hard, why am I doing this? What’s the point?

It’s something I definitely struggled with, to be perfectly honest. I don’t have a great answer for it yet. I’m still working on that, but the reality is, that is what stopped me or prevented me for going full speed on a lot of stuff because I haven’t needed the money, so what’s the point?

Rob: That makes sense, although you’re not independently wealthy. You do have to work. If you stopped working altogether, it’s not like you can take five years off. When I was in your shoes, that was my motivation. It was to get to a point where I could take years off or the rest of my life to achieve financial freedom. It’s an overused term and it’s almost devoid of meaning at this point, but I wanted the ability to never have to work again. That was a big motivation for me. Does that not motivate you?

Mike: I feel like the runway’s long enough. It’s not like a hardcore motivator for me, if that makes sense. I’m not under the gun. I don’t have two months or whatever to make ends meet or I’m done and I have to go find a full time job because that’s not the position I’m in. I’m fine for probably several years. That’s not a big deal. The problem is that there are going to be points along the way.

Let’s say Bluetick completely went away, for example, I lose that income. Yeah, I would probably be in a little bit of trouble, but I would still have plenty of runway left to figure out what I was doing at that point. The question is how do I address that? What do I really want? What am I really looking for?

I don’t necessarily have specific answers for that. I’m still working on those. I agree that the financial freedom aspect of it is a good and worthy goal. The question is, what is it that I’m really looking for above and beyond that? If I have that, what am I going to do? What’s going to drive me and motivate me? Even if I achieved that, then what’s next? What’s going to prevent me from just saying, “Okay, now what?”

Rob: That’s so interesting. I hear you, but I would get to that point then say, now what? I have gotten to that point a number of times. For me, quitting a salary job was this huge goal of mine. I quit it and went full time contracting, remote, consulting, in, let’s say, 2002 or 2003. I remembered being like, “Oh my gosh! This is it. I’ve dreamed of this for 20 years since I was in high school. I wanted to have this remote job.” And I did. Six months later, I said, “Now what?”

You know what “now what?” for me was? It was, “Huh, I’m bored of working dollars for hours. I want a product. I want a product to support me.” Then, in 2008, I’ve got a full time income from products. I remember loving it for about a year. Then, I said, “Now what? I’m bored. I needed to do something bigger.” That was podcast, conference book, Micropreneur Academy. Then, it was HitTail. It was like, “I need to level up.” Then, after that it was Drip. After Drip, it was, “Now what?” Now, I spend more time in the podcast than I do in TinySeed.

Your and my motivations do not have to be the same thing. That’s not what I’m saying. I do think that the best entrepreneurs I know have a driving motivating factor. It is either to create—to build stuff that people use—or to achieve. There are a bunch of folks who just want to build a big company. They want to build the Amazon, or Google, or the Uber. That’s not my motivation. My motivation has always been to create interesting things that other people can use. I’m sure there are other motivations.

The thing that I’ve seen, if you ever heard of the Enneagram, it’s a personality test. It’s like the Myers-Briggs or whatever. It’ll tell you, “This is what motivates you and this is what doesn’t.” I’d be fascinated for you to take that. Whether you talk about it on the show or you just take it for yourself to get some insight into your likes, dislikes, your pros and cons, strengths and weaknesses, and your motivations.

I think that until you know that, it’s going to be a challenge for you to really be motivated to launch products because this […] is hard. That’s what we’ve experienced. It is hard to do this. Without a real drive of, “Man, I need financial freedom,” or, “I need to create stuff that a bunch of people can use,” or, “I just need to escape this inner voice in my head that probably my dad or my mom put in me.”

These are the motivations that I’ve seen drive entrepreneurs to do really interesting things. I don’t even mean great things, you don’t have to build a multimillion dollar business. That’s not what Startups for the Rest of Us is about. It can just be about shipping cool things into the world that people use and showing up everyday to do it.

Mike: Yeah. Part of my question that I’m kicking around in my head is, what is it that I want? All of the things you talked about are like, different people have different goals. Some may want to build the next Amazon and for you personally, that doesn’t resonate. It’s not what you want. But when you’re talking about your journey from going to self employment to building a product then to HitTail, Drip, and TinySeed, that whole journey is a series of challenges that you’re undertaking.

In my mind, what I’m really struggling with is what is the challenge that I actually want to tackle? What is it that I personally want to do. That’s not something that comes over night. Especially, if you have the time to figure out what it is you want to do rather to be in having some forcing function that makes you decide within a week. Within a week, that’s a time constraint. You have to deal with the constraints right there and then versus I’m in a position where I can take some time to figure out what it is I actually want, reflect on exactly why that is, and why it’s going to make me happy. If it’s not going to make me happy, I don’t want to do it.

Rob: You’re right. Until you’ve been there, it’s hard to understand how saying, “I can move and live anywhere,” actually makes it a lot harder. It’s tough to say, “I can build or do anything. I have a few years of runway,” makes the choice a lot harder because there is no forcing function for you to make a decision. There’s not a ton of things pressing on you to do it. I hear what you’re saying.

It sounds like, “Here’s what I’d like to do with this because this is really an interesting topic.” I noted, “What is the challenge that Mike wants to tackle? Why is he doing this?” I want to revisit this. I think that you should give a thought, do a retreat, do whatever it is that you’re going to do to figure that out. Take the Enneagram. I’ll just put the link. It’s not a silver bullet. Take it. Take some personality test and do some thinking and stuff. Think about what it is you want to do. This is a time to be deliberate about these things.

The mistakes that I’ve seen some founders make, it’s a founder I have in mind in particular, he sold a company and sold it for several hundred thousand dollars and didn’t have enough to retire, but he could take time off. He didn’t take time off. He made a quick decision that said, “I got to get right back on.” He launched this next thing within a few weeks. It was a mistake because it was almost like a rebound, like a rebound startup or like a rebound idea.

You’re not in a position to where you’re shutting Bluetick down and looking for another thing. You are in a place where you have the luxury of taking a month or two, set a timeline so you don’t take a year or two, but figure it out. That’d be my advice. What do you think? Do you think I’m full of BS?

Mike: Well yeah, but no. That’s a great way to phrase that question. I like that. An excellent point about the fact that when you got a blank slate, you can live anywhere, and you can do anything, what is it that you’re going to do? When you’re facing the problem, there’s all those constraints. It helps guide you in the right direction. But when you have no constraints or very, very few that makes it a lot harder. That’s the position I’m in. I have much fewer constraints on me now than I probably did five or six years ago.

Rob: The paradox of choice.

Mike: Yeah. I’m just trying to make sure that I make the right choice for myself, go in a direction that is going to make me happy, and that’s actually what I want to do. I remember a time when I was a kid. I was like, “I want to do this. I want to do this. I want to do this.”

Fast forward 30 years and you don’t have time in your life to do all of those things. The question I’m trying to answer for myself is, in 10 years, or 15, or 20 years, when I look back on my life, what is it that I want to have achieved? What would make me happy? Or what do I believe would make me happy? That’s what I’m trying to figure out right now.

Rob: And you’ve taken a couple of months off of the podcast. I know you took some time off of work to think about it and this is not something that could come overnight. Let’s revisit that in future episodes. I feel like you should come back in three or four episodes and cover all this stuff again—anything that is an open question.

Whether you have an answer then or not, I’d love to hear updates on your progress and I think the listeners would as well. It’s been an ongoing story for nine years and continuing that thread is going to be good for all of us to hear the decision you make.

If we come back in seven days and I ask you the same question, you don’t have progress because it’s like, “I can’t figure these things out in a week.” But if we give it time to breathe, I feel like we can potentially follow the story in a way that’s helpful and doesn’t put pressure on you to force you to have answers to things that you probably don’t have.

Mike: That’s a double edged sword because there are times where having a forcing function like that makes you make decisions. It is not to say that it makes the decisions for better or worse. It’s just that it forces you into making a decision.

It could go either way. I’m not saying it should. I’m just saying that it could go either way where it’s like if it’s seven days versus three or four weeks or whatever. Sometimes, having to make the decisions earlier is better. Sometimes it’s not. I don’t know if that’s a good answer either way. That’s why the classic answer from my consultant is, “Well, it depends.”

Rob: Yup. When we last left you, there were some speed bumps that we were talking about, like roadblocks. Then there were some health stuff, there were sleep stuff, there were coaching and failures, a bunch of stuff I have bullets about that I want to run through.

The first thing is there was Google drama. Google needing an inspection certification that could cost tens of thousands of dollars. Potentially, no one was getting back to you. That was two months ago. That was a weekly thing that was going on. Is Bluetick going to get shut down because of Google? What’s going to happen? Update us on that. What does it look like today?

Mike: I’m past 95%, it’s probably 80% because of the 80/20 rule. Then, I’ve got another 80% to go. Everything is done with Google except for the security review. Actually, I reached out to the companies that are doing the security reviews before and I dropped it. I didn’t get back to them because I was just not in a place where it was worth my mental energy to continue pursuing it.

I’ve gone back to them recently. One of them had a survey that I needed to fill out and give them a bunch of technical stuff. I gave that to them and scheduled a follow-up call with them. The other one I’m trying to get us a meeting schedule with them. I’m basically trying to get the price quotes hammering out and seeing how much is this going to cost me. In some way, that probably impacts what I’m going to do with Bluetick moving forward, but maybe not.

Maybe I just made a decision that’s like, this is going to be the path forward for me. Regardless of how much that cost, I’m just going to do it. Whereas before it was much more on the mindset of, “How much is this going to cost?” “What’s my growth trajectory?” “Is it even worth me going in that direction?” Part of the factor of that was how much is it going to cost to have that review done. Right now I’m just in the process of figuring out what the cost is.

It’s hard to say that I’m not less focused on the growth trajectory because I still think that that’s very important, but is it something I want to do? Probably the bigger question that I need to answer is do I want to continue working on Bluetick and moving it forward? I definitely think that some of the recent conversations I’ve had with existing customers has really added to my motivation to do that. I got away from talking to my customers nearly as much as I probably should’ve been. That has dramatically helped that motivation.

Rob: Fascinating. To summarize then, Google stuff is moving forward. You don’t have exact data yet, but you’re waiting to hear back. Bluetick shutdown is not imminent based on Google doing anything. You’re in the process of answering this question of, “Is this something I want to continue working on?” probably based on customer interactions.

Mike: Yes.

Rob: Related to that, there was a technical issue that you brought up which was this sealed .NET component you’re using, untestatable because it’s hard to get into all of this stuff. Have you done anything with that? Have you made progress? Or are you just saying, “Forget it. I’m just going to deal with it the way it is”?

Mike: Do we have a 20 minute profanity filter or a beep that we can put in here?

Rob: We do.

Mike: I went back and forth with the support people on that. I’ve made the decision that I’m going to need to rip that out and replace it. I’ve already got something I could replace it with. I’ve already started going through the process of replacing it. Their support basically came back and said, “Yeah. This isn’t a priority for us. We’re not going to make any changes with that.” “Too bad,” is really what the bottom line was. That’s a nice way of phrasing what they said, but yeah, I’m really, terribly, unhappy with the response I got from them.

Rob: But it’s no longer a roadblock because you’re going to fix it and you can move on. It was something you brought up multiple shows in a row as well. It seemed to be really hanging you up. This was one of the options we threw out, remember? I was like, “You can shut down the whole company. You can write the component yourself.” You brought up, you could switch components or I said, “You could just deal with it and not have great test or whatever.” This is one of the options. At least it’s one of them and you’re moving forward with it.

Mike: Yup, and I’ve already started that process. The problem with ripping it out completely and switching over is that it’s a process is going to take probably several days for my servers to turn on. It’s a little terrifying to have to pull the trigger and actually make that complete switch. There’s the architectural changes that needed to be made as well. I’m trying to push it off or make it so that I can do one mailbox at a time or something like that. I haven’t dedicated a huge amount of time to that beyond the initial prototype and stuff.

Rob: Don’t let it hang around. If I have one piece of advice, it’s get past this. It’s easy to put this off and be like, “Oh, I don’t really want to. It is a headache,” or, “It’s hard to pull the bandaid off.” If you’re going to do it, do it, and get past it.

Mike: The question in my mind that I’m struggling a little with is, does this add anything for the customers?

Rob: No, of course not.

Mike: You’re right. It doesn’t, but at the same time, there are places where it’s a detriment to me to be working in that code because I have to be super careful about things breaking because of that code. My time is better spent on doing marketing stuff anyway. Should I be focusing my time on that even though this thing is hanging out around up there?

What I struggle with is the fact that it’s mental overhead. I know it’s there, I know that it’s a problem, I know it needs to be dealt with, but if it weren’t there, I wouldn’t think about it at all. I have a hard time just pushing it out of my mind because I know that it’s there, but at the same time, I need to be working on other things. I don’t have a great answer for that.

Rob: It sounds to me, you know that there are four or five options. We ran through those. Shut the business down, replace it, rewrite it, whatever. It sounds to me like you made a choice to replace it. If you’ve made that choice, just do it and get past it. What is it? A week’s worth of work? Two weeks’ worth of work? You have the luxury. If you haven’t made the decision, then that’s fine. If you made the decision but then are half doing the work on a decision because you feel like you need to do other stuff, then it sounds like you really haven’t made the decision.

Mike: No. I have made the decision. It’s just a question of trying to slot it in when I’ve got other things that are also relatively high priority to get done. I’ve got a challenge around prioritization as well because I’ve got so many things that need to get done. We can come back to that. There’s other stuff of it.

Rob: Exactly. We don’t want to run two hours. I have an open questions for future episode where we revisit all these. This is one of them.

Another thing was during the last episode, listeners know you’ve had issues with low testosterone and your doctor taking you off this patch. You felt like you’re unmotivated, that you are having trouble sleeping which is related, but not the same thing. You were not doing great in that last episode, to be honest. I could tell and we talked a little bit after we closed that episode. What has happened since then?

Mike: To be blunt about it, I was a total mess when we recorded that last episode. The very next day I went back on my medication which is just a dramatic difference between them. I basically told my doctor I was never going to do that again which he wasn’t happy about. I’m like, “I’m sorry you’re going to have to deal with this.” Things have been a lot better in that regard.

I’m actually off two other medications. That was really tough. That took probably six or eight weeks to get through and get over. There’s withdrawal effects and things like that. I had to deal with them. It was just low energy, low motivation, hard time sleeping. Things have gotten dramatically better in the past three or four weeks, I’d say. But it was hard getting through that period, to get off those medications.

It has done a lot of good for me. I’m no longer suffering from a lot of those side effects. That’s part of the reason why I was on some of those medications because I wasn’t sleeping very well. It created this vicious cycle. To be more specific, I was on Adderall because I couldn’t focus during the day. Then, I was on sleep meds at night to try and get me to sleep. It’s just like they’re basically fighting against each other. The reality is I couldn’t sleep at night because of the sleep apnea. I ended up on these other meds that have addictive qualities and things that go really sideways in your body when you’re trying to come off of them.

Those things are a lot better. I’ve noticed in the past few weeks that things have gotten dramatically better in terms of my energy, my ability to focus, and my ability to be productive. Productivity is, I don’t want to say it’s a choice, but you have to focus on being productive. If you don’t focus on that, then you’re just going to sit there and not get anything done. At least I found that way for me. I don’t want to overgeneralize that.

Rob: Yeah. That sounds like a rough couple of months. I’m glad to hear that you’re feeling better.

Mike: I’m only at one medication now. Well, actually two. It’s like for testosterone and I’m on blood pressure meds. My doctor’s done all kinds of test. I actually have a doctor’s appointment this afternoon. As far as I know, I also don’t have cancer. I guess that got back down going for me.

Rob: Yay, that’s good news. Great! That sounds like a tough couple of months. Taking time off was probably the right choice to deal with that because that’s not something you necessarily wanted to be working through. I’m glad to hear it and I really hope that that continues. You don’t know what you’ll feel like in three months, or six months, or nine months. Things come and go.

You sound more awake and alive than you have been for a long time. I don’t know if it’s just because you’re fresh, because you’re like, “Oh boy!” I don’t know if you ever lifted weights all the time, but if you lift seven days a week, your body gets tired. If you take two or three days off, you come back, you can just lift crazy amounts of weight. You just feel amazing because your body has had time to recover. I feel like there’s been a bit of that. You just sound better.

Mike: For sure. I’ve been doing a lot of little things. I’ve been tracking when I sleep well, when I don’t. What was I doing the day before. I’ve been tracking what I eat a lot. I’m trying to lose weight, but that’s only going marginally well. Coming off of the Adderall was really hard because I added 10 or 15 pounds really quick. I’m back down to only about five pounds over what I was, but still, I wanted to lose weight on that point anyway. There’s that.

Then, I found that there’s certain types of music that I can listen to. If I listen to it first thing in the morning versus I sit down and I start working without listening to music, then, I’m way less productive and I’m way less energetic. I’ve also realized that I need to have a routine as much as I hate it. I can’t stand going through the same routine all the time. It’s boring to me. My brain just doesn’t deal with it well. At the same time, I need that structure.

Those are the kinds of things that I’ve found to be very helpful over the past month or two. It’s been a learning process because I’ve been on my own. I’ve been able to do whatever I want and still make it through, still be productive, but things have changed. I don’t know if it’s just because of burnout or because I’ve gotten older and things like that. Drawing lines between work and playtime, the exercise has obviously made a little bit of a difference. I’ve gotten back to that.

Then other little stuff like getting rid of small annoyances. We were talking before the podcast started. You’re like, “Wow, your keyboard’s really loud.” I was like, “Yeah, I bought a new one.” It’s a total of really little thing, but it’s got a volume control built into it with little roll bar. I can put the volume up or down on my music while I’m sitting there as opposed to banging on a button or having to go use the mouse and change the song that are on. It’s all the little stuff, but I made a conscious effort to identify those little things that were annoyances that are now smoothed out. They’re no longer impact my day and they no longer cause me to either get out of a rhythm or get angry about stuff that’s going sideways.

Rob: Yeah, that’s good to do. that’s good to recognize. To summarize all that, it’s like you took a step back. You took a step back and you look at your life, your worklife, your day to day progress, and you got over some off medications which is always hard to do. You took a step back and you said, “Hey, what can I improve in my life?” At least one listener is thinking to himself, “Mike, welcome to 2015 with the volume control on you.” But I’m definitely not thinking that.

How was your sleep? We have a couple more bullets to cover. We’re just going to have run long today. How was your sleep? That has been such a big issue, frankly, for years.

Mike: It’s a lot better. I definitely noticed that there’s days of the week where that I don’t get as much sleep as I would like, but then, there’s other ones where I would just wake up feeling completely refreshed and ready to get to work. That’s what I was just talking about where I’m trying to be more deliberate about tracking what happened the day before, how the day went before, and what specific things may have caused that. I don’t have a lot of information on that yet, but I’m definitely keeping a close eye on that, being very deliberate about looking at that, and examining it because that’s going to be important for me.

Rob: I’m making a note here to check back on this as well just because it’s something that’s important and it’s important to be honest about it. Everytime doesn’t have to be, “Oh, everything’s great. My health and my sleep are great.” You got to be able to talk about when it’s impacting you, like in episode 448, talk about when it’s negatively impacting your progress. Something you mentioned on that episode and prior was like, “I think I need to be in a mastermind.” “I need more accountability.” “I’m thinking about hiring a coach.” There was stuff bubbling around that. What’s the update on that status?

Mike: I have a new mastermind group. We’ve been meeting at least once or twice a week, more on a Monday or a Friday, just because of the scheduling and stuff like that. That’s been going really, really well. I’m really glad that I picked that up and thanks to the listener. I won’t call out the specific name of who it is, but know that the person who introduced this probably listens to the podcast, so I just want to say thanks for that.

In terms of a coach, I’ll say a pseudo business coach, more or less who’s holding me accountable on a weekly basis saying, “What did you do these past weeks? What do you plan on doing this week?” Then, we’ve had a couple of calls here and there not just for accountability. We have a call just yesterday or within the past three days about going through my marketing plan, picking it apart, and saying, “Are these things really important? Are they not? How are these things ranked and weighted against each other? And what should you be focusing on next?” Those are the things that are going to end up on the shortlist of stuff that I implement moving forward. He’s just going to hold me accountable  to it and get me a sanity check.

Rob: So far so good?

Mike: So far so good. Yeah.

Rob: I have a bullet here to ask about you. Your motivation, your effectiveness. Have you developed a system because we covered that as well. You already talked about that. It sounds like for the past three or four weeks, things have been feeling a lot better?

Mike: Yeah. I would say things started to turn a corner about three or four weeks ago. The past week-and-a-half to two weeks, things have really started amped up a little bit. It’s a combination of no longer really suffering from the withdrawal symptoms of the medication and then also getting to the tail end of burnout, which maybe I’m still working through that. I’m not really sure. It’s really important for me to figure out not just what it is that motivates me, but what it is that I want to achieve.

Rob: As we start to wrap up, something that we talked a lot about that I brought up multiple times in the prior episode is about making progress on Bluetick or making progress to your day to day work, figuring out how to differentiate Bluetick, how to make it different from the other offerings such that it’s a product that you can sell, and you’re not just picking up crumbs. Do you have clarity about how to do that? That’s the first part of the question, and have you started making progress towards that end?

Mike: I wouldn’t say that I have absolute clarity on it, but I would say that I have some ideas about what the direction of it it should be. It’s more or less, I believe, doubling down on the warm email follow ups because I’ve been talking to a couple of customers here and there about what it is that they used Bluetick for, why they use it, and asking questions to help me figure out what the direction for it is, what it should be, what are they unhappy about, what are they using it to begin with, and consolidate that information.

One of the customers that I talked to, interestingly enough, he said that he started out using it for cold email. Then, when he switched over and started using it for warm email for other  things, he’s like, “Oh, I’ve got this tool. I might as well use it.” Then a lightbulb went on for him. I was just like, “Oh, that’s interesting. Why?” Then, he started talking about the fact that it’s really built well for those types of scenarios. He was talking about why he was using it and how if there were some minor changes to it, it would be more helpful to him and just easier to use.

It gave me some ideas about how to go in that direction a little bit more. The problem I see is that when I ask him if he were talking about it to somebody that he knew or another entrepreneur or something like that, how would he pitch it to them? He’s like, “I really don’t know.” That’s something I struggle with is how to present it to people that in a context outside of use cases, maybe I just have to go on to that direction, and talk about it in terms of specific use cases.

Rob: How would you summarize that?

Mike: How would I summarize what? How it’s used?

Rob: No. Just the whole thing. If I were to say, do you know how it should be differentiated? I think I do. It’s the warm email context. Then, making progress towards that, not yet? Still in the thinking phase? When I say progress, have you shipped code or marketing material or different copy? Updated the website? Anything to that, and yet.

Mike: Yeah, I haven’t done any of that stuff yet. I’ve just been consolidating the information, kind of thinking about it. I’m not sure what the best ways for me to present that to other people are. I’m not sure if that’s the absolute direction I should go. Should I niche it down a little bit so that it is much more like a pipe drive plugin or should I integrate with a bunch of different products that are similar to that?

I have some open questions about that stuff and I don’t have the answers yet, but they are things I’m trying to actually figure out. Like how should this be pitched to people? Who are the exact people that I should be solving this specific problem for? When I first started on Bluetick, it was much more open-ended. It still is open-ended and it can do a lot of things, but if I were to niche down and only solve a very small sub-segment of the bigger problems that it can solve, I feel like it could probably get a lot more traction, and the question is, what exactly are those?

One example might be to reschedule meetings that have been cancelled. Those people are probably high profile prospects or high value prospects. If somebody cancel the meeting they scheduled, that’s probably a good situation where Bluetick could help you get those people back to a meeting. But is that the place where I want to niche down into? I don’t know the answer to that yet.

Rob: How are you going to answer those questions? You said you had several open questions. Do you have a plan to figure out how to answer them?

Mike: I’m going to be going through in talking to the rest of the customers that I have and seeing if that is something that they generally use it for. If so, then, I can at least generally answer that. At least try it out as a direction. I don’t know. Let’s say I decided to do that today. It may take another month or two to figure out, is this a reasonable direction? Am I going to get any attraction with it? I don’t know that.

Even if I made the decision, I’m still going to have to test it out. I’m still going to have to try it, see if I can get enough customers, and get some sort of traction. If I’m not getting that, then I have to probably go back to the drawing board and try and  figure it out.

There’s going to be a decision point activity and then wait to see what the results of the tests are. If I don’t go through all three of those things, I can decide what the direction that is all I want. It doesn’t mean it’s going to be successful and there’s no way to verify it.

Rob: Makes sense. To be continued in a future episode of Startups for the Rest of Us. Stay tuned to hear the stunning conclusion of Mike’s journey with Bluetick in a few episodes. Mike, I have the next three episodes mapped out or recorded already. What we’ll do is…

Mike: I’m totally screwing up your […] system.

Rob: Yeah, you are. No, this one slides perfectly in place. I have all that dialed in, but what I’d like to do in the interest of both keeping the story going is also giving you time to get stuff together and make progress on these things is record with you again in a few weeks. I don’t know if it’ll be 461 or 462, somewhere in that range, and to hear what else is going on, hear updates on your thinking.

There’s a lot of open questions. I have six or seven bullets here that I have taken about differentiation, accountability, health and sleep, to what challenge do you want to tackle, and what it is you really want to do. I’m glad that you’ve made the progress that you have. It sounds like you’re out of the fog. It seems to me like what you have been doing for the past two months is working. Keep doing that.

I feel good just talking to you about it. It makes me feel good to hear you, the old Mike. It’s the Mike that I remember. You and I have gone in and out of these things. There’s an old Rob and a new Rob where I was super depressed for six months doing stuff. It’s not just about you. It’s cool to hear that. Do you feel that in yourself as well?

Mike: I do. It’s hard for me to look back on it. It’s one of those painful things to look back on. It’s like, “Oh man, I wish I hadn’t felt that way,” but it is what it is. I’d rather take the time and do the right things for myself, what I want, what I’m trying to do, and make the right healthy choices, I’ll say, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that going through those periods is easy either. I definitely agree that I feel alot better today than I did two months ago, or three months ago, or even six or eight months ago. The word you used earlier, coming out of a fog, that was woefully accurate. It’s the way I’d put it.

Rob: Well, thanks for coming back on and digging into these stuff. If folks want to keep up with you—no, I’m just kidding. You know I always do at the end of the interview. “If folks want to keep up with you, Mike, where would they go?”

Mike: I would say Twitter, but I don’t use Twitter.

Rob: Very good. I feel that wraps us up for today.

Listener, if you have a question for us, call our voicemail number at (888) 801-9690 or email us at questions@startupsfortherestofus.com. Our theme music is an excerpt of We’re Outta Control by MoOt, it’s used under Creative Commons. Subscribe to us on iTunes by searching for startups and visit stratupsfortherestofus.com for a sexy new website and the full transcript of each episode. Thanks for listening and we’ll see you next time.