The Exchanges

Q starting, everyone said like, oh, just go on Odesk and hire someone in India to do it. And I'm like, I don't know, man, that doesn't sound like I can like, like, not really. Yeah. So like, what do you, what, what, what are there any agencies that you like or for hiring devs? Are you hiring someone by the hour in America? What, what's, what do you typically see?

A Yeah, I typically see, I see a lot of people going either through referrals, like you get into a community, um, MicroConf Connect, or Indie Hackers, or whatever, Dynamite Circle, and you ask, and you say, who has used someone whom you trust, right? So you try to get that referral, it's not just a, a flat look, because going to Upwork, which used to be Odesk, is kind of a shit show these days. The other thing is, there are now these Uh, referral services, aggregators. There's one called Trust Shoring, which is run by a guy who attends MicroConf, but he basically knows a bunch of Eastern European dev agencies, and if you come to him and say, I want to build an iOS app, he'll say, cool, I have these three agencies that I, that I refer to. He's almost like a broker in a way, but like, he's a good dude, and he knows them, you know, and so he, and he's vetted them, and then there's one called CloudDevs.com, and they do this similar thing for Latin America.

AI assessment note: “I see a lot of people going either through referrals... There's one called Trust Shoring”

Q No, but like you don't tell me what you sold for, but like, like when you said my goal is to earn this much, like what's, what was the threshold of not having to work?

A Oh, that's interesting. You know, when I was 25, I just thought it was millions. I never actually calculated it. And then as I got into my thirties, I started saying, well, what's this four percent rule thing that you hear about in personal finance, right? And I actually think the four percent rule is bullshit. Um, I think you need to be, you need to be a little more cautious. So it's about three, three and a half percent. So then The rule is if you need, if you want a 150,000 dollars a year to live on and you have five million dollars in the bank, then the idea is that if you do the four percent rule, you can take out 200 grand a year and never, um, touch the principal because stocks and bonds and other investments are, are, and inflation are, are working there. So a three percent rule would give you about a 150 grand. So I'm not using my numbers, but you get the idea. So it quickly became apparent to me that And when I was in my thirties of like, I think somewhere, it's somewhere between five and ten million, I think is most people's number. Depends on where you live. Depends on how you live. Um, but I think anything north of 10 is like, like, it is excess. I'll say that. I, I'm north of 10. And I, and I feel like I, my life didn't change. There was some point between five and 10 where it was like, yeah, that's enough. You know, I still like having the money and I do things w…

AI assessment note: “There was some point between five and 10 where it was like, yeah, that's enough.”

Q Do you feel, like, see, remember, like, when you're a kid, and you used to date someone, and then you see her with another guy, and you, like, feel just, like, that, that, you feel, like, anger, and jealousy, and you're sad. Do you, do you still have that, do you have that emotion when you see Drip?

A I don't. And, but, but I will say that there have been some things that have happened that have, that I haven't been happy with. So they, like, raised prices, and they didn't do it very well. Right after I left, like a few months after, and I was like, you guys are better than like, I would have done that so differently. And if I was in the room, I would have said, don't do it. They just did it really fast. They didn't grandfather, you know, they just made kind of all the one-on-one mistakes and that sucked. And I, and then there was a huge backlash against drip, which is part of my legacy. Like drip, drip is, you know, it's like the hustle will always, you will always be the founder of the hustle. Right. And I will always be the co-founder of drip. They they've messed with the UI. They've reshaped it and stuff. So when I go in there, I'm a little bit like, uh, I liked it the old way, but But I don't feel, it's not the ex-girlfriend thing. It's more of a, I did have to let it go, you know, and just, and just let it go. I still use it. I mean, I'm in it every day. It's such a good tool.

AI assessment note: “I don't... it's not the ex-girlfriend thing. It's more of a, I did have to let it go”

Q Okay, so podcasting is, is, you're saying it's a good business because there's actually enough customers to, to make it work, right?

A Yeah. Yeah. And podcasting has this other thing that, that is, I think, undervalued or just not talked about enough. It's this concept of a dual funnel or a split funnel where, You have, you know, who else has this is, um, electronic signature. E-signature has this, where you have this super wide funnel. There's either free users or very inexpensive users on the low end, and so a lot of people use it. Thus, you build a brand, and you just have 5010 thousand customers, whatever. Uh, some are just users, some are customers. You also, if you have any type of viral loop, that's amazing, right? You send the link to Squadcast or Riverside. You send a link to get a document signed. Oh, a little bit of virality. But then on the top end with eSignature, similarly, you have realty mortgage brokers who I need 8000 documents a month signed, and suddenly that's at 10, 20, 30 grand a month. That dual funnel is incredible because when, if you're just enterprise, then you're enterprise, right? And it's like Oracle in the old days. It's like, all right, so we need to close 500 deals this whole year, but each deal is a million or two million bucks, right? I mean, that's, it's like these massive deals. And it's just this grind of enterprise sales. But when you have the low end funnel and the high end funnel, it's, um, it feeds on itself and it helps you have a more stable business.

AI assessment note: “Yeah. Yeah. And podcasting has this other thing that, that is, I think, undervalued”