May 5, 2024 • 42 mins
James Rose is the co-founder of Content Snare.
With wit and wisdom, he shares the joys of developing a product that resonates with a market one never anticipated, emphasising the critical role of customer feedback and the importance of adaptability in business growth.
Our chat with James takes a dive into the essentials of bootstrapping a startup and navigating the complexities of global team dynamics.
Learn how Content Snare's origins in a software development agency provided the springboard for a self-funded enterprise, and how hiring the right attitude has propelled their team forward.
James discusses the significance of test projects in the hiring process and underscores the effectiveness of asynchronous communication in managing a distributed team.
Closing the loop, we explore the link between intense work and essential downtime that startup life demands.
You can connect with James on LinkedIn and check out Content Snare.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
making the right decision on something is more
important than the hard grindmost of the time, like make the
right call.
And the only way we're going tomake the right call is we've
got a clear head.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
From reading fiction or going for a walk or whatever,
you know 100% like going for awalk or like having a shower and
it's like totally classic and Ithink the only reason the
reason showers work, from what Iunderstand, is like you're not
thinking, you can't be on yourphone, you can't like you're not
listening to anything andyou've got this like nice
(00:33):
feeling.
I guess experience that you'rethinking about Like you're not
really like it shuts your brainoff from thinking about all this
other crap and allow well, in away, because you start solving
problems kind of on the fly,it's the same as going for a
walk.
James is the co-founder ofContent Smear and he'll talk a
little bit about what ContentSmear is all about the amount of
(00:54):
people that come up with someidea and just run with it
instead of trying to work out ifsomeone's actually going to pay
for it.
That's the biggest thing instartups is and I didn't realize
this until recently.
I thought no one did thatanymore.
It was so like really bad atjust coming up with silly ideas
and running with them.
You'd be like what is the pointof this product?
No wonder you don't have anycustomers.
Why didn't you ask some peoplefirst?
Right, validate your ideas,talk to customers, get the
(01:17):
feedback.
If people aren't interested andthey're not paying you like,
that's usually a good sign thatyou shouldn't be doing it.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Hey everybody, it's Greg Sheehan.
Welcome to my podcast, whereyou will hear from a range of
guests, including those from thestartup world and those that
have had incredibly interestinglives and some stories to tell.
I would really appreciate it ifyou could hit the follow button
and share this amongst yourfriends, but, as you know, time
is limited, so let's get on withit and hear from our next guest
.
My guest today is James Rose.
(01:52):
James is the co-founder ofContent Snare, and he'll talk a
little bit about what ContentSnare is all about shortly,
james.
Welcome to the show, greg.
It's an honor to be, here, mate, thank you.
We were introduced by a guywho's infamous in the accounting
industry, trent McLaren.
So big shout out to Trent Trent, if you're listening.
We made it work.
James and I are here togetherNow.
(02:14):
One of the things I havelearned actually about James is
that he, some time back, wasactually a podcast host in his
own right and actually had anumber of podcast episodes.
So he's got all the gear, he'sgot the right microphone here,
so hopefully the audio qualityfrom both of us is okay,
although I still think I coulddo better with my own audio
quality.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Oh, there's always more money to spend, right.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
There's always somebody wanting to take your
cash, that's for sure.
James, I'd love to start beforewe get into content snare.
I'd love to talk a little bitabout your personal origin, so
how you got to be anentrepreneur.
Was that something that yougrew up dreaming of?
Were you the kid with thelemonade stand?
Like what's childhood, james?
Speaker 2 (02:55):
what did he look like ?
It's funny you ask that becausethis comes up in on socials all
the time and in you hear peopletalk from stage and how they've
always had this entrepreneurialthing.
I couldn't be further from thetruth.
I was like Mr Conform to all ofthe normal, like life stuff.
There was no rebel, there wasno entrepreneur, there was no
anti-authority.
(03:15):
It was like go to school, doreally bloody well, get the
degree, get the engineering job,do that forever.
Kind of wanted the house andthe white picket fence and
whatever and all that sort ofstuff.
And then I don't know it kindof just all swapped at one point
.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Because you're a technical founder, technical
co-founder, so you've done a lotof stuff in and around software
engineering, but you also seemlike a guy who can kind of do
that more general business salesthing.
The fact that you even had apodcast probably makes you a
little bit rare in that regard.
(03:50):
How does being a technicalco-founder impact on your
approach to being a startupfounder?
Does it make it easier?
Speaker 2 (03:59):
or does it make it harder?
I think there are some things.
It's definitely easier.
I mean just to back up, I have.
So we had two technicalco-founders.
So now I am kind of I don't doany coding anymore and I miss it
dearly Like if there's anythingthat gets you into a flow state
and like makes the whole dayevaporate.
I used to go to work when I hada job and, like you know, start
work, oh God, it's midday.
(04:20):
I better have some lunch, youknow I better have some lunch.
You know, oh God, it's time togo home.
Those kinds of days just don'thappen.
When you're a business ownerrunning you know every hat
wearing every hat in thebusiness.
But when it comes to certainthings, the technical background
helps a lot, you know, likeactually working out what
developers to hire, for example,or knowing if someone's full of
it.
I think it helps a lot in sortof automation and productivity
(04:42):
world because I can see howpieces of different apps might
fit together so I can connectthem and don't have to do that
work anymore.
Right, and that's why I thinkyou know I've done so much.
Automation helps a lot ofpeople with automation over time
and also like speccing products, like as a software founder,
knowing how stuff fits togetherbefore you tell a developer like
this is what we want it to do.
(05:02):
I think that definitely ishelpful, as having that
technical background tell adeveloper like this is what we
want it to do.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
I think that definitely is helpful as having
that technical background.
So tell us a little bit aboutthe origin story for content.
Sneer, was that something thatjust came to you in a dream at
night?
Were you out for a run, wereyou trying to solve a problem
and therefore build a businessaround it?
Like what was the origin ofthat?
Speaker 2 (05:19):
so content sneer is actually our third well, more
than third software product.
It's the third that actuallymade money, like there was many
others that kind of never.
We sort of abandoned orscrapped.
So we always knew we loved thesoftware model and we're always
looking for a problem to solvewith software and we had a web
design agency and softwaredevelopment agency for a while
(05:40):
in the middle there and that'show we found a lot of ideas.
Right, it's just seeingproblems that our clients had.
But in the content snares caseit was somewhat of a dog food
problem, like we're feeding,like it was our own problem,
right.
Like getting information fromclients to build websites was a
pain in the ass.
We didn't recognize itnecessarily.
At first.
(06:01):
I actually I had a differentidea, completely different idea
for the product.
It was in like a briefing tool,but I spoke to I think about 15
other designers that I knew,like other web designers, and
just was like tell me about yourprocess, start to finish, and
what sucks the most.
I didn't sort of seed them withany idea of what I wanted to
build at all and all of themfocused on getting content from
clients as being the biggestpain in the ass.
(06:23):
So that was kind of like thepivot before it even started.
Like, oh my God, like, yes, wehave that problem and I actually
have some ideas on how we canfix it Right.
So that's how it was started.
Just to fast forward, it's nolonger just for web designers,
it's used by mostly professionalservices.
Now, like, accounting isactually our biggest segment,
because it turns out everyone'ssick of chasing clients for
stuff.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
And I'm from the accounting industry.
I've spent way too many yearsto kind of add up in and around
the accounting industry and,yeah, one of the massive
bugbears is both for theaccountant and for the client, I
suspect is getting informationoff them.
It's time consuming and, as aprofessional, time is money
literally, and it's filled withfriction.
(07:06):
There's lots of backwards andforwards, so how did you go
about starting to solve thatproblem, because it's an endemic
issue?
Speaker 2 (07:14):
so the like I said the initial version was actually
for web designers and marketingagencies and all just about
making it easy for the client toprovide you that information.
So it was kind of like a placefor people to go through and
type in information and likeupload photos for the website
and that kind of thing.
But there's two big piecesright In the whole like making
it easy.
Sorry, three big pieces.
It's like making providing asimple experience for the client
(07:36):
so they don't have to like loginto another portal, they can
clearly see what's outstanding.
So it's just like a simplechecklist.
That checklist that they go toit's all auto saved.
So we knew that from experiencethat if you use like a forms
type tool a lot of people willuse for questionnaires, they get
like some of the way through it.
If they get called away orclose that window or don't hit
the save button, they lose allthat work and it's like, oh yeah
(07:59):
, they'll get very, very cranky,let's say um, and I'll probably
just never actually comethrough with it again because I
just can't be bothered doing itall again.
So like just making thatexperience easy is one.
The automatic reminders is thesecond piece, because you've got
to remember to check in withpeople all the time and
sometimes you don't want to, youfeel resistance to it because
it's like I feel like a pest,I'm pestering this person for
(08:21):
stuff, whereas if it's like anapp doing it, you can blame it
on the app.
And thirdly, it's actuallyguiding people through the
process.
So we kind of knew this.
I wouldn't say we had all thislike plans from day one.
We allowed for it but didn'trealize, like how important
these three sort of pillars were.
But yeah, the last bit is justlike showing people what you
(08:41):
need in a way like that's freeof industry jargon.
We always say that you know.
Imagine you're talking to yourmost difficult client.
If you're asking for a document, it's like pitch your most
difficult client and explain tothem what you need, where they
can find it, like what it shouldlook like, all that kind of
stuff, because if you canexplain it to them, it's like
everyone else will find it easy,or your other clients.
So that was kind of along-winded way of saying all
(09:04):
these things are kind of what wehad in our minds, but the
products changed a lot over time, obviously.
But yeah, that's the stuff weknew.
We had to automatically remind.
We knew it had to be easy andwe knew we had to explain to
people what we needed them togive us.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
And how did you find the accounting industry?
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Like what brought you to the accounting industry to
the point where you realize theyhit this issue.
So we acquired a lot of usersthrough just organically, like
people Googling for the problemsthey had and finding us through
that way.
So that naturally attractedvarious industries.
Like it kind of just happenedat some point where we kind of
realized it could be used forother industries and we noticed
other industries signing up.
Like I remember speaking to alawyer being like oh yeah, we
know this isn't made for us, butyou know, we're so happy we
made this work for us and blah,blah, blah and it's saved us all
(09:51):
this time.
And we went maybe there'ssomething there looking at other
industries but we were lookingat probably five or six
different industries as the nextone and we kind of we got lucky
.
We had like a stars aligningmoment because we couldn't
decide which was the next mostobvious industry.
But within one week sorry, twoweeks we had an amazing video
testimonial from an accountantin America that went you know
(10:13):
what this has been so good forus.
I'm like, do you want to saythat on camera?
And they were like hell yeah.
And then one of their, someonethey work with, saw their
onboarding experience withcontent snare and went, okay, we
want that too.
And gave us a video testimonialwithin like two weeks.
And at the same time we hadsomeone reach out from a
document management system inthe space in the account for
(10:34):
accountants and he said he wasinterested in acquiring us
because the industry needed whatwe did.
And that was like we just werelike, oh my god, this is all
these kind of things that happenin quick succession.
We've got to go into accountingLike it's clearly solving a
really big pain point there.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
And how have you found working with the
accounting industry?
I love the accounting industry,but I also understand and
probably get, its frustrations.
How have you found that?
Speaker 2 (10:59):
It's funny, like accounting has such a not a bad
reputation, just like makepeople make the butt of many
jokes about, like how boring orwhatever it is.
It has been the completeopposite of my experience.
Just the events and the people.
I have such amazing and greatconversations, people, people
are super outgoing.
I remember the very beginning Ireached out to a couple of
influencer types in the space,being like, ah, let's see if
(11:22):
they'll talk to me about thislike problem we want to solve.
And they like got on a callwith me and I was like, ah,
let's see if they'll talk to meabout this problem we want to
solve.
And they got on a call with meand I was like what the hell?
That was so easy.
Why are all these people soopen and friendly with their
time?
I'm just not used to that.
I feel like digital agencieswere a lot harder and
accountants have been superfriendly, super open, really
forthcoming with feedback,totally happy to help out.
We had customers of ours go toZerocon with us.
I was, like you know, totallyhappy to help out.
(11:42):
Like we had customers of oursgo to Xerocon with us.
I was like I've tried this idea.
I was like because I don't haveany salespeople.
So I was like, would you wantto come and man the stand and
show people how you use content?
And they're like, yeah, cool.
I was like what's going on?
I don't know.
My experience has been amazing.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
I've had.
So funny.
Actually, when you reference,you know, an event for
accountants with people who arenot from the accounting industry
or haven't been to somethinglike a zero con, and I can see,
you know, them kind of rollingtheir eyes and going, oh my God,
what would that be like goingto some sort of event for
accountants, and they get thereand they, you know, know, it's
not quite Coachella, but it's,it's, but it's up there right
like there's literally I don'tknow 4,000, 5,000 people, djs,
(12:33):
you know, merch stands.
It's incredibly well, well puttogether.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
It's out of control.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
It's so much fun it's so impressive and there's a
bunch of people around theprofession now who are in their
20s and their 30s and they'recool young people who are
financially trained and justunderstand a debit from a credit
.
So it's pretty cool.
So tell me a little bit aboutthe journey to date.
So you got started with ContentSnare and then start winning
(12:58):
customers et cetera.
How's that journey gone to dateand how's it going now?
Speaker 2 (13:03):
I mean great since switching well, I didn't really
switch to accounts.
We still have lots of differentindustries come in.
So accounting makes up about 30of our customer base and that
climbs every month but it justso.
It's like slowly overtaking asour predominant industry and I
don't know if we've had a singlenegative growth month ever,
(13:24):
especially since moving toaccounting.
Like you can zoom out on ourgrowth chart over time and you
can clearly see the inflectionpoint where the graph of the
growth sorry, the slope of thegraph changes.
And that was kind of around thetime where we really dedicated
to accounting.
So again, when I say that likewe still have plenty of other
industries and still most of thefeatures we build are very,
(13:45):
still generic because everyone'slike I was saying, everyone's
got this problem.
It's just like a fewintegrations and things for
specific for accountants thatreally that they really love,
that makes it sort of when I saywe focus on accountants, like
that's usually what I'm talkingabout.
But yeah, I don't know if thatanswers your question.
I mean, it's going well and itdoesn't seem to be changing.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Yeah, and In terms of growing the company, have you
needed to raise external capital?
Have you bootstrapped the wholething?
How have you gone about doingthat?
Speaker 2 (14:12):
I think I'd call it self-funded rather than
bootstrapped, because youobviously need some money at the
start to build the thing, andso we had a little bit of cash
from our software developmentagency.
We were very lucky there inthat we had basically a project
that was able to one or twoprojects that we were able to
keep and shut down the rest ofour clients because it was for a
(14:35):
really, really big client andthat was kind of the funding
source for the initialdevelopment.
But we've been positivecashflow for quite a while now
and it's actually really nice.
I guess to tee back into yourprevious question we're at a
point of growth now where it'slike every couple of months we
can seriously look at hiringsome kind of external help,
(14:56):
whether it's like an agency oranother team member or whatever.
So we're actually finallygetting to that point where it's
just like oh, I don't have timeto work on xyz, like let's put
someone in place for that, yeah,so, yeah, it's kind of nice and
the toughest part of thejourney so far.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
What have you experienced?
Where you were like god if I'dknown that at the beginning I
might not have, I might not havedone this or a moment where you
had your head in the hands well.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
So two things there I'd say was something I wish,
because you kind of said I wishI knew this earlier.
I mean I wish I knew earlierthat accountants and
professional services how muchbetter clients they would have
been because we bounced aroundon that for a long time, because
I spoke to accounts andbookkeepers who didn't really
see the need for it in theirparticular business, with their
flow, and it just so happenedthat the people I spoke to were
(15:45):
like the wrong subset.
I didn't realize, like everyoneelse kind of was like wow, this
is amazing.
So that was a bit of a bummer.
But I still think the mostdifficult thing in business is
just people.
So hiring, firing, finding theright people, recruitment,
finding agencies, you knowexternal people as well I just
find it's by far the hardestpart Like it's really hard to
(16:09):
find good people and even harderfor me personally to let people
go.
I just hate that process.
So much.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
Why do you think that is?
I mean, you know, I think mostpeople find that tough, but do
you?
Is it something that you findparticularly tough?
Are you overly empathetic?
Is it?
You know what is?
What's?
What's behind that?
Speaker 2 (16:26):
some people find it easy well, I think firing people
if you find firing people easy,there's, yeah, probably a very
low amount of empathy in there.
Like I wouldn't have consideredmyself like a super empathetic
person I didn't think I was butlike I can tell you like two of
the hardest things I've done arefiring people and breaking up
with someone you know like Idon't know what it is.
(16:46):
Obviously it's been a very longtime since I had to do that
Been with my now wife for like13 years, but 14.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Anyway, she probably won't listen to this.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
So yeah, I guess it is an empathy thing, right?
I don't know, just lettingpeople down sucks especially,
like because you know they'regoing to have to go find another
job and that's hard and thatprocess sucks for them.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
Yeah, and what do you look for when you're hiring?
Is there something that youapproach?
Are you skills-based?
Are you attitude-based?
What is it that you typicallylook for?
Speaker 2 (17:23):
I am probably not the best example of this.
I mean, I feel like ourprocesses are pretty good, like
we have a pretty good process tofind the right people, like our
first pass.
I don't even look at theirresume.
I actually have like fouropen-ended questions on the
application form and that'sreally all I look at.
Because if someone's notwilling to go to the length to
(17:45):
fill out some open-endedquestions in a good way and like
one of them or two of them kindof requires them to actually
look at our business a littlebit and it's really clear who's
gone to the extra effort to goand do that, you know, to
research our website.
Like I just ask people likewhat's the contest they're doing
, who's it for, sort of thing,and some people will just put
some generic crap that they readin the job post or put in like
(18:07):
two words or something, and itjust makes that first pass so
easy to delete all those people,so that I think what's going on
there is that's more attitudeto me right, rather than skills
is that they want the job.
They're like they've got thatattitude.
They're like willing to put inthe extra effort and attention
to detail.
But then, when it comes to thehiring itself, it depends on the
(18:27):
role.
So obviously, developers needskills, right, I'm not going to
hire a developer based onattitude, because they need to
know how to code stuff and wecan't be training them.
We don't have the resources totrain them just yet.
But recently, you know, wehired someone for marketing and
sales where they were not thebest fit skills wise.
But attitude I think it's reallyreally important there, because
(18:48):
marketing, I think, can betaught fairly, like a bit more
easily than development, and oneperson was just clearly so much
more enthusiastic and had donethe research and learned about
the product.
And so, like I do go towardsattitude on most hires rather
than skills and sort ofattention to detail, for example
, like I don't know if that canbe taught as much as like
(19:10):
someone, like if it's anassistant role, whatever, like
someone that needs thatattention to detail.
I'll try and tease that out inlike test tasks.
So we usually do a test, paidtest project to start with.
So between the application andthe paid test project, like
that's what I'm looking for,depending on the role, and most
people I know in like who runbusinesses, do gravitate towards
(19:31):
attitude as being moreimportant Cause again, like you
can teach skills but you can'tteach attitude.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
Yeah, and are the team remote?
Are you in offices?
What's the deal there?
I kind?
Speaker 2 (19:42):
of thought what we had was somewhat normal, and it
depends what circles you're in Iguess like a community of
entrepreneurs, the way this iscompletely normal.
But when I speak to otherbusinesses they're like wow,
like that's crazy.
Like just to start, I've gotone person on, we've got a team
of, I think, 11 at the moment.
I've met one of them in personever.
Yeah, so that's kind of whichyou know.
(20:02):
I guess I thought that was kindof more normal these days, but
for a lot of people it isn'tthey these days, but for a lot
of people it isn't.
They're all, yeah, around theworld, remote, mostly working at
home or co-working spaces.
The most recent hire they have areally cool setup.
They have an employer of record, I guess you would call it.
They're like a sort of a laborhire agency in South Africa
where they get all their remotepeople to come together in an
(20:23):
office if they want.
They don't have to, so they getthat cool office atmosphere.
But they're all working fordifferent people, which I
thought was interesting.
I mean, obviously this is likea lot of accounting companies
have BPO's or whatever in thePhilippines, but yeah, this one
was in South Africa.
They had a really cool lookingoffice, the classic startup
thing with ping pong and drinksand all that sort of stuff which
I thought was like.
(20:43):
I actually want that for myteam, cause it's kind of hard
when you're working remote toget that fun part of going to
work which you know, so thatthat's a new, new experiment for
us, I guess hey, just let mepause you there for a second and
tell you about some help that'savailable for startup founders.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
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They just burn out throughstruggling with aligning all of
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It doesn't have to be like that, though.
Jess Dahlberg is an expert instartup performance and she
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Simply head to jessdahlbergcom.
(21:27):
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Let's get back to the show.
Yeah, the remote thing's reallytough, I think, in terms of
building culture.
It's certainly my experience.
(21:48):
So when and having built aculture that was, you know, we
had a little almost a hybrid ofsome in office, some remote and
actually just even just sharingculture across offices super,
super challenging the fact thatyou've got people around the
world are they all sort of, youknow, contractors?
Do you have to get involvedwith tax stuff and engage
(22:09):
something like a deal to docross-border tax issues, or do
you try and just keep that assuper?
Speaker 2 (22:14):
simple as you can.
Yeah, we do try to keep itsimple.
It's quite annoying inAustralia whether the whole
employee versus contractor thing, you know, because they say if
someone's an employee, you needto do super and you need to do
work cover and all this sort ofstuff, and it's like, how do I
do super for someone who livesin croatia?
You know it's there.
So, yeah, we try to keep itsimple.
(22:34):
That's why I like this employerof record model too, so it
becomes like as an industrycalled employers of record,
where you're paying like acompany that does the local
hiring.
I think that's like one of theproper like way to do it.
But yeah, otherwise it's sortof the contractor model.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
Yeah, and how do you deal with building culture?
Is the building of culturecritical to what you do, or is
it not so important, given thatyou've got almost a gig economy
workforce going on?
Speaker 2 (23:02):
Yeah, it's hard.
I do, like the customer-facingstuff.
There needs to be a little bitof culture, right?
The developers I don't thinkit's as important, a lot of devs
just like getting in there andgetting stuff done and making
things.
So, yeah, I don't know, Iprobably am not the person to
listen to on this, because Iwouldn't have expected us to
have an amazing team culture,right.
(23:23):
But then I asked some of ourteam for like I wanted to put
like a testimonial on our jobapplication from our existing
staff and one of them came backand said, like amazing culture,
low tolerance for bullshit, likemicromanagement and pointless
meetings and all this sort ofstuff.
And I'm like, okay, well, Iguess that's our culture is just
laid back and chill and beingflexible with time and letting
(23:45):
people work whenever the hellthey want.
We're not like, oh, to do aphone call with like you need to
be available, like you're 3 am,you know.
Like there's none of that.
Like I think our culture isjust kind of relaxed and yeah,
yeah, and maybe that showsthrough to people on our team
which I didn't realize untilrecently and how do you deal
with time zones?
Speaker 1 (24:03):
because no doubt you've got people across a whole
bunch of time zones and it'sthe one thing I feel like if we
could just flatten the earth andhave the sun land on all places
at the same time, how do youdeal with that at a practical
level?
What do you do?
Speaker 2 (24:15):
It is tough, it is very tough.
I mean again, with developersit's often not that big a deal
because they can work onsomething, come up with a bunch
of questions, roadblocks, youknow, plan something out and
then write.
You know, while we're asleepthey'll write out like a big
list of questions and then wecan jump on in the morning and
answer all of those right.
It does suck to not have thatlike immediate sort of feedback
(24:36):
on things, but I mean that kindof works.
I'd say the biggest thing forus because, again, like there's
normally at least a little bitof overlap where we don't do a
lot of meetings unless they'renecessary.
So that isn't that important.
It's just asynchronouscommunication through slack and
that gets us by on most things.
You know, like everyone's kindof in their own lane doing their
own thing.
So support are answering,support questions, sending
(24:59):
messages to the development teamif they find a bug or whatever.
You know it's all just done inslack and it can be asynchronous
.
Like none of this needs to belike immediate, so it hasn't
been a big problem.
I'd say that the biggest problemis when you're onboarding a new
team member and you need to dothat, some of that face-to-face
time initially like I'm goingthrough that right now and it's
the worst time zone becauseSouth Africa and the UK for us
(25:21):
is really bad because it's 5, 6,7 pm calls, which is rubbish my
brain is shut down by thatpoint and on that it's the demo,
demo calls and calls withcustomers in alternate time
zones.
So like on one day I could talkto someone in the US on the
Eastern time zone over there,which is like a 7am call for me,
and then I could do a 6pm callon that same day in the UK,
(25:41):
which is just crap.
That's the hardest thing.
But that's the person I'monboarding now is going to start
handling.
She'll be on the same zone tohandle those two extremes for me
, which is going to make life somuch better, right?
So I think it's just getting.
You know, our developers areall on fairly good, similar time
zones except one, so they gettogether and have their own
(26:01):
conversations.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
Plus, it's the Saturday pain in the ass too,
right.
So the fact that the US is onFriday when you're on Saturday,
just a real pain.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
Yeah, which I mean in a way it makes Mondays really
good, because there's almost nocalls that happen on Mondays
because it's still Sunday forthem.
Yeah, so you've only got likesort of four, four and a half
days of actual overlap, which Idon't know Like.
It just works.
Like I was saying, like maybewe could be more efficient, but
we're okay with it where it is.
And developers you know, thedevelopers can still go on and
(26:30):
do their things, the supportteam can still provide support.
Marketing is very muchasynchronous.
It's not like we're deliveringprojects.
That's the big difference here.
It's right, like software,almost everything's asynchronous
, except for calls withcustomers.
Everything else is just kind ofhappening in its own sort of
lane and there's occasional, youknow, things that need to go
(26:50):
between them, like a bug, like abug report from support or
something, or feature requestsor whatever you know.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
So, yeah, I think it it's, it's working okay, and so
what would you say is yoursuperpower?
As an aussie founder, I knowwith aussies and kiwis very much
alike here.
We don't typically like to talkabout the things that we're
really good at, but you willhave something that you know
when you're in this mode, thezone of genius, if you like.
Things just work better, theyflow better when you're doing
(27:18):
that.
What is that for you?
Speaker 2 (27:19):
Two things I think.
One is workflow automation andjust automating things.
You know, like my previous rolewas a control systems engineer
and so the English version ofthat is like making big
machinery run by itself orthrough code, right, and I love
that so much and I don't get todo that anymore.
I love the work.
I hated the, let's say, peoplejust working with and for
(27:40):
dickheads was a problem.
I have worked with a lot ofawesome people.
In fact, my business partner ismy old boss, but yeah, so,
using things like zapier andmake to automate workflows in
our business man, I can do thatall day, but it's just you gotta
slow down at some point, like,and it carries over into home
automation.
Like you know, right before Ijumped on this call, I called
out the I'm not gonna say hername the amazon device.
(28:02):
I said a couple of sentences toher and she, like turned on my
lighting, turned on the powersource for my camera, turned on
the lights behind me.
You know all of that.
Like, I just love automatingall that sort of stuff, so
that's my superpower.
And I think the other thing islike just networking and being
at events and building a networkand partnerships and that kind
of thing.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
They're like my two primary things it does strike me
as rare that you are a verygood communicator.
As I said, you did a podcast,you know for quite some time.
You're a really goodcommunicator.
You seem like a natural, a guywhere sales would actually come
relatively easy to you as afunction.
Yet you are a softwaredeveloper which you know not to
not to put people in a box, buta lot of software developers
(28:42):
wouldn't necessarily love.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
No, you're right, sales process that's kind of
real you think, probably I thinkI'm very much in that like jack
of all trades, master of none,kind of thing.
Like I wouldn't say I'm amazingnecessarily at anything and I'm
totally okay being like that.
Like I, I get like into hobbiesand I get kind of 80 of the way
there or like I don't know, noteven that, like 60 to 70 and
(29:04):
I'm like happy with that and I'dnever get better than that.
I'm never going to be a masterat stuff, but you know, I kind
of like having semi-skills at alot of things.
Do you get bored quickly?
Yeah, oh, yeah, hell, yeah,yeah, yeah, I'm surprised I'm
still in this business.
You know, like I guess it'sbecause, as a business, you do
so many different things thatit's never quote-unquote boring.
(29:25):
So because I'm like how am Istill doing this same business
this many years later?
Like I would have thought Iwould have gotten over it, but
no, because how long has contentsnare been around now?
Content snare started in 2016,but we started our business in
2010.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
Yeah, Right, okay, so you've been going at this
basically the whole time you'vebeen with your wife.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
Yeah, pretty much it was around the same time.
It's funny because my goal wasalways to go and live abroad for
extended periods of time and Igot to that point in our
business right as we got reallyserious and she had real jobs
and couldn't do that and I waslike, oh, what's the worst
(30:05):
timing on this?
But it is what it is and is she?
Speaker 1 (30:08):
you know fully across the fact that you have to work
weird time zones and that youare taking calls first thing in
the morning and last thing atnight.
Is that or does that createtension?
Is building a global business?
Speaker 2 (30:19):
I mean, again, we're both just chill.
If our company culture is chill, we're pretty chill in our
relationship too.
So it just works.
I mean, I think and I'm alsoworking towards not having to do
that so much.
It's been difficult now thatwe've got a kid and another one
due very, very soon, becauseobviously, you know, if I'm
doing it on a call at six to six, 30 at night, that's like peak
witching hour, you know.
(30:40):
But we try to balance it, likebefore she was pregnant again,
she would go to soccer trainingand at that exact same time, you
know.
So I'd do, I'd do my part, youknow.
Try to balance it out a littlebit, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
Yeah, it's, it just works yeah, it just, it just
works well for you.
So, in terms of ways that you,you know you get away from the
business, how do you recharge,how do you sort of find
inspiration for getting back anddoing another day's work?
Speaker 2 (31:08):
yeah, I guess.
I mean there's a couple things.
If it's in the middle of a workday, I like just going for a
walk, you know, like getting out, and that you can expand that
out into like multi-day hikes,which we haven't done in a very
long time because I had kneesurgery actually almost exactly
a year ago, which I'm only justgetting to the point now where I
could do something like thatagain, and also my wife's been
pregnant, so that's kind of goneout the window for a little
(31:30):
while.
But those like getting outside,you know absolutely.
You know I haven't been able togo snowboarding in years.
I used to skateboard but I blewmy knee.
So like a lot of those thingsare actually gone right now.
It it's a lot of FPV, firstperson view drone flying, so
it's kind of getting like amanually flown drone, there's no
GPS in it and just rippingaround a park and through trees
(31:51):
and yeah, I find that a lot offun but yeah, you're a bit of a
tinkerer.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
Are you somebody who likes to play with, like you do,
home automation as well?
You enjoy that.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
I do, but as well, yeah, you enjoy that I do, but I
don't do it enough because it'sa time thing.
You know, I spent so much timeon the business that almost
nothing goes on that.
But working that's like thegoal right is is working less so
that those things have moretime.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
But yes, tinkering is a lot of fun and how do you
sort of with your co-founder?
Just what?
Just the one co-founder, yes,yeah, how does the relationship
you know work?
Either well or not so well attimes.
Like, how do you manage thatco-founder relationship Because,
as we all know, in the foundercommunity they can be tough
relationships to have at times.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
Yeah, I think we're very lucky again and I don't
know if it comes from us bothbeing pretty chill and relaxed,
like neither of us are like thiscrazy go-getter where we're
just like we're going to strivefor these huge numbers.
We're not like a mini Elon Muskor something.
We're not trying to just takeover the world, we're just happy
building our thing.
And he works a lot more than me.
(32:54):
I think it's a combination.
He's doing what he loves, he'scoding At the same time.
I think he goes too hardsometimes and I think he knows
that as well.
But yeah, I don't know.
Like we both have similar goals.
We knew each other for a longtime before we started a
business at a work capacity Likehe was an engineer and then
became my like manageressentially, and I, we both knew
the way each other operated fora long time, many years before
(33:17):
we actually started the businesstogether.
And you know it's been a longtime.
Now.
I think we should.
We just get on, it's just easy.
And I think and you know it'sbeen a long time now I think we
just get on, it's just easy.
And I think a lot of it is justattitude and wanting the same
same kind of thing and havingcomplementary skill sets.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
Now I think it just works and if you were to have a
disagreement, is that something?
Because you don't like?
You know it's like not wantingto let somebody go and say that
they're being fired.
That doesn't come easy.
Do you find it easy to dealwith things that you do disagree
on, to talk about that, or doyou avoid it Like what's the
(33:49):
standard?
Speaker 2 (33:50):
I mean, it's almost like a cop-out, but it's just,
and this is the same as on myrelationship.
We almost never have seriousdisagreements, right.
Like I don't know, maybebecause we're kind of similar in
a lot of ways.
Actually, that's notnecessarily true with my wife.
There's a lot of similarities,but also a bit of opposites in a
lot of ways too.
(34:11):
I don't have a good answer tothat, because we just haven't
really had to do it.
We have disagreements on how afeature should work or what
features we should prioritizeand that kind of stuff.
But I think usually we'repretty on the same page on a lot
of things, which may be a badthing, right.
But there are times where wemight disagree on the priorities
and we'll just make our casesfor it, and one of us usually
comes around.
You know, it's very rare thatwe both butt heads that hard,
(34:32):
that we're like completely onother sides of something.
A lot of the time, when itcomes down to it, it's funny
like someone will be reallypassionate and the other person
won't be that passionate aboutthat particular issue.
So I was like that's not a hillI'm willing to die on.
Let's go with your option,right?
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (34:47):
let's keep moving, and is this something that you
like?
Do you consume a lot of yourstartup related material
podcasts, books on the topic?
Speaker 2 (34:55):
not so much anymore.
I've gone off business booksand trying to chill out from
podcasts.
I'm actually like I've made itthat an intentional part of my
life to go back to fiction booksand whatever, because otherwise
it's it's just burnout man,like between having a child
who's running around all thetime and like this business and
then, like you know, I used togo to the gym and in between
(35:15):
sets I'll be listening topodcasts.
I go for a walk, I listened toa podcast and it was all
business content.
Before bed I'd'd be reading abusiness book and that's like
the recipe for burnout,especially for me now.
Like I was better at it beforehaving the kid, but now it's
like it just there's neverending, right.
So now I'm actually notconsuming much I do.
There are, like, if you want toknow some things, some books
and stuff that I like, I'mabsolutely happy to share some,
(35:37):
but yeah, but you're readingfiction.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
It's interesting because I was just earlier this
morning interviewing Chris Grantand Charlie Crisp from Unyoked,
and Unyoked is an off-the-gridcabin experience and they have a
lot of founders go and staythere, because we do get burned
(36:00):
out in the founder community andwe kind of overdo it, and so
you know, creating experiencesthat allow you to get off the
grid, clear your head, et cetera.
The reality is, in startups,making the right decision on
something is more important thanthe hard grind most of the time
, like make the right call andthe only way we're going to make
the right call is.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
We've got to clear head from reading fiction or
going for a walk or whatever youknow A hundred percent, like
going for a walk or like havinga shower, and it was like
classic.
And I think the only reason thereason showers work, from what I
understand, is like you're nowyou're not thinking, you can't
be on your phone, you can't likeyou're not listening to
anything and you've got thislike nice feeling.
(36:38):
I guess experience that you'rethinking about Like you're not
really like you're.
It shuts your brain off fromthinking about all this other
crap and allow well, in a way,because you start solving
problems kind of on the fly,same as going for a walk, you
know.
And if you start listening to apodcast instead of going for a
walk, like my strategy which Ineed to get back to for solving
(36:58):
problems that I couldn't workout, you know I'm like I want to
build, like I want to spec outthis new feature, but I just
don't know how it all fitstogether.
You know it's just like okay,go for a walk, no audio, and
just think about that problem,right, and a lot of the time I'd
be dead set like three minutesinto the walk and I've, like,
got the solution.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
It's incredible, isn't it?
Yeah, yeah, just freed up yourbrain to be able to do what it
is good at doing.
Speaker 2 (37:21):
Yeah, and sometimes it'll be very, very quick, and
then you're like, oh, what am Igoing to do for the rest of the
walk?
I'll think about something else.
Speaker 1 (37:27):
Exactly, and is there a philosophy or a mantra that
you like to live life by thingsthat are important to you and
the way that you go about life?
Speaker 2 (37:38):
Oh, that's a hard one , because whatever I say is
probably like not what I'mactually living right now, but
I'm working towards, and it isreally that like trying to be
ruthless on working on thingsthat matter and automating
anything that can be automatedis kind of I wouldn't say like I
have this stuck on my wall orsomething, but they are things
that I try to do.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
you know, like I only work on important stuff and
automate everything else and andmy final question is really
around and this is a question Ivery rarely ask because I find
people are kind of thrown by itor they're not even necessarily
on this page Is there somethingthat you believe in strongly
(38:20):
that very few people do believein?
So it's something that's maybecounterculture, counter to what
a common person would think andbelieve.
Speaker 2 (38:31):
That's a hard question.
Yeah, I don't know, likethere's probably some things I'd
prefer not to say on somethingthat's going to be public.
Speaker 1 (38:39):
There's some controversial stuff.
That's cool.
You don't have to share that.
Speaker 2 (38:43):
It's usually, yeah, one of the topics you're not
allowed to talk about anythinglike political religion, yeah,
all that stuff.
No, I don't Not really.
I think, yeah, I don't know.
Like I said, my history hasbeen very rarely, you know,
anti-authority or like crazyout-of-the-box stuff, so I don't
(39:03):
think I've got anything for you, sorry.
Speaker 1 (39:05):
No, no, no, that is good and actually I did say that
was the last question, but Ipromise this is the last one.
Any advice for founders?
You know you've had some timeas a founder.
You've journeyed along thispath for a while.
If you were talking to you know, 10-year, 15-year younger James
, what would you say aboutstarting in the startup world?
Speaker 2 (39:26):
Talk to customers more actual customers.
Validate things before you dothem.
You know we've been pretty goodat that, but sort of every
iteration of things we do in ourbusiness we get better at it.
Like the amount of people thatcome up with some idea and just
run with it instead of trying towork out if someone's actually
going to pay for it, that's thebiggest thing in startups is,
(39:46):
and I didn't realize this untilrecently.
I thought no one did thatanymore, was so like really bad
at just coming up with sillyideas and running with them
until I actually went to somestartup events again because I
stopped going to them years agobecause I got sick of having
people pitch me on their stupidideas and I mean, they're not're
not all stupid, obviously, I'mjust like but there was a lot of
that where you'd be like whatis the point of this product?
No wonder you don't have anycustomers.
(40:08):
Why didn't you ask some peoplefirst, right?
So I think that's like thebiggest thing.
And I went back to some startupevents recently and kind of got
thrown straight back into thatand I was like damn it, like
people are still doing this Likevalidate your ideas, talk to
customers, get the feedback.
If people aren't interested andthey're not paying you, that's
usually a good sign that youshouldn't be doing it.
Speaker 1 (40:26):
Yeah, yeah.
People just fall in love withtheir ideas, don't they?
They fall in love with theirideas.
They believe that that's goingto be the you know, the elixir
to a problem, when actually theproblem doesn't exist.
Or it's not a problem thatpeople, or it's not enough of a
problem.
Speaker 2 (40:40):
You know, like Content Snare, we plateaued for
a long time when we were stillfocusing on web design,
marketing agencies and we kneweveryone had this issue.
But whether it was like they'renot willing to spend money like
our pricing, you know, maybethere's a disjoint there, maybe
it wasn't the perfect fit forthat particular use case, maybe
there were some other factors, Idon't know, but there was a
(41:01):
point where it was like, does itmake sense to keep this going
if we can't get any bigger?
You know, like we've exhaustedeverything that we know to
possibly do, except a newindustry which just breathes
life back into the business.
And it's been freaking amazing,right.
So sometimes you'll be bangingyour head up against the wrong
wall when you could just go likeover there instead.
Speaker 1 (41:21):
Yeah, there's definitely a need for this
product in the accountingindustry.
I know that for sure.
And for those of you in theaccounting industry that happen
to be listening to this, checkout Content Snare.
I will actually include theability for people to connect
with you on LinkedIn and viaContent Snare in the show notes.
James, thanks so much for yourtime today.
I've really enjoyed getting toknow you a little bit better.
(41:43):
Again, shout out to Trent, whomany people in the accounting
industry know, for introducingus.
James, thanks so much for yourtime today.
Really really appreciate it.
Thanks for having me, greg,it's been a lot of fun.
making the right decision on something is more
important than the hard grindmost of the time, like make the
right call.
And the only way we're going tomake the right call is we've
got a clear head.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
From reading fiction or going for a walk or whatever,
you know 100% like going for awalk or like having a shower and
it's like totally classic and Ithink the only reason the
reason showers work, from what Iunderstand, is like you're not
thinking, you can't be on yourphone, you can't like you're not
listening to anything andyou've got this like nice
(00:33):
feeling.
I guess experience that you'rethinking about Like you're not
really like it shuts your brainoff from thinking about all this
other crap and allow well, in away, because you start solving
problems kind of on the fly,it's the same as going for a
walk.
James is the co-founder ofContent Smear and he'll talk a
little bit about what ContentSmear is all about the amount of
(00:54):
people that come up with someidea and just run with it
instead of trying to work out ifsomeone's actually going to pay
for it.
That's the biggest thing instartups is and I didn't realize
this until recently.
I thought no one did thatanymore.
It was so like really bad atjust coming up with silly ideas
and running with them.
You'd be like what is the pointof this product?
No wonder you don't have anycustomers.
Why didn't you ask some peoplefirst?
Right, validate your ideas,talk to customers, get the
(01:17):
feedback.
If people aren't interested andthey're not paying you like,
that's usually a good sign thatyou shouldn't be doing it.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Hey everybody, it's Greg Sheehan.
Welcome to my podcast, whereyou will hear from a range of
guests, including those from thestartup world and those that
have had incredibly interestinglives and some stories to tell.
I would really appreciate it ifyou could hit the follow button
and share this amongst yourfriends, but, as you know, time
is limited, so let's get on withit and hear from our next guest
.
My guest today is James Rose.
(01:52):
James is the co-founder ofContent Snare, and he'll talk a
little bit about what ContentSnare is all about shortly,
james.
Welcome to the show, greg.
It's an honor to be, here, mate, thank you.
We were introduced by a guywho's infamous in the accounting
industry, trent McLaren.
So big shout out to Trent Trent, if you're listening.
We made it work.
James and I are here togetherNow.
(02:14):
One of the things I havelearned actually about James is
that he, some time back, wasactually a podcast host in his
own right and actually had anumber of podcast episodes.
So he's got all the gear, he'sgot the right microphone here,
so hopefully the audio qualityfrom both of us is okay,
although I still think I coulddo better with my own audio
quality.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Oh, there's always more money to spend, right.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
There's always somebody wanting to take your
cash, that's for sure.
James, I'd love to start beforewe get into content snare.
I'd love to talk a little bitabout your personal origin, so
how you got to be anentrepreneur.
Was that something that yougrew up dreaming of?
Were you the kid with thelemonade stand?
Like what's childhood, james?
Speaker 2 (02:55):
what did he look like ?
It's funny you ask that becausethis comes up in on socials all
the time and in you hear peopletalk from stage and how they've
always had this entrepreneurialthing.
I couldn't be further from thetruth.
I was like Mr Conform to all ofthe normal, like life stuff.
There was no rebel, there wasno entrepreneur, there was no
anti-authority.
(03:15):
It was like go to school, doreally bloody well, get the
degree, get the engineering job,do that forever.
Kind of wanted the house andthe white picket fence and
whatever and all that sort ofstuff.
And then I don't know it kindof just all swapped at one point
.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Because you're a technical founder, technical
co-founder, so you've done a lotof stuff in and around software
engineering, but you also seemlike a guy who can kind of do
that more general business salesthing.
The fact that you even had apodcast probably makes you a
little bit rare in that regard.
(03:50):
How does being a technicalco-founder impact on your
approach to being a startupfounder?
Does it make it easier?
Speaker 2 (03:59):
or does it make it harder?
I think there are some things.
It's definitely easier.
I mean just to back up, I have.
So we had two technicalco-founders.
So now I am kind of I don't doany coding anymore and I miss it
dearly Like if there's anythingthat gets you into a flow state
and like makes the whole dayevaporate.
I used to go to work when I hada job and, like you know, start
work, oh God, it's midday.
(04:20):
I better have some lunch, youknow I better have some lunch.
You know, oh God, it's time togo home.
Those kinds of days just don'thappen.
When you're a business ownerrunning you know every hat
wearing every hat in thebusiness.
But when it comes to certainthings, the technical background
helps a lot, you know, likeactually working out what
developers to hire, for example,or knowing if someone's full of
it.
I think it helps a lot in sortof automation and productivity
(04:42):
world because I can see howpieces of different apps might
fit together so I can connectthem and don't have to do that
work anymore.
Right, and that's why I thinkyou know I've done so much.
Automation helps a lot ofpeople with automation over time
and also like speccing products, like as a software founder,
knowing how stuff fits togetherbefore you tell a developer like
this is what we want it to do.
(05:02):
I think that definitely ishelpful, as having that
technical background tell adeveloper like this is what we
want it to do.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
I think that definitely is helpful as having
that technical background.
So tell us a little bit aboutthe origin story for content.
Sneer, was that something thatjust came to you in a dream at
night?
Were you out for a run, wereyou trying to solve a problem
and therefore build a businessaround it?
Like what was the origin ofthat?
Speaker 2 (05:19):
so content sneer is actually our third well, more
than third software product.
It's the third that actuallymade money, like there was many
others that kind of never.
We sort of abandoned orscrapped.
So we always knew we loved thesoftware model and we're always
looking for a problem to solvewith software and we had a web
design agency and softwaredevelopment agency for a while
(05:40):
in the middle there and that'show we found a lot of ideas.
Right, it's just seeingproblems that our clients had.
But in the content snares caseit was somewhat of a dog food
problem, like we're feeding,like it was our own problem,
right.
Like getting information fromclients to build websites was a
pain in the ass.
We didn't recognize itnecessarily.
At first.
(06:01):
I actually I had a differentidea, completely different idea
for the product.
It was in like a briefing tool,but I spoke to I think about 15
other designers that I knew,like other web designers, and
just was like tell me about yourprocess, start to finish, and
what sucks the most.
I didn't sort of seed them withany idea of what I wanted to
build at all and all of themfocused on getting content from
clients as being the biggestpain in the ass.
(06:23):
So that was kind of like thepivot before it even started.
Like, oh my God, like, yes, wehave that problem and I actually
have some ideas on how we canfix it Right.
So that's how it was started.
Just to fast forward, it's nolonger just for web designers,
it's used by mostly professionalservices.
Now, like, accounting isactually our biggest segment,
because it turns out everyone'ssick of chasing clients for
stuff.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
And I'm from the accounting industry.
I've spent way too many yearsto kind of add up in and around
the accounting industry and,yeah, one of the massive
bugbears is both for theaccountant and for the client, I
suspect is getting informationoff them.
It's time consuming and, as aprofessional, time is money
literally, and it's filled withfriction.
(07:06):
There's lots of backwards andforwards, so how did you go
about starting to solve thatproblem, because it's an endemic
issue?
Speaker 2 (07:14):
so the like I said the initial version was actually
for web designers and marketingagencies and all just about
making it easy for the client toprovide you that information.
So it was kind of like a placefor people to go through and
type in information and likeupload photos for the website
and that kind of thing.
But there's two big piecesright In the whole like making
it easy.
Sorry, three big pieces.
It's like making providing asimple experience for the client
(07:36):
so they don't have to like loginto another portal, they can
clearly see what's outstanding.
So it's just like a simplechecklist.
That checklist that they go toit's all auto saved.
So we knew that from experiencethat if you use like a forms
type tool a lot of people willuse for questionnaires, they get
like some of the way through it.
If they get called away orclose that window or don't hit
the save button, they lose allthat work and it's like, oh yeah
(07:59):
, they'll get very, very cranky,let's say um, and I'll probably
just never actually comethrough with it again because I
just can't be bothered doing itall again.
So like just making thatexperience easy is one.
The automatic reminders is thesecond piece, because you've got
to remember to check in withpeople all the time and
sometimes you don't want to, youfeel resistance to it because
it's like I feel like a pest,I'm pestering this person for
(08:21):
stuff, whereas if it's like anapp doing it, you can blame it
on the app.
And thirdly, it's actuallyguiding people through the
process.
So we kind of knew this.
I wouldn't say we had all thislike plans from day one.
We allowed for it but didn'trealize, like how important
these three sort of pillars were.
But yeah, the last bit is justlike showing people what you
(08:41):
need in a way like that's freeof industry jargon.
We always say that you know.
Imagine you're talking to yourmost difficult client.
If you're asking for a document, it's like pitch your most
difficult client and explain tothem what you need, where they
can find it, like what it shouldlook like, all that kind of
stuff, because if you canexplain it to them, it's like
everyone else will find it easy,or your other clients.
So that was kind of along-winded way of saying all
(09:04):
these things are kind of what wehad in our minds, but the
products changed a lot over time, obviously.
But yeah, that's the stuff weknew.
We had to automatically remind.
We knew it had to be easy andwe knew we had to explain to
people what we needed them togive us.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
And how did you find the accounting industry?
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Like what brought you to the accounting industry to
the point where you realize theyhit this issue.
So we acquired a lot of usersthrough just organically, like
people Googling for the problemsthey had and finding us through
that way.
So that naturally attractedvarious industries.
Like it kind of just happenedat some point where we kind of
realized it could be used forother industries and we noticed
other industries signing up.
Like I remember speaking to alawyer being like oh yeah, we
know this isn't made for us, butyou know, we're so happy we
made this work for us and blah,blah, blah and it's saved us all
(09:51):
this time.
And we went maybe there'ssomething there looking at other
industries but we were lookingat probably five or six
different industries as the nextone and we kind of we got lucky
.
We had like a stars aligningmoment because we couldn't
decide which was the next mostobvious industry.
But within one week sorry, twoweeks we had an amazing video
testimonial from an accountantin America that went you know
(10:13):
what this has been so good forus.
I'm like, do you want to saythat on camera?
And they were like hell yeah.
And then one of their, someonethey work with, saw their
onboarding experience withcontent snare and went, okay, we
want that too.
And gave us a video testimonialwithin like two weeks.
And at the same time we hadsomeone reach out from a
document management system inthe space in the account for
(10:34):
accountants and he said he wasinterested in acquiring us
because the industry needed whatwe did.
And that was like we just werelike, oh my god, this is all
these kind of things that happenin quick succession.
We've got to go into accountingLike it's clearly solving a
really big pain point there.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
And how have you found working with the
accounting industry?
I love the accounting industry,but I also understand and
probably get, its frustrations.
How have you found that?
Speaker 2 (10:59):
It's funny, like accounting has such a not a bad
reputation, just like makepeople make the butt of many
jokes about, like how boring orwhatever it is.
It has been the completeopposite of my experience.
Just the events and the people.
I have such amazing and greatconversations, people, people
are super outgoing.
I remember the very beginning Ireached out to a couple of
influencer types in the space,being like, ah, let's see if
(11:22):
they'll talk to me about thislike problem we want to solve.
And they like got on a callwith me and I was like, ah,
let's see if they'll talk to meabout this problem we want to
solve.
And they got on a call with meand I was like what the hell?
That was so easy.
Why are all these people soopen and friendly with their
time?
I'm just not used to that.
I feel like digital agencieswere a lot harder and
accountants have been superfriendly, super open, really
forthcoming with feedback,totally happy to help out.
We had customers of ours go toZerocon with us.
I was, like you know, totallyhappy to help out.
(11:42):
Like we had customers of oursgo to Xerocon with us.
I was like I've tried this idea.
I was like because I don't haveany salespeople.
So I was like, would you wantto come and man the stand and
show people how you use content?
And they're like, yeah, cool.
I was like what's going on?
I don't know.
My experience has been amazing.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
I've had.
So funny.
Actually, when you reference,you know, an event for
accountants with people who arenot from the accounting industry
or haven't been to somethinglike a zero con, and I can see,
you know, them kind of rollingtheir eyes and going, oh my God,
what would that be like goingto some sort of event for
accountants, and they get thereand they, you know, know, it's
not quite Coachella, but it's,it's, but it's up there right
like there's literally I don'tknow 4,000, 5,000 people, djs,
(12:33):
you know, merch stands.
It's incredibly well, well puttogether.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
It's out of control.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
It's so much fun it's so impressive and there's a
bunch of people around theprofession now who are in their
20s and their 30s and they'recool young people who are
financially trained and justunderstand a debit from a credit
.
So it's pretty cool.
So tell me a little bit aboutthe journey to date.
So you got started with ContentSnare and then start winning
(12:58):
customers et cetera.
How's that journey gone to dateand how's it going now?
Speaker 2 (13:03):
I mean great since switching well, I didn't really
switch to accounts.
We still have lots of differentindustries come in.
So accounting makes up about 30of our customer base and that
climbs every month but it justso.
It's like slowly overtaking asour predominant industry and I
don't know if we've had a singlenegative growth month ever,
(13:24):
especially since moving toaccounting.
Like you can zoom out on ourgrowth chart over time and you
can clearly see the inflectionpoint where the graph of the
growth sorry, the slope of thegraph changes.
And that was kind of around thetime where we really dedicated
to accounting.
So again, when I say that likewe still have plenty of other
industries and still most of thefeatures we build are very,
(13:45):
still generic because everyone'slike I was saying, everyone's
got this problem.
It's just like a fewintegrations and things for
specific for accountants thatreally that they really love,
that makes it sort of when I saywe focus on accountants, like
that's usually what I'm talkingabout.
But yeah, I don't know if thatanswers your question.
I mean, it's going well and itdoesn't seem to be changing.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Yeah, and In terms of growing the company, have you
needed to raise external capital?
Have you bootstrapped the wholething?
How have you gone about doingthat?
Speaker 2 (14:12):
I think I'd call it self-funded rather than
bootstrapped, because youobviously need some money at the
start to build the thing, andso we had a little bit of cash
from our software developmentagency.
We were very lucky there inthat we had basically a project
that was able to one or twoprojects that we were able to
keep and shut down the rest ofour clients because it was for a
(14:35):
really, really big client andthat was kind of the funding
source for the initialdevelopment.
But we've been positivecashflow for quite a while now
and it's actually really nice.
I guess to tee back into yourprevious question we're at a
point of growth now where it'slike every couple of months we
can seriously look at hiringsome kind of external help,
(14:56):
whether it's like an agency oranother team member or whatever.
So we're actually finallygetting to that point where it's
just like oh, I don't have timeto work on xyz, like let's put
someone in place for that, yeah,so, yeah, it's kind of nice and
the toughest part of thejourney so far.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
What have you experienced?
Where you were like god if I'dknown that at the beginning I
might not have, I might not havedone this or a moment where you
had your head in the hands well.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
So two things there I'd say was something I wish,
because you kind of said I wishI knew this earlier.
I mean I wish I knew earlierthat accountants and
professional services how muchbetter clients they would have
been because we bounced aroundon that for a long time, because
I spoke to accounts andbookkeepers who didn't really
see the need for it in theirparticular business, with their
flow, and it just so happenedthat the people I spoke to were
(15:45):
like the wrong subset.
I didn't realize, like everyoneelse kind of was like wow, this
is amazing.
So that was a bit of a bummer.
But I still think the mostdifficult thing in business is
just people.
So hiring, firing, finding theright people, recruitment,
finding agencies, you knowexternal people as well I just
find it's by far the hardestpart Like it's really hard to
(16:09):
find good people and even harderfor me personally to let people
go.
I just hate that process.
So much.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
Why do you think that is?
I mean, you know, I think mostpeople find that tough, but do
you?
Is it something that you findparticularly tough?
Are you overly empathetic?
Is it?
You know what is?
What's?
What's behind that?
Speaker 2 (16:26):
some people find it easy well, I think firing people
if you find firing people easy,there's, yeah, probably a very
low amount of empathy in there.
Like I wouldn't have consideredmyself like a super empathetic
person I didn't think I was butlike I can tell you like two of
the hardest things I've done arefiring people and breaking up
with someone you know like Idon't know what it is.
(16:46):
Obviously it's been a very longtime since I had to do that
Been with my now wife for like13 years, but 14.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Anyway, she probably won't listen to this.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
So yeah, I guess it is an empathy thing, right?
I don't know, just lettingpeople down sucks especially,
like because you know they'regoing to have to go find another
job and that's hard and thatprocess sucks for them.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
Yeah, and what do you look for when you're hiring?
Is there something that youapproach?
Are you skills-based?
Are you attitude-based?
What is it that you typicallylook for?
Speaker 2 (17:23):
I am probably not the best example of this.
I mean, I feel like ourprocesses are pretty good, like
we have a pretty good process tofind the right people, like our
first pass.
I don't even look at theirresume.
I actually have like fouropen-ended questions on the
application form and that'sreally all I look at.
Because if someone's notwilling to go to the length to
(17:45):
fill out some open-endedquestions in a good way and like
one of them or two of them kindof requires them to actually
look at our business a littlebit and it's really clear who's
gone to the extra effort to goand do that, you know, to
research our website.
Like I just ask people likewhat's the contest they're doing
, who's it for, sort of thing,and some people will just put
some generic crap that they readin the job post or put in like
(18:07):
two words or something, and itjust makes that first pass so
easy to delete all those people,so that I think what's going on
there is that's more attitudeto me right, rather than skills
is that they want the job.
They're like they've got thatattitude.
They're like willing to put inthe extra effort and attention
to detail.
But then, when it comes to thehiring itself, it depends on the
(18:27):
role.
So obviously, developers needskills, right, I'm not going to
hire a developer based onattitude, because they need to
know how to code stuff and wecan't be training them.
We don't have the resources totrain them just yet.
But recently, you know, wehired someone for marketing and
sales where they were not thebest fit skills wise.
But attitude I think it's reallyreally important there, because
(18:48):
marketing, I think, can betaught fairly, like a bit more
easily than development, and oneperson was just clearly so much
more enthusiastic and had donethe research and learned about
the product.
And so, like I do go towardsattitude on most hires rather
than skills and sort ofattention to detail, for example
, like I don't know if that canbe taught as much as like
(19:10):
someone, like if it's anassistant role, whatever, like
someone that needs thatattention to detail.
I'll try and tease that out inlike test tasks.
So we usually do a test, paidtest project to start with.
So between the application andthe paid test project, like
that's what I'm looking for,depending on the role, and most
people I know in like who runbusinesses, do gravitate towards
(19:31):
attitude as being moreimportant Cause again, like you
can teach skills but you can'tteach attitude.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
Yeah, and are the team remote?
Are you in offices?
What's the deal there?
I kind?
Speaker 2 (19:42):
of thought what we had was somewhat normal, and it
depends what circles you're in Iguess like a community of
entrepreneurs, the way this iscompletely normal.
But when I speak to otherbusinesses they're like wow,
like that's crazy.
Like just to start, I've gotone person on, we've got a team
of, I think, 11 at the moment.
I've met one of them in personever.
Yeah, so that's kind of whichyou know.
(20:02):
I guess I thought that was kindof more normal these days, but
for a lot of people it isn'tthey these days, but for a lot
of people it isn't.
They're all, yeah, around theworld, remote, mostly working at
home or co-working spaces.
The most recent hire they have areally cool setup.
They have an employer of record, I guess you would call it.
They're like a sort of a laborhire agency in South Africa
where they get all their remotepeople to come together in an
(20:23):
office if they want.
They don't have to, so they getthat cool office atmosphere.
But they're all working fordifferent people, which I
thought was interesting.
I mean, obviously this is likea lot of accounting companies
have BPO's or whatever in thePhilippines, but yeah, this one
was in South Africa.
They had a really cool lookingoffice, the classic startup
thing with ping pong and drinksand all that sort of stuff which
I thought was like.
(20:43):
I actually want that for myteam, cause it's kind of hard
when you're working remote toget that fun part of going to
work which you know, so thatthat's a new, new experiment for
us, I guess hey, just let mepause you there for a second and
tell you about some help that'savailable for startup founders.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
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It doesn't have to be like that, though.
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(21:27):
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Let's get back to the show.
Yeah, the remote thing's reallytough, I think, in terms of
building culture.
It's certainly my experience.
(21:48):
So when and having built aculture that was, you know, we
had a little almost a hybrid ofsome in office, some remote and
actually just even just sharingculture across offices super,
super challenging the fact thatyou've got people around the
world are they all sort of, youknow, contractors?
Do you have to get involvedwith tax stuff and engage
(22:09):
something like a deal to docross-border tax issues, or do
you try and just keep that assuper?
Speaker 2 (22:14):
simple as you can.
Yeah, we do try to keep itsimple.
It's quite annoying inAustralia whether the whole
employee versus contractor thing, you know, because they say if
someone's an employee, you needto do super and you need to do
work cover and all this sort ofstuff, and it's like, how do I
do super for someone who livesin croatia?
You know it's there.
So, yeah, we try to keep itsimple.
(22:34):
That's why I like this employerof record model too, so it
becomes like as an industrycalled employers of record,
where you're paying like acompany that does the local
hiring.
I think that's like one of theproper like way to do it.
But yeah, otherwise it's sortof the contractor model.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
Yeah, and how do you deal with building culture?
Is the building of culturecritical to what you do, or is
it not so important, given thatyou've got almost a gig economy
workforce going on?
Speaker 2 (23:02):
Yeah, it's hard.
I do, like the customer-facingstuff.
There needs to be a little bitof culture, right?
The developers I don't thinkit's as important, a lot of devs
just like getting in there andgetting stuff done and making
things.
So, yeah, I don't know, Iprobably am not the person to
listen to on this, because Iwouldn't have expected us to
have an amazing team culture,right.
(23:23):
But then I asked some of ourteam for like I wanted to put
like a testimonial on our jobapplication from our existing
staff and one of them came backand said, like amazing culture,
low tolerance for bullshit, likemicromanagement and pointless
meetings and all this sort ofstuff.
And I'm like, okay, well, Iguess that's our culture is just
laid back and chill and beingflexible with time and letting
(23:45):
people work whenever the hellthey want.
We're not like, oh, to do aphone call with like you need to
be available, like you're 3 am,you know.
Like there's none of that.
Like I think our culture isjust kind of relaxed and yeah,
yeah, and maybe that showsthrough to people on our team
which I didn't realize untilrecently and how do you deal
with time zones?
Speaker 1 (24:03):
because no doubt you've got people across a whole
bunch of time zones and it'sthe one thing I feel like if we
could just flatten the earth andhave the sun land on all places
at the same time, how do youdeal with that at a practical
level?
What do you do?
Speaker 2 (24:15):
It is tough, it is very tough.
I mean again, with developersit's often not that big a deal
because they can work onsomething, come up with a bunch
of questions, roadblocks, youknow, plan something out and
then write.
You know, while we're asleepthey'll write out like a big
list of questions and then wecan jump on in the morning and
answer all of those right.
It does suck to not have thatlike immediate sort of feedback
(24:36):
on things, but I mean that kindof works.
I'd say the biggest thing forus because, again, like there's
normally at least a little bitof overlap where we don't do a
lot of meetings unless they'renecessary.
So that isn't that important.
It's just asynchronouscommunication through slack and
that gets us by on most things.
You know, like everyone's kindof in their own lane doing their
own thing.
So support are answering,support questions, sending
(24:59):
messages to the development teamif they find a bug or whatever.
You know it's all just done inslack and it can be asynchronous
.
Like none of this needs to belike immediate, so it hasn't
been a big problem.
I'd say that the biggest problemis when you're onboarding a new
team member and you need to dothat, some of that face-to-face
time initially like I'm goingthrough that right now and it's
the worst time zone becauseSouth Africa and the UK for us
(25:21):
is really bad because it's 5, 6,7 pm calls, which is rubbish my
brain is shut down by thatpoint and on that it's the demo,
demo calls and calls withcustomers in alternate time
zones.
So like on one day I could talkto someone in the US on the
Eastern time zone over there,which is like a 7am call for me,
and then I could do a 6pm callon that same day in the UK,
(25:41):
which is just crap.
That's the hardest thing.
But that's the person I'monboarding now is going to start
handling.
She'll be on the same zone tohandle those two extremes for me
, which is going to make life somuch better, right?
So I think it's just getting.
You know, our developers areall on fairly good, similar time
zones except one, so they gettogether and have their own
(26:01):
conversations.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
Plus, it's the Saturday pain in the ass too,
right.
So the fact that the US is onFriday when you're on Saturday,
just a real pain.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
Yeah, which I mean in a way it makes Mondays really
good, because there's almost nocalls that happen on Mondays
because it's still Sunday forthem.
Yeah, so you've only got likesort of four, four and a half
days of actual overlap, which Idon't know Like.
It just works.
Like I was saying, like maybewe could be more efficient, but
we're okay with it where it is.
And developers you know, thedevelopers can still go on and
(26:30):
do their things, the supportteam can still provide support.
Marketing is very muchasynchronous.
It's not like we're deliveringprojects.
That's the big difference here.
It's right, like software,almost everything's asynchronous
, except for calls withcustomers.
Everything else is just kind ofhappening in its own sort of
lane and there's occasional, youknow, things that need to go
(26:50):
between them, like a bug, like abug report from support or
something, or feature requestsor whatever you know.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
So, yeah, I think it it's, it's working okay, and so
what would you say is yoursuperpower?
As an aussie founder, I knowwith aussies and kiwis very much
alike here.
We don't typically like to talkabout the things that we're
really good at, but you willhave something that you know
when you're in this mode, thezone of genius, if you like.
Things just work better, theyflow better when you're doing
(27:18):
that.
What is that for you?
Speaker 2 (27:19):
Two things I think.
One is workflow automation andjust automating things.
You know, like my previous rolewas a control systems engineer
and so the English version ofthat is like making big
machinery run by itself orthrough code, right, and I love
that so much and I don't get todo that anymore.
I love the work.
I hated the, let's say, peoplejust working with and for
(27:40):
dickheads was a problem.
I have worked with a lot ofawesome people.
In fact, my business partner ismy old boss, but yeah, so,
using things like zapier andmake to automate workflows in
our business man, I can do thatall day, but it's just you gotta
slow down at some point, like,and it carries over into home
automation.
Like you know, right before Ijumped on this call, I called
out the I'm not gonna say hername the amazon device.
(28:02):
I said a couple of sentences toher and she, like turned on my
lighting, turned on the powersource for my camera, turned on
the lights behind me.
You know all of that.
Like, I just love automatingall that sort of stuff, so
that's my superpower.
And I think the other thing islike just networking and being
at events and building a networkand partnerships and that kind
of thing.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
They're like my two primary things it does strike me
as rare that you are a verygood communicator.
As I said, you did a podcast,you know for quite some time.
You're a really goodcommunicator.
You seem like a natural, a guywhere sales would actually come
relatively easy to you as afunction.
Yet you are a softwaredeveloper which you know not to
not to put people in a box, buta lot of software developers
(28:42):
wouldn't necessarily love.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
No, you're right, sales process that's kind of
real you think, probably I thinkI'm very much in that like jack
of all trades, master of none,kind of thing.
Like I wouldn't say I'm amazingnecessarily at anything and I'm
totally okay being like that.
Like I, I get like into hobbiesand I get kind of 80 of the way
there or like I don't know, noteven that, like 60 to 70 and
(29:04):
I'm like happy with that and I'dnever get better than that.
I'm never going to be a masterat stuff, but you know, I kind
of like having semi-skills at alot of things.
Do you get bored quickly?
Yeah, oh, yeah, hell, yeah,yeah, yeah, I'm surprised I'm
still in this business.
You know, like I guess it'sbecause, as a business, you do
so many different things thatit's never quote-unquote boring.
(29:25):
So because I'm like how am Istill doing this same business
this many years later?
Like I would have thought Iwould have gotten over it, but
no, because how long has contentsnare been around now?
Content snare started in 2016,but we started our business in
2010.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
Yeah, Right, okay, so you've been going at this
basically the whole time you'vebeen with your wife.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
Yeah, pretty much it was around the same time.
It's funny because my goal wasalways to go and live abroad for
extended periods of time and Igot to that point in our
business right as we got reallyserious and she had real jobs
and couldn't do that and I waslike, oh, what's the worst
(30:05):
timing on this?
But it is what it is and is she?
Speaker 1 (30:08):
you know fully across the fact that you have to work
weird time zones and that youare taking calls first thing in
the morning and last thing atnight.
Is that or does that createtension?
Is building a global business?
Speaker 2 (30:19):
I mean, again, we're both just chill.
If our company culture is chill, we're pretty chill in our
relationship too.
So it just works.
I mean, I think and I'm alsoworking towards not having to do
that so much.
It's been difficult now thatwe've got a kid and another one
due very, very soon, becauseobviously, you know, if I'm
doing it on a call at six to six, 30 at night, that's like peak
witching hour, you know.
(30:40):
But we try to balance it, likebefore she was pregnant again,
she would go to soccer trainingand at that exact same time, you
know.
So I'd do, I'd do my part, youknow.
Try to balance it out a littlebit, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
Yeah, it's, it just works yeah, it just, it just
works well for you.
So, in terms of ways that you,you know you get away from the
business, how do you recharge,how do you sort of find
inspiration for getting back anddoing another day's work?
Speaker 2 (31:08):
yeah, I guess.
I mean there's a couple things.
If it's in the middle of a workday, I like just going for a
walk, you know, like getting out, and that you can expand that
out into like multi-day hikes,which we haven't done in a very
long time because I had kneesurgery actually almost exactly
a year ago, which I'm only justgetting to the point now where I
could do something like thatagain, and also my wife's been
pregnant, so that's kind of goneout the window for a little
(31:30):
while.
But those like getting outside,you know absolutely.
You know I haven't been able togo snowboarding in years.
I used to skateboard but I blewmy knee.
So like a lot of those thingsare actually gone right now.
It it's a lot of FPV, firstperson view drone flying, so
it's kind of getting like amanually flown drone, there's no
GPS in it and just rippingaround a park and through trees
(31:51):
and yeah, I find that a lot offun but yeah, you're a bit of a
tinkerer.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
Are you somebody who likes to play with, like you do,
home automation as well?
You enjoy that.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
I do, but as well, yeah, you enjoy that I do, but I
don't do it enough because it'sa time thing.
You know, I spent so much timeon the business that almost
nothing goes on that.
But working that's like thegoal right is is working less so
that those things have moretime.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
But yes, tinkering is a lot of fun and how do you
sort of with your co-founder?
Just what?
Just the one co-founder, yes,yeah, how does the relationship
you know work?
Either well or not so well attimes.
Like, how do you manage thatco-founder relationship Because,
as we all know, in the foundercommunity they can be tough
relationships to have at times.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
Yeah, I think we're very lucky again and I don't
know if it comes from us bothbeing pretty chill and relaxed,
like neither of us are like thiscrazy go-getter where we're
just like we're going to strivefor these huge numbers.
We're not like a mini Elon Muskor something.
We're not trying to just takeover the world, we're just happy
building our thing.
And he works a lot more than me.
(32:54):
I think it's a combination.
He's doing what he loves, he'scoding At the same time.
I think he goes too hardsometimes and I think he knows
that as well.
But yeah, I don't know.
Like we both have similar goals.
We knew each other for a longtime before we started a
business at a work capacity Likehe was an engineer and then
became my like manageressentially, and I, we both knew
the way each other operated fora long time, many years before
(33:17):
we actually started the businesstogether.
And you know it's been a longtime.
Now.
I think we should.
We just get on, it's just easy.
And I think and you know it'sbeen a long time now I think we
just get on, it's just easy.
And I think a lot of it is justattitude and wanting the same
same kind of thing and havingcomplementary skill sets.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
Now I think it just works and if you were to have a
disagreement, is that something?
Because you don't like?
You know it's like not wantingto let somebody go and say that
they're being fired.
That doesn't come easy.
Do you find it easy to dealwith things that you do disagree
on, to talk about that, or doyou avoid it Like what's the
(33:49):
standard?
Speaker 2 (33:50):
I mean, it's almost like a cop-out, but it's just,
and this is the same as on myrelationship.
We almost never have seriousdisagreements, right.
Like I don't know, maybebecause we're kind of similar in
a lot of ways.
Actually, that's notnecessarily true with my wife.
There's a lot of similarities,but also a bit of opposites in a
lot of ways too.
(34:11):
I don't have a good answer tothat, because we just haven't
really had to do it.
We have disagreements on how afeature should work or what
features we should prioritizeand that kind of stuff.
But I think usually we'repretty on the same page on a lot
of things, which may be a badthing, right.
But there are times where wemight disagree on the priorities
and we'll just make our casesfor it, and one of us usually
comes around.
You know, it's very rare thatwe both butt heads that hard,
(34:32):
that we're like completely onother sides of something.
A lot of the time, when itcomes down to it, it's funny
like someone will be reallypassionate and the other person
won't be that passionate aboutthat particular issue.
So I was like that's not a hillI'm willing to die on.
Let's go with your option,right?
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (34:47):
let's keep moving, and is this something that you
like?
Do you consume a lot of yourstartup related material
podcasts, books on the topic?
Speaker 2 (34:55):
not so much anymore.
I've gone off business booksand trying to chill out from
podcasts.
I'm actually like I've made itthat an intentional part of my
life to go back to fiction booksand whatever, because otherwise
it's it's just burnout man,like between having a child
who's running around all thetime and like this business and
then, like you know, I used togo to the gym and in between
(35:15):
sets I'll be listening topodcasts.
I go for a walk, I listened toa podcast and it was all
business content.
Before bed I'd'd be reading abusiness book and that's like
the recipe for burnout,especially for me now.
Like I was better at it beforehaving the kid, but now it's
like it just there's neverending, right.
So now I'm actually notconsuming much I do.
There are, like, if you want toknow some things, some books
and stuff that I like, I'mabsolutely happy to share some,
(35:37):
but yeah, but you're readingfiction.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
It's interesting because I was just earlier this
morning interviewing Chris Grantand Charlie Crisp from Unyoked,
and Unyoked is an off-the-gridcabin experience and they have a
lot of founders go and staythere, because we do get burned
(36:00):
out in the founder community andwe kind of overdo it, and so
you know, creating experiencesthat allow you to get off the
grid, clear your head, et cetera.
The reality is, in startups,making the right decision on
something is more important thanthe hard grind most of the time
, like make the right call andthe only way we're going to make
the right call is.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
We've got to clear head from reading fiction or
going for a walk or whatever youknow A hundred percent, like
going for a walk or like havinga shower, and it was like
classic.
And I think the only reason thereason showers work, from what I
understand, is like you're nowyou're not thinking, you can't
be on your phone, you can't likeyou're not listening to
anything and you've got thislike nice feeling.
(36:38):
I guess experience that you'rethinking about Like you're not
really like you're.
It shuts your brain off fromthinking about all this other
crap and allow well, in a way,because you start solving
problems kind of on the fly,same as going for a walk, you
know.
And if you start listening to apodcast instead of going for a
walk, like my strategy which Ineed to get back to for solving
(36:58):
problems that I couldn't workout, you know I'm like I want to
build, like I want to spec outthis new feature, but I just
don't know how it all fitstogether.
You know it's just like okay,go for a walk, no audio, and
just think about that problem,right, and a lot of the time I'd
be dead set like three minutesinto the walk and I've, like,
got the solution.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
It's incredible, isn't it?
Yeah, yeah, just freed up yourbrain to be able to do what it
is good at doing.
Speaker 2 (37:21):
Yeah, and sometimes it'll be very, very quick, and
then you're like, oh, what am Igoing to do for the rest of the
walk?
I'll think about something else.
Speaker 1 (37:27):
Exactly, and is there a philosophy or a mantra that
you like to live life by thingsthat are important to you and
the way that you go about life?
Speaker 2 (37:38):
Oh, that's a hard one , because whatever I say is
probably like not what I'mactually living right now, but
I'm working towards, and it isreally that like trying to be
ruthless on working on thingsthat matter and automating
anything that can be automatedis kind of I wouldn't say like I
have this stuck on my wall orsomething, but they are things
that I try to do.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
you know, like I only work on important stuff and
automate everything else and andmy final question is really
around and this is a question Ivery rarely ask because I find
people are kind of thrown by itor they're not even necessarily
on this page Is there somethingthat you believe in strongly
(38:20):
that very few people do believein?
So it's something that's maybecounterculture, counter to what
a common person would think andbelieve.
Speaker 2 (38:31):
That's a hard question.
Yeah, I don't know, likethere's probably some things I'd
prefer not to say on somethingthat's going to be public.
Speaker 1 (38:39):
There's some controversial stuff.
That's cool.
You don't have to share that.
Speaker 2 (38:43):
It's usually, yeah, one of the topics you're not
allowed to talk about anythinglike political religion, yeah,
all that stuff.
No, I don't Not really.
I think, yeah, I don't know.
Like I said, my history hasbeen very rarely, you know,
anti-authority or like crazyout-of-the-box stuff, so I don't
(39:03):
think I've got anything for you, sorry.
Speaker 1 (39:05):
No, no, no, that is good and actually I did say that
was the last question, but Ipromise this is the last one.
Any advice for founders?
You know you've had some timeas a founder.
You've journeyed along thispath for a while.
If you were talking to you know, 10-year, 15-year younger James
, what would you say aboutstarting in the startup world?
Speaker 2 (39:26):
Talk to customers more actual customers.
Validate things before you dothem.
You know we've been pretty goodat that, but sort of every
iteration of things we do in ourbusiness we get better at it.
Like the amount of people thatcome up with some idea and just
run with it instead of trying towork out if someone's actually
going to pay for it, that's thebiggest thing in startups is,
(39:46):
and I didn't realize this untilrecently.
I thought no one did thatanymore, was so like really bad
at just coming up with sillyideas and running with them
until I actually went to somestartup events again because I
stopped going to them years agobecause I got sick of having
people pitch me on their stupidideas and I mean, they're not're
not all stupid, obviously, I'mjust like but there was a lot of
that where you'd be like whatis the point of this product?
No wonder you don't have anycustomers.
(40:08):
Why didn't you ask some peoplefirst, right?
So I think that's like thebiggest thing.
And I went back to some startupevents recently and kind of got
thrown straight back into thatand I was like damn it, like
people are still doing this Likevalidate your ideas, talk to
customers, get the feedback.
If people aren't interested andthey're not paying you, that's
usually a good sign that youshouldn't be doing it.
Speaker 1 (40:26):
Yeah, yeah.
People just fall in love withtheir ideas, don't they?
They fall in love with theirideas.
They believe that that's goingto be the you know, the elixir
to a problem, when actually theproblem doesn't exist.
Or it's not a problem thatpeople, or it's not enough of a
problem.
Speaker 2 (40:40):
You know, like Content Snare, we plateaued for
a long time when we were stillfocusing on web design,
marketing agencies and we kneweveryone had this issue.
But whether it was like they'renot willing to spend money like
our pricing, you know, maybethere's a disjoint there, maybe
it wasn't the perfect fit forthat particular use case, maybe
there were some other factors, Idon't know, but there was a
(41:01):
point where it was like, does itmake sense to keep this going
if we can't get any bigger?
You know, like we've exhaustedeverything that we know to
possibly do, except a newindustry which just breathes
life back into the business.
And it's been freaking amazing,right.
So sometimes you'll be bangingyour head up against the wrong
wall when you could just go likeover there instead.
Speaker 1 (41:21):
Yeah, there's definitely a need for this
product in the accountingindustry.
I know that for sure.
And for those of you in theaccounting industry that happen
to be listening to this, checkout Content Snare.
I will actually include theability for people to connect
with you on LinkedIn and viaContent Snare in the show notes.
James, thanks so much for yourtime today.
I've really enjoyed getting toknow you a little bit better.
(41:43):
Again, shout out to Trent, whomany people in the accounting
industry know, for introducingus.
James, thanks so much for yourtime today.
Really really appreciate it.
Thanks for having me, greg,it's been a lot of fun.
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