#257 – From Indie Hacker to $200M+ with Patrick Campbell of ProfitWell
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What's up, everybody? This is courtland from india hk's to com. And you're listening to the ni hacker's podcast. More people than ever are building a cool stuff online and making a lot of money in the process.

And on this show, I sit down with these ni hackers to discuss the ideas, the opportunities and strategies they're taking advantage of so the rest of us can do the same. We hear a patrol cambell, the founder of profit, well, very popular. And they set of tools helps other companies and prove their revenue growth.

So if you got a subscription company, profit well will help you produce the number of cancellations. It'll help you figure out your pricing. It'll give you report and stuff to just help you basically make money. And patra came on the podcast years ago. It's been a while patrol and you share the story behind profit well.

But then a few weeks ago, you email me with secret at the time, but now not a secret information that you have gone from being an ni hacker to being an ni hacker who sold his business for nine figures, not seven figures, not eight figures, but for over two hundred million dollars, I think, is the figures. Is that right? Yeah, that's great. That's not crazy. I like to you like when you say that out loud, you even believe .

that's ridiculous. Oh, it's insane. And to give you guys context, we were like aggressively trying to pay off our house like very gay ramsey, if you heard of that guy has got some interesting views on like that. I don't always agree with everything, but I was more like, oh, it's a really cool thing to bring my partner not together and so in anyway, we had fifteen thousand dollars and paid off house that was in like no stocks, some usual fans anything and then um sold the company and and it's very much not now and it's it's kind of weird um a lot of a lot of shaping problems like that essential Prices like I was .

talking to a founder who will go unnamed, but he has a company that is worth many millions of dollars and they are talking on the podcast recently and he is kind of brook.

And this is really interesting thing where you can have his company that super successful, but you haven't had an achievement, but you haven't actually sold like you have and you're just stressed and from the outside looking in everyone's I go to companies making tens of millions. Dolores must be rick. And it's like now actually i'm broke. I'm paying my employees and paying my bills. It's kind of crazy.

Well, that's that's something that i'm really curious about. So how does a boot trapped founder grow company that that big?

Yeah probably andy hacker, who wants to be where you are? I go. I sold my company for eight figures.

I think I talked about IT on the pod a couple years ago, but like first principle, thinking was like very central and very core to how we thought about things. And I think that the reason for that is because in a boost rapped environment, like every company, boost rapped or venture back is resource constrained. I think in a boosters PPT company, you are like you you're so constrained by so many different things that you have to think about.

Like what is the best way for me to step through this? Or like what are these priorities that we're going to go after? And what that means is, is like, okay, it's OK for us to spend two hundred thousand dollars in something, but we're not just going to like spend to in organic test, like we need to like test is small and grow IT or like really think through our strategy before we go to deploy that capital. I think the other thing that we did really well in the past couple years that like helped our growth even, you know, faster than was was we kind of started to approach our culture as like philosophical monarch, I guess, is the best way to put IT originally said dictatorship. But that sounds so aggressive .

also yeah that sounds .

so much more agressive than IT is. And in all, that means is like we were really accommodating on things, I would argue, like three or more years ago. And what that means is like a values, right? We have things that we think are going to give us an advantage to winning.

Quote, quote, whatever winning is like, feedback is not negotiable. We talk a lot about that. The way you receive feedback very negotiable, but getting the feedback is non negotiable, right?

Um we really believe in this thing called M C I most charitable interpretation principle like, you know, chatting if I always sudden like you don't like when I say the color blue and i'm like, oh yeah that book was blue and you're like offended like, well, the way you handle that situation and the way I handle that situation is really important. It's not like, oh, I should have red chain's mind and know he didn't like the color blue. IT was more like, no, like, changes should be I came in. I I didn't know this. I don't think he meant nothing by IT but like I don't really like when you say that we're blue, i'll be like only got i'm so sorry, al like not using the .

color right we weren't I can't relate corner and I never argue and we definitely don't have a policy of being most charitable .

yes yeah well, your brothers and your twins, which this is a whole other, I feel like you know, range in the whole situation. But those those are two really big things that I think like we didn't do as much as we should have like the first couple of years.

In the last few years, we really internalized and the the latter one meant like, you know, firing some people and like some people quitting because they wanted us to handle certain situations one way. And we were just like, no, like this is how we do things here. We're not saying it's Better, worse than what you want to do, but we don't do IT that way. And if that's not okay, like let's find your new job, which it's it's an uncomfortable thing to doing a boot stack company because you're like, oh my god, I need everyone would really so hard.

I think it's one of every company to some degree is a government. You've got leadership. You've got people. There is like some need to organized and feature, like how do we make decisions?

How do we deal disputes? How do we treat everybody like there's like a death factor government in every company and any government can have any form, right? There's usually some type of leader. There's IT could be democracy, could be a republic IT could be dictatorship or a monarchy, as you say.

And I think like in recent times, has been kind of issues come to the four because they have been like controversies is where the way the employees of the company want things to be run doesn't dely with the way leadership wanted IT to be run. Coin base. You saw brian armstrong with this giant manifesto, almost about a cow coin.

Base is not a place for political discussions, which goes against the beliefs of quite large number of people, especially attack industry, like people quit, people are fire as huge controversy. Base camp had a similar thing. I don't know, they handled IT was as well. But same thing going on there.

They not well, that .

controversial opinion .

out there.

I yeah they do not handle IT well, but it's a tough situation is like not exactly a playbook. We're how to do this is kind of a new, I think thing. I don't remember they're being some huge controversy at profit.

L if there was, I might have dismissed IT. Like how did you? I didn't make the .

transition they got. There was IT.

But yeah, I didn't become a monarch.

Probably more than alegre is an alga dari. Guess like something like that because I was IT wasn't me like we add this like small group of folks that like, you know Frankly were like the top performers. They weren't all like leadership, but they were just the people, right? And I think what we did is we were we are a writing culture.

And so what we did is we were the debating right? And I was always debating like like basically on a spectrum, right? Because it's never like back and White. No things things like back and White. It's all like nuance.

It's all like, well, how do we hof this? What are we going to optimize for all these other stuff, right? And I think the advantage we had is we were like well intentioned, arrogant readers. And what I mean by that is, let's say, someone like how a really hard trouble with most charitable interpretation.

Um we had a situation where um you know someone like um they just use the word girl in the presence of someone like IT just off handedly like they were just like, uh who is the girl who was on the call and someone was got very bothered they went to hr was like a huge thing right and in that situation what we should have said is like listen like you guys, if you need help talking together will have a manager in media hr meat you guys got to talk to that sounds like this percent and meaningly by IT IT sounds like, you know this is important. You maybe they don't know ba, all right. And I think the way we handled that was like, let's hear out.

Let's like to all these other things. I was one of those things. And this is really controversial. This is like, unfortunately, this is very controversial. And I was like, no, like, we believe in mci.

We believe it's your job to if you, if like, you can give him, in this case, most charitable surbiton do IT. If not, like go to a manager to get help. If you can go to that manager to get help, go to another manager and then like through all the the layers you go to H, R.

Last, right, unless it's second obvious thing where we all have good judgment, right? And so I think like what we used to do, we try to like talk to that person and try to like change them, right? And IT IT would work with like skills, right?

Like if we had our job that needed fifty out of one hundred and critical thinking, but the person was at zero, we would go, we can get them to fifty and six months, like, we can help them, right? And I was just, again as well, intention, arrogance. And I think what we ended up doing is we started qualifying stuff.

We started talking about that. We started filtering for and recruiting. I started doing like all the final interviews and doing some like specific questions going to help with IT. And then we like have them read the memo s before they started in all these other things. And then that kind of like kind of filtered most people out, a kind of filtered people out. And then the people who are there that didn't drive with IT like we only had to let go one person um and then two other people like quit um IT wasn't this big confederation al thing um IT just was like oskar the backbone to like defender values, which IT sounds scary even saying that because that sounds like, oh, what are these crazy values like they're not that in seine they're just like they're just basic stuff, but we just start defending IT.

It's funny you you said that you're not a lot like the base cap situation, but. There is one sense of what you are and one sense what you are not the sense of what you are is what IT sounds like is there was just sort of no system for for hashing this out. So was just like, okay, we're just going to go ahead and hash IT out.

And one of the things that that dh h talked about with his situation, as they is kind of over this, this open form, we can all dead, these random things. And that was what was controversial. We put the sky boss on that hay, listen, if you're at work, we're talking about work.

If you have political opinions, talk about IT outside, the sense of which are not like a base campus. You didn't write a big public blog post kind of declaring to the world outside of your company what your policies were. But now you've got this system, you you have these ideas and you have to get rid of some people that that didn't drive with IT. But are you now kind of more systematic like, you know, does that seem like these frustrations are still bubbling under the surface and you just kind like hillis and this is these are the rules are yeah.

I think it's so there's there's two things run like one, I think we actually we did ever assist because this wasn't like a moment perfectly in time.

He was kind of like building, like we have the memo s we just didn't defend them, right? Like and then we had like a couple of memo s as we needed to write and then we needed to add IT to the hiring, right? And so yeah, did we didn't have like a pure system and then I didn't get implemented overnight, right?

I think the last thing was just having the courage to like actually higher based on culture, which is everyone tells you to do, but you just never have the curse you do IT. And I also don't think you've understand that. I think it's one of those wisdom things like you can hear tons of podcast of people telling you like, no, no, you shouldn't ire that person because they don't fit culture and then all of a sudden year like, oh, crap I learned that lesson right? And even on the base camp memo, it's kind of funny.

We wrote our own version internally, basically the obama was you can debate and talk about whatever you want. You are not entitled to anyone having your opinion. You're not allowed to get overly offended if someone has a differ opinion.

The new but also keep in mind, this is our mission, like to help subscription businesses grow automatically. That's our mission. That's what we're doing within these four walls and whatever we can do within these four walls to help that, including different initiatives. And so we absolutely will do that. And so like I think that was kind of the take is like whenever something would bubble up, we would like, hey, here's what we think if you don't agree and we also have a feedback culture like let us know right now where this is getting a little little Harry right um is we were eighty five people, approval number three hundred hundred and fifty people at a venture backs like you know paddle uh company venture back company right.

And all of the sudden now it's like we did a lot of this like, okay, do we kind of think about the same thing um as each other and like diligence and like predilection, right? But now it's like the ruby hits the road, right? And now or three hundred and fifty people, there's all types for managers like we're minority of the group, right? Like and so it's like yeah like focus running product down on the board and on the exact team.

But like how much of this can we push for? How much of IT can we is IT change when we're three hundred and fifty people because some of the stuff you just your sensitivities do you have to go up, right? And you know I mean, only apple, I think, has the backbone to be like, yeah we don't care like get back in the office or whatever IT.

And even then they faltered on a ride. And so yeah, I think it's I think it's tough. So I think like when you are defending your values, you will lose people and you will not be able to hire folks.

But the giant overturning thing in this entire conversation were talking about tech jobs like it's like the most privileged subset of all jobs in the world, right? Like we're talking about like, oh, you're getting ninety thousand dollars the answers support tickets, right? You're not digging ditches for thirty five thousand dollars a year, right? like. And so I think at the end of the day, like I always hold that in context because I think it's like, okay, yes, it's it's not unsupportable some of these things, but it's also like, you know, it's okay like if someone can't find a job like here, they're going to find a job somewhere else like even in this market.

maybe this is argan to say, but I think of tech jobs is like almost sort of being like an indicator of the future. Like I remember, like in the early two thousands, like google is a crazy place to work and look at their cafeteria the'd higher professional chefs. And they've got all these like my sad and was just like mine blown.

And then now today, it's like, oh, it's like you could throw a rock and sambas go and it's hard not to hit a company building that does all those same things. And as a result of that, like they sort of like pushed the world forward in a way we're like all those, like millions of more jobs are usher and nicer because somebody LED the way in doing that and others follow their example. So on one hand, is that definitely true? OK? These are crushing tech jobs.

You know, people should be chill out a little bit. They haven't pretty good. But on the other is that if you are putting on like a sort of like I don't a visionary hat and imagine this future, you toy in the world where work is the best thing that could possibly be, it's like you and away are helping to create that and shape what that's gonna look like. And I guess a part of your vision is that, and I don't know me who originally out, but like when you come to work, it's for work. And when you come to work, you're expected to be a grown up and resolve your own disputes and be in adult and not necessarily look for a leadership to solve all of your problems.

What what's funny about we say that the gutteral reaction is google also did they were the ones to start the whole bringing your whole self to work concept like that was a big thing, right? And this is a huge wave, right? So the problem with the base camp situation, and I would argue you like we didn't go to talk about politics, work.

You don't talk about politics work to do to launch of student, I don't care, right? I think the issue is we expect people to bring their whole selves to work, then they bring their whole selves to work, and then we're surprised when part of themselves is like their culture, their stuff that's happening in the world. All these other things, right of all these compounding things about mental, healthy, all kinds of stuff that are on top of the right.

And so I think the identity that I would give is like, I think you, and this is a little scary, you will have companies that will be more, I don't know if they're open, but more obvious than how they think and they work. And I think that some companies will be for people who like love their craft, they love their job, they like, they love that. And that's kind of where the culture orientated them around.

And there might be like two groups inside the company, right, where where you have that group and they knew, like we called them nine to five years inside profile and we called them like career st. And the nine of five IT wasn't none of this majority nine to five years. It's like they want a great job, great pay, but don't talk to them on friday night.

Don't talk them on saturday. Whatever the career is. There were like, can we work this weekend? Can we work on this thing? Can you like, show me how you did that thing? Like on saturday? They were like that style. They wanted ten years of a career in two years, right? And I think it's like that should be OK like you you should be able to open with IT.

And I think what happens is on the individual level, people feel insecure about being an eighty five or because they see what careers kit and then they are insecure about oh, the career is are able you know to to get advanced rate. But I think it's it's going to be more of like you'll either have jobs that are mostly automated or like unfortunately like more minimal, right? Like this is where the amazon and warehouse stuff is coming into play.

You'll have jobs that are pretty casual um and maybe it's the future vision of like oh, I have multiple different freeze ance jobs basically where I used to maybe have one full time job and then you'll have careers where people are like, no, I want to like go all in and I don't know. I think it's I think it's really interesting um and finding a culture like if you think about snow crash, right like snow crash has been the news past couple years. Again, it's like almost line with your company, like a religion or like a uh state home. Yeah um and I don't know we'll go that far, but I don't know it's just just .

think about that. I was like, is the company .

there is like.

yeah there is a number of others is a great the world that is he the world he created is just fantastic yeah that the story was like interesting the world is more interesting yeah me I think you're right.

Imagine that people sort of underestimate culture. It's like one of those things that's like he comes from wisdom and experience like you make the mistake and you arn the hard way. And about how how many people in a podcast set around a pontificate about how you should do this is like, yeah just kind of like washes over you if you're listening you like I think about that later.

I'm just trying to get my business to work. But like what I think about like least what i've been thinking about a lot recently is that culture is everywhere, like even in our friend groups. It's like a prime example of culture.

Like i've been like introducing a lot of my friends to each other this year. And I friend from all walks of life. I know a bunch of starfall artists.

I know a bunch of entrepreneurs. When you building out of companies, I know a bit of sex workers. I know a bunch of like the circus performers and like i'll bring them.

All into like a house together and like try to like have them and it's fun, super fun. Everyone one's like kind of shocking. Like whatever I got, you meet this person.

You know this person so different. Some people want to go on like a ten mile bike ride in the morning. Some people want to like you chug beers until the drunk two pm.

Some people want to go do some. Some people want to watch movies and disease. The culture behind IT. And the thing is like, in point of fact, despite like my wildest optimistic dreams, IT doesn't always work.

Like there are some people who just like don't want to be in the same room as other people. And what I think about like a company culture is like arguably the of the same thing. Like you have a group of like ten people who you really like, you can go to a make sure that people you all drive where they drive with each other.

And IT works really well because you did to enjoy each other company. If you have like a three hundred person company or a thousand person company, like is IT even possible to bring that many people together in a way where everybody brings their whole selves to work? And IT actually works. And it's not just a bunch of conflicting cultures and opinions, like what I think about companies that are that big, that are like uniformally the same. I think of like the empire from star wars would like darva the top and everybody's a clone, you know, because that actually working in real life.

I think the ones that have been successful, like we always talked about, like tech companies, right? But there's like tons of companies that are enormous, like had count lies that are actually doing, like they're controversial for a lots of reasons. But like coke industries, like coke industries is extremely successful company.

They have like gosh can be hundreds of divisions, if not a thousand divisions, right? Like different products, these type of things. And like I think what they did is they're also like a very libertarian because it's the cope brothers, right? For all their baggage.

You they run a company, by the way, that's how they became billion's, right? And I think that was really interesting about their structure. If you kind of read anything about them is like they kind of do IT based on, like almost a city structure.

So they they focus like at the top more on, like the leaders of each group like. And another one is disney, like disney is oner. What he talked about is like everyone of the exact team should be able to be the CEO.

Like that's how you create a great exact team, right? And then I think what that does is if that culture can like cascade down, and if you choose like almost like the core principles, like almost the first principles of how you're going to grow and then just like cascade that down, there's always gna be like bugs, right um but you have systems in place to handle those bugs. And I think that when you look at like google, for instance, like google had like a lot of backlash the past two years that microsoft didn't, right.

We made fond of soft for a few things, but they didn't have like the worker revolts as much as google did. And I don't know if I know the answer is to why that is, but like that's interesting. Like we should explore that.

I think google I worked to google and it's it's a fantastic company. They pay more than your worth for what you're doing and they they treat you like disney every day. It's amazing. But it's one of those things that I think that they like a Better phrase, like I think they they were like bringing yourself to work to an extreme. Then everyone started bringing themselves to work in front of the entire company at all hands. And that just created a lot of conservation where you had some people who really cared, arguing and then other people who just wanted to do their jobs like, like just kind of and you just created this cocktail where the baLance was off. I think as maybe microsoft to figured out the baLance, I don't know.

I remember seeing this this old diagram of how different tech companies are organized. And I can't member the way that google look.

But I remember is at the city in the network.

remember that microsoft on there was a bunch of differently little field terms of guns pointed each other.

And maybe that is .

like the thing you're talking about where it's like not saying, but I think I think IT has a name, sure to the public is the moneth entity. But when you're part of IT, maybe you can organize one hundred thousand people, all be the same culture, the same way. Like maybe they have to have distinct teams that are just different from each other.

You probably should. And if you have those distinct teams that are different from each other, you probably create, like quoting, a safe space for anyone with the company where they can just work for the team is right for that. Rather than everybody trying to appeal to the leadership during all hands meeting, saying we should, this is how I feel, and therefore you should feel this way, leadership, and therefore you should dictate that onto literally all hundred thousand people or thousand people or hundred people of the city.

I think it's also one of those things where not all like, I would argue, like you can pick your principles, you can pick your values, obviously, but not all principles of values are created equal. Like for example, like yes, we have this physical hc monarchy that i'm describing or this oligarchy, right? But like our values are like debate feedback, like no top down decisions.

Like all decisions are like with the person who's on the front line, right? It's a very different culture than like a very top down like gun pointing type culture that I think some people end up having. It's also very different than like the five percent and company that like it's four contractors in the founder, right? Like it's all very, very different.

And I think it's like as you scale in the different areas for what you want as a human individual, as a founder and then what you like, what is expected digit towards that outcome, you have to line on those particular things. Like I don't think you can create a truly top down culture for ten thousand people. Little one, one hundred thousand people just won't work.

Let's get on to you like A A more advice. Different topic because the allowed people, people into the show are early age founders. And I remember back in the day that we used to these office hours, things some of us like on youtube, we were to get, yeah I guess we get on a zoom call and you did one like a bunch of like early founders came in and just ask you questions. You even through the entire gammit, you've gone from medi hacker to you know, nine figure of eggs IT now cool rich guy can sit on the mountain p and talk about how to do IT what do you think any hack i'm .

still writing bd r emails but you don't work IT doesn't get like still writing blood person emails. Yeah yes.

exactly what do you think floods founders need to hear? And i'm not talking about the stuff that like is necessarily the obvious advice that everybody knows that isn't doing. But like what are some things that you know like maybe some of these things that we are in the pocket and just never do, but we need to hear anyway. Like what are people not doing right that you think they could be doing Better?

I think um we talked about this little bit that know themself concept is so important and what I mean by that is like you, anna, push two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year and work twenty hours a week, fantastic. You want to try to build a hundred million other company, fantastic. But like know what is required by looking at the people who have done that and stick with that, right?

I think the biggest issue I see with some founder and one of the hardest conversations I have with like founder friends sometimes are like people asking for advice is is around the topic of like, okay, well, like what's your calendar look like, right? And it's like personal thing, personal thing, personal thing, personal thing, personal thing. It's like, well, okay, only work fifteen hours a week OK yeah like that's that's OK don't you be wrong? That's awesome.

right? You can make a living, right? That's amazing. You can like corner, you are kind of saying this before, like you can make a little a really good living off of, you know, finding that sweet spot of like working the least for the lifestyle you want. That's great.

But I have never met like someone who got to an eight figure exit level and nine figure exit who didn't like put the time in and like work their assaf right. And IT wasn't just like work smarter. IT was also work harder, right? Like IT was also time right.

And there's there's a point where it's like, yes, like vacation stuff, but like I haven't i'm not saying I like there's only way to do IT, but like I made on a vacation three and five years and i'm not think that's good. I'm just saying like that was like what I thought the business needed and i'm a little bit alcoholics on a little bit of dowler, but I amongst at least my friends, like until they realized they just want to do a profit business. The ones who were trying to go for like banging growth, the ones were venture back, like they all work extremely hard. And I think that's a really big thing, is like you gotto understand what IT takes, or at least what IT has taken for other people to see if you want to be in that like general direction.

if that makes sense. I was on a gates scholar, and he got to meet bill gates and college and my family, very ambitious, but he always talk his brag about being kind of lazy, about how smart he was, and he could do all these things, but he wasn't working that hard. And then he met bill gates, and bill gates told him that exact thing, which is like, look, depending on like how successful you want to be, like you're going to be competing against people who are not only equally a smart to you but also work super deeper hard. And if you don't have both of those things, it's like sort of hard to reach those oppressions well.

And I think that like we all have any hacker friends who they have seven projects that amazing go to seven projects that's awesome. One of them going to pop like it's not luck, it's just iteration. That's great, awesome, right? But it's also like, I don't know IT, at some point you gotta go all in on something, right?

If you if you want that exit, if you want that, like, big thing. If you want like, you know, good exits. And again, like it's all relative, right? Like a million dollar exit is amazing.

It's life changing, right? Um you know maybe you don't have to work out, but some people they worked. They're ought off just for a million dollars IT, right?

And and that's kind of what IT takes is like when you have everyone somewhat equal, you know on all these variables, like that's the one factor that's differentiating. I think I think the other thing is like before I went in, so I I worked for the government is my first job. I worked in us in tel, which I know we talked about that on the last part a little bit.

Then that's how I got to detect. I never wanted to go into business, but when I was in college, I was gonna like my PHD and economics, which think got IT didn't do that. But I was like the thing I wanted to do IT.

Was that or political rhetoric? Again, I was just going to be an academic because I was like, you know let's go read books and right papers. It's a great, great chaining. I actually think you would like that field um based on some of the things you've in the pot the past few episodes, i'll send you some readings courland. I know you're the frames like you want to anyway, but long very short.

I think that like the reason I about that up is because if you're not approaching your field as like I would argue almost like an academic or professor or like whatever IT is, I think you're doing IT wrong because your job is to like, just fill yourself with so much data, right? Read paper, read blog post, read books, read like academic papers. If your field has those things, like learn from people are Better at you than engineering.

And I think that that's like that's the thing that like I think I did a little but differently. Like I didn't know anything about pricing. I didn't know a damn thing about pricing when I start this company now like I probably know you know, I have among comfortable with you know saying something like this, but I probably know more about like sas or some different pricing than most people out there, right? And IT was not because, like, i'm just smart.

IT was because, like, I read growling academic papers on pricing theory. I read, like all these other things, and I studied them, my flash cards, right? Like all these different things, right? And I think a lot of founder is there are so much going on, you don't like focus on like, oh, I need to like know my craft, whether that's a specific type of craft like marketing or like engineering or like my industry, if that makes sense.

You go to abroad, you can co deep .

the thing that I love, I think the most about about your advice. First off, it's like it's advice, but it's like meta advice, right? It's like you're gonna to work hard. And one of the one of my pet peeves is that everyone that I know who an andy hacker who's successful um or who's successful at a lot of other things and a lot of other fields, that it's difficult to be successful at them is that they had to work their asses off while they were working. While they are climbing, at least at some points in those periods over the arc of them developing their skills, rich in their goals, they had did not really have really good workplace baLance. And yet one of the things that I often see among andy hackers is like when someone will become really successful and then once they are at the top, it's almost kind of like they pulled the latter up and they're like, ah you know we've got this worklife baLances problem .

everyone yeah it's easy. Rect yeah it's .

correct but it's it's like has like the wrong IT like mrs, part of the story it's an incomplete story. It's like I get to sleep but I get to sleek now and I get to work work like baLance because no sort of resting on my layers.

And to connect that to the other insight that you had, which is a lot of the people who who achieve that's the way they are able to achieve IT in a way that's at least sustained, sustainable enough that they become successful at IT, is that they're in field where they can be obsessed. They are in a field where they can just do this crazy research on lets up. I don't think it's difficult in theory to to you know, sort of due research and like become a professor of stuff. If you are in a field where as as you said, like you know, you're a craft man at this thing.

you naturally do that. I may push back against a little bit though just my own personal story. The reason the hackers was blew up in the earliest days of the hackers wasn't because I was working eighty hours, which I was doing IT, was because I was in the right place at the right time intentionally, because I had a lot of market research to try to figure out what the right idea was.

And then I worked eighty hours because there are other things I wasn't sure about, and I was that's where I was, but I was putting in a lot of effort. But a lot of that effort was wasted, like in handset, even at the time I wrote detailed blogs about hourly tracking early, says in the index ross blog, and you can see where every hour went. And a lot of the effort that I put in and was wasted because I didn't make good decisions.

And if you'd been a little a bit more discipline and taking more time to make Better decisions, some of those decisions were obviously really bad. Like one of things I didn't do very often was I going to talk to mentors. There are people I could have talked to you who would have given me several answers so quickly and so easily. But because I emotionally was in a place where I just, I need to do IT all myself like I worked harder.

not smarter you, but that's a thing. But that's a thing like that. That's wisdom. In order to learn that wisdom, the proof in hindsight, I start profile over just again. I have none of the like base.

I just have the knowledge I can shave three years of our trajectory, guaranteed three years because you didn't know the piece of advice or the piece of the thing that was going to unlock the thing, right? You have to go through all the like and that's that that's the other thing, right? It's persistence, it's resilience and it's a tRicky thing, right?

Because there's people who like, you know, they leverage their life savings and their mortgage, their house and they're going and there's no traction, right? Like and that's a situation where you should probably stop, right? But I think in terms of knowledge, like I had the same thing or I don't want ask for help because you I don't know, I have to do myself and then as soon as I ask for help, oh, everyone's been through, okay, like I I can ask you, right?

But I think chaining one of the things you said and maybe cause I don't know you might disagree with this, as I think the reason people pull up the latter is because no one wants to admit that worklife baLance is probably the wrong way to think about like it's just the wrong framework. It's completely the wrong frame. IT made so much sense when I was nine to five White picket fence, know all the other stuff.

IT made so much sense. Now we're on a podcast at what is IT two P M. Pacific shoot in the shed corner doesn't even have sleeves on a shirt, right? I'm in short, I have been showered in two days like just to throw that out there like and we're just chilling like talking about stuff, right? And what that means is is he's a different world, right?

Like this is baLanced like I was talking to another founder friday and we were both talking about, hey, like we don't really have a lot of like close friends. We have like five close friends and it's because like we love what we do and we found our friends with the people who we do, right. And then there's people like Jenny, my Better half SHE has three friends.

She's got so many friends like she's invited every wedding, right? It's just different strokes. And I think that's the thing that like we get wrong, not only with our teams but with ourselves of like what's the lifestyle we want, what is the best hedge against that lifestyle and we can change whatever we want.

That's another that's why the frame sucks to we can change, right? Like I haven't taken a vacation. Well, I will guarantee you the rest of this year and probably not going to work as hard as I did a year ago because it's like I got to like baLance IT a lot. I got to lik Epace m yself a l.

ittle b it r ight t o m e, this is the main value proposition of running your own company. I mean, it's cool to make a lot of money IT really is. It's cool to um do you know whatever have big following or whatever IT is that a lot of superficial benefits of IT are but to me, I completely agree with you.

I was actually I think i'm in middle of writing. I haven't figured out the controversial title e, but post about how I don't the concept of work. But I I think that .

I think it's like what .

IT is as you said, I think it's that there are context like if I worked to nine to five and I felt that I didn't have a lot of options and i'm doing this thing sort of reluctantly dragged my free, doing the thing to pay the pay the bills and then I might say that, but you know it's like I can't wait. I can't wait for saturday, right or on sunday, can't you know can't I don't want to go to save because tomorrow's monday.

Um but the cool thing about what we do is especially if we had a certain level of sort of sustainability as we get to craft our own lives. And so the way that I look at this, I don't look at IT as work in life. Everything that I do is just my projects and so I want to to find some baLance.

But that's because if I work all day, my girlfriend is walked in the room and roll our eyes like i'm work I can, right? It's like that's one of my projects, my relationship that I managed with people that if left to my own device is not thinking about IT, i'll probably get neglect that a little bit more than I like to. So had to be a little bit conscious about IT. There's a certain amount of work that I want to do, but I kind of got to do the work that I need to do and not always just that. The fun coding things are like blog ing, things are a lot of like management.

It's work like fit and that's the thing that like I think that's the thing you have to learn as just a twenty thirty something. Hopefully you learn new twins. You can choose your friends.

I lost friends because I starting this company. They weren't really friends, but I thought they were friends at the time. They wanted me to go out every night.

I didn't want to do that. I wasn't me like. I wasn't me like, maybe I was me at a time, right?

I lost a partner because is just wasn't a lifestyle he wanted. And I was like, oh no, like, I like this craft. I like to go after my craft and it's not going to change.

So like, SHE thought I was going to change. I knew I wasn't going to change. And like, you know, when I think it's communicating as well as a lot of people, they miss.

And this is what caused a lot of like problems. And in her personal relationships, when I started dating Jenny third day, hey, this is the life style. This is how I think about things.

These are the bounds. These are the things are probably not onna change, like with kids, everything. But here's the advances, flexibility of the southern stuff. I'm so happy when i'm with you. I am with you like all other things, right? And I think that that if you communicate, you've done the introspection to understand like what you want, whatever IT is and and you surround yourself with the people that are there, like I think that's that's true like the happiness I would are you that's good founder happiness whether in hair not I would glad .

you had work like fit because like I do think that there is a vision that like you have to be miserable and order to start a company that successful like to be working so hard that you don't like IT. But if there's a good fit like the people around you, channing is a good example. Work on andy hackers for chatting.

The very first person I brought on has made andy hackers like a joy to work on because he's my brother. And we love just talking about philosophical stuff, and that we love being on the podcast together that doesn't handle my work in. Anyway, in fact, that makes IT much Better. IT just fits in with my life a lot Better. And I think people underestimate the degree to which that if you are an ni hacker in your founder, you can do literally anything that you want as long as this isn't like violate laws of physics, like you can structure your business that way, and hopefully you structure .

in the way that like .

the market of exactly right .

and what I you might .

go to jail. But point is like you can struct a business that fits with the life that you want. You can ask yourself these questions at the beginning, what kind of life do I want to live?

Like when I started any hackers, like I knew I didn't want to start a mission critical business where people's lives are dependent on on my website staying up but nine and nine point nine, nine and nine person up time because I know that's onna translate me being stressed out all the fucking time when my website inevitably goes down. This can be good businesses as businesses tend up really good attention. They tend to serve like a really important issues.

But like, that's not what I wanted for myself. And I think very few founders ask themselves these questions. They don't do what you said, Patrick, which is to study the people who are very successful. See what it's like to be that person, see what it's like to get there and ask, is that the kind of life that .

I want to live when I think it's because you you start with like, oh, this is a cool idea and you're like, oh, cool and then you have the vision of, like the beginning, the cool, the coolness and the first code in the landing page. And any of this vision of, like the social network or money ball or like all these, like, you know, movies that guys don't like to admit how many times they watch them, right? And so it's like one of those things.

We're like you have the ends and they're both really exciting. And then this a messy middle, right? And I think that I don't know. I think like that's why it's really interesting when you look at like second time founders, no matter if the first thing was successful or a failure, like there are less accommodating, unlike for themselves, less accommodating for their teams.

They like kind of structure things like and I think a lot of first time founders is you're struggling to learn these things while you build, which there are hard lessons and hopefully like you look into learning them with the right mentors, advisers and set up. But sometimes like you go up in a ball of flame and then you have like a year of like existential crisis because you're like, what happened? I don't know what happened and it's hard. It's really hard.

Speaking of exit, central crisis, ten years running profit. Well, you sold IT for, you know, I popping amounts of money. What now like what what the next ten years look like?

Good question. I met paddle. I want to stay to IPO at least, if not longer, mainly because i've always loved building. Like, I like the building part. I think I started becoming an entrepreneur because I thought, like, oh, if i'm going to work my boat off.

Like, I want to get paid but then, like, I think you quickly realized, like, there's easier ways to make money and like, grinding. And I was always enemies with, like, cool, we solve this problem. Oh, we got faster at this. All we compounded that. Like, I love those problems, and I think I want to see that from this point to IPO, just to see what that looks like.

And if I like IT, right, because if I want to swing again, I I don't know if I want to like were going to get a hundred person company and that can be proferred or if it's like, no, no, let's go for IPO again. But beyond that or maybe on the side hustle, I am very fascinated with like two areas. Um one is like broadly defense, which sounds scary, like defense companies, the type of things.

But I think with my experience in working in the intel community, I think it's like there's a lot of things around like cyber security. There's a lot of things around like personal security would argue that are like really important, but not enough people are working on them because it's like defense and that sounds scary. And then the other area is really around like I guess the broad category would be like democracy and like freedom of information. Um I think that's like an area that like you're .

doing with really, really minor trivial topics.

There was this speech that I always come back to, and I suggest people read. I should have brought her up in the conversation of teddy. Roswell gave this talk. IT was the doctor of australian life. And this kind of like houses the entirety of all of my views I feel in the past like hour.

And it's basically like if you've been given the ability and he has given the speech in front of like people at a press club like all these like hot focus is basically like less than you're all in a good position. You've been given a gift no matter if you richer, like middle ass or whatever, like, therefore you must not live a life of ease. You must like, do hard things, go after hard things.

And so now it's like, no, like if I can like, help fix democracy or help and that's such a loaded term, but if I can help the way elections are run, specifically how campaign finances wrong because I think that's a really interesting problem because everyone's trying to solve IT through public means. And like you're asking the barber to stop giving haircuts again makes no sense, right? Like rather than like solving IT from a private perspective. Um and then there is this other thing and whenever I get a chance, I to talk about IT.

Um so if forgive me for small diatribe, but like iron sports and a few member iran sport, like read IT or one of the couple really employees and I know technically you go honer he he was involved with like soba and pippa but he also was like he got his exit from reddit and he started buying public information and you're setting IT free because this is a big thing that people don't realize, like there's lot of court records that people need for, like even public defenders that are behind payor ls, and it's free, the information we have to pay like a processing fee basically. So he started buying us. There was all legal, at least IT was grey um and then you know he did A J store thing and had a prosecute criminal tears he was trying to like um and then he took his own life yeah he was definitely over prosecution like J R didn't want assume M I T didn't want assume him but he chose to keep going um at least in my opinion I need to say for defamation purposes but yeah, I like very short. I think though there's like stuff there because we have all this information now, like the cost of that information is like important to come down. And I think the cost of information coming down also helps election costs as well.

I checked out the the speech in the sort of main point in the opening in market. He says, I wish to preach not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of toil and effort of labor, and strive to preach at the highest form er's success, which comes not to the man who desires me are easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship or from bitter toil and who out of these winds the splendid ultimate triumph amazing um people .

that are listened to the podcast can hear this but um this is my favorite quote is from the sky and named nicolas hob and it's like the mire image of of that same concept which is he was a psychologist like one thousand nine hundred and sixties and IT is one should choose trouble for oneself in the direction of what one would like to become at a level of difficulty close to the edge van's competence and like that supposed to be like the way that you strike that perfect baLance in life. So it's awesome that you ve had this again, ridiculous, sexy and that you're doing exactly what everyone who knows what happiness is, is made out of, which is you're stepping your game up and you're looking for the next chAllenge is at the level that you've there.

something actually changed. You said the access form the other day that I respond to you in this vein, which is that, like, know, a lot of times you'll see soldiers who are in war and war is a terrible, scary thing. It's awful, right?

Know, like most of the people that I know in the military that could have been war, spend a lot of time thinking about like that daily finally come home. How great that's gonna. And that awful people come home like Normal life seems aimless.

IT seems like what's the purpose I had this band of people that was a literally life or death every day with now that i'm home and safe like that's a great that's something bad about that. But it's like where's that strike? Where's that like chAllenges and i'm fighting against.

It's almost like a ridiculous comparison to make. But the some parts of the analogy, you're true that like as a founder, if you ve been going through the shit for years and it's been tough and you're strugling to survive and then after you're done, you're like, okay, well, now I like my boat lot of money. Like, what do I do? IT could be a simple, like.

aimless feeling. You and I, I think this idea, some veteran from afghanistan, the rolling has computer .

across the room, is basically.

if you think here's yeah yeah you know it's really fun IT like it's not funny but and that vein, funny animal, not really that fun. Talk to thirty folks in making this decision to to sell all of them had sold. All of them had made something fifteen said they wouldn't have sold the company if they to do IT over again.

I think they have the money. So it's kind of like a hard thing to like understand that. Um I think almost a hundred percent at eight fifteen where people who like gave the keys and just walk away.

The other fifteen mostly like went on to the next company of the fifteen who walked away or so three of them became alex. Either like drugs, like hard drugs, alcohol and they're all fine now. But like it's it's when it's exactly the same court and it's like when you when you have that void, that purpose, like it's even not everyone is going to become a drug ADC, right?

But it's like it's a tough thing. I think purpose is so important. It's like someone tweet today like they know a couple of thirty to forty year old who have retired and all of them are backwards because like you just got to get something going and even if it's small, IT doesn't ter what IT is like go work the company, go volunteer. Like I think it's important to have .

a more important to have purpose will listen, Patrick, congratulations on your success. Thanks you to come on on the show to share some of your thoughts in your advice and your parent what doesn't hopefully get as much as this episode I did, I had blast. Where can people go to learn about what's ruck to now at both profit well and and set of that?

Yeah, i'm just pata cus P A T T I C U S on twitter, childhood ict name, long story. So i'll to sleep IT at that.

alright. Thanks.

baccus.