169: Insights and Observations on Starting a Business with Josh Pigford

In this episode, I chat about diversifying your life and Bjork interviews Josh Pigford from Barometrics about the insights he's learned by starting his own businesses. Hi friend, and welcome to the Food Blogger Pro Podcast, AKA the podcast created to help you, whether you're an inspiring or seasoned blogger, create the blog you've always dreamed of. I'm Alexa, the general manager of Food Blogger Pro, and we're just so excited that you're here. And before we hop into the episode today, I'd like to take a second to thank our sponsors, our sister site for WordPress plugins, wptasty. If you go to wptasty.com, you'll see that we offer three different plugins under the WP Tasty brand, Tasty Recipes, a Recipe plugin, Tasty Pins, a Pinterest SEO plugin, and Tasty Links, and Affiliate and Keyword Auto Linking plugin. All three plugins can positively impact your food blog, and I encourage you to check them out on wptasty.com and if you've been listening to the Food Blogger Pro Podcast for a while, you know that with the information about each episode sponsor, we include a helpful tasty tip that you can apply to your blog or your business. And today I want to quickly chat about diversification. You know, if you're a food blogger, it's probably hard to kind of remove yourself from the food blogging world. You know, we all need to eat, so food is always a part of our day, every single day. And people know that you're the food guy or the foodie, so they talk about that awesome meal they just had or a recipe they found in a magazine or on a TV show, you know. But I encourage you to step outside side of the food space every once in a while. Josh talks about this a bit in this episode of the podcast as well, but I found it incredibly refreshing and inspiring to spend some of my time learning about or just doing other things to broaden my horizons and to turn my focus for a little bit. I encourage you to make a list of questions you've been wondering about and start researching and learning about those things. For example, I realized that I drink a lot of coffee without actually understanding the work or the process that goes into getting the 16 ounces of liquid in my cup in the morning. So I decided to research, talk to local roasters, start a coffee subscription, take a coffee class. It's similar to food, but different enough to refresh my mind and help me focus on something other than food for a little bit. If you're feeling a little burnt out or uninspired, I encourage you to do the same. And now the episode. Josh is the founder of a company called Bare Metrics, which helps you understand your business's metrics, benchmarks, and so much more. Over the years, Josh has started quite a few businesses, and some were successful and some weren't so successful. But he has learned a ton about the business of making businesses, and that's what he's here to talk about today. In this episode, Josh talks about things like when you should actually ignore data, to whether you want your business to be a painkiller or a vitamin, and just so much more. It's a really fascinating interview and I think you'll learn a lot. Without any further ado. Bjork, take it away.

A little bit of background here. So we. I've been following along with what you've been doing for a while and just really appreciate your voice and how you talk about startups and being a business owner and everything that comes along with that. And so for me, it's just a fun chance to connect and talk to you a little bit about startup. So a little bit of a selfish podcast interview in that way. And also I think that the things that you talk about are so important for other business owners to hear. And I was looking through your, for lack of a better word, tweetstorm, but the different, like, list of things that you came up with, insights and observations on starting a business and just so many good things wrapped up in that and kind of a base of like, self care as being a part of that too. And I just think you bring a really unique combination to, uh, you're able to combine that in a really unique way. We were talking about business and startups and working on things and building something and growing things and scaling things, but also it's like, hey, there's this human element that is so critically important to it. Um, so anyways, that was kind of the reason for saying, hey, would you be up for coming on the podcast? Well, cool.

Well, I appreciate it, man, but would.

Love to kick things off by just hearing a little bit about your story and, and, and kind of the origin story of Josh and then jumping into some of those takeaways that I feel like would be important to surface. So. Okay. Sound okay?

Yeah, it all sounds great. So I guess, I mean, for me, I, I would say I was like typical entrepreneurial kid. I mean, like, I was a kid who was, you know, always like, hey, I'm gonna like, put a Sign out in the front yard offering to cut your grass or looking for ways to, you know, make or sell things. I mean, really, even when I was a child. So that's always been in my DNA on some level. And I've always been, you know, the kind of person who's just wanting to make or build or create things. I don't consider myself an artist. I went to school for graphic design. But, you know, to me, it's just like, I just enjoy creating things. And so that's sort of where anything that I do is sort of based or rooted in is my sort of desire or pull to make something out of nothing. And so that's just influenced everything I've done. I mean, I, you know, I. When we talk about careers or jobs or anything, I've really only had a couple of them at all over the past, you know, since I could be employed. And, you know, I worked in retail when I was in high school, but then past that, I had one job where I was a designer at a interactive design firm. Um, and I had that job for seven weeks. And that was the end of me as an employee. So. And that. And that was. That was 2005. So, you know, I joke that I would be a terrible employee, and I was. So I, you know, I'm just. I'm not. I have to be, like, making things, and it's, like, really hard inside of, like, an employee box.

Yeah, it's interesting to see. I feel like that's one of the characteristics that I see with you, like, as I observe who you are from a distance, is this maker, and not just maker of digital things, but also physical things. And I noticed that. So Bare Metrics, which is what a lot of people know you as your founder of BareMetrics, which is SaaS Analytics, SAS Metrics. How would you do. What would your elevator pitch be for Bare Metrics?

My cheesy buzzwordy title for it is that Barometrics is a revenue analytics platform. It just means that we tell you what's happening with your money.

Yep. And there was a time before we had a couple different products that we have now where I was like, what type, like SaaS metrics kind of business could we create? Because I just want to use Bare Metrics. Like, it just looks so good. It feels so good. And then we finally launched one, which is a WordPress plugins site. It has recurring revenue. It's called wptacey. We talk about a lot in the podcast, but I was like, okay, finally we have one. So now we can use baremetrics. So I would like to, in a small sense, credit you for encouraging me to start a recurring revenue business so I could use barometrics.

I appreciate that. I think in a lot of ways barometrics is, this can be a thorn in my side because it's like, it's this thing that can deliver really great news or it can also be terrible.

Sure.

Hey, you're doing amazing. And like every. You're on the top of the world, otherwise it can also tell you that things are going awful and I get the same, you know, barometrics as a business has the same ups and downs. And so there are days that I just loathe looking at our own product.

Yes, right.

I appreciate the compliment.

Yeah, for sure. And the interesting thing though is that I've noticed you being a maker and so Bare Metrics was something that you founded. You made Bare Metrics, you created a digital product. But I've also noticed that you're a maker in other places and with physical goods as well. And I was actually just watching a video of you sanding and it was this video of you, like putting these glasses on and this like protective mask. And so one of the things that I find so interesting is like you hear people so often say, hey, if you're going to do this, this being build a business, you create a company, you have to be 70 hours a week. You got to sacrifice time with your family. You have to at all ends make sure that the only focus is business. But for you, it seems like you have a successful business, you have a team, you've been able to grow Bare Metrics, and you also are doing things on the side that are kind of these creative endeavors. And I think I find that so admirable. How do you, in the startup ecosystem and the business building ecosystem, how do you resist the urge to give everything you have to your business?

So I think that it comes down to what, what's the driving force behind, you know, your, what you do with your time. So for me, this is the reason why I was always, I was a terrible employee in my seven weeks of employment was that it was someone else dictating sort of how I spent my time. And I need to have control over that in that I want to be able to choose to do things that require me to learn something new. So I can't keep doing the same thing over and over every day. It'll just drive me crazy. And so what's great about building a company and being the person who starts it is you you have to do a thousand different things and you're constantly thrown into the deep end of, you know, hey, here's some marketing stuff. Figure it out. Or here's this customer support thing. Figure it out. Like I, you know, every single day I, you know, it's sort of this. I don't know what I'm doing at all. And that's exactly where I thrive. I need to be in those situations. And so what I think happens is people get all in on a given thing which, you know, some people would call focus or like the. Which on some level, yes, it's good to have some focus. But I also think that if you focus on something too long, what you end up in is this like echo chamber of building a company where you can't. You get. It takes you longer to figure out solutions to problems. And you just, you start thinking, well, this is the way I have to do things. Because that's how everybody does it. And you don't ever get some sort of other perspective on it. And, And I mean there was. I certainly go through phases of that and. But I find that having other interests prevents that from happening as frequently because I, you know, I've got this. Projects I'm in the middle of that involve. Yes, like making these like concrete home decor things or building something out of wood or like coding some fun random project about like discovering new music or whatever. Or like it's something that just uses a part of my brain that I never ever have to use with bare metrics and it lets me come back to bare metrics with fresh perspective.

Yeah. In. In a way, it's almost saying the thing that isn't the thing. This is going to be a terrible way to say this. Let me know if you're tracking the thing that isn't the thing. Helps you build the thing. Like, even though you're not focusing on, in your case, bare metrics, it's the act of stepping away from it and focusing on something else. Like cedar and sail, which is what you're talking about. Kind of these beautiful little designed. It's concrete. Is that what it is? Coasters and planters and things like that allows you to look at and approach bare metrics differently, which I think is so valuable. The analogy that I can. Or the comparison that I would have is just last night or. No, it was Monday. So recording this on a Wednesday was just on Monday. My friend invited me to this once a month, sea shanty sing along at the Dublinaire in St. Paul. And everybody sings like shanty sea Songs like sailor songs. And it's like 50 people in this bar and they all know the songs. And there's this part of my brain that was activated where it's like it felt so good to be exposed to something so foreign and unfamiliar. And while doing that, for whatever reason, I start to think about and process other things that are like, related to it. But it's almost like I'm looking at it from a window that I didn't even know existed until I had this experience. And what a valuable thing that is.

Absolutely. Well, I mean, it's, you know, you ask an artist or a musician or whatever, where'd you get your. Where do you get your inspiration from? Or whatever. And it's just all the things, right? And the tiniest things that you observe around you can influence how you think about some sort of problem in some other completely unrelated field. And I think one of the biggest mistakes or one of the just the worst sort of outcomes of the entrepreneurship sort of startup gold rush is that people think that they have to dedicate every ounce of time that they have available and that sort of gets worshiped. And it's really just an insane way to. One, just to build a company and two, to even have an existence, because that's not much of an existence. To approach building a company as this all encompassing. You dedicate every, every single ounce of energy that you have at it. And I don't know, I think a lot of that comes out of people who have never built a business before or this is their first time to approach building even a product or anything where they think, I don't know whether it's just these visions of cashing out and making a ton of money or something. They think, well, after I've made bank, then I'll go back to doing whatever I want. But I mean, I think I've been doing this for 15 years and I'm going to do it for as long as I can function in some capacity where I'm making something, whether it's digital or otherwise. And so this has to be sustainable. It has. There's. I can't go all in to the point where I'm burnt out on it and I don't ever want to do it again. I have, I have to figure out a way to make it work long term. And that's what really drives me. Having lots of interests than just.

Do you feel like so bare metrics. It's a company where you get exposed to lots of other different entrepreneurs, people starting businesses. In some ways, you Get a small little peak, not just like numbers peak, but like interacting with the struggles of the day to day. For people that are building a business, do you think that's influenced the decisions that then you make on how you're building your business?

I think, you know, probably one of the most influential things is so we track why people cancel. And a significant portion of that is like the reason that they select is that they're shutting the business down. And to me it's like, okay, so it drives home the fact that so many businesses just don't work out. And when we have these like benchmarks that we can see internally and we even have like a public benchmarks page of all the SaaS companies or subscription companies that use us, and you see that most companies are not doing that great. And so for me, what influences that is the fact that it just drives home that for most people it's a struggle and that all of the. It's easy to kind of get caught up in X company gets 100 million in funding or Y company sells for billion dollars, whatever it is. And it's, it's just these extremes that you read about, which are not the daily thing for most companies. Most companies, it's like it's a slog and it's so much work and the needle hardly ever gets moved and there's not these amazing things that are happening every day. It's just trying to make it work.

Yeah. And it never gets reported on because it's not interesting. That's boring. Right.

Because that's like, the thing is like business building a business is mostly boring.

Yeah, for sure. And I would. We'll link to this in the show notes so people can check it out as well. But there's some great pages on Bare Metrics, open benchmarks, which is kind of these an average or kind of a snapshot look at different companies within Bare Metrics, which is really interesting to say or to see and to say, okay, like on average, if a company, let's say charges 10 to $25 a month, what's the lower quartile or the median? Mrr. Mrr for those that aren't familiar, is like the monthly recurring revenue for that business. What does that land at? And then there's also this open startups page which is interesting where it just shows companies that are open and saying like, here's exactly how much we're making and what it looks like. And familiar one would be ConvertKit. So we've talked to Nathan on the podcast before and we have some listeners that use ConvertKit, they're one of those companies that says, hey, we're going to expose our data and our revenue information. And they would maybe be an outlier in kind of the top 1 or 2% of like companies that grew really, really quickly and are at a really substantial amount. But then you see other companies where you know, hey, it's 1,000, 2,000, $4,000 a month, which is still really incredible. But like you said, it's not the massive growth of the $10 million funded company that's hiring like crazy and building at a ridiculous, ridiculous pace.

Well, and that was like, that was a big motivation for us even opening up that stuff was to surface the mundane. I mean, on some level, obviously you mentioned Nathan and ConvertKit. They were an open startup before they were doing really well. I mean they were an open startup when he was doing basically it was like essentially just him and maybe one or two other people doing a few thousand dollars a month and it just staying there for like a year. And you know, they chose to be open and it just also happened to be that they figured out what knobs to twist and all of a sudden, you know, over the course of a few months they go from making a few thousand a month to, you know, 100,000, 500,000amillion dollars a month. But you know, like for most though, that's it's just all sorts of boring and it's good to surface and show how boring it really is because it kind of, it takes away some of the shiny object that comes from building a company.

And I think the other thing that's important to point out that maybe if you get too caught up in it is just the reality of revenue versus profit. And all of these companies also have either man hours that they're putting in on the side or it could be their main thing and a lot of times teams too. So whether it be the open startups page or looking at anybody that does any type of reporting and saying like, hey, here's how much we're earning. Always remember, like there's many different components that go into that and that need to be factored in, but nonetheless really interesting to see and I would say an important page for people to check out because it's insightful and a lot of takeaways on that. One of the things that you'd mentioned, you've been doing business or business building or creating for 15 plus years and you had this recently, it was maybe at the beginning, ish of the summer, kind of went through this observation insights on what it's looked like to start companies, build companies, and I would love to pull some of those out. We'll link to that as well, so people can check out all of those. But there's a couple different elements that I thought would be so good to talk about and really important for people to know. And I'll just kind of go in order. But we won't do all. I think there's like 29. So we won't do all 29, but I'll pull some out that I. That I feel like were really important and interesting observations. One of the first things that you talked about was this idea of hiring or outsourcing finances immediately. And I know there's actually a story that goes along with that for baremetrics. That was a really pivotal point in your story. So can you talk about what that means and how people do that?

Yes. So a couple of years into baremetrics, we had taken on a little bit of money. And that started the cycle of hiring ahead of revenue. And when you've got a little bit of funding, you can hire quite a deal ahead of revenue. And so you end up with this, what's essentially a burn rate where you're spending more than you're making, but it's okay because you've got this, a lot of money in the bank. So we realized that the idea is you raise some money, hire some people, which helps you grow faster, and then eventually you are able to outpace.

The.

Money that you're burning and you can actually turn profitable pretty quickly. But that usually does not happen. And that was still the case for us. We had hired a bunch of people and we could not catch up with growth. We were growing, but not fast enough to catch up to our burn rate. So we were going to run out of money. And then you can't pay people. That's a problem. So we realized this with about 6, 7, 8 weeks of cash left in the bank, that this is. That we did not have much money left. And we realized that because I'd gotten introduced to a guy who did basically like, outsourced finance stuff for companies. I had been doing things manually myself in spreadsheets, and what I lacked was proper forecasting of where we were going to be in the coming weeks and months. And so when he started looking at our numbers, he quickly realized, hey, man, like, things are about to get nasty for you. Like, you gotta. You gotta change some stuff. And so we did, and we eventually got profitable and everything's fine now. But that led to that whole takeaway being like, I should have hired this guy from the beginning and I would have just saved myself and the team a world of hurt. So that's. Yes, I think you should hire, especially if you're not a finance person. I'm not at all. I. You know, it's funny, you start a business and it's like you don't care about the numbers that much. But I'm just, I'm not a numbers person that sense. So like accounting stuff, you know, bookkeeping, whatever, just. It makes my eyes glaze, glaze over. So. But you've got to have somebody who like that stuff's important. So you need somebody who can get, who can be this sort of external view for you to give you some. A dose of pessimism.

Yeah, I remember I would say it was probably two or three consecutive years where tax season would roll around and I would be there. There'd just be a week of me being so frustrated at the lack of systems that we had around finances. And eventually it was like, okay, this is a recurring pattern and if I don't change it, then this is just going to happen every time. And it was one of the first hires that we made was somebody to help with both bookkeeping and then doing the CPA work. Do you have any advice for where you find that person? Whether that be kind of on the, on the more beginning level kind of bookkeeping versus higher level. The person you were talking about was kind of like financing and forecasting.

Yeah, I mean, I don't. As far as finding someone, I think bookkeeping is just a base level good way to start. And really any bookkeeper is, you know, that has some references is probably as good as any. That alone is a good first step because, you know, if you leave the bookkeeping up to yourself, you'll update your books like once every quarter if you're lucky because you just. Nobody likes updating all these numbers and balancing stuff. So the base level do that. As far as finding a finance person to help forecast some stuff, I mean, I stumbled upon this guy from a referral from a friend. So. And I think it just kind of depends on what industry you're in. And like if it's helpful to find somebody who can do that and as familiar with your type of business. So if you can get referrals from other friends who've. Who have similar businesses that can make referrals, that's a good way to start.

Yeah, for sure. And for reference, for those that are listening, kind of wondering like how what does that look like what we did was there was just like a couple local CPA bookkeeping companies and connected with each one of them said like, essentially, here's what we're looking for. We're looking for somebody to do our books every month. And we set it up where it's like read only access to our bank account, access to our, we use shoebox for our receipts and then access to QuickBooks. And it's kind of like we'll just make sure. Our responsibility will be to make sure that every business transaction we use our card for it. Like that's what we're going to do on the bookkeeping side to make sure that it's really clean. Use the business card for it. And that's just been game changing for us because like you said, if it was up to me, it wouldn't be something that I think that I would be diligent enough to keep track of. One of the things that you talk about in a point that you make is this idea of ignoring data. And so you're talking about specifically this idea of launching a product and kind of doing this a B testing. But I think it's kind of this universal concept that people could apply to what they're doing. Why is it important to ignore data early on? And if you don't have data, then what do you look at and what's important?

So I think it comes down to figuring out what are the big. Okay. So I think of it like you're in a hole and you need a shovel to get out of it. And what happens is paying attention to numbers is like using a little hand shovel for gardening to like dig out of this massive pit that you're in. And what you need is a backhoe. So you need like tweaking stuff and a B testing stuff. And paying attention to these tiny changes in numbers does nothing for you early on because it's just making tiny incremental changes. And early on everything that you do should be a backhoe. Like it should be. You should be able to just make big dents and things because you haven't done anything yet. So that's kind of what I mean by that is it's easy to get caught up and tweaking all these little things and paying attention all these little things and convince yourself that you're making progress. But in early days, that's almost a guaranteed way to get distracted from meaningful work.

Yeah, we talk about it in the context of like getting your local just right when you're starting. It's like that's important and it's something that, you know, logos are important and they make an impact. But it's like it really matters when there's a hundred thousand people seeing it as opposed to 100 people. And not that it's bad to have a good logo, but it's bad if you are using a limited amount of time that you have to kind of fine tune and tweak those things that aren't as big. So what is the, you know, if you're looking to level up your little garden shovel even to a regular shovel or, you know, heavy machinery, what is the equivalent of heavy machinery? What are the things that really make a difference?

So this is extremely dependent on your business. It just comes down to what ultimately gives you the most flexibility and the most opportunity is cash flow. So whatever that takes to bring in a bunch of new customers or to maybe that's, you know, an annual plan if you've got some sort of subscription based business, because that gives you a big influx of cash. But it's, you know, changing the headline on your landing page of the marketing site is not going to get you any new customers. It's just not because, because of the whole, like we said, where you don't have enough people looking at it for it to matter. So maybe that's, you know, the sort of Silicon Valley term is to do things that don't scale. And so maybe that's calling a bunch of places to try to find new customers or sending some cold emails, like stuff that you're not going to keep doing long term, but they get you some momentum. Momentum is underrated where you need to get something to get the ball rolling. And just the act of getting the ball rolling many times will spark new ideas or just give you new opportunities because you made contact with some person who ends up being this like great contact who can introduce you to 100 new customers, whatever. But you just got to get out there and try to do large, larger things that don't involve just. Yeah, it's basically do anything other than make tiny tweaks to things.

Right. And one of the things that you say is this, and you mentioned this talking to customers and then you say you follow up for those that aren't familiar with what that looks like with words out of your mouth. And that's such a hard thing to do. But can you talk about why that's important to do early on that people really understand who their customers are or who their readers are, or who their audience is? And how do you go about doing that. And for somebody who's used to being behind a computer like I am, it's kind of a scary thing to think about even doing a podcast. It's like, okay, we've been doing a podcast for a while, we feel comfortable with that. But then it's like, ooh, what did, how do you talk to your customers? What does that look like?

Right?

So.

I think what the problem is with people who do any sort of digital work, you know, I mean, look, or work on the Internet is you do have all these tools at your disposal that, you know, on the surface they promise all these things like systematizing X, Y and Z. And so you get more feedback. For instance, like, like take a subscription company where there's a cancellation process or you produce some book or some course or something and you're just wanting feedback. What's really the easiest thing, the least, the thing with the least amount of friction is to throw a form up. Just a typical form, drop in your name and a comment and then you're like, hey, I'm gonna get some feedback from this. And again, it feels like you've done something meaningful by adding a form to your cancellation process or some place on your website for people to get feedback about the book or whatever. You put this form up and then you think that you're going to get some sort of feedback that's useful. And then when you don't get any feedback, you're like, ah, people just, you know, just don't use the form. Okay, fine, whatever. But what happens is when people do use those forms, for instance, they're giving you this surface level sort of feedback because nobody wants to type out a bunch of stuff. Whereas when you talk to someone, as humans do, you, you find out all sorts of things that you would have never ever gotten from a form. You get things like, I mean, even as something as simple as being able to pick up on like the tone while they're giving you feedback, like are they angry or are they actually pretty excited? Or like, are they bummed that this didn't work out? Like, you can tell that stuff by talking to people and then infer a whole lot more than you ever could have by reading a couple of sentences and feedback from a form. So when you have a conversation, it's able to be this two way thing and not just them throwing some feedback at you, but instead it's like, it's this dynamic conversation where you can ask follow up questions. You just get so much better feedback. Like talking to two customers is more Valuable than probably the feedback that you receive from a hundred form people. Filling out a form a hundred times like it's just having a conversation is infinitely more useful, but it's also much scarier, right. Because you don't know what questions to ask or maybe you're not great at making conversation or, you know, you just stumble over your words or whatever. Like that stuff goes away with practice and you just have to start doing.

And this is a really ground level. But how do you go about doing that? If somebody says, okay, I can imagine myself having a conversation with somebody to ask them feedback on the business that I'm building, I can maybe even ask, imagine some of the questions that I would ask. But what does it look like to do that on a consistent basis and to kind of fold it in as part of your routine?

So I think it's. You pinpoint user interaction that maybe you want to change or maybe that you want more of. So say it's something where, okay, let's. I guess probably a lot of people listening have some. Something that they're publishing, I presume, Right. Whether that's a podcast, a book, a newsletter, whatever.

Yep.

So say you want more people to buy a book. Well, you almost certainly have a list of people who have purchased your book and some, you know, you've got an email list or whatever from when they purchased the book. Reach out to them, send them an email and say, hey, can we hop on a phone call and talk about your experience? One, like how you found the book and then two, what's your feedback on the book itself? Like, is the content even good? Right. So that's how you just go reach out to them and you just do that consistently. I mean, you could automate that if you wanted. You know, if you've got some sort of newsletter or email software or CRM or whatever it is that you're storing this stuff. You could automate following up with people, you know, a week after they've bought the book or something to try to hop on a call. And I mean, you know, the majority won't respond or won't necessarily want to schedule something, but like some will, maybe 10% will or something, or 20% and. And then you'll quickly end up with a bunch of calls that you can make and feedback that you can get. And you'll figure out a lot of the common things that are coming up in those conversations. And it can lead to new content or it can lead to, you know, changes in the book or lead to ways that you can find New customers or whatever. But you have to start making these, having these conversations to surface the commonalities.

Yeah, it's interesting even. We're going through the process of hiring a new member success agent. We're calling the position for Food Blogger Pro. And in one of the questions that we ask in the interviews is like, what feedback would you have on Food Blogger Pro? What would your feedback be? And even the purpose of it isn't to like, get insights onto how it could be better. It's just to have a conversation with people around how familiar they are with the product. But I've noticed, like, oh my gosh, like there's really valuable things that are kind of consistent that people bring up. Like, it'd be really nice if, you know, you had a system for moving through the content. And it's like a couple of people have mentioned that that would be really nice, wouldn't it? And being able to then respond to that in a way where we wouldn't, like you said, if we just kind of have a form when somebody cancels a plan. So it makes sense. One of the things that you, that you talk about that I think is such an important concept is this idea of selling a painkiller, not a vitamin. And the difference between nice to have or how nice to have isn't necessarily enough to really build a business or build a strong business. So can you talk about the difference between a painkiller and a vitamin? And how do people know if what they have is a painkiller or a vitamin?

So the first sort of caveat there is, are you building a consumer business or a consumer focused business or a business focused business, like who your customer is? Because that changes that a little bit. But at the end of the day, people spend money on things that save them time, that save them money, or that create value, like create some new way to make money. So those are the three ways that people, that three things that people are willing to pay for. So the way, like you can build a product that can do, you know, as long as it touches on one of those nerves, you can find some customers. But the only way that you're gonna really be able to make a decent amount of money from it is to be solving something that's a significant, like, the bigger the pain is for them, the more likely they are and the easier it will be to build a business that people want to give you money for. Because if you're just sort of solving this, like, you know, this is, this isn't, this is an inconvenience for me, but you know, I'm fine with continuing to. I would rather do that than fork over a hundred bucks a month for it. Then at that point it's just a vitamin and not like a real painful issue.

Yeah. And I think important for people to think about that even if it's on the content end of things. The is your focus on providing something that is a nice to have or what would it look like if you are producing something product content or information around something that is a crucial pain point for people. And for a lot of people that listen to podcasts, it could literally be something that is a pain point. Like it could be something that people that somebody's processing through. Whether that be not everybody that listens to this has content or businesses in the food space, but a lot of people do. And so often there are people that have these really specific skill sets that they offer or help that they can give to a specific pain point for people. So something to think about as you especially in the early stages for getting that traction. A couple of things that at the end, you know, you have these 29 things that you go through and these last couple here are, I think there's four of them that I wanted to mention. And I think these are the like human experience holistically, are you as an individual taking care of yourself and good perspective pieces. And I thought it'd be good to talk through each one of these as a way to close out here on the podcast. So one of the things that you say is get friends who aren't entrepreneurs. And why is it so important to have people that aren't in kind of your echo chamber?

So it's sort of the same reason that I think you should do lots of things and not just focus 100% all in on one specific thing because you need the other perspective to help you make good decisions or at the very least to give your brain a break from thinking about the thing that you or mostly consumed by. Right. So when you surround yourself by people who are just like you and doing the same things as you, you end up in your downtime talking about the things like, you know, you talk about your business and they're talking about their business and you just keep talking about business. Right. So you need people who are gonna, you can talk to them about other things. Right. You know, it's like I've got friends. Like they'll come over and we'll like, we'll go fishing and talk about anything. But building a tech company doesn't come up and that you have to have that. Otherwise again, your brain just never gets a break from it and you'll go crazy.

How do you know if you're in the echo chamber? Like, is that something where you can, you're in there and you're like, wait a minute, it's super echoey, I need to get out of here. What are the signs that you're in the echo chamber?

I think it requires, it's just being self aware and taking stock of am I constantly doing and thinking about the business at every hour of the day and when I'm around other people, am I still talking about and thinking about the business?

Yeah.

And if you are, if you're out at dinner with random people who are not, do it like you know, as part of a part of your business or an employee of your business or whatever. And you're talking about and thinking about the business you like you should, you need to make some changes.

Yeah. And one of the things that could help with that is the, the next thing you talk about is this idea of vacations being so important, being crucial and taking time off and time away. And I remember there was a blog post you published about kind of switching at Bare Metrics from this like unlimited vacation policy to having like, it was like a reverse like mandatory vacation policy. Can you talk about why vacations are so important and what that looks like?

Yes. So I think what happens, there's so many startups that they're big, one of their big benefits that they sell is unlimited vacation and, or a loose vacation policy. And what they mean, they're saying you can take off as much time as you want, but what that ultimately means is nobody takes any time off because you just don't know what the actual line is there. And so instead we say that you have, there's a minimum vacation you have to take ultimately at least about four weeks off throughout the year. You take more if you want, but we expect you to do that and we expect at least for there to be at least a full week off vacation somewhere in there, you know, more would be fine or even encouraged. And the thing is, the reason that's so important is again for all the other reasons, talking about giving your brain a break from something where like you have to be able to let your mind, you know, sit on something. It's like, you know, when you sleep at night, while you're sleeping, your brain's doing some work filing things away. You know, it's like, it's how long term memory gets stored and that's A crucial component to being good at what you do is is letting your brain take a break from trying to chew on the same problem over and over again. And vacation is a great way to step away from that and to come back with some new ideas and some fresh perspective that you haven't been able to get by just taking the Friday off or something like that. Like you need these big breaks let you kind of take stock of things and like really approach problems from a.

New perspective and attend a sea shanty sing along every night. That will be my addition to. Right.

And you may find, you may find that you're actually really good at that and turn that into a career.

And that's where we would do an interview around career change.

We could do an interview where we just sing.

Where each response is about business but is is delivered through a sea shanty melody.

Lots of args.

Yeah. Two last points here to wrap up. One of the things and I think this is so critical is that you don't attach your self worth to your company. And I think especially for people that have a either personality driven business or their personality is the business that to remove yourself from that is really difficult. So how do people go about detaching if they are attached from their. To their company in terms of their self worth?

I mean that requires lots of focus, this sort of introspection. I mean I'm a big fan of going to therapy so like getting somebody else who can. You can just sort of vent and get all this stuff out and they can help you sort of take stock of things and not and just learn how to practically not attach yourself for something. I mean like that's a hard thing. It's easy to say really hard thing to do because so much that is a mental thing. Right. It's. It's really, really difficult to be like, you know what, that person who just like called me all sorts of names and was really angry in their support ticket. Like they were probably having a bad day and it's like taking out on me. But that's still. I feel like they're personally attacking me. Yes, it's hard to detach from that. And it just takes. You have to be really intentional about it. And there's so much of that's like interconnected with the not, you know, the whole echo chamber thing or not surrounding yourself by the same things over and over again where you're able to find other things that bring you enjoyment so that when something goes wrong with the business because something will. You still got other things that you can say, like, this thing's going terrible, but this other thing, like, I'm really excited about working on that this weekend because it's a. It's a way to, you know, again, to find some. Or show that you've got value outside of just this business that you're building.

Yeah, Yeah. I think that idea of having somebody as your go to. To, like, speak out loud, the things that are normally in your brain, is such a valuable thing. And that idea of the therapeutic ness, if that's a word of therapy and what that looks like. And one of the things I've been constantly trying to do is build out what I call a personal board of directors, which is like these people that can weigh in on my life and can say, like, hey, what about, you know, are you looking at things from this angle? Or even to speak out loud. The things that exist for somebody who doesn't exist in the world that I'm like, they can weigh in on that in such a valuable way because they have zero baggage as to, like, the norms in that, whether you call it ecosystem or echo chamber that otherwise people would kind of have a stock answer to that sounds familiar and is part of, like, the language of that little culture. So just really, really appreciate that. And then the last thing here, and I think this is so refreshing for people to hear we found this to be so true and believe it to be true for what it looks like for me day to day, is everybody's winging it. Like, every single person is winging it in some way. At what point do you feel like you realized that? And why do you think it's important for people to know that?

When did I realize. I have always. I've perpetually felt like I had no clue what I was doing. I don't know. Yes. I don't. I've always thought that I was just making stuff up. So I don't know. There was a realization point. But I do think, to me, it's just. It's kind of like. It's a comforting thing to know that even the guy who seems like they're doing really well, you talk to them and they realize maybe they know how to do something. Like there's a certain aspect of business, for instance, that they are really great at and you're terrible at, but they've got something that they're not great at either. And they will. You know, they're figuring it out on some level too.

And I think it's so refreshing for people to hear that because from the outside, it Seems like everybody has things really lined up and knows what they're doing. And.

Well, that's the thing that everybody talks about. Right. Like you post about some accomplishment. Right. Or just something that's gone really well and you want to, like, talk about, but you don't want to talk about, hey, I just blew $100,000 on this thing, like, totally screwed it up, or I just, you know, we lost the house because we didn't not succeed. Like, nobody talks about it. So it just, it appears that everybody's doing really great when actually most people aren't doing that great.

Yeah. And I think that there are people that talk about it and you're one of those people that's being. That's willing to be transparent in that. And for that I really appreciate it. And I think that people that listen to this will get a lot of value out of it in hearing those things. So, Josh, we talked about bare metrics. We'll make sure to link to that. For anybody that has any type of, would you say SaaS business, would that be a good subscription based business? Got it. Subscription based business. Barometrics would be a great tool for, for anybody that has a cute little plant that they want to put in a good container. Cedar and stone. And then you have a couple other kind of fun little side projects that I know aren't your main thing, but can you talk about what those are? Because I would love to give those some exposure on the podcast as well.

Sure, sure. So, yeah, so there's cedar and sail, and then there's this music game that I've been building called Rockburg.

Okay.

There's this new music notification stuff, this little app called Droptune.

Love it.

So that's extremely random.

Yes. But. But at the same time I was looking at it, I was like, oh, this is very intriguing. And I know it's not your main thing, but I.

It's all just like things that I want to see exist. So I just start trying to make them exist, quickly realizing that I'm completely, you know, again, I'm winging it. I mean, I don't know how to build any stuff, but I'm figuring it out.

Yeah. Cool. And then how about for you personally, if people want to follow along with you online?

So Twitter is where I spend too much time. So that's Hpigford, that's S H P, I G, F O R D. Awesome.

Josh, thanks so much for coming on the podcast. Really great to connect.

Hey, thanks for having me.

And that's a wrap. Thanks for Tuning in to the Food Blogger Pro Podcast Today friend. We hope you enjoyed this episode with Josh and I encourage you to check out all of his observations and insights on Twitter. You can find a direct link in our show notes for this episode. There are lots of great lessons outlined there. It's also time for our Reviewer of the Week, where we look to our itunes reviews and feature one of them at the end of our podcast episodes. Today's Reviewer of the Week comes from Becky Wink and it's it says I love to listen to the Food Blogger Pro Podcast. While I'm editing photos for my blog, Bjork manages to interview the top names in blogging and has them share their knowledge and accomplishments in an inspiring, not intimidating way. I highly recommend it for bloggers even if your primary focus isn't food. Thanks so much for the review, Becky. And if you'd like to be featured on an upcoming episode of the Food Blogger Pro Podcast, simply leave a review for us on itunes. It takes only a few minutes, you can do it straight from your iPhone and it really helps the podcast get in front of more listeners like you. Thanks for tuning in this week friend, and from all of us here at FPP hq, make it a great week.

Sam.