305: Non-Traditional Success - Optimizing for Happiness with Jason Glaspey

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm really excited to be talking to somebody who just today I was sorting my contacts, Jason, I'm using this. I'm in the beta stage. I know you're a beta user of a lot of software I was in. I was beta testing this app called Foak, which is content management, and your name came up and you have to like, categorize people and there's like, business and there's blogging, and I categorized you as friend. So I just want you to know that's where you landed. But for those who aren't familiar with Jason podcast listeners, Jason is a friend, but also somebody who's had success in business, who's a creative thinker, who's really connected. And I'm excited to talk to you, Jason, about your story because you've been at this for a really long time. When we last connected, I heard of this app. It was like this pub crawling app kind of thing. I'm probably doing a bad job explaining it, but you've been in the world of online businesses and online ideas for a long time and have had some really cool successes with that. And you're also a really good connector of people, which I'm interested to hear about your story and in the food space as well. We're going to be talking about Paleoplan and today actually is the. What did you call it? The saleiversary of one of the businesses that you created, built, scaled and sold Paleo plan. How long ago was that and what was that day like when you sell, sell your business and then do you just get like a really big check in your bank account? How does that work?

Yeah, it was seven years ago. @ the time, my wife and I, we were spending a month in Mexico. We live here now, but at the time we were still just kind of dabbling. And my wife's parents were in town and it was the day they left and everything was supposed to go through sometime and they're like, yeah, there should be a wire hit your bank account because, you know, nothing feels real until you have money. And then eventually, yeah, like, like the guy to pick up my parents or my wife's parents and take them to the airport had just pulled up and I checked and it was like the money was there and we're like shots of tequila, quick. And we did a like frantic round of shots and hugs and crying and high fives. And they left. And my wife and I looked at each other and we had a two year old at the time. We're like, I guess we go to the beach and went to the beach and hung out. It was a pretty awesome.

Day. You hear that with like athletes who sign a big contract and it's like, what do you do after you sign this huge contract? And a lot of times they're like, went to McDonald's and got like a Big Mac and it's like. And then it's just like kind of back to normal. But what did that look like for you? Because previously your normal had been working on this site and this business. So what does the next day look like after you sell something?

Yeah, that is a question I didn't even know I needed to think about. You know, when the time came, I was pretty convinced, like, hey, I'm going to take a little bit of time off. I don't need to work tomorrow. You know, I think I took like a month off before I really asked myself next questions. But you're definitely just vibrating. You're excited. But there's also in some ways like this, like, holy crap, what am I, what am I gonna do now? Like, what do I do? And it wasn't. I should. It doesn't have to be super specific, but it wasn't, you know, like forever changing money. It was a couple of years changing money, you know, the equivalent of like, you know, five to 10 years salary. So like, wow. Normally you don't get that all at once. And I didn't get it all at once also, I got part of it. So there's like all this excitement, but still like a sense of like, you know, I'm certainly not retired, I certainly don't have the fu. Money. So there's this feeling of, can I do it again and how quickly do I need to do it again? And this sense of like my ego got involved and I wanted to like prove I could do it again. So there's all these like weird calls on your emotions, you know, and you have to really start making decisions about who you are, what your values are, how you're going to define yourself and your time because you have suddenly a little bit more breathing room to think about some things. And you have a little bit more responsibility because you get the privilege of choosing some, like a little bit more about who you are in your lifestyle when you're not suddenly forced to be on someone else's like, clock. And I had already been kind of free from someone else's clock for about three years at that point. I ran payload plan for five years and about a year and a half into it, I broke off full time, close to two years, but that sense of, like, moving forward, moving forward, moving forward, and then suddenly, you know, like, you sent your baby to college and the house is quiet and you don't really know what your identity is.

Anymore. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a good analogy. Did you feel that was true for you in that season, like, the year or two after where it was like, who am I and what am I? What am I.

About? Yeah, I had a really good idea who I thought I was, and I just ran after that person really quickly. It turns out I think I'm a different person than I thought I was. And I have changed a lot of the perspectives I had from five, seven years ago.

Hopefully. Who did you think you were and who. Who are you? This is getting. This is getting deep.

Quick. Oh, there's no way I can answer that without sounding pretentious, but I think I sounded. I think I felt like I needed to be this, like, hyper successful guy. I needed to show everyone, like, you didn't have to take VC money to run a company and have a small exit that was meaningful. Seven years ago, the startup world was different. You know, how people thought about companies was still different. The whole word startup felt different, and I didn't necessarily qualify. And I felt a lot of ego about that because I didn't want to call what I had, like, a side hustle. It felt, you know, it was bigger than that. And for some reason, I was just really worried about what other people thought, what the titles were, how I define myself with words to the outside world instead of actually just caring about who I think I am and what are the values that I care about and how am I living those out with my family every.

Day? And do you feel like you've been able to make that transition now, where that's more.

Aligned? Yeah, actually, we have. I mean, this year was pretty crazy year for, I'm sure, almost everyone. But we, my family, my wife and I especially, really doubled down and recognized, you know, hey, we're a team. We're doing this together. My career isn't actually nearly as important as the lifestyle my wife and I choose together, and that we want to work towards that outcome as a team versus working towards who's Jason Glaspie and what defines him as a person, and how do I let the world know about that? Yeah, I just really quit caring about it. And I just care about, like, hey, do I. Do I have a chance to live amongst community people that I care about? Do I create things that matter, that Help other people. And am I doing it in total partnership with my family? That's what matters. Not necessarily the title of I Sold as something at X.

Multiple. Yeah. Yeah. I think there's extreme freedom that comes from not holding so tightly to how you're perceived in the world and also knowing that I was having this conversation with my dad the other day and was reflecting on this. The dual reality of everything we do is insignificant and everything we do is eternally significant, and the things that we do have an impact, and they can make the world a better place, and they can impact people in really significant ways. And yet it's not like us. It's not me. It's not Bjork Ostrom or Jason Glassby as the like reason that's significant. It's because we can do work that can impact people. But also, I know that, like, in a minute, I will be forgotten once I'm gone. And I think those two things are so, so true. And maybe it's like a little bit. Sounds a little bit more. But, like, I think I'm relating to what you're saying in that it's. There's something centering about it. I think to release some of the weightiness of needing to be known and to prove something, whatever that might be, while not saying nothing matters, I'm just going to shrug and not try and do anything. Like holding those things true, does that resonate kind of with the vicinity of what you're getting.

At? Yeah, I definitely transitioned from. And it's not that I don't care about what people think of who I am. I just recognize that, like, hey, I'm just gonna be the most me I can.

Be.

Yeah. And I'm gonna do it in a way that is honors and respects other people and the, you know, the world around me, you know, all things included. And I don't have to, like, manage my reputation, so to speak, be the person I want to be, and that will be how people. That's how I'll be.

Defined. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. One of the concepts we talk about on the podcast occasionally is this idea of really clearly understanding where you're trying to go and then knowing that you don't have to take somebody else's path to get there. And I think sometimes what I see myself doing is I see somewhere that I want to go, and I see somebody who's maybe gotten there, and. And then I think that's the path that I have to take to get there. But what I hear you saying is, hey, understand who you are. And where you want to go for you. You know, you talked about that as really having a good idea of what living a good life with your family looks like, and then saying, like, okay, with me being who I am and how I work within the world, how do I get there? As opposed to saying, like, I see somebody else who did that, maybe I need to go that way. That's been something significant for me as I've gone through the process. And I think one of the ways that we do that is by hearing stories, but then also knowing what our story is within that. I want to talk specifically about Paleo Plan because I think some people's story, they want to replicate what you did. They want to build something. They want to either then work on it for a long period of time and maybe create autonomy within their work and cash flow within the business. And you did that. Why did you decide to sell? Like, why not continue to run a company forever? How do you know when it's time to not do it anymore?

Yeah, there's a whole thing. There's a lot of parts of that question. Part of what made me want to start Paleo plan was in 2009 when I started it. I was following the Paleo diet, and information was super hard to get about it at the time. There were a couple of books and, like, one or two websites, and it was very difficult to actually just find the information. Straight up, is this recipe Paleo is, you know, is quinoa Paleo? Why not? What am I going to eat this week? How do I find some recipes? And so just doing that work was labor. And I recognized that, man, anyone who's trying to eat Paleo right now is going through the exact same thing as I am. And they have no better resources than I do. I'm very good at Google, so I trust my ability to find things on the Internet at least as well as most people. And I just realized, like, hey, I. Other people are wasting time doing the exact same thing as I am. If I can share this thing that I've had to work to get that immediately works for other people, then there's value there. And I hate that word. Like, you know, capital v value in a capitalistic way. But there's just like, I'm helping people. And for those who don't know, Paleo Plan was a meal planning service. So we emailed you meal plan shopping lists and recipes once a week for $10 a month. And it just solved the how do I eat Paleo problem again in 2009, that problem wasn't being solved by anyone else in a convenient way and my tool took off. I was fortunate to get in there early and I ranked number one for Paleo recipes for several years. And like, as a result, we just got a lot of people who are looking to solve that problem. That part has been super powerful. And just like I always want to go back to that, I don't want to just find a way where a transaction's occurring and I can take a little part of it. Like, here is a totally mundane product and I'm going to sell it, but I'm going to figure out just one technique better to sell it. And almost all of the energy is just going into convincing people to buy mine over someone else's. I've done that and I don't enjoy that. And so I'd much rather be like, hey, how can I actually use my creativity? The things that I love doing, writing things, making things into something that helps other people, while at the same time it stems from. There was a real need because I struggled to find the information myself. So once I. But after, at a certain point, I mean, I'm not, I'm not a, I'm not a Paleo. I'm not the face of Paleo Nation. You know, I'm. I do still like beer. I am not, I'm not dogmatic about what I eat. And I definitely had also run the company to the extent that I, that my skills were currently able to push it forward. And you feel guilty having this thing that is valuable, but you don't know what to do with it. And it feel and it weighs. It weighed on me as an entrepreneur that I wasn't maximizing its potential. But I wasn't really sure what to do, nor did I want to risk the energy of trying to increase my revenue with a bunch of things that I had no idea if it would work. And it just seemed like Paleo is not going to last forever. In this case. There was a fad nature to it where the majority of the popularity came and left. There's still, you know, millions of people eating it. But I recognize also that there would be a time when it wasn't as valuable as it was right.

Then. Like if you look at Google Trends and type in Paleo or like Paleo versus Keto or whatever it might be, you can see that so smart on your part. Is it, is it still. It's still around. Do you know who, where, where, who, who it's with right now and kind of the story of it? Or do you after you sell something as kind of like, hey, I'm done, I'm going to step.

Back. Yeah, I maintained a small share of the company after I sold it and there was a buyout period where they were paying every month. So I was definitely aware of what was happening. And the person who bought it, I think he realized a lot of his skill sets matched mine. And so what he brought were things that I had kind of already optimized. And I think then he struggled to find, you know, what is the next step for as well. And then he ended up selling it onto another company and those people had a handful of other Paleo properties. So this was kind of a. Oh, this is a great tool to use with all of our other things when we get people in, we now have another product to sell. So he ended up passing it along after another just a year or two and I believe it's still going strong. I check it every once in a while the people who it looks very similar than it did when I sold.

It. Sure, that makes sense. How much of what you're doing now is trying to catch a similar wave? Because I think there's something to be said about if you have the best copy, the best product, the best customer support in an industry that's non existent or declining. It's really difficult if you have all of that stuff in an industry that's on the rise or even average product, average customer service, average, all the things in a really significant industry trend. I think that can almost be more important than all of the other things as long as eventually those things come along. Product, you know, marketing, all of that. When you think of new ideas now, how much of it is like, hey, can I, can I find this thing that is happening in the world online or offline and can I catch that wave in a similar way to maybe what Paleo was not necessarily in the food space, but is that part of your thinking, having in some ways kind of experienced that or was that not part of Paleo plan when you look back at.

It? No, I definitely the majority of my success I think came from two elements that just blended well. One was I recognized that Paleo was being promoted by the CrossFit gyms and I knew that CrossFit was exploding and that meant that Paleo plan was going to get promoted to a lot of really healthy, really fit people who wanted an optimized edge. And those people are who a lot of out of shape people go to for advice. So when you look at a really ripped dude from CrossFit you're like, what's the secret? And he's like, I eat Paleo and I go to this gym. I was like, you know, this is gonna grow. This is gonna grow naturally in the shadow of this other wave that has a lot of money behind it. And I recognize that. I recognize that at the time, there were really low resources and I was really good at building websites. I knew how to. I mean, I was a professional website builder going into that, so I knew how to do it. I knew how to think about it from a product perspective. And like, what do customers actually want and how do we actually give that to them in a simple way versus a complicated way? And having empathy for the end user and their experience and actually really caring about that is honestly, like the superpower. Like, all you have to do is really care. And so, to answer your question, I have found myself throughout the past couple years presented with infinite opportunities and not necessarily, like, you know, job offers, but just like, oh, there's something there, or there's something there, or I bet someone can make money doing that. But I know that, like, I no longer want to do things that I'm not naturally great at. I want to build my day around things that I love doing. And so how can I use my unique skill sets that I love exercising in a way that helps people so much that I get money for? And so what jobs align with that, what products align with that? And so that kind of led us to saying no to a lot of things. And then earlier this year, and also, I've just gotten super interested, super easy to say no to great ideas, they're everywhere. And so just. But, like, if they're not right for me, I'm going to be miserable working on them. And part of that is getting to know who I am and trusting who I am and trusting my instincts. Like, oh, like, I heard about the fba, you know, filled by Amazon World, you know, seven years ago, six years ago, I looked into it. And when I looked at the day to day, it's like, I hate doing every one of those tasks, all of those tasks. I am miserable in that situation. And so I just. I walked away. And it took me forever to not feel like I was missing out, but I just recognized, like, hey, someone's awesome at that. Let them be awesome at that. I'm. I'm awesome at this other random stuff, so let me be awesome at.

That. Now, how do you know what that is? Because I think a lot of people are trying to figure that out. And then also Trying to figure out how do I then create a job around that? Like, what do you. Do you have? Is it more of the gut, like, hey, I'm doing this. I don't enjoy it, I'm doing this. I do enjoy it. I read a book a while ago called designing your life, and they have this little thing where like, you write down what you did and then it's like, like a fuel gauge, like, how much did it take out of the gas tank versus, like, were you full or empty when you did this? It's kind of a way to go through that process that you're talking about. Yeah. What does that look like for you? Or have you been kind of creating and working for a long enough period where you kind of know what that.

Is? Yeah. One of the ways that helps is to know, like, what are the projects that I just burned out on so fast? And when it was just like, oh, staring at email open rates and trying to optimize subject lines. And then like, okay, well, if that's optimized, then what's the next step in the optimization chain? Okay, so, okay, write five new emails and see which one gets a slightly. But, you know, like, to me there's an inner. There's an interesting part of that, but it becomes soul crushing after a short trip. And so I feel like, you know, I know how to do that. Actually, I'm pretty good at doing that. And I've done it professionally for a few years, but I don't enjoy.

It. It.

Doesn'T. Like, I'm not pumped. And so now I know that, hey, when that time comes for my next, my next thing, when I need to write an email, I know how to do it. I don't have to hire that out. And I'm going to do it in a pace that I'm comfortable with, and I'm going to do it with my style that I enjoy. Wr. And if that means that I don't have as many customers, that's okay because I'm happy to get paid less to spend my time doing the things that I like.

Doing. Yeah, there's that. It's like, you know, eye roll at this point, but that idea of the conversation between a fisherman and a businessman who's like, you know, and essentially to like, not have to tell the entire story, the business guy is like, hey, why don't you buy a big boat and make more money doing this? And eventually comes to find out that you would do all of that in order to then be able to fish every day? The guy's like, I'm doing it. It might not be at scale, but essentially what I hear you saying is, how do I move towards a reality where work doesn't feel like work? And then as long as you're able to make ends meet and provide for the things that you need to cover, that's kind of it. Like you're doing the things that you want to do every day and you're creating an income from it. But I think the hard piece, that's the peak of success to me. Yeah, But I think the hard piece that's easy to gloss over is like the make money from.

It. So I have thoughts on.

That. How do you make money on.

It? Yeah, yeah. One of the things is it's not easy, right? Everyone thinks that, like, oh, after 20 years of building the skill sets, then it was easy. But, you know, you have to learn the skill sets and you have to put in the time and you have to care and you have to work hard at it and you have to pay attention and you just, you know, like anything, if you want to be a great pianist, you have to spend time in front of the piano. But also I think that you can. One of the things is that fisherman. So, by the way, that is absolutely one of my favorite stories. Like, I want to have the whole thing tattooed on my back. It's amazing. I live and breathe that story because. But one of the things no one thinks about is if you do the route and you buy the bigger boat and you get all the stuff, then you have a sweet mansion and you have people cooking and people cleaning and gardener and a guy for your pool and. And your life is polished and simple, maybe, right? And I think that's what people think of, that they need to reach when they reach the. I've made it and I. One of the big things. So we had, like I said, a pretty good financial event seven years ago. And then I spent seven years trying to figure out WTF I do next. And there's definitely been, you know, a moment in there where my wife and I, we were basically broke. I mean, we don't need to get into details, but we'd spent our opportunity money. We were doing gig work again. I was consulting. I wasn't really enjoying it. And we were starting to go into debt because one of my clients wasn't paying on time and fully, fully evaporated money. We were so far from the we can do anything. And I mentioned that only to say that we're building our next business under very meager resources. We are not paying for everything. We're not hiring everything out. But we're also significantly lowering what our costs to live are. You know, I'm happy to have a car with 180,000 miles. I'm happy to have a modest house that I love, but by no means would get anyone excited. I like, we live in Mexico, like I've said, and most of the year. And we live in an eco village community that's off grid with solar and we can totally reduce our cost. But we also say no to so many things. We don't travel as much as we used to. We don't buy nearly anything compared to how much Amazon used to come to my house and it's like, man, I can totally make more to have more. But I have never been happier when I had more. And I found that after I was broke a second time. I am so much happier when I'm not managing stuff, when I'm not trying to earn stuff, when I'm not worried about what I have and the ego balance of it. So we're big fans of like, make, spend less, make less and spend the meat of your life doing just whatever the hell brings you fulfillment and supports the people around you. And if I decide I want to make more, we'll figure out how to make more. But like, first and foremost, we're not optimizing for wealth and accumulation. We're optimizing for pure love of. And that means my wife is. She's super tense about money. So we have to have a savings plan involved. So we have to make enough that we are putting money away for savings. We're not being irresponsible, but we're picking the lowest amount possible and choosing to forego things so that we can.

Say yes to our life. Yeah, it's almost like Mr. Money Mustache meets startup building. Like those two things at the same time. Like, hey, I don't want to necessarily. It's not like you're thinking about it as like, how do we live a retired life in the same way that maybe some of the people from the fire community would. Which we did a podcast interview on that. We'll link to that in the show notes with somebody from the fire community. But like, yeah, can you talk about that? Are you familiar with Mr. Money Mustache and what do you. Does any of your thinking on how you live life come from that? Some of the concepts that align with what he talks.

About? Yeah, totally. I remember when I first started reading his blog a couple years ago, I went through a whole series of like, this guy's incredible. This guy's a freak. This guy is cool, but not my game. I could probably learn something from this guy. I just did learn something from this guy. I do not want to. I don't want to read this guy's blog all the time, though. Like, he's really thoughtful. It's all very good, but it's long and it's very. It's like, oh, man, I can't go into that emotion every time I see one of his posts. So then. But every once in a while, I'll check him out, and I'm just inspired. And as the couple of years have went on, I found myself coming into alignment with him more and more. And also just. It's nice having him as a. I'm not crazy. Someone else is like, you know, leading this charge and is kind of waving the flag. And I can at least look over and be like, hey, I'm saying no to a bunch of our modern culture's ideals. I'm saying no to a lot of those. And he's just a strong presence that can remind me and my family that, like, nope, totally normal, actually. I dig what this guy says. I dig his values. I dig the way he's trying to find solutions to life. And I think about, like, you know, he doesn't want to have a gym membership, so he does the physical labor around his house. And it's like, yeah, I don't have to pay for the physical labor. I don't have to pay for the gym membership. I don't have to pay for a handyman. And that. And then when you. It's so hard for me. I think one of the big shifts for me to that type of mindset was to really get enough time away from the computer to. For an extended period of time to help me see. Oh, God, I hate being in front of a screen. I've made my entire career based on the Internet, and I absolutely loathe sitting down at a computer anymore. I don't want to optimize any of the apps I used to optimize. I don't want to have a to do list. That's super slick. I don't want to be on a screen. One of the things that shifted was during the first lockdown of COVID last March. I was in this eco community, and we just hold up and this community, and we were outside every day. You know, the community was still really tight, and it just totally changed. Like, we grow our own food there. We have an amazing garden, and just my Whole idea of like, you can live without needing to earn tons of money and you can spend your time.

Happy. Yeah. Yeah.

Right?

Amazing. Yes. And, you know, I think of this term ramen profitability that comes from Paul Graham, but it's like he uses that as like, you got to stay this way for as long as possible. So then you can grow your startup really big and essentially survive in order to then scale. But it's like, or you could just stay there and to your point, optimize around other things. So the goal then becomes. Or the currency is not actual cash or dollars, but rather autonomy, time, or to your point, happiness. I think the hard thing with that is we don't quantify it. If we walked around with an app that we would pull up, we could check our bank account and it would show us how our trending happiness for the past 30 days. Or if we had a score above our heads and we could see how happy everybody else is. And you walk by and you're like, wow, that person's really happy. How do I become happy? Like that person or whatever word you want to use for it. Happy, joy, content. I think you'd find people optimizing more for it. I'm curious to know, how do you continually nudge yourself towards that and away from the thing that is such a strong pull, which is like metrics, numbers, growth, scale, like whatever that might be. Especially when you look at things online, personal improvement, you can always get a little bit better. It's a lot of what we talk about. How do you get a tiny bit better every day, forever? I think that applies not only to business, but also how you operate personally. And we all want to be getting better in regards to our investment in our family, our investment, ourselves, and just how generally happy we are. But how do you nudge yourself towards that over time? What does that look like and not get drawn into kind of the strong pull of the traditional success?

Yeah. I think one is a long commitment to change. You know, you can identify, like, hey, that's the direction I want to.

Go.

It's. I'm probably gonna wake up tomorrow and have other feelings. So I'm gonna have to be committed to like, hey, I'm gonna slowly change parts of my life that take me away from that. You know, one way is start deleting people on social media who pull you the wrong direction. Another is easy, easy solution. Yeah. Another is cancel your prime membership. You know, you don't need to buy. You have enough. Remind yourself, you know, that what. What metric are you serving? And what is the purpose of that purchase? Is it improving your true life or is it just quickly solving a problem and inconvenience or whatever? Also, I think, you know, a big thing for me has been working with my wife really closely. She's a graphic designer. So we're super inside and we're, we're both integral parts of this thing that we're building. And talking to her often reminding ourselves what our values are. When I'm not, when I'm not checking my bank account every day, but I'm checking like, hey, honey, how are you doing? How are you feeling? Do you feel confident in our decisions? You know, we're also, we kind of learned from the basecamp. Six week build.

Cycles. Yeah, shape up, shape.

Up. Yeah. So we're kind of doing like six week cycles within our family and just being like, hey, for the next six weeks, this is what we're working on on the business and our family. And this. We're not answering any other big questions other than these. Like, we're not answering should we do this or that. We're not trying to solve for this or that. We're not efficiently trying to optimize our whole lives. We identify, this is what we're working on right now. And when big problems come up, we're like, not what I'm trying to solve right now. And it's useful both from work and life. And it allows you to say, these decisions are locked in. I'm working on these things right now. And then you just, that's your focus every day. You don't have to worry about some of the.

Others. What if somebody hears that and they're like, gosh, I'm interested in pursuing a similar thing. How do you do that? What is the unraveling and then rebuilding process look like? And what advice would you give to somebody who wants to change what they're optimizing?

Yeah. One I would ask, look for the people who are the partners in your lives. You know, might be a spouse, might be a brother. It doesn't matter who are the people that you're doing life with? And like, how can you work with them to achieve your goals collectively? You know, if I tell. And again, like, hey, I want to make $5,000 a month so I can live this lifestyle. Like, well, who's with you on that? And it doesn't mean they have to be your actual partner. But like, are you just stating something into the ether and defining it as a goal? And what does something that we talk about a lot is what does it look like to perfectly be executing our plan right now and how far are we from that? We acknowledge that we're never going to go through all the steps without making mistakes, that there's like, go to three steps forward, one or two and a half steps back, and then seven steps forward and then nine left turn. 80%. Like, we understand that and we don't expect to remove that, but we do ask, okay, what does it look like to be perfectly executing our plan, and what are we just totally missing on and how do we get to there? Those force you to not look at the daily circumstances, but look at your goals, and they force you to define what you want. It's really easy to not actually define what we want. Just say it's something that's over there. It looks kind of like that. Oh, he's got it. I kind of want his version. Oh, she's got it. I kind of want her version. And you're constantly want. Like you were kind of saying, oh, this or, oh, that whenever you see something, but when you know what you want and it's totally locked in, you're not tempted to look at the numbers that don't help you get.

There. Right? Yeah. Lindsey and I have talked about this idea in this season of Life, which is especially true for us, but the idea of north, ish. And what I heard you talking a little bit about is like, you have a clear picture of where you want to be, and you kind of zigzag to get there, but you're kind of generally going northish. And there's been a couple of conversations that we've had lately where we're like, hey, northish, like, generally headed in the right direction. It's not perfect. Um, and, you know, it's a difficult journey, but we're generally going there. But you need to know where there. Where there is. Like, what. What does that actually look like? Which I heard you saying, which I think is really great. Um, what is the. What is the thing that you're working on? You've talked about that a little bit now, but I'd be curious to know, like, what your main focus is and even kind of day to day, what that looks like now is you're building your ideal day.

Yeah. Two or three years ago, I was working with an amazing director of a private school here in Mexico. It's an international school. It's awesome. And this guy was just a savant when it comes to children and relationships, and I learned a lot from him. And it led me at a time I just really acknowledged that as families, we have single family parent or single family homes. And. And we have completely lost tradition with how to do just some of the simplest things as a family and ancestral knowledge of, oh, don't do that or do that, while at the same time our world has changed so dramatically that we can't go to some of our older relatives and ask for help. Because grandma doesn't know the right amount of time for my kids to watch the iPad. I can't go to her and be like, grandma, how do I solve this really tough problem? And so I feel like. And then to also say, but we also don't live anywhere near our family. So even the common things we have solved, we don't have the benefit of their sharing their knowledge. So we just kind of recognized like, hey, what if we could make parenting's lives just a little bit easier by providing some sort of data or content or something? And we were very open about what that looked like, and we've explored a bunch of different versions. And then when Covid fully hit, we just put it completely on hold. And now, as of 2021, we've reopened this idea and we're focused 100% on a potty training.

Product. Nice. Before we press record, I was like, that's the season we're going into. So this is going to be a podcast interview, early beta user signup.

Yes. What we just noticed was I did some looking in parenting forums and I just saw a recurrence of asking for really direct, honest, sincere questions about potty training that showed that they didn't have anyone else to really talk to. And one, it just breaks my heart, like, how are we failing our families this much by not providing resources? And the other hand is the only real resources I found other than maybe 400 word articles were like 300 page books. And as my wife said, every major milestone is another parenting book you're supposed to read. And she's like, we just don't got it. And so just being super inspired by Paleo plan, like, how can we do research to solve one problem and let it scale? Like, babies needing to potty train is not going away. And there's like 2 to 3 million new babies born a year, so there should be lots of babies that need to potty train. So identify just that market. But then we identified just no one has made a just great solution to helping a parent. And then what's the empathy for that parent? They don't want to look at a desktop site. They want to look at A wonderfully designed mobile experience. And they're tired and it's probably late at night. So they don't want long, wordy articles that are hard to understand and really complicated frameworks. And really, you know, it's like, hey, how do you take all that understanding of parenting, all the fatigue, the worry, the guilt, the shame, all the places it comes from, and then purify the content they need in a way that is perfect for them? And we have some ways that we're trying to do that. Some of it is heavily reliance on summations. You do not need to read five pages about rewards. Most parents need to read three paragraphs. But then it's that kind of like wire cutter style. Some parents need to know more or they want to check your work, or they kind of want to see how the, you know, the sausage is made. And so then you. Then you do have that information. You do go deep. But you provide lots of ways for people to access that content, to get straight to the part they need and back out. And as someone who's built websites for 20 years, my wife's a graphic designer, we think about this stuff all the time. It's like, that's what we know how to do. We know how to take complex.

Information and make it fun, distill it down and look good and. Yeah. So I'm interested, you know, as we kind of come to the end here, I'm interested to hear what, what are the tools you're using to build that? Uh, I know that you're always kind of on talking about beta user of software, but that's something that you're always aware of. And I feel like you're really connected in the startup software community and know tools that work really well to build products online. So what does that look like for.

You? I'm trying my hardest to keep things simple. In the past, I'd be like, oh, here's a cool, this I can.

Use for that zap here to connect to. When they pull it up, it changes the temperature.

Yeah. And now I'm trying to be like, you know, most of that stuff doesn't help the customer. In the end, what helps the customer is super fast access, super fast loading websites, really clean navigation. So we're just using webflow. I've gotten to know webflow really well. I'm proficient at it to be able. I'm finally at a point where I can write anything I want. I can create almost anything I can, my wife and I can imagine without needing outside.

Help. Can you talk about what Webflow is. A lot of people would be familiar with WordPress, but how's Webflow.

Different? Webflow is like if WordPress was made now, but it's without a blogging like paradigm, but more of just like, hey, how do you help people build websites that don't need to know every ounce of content code? So it's a no code tool. It uses a very modern interface to give you the ability to use basic CSS commands without having to know syntax. And you can say center that and it centers and you don't have to write. And if you know the structure of code but don't want to type it all out, it's perfect. It's getting to the point where you don't even really have to know the structure of code, but it will help and it allows you. And it's very heavily focused on people who want to create compelling design. So it makes unique. And what would be very difficult in WordPress, design wise is much, much faster and simpler in Webflow. And you don't need to have any experts or funky plugins for a lot of.

Things. Right, right. That makes a lot of sense. Could be great for like in your case where you're wanting to create a really beautiful, easy to use experience. I haven't spent a lot of time with it, probably early stage for anybody who's building and wanting to optimize for like search engine optimization for recipe type content. But if you have like a recipe or if you have like maybe a product, you're promoting something you're selling more like branded type stuff, marking a good direction, they're amazing for marketing sense. Yeah, that makes sense. So, last question that I want to ask you that we could do a deep dive on this in another podcast because it's probably a big question, but I've just noticed one of the things that's fun about being connected with you is noticing all the different places that you're connected around the different communities I'm a part of. I was just looking on Twitter earlier today. Justin, who somebody we're connected with, is working on an app called Up Focus. And then he. You like tweeted. About 15 years ago, the first check that you ever got with a comma in it was like working with Justin on something. I'm like, wait, Jason knows Justin? You introduced us to Katie, who works on the WP Tasty Team and leads that all the work over there with the WP Tasty Team. Maybe it's just by chance that you get connected in here and then suddenly you're kind of in that little circle, but you're. It feels like you're a really good connector for people who also want to be good at connecting and getting connected. How do you do that? Because you're good at it. And I think it's important for people to know how to do.

That. Well, that's a super nice compliment. I appreciate it. A lot of it was. I got on the Internet 20, 25 years ago when it was kind of young, and I made a little. I found the other people who were on the Internet in Portland at the time and got to know them. For Justin, for instance, though him and I actually went to ad school together in college. We studied advertising together. So I really have known him for at least 20 years and then. But also I've been lucky to just. There's been really great people around that I've been in the right spot to get to know. And then their careers have just done awesome things. And after 25 years of being in the industry, you start to know the people. And the people who've done interesting things have been around long enough that I might have met them early, then I definitely would say that's how I'm connected to Portland. Was. I was just. There was a time when all of Portland had like 100 to 200, like tech folk that kind of were in this little community. And if you were part of it back then, it didn't take long to get to know all the other people. And then as Portland's grown, it's filled up as this really nice seen. But, you know, enough of the outlier or the connectors in that because they were there early on also. Twitter has been like that for me. I was kind of early in Twitter and just found like, these are the guys to listen to. And I was there early. So I got followed by a few of them. We made connections that now allow me to bounce around and then hopefully trying to do work that matters, trying to do work that I'm proud of and connecting myself with people who are also doing work that they're proud of of. There's a lot of things I've said no to that are about money or about other things. And I've tried to, you know, as much as I can lead towards things that I like doing, I'm proud of doing and that allow me to do my best work. And when I can do my best work, then that tends to introduce you to people who are trying to do the same. And not by any means have I always done great work. But it's my.

Hope. You know, I know that personally I've benefited from it in multiple ways and so it recorded. Thank you for the connections you've made and also I'm just grateful to be able to, when I'm sorting contacts, be able to put you in the like friend bucket. And I've learned a lot from you and have also made some great connections for the people in my life. So really appreciate all that you've done for us. Thanks for sharing your story, Jason, on the podcast and excited to stay connected moving forward. If somebody wants to reach out and connect with you, best way to do that would be what Twitter is a great.

Way. Jason Glaspie MostlyProudParents.com is where we're going to be announcing our potty training. It's Pooping on the Potty, the online academy. We're going to be beta testing in about a month and then launching it this summer. And also I want to say to you, Bjork, I've had a chance to get to know you. I consider you also a friend. It's nice that's reciprocated. But for all the listeners who hear Bjork and wonder like, can this guy really be this nice and thoughtful all the time? Like for those that haven't had the pleasure of meeting you, I want all the podcasters to know that like he is easily one. Burke is easily one of the most sincere, thoughtful guys I know and also one of the most amazing question askers, which to me implies that you actually care about the people that you're talking to. You listen really well. You follow up on what they say instead of like retorting. Like your empathy and sincerity is always like three feet in front of your body and it's amazing to interact with.

You. Thank you. Well, really appreciate it. We'll use that. We'll start to do opening clips on the podcast now. Uh, we'll, we'll cut that one out and we'll just use that as the opening clip. We'll just like shine a light on it. Perfect. Uh, no, I really appreciate it, Jason. Thanks for coming on and sharing your story and excited to stay connected moving forward.

Here. Absolute delight.

Man. Thank you. Take care. Thank you to Jason for coming on the podcast. Jason, as always, really fun to talk to.

You. And one of the things I.

Appreciate about a podcast episode like this.

Is it provides another lens, another way to look at things and sometimes what can happen when we go heads down when we're working on the thing that we're working on. We look at people who are doing similar things and we try and do what they're doing or we have conversations with friends who are doing the same things as us and we can get kind of micro focused on a really specific goal which is good. But outside perspective and outside ideas like the ones that Jason shared today are really, really helpful and I always appreciate them. So another big thank you to Jason for coming on today and thank you to you podcast listener for tuning in. If you're listening to this as a one off episode, maybe you stumbled across it somehow. When you're searching for a podcast to listen to, you can go ahead and subscribe to the Food Blogger Pro podcast. All you have to do is just search for Food Blogger Pro in the podcast app that you use and hit the subscribe button. It'll make a big difference for us as we continue to grow this podcast and hopefully have as big a reach as possible as we continue to share this message of showing up and getting a tiny bit better every day forever. Thanks for tuning in. It.