Redefining Retirement in the Modern Age

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In this conversation, we speak with Aaron Smith and Will Simpson about the evolving landscape of midlife, retirement, and entrepreneurship. They explore how individuals in midlife can redefine retirement, the rise of solopreneurship, and the importance of multiple income streams.

The discussion emphasizes the need for a strong understanding of personal finance, market dynamics, and the significance of validating business ideas. The speakers share their experiences transitioning to fractional roles and the challenges faced by those in corporate environments.

They also highlight the importance of understanding one's motivations and the changing realities of work in today's economy.

Episode Transcript

SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
Welcome to Midlife Kicker, the podcast for
professionals who've left thecorporate world but aren't ready
to slow down.
We deliver stories from midlifeadventurers who are breaking
boundaries, reinventingthemselves, and building new
careers and businesses on theirown terms.
Each episode delivers freshideas and practical advice to
help you launch your own secondact with confidence.

(00:22):
Your midlife moment isn't anending.
It's your springboard tosomething even better.
So if you're ready to kick opennew doors and create your next
chapter you're in the rightplace.
Let's get started.

SPEAKER_02 (00:37):
All right.
Well, today I'm joined by twomen with exceptional business
experience and some interestingideas on midlife and retirement.
Aaron Smith.
Aaron has performed many roles,mentor, investor, entrepreneur,
host of his own podcast.
And Aaron and I met at Dellseveral years ago.
And since then, he's been busywith multiple software ventures.

(00:57):
And Will Simpson.
Will's a fractional, excuse me,COO and executive coach.
Will worked with Aaron atHoover's, the D&B company, and
recently gave him some insightsinto early staging investment
and company structures and thesetwo friends have now partnered
on several projects and arebeginning to ask what happens
when people reach a point whenthey're too young for retirement
yet considered a little tooseasoned for corporate roles and

(01:19):
as a follow-on could midlife bethe best time to become a
software founder so gents happyto have you here maybe we begin
with this question on retirementlike how do you define it and
then maybe we move on intohearing about your past to the
present day

SPEAKER_04 (01:32):
well you want to go or you want me to go Yeah, you
know, I'm an opinionated guy onthis one.
First of all, I'm joining youfrom Panama City.
So that's Ciudad de Panama.
And, you know, it's wonderful.
It's different, but it allowedme to do some of the things that
I wanted to do.
You know, When you tell yourfriends and family that you're

(01:53):
about to retire, there's a wholelot of questions that they start
hitting you with.
Some things you've thoughtabout, some things you haven't.
One of them is, obviously, howare you going to pay for that?
And I definitely have opinionson that.
But the other thing is, what areyou going to do?
And I know a whole lot of guyswho are still working, not
because they have to, butbecause they can't think of what
else they would do with thetime.

(02:14):
I think retirement is what youmake it.
It's an adventure that's unlikeworking world if you are like me
you choose to get up and dosomething productive it also
affords you the opportunity tofocus on the things that are
important to you so if you wantto devote more time to charities
if you want to get up and gogolf if you want to go do

(02:36):
whatever it is you carve outthat time but what you should
find out is you still don't havebut 24 hours in the day so yeah
that dance card gets filled uppretty quickly that's that's
kind of what i see the otherthing is you know for me
personally i've chosen todefinitely took about three to
four months just to kind ofdecompress.
So before I left the States, Iset up a fractional product

(02:59):
marketing business, very similarto what Will did.
I had a great mentor.
I'm not going to say her lastname, but her first name is
Susie.
So if she's watching this, shoutout to Susie, who advised me on
what I should consider doing asI started making that transition
from full-time employee to lifeoutside of the corporate world.
And one of the things she saidwas, hey, approach your current

(03:22):
boss, especially if you'rekilling it.
Approach your current boss andgive them the proposition of
moving you to a fractional role.
It's going to save them money,and you can work out a contract
from there.
I thought she was nuts.
I was like, there's no way I'mgoing to approach my boss, who
at the time was the CEO of thecompany, and say...
You know, I'm looking atpivoting and this is my

(03:43):
timeline.
But what worked for my benefitwas I was pretty transparent
from the time I joined thecompany that this was like my
last stop.
And, you know, it's not like myparents when they retired and
there was an announcement in theoffice and they had cake and
they got, you know, cards orwhatever.
Like, effectively, retirementfor Gen Zers, you know, I'm

(04:04):
sorry, Gen Xers is what I wantto talk about.
Retirement for Gen Xers isreally...
Employment termination.
That's how it's treated from anHR perspective.
So what we did was we terminatedmy employment, restarted as a
contract.
And I did that while we movedour home to a new country.
So I did that for about a yearand then started poking my head

(04:24):
up as Will and friends startedbringing new opportunities my
way and making a decision onwhat seems interesting.
Because it's a whole lot easierto...
to pay for your retirement yearswith cashflow than to watch your
savings, no matter what yoursavings amount.
Like this is not an indictmenton did you save enough, but no

(04:45):
matter what that number is, whenyou start seeing the amount go
downhill, you start to think,man, you know, even if I was
able to bring in a small amount,it would offset that.
And so that's the way I start totalk to people who are in my
position or saying, hey, I'mthinking about retirement.
What would you advise?
And I'm like, you know, Numberone, be aware that that number

(05:07):
starts to get nervous.
It's going to make you pucker.
But at the same time, we are inan age now where it's easier to
work remotely and it's easier tocarve out a business that you'll
enjoy doing that gives you justenough to live on.
That's my feeling.
I know that was a littlelong-winded, but feel free to

(05:27):
ask me anything.
Will, I know you got an opiniontoo because you've been at this
longer than I have.

SPEAKER_02 (05:31):
Yeah, let's hear from you, Will.

SPEAKER_01 (05:33):
Yeah, so for me, I never ever planned on retiring,
I still don't.
I don't know what that wordmeans.
However, I left corporateAmerica in 2018.
My wife actually left in 2015and she's a fractional as well.
And so, you know, I kind of usethe learnings of her going

(05:53):
fractional to help me.
And I did that for a while andit was fun, you know, and I went
and did some, you know, some bigfun things, right?
You know, setting up, helpingbigger companies set up
companies overseas or smallercompanies just being their
fractional COO.
So, you know, that was fun.
And then in the last threeyears, I inadvertently entered
into what other people werecalling retirement.
It wasn't what I was callingretirement.

(06:14):
It was what they were callingretirement.
You know, I took some time.
I wrote a fiction novel.
I took some time and I workedfor some nonprofits where I
didn't get paid.
And I did some pro bono thingsand some things like that.
And then what I realized when itwas like, okay, well, let me
lean back into picking up somepaying clients.
The response was, oh, I thoughtyou retired.
And I was like, what is thatretire word again?

(06:37):
And so for me, it's like, Idon't, I'm going to pile on to
what Aaron said.
I'm always going to wake up anddo something and be productive.
I don't, I mean, my golf game isnever going to get any better.
I'm terrible.
I go golfing every once in awhile, right?
But it's not something I wantto, do most of the time.
I need to build or do something.
Through working with Aaron andtalking to some other mentors

(06:57):
and people that I worked withfor a long time, what I realized
is that leaning back intoentrepreneurship is really what
is going to bring me and hasbeen bringing me the most joy.
And I've just recently startedto find out this, that if I look
back, I've always had that gene.
And so now I'm just stretchingit and building it.
And so for me, that's whatretirement is.
It's stretching it and learningto build a muscle mass around my

(07:19):
entrepreneurship gene.
And, you know, still doingfractional work.
I'm still doing all the things.
But like Aaron also said,working remote and multiple
streams of income is the newway, especially for us in
mid-journey.
You know, I'll be 60 this year,so I'm not over the hill yet.
But, you know, this is somethingthat I think that I can do.
So that's where I'm at.
That's actually

SPEAKER_04 (07:40):
the key thing.
I want to go back to somethingWill talked about, like multiple
streams and living remotely.
Like right now, you see a lot ofoffices telling their employees
that they had told just three orfour years ago that they could
live wherever they want to andbe productive at work.
And we know the productivityhasn't gone down, but they're

(08:00):
now being told they have to comeback to the office.
So if you're in a position, andI always start off by saying
this, if you're in a positionwhere you are already killing it
on the job, right?
Listen, nobody's indispensable.
But you always want to come froma position of knowing what your
worth is at that point in time.
If you can leverage that andsay, you know what, I'm willing

(08:20):
to give up something to getsomething.
And for a lot of people thatgiving up something is, I can
give up the FTU world.
The kids are already on theirway.
You know, real estate being whatreal estate is, you never know.
Depends on what market you'rein, but maybe you can sell.
And that becomes a nest egg.
And you can live remotely.
And oftentimes, if you don'tfocus in on one specific place,

(08:44):
but if you look at the geographyof all your options, right?
You take into considerationproximity to family or working
hours or who your clients wantto be.
I'm sorry, who you want yourclients to be.
All of a sudden, the playingfield becomes larger and the
expenses to live that life startgoing south so now you're like
instead of instead of needingyou know 250 000 a year to live

(09:08):
on now you're talking about whyi can still look like a king on
60.
the math starts working in yourfavors you know i think
especially when you're talkingabout knowledge workers that we
all were you know all are.
We are adept at looking andsurveying strategy and making
calculated bets on what makesthe most sense.
Why wouldn't you apply that towhere you live?

(09:30):
Why wouldn't you apply that tohow many enterprises that you
choose to work

SPEAKER_02 (09:34):
with?
You guys have mentioned waysthat you got into these
fractional roles, but for thosethat maybe are looking for a way
to engage with others that aremaybe in the same boat, they're
considering this thing, you Anyrecommendations on that?

SPEAKER_04 (09:51):
Sure.
Will's more of a coach, so I'mgoing to let him fire first on
this one.

SPEAKER_01 (09:54):
And, you know, and I'll make a quick clarification.
You know, people say, coach, I'mmore of an advisor than coach,
right?
So I'm not your therapist,right?
So I'm not the kind oftherapist.
I'm not your business therapist,right?
That's not me.
But on advisory, I met with agroup of women and technology
people just a week ago.
We talked about this very thing,right?
This very, very thing.
And it's like, these people arelike, hey, we're ready to make

(10:16):
this move.
How do I do it?
Right?
And that's a question that wecan dive in.
I've got an hour presentation Ido.
I talk about it.
There's some basic blocking andtackling that everybody should
think about, right?
And we've already hit on some ofthem.
And if you think about, hey, allbusinesses are three things.
They're finance, they'reoperations, and they're sales.
All businesses are that way.
Operations in the, hey, I'mgoing to do it myself.

(10:37):
That's you.
You have to have that in spades.
I'm not going to advise you howto do your craft.
We're going to assume that youare your craft and you're good
at it.
Finances, don't go crazyspending money coming out of the
gate.
You don't need the best websitein the world.
You don't You don't need to buyand spend all those things.
I recently got my real estatelicense.
Think like a realtor.
They don't spend no money.
And that's the way to do it.

(10:58):
It really is.
And then think about the otherthing that Aaron said on the
finance side.
Think about your runway.
That's what you do in your firstyear to 18 months.
Consider that your job is toextend your runway and nothing
else.
It's not to hit those bignumbers.
It's to extend your runway.
And then think about your sales.
You've got to have a plan andyou've got to have something
written down.
You can't just, well, I know alot of people.

(11:20):
Build it and they will come hasnever been a thing.
It's not going to be a thingtoday.
And if you're the it, you can'tjust wave your arms and have
people come and sign up.
Well, I'd love to pay you 250bucks an hour to do this thing.
But do like Aaron said, leverageyour relationships.
You have to get started in thatrunway while you're building a
plan.
That's what you want to do.
Start small.
So the end of that conversationis start small.

SPEAKER_02 (11:41):
Yeah, fantastic.
I couldn't agree with that more.
So let's maybe we move into whatare you guys working on now?
What do you want moving intonext.

SPEAKER_04 (11:48):
So I'm going to start off on this one.
So we are working on somethingthat really, I think, lends
itself to the question that weended with, which was, how do I
get started?
So Will and I have been workingon a couple of enterprises for
the last, I don't know, six orseven months.
But what we've seen is an acuteneed and a very specific need

(12:13):
area and it really comes down topeople who they have it in them
that they want to go and dosomething on their own whether
they whether they have itinnately genetically like we'll
talk about or whether it's beenthrust upon them listen the
white collar market has been arecession for a couple of years
now if you've been laid offchances are you know that it's

(12:34):
it's been a longer periodwithout a job than you ever
thought.
I've had people who've been laidoff and they thought it was
going to be three, four, five,six months, and they're going on
a year to year and a half.
So a lot of times, starting tothink like an entrepreneur is
coming because it was justthrown in action.
But then we've had thismarvelous thing called AI thrown

(12:57):
at us too.
You know, I shared a couple ofarticles late last night with
both of you, but in summary, itwent something like this.
You've got some big companieswho are hedging their hiring
going into 2025, 2026.
I'm not going to mention anyspecific names, but you can
Google it, find out.
And they're saying, yeah, we'renot going to hire the HR

(13:17):
headcount.
We're not going to hire theengineering headcount because we
think AI is going to be able tosolve for that.
Then you've got other companieswho are saying that they already
went all in on AI and Nowthey're bringing the humans back
because they're seeing thelimitations of AI.
So what does that mean?
That means it's all over theplace, but you do need to start
taking some bets right now.

(13:38):
And if you're someone who iskind of playing around with AI
and saying, you know what, theremight be something here, then
you probably are going to beinterested in what we're putting
together.
And so it's not named yet, buthere's some things to start to
consider.
If you're someone who says, youknow what, I want to do
consulting or fractional at somepoint.
Well, the easiest thing to do isto talk to your immediate

(14:00):
network, your immediatecontacts, and see, you know, do
some market research and see ifthere's any demand, right?
And for me, at the time that wedid it, it was 2023.
You know, a lot of people hadjust taken part in the Great
Recession.
They had gotten new high-payingjobs, and a lot of companies
were like, I don't have a lot ofmoney to spend, but I need help.

(14:21):
So being a fractional kind ofoff the books made sense.
I don't know where we're atright now.
But what I do know is whetheryou want to be a fractional,
whether you want to, whetheryou've got an idea for a cool
software thing, there's adiscipline around it that a lot
of people don't know what it is.
And so a little bit more aboutour background, you know, Will

(14:44):
and I have a combined 40 plusyears in technology.
He was my technology partner.
at the New Branch.
But I didn't tell you what I didthere.
So I was a product manager.
And a product manager is not aknown field outside of
technology companies.
So assuming that you're someonewho's coming from a dental or
healthcare practice, you may nothave ever known what a product

(15:05):
manager does.
In brief, we would write thebusiness plan for any new
product, maybe 60 pages or so.
half of which never got read.
I tell people, writing thebusiness plan isn't so you can
show somebody your businessplan.
It's for you.
It's for the author to thinkthrough all the things that you
need to consider.
Same thing happens when you arebuilding your enterprise of

(15:28):
being.
When you're doing that, You haveto have a business plan.
And it's not so that you can goto the bank and ask for
financing.
I need$100,000 so I have arunway to get my first client.
No, that's not the point.
The point is, so you know, isthere actually demand for the
skill sets that you bring?
And if there's not, can youaugment your skill sets so that
you are in demand?

(15:49):
Or do you pivot into somethingthat is more aligned to what
your interests are?
A quick couple of statistics,right?
So when I got started workingwith Will at the beginning of...
Well, actually...
towards the mid-20s.
If you were interested in asoftware startup, you had to
have a certain background.
You were a technology person.
You were a coder.
So between the two of us, we'llhave more likelihood of getting

(16:10):
funded.
Well, for a whole lot ofreasons, but we'll go into those
later.
The other thing is, you werelikely to get between$500,000
and a million dollars of seedmoney to get that idea off the
ground.
By 2014, that went up toabout...
2 million, 2 million to 3million.
Why?

(16:31):
There was more excitement, moreVCs competing, looking for more
of those unicorns.
All right, now as we enter in2024, 2025, it's still where
they're looking for someone witha business background or a
strong technology background.
But now the market has startedto pivot to say, there's

(16:51):
something happening with theindividual, the solopreneur, who
has an idea to bring to marketAnd the investment amount isn't
what it took in the past.
The investment amount for seedround could be anywhere from
$50,000 up to 500.
Are they looking for unicorns?

(17:12):
Probably not.
So if you're the person who hasan idea that you want to bring
to market, you need somebusiness discipline.
You need to prove that there'sactually a market there.
But you also don't have to lookfor something that's going to
require$3 million of fundingjust to get built.
that those days are fast goingbehind us.
Are there still always going tobe need for big platforms?

(17:34):
I'm not necessarily sold onthat, but I do know that for
people who were previously shutout of that space, the world is
a whole lot more federated now.
It's democratized.
If you have the idea and you'rewilling to get the guidance on
proving there's a market and bewilling to build a working

(17:55):
prototype that may not be whatyour entire vision is, but has
parts of it, you could probablyget funding today.
And maybe it only makes you$100,000 a year.
Could you retire on$100,000 ARR?
Probably.
And you probably do so in a lotof different geos.
So that's my opening salvo.
We'll take it over.
I'm

SPEAKER_01 (18:15):
going to jump in on some of that, and I'm going to
roll the clock back a littlefurther than Aaron did, because
I've seen part of this moviebefore.
In the mid to late 90s, Youknow, there was this new
disruptive technology called theWorld Wide Web that no one had
ever heard of, right?
It was becoming, you know, anenterprise-level thing.

(18:35):
And the answer was similar towhat we just said here.
Look, individuals can now havetheir own marketplace, right?
That was what everybody wastalking about, right?
We can have your own store,brick and mortar.
Remember those terms that wereout there?
We're going to compete with thebrick and mortars.
And there was a lot of things.
And what happened was that a lotof the individuals who were tech
professionals savvy people cameout there and stupid money was

(19:01):
being thrown at them.
And I call it stupid moneybecause there was no business
money.
It was just the technology.
It was just this one piece.
And just like I talked about inthe very beginning, all
businesses have three things.
If you only get operations andno finance and no sales, you do
not have a business, right?
It was the same true then.
It was there now.
We all know what happened.

(19:21):
You know, let's just fastforward a little bit.
We have been a bit of hindsight.
2000, 2001 came along, dot com,boom.
We all, we remember it.
You either lived it or you knowabout it.
happened because we had so manybusinesses built on houses of
cards that hadn't done their duediligence, hadn't really gone
out there to make sure that theywere coming up with something

(19:41):
that wasn't a science project,but actually was going to be
viable in the marketplace.
And so we're trying to takethose lessons, part of what
Aaron and I are bringing withour experience, including that
is, hey, we want to help youwin, right?
We want to help you not makesome of those same mistakes that
we, in fact, have lived throughbefore.
We're not guessing.
We didn't read a book aboutthem.
We felt the pain, you know, Soall of those things combined is

(20:05):
like, hey, you know what?
This is a cool new technology.
We're not taking anything away,but let's take advantage of it
the correct way with also, also,and also.
It's not, cool, I can build anapp with AI in six hours.
There it is.
How come nobody's buying it?
Where's all my money?
I was counting on this.
I could be$200,000 a year.

(20:26):
And it's because you built anapp that nobody knows about it.
Nobody, even if they do, thenthey're like, I don't need this.
I can do this myself for free.
So all of those things have tobe vetted.
And that's what we're going tobring as part of our solution,
name solution, as it were.
And the other thing that we'regoing to put out there, and I
hope I'm not dropping it out ofthe bag too soon, but we're

(20:46):
entering into it purposely onthe global market.
you're focused in saying, look,this is a global company from
day one.
So we're not saying, oh, we'reonly going to go here, we're
only going to go there.
We're not geographicallylimiting this.
This is a global endeavor forall peoples that want to show up
and be in the solopreneur worldand move it forward, right?

(21:08):
It's disruption at its finest.

SPEAKER_04 (21:10):
Let's clarify a couple of things.
So solopreneur has a lot ofdifferent meanings, right?
So a solopreneur can just be oneguy who's doing consulting work.
And we're not saying that thatthey don't have value in what
we're talking about.
But really, the focus is onpeople who have an idea that
they want to build into asoftware business, and they want
to do so in a smart way.

(21:31):
They don't know about, you know,how to start up, how do you get
funding for your first startup?
But I can guarantee you, itcosts more money than you think
it does, but it doesn't cost asmuch money as it used to.
So somewhere in between thosetwo extremes.

SPEAKER_01 (21:44):
How do you- Yeah,

SPEAKER_04 (21:45):
solopreneur are not

SPEAKER_01 (21:46):
services, right?
So not human-delivered servicesis, you know, is what we're
doing.
And there's nothing wrong withyou.
I mean, hello, I made a livingoff of Soul Opener Human
Services.
I'm not discounting it at all.
But that's just not necessarilyour target market.

SPEAKER_04 (22:00):
For a lot of people, that's going to be the first
thing that they step into.
And to be honest with you, it'sa great opening place.
And for very many people,they'll probably go into that
and stay there.
But at the same time, there's anopportunity, and we see it
happening.
You see people saying, oh, Ibuilt this cool new thing using
AI.
eye prompts, you know, it doesX, Y, Z.

(22:23):
And you're like, okay, that'sgreat.
Where's the revenue?
How are you marketing it?
What do you think about in termsof partnership?
Who is this thing actuallycompete with?
Are there other competitors outthere that do the same thing?
You never know.
Well, Roy, we're going to turnit back over to you.

SPEAKER_02 (22:35):
Yeah, well, you know, you hit on a number of
things there.
And you think about, like, themarket.
What's the size of the market?
The competitors, right?
Is there anybody else out theredoing the same thing?
And a lot of times there are,and that's okay in many cases.
Not all, but, you know, butthere are...
That means

SPEAKER_04 (22:54):
you have a market.

SPEAKER_02 (22:55):
At least you know, yeah, right?
And so how many CRMs are outthere.
I mean, there's a jillion,right?
And then there's more every day,it seems like.
And then with regard toservices, you know, sometimes I
think that people who may startthere end up realizing that
there's a consistent problemthat they see.
And that problem could evolveinto an application that
essentially solves the problem.

SPEAKER_04 (23:15):
I've got a guy here, to be honest with you.
I've got a guy here, young guy,one of my youngest prospects,
we'll call him.
His challenge isn't creatingbusiness.
He's a services guy.
He's a digital marketer.
And he's decided that right nowhe wants to start disrupting
himself because he knows that hecan't man all the different

(23:36):
pieces of his solution byhimself.
So he's coming to us saying, Howcan we automate this?
Can you build me a system thatautomates what I do and very
smartly going after one specificvertical?
So sometimes saying no to awhole lot of things but saying
yes to one thing will be yoursaving grace here.

SPEAKER_01 (23:56):
The other thing, Bert, these service solopreneurs
that are going in and some ofthe solopreneur communities that
I'm a member of, we talk aboutthis, is that The revenue looks
like this.
All the services people, we loveit when we're working, so we
quit networking and doing allthe things that you need to do
to get clients,

SPEAKER_03 (24:13):
right?

SPEAKER_01 (24:14):
And then you lose a client.
And so what we're saying is,hey, but you know what?
I guarantee you, you felt thepain, just like you said, Roy.
You come up with a need.
And what if you could augment?
Okay, let's just say you're notlooking to build a unicorn, but
if you were looking at somethingthat even brought in half of
what Aaron said, let's just sayit only brings in$50,000 a year.
So now you're It doesn't looklike this, it looks like this,

(24:36):
right?
You're much less.
And you just got this, you startto extend that runway, start to
build that little base.
And this way you're still doingthe services that you may love
and you're being a fractionalCOO and you know I love it, but
I've got this other revenuestream from the software
business that I started thatmade sense and had customers and
had need in the marketplace.
And now I can count on thatbaseline revenue so that I'm not

(24:59):
so feast and famine.
So there's lots of ways to lookat this and make that, you know,
when you combine the place thatwe, you know, we kind of said
this already in the start, thoseof us entering this midlife,
retirement, whatever you want todo phase, we're not
billionaires, right?
We don't have unlimited funds,so we do have to watch, you
know, income and outgo.

(25:20):
We don't like the feast andfamine of only doing services,
so we lean into themulti-streams of income, and it
can be, it might be multipleservices, but it can also be
things that aren't services, andthat's where we're playing.
Like, look, we can help you.
We can help.

SPEAKER_02 (25:34):
Yeah, no, I like it.
You know, one of the otherthings is that for some of the,
I'll say service providers,right?
AI can certainly augment some ofwhat they do.
Not all of them, right?
If you're out there, you know,cleaning a pool, well, but it
may be it helps you with yourfunnel, right?
Your sales funnel, right?
Lead generation, things of thatnature, right?
So there's a lot of places whereit can play to help smooth out

(25:55):
that curve, right?
Because we all need that funnelloaded, you know?
Oh, that's excellent.
Well, you know, you started tobring up the midlife thing.
And so maybe we talk a littlebit about that because, you
know, You know, there's recent,I mean, just reading about, you
know, Microsoft the other day,right?
Laying off 7,000 people.
And, you know, a lot of themwere in the, really in the
software engineering area,right?
You know, the devs and programmanagers, a lot of what I've

(26:17):
done over the years, and someproduct managers, things of that
nature.
And that's just one company,right?
A big company.
But many of these people had,you know, 20 years there, 25
years.
And so now they're at that pointwhere it's like, just like what
we talked about at the verybeginning of this, right?
They reached a point wherethey're too young to, stop and
maybe they're not able to.

(26:38):
Corporate is not that crazyabout keeping them around.
So maybe we get into the midlifetopic and how people are
embracing some of these ideasand maybe some of the things
that are impacting them andcausing these changes that we
see in corporate America.

SPEAKER_04 (26:57):
So I want to jump on this one first, right?
Because the thing about...
losing your job from a companylike microsoft if you've been
there for 20 years chances areyou're still leaving with a
relatively robust stockportfolio made up of microsoft
who are doing wonderful right somy heart still goes out because

(27:18):
you never know what somebody'spersonal finances but When you
think about people who aren't inthat, if they don't work for a
Meta or an Alphabet or Microsoftand they're still getting
impacted, you know, the average401k balance is about$192,000
for somebody who's in their, youknow, born between 1965 and

(27:42):
1980.
So I always refer to the GenXers.
I don't typically talk aboutboomers because by and large,
they have something that a lotof Gen Xers missed out, and
that's the pension.
We can make an argument thateverybody who's a boomer has a
pension.
I get that.
But when we're talking aboutjust overall markets, that's the

(28:04):
last group that benefited fromhaving a combined pension along
with a 401k program of somesort, right?
So they were set up differently.
I remember growing up andeveryone telling me from the
time I was an undergrad, youjust got to make sure you put
some money in your 401k.
It's going to be great.
Well,$192,000 does not add up toa great retirement.

(28:26):
So my thesis is really, youknow, if you go right now to
bizbuysale.com, there are anynumber of small businesses that
are for sale by the previousgeneration.
Matter of fact, they're tryingto unload their businesses so
they can retire.
And that's great.
And if that's something thatinterests you, you're probably
not our target market anyway.

(28:46):
But, and I would even say thateven if you own a small
business, you probably have anidea for something that you wish
that you created or somethingthat would just make life easier
for not just you, but for peoplewho do the same work as you.
If you're not in that group, ifyou work in tech, but not one of
the majors, you don't have ahuge stock portfolio that's
going to carry you for the next10 to 15 or 20 years.

(29:07):
What do you do?
What we do know, and I don'tcare what your beliefs are
politically, your socialsecurity check is either going
to do one of two things.
It's either going to give youjust enough to live on, or it's
not going to be there at all.
Those are the two options.
You can argue about how muchmore it could be, but right now,

(29:30):
it's not set up to give you astandard of living that most
people are going to becomfortable with.
What are you going to do?
You have to come up with a plan.
And when I see the variouscompanies right now, the early
movers, the first movers who arepromoting, hey, you be your own
software startup and you canmake a gazillion dollars.

(29:52):
In some ways, they're beingdisingenuous, right?
If you actually look at the casestudies of the people who are
being successful, they're peoplewho already have started a
business or two, or they werealready coders for small
companies and they were sellingto people who code just like
them.
So they knew the market verywell.
What about the next group?
So I'm surprised that it's notas urgent as an issue for a

(30:17):
great majority of people.
One of the things that Will hadmentioned early on, we said
we're going to start aninternational company day one.
Without disclosing where we'resetting up, there are grants
being made available tocompanies who are willing to
help individuals to becomeself-sufficient and become
startup founders.
They're not necessarilyself-sufficient.
They're not always in the U.S.
They're in other geos.

(30:38):
So it's part of what we do,which is really a combination of
advising and softwaredevelopment.
It's that intersection.
So we can take a person who hasan idea and help them refine it
before they go spending money.
And then once we validate it,that there's a there there, then
we hand it over to really lowcost software development.
so they can get to the nextphase.

(31:00):
And we know in softwaredevelopment, there's always a
next phase, whether it's thenext round of funding or what
have you.
But it's nicer to know that youcan work with someone who's
going to do this on your behalfwithout asking for a percentage
of your company, which is what alot of outfits who offer

(31:22):
advising as a VC do.
would do, they're gonna do itfor a percentage.
We are saying, we'll do it withyou for a fixed amount that's
transparent.
So, you know, there's alwaysgonna be opportunities to
partner, but there's alwaysgonna be opportunities to say,
you know what, we're here tohelp you.
We're your virtual CTO andvirtual advisor.

SPEAKER_01 (31:42):
And, you know, going back a little bit on the midlife
is that, you know, I'm gonnapile on to what Aaron said
about, you know, I'll just putin your 401k.
I've never been a performance.
I guess that's a fair word.
You know, I didn't finishcollege.
I don't have a degree, right?

(32:04):
I didn't.
And I came up through technologyand made it all the way to the
C-suite without it.
And generation, that's veryunlikely, right?
I mean, if you tell people thattoday, they're like, what?
How do you not have a degree?
You were the COO at blah, blah,blah, blah company, right?
And so, you know, things havechanged.
And And looking at that and notgoing, well, I need to put a

(32:27):
little bit in the 401k, I needto make sure that I pay an extra
$100 a month on my mortgage andkeep that car an extra two or
three years and all of the sageadvice that I'm not discounting,
but it also isn't going to getyou to pass that average 192
that we're talking about, whichI'm just going to tell you, that
is not going to get youanywhere.
It's like, especially if you'retrying to stay and live in the

(32:48):
States.
But even if you're not and youreally cut it down, what are you
going to do in retirement?
You know, the other thing is, isthat the retirement age to the
time we're not wandering aroundon the earth is also longer.
So what are you going to do?
You're going to sit in a chairand do nothing?
If that's your goal, hey, goodfor you.
I'm glad that you can be happydoing that.
And so my advice, my thing is,is that we talk about

(33:11):
mid-journey.
Yeah, let's...
The 30-somethings need to bethinking about this too.
We need to get deeper in there.
This is not just for the, youknow, 50 and 60-year-old people
that we're talking about.
We're talking about the30-somethings.
Think about it now.
Even if you look at the way thatwe've engaged with companies
throughout careers, there was aday when, you know, a decent

(33:33):
tenure was, you know, 15 yearsor so, right?
And if you're in technologyspace and you stay with a
company more than four or fiveyears ago, man, what are you
doing?
Why are you still there?
So their notion of stability haschanged.
And so again, back to thinkingin multiple streams, thinking
about disrupting yourself andthinking about what is, what am
I going to do?
It's like, okay, I still gotkids at home.

(33:54):
I'm not ready to retire.
I'm not ready, but what am Igoing to do?
Okay.
It's not a viable thing.
I know social security isrickety bet at best, right?
I've got to put into it andthat's all good.
And I understand, but I can'treally count on that.
And even if I put those twotogether, I can't start Start
thinking now about somethingother than.
As you're entering midlife, talkto some people that have been

(34:14):
there, done that.
And make some differences now.

SPEAKER_02 (34:22):
You know, some of your experience, I mean,
experience I've had, myexperience has been is that
these things, for me anyway,have always taken longer than I
thought they would.
I can get development done likethat.
I can go and create somethingquickly.
And it, you know, it works andall that.
But there's a lot more to it,you know, to your point than
that, right?
Is it a real thing, right?

(34:42):
Is it something that peoplewant?
Again, to your point, you can'tjust build it and they will come
because they won't.
You got to go make some noise.
And the thing is, a lot of the,I'll say that there's a, there's
a A set of folks, an age group,tend to be at the younger end.
They're used to seeing peoplewith, you know, in these YouTube
videos, right, on private planesand Porsches and all this kind
of stuff like that, you know,Lamborghinis.
And it's not always real, right?

(35:04):
There's a lot of fakery to that.
But, you know, they want to movefast.
And I don't blame them.
I like the energy.
I've never been that patientmyself, and I like that.
But there are some of thesethings that it certainly
behooves you to take a littletime and have a little thought,
you know, and maybe get somethought leadership.
Right.
And, you know, be betterprepared as you go into these

(35:25):
things, because it doesn'talways turn out the way that you
think it might.
And, you know, there's been alot of pivots that have
happened.
Right.
Pretty, pretty incredible onesjust recently.
I mean, like, you know, just theother day, Windsurf, right?
OpenAI, you know, wants, youknow, three billion for
Windsurf.
They pivoted.
Windsurf pivoted a year or soago.
And so anyway, there's a lot ofthat.

(35:45):
And so, again, I'm thinking, youknow, where you understand
what...
what the idea is, what themarket is, and get some input
from others.
Again, things that I think are agreat idea, I go talk just to my
wife, and she was like, yeah,what are you thinking?
Are you nuts?

SPEAKER_04 (35:59):
So here's the thing.
So in terms of technology andideas, most people that I come
across...
they're going to be in one oftwo camps.
Either they know that they justare not that creative and they
can't come up with a lot ofideas, or they're the kind of
person who can throw off threeideas between the time they get
up in the morning and the timethey go to bed.
Their issue is, how do I qualifywhich one is worth my time to

(36:23):
pursue?
And so having somebody who's asounding board can definitely
help to filter all that.
The thing is, no matter what theidea is, right?
Someone came to me the other daywith an idea about a music
player that could be, you couldcrowdsource the playlist and it
would automatically sequence itbased on not just the BPMs, but
the vibe.

(36:43):
So I'm also a part-time DJ.
We'll say a bedroom DJ.
That's what they refer to us as.
And so you could feed that intoa software and it will auto mix
to create a party.
And that was interesting.
But by the end of the day, shehad another idea, right?
And so, but here's the thing,right?
The thing is, is while thetechnology and the ideas may

(37:03):
change, the discipline requiredto validate the idea stays
consistent, right?
And it doesn't have to take along time.
It can.
And it also doesn't have to takea lot of money.
It can.
And I'm always in favor ofproviding a person, and I did
this as a product manager, youknow, I would give basically

(37:24):
three scenarios and three levelsof investment to make a decision
on what to do to get to the nextgate, right?
Those are things that we aretrained to do.
Roy, you've done this throughoutyour career.
So we have the benefit ofknowing how to think of getting
something from an idea toproduct that is not necessarily

(37:44):
known to a lot of people unlessthey go through basically
learning school of hard knocks.
They try a couple of ideas, theyfail and they figure it out.
Oh, I need to do more researchin the front end.
But I think...
that having one or two peoplenear you in terms of being able
to flesh out ideas, in some waysit's a benefit, but it's also a

(38:05):
problem.
Because remember, when you comeup with an idea, you also have a
target market, and the peoplearound you may not be the target
market.
Exactly.
Right?
And so the conversation that Ihave with my friends and family
when I have an idea is they'llsay, well, that doesn't make any
sense to me.
And I'm thinking to myself,that's because you're not the
target market.
But if you were, because wetalked to so many people.

(38:28):
So I posted this on LinkedIn awhile back, and I think you may
have seen it, that right now, ifI were investing in a software
startup or a startup ofanything, I would focus the
majority of my energy on how toget to know the market better.
and get their participation evenmore than building the product
itself.
100%.

(38:49):
If you can get them to have aconversation and engage with
you, your target market, thenbuilding the product is actually
much easier.

SPEAKER_02 (38:56):
For sure.
Yeah, I'm actually going throughsome of that right now.
I mean, I'm going to havewebinars with people that are in
the commercial constructionbusiness, right?
Schools, hospitals, hotels, youname it, right?
And I know a little bit aboutthat field, but not as much as
they do.
And so I'm essentially lookingto pick their brains, right?
And how AI might be able to helpthem, right?

(39:17):
How they can use that in some ofwhat they do.
But the key is understanding,you know, essentially their
day-to-day and what's, you Youknow, all those questions and
pseudo cliches, you know, thatwe've heard for years and years
and years.
But basically, understandingthat market a little better, a
little deeper.

(39:37):
And, you know, frankly, one ofthe things I ask people all the
time is like, hey, what's a taskthat you have to do day in, day
out, week in, week out that youwould love to hand off to
somebody else?
And when I hear that, I alwayswrite that down because that's
an idea that, you know, that's aproblem, right?
Potentially, right?
Again, you got to go and dig ina little farther.
But

SPEAKER_04 (39:56):
anyway.
The beauty of being...
someone who's midlife is,especially if you're somebody
who's been in construction for15, 20 years, or you're somebody
who been in healthcare 15, 20,or something that you have.
So the way I view AI now, and mywife and I was having this
conversation last night.
Right now, a lot of ways thatChatGPT and tools like that are

(40:18):
being used is like the ultimatevirtual assistant that you can
ask it a bunch of questions andit streamlines the work that you
would have done.
That's tip of the iceberg still.

SPEAKER_02 (40:27):
Right?
Right.

SPEAKER_04 (40:29):
Now you can do agents to go out and do tasks.
So the things that you weretalking about in terms of doing
the market research or standingup the landing page or all.
So, you know, you can deployagents to go do that.
Nothing beats being able to havea real conversation with real
humans until you start sellingto the machines, right?
So as long as you're stilltransacting and expecting money

(40:52):
from a real human, nothing isever going to replace having
that interaction to find out ifthey're there.
But to bring this back to homewith someone who's, you know,
40, 30, 40, 50 years old, youalready are a subject matter
expert

SPEAKER_02 (41:07):
in

SPEAKER_04 (41:07):
something.
So you don't, when I see peoplesaying, you know, and I'll be
guilty of this too, but when Isee people saying, I'm out of
work, I'm going to go pay to goget my resume updated, my
LinkedIn profile updated, I'mgoing to go back to school, get
this certification, blah, blah,blah.
What my brain starts going tois, okay, so now you're
competing with on many differentvariables, right?

(41:33):
You already are a subject matterexpert.
What we need to do is pull outthe problems that you already
know about that need to besolved.
And would you rather, and thisis hypothetical obviously, would
you rather spend$10,000 gettinga new certification and your
resume and your LinkedInprofile?

(41:54):
Or would you rather put thatmoney towards building a
business for you that couldthrow off$50,000 to$60,000 a
year?
It should be a no-brainer, butit's a mindset change that most
people aren't...
They're not convinced that theycan trust themselves to make
that commitment.
And that's a lot of what we haveto...

SPEAKER_01 (42:12):
That's it.
Most humans don't like change.
As I was saying in the techworld, you want to keep an
engineer in their seat longer tothrow nickels, dimes, and
quarters behind them becausethey're afraid of change.
They won't back up.
And so with that notion thatpeople are afraid of change is

(42:33):
that they see it.
from their perspective as arisk, as something crazy, as
something scary.
And so they'll double down ontheir commodity.
It's literally the samecommodity that got them pushed
out of the marketplace to startwith.
The reason that you're 55 yearsand can't get another job is
because ageism is real.
And doubling down on a new certand getting the best resume on

(42:55):
the planet and the best LinkedInprofile on the planet are going
to do you zero good.
I've spent those thousands thatAaron talks about.
I'm not guessing, right?
And so...
The thing that I want peoplethat are listening to this to
take care of You don't have towait until you're 50 or 60,
because even at 30, you'vealready got something.

(43:15):
Got us.
You're an SME.
You're a subject matter experton something.
Do you like that something?
That's the first question youshould ask.
And if not, great.
Then become, you've got a littletime, become a service matter
expert between now and the time,so that when you're ready to
pull that trigger, you can go,okay, this is where my next
happy place can come herewithout depending on...

(43:37):
This very fickle and not on yourside corporate machine.
But America is not there foryou.
This is not the way it works.
It's not reality.
And so helping people to see anew reality.
I mean, look, in a lot of ways,you know, I say we're not
therapists.
You know, in a lot of ways,that's not necessarily true in
some ways.

SPEAKER_02 (43:53):
Well, you know, and I was just thinking as you were
saying that, somebody would havesaid that to me when I was 30 or
35, you know, and really kind ofpushed me on that.
But, yeah, no doubt now, youknow, there's so many of these
folks that aren't in tech,right?
I think one of the issues I haveis a bit of a bias because I've
been in tech all my adult life.

(44:13):
And so I tend to think that way.
But there's so many people thatare not, right?
Again, healthcare and notnecessarily the tech side of
healthcare because there's alittle bit of that.
But they could be in virtuallyany field and when this happens
to them, it's a shock to thesystem, obviously.
And then it's like, well, whatdo I do?
And they do fall into these kindof, I don't want to say trap,
but these common steps ofupdating the resume and such.

(44:36):
And I think thatEntrepreneurship really has to
be the answer.
I don't see too many otheroptions.
And so if that's the case, let'sjust assume that that's a valid
thesis here.
So if they're going to go offand do this, they need to
understand the market andcompetition and such.
But how do they really start?

(44:57):
Because I see people that say,I'm going to go out to Upwork or
whatever and post something outthere.
And they don't necessarily knowwhat they're going to get.
They don't necessarily know thequestions to ask, right?
So I'm

SPEAKER_04 (45:11):
going to serve this one up to Will.
But here's the thing, Mike.
Look, I was there.
And what we know is that theemployer-employee relationship
is changing once again.
It changes in every age.
And we're upon that change againwhere...
And I actually think the youngerpeople, like my sons who are in

(45:34):
their 20s, already have a notionthat they don't expect any
particular job to be meaningful.
Other than providing them apaycheck to live on, that's the
full extent of the agreement.
Whereas if I talk to my mother,who was a state worker for most
of her career, like she expectedto be taken care of.
That was part of the contract.
So what we're really saying ishow do we start to rewire

(45:57):
ourselves so that we're preparedto be self-sufficient And I
think that doing things likeside hustles or, you know,
Upwork or whatever, it is a goodopportunity just to get your
toes in the water.
But realize what it is.
Just because you're doing thatin year one, know what you're

(46:17):
doing it for.
Maybe it's for some extra cash,but maybe what it's really doing
is teaching you how to budget,how to think about yourself as a
business owner, even if it's asmall business at the time.
One of the things...
that Will kind of touched on.
We talked about the three thingsthat every business has.
Here's what I know.
I know that a lot of people areokay with a lot of the idea of

(46:41):
being a business owner.
And even if, you know,especially if they're married,
because they can say, well, I'mnot that great with money.
My wife is, so she can have theaccounting.
I'll handle this other stuff.
But universally, there's onearea that everyone seems to want
to fall down on, and that'ssales.
Nobody things that they're aseller.

SPEAKER_02 (47:02):
Right.

SPEAKER_04 (47:03):
The good thing about technology today is it can do
most of that.
You know, there's onlineplatforms that you never
actually have to sell, right?
But you still have to thinkabout the customer and how you
position things to them so theywill buy.
The funny thing for me is mostpeople who approach me and say
that they're not a seller aresome of the biggest salespeople
I've ever come across becausethey have sold themselves on the

(47:25):
notion that they can't sell.
My wife...
has an affinity for working out.
So if she had ever gotten achance to work for this
particular vendor who took offduring the COVID era, who does
exercise equipment remotely, ifshe had ever gotten hired, she
probably would have been theirtop salesperson.
This from the same person whosays that they hate selling,

(47:47):
they can't sell.
So what I tell people is it'snot that you can't sell, it's
that you don't, you haven'tfound a thing that you're
passionate about yet.
And so as Will was talkingabout, you know, finding things,
trying things that, you know, ifyou're 30, if you find something
and you're not really excitedabout it, go on to the next
thing.
That's really what we're talkingabout is finding something that

(48:08):
you can be passionate about.
There used to be a TV show.
It might still be on.
Like I said, I'm in anothercountry, so I don't get the same
channels.
But it was called Dirty Jobs.
And I used to tell people allthe time, there's a lot of money
to be made doing dirty jobs.
A dirty job is a job that nobodyelse wants to do.
We all look at it and we allsay, I ain't doing that.

(48:30):
But even garbage men...
in New York City can make$100,000 plus a year.
So it may not be a lot of money,but it's all in changing the way
you think about the problem.
So, Will, I know I waslong-winded.
I know you talked to a lot ofpeople who are at that point or
you have spoken to a lot ofpeople who are at that point
that they don't know if they'reready to be a business person.

(48:53):
What do you say to them?

SPEAKER_01 (48:55):
And so what I say is, one, understand your why.
Why are you going off on yoursolopreneur journey?
Whether it's solopreneur inservices like we talked about or
whether it's solopreneur tostart a business of some sort or
both, right?
Understand your why because itneeds to be strong enough to
help you to do the parts of yourbusiness, at least initially,
that you do not want to do.

(49:16):
You want to do the operationspart, because if you don't want
to do that, well, don't evenstart, because that's you.
So you want to do the operationspart.
You have to do the financialpart, and everybody seems to
understand that you have to dothe financial part.
There are some good resources,and you can tap your network and
get the very minimal part done,form an LLC, all of those basic
blocking and tackling things,and those tend to be one-off

(49:38):
endeavors.
So that also tends to get done.
It tends to get overdone,actually, but that's okay.
When people fall down, It's forpeople, especially people that
didn't come up through sales,didn't come up through
marketing, didn't come upthrough product promotion,
right?
Or Marcom, as it was called inthe day.
If you didn't or not experiencein that area, people look at it
and say, well, you know, I'lljust make some posts on LinkedIn

(50:00):
or I'll just have a, you know.
And so what I'll say is your whyneeds to be strong enough to get
you across the line to thebasics of marketing you.
or your product.
Do you know your niche?
Oh, no, there's no such thing.
Yes, there is.
You're just not, you don't, youneed to talk to somebody or
something that can ask the rightquestions.

(50:21):
What is your brand authority?
Right?
That is...
Why does your niche, why are youan expert, right?
What is your SME, right?
What is your there?
It's like, I don't know.
It's like, okay, well, again,talk to somebody or something
and get that done.
And then you take it the next,after that, it's like, okay,
well, I got a brand authority.
It's like, okay, that's cool.
What's my proprietary or uniquemethod to me, right, to what I'm

(50:43):
doing or my company?
What's special?
One method that makes thisdifferent from all of the other
fractional COOs out there orwhatever it is you're doing or
from software that, developscolors, or whatever it is that
you've got.
What is special?
And then finally, we get to thecrux of it, because we don't get
all four of the primaries.
The fourth thing is, what isyour lead generation system?

(51:06):
System, plan, not, well, I'mgoing to post it on LinkedIn
twice a day.
That's not enough, right?
It's like you need to have asystem, and you need to figure
out a way to work and go withthat system progressively over
time, balanced against yourfinances, right?
In addition to all of the humaninteractions and yes building a
network and shaking hands andkissing babies it's all

(51:28):
important referral networks veryimportant but they cannot be the
only if your why isn't strongenough to help you get through
whichever one of those two humpsreally says oh my god that's so
hard some people do that overfinance right and again my wife
and i she hates the finance partso we partnered right i did all
of that right you got to makereal investment in the the

(51:50):
marketing sales side of things.
And your why has to be strongenough to get you past that.
If you go, well, that's okay.
I'll get two out of three.
I'll be good enough.
My advice to people when theysay that, I'm like, stay home,
right?
Go out there and stay on thegrind, stay on the thing.
You're not going to make it,right?
I mean, you might get lucky, butthat's not a plan either.

(52:11):
And so, you know, part of whatwe will do is develop tools to
help those people not have toexperience the length of pain
that they're feeling goingthrough the marketing, arguing
with themselves as to whetherthey're a salesperson or not,
right?
I'm very much guilty.
I don't like sales.
I don't like that thing.
But something I believe in, likethis company that Aaron and I

(52:34):
are building or the productsthat are putting out there or a
product that I have built thatsolves a need of mine when I am
my own customer, I can sell thecrap out of that.

SPEAKER_02 (52:42):
Sure.

SPEAKER_01 (52:43):
No problem.
I got no problem.
I'm an extrovert,

SPEAKER_04 (52:45):
right?
No problem.
So I was just going tointerrupt.
So one of the things that wewanted to accomplish in this
conversation, even though we'renot announcing the name of the
company, is what are we actuallydelivering, right?
And so you've heard Will and Italk about things from different
perspectives.
They're both unified in talkingabout what is necessary for a

(53:08):
company.
Will, who's not a marketer, hasfaced a lot of challenges in
marketing.
And so he has led thedevelopment of one of our first
products that we'll bring tomarket that helps people to
figure out what their brandauthority is, how they go to
market, what's the mosteffective story for them to
tell.

(53:28):
And it's good for someonebecause if I were to do it, it
might be a little bit moreclinical.
I've been in marketing like mywhole career.
For him to do it, it reallyaddresses the pains that he sees
founders face.
Whereas I'm more on the frontend of how do you validate
whether or not the idea that'sin your head is the one to focus
on.
If you've got 20 ideas for abusiness that you could devote

(53:52):
your time to, how do you decidewhich one is actually worth your
effort?
Or even which four?
Because if you've got 20,chances are you're not going to
devote all your energy to one.
Do you have a systematic way tobe able to say, okay, I need
something, a system that to goout and validate these ideas for

(54:15):
me such that when I wake up inthe morning or look at it in a
couple of hours, it's tellingme, okay, of your 20 ideas,
these are the subset that youprobably have a real shot at
winning.
Now, you can.
You can take that and run withit, or you can do the additional
homework of going out andtalking to real people, getting

(54:36):
their input, refining it, andthen now you're taking that four
down to two or one.
A lot of people need that.
They feel like they need kind ofan outside, unbiased opinion to
know where they should investtheir time and efforts if
they're going to do this and beserious about it.

SPEAKER_02 (54:52):
Yeah, you know, one thing I'm thinking, and I'm just
going to ask you as right now,but would you be willing to come
back for another episode and wedive into that a bit deeper,
maybe even show something thatyou've been working on if you're
willing to, and maybe stepthrough the process that people
might go through.
From the very beginning, I havean idea.
I want to do this.

(55:13):
And so begin to work their waythrough this and what it might
look like.
And I mean, I have a gazillionof them.
But I also know that some ofthem are like, yeah, I don't
think I'll fool with that.
But, you know, I write them alldown because I never know.
But I think if we did that, itwould it would be helpful for it
could be helpful for a lot ofpeople and certainly be helpful
for me.

SPEAKER_04 (55:32):
There are two inputs that are required for for
validating whether or not it's agood idea.
One is, can you describe whatthe problem is you're trying to
solve

SPEAKER_02 (55:41):
there?
Here we go.

SPEAKER_04 (55:42):
And who are you trying to solve it for?
And the more detail you canprovide on those two questions,
the better the outcomes.

SPEAKER_02 (55:50):
Yeah, that is outstanding.
You just kind of went right tomy heart here because I just
went through this.
I had this conversation withmyself about a week ago and
adjusting really my target abit, you know, because I
realized I was aiming a bit low.
And once I up-leveled my target,I realized that the
conversations were far differentand far more advantageous for

(56:12):
both of us.
sides

SPEAKER_04 (56:13):
isn't that interesting too i find that that
happens where first-timeentrepreneurs tend to shoot low
i remember when i first starteddoing the fractional work and i
was thinking okay chances are mytarget by target customer, if
you will, was going to be likethe VP of marketing.
Because I was thinking bigcorporations, whereas the person

(56:36):
who actually found the mostvalue was straight to the CEO's
office.

SPEAKER_02 (56:39):
There you go.

SPEAKER_01 (56:40):
I do want to jump in and answer your question
directly, Roy, is thatabsolutely we'll come back and
play show and tell.
I want to get that part on therecord.
And we can show you the pathfrom idea that we're talking

(57:01):
about.
We'll start with the pain.
from the pain to the ideation tothe, I'm thinking about doing
this for me, to let's validateit in the market and how we did
it and who got to use it andtest it and play with it, to,
cool, I need to iterate andshift and pivot, and this is now
what we've ended up with that wethink is there.
And then to the next possiblesteps, right, is, oh, okay, so

(57:25):
here's how these two ideas thatwe have can dovetail and become
reality.
something even greater.
So we definitely have a storythat we can tell to those ends.

SPEAKER_02 (57:36):
Well, that's great.
I think if we do that, that'd bebeneficial.
And we can talk about some ofthe other things that come up in
that because, you know, we don'thave to dive into this right
now.
Maybe save it for the next one.
But, you know, the whole vibecoding thing, you know, people,
again, right, jumping in with anidea and knocking something out.
There's a whole lot of issueswith it.
Let

SPEAKER_04 (57:53):
me just say this.
I love vibe coding.
We are not anti-vibe coding.
We're just pro softwarebusiness.
And my coding does not alwaysmean you've got a business idea.
That's it.
That's it.

SPEAKER_02 (58:06):
That's for sure.
Well, there's those issues.
And then you get into some ofthe technical pitfalls as well.
I'm on a couple of onlineboards, right?
And basically I see people thatare, I'll refer to them as
newbies.
And I don't mean that in adisparaging way, but they're new
to software development.
And they're finding that itain't quite as easy as they

(58:27):
thought it might be.
You can get to 90%, 95% and thenit's like, I'm stuck and I'm in
the death spiral here, eating upall my tokens and I can't get
out.

SPEAKER_04 (58:37):
And that's where having a seasoned team of actual
technologists, sometimes you'regoing to be able to go forward
with your no-code stack.
In some cases, that will be thecase.
It may even be a lot of thecases.
But in some cases, there'senough complexity that having

(58:59):
real humans who've built realsoftware products is going to be
the answer.
And for that, even if you'veever been in product, which I
know both of you have, one ofthe hardest things to do is to
translate the idea of thevisionary product guy or even
CEO to the developer who has togo create it.
Even if you can give thatworking prototype to the

(59:20):
development team and say, thisis what I had in mind, You cut
so much time and frustration outof the development process.

SPEAKER_02 (59:27):
It's phenomenal.
I totally agree with you.
Because, you know, a picture isworth a thousand words.
Go ahead, Will.

SPEAKER_01 (59:35):
Back to the vibe coding, and we'll just talk
about chatbots in general,right?
Chatbots, they want to pleasethe person asking questions.
This is the way they're set up.
They will lie to you.
And then they will admit theylied to you.
If you say, is this based infact?
It's like, oh, oh, well, youwant a different answer then.

(59:55):
And your dev partner vibe codingthing, the solution that it
offers is the one that's at thetop of whatever priority it came
up with has nothing to do withthe logic of what you're trying
to build.
And so this is where, like Aaronsaid, having the skills, even my
skills as a coder, which aregreatly atrophied, have already
shown to be beneficial with vibecoding.

(01:00:17):
And then you take it to the nextlevel with someone who's still
active, it does make adifference.
But like you say, not anti-bindcoding at all.
Very, very high and positive onthere because there's lots of
benefits as long as you're goingto properly balance it with a

SPEAKER_02 (01:00:30):
company.
Yep.
Good.
All right.
Well, look, let's go ahead andwe end here and then we'll come
back and really get into thisprocess of taking an idea and
working our way through that.
And we'll see what some of whatyou guys are working on.
But I think this is a great,great introduction to not only
the topic, but then helpingpeople to move along because

(01:00:51):
this is a real thing.
It's a real problem now thatpeople are facing and anything
that we can do and whether it'seven some small way to help
folks would be a fantasticthing.
So I thank the two of you foryour time and your energy in
this and we'll get back togethersoon and we'll knock out this
next episode and who knows wherethat will lead.

SPEAKER_04 (01:01:11):
Roy, thanks for making your platform available
to us.
We really appreciate it.
Thank you.
We do appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 (01:01:15):
All right, guys.
Thanks.
Bye-bye.
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