#209 – Business Books, Coaches, and "Getting Rich" with John Doherty of Credo
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What's up, everybody? This is courtland and from india hacker's stock com. And you're listening to the indie hackers podcast. More people than ever are building cool stuff online and making a lot of money in the process. And on this show, I sit down with these andy hackers to discuss the idea that s the opportunities and the strategies they're taking adventures of, so the rest we can do the same.

I'm here with john duty of credo. Welcome back to the show, john.

thanks. Good to be here, man.

Been a lot. I think you ever number fifty nine, which was in two thousand and eighteen. So it's a very long while and that ever I think you walked me basically the kind of creation of your company credo and how you got to where you were then. I think you are at like twenty thousand dollars a month in revenue from created then.

yes. So we have basically doubled. But to be completely Frank with you, that doubling has happened in the last year.

Let me do my my best attempt to describe what credo is, at least what I was the last time we spoke and and you correct me where i'm wrong. So a great just going like you an ideal way to to find an agency to help you market your website.

So if you need someone to do writing for you or to build your website for you or to run your facebook or google ads for you or to do seo for you, but you're not sure how to find the best people are the right people for you. You go to credo. You guys are experts at this.

You have extremely deep connections with everybody in the industry. You know exactly who's good, who's bad, who's right for job. And so I kind like go through you. You find me the right person, and then you take a cut of that relationship. Is that an active description of how crato works?

Credo helps companies find and hire the right prevented digital marketing farm. And then we're actually paid by the agencies. So agencies pay us for consistent monthly sales pipeline.

There are two side of business. We have the biotin at the agency. So i'm talking to someone is looking for an S O firm.

I say we help companies find in higher the right prevented digital marketing in S O firms. I'm talking to an agency. I say we help agencies get more qualified prospects in their sales pipelines so they can grow their agency.

So in your situation, I think what interesting about your story is that i've thought a few people on the podcast, residents who were like the pandemic IT and we crushed IT. We're now i'm making ten million dollars a year. We just started at this last january, which is cool and it's nicer people doing well. But like the pandemic c really did a number on you guys described to me like what you were doing before sort of your current iteration of freedom and why that didn't work in the pandemic?

yes. So we, in bad man about the start of twenty nineteen, started building out of a full marketplace. So basically, the vision here was that clients don't buyers don't know how to run the hiring process well, and agencies are kind of all over the place when he comes to pitching.

And they they don't often give reporting like they should. And basic, I had these like ideals of this is what a good agency does. And so you know, there there's you can go the one side of educating and saying, this is what a good agency should do, right? Trying to teach the agencies to do IT, trying to teach the buyers to look for IT.

But then sometimes people don't follow through. I was like, we can build software that just requires IT and the agencies not getting paid until they report, right? And like they are going to stay through proposals is there within the system.

Decline can reviewed in one place, right? Oh, wise, it's all over the place. So we built out this full this full marketplace launched IT in september twenty nineteen. I start moving agencies over to IT. And basically we got we a small kind of annual fee for agencies that we are referring work to and then went an agency closed.

We would then um the the client would then pay the agency through our systems, the payment ascent, say strike, agree to hire higher S U agency for twenty five hundred dollars a month through cradle at the time. You would then fun that first month. So like you heard him now you're starting in june.

You would fund june in credo agency would do the work report to you within five days of the of the of the month, like to start the next month. And then once that was all good, and they did what they said they were going to do, then we would pay out to the agency on your behalf. And we took a kite of that right? Um so basically about in about six months time, we went from processing no money to that system to processing six figures a month, do that system paining out to agencies.

And we took IT average out about fifteen percent, one five percent, but IT was IT was really Operationally heavy， you know, clients pushing back and being like, but why should I pay anything? Now we're not like you're not actually paying. You're putting IT in s grow.

If they don't deliver, you don't not paying anything, you know give IT back to you that kind of thing. And I was just like IT was a lot of support. IT was super Operationally heavy.

And because we took a percentage of work that was being built to the system, basically, collin, we did not have control over our own revenue because we worked the ones retaining them. The agency was and that is a terrible business to run. Um so you know hard lesson learned.

I've earned a couple times now, but we had this idea of arbitration worth an agency didn't deliver. We were basically work out something know in between the two, like so they did have to work. They get paid half climbing.

You get that agency, you agency basically had to take IT, right? Because there are the ones that screw up. But then I was I realized was literally spending time to make less money, which doesn't really make IT.

It's not fun to do any sort of repetition like this would happened on andy acr sometimes like people would have arguments like you publish this interview, my code, but I disagree about this thing. Then it's like because he said, he said and like I would go into these back in the past and I try to investigate. And every single time, like this is why we have a legal system. This is ridiculously difficult. It's not fun as a huge waste time taking IT down.

right? And I had a process for doing IT, but I mean that I remember IT happened who was like new year's eve twenty nineteen going to twenty twenty. And I get this person that I could tell was gonna a pain from the start and they are claiming this agency didn't deliver at at a and so new year's eve and i'm like arbitrating this thing, like spending my time to make less money, but he just ended up like refunding them everything, toying the agency like he screwed this up. I'm sorry, I was like six P M.

On new year year and I was at cabin up by red rage and was just so annoyed and was like, why am I doing this? IT was terrible. So I didn't hire someone to do that sort of thing, but I still just wasn't worth IT right then.

I was think someone else for us to make less money, just overall, did not make sense. So, so we see what happened. Long story short, cortland discovered hit. We were up. We have been dominating our numbers beginning of twenty, twenty, like number of leaves we needed to get in order to hit our numbers, that things were growing IT was hard, but things growing.

And basically the week that cove IT hit, we went from being a hundred and twenty percent above our goal for the month to being at seventy five percent of our goal for the t. So like lead numbers just got designated clients, fired their agencies. So we talk about a twenty percent revenue haircut.

And we were basically Operating a break y then at right and targeting like we were gonna a be like quite profitable within six, eight months. But you we are basically a break given. So then we went into the red. We had a cash buffer, but we still went into the red. And I was like, this is not sustainable.

So my business partner, cl ni, we, we SAT down the word like, what do we do? And I see to start asking agencies, I K is like this part of the product offering, you any value like basically from the inter on and they're like, not really. I kind of hate IT and I like you just call my baby ugly.

And there like, yeah exactly. And like, thank you. So I heard this five times in a row and was like, right? I know what were going to do.

We're going to cut the product and half. We're going to stop requiring proposals and everything come to the system where I am going to let that come to anymore. And we're basic going to charge agencies honest subscription basis, but we're going to tell them how much this lead is potentially worth.

We ve vented IT out. We know how much you're spending. We know if they're looking for. We know from our historical data how much you're probably going to spend.

And I pictured to a couple of agencies and I was like, would you pay this? And they're like, absolutely. I like, okay, call next one. I went to live in higher.

Would you pay this to? Like, absolutely. Found the cap. And that's what we started charging people at. So we foot the switch on that in july.

So as April, may that we decide to try IT in thirteen days, we had made the changes to the product and got five agencies signed up. And the revenue already surpassed monthly revenue we've been making with the marketplace. So IT took me way quicker to get to way more revenue.

And they're like art. We're just going all in on this sunset to sunset. Ted, like the second hf of the product, moved everyone over to the the subscription product now and we've double since last july.

I don't feel to have people, as you said, call your baby ugly maybe in middle of crisis when things aren't working, I can imagine and it's like, okay, i'm going to take you seriously. But like I say, they're done that and twenty nineteen, you know when things didn't seem to be working, which you have taken their feedback as seriously?

No, I wouldn't have. I felt relieved IT for them to call my baby ugly because that was kind of what I thought I was and is kind of what I needed to hear at the time. No, we don't really go you don't really go looking for a feedback like that.

When you're not ready to hear that. When you're already to hear, you're kind of looking for the validation that IT is. So, so IT actually felt really good because I made IT a very easy decision. If some if ha'd been like it's great, and half have been like, I don't like this specific there. Others like, I don't like specific thing and others were like, I hate IT.

Like, what? Who do you listen to? But everyone was like, yeah, this part is adding no value to my business is actually by forcing things and making my life worse yeah was like, alright, fair enough.

This is clear. Like, what you I was like, what do you want? We want qualified leads on our calendars.

OK. cool. We're going to stop requiring all the other thing. And so we're going to bring you onto the project and we're going to schedule them with you so that they're not so they're much less likely to ghost on you and they're like, that's amazing, right?

There are kind of an outsource sdr service in away for marketing for marketing agencies, but IT works and and they get a lot of value from IT. You know we have agencies that have closed you know over a million dollars in the last year, one that's close, close to two million dollars of work in the last year. From credo.

when your businesses in trouble, the best thing could possibly do is figure out what the problem is. And the chAllenge is there is almost always like five or ten different variables, different leverage. You could pull different things.

You could change that. I might be the CoOperate like IT might be because you're not working hard enough marketing, you know, that might be because it's just a temporary phase in the pandemic and things are gonna come to the ground. Well, if you just wait out a couple months, right there might because your pricing is off IT could be anything.

And if you can find consistent feedback from customers who are all saying, no, it's this one thing. We really don't like such a weight off your shoulders from having to do this sort of wild guzan t and just hope that you've get to that. You figured out the right thing is to fix.

And the way that I like to do IT when i'm building is that I often asked myself, I pay close attention to my own kind of reaction to the business, unlike White, like why do things feel hard or why am I just frustrated all the time right now, whatever is going on, right? And usually I can kind of trace IT back and be like I was getting annoyed at this time, or a client send email at this time, they're unhappy this happened.

And if I and I I actually note IT down, I put IT into trial, like kind of have a running list of things. And if someone just tells us something once or you see something once put on the list, if we see IT twice, start looking for if we see IT a third time, then it's time to deal with the right um and then I can go through a whole brick of like is this causing customers to turn? Is IT hurting revenue like that kind of thing and kind of what and that makes IT pretty obvious what the thing is that we should work on then, right? We run pretty difficult, explains now we do try to focus on specific metrics undertakings for the quarter like this quarter that has been success.

So how do we help more agencies to close more work? How do we help more buyers find the right agency? So that is our overall theme. But you know within that is, is this harding revenue, is could this grow revenue and kind of making those trade off there? And we never get a completely right, but IT at least allows us to focus and know why we're doing IT as opposed to like hope this thing works, right, which is kind of what we do with the marketplace.

and we see how that worked out. Yeah, you didn't A A andy. Hackers, I think, like to be a month ago. And you have some really good questions that people asked you and you have some interesting answers. One of the questions that people asked was kind of about like finding a business partner is not your coffee because you know, you're saying we who is created, who who you working with, how biggest team because I think when we I interviewed three years ago, if you didn't have a cofounder.

you are going to do in this by yourself yeah, I still didn't have a cofounder of a business partner. There are six of us that actively work on the business and with contractors in such, there's like you know including couple agencies that we were with for marketing, kind of nine or ten different entities that touch the business. I mean, full transparency.

We cracked a half million revenue mark back in february, and we grow more since then. So we're doing okay these days. We're consistent profile.

But I actually met my now business partner and my my C T O L E. So I post I D post on linked in in september twenty seventeen, there was a two year university of beginning let off. So I I did a post kind of like poetry.

One thing is per line post on like and IT went viral. They got over ten million views, almost one hundred thousand likes, like thousands of comments and A V P of sales at trust. Pilot saw IT, his d reached out weird coffee, told what he was doing is like, you need to meet my friend ali, who I used to work with.

And so we introduced ali and I. We met up in a local bury for a beer. Both ended up having three or four can drip home um so we like went really well and then um I wanted to redo my marketing site.

So I basically had already to do that. We kind of partner up on doing that. And then when I wanted to go into building the marketplace, I kind of pitched him on IT.

yes. So he's basically become a minority partner in the business. You know, he's kind of my business soulmate in a lot of ways like we think very well together.

We actually have formed a parent company to launch some other businesses as well, some other likes, all for businesses. So we're pty fifty partners in that I am the majority owner. Credo for sure. He also has is like wordpress development agency and platform. But like I was a honestly fate, but we got along really well.

And then what I would tell people that are looking for this is a work on something interesting b network with others who who may know those people, ask for those introductions and then work on something together, right? Something like weight, like don't bring him on is know fifty fifty cofounder ers. Something like that if you don't know them, ideally you already have something working that has revenue.

You know we are at when I met only, I think we are probably at eighteen to twenty seven month something like that. So I had some revenue, you know, I had some revenue. I had I could pay him to build up the site, that kind of thing. And we just kind of still step into IT yeah .

the person who asked this question, I think he had like a business doing three or four hundred thousand dog in revenue and he was trying to figure out IT OK, how do I I bring on a partner because didn't really want to pay like sand from cisco Prices and spend like you know half of his revenue on a partner. And I think the way that and I did IT, I think he's like sort of as he's working on the business, he sort of like getting paid more, like earning his way into the position. That just makes a lot of sense.

That's exactly what we do here. And it's it's worked out it's worked out well. Yeah I mean we pay him, he's pay as A W too.

You know he's not full time on crudo. He's like half time yeah so we can pay him you know half of what we pay someone full time. And then every quarter he's vesting and it's four year year vesting with one year Cliff, like a pretty standard.

And you also give you you don't think anyone should really ever give up equity and almost any situation and you recommend in this book called how to get rich ah which is like literally the jesus title of any book. But I added IT to my reading this immediately uh because you're not the first person and i've heard recommend this my body. Sam, who runs the years later, the hustle, has also recommended this books.

In fact, he said, is one of the best business books is ever read, our best books is ever read, period. And that he treats that that almost like a reference book for him. He goes back to IT a sort of relearn these lessons.

And every time sam was recommended a book, it's been good. So to see him recommended and you to recommend IT IT was pretty cool. So I looked at IT.

I could look at that basically, you did the may and was like how to get rich, really going to buy this book, call how to get rich. And even the cover is kind of bad. It's like this cheesy, typical business book cover this guy you have never seen or heard up before on the top. And IT says, like you know, one of the world's greatest entrepreneur shares his secrets and it's got like a gold sticker, IT and stuff.

H, it's fantastic. And sam is a way Better entrepreneurs. I am, by the way, but the fact he recommend as well, I got the recommendation from dr.

Tel, yeah, I told me as well, like it's super chess is a super chez title, but is really, really actionable. So basically, long story short, felix and has started didn't publishing in the U. K.

They started maxim magazine. And so like they have done insanely well. This do is like really, really well known. And I was really just like a ton of war stories. I would almost say it's uh it's like a it's a british version of the hard thing about hard things by been horrible ds, because he talks about like you know starting off in this site, crappy apartment that basic didn't have a roof to like owning private islands and jets, right? So it's like it's really like fascinating story, but he basically talks about how like, the way to actually get wealthy is to own things.

And so he says, like find the right people if you need to give them some ownership, make them earn IT, right? But they also actually need to earn IT, not just like i've been around for a while, I would like to have some of the business, but like they're substantially adding to you could even like grow them up to take over from you, right? That's the kind of person that you should give you to otherwise pay them well, give them bonus and set of structures.

But most people are not motivated by that owner ship, nor do they know how to properly value IT theyve. Just like heard that maybe they should want IT when actually what they want is they they want to be paid more, that kind of thing. And then you have to decide are they paid reasonably, should they get a pay raise? Or do you just say, like you know what.

I get IT, but like I can't pay you anymore for this role. So I i'll help you find the next thing and i'll find some replace you, right, which is like kind of cold and calculated in away, but it's also how business works, right? You can't pay someone more money for the same work just because they want IT just because theyve ask for IT like you need to pay them for what they're doing.

Yeah there's A A sort of article a derec severity stood on this book. He does like book notes and all the best book he's read, and gave this one in the eight, eight of ten. And he has a section.

This is an ownership, owners, ownership, and is to become rich, you must be an owner, and you must try to own at all. You must strive with every fibre of your being while recognizing the idc of behavior to own and retain control. I was near to one hundred percent of any company as you can. It's pretty extreme, pretty extreme position.

But if IT IT is but I definitely highlighted that like on my kindle, I definitely highlighted that I was just like clear as day and like I totally, I totally get IT.

I checked the wikipedia ticket on the guy behind x i'd never heard of him. I feel extended currently died six or seven years ago. But IT sounds like a crazy guy.

He created the publishing company that own maxim magazine. He was really like seven hundred and fifty million dollars when he died and just donated to at all to charity. It's been like a bunch of time as a poet, and like five books of poetry. And then the books he talks about how he like blew through over one hundred million dollars which he spent on like drugs and women apparently and it's just like he he looked very for controversial life to say the least and like, yeah hear him give business vice seems that seems like there will be an entertaining read of not use one for .

sure you know what is interest because we talked about coaches, right? And like I have a couple of coaches. So I work with dr. Tones as academy and the Christmas, whose VP of product innovation at at liquid web and nexus, the hosting company and I worked with another coach before as well.

And it's it's funny that you mentioned that about feeling x inis because one of the things that i've noticed over the years working with coaches, i've spent over sixty years on coaches over the last four years, but one of the things I I look for in a coach is um a do they have a have they been to coach before? Like I don't want to hear someone that doesn't know how to coach someone else. Do they have the experience growing the kind of business that I am growing, right? So like dan started clearing the FM, right, growing his mother.

Like, often businesses kind of like high ticket stuff Chris has done to law that stuff as well. And then the really important one for me that a lot of people miss is, do I want to have the kind of life that they have and the they are building for themselves? Because if someone is just building like businesses to get up, seeing rich and to have a healthy lifestyle and their choice divorce in their lot.

people.

no, yeah, I have zero interest in that. Chris has been married for almost twenty years, has two awesome teenagers, right then his wife for name is fantastic. They have two boys you know who are great needs.

There are both super driven, but they're also big about their family and love their family um and so that super important to me is that like kind of cultural alignment there yeah dance stuff is really interesting but like I also take IT with a grain of soul I mean and he showed up says in that book and I I I come him her saying this is like he said, if you wants to get rich and in his mind is like fifty male plus network, right? And obviously he was worth way more than that was like basically you have to sacrifice everything else to do. That is like you're going to sacrifice relationships, you're going to sacrifice marriages, you're going to sacrifice your health in your sanity and that kind of thing.

And I SAT back and said, maybe I don't want to be maybe that's not worth IT. You know, like I don't want to be like that level of wealthy, maybe just because of what I might require from me. You know like i'm not willing to make those trades.

So yeah, he talks about if I found a quote from him that talks about like the two priorities he has for being rich. And this is like after he, like, had lived a life of departure y and a lots of pain and drug diction and is added to the cook. It's crazy.

This guy made as much money as as he did. We talked about being written up to buy the only two things, apart from health and love, that were fusing about in life. And number one is, he says, time, and number two is the option of not having to be in any particular place, on any particular day, doing any particular thing in order to pay the rent to the mortgage, which is really just freedom.

I think both of those things are just like rich up to have freedom. And like you, you need significantly less than fifty million dollars to have the feeder to do that. You, you could, you could survive on one hundred times less than that and be completely fine and be very unhappy. And basically special life doing whatever IT is you .

want to do exactly. Yeah, yeah. And so I I, I respect that about the book as well.

I think it's A A really good way to about kind of building building a business, building a life is like, is this actually giving me the freedom that I know that I want, whatever that means for you? For some, it's gonna quire two million dollars. For others is going to require one million. Others require hundred fifty thousand.

What is that for you? And you're working on created and you're working towards a goal. What kind of life do you want to live? And are you already live in their life?

Get close. Get closer for sure. You know, I married. I have a two year old. You know, I get to kind of choose what I work on most days.

If I wanna clear my schedule and not do any meeting that day, I can get to for me. I have that I haven't worked a full friday and probably about two years, so I worked about four, four and days a week. I never almost never work past really four thirty P M.

So and I start around nine. Um you not burning the oil, i'm not working a lot of weekends, really many weekends. I take working mail and probably weekends and probably three years know there are still some like lifestyle things that I would you know that I would like.

My my wife and I purchased land up by broken ridge last summer, and we're looking at building a house up there, you know and IT would be IT would be nice to not have to make some of the trade offs to keep within budget. I do read a lot of like financial independence stuff, like a financial independence sub edit and and that sort of thing I saw meet sethi. I really respect for me.

I kind of take on a rich life, push me to think about what mine would be and he said something about like he treated something the other day about like, how would you what point have you reached where like, money doesn't matter, right? What people talk about like I don't look at Prices on the menu anymore. They're like that one when I felt good, i'm there.

But my goal is to really be like plain ticket five, right? right? Get book a ticket anywhere in the world and nothing choice.

So, you know, as travel up is back up, you travel to ton prepare the mic. Yeah, have a bunch of trips already planned this year after to getting vaccine. So like that's kind of my goal. I don't think you never going to be satisfied, just like you can always have more and other people always have more. But like feel pretty good about at this point.

What about you like your business life? Because I think about in terms of, okay, what my my personal life to be super financially secure and free, I don't want have to look at the Price of, know a meal when to go to a restaurant like that feels good, that I going to do that right? But also, you know, it's more than it's just about like cost savings being would like that fear, anxiety, but also like positives you can bring to your life.

And I think a lot about with andy hackers, how do I structure andy hacer such that IT maybe not forces me, but like at the very least, pushes of me or not as me in the direction that do things that like i'm going to find very fulfilling and entertaining and worthwhile. Having this pockets is great because conversations like this, in fact, I have to have conversations like this two or three times a week. And like job, it's little of my job to do a thing that I like to do, but like I might not do otherwise because I might be little lazy.

I want to go to the gym regularly. I don't do IT, but I would love to I if I had a job that forced me to go to the jam, you know, I was a motivational speaker and personal training, like I would have to go work out in order to look at IT and be able to do my job. And so I wonder what that is for you. You think about how you shock credo as a business such that um it's actually like enjoyable to run. And do you have like some sort of a dream future where it's like amazing to and that makes your life even Better .

than IT without too good? It's a really good question. I would say a lot of the decisions that we've actually made with the business, like there's a lot of there's a lot of different interactions that we could go with IT, but we've made the decision to kind of focus on agencies doing, you know x amount of money per year, x number of people simply because like we, we are expressed not a freeLancer platform because people looking to higher freezing are usually have lower budgets. They also want a lot of attention.

They need a lot of advice at that and they can pay for IT, right? I value my time very highly. As you can tell, I worked night every day and I never do calls on fridays.

So like, I value my time and my freedom very highly. And so we just made the choice to not do a lot of things that would just just make the business a lot more complicated. We might make more money, but not hurting for money for sure.

so. Um you know we've made those those trade ffs. And for me, what gives me out of bed in the morning is and and what gives me excited is seeing agencies winning and seeing good people winning.

Know we have had emergencies on created before that turned out to actually worn a great partner, right? Like not that they are bad people, but like they couldn't close and they were kind of needy for, you know, head questions. They never kind of got the system and how IT worked and they couldn't close work.

First, we have some agencies that have been with us for years that we've added millions of dollars to their bottom line and are great people and become someone like closest friends in the industry. So you know, people like that, we're like they get to close and i'm like dying. We just like help this agency make another, you know, hundred thousand dollars this year, right? Which means that they can hire more people, they can deliver more value, that kind of thing.

I've got a my form of life for shooting a business that you love. And sometimes I said that sounds cheesey when you're talking about making my customer is happy, making them a lot of money in that, that's IT feels good. And I think like to me, before I started a business like that sounds easy and just like I would that make me feels super good. But like the reality is like you probably want more time talking about your customers and talk to your customers, then you do anyone else when you need a business.

And like if you want to start a business that you enjoy, I think the first thing you should do is you should identify a group of people that you really enjoy being around, you know, people who actually bring you joy and then leone what they pay for and make them your customers and you know, hire other people like you who also love these same people and then do the rest of IT saying habits, garage of time, be patient because is probably take a long time and try to enjoy the journey or set things up so you do enjoy the journey. So you're not just constantly stressed about getting to some milestone that you may or may not hit. And if you could do all those things, I think you're probably going to start a business that you like.

The interesting thing is even now, I could work on anything I wanna work on, like I could say, you know what? Today i'm not working on credit and working on the other thing I could do, that I have that freedom. And actually cortland, we all have that freedom.

Like to a point is like making that choice is gonna mean, you will mean different things for different people. But at the end of the day, we do all have that choice, right? We're just telling ourselves that we don't and IT might not be worthy to make the choice if like not working on. That means you can feel your family, you probably to make that choice.

But the point is you can anyone can say any time I don't want to be doing this thing and I think once you kind of accept that and realized that, like I am choosing today to work on this thing, then even when you're in like the tough parts, the slag, right, the slow as as ramp of death, know you trying to get those first time customers or you know something like that um that can keep you going. It's kept me going on, you know on hard days. Where is like, okay, I it's a hard day, but i'm still choosing to work on this thing.

I'm still choosing to go to work A K A step in my office at home. I think having that mindset can really help us out as well as we're building businesses. And then as I was saying at to start realizing one of the things are constantly kind of annoying me um and for me like what wasn't worth about the marketplace was I was spending my time, which I ve are you very highly to make less money.

I care about my time and I care about supporting my family and I care about doing well myself. My wife works as well, like it's not all of me, but those are the things that I know that I care about. And so I was making trade off to just were not worth IT to me anymore.

And so I think we need to realize that. And also that is perfectly OK of fire customers, you know like build build for the right people, but you are gone ough customers that that are not the right fit. And then IT is perfectly okay to get them you get them off for your plate. I learned that from ten paris thirteen years ago when I read for our work first time. And IT, just like that, just made a world of difference in business.

So tell me about some of these side projects that you have started and lodge like your main one.

Um meet two main once one is completely not related. All of what I do today today is related to my hobbies single geared dotcom which is basically an outdoor or gear reviews website um and I basically built IT. It's what press in woo commerce and I basically built IT because I wanted to learn how to build a commerce site.

And so I built IT, purely a filet driven, know, does a couple grand a year. And revenue, something like that, basically pays, pay, pays for the often are licenses I have to use to let IT run on autopilot and buys me some new gear of year, right in big gear among biker. Ta, so it's fun. If I wanted get out attacks and go into the outdoor industry, I can just use that and be like i'm the founder single .

year yeah and IT makes sense because it's actually kind of dub tales with your scale set because if you're doing like a fillip marking you not spending a ton of time building the product, the products are basically created and all other people. So really, what you need to figure out is just how you are going to get people in the door and you are like a professional market or professional. So you know that .

you pushing harder actly is editor nga dot com. Basically, if you know design pickle, think design .

pickle for copy editing, improve reading. So design picunches .

sign how grammatical sort of model. And it's is still early traction where i'm cracking up the blog content, driving traffic to IT, um you know reaching out to people I don't see. I'm still trying to find the first time customers, but it's a side project.

I have some ideas for other ways to get traction on there as well. But yeah, subscription business is high ticket subscription, which I realize this kind of is kind of my jam and is connecting up the two sides, right? It's hard to find good editors and people in bad copy and hype list kill conversions.

So if that can be cleaned up, people are going to make more money. I like two side of businesses. They're hard, but like two side of products and businesses, words like these people I need, these people offer the thing. How can we bring them together and make IT work? Know for everybody what .

you think is the most important thing to do to get a two sided marketplace. There are two sided business to work because it's right. You've got two different customer sets. You got to get them both theoretically at the same time. And even if you like a really good at finding one set, doesn't sadly mean the other people going to be here, even if you find like really good copy editors, and does not sadly mean you're going to find a about the people who need stuff to be copy edited, who willing to pay three or four hundred dollars a month for the service.

the way that I did IT with crato, the way i'm doing IT without ninia, the way i've done IT with others we have seen other people do IT is you need to see that initial supply. So the supply side, the people kind of delivering the service and then you just focus on demand because it's super easy to get supply even if you get like fifteen people on the supply side.

And someone needs something specific, right? If someone, if an author came to me and they're like, I need help finding an editor IT wouldn't be hard to find an editor because i'm literally selling the money, right? Like, hey, here's a person that needs this.

I need you to give me fifteen percent OK. They they mark their Price a little bit to make the margin work. And we're good to go for the two side of business.

Don't know that initial supply get him in. However, you can just get him in for free. Listen for free, right? Do a little bit, make sure they are good. So either like looking at their work, if you're qualified to look at their work or just getting someone that you trust to kind of vouch for them. And then you just have to focus on the demand side. And that is the only thing that you focus on because if you can grow demand, if you can bring in demand, you can always find supply, and you always can be able to keep supply happy.

Yeah, kind of how I feel about andy hacker sometimes where and a way or a community, let's take a bunch of people helping each other out. But it's kind of this nebula, a more visible ab of people. It's not so clearly divided into like no danin science supply side. But if you really do have readers and writers, you have some people who will literally never write a single post in any hackers, and you have some people who basically make a career out of writing posts on a ty hackers all the time. The more those people we can bring on to the site, the more we can attract, the more useful IT is for readers. And like they're based on the supply side and they're much easier to find like pretty everybody have on the podcast, could be a contributor, any hackers, so we could go out and literally just like higher writers may be maybe through your site, professional writers and say, okay, help us, you know, our journalists help us tell stories, help us write articles and then just focus completely on the marketing to get the demand side up, completely on finding new entrepreneurs and founders to come read the forum and take part and see you everybody .

body posting and and that initial traction is is definitely tough um and I would just say you do IT do IT for free like the first people I had on credo. I list them on the site for free and an abc took a percentage when they close. So you up model couple times, I will not do IT again.

If I try to do IT again, someone needs to slam because this is a bad business. But you know like if you're getting a job board off the ground, right, you have the people hiring and you have the people looking to be hired. You not to be able to charge people to list their jobs, to list their jobs.

If you don't have anyone looking for jobs like posted for free, let them post IT for free. Or if you can, to get them in there, right, like posting IT yourself. We actually had a job or job board on on cradle for a while, and I would find people that were looking to higher.

I would email, I would email them, asking them if I could post on our job board as well. I would do the whole thing, know for them um and then we are driving in the man inside people looking to hire. I tried at first getting people to pay because we have tens of thousands of people a month coming to the site and they still wants to do IT because they haven't seen at work.

So the model should be listed for free. People, you know, coming through show how much to people, how much traffic you have, and then let those who want to promote their posts pay to promote their job. There are listing above everybody else.

Or if you doing something like a community like I do with andy acres, you can literally be the entire supply side yourself, and you can do IT for free. Guy was just on there doing a ton n of views, sitting out email, news, letters everywhere, who got new interviews. And there's just posting in town on the form like that was enacted at the first like five, ten, fifty users on the website.

I didn't need other people to take part. And so kind of the easy part of starting your company is like you don't have to be that clever. You just that sort of work hard and pushed to do IT.

And then later, as you get bigger, you didn't need to be clever. You are trying bring in your ten thousand user or your hundred thousand user. You probably need to be an expert marketer or be super anyway, give you your not only good to you but like you're pretty good to do in the podcast circuit. You know like doing this show is going to be helpful for your business hopefully and you've got like other tricks up sleep. So to get to the next level, one five hundred eight in revenue was like pretty hard to get to a million or five million or ten million.

I always think back to the I heard, uh, will rinaldo from seer interactive marking agency out of philadelphia and I member he wrote a blog post backing like two thousand and twelve where he was quoting one of his mentors who said, like, well was like, why is so hard to get from? Like, know five people and twenty people in something like that is mental was like, well, what got you here won't keep you there like the things that you did to kind of like hacking initial engagement or get initial leads or whatever initial users, that's not going to scale to get you to know you might get in, but it's not going to get you to one hundred.

But if you can give you smart enough and work hard enough to get to, you can do the same thing to get to one hundred. Just the strategies and tactics are gone to change. But if you just get started, you don't really need to worry about that.

You'll get there. And you'll realized that I ve hit the ceiling. Now what? That's what I D like having coaches because then, like, you need this framework, you need to do this thing and like a cool, and then go and do .

that very cool. Well, listen, john, it's been cool catching up with you and figure me out what's going on with credo. I always asked the into the show, what's one lesson one, take away that you think flegere beginning in the act and take away from your journey and what you ve left so far.

This one actually comes from, I don't know who had originated with, I actually heard IT um on the the empire show where where bedroom always says how you do anything is how you do everything. I think about that fairly often that and also when I walk up to my room I listen to a Lewis house podcast years ago where he talked about, like one way out to be a productive is to make sure that you make your bed every day.

And so I walk up in my room and I hear loses voice in my head. I make your bed, which is kind of weird, but beijing is how you do anything, is how you do everything like, you know, if i'm whatever, putting something away and I take a half way, right when I could just easily take IT all the way, just put a word, should be creating myself future work. I like how you do anything, is how you do everything. Okay, cool. Let's do this. Well.

I love that because if you get in the habit of basically doing everything well, your brain is always going to be in that mode. Like, I am extremely hard working, extremely detailed. I finish things and I see them through to the end and you're going to Carry that with you everywhere.

Where is begin into the habit of like being sort of lazy with things into kind of a negative mental cycle? And then when IT comes time for to work in your business, like that's probably going to Carry over and like maybe you can push through that and change IT, but is that about what you want to have to fight every single day? Probably not.

You got IT. Yeah all mouse bat. Your identity and identity drives everything else. So then a super great time.

Can you let listeners know where they can go to find out more about? Watch ruck to with.

for sure. So the website is get created dot com G E T C R E D O dot com best place to kind of connect with me personally in what i'm doing and thinking about is twitter at dirty J F D O H R T Y J F.

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