Mike Minutes Mastermind 02/08/2024

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Yesterday, today, sorry, today, today and tomorrow.

I'm in Austin and I am at a.

Sort of mastermind for other tech founders. I am the youngest person here and then probably one of the smaller, probably if not the smallest, definitely the smallest software company. But you have to pass certain thresholds of revenue and so you know to be eight figures you have to basically be in the group.

So anyways.

Good. I haven't been in a room like this for.

A long time when I can confidently say like every single person is either where I'm at or ahead of me. And.

So far today, this is day one. I was in and out today because I have other meetings and things but.

Day one takeaways. I actually haven't thought about this. Let me give me a second here. I have some of my notes here. But the biggest takeaway honestly for me is the fact that every single one, when I tell them what I'm going through in co pilot now, they laugh and they chuckle and they have a great story of something that 10 times worse or to them it's 10 times worse. I guess.

One guy, for example, their similar thing happened. They had a whole bunch of people joining.

Their API broke and for five days straight their system was dead. Like didn't, didn't even start.

And so that was like, wow, that's pretty intense.

So that's what I've been trying to get this week is like I don't know prior to this event and this mastermind, I don't know anyone else trying to run software like I am as much besides like Jonathan Patosnik and a couple others that I've reached out to and like you know, talking to competitors. But it's different to actually like just talk to people want to actually share and we all sign non disclosure agreements and because I believe that software is so important for Augusta the next five to 10 years, this is kind of the, the world I need to play in right now and learn. And what's interesting is like I've had a lot of them help me and like look at what I'm doing and like they're basically saying like you're doing everything right. That's somewhat reassuring. They're saying you're on the right path, you're doing the right actions and it's if you're taking the right actions, it's only a Matter of time before results align with that. It's like that is somewhat reassuring despite just how much of it feels like a gut pinch all the time. When you feel like you're making mistakes and you are failing.

To see that other people have been through it, you've done and are, you know, literally 50, 60, $70 million in annual revenue of their software company. They've been doing it for 15 years and they went from desktop to cloud and they just have so much experience. It's pretty awesome to be able to talk with them and know that, like all the things that I feel lost on, like I'm not an idiot, like they felt lost at some point too. And so that's somewhat reassuring now. It doesn't take away just the acuteness of the pain, but it does help just know like long term, like the confidence in where we're going. And the North Star is strong. So some specific takeaways. Honestly, I think the most notes is this one gentleman from.

Ireland.

Just a really solid talk.

He's just really good, man. He kind of like. I, I actually volunteered and talked a little bit. So we had to see if I can actually say any of these one second and go back to my notes. I have these diagrams drew.

One of the things he had asked us to do is like, what are the. What are the three beliefs or areas keeping you small?

That was interesting.

Let's see. Can I make it these. Yeah, I can. Okay, so one was. So, yeah, these are what are the three beliefs? And they couldn't be to do business. That was the thing. So we did another part about business. So like I said, enjoying my money. I have a problem with that. Second thing is the fact that like having relationships or commitment to people could potentially like hurt the businesses. You know, you get divorced, you got problems. I don't want that to affect the guest, the nation, stuff like that. Right. These are just me being honest. I didn't think I was going to share this. These are three areas or beliefs that keep me sold. Third one was, it was kind of like a blend of three things. I put on one line though. I put delegation and I kind of crossed it out into an arrow and I put imposter syndrome. But I didn't like really makes sense. So I put humility. So I think from what that I gathered from that it was like.

What is it called? Called the.

Something like the Protestant burden or like the. I forget what Dr. Cashy calls it a certain thing, the Protestant something. And. And it's a lot of times it's like this, like, this guilt or like, you put this something on you because, like, you're not worthy or like, you're always a failure making mistakes. And I don't feel like an imposter in, like, this room. I feel like I can. I can talk with them and I can. I can give to them just as much as they can give to me. But I definitely feel. There are times when.

I feel like I am trying to appear to the team and even, like, other owners and destination, et cetera, smaller than I am. I hope this comes across correctly. I'm just thinking out loud, but, like, I. I come across. I try to come across because I. I hate pride. Like, I hate, like, I just hate it. Anyone that's proud, like, stuck on themselves, it just really, really irks me. And so I've always tried to, you know, remain humble and like, I think that's a positive thing. But in doing that.

Sometimes you will fail to delegate and you'll do many menial tasks just to prove that you are quote. And I see that in myself quite often. It's like, oh, well, I should keep doing this because, like, that's what I do as a humble leader, when it's like, no, that's what's keeping you back from leading the team effectively. That's what's keeping you back from doing higher level tasks. Like, I would love. I would love to be able to communicate more with members of Augusta nation one on one. I'd love to be able to do the same thing with members of copilot.

Especially when, like, there's. There's like, fire. But I gotta realize that focusing on one instead of the many that, like, I can help in that same hour is important. And so, like, you know, you probably have noticed I am not in the Facebook group for copilot at all this past week. I have not gone to it one single time. And the reason for that is, like, several different things. And one of which. Okay, here we go. Like, I'm just gonna. I'm just sharing. All right, so I guess this is officially education just changes to musings.

So this is. This is my education. This is my self education. I am learning. So the reason for the past week I have been out of the copilot Facebook group and is not because I'm gone or out of town.

Like, I'm about to start my next day of work right now. So, um.

There was a couple things. So one is people started tagging me basically to. To, like, go around the back of, you know, people that I talked to at air traffic control, abc and it's super disempowering to the team. Even if they're correct. It is.

It'S super. It's like mommy, Daddy, like, if mommy says no, I'll go to daddy, and if daddy says no, go to Mommy. Um, and so sometimes having too much access to, to myself is actually really damaging to the team. And I saw what happened when it happened one time like a week and a half ago, and it's just not good for team morale because they have this cloud of over their head of like people are going to like cattle on me publicly to Mike. And so I saw what happened. I observed it and I was like, that's really negative. So I had to apologize. I didn't have to. I apologized to the team and said that's not right. I want to empower you to do your job well and if you make a mistake, you can own it yourself.

So also I've been on the Facebook group in part because the issues that we are facing right now.

I cannot solve them. And I have made it clear what the vision is and my community. You'll just see my communication style change with the Copilot Facebook group. I will, I'll be more communicative, but I'll be more output. I will not be taking much input because right now, taking input right now is like crippling me and I need to keep my head on my shoulders and I need to keep operating with the engineering team from what I as a CEO can do and like what I have got over the past 24 hours, being here for example, and like sharing and talking to other people that are like, like years ahead of me and like just massacre. I think some of them have over nine figure companies. Some of them exited for, you know, like high nine figures. It's insane. And then they come back to this. So what I have, I've got over the past little bit and what I feel like I am hitting up against in part is I thought I was going to have a technical co founder with Patrick and someone that during these fires would be in there with me. I'd be able to handle the management of the team and the strategy and the vision and there'd be someone else that could understand a little bit more about the technical side. Now we have a really good engineering team at Copilot. However.

Having a founder that is also technically and understand their language would be really helpful for me. So I've been considering that I've been talking to some people and so that's been really good. And so.

Yeah, so I'm just sharing with all of you because you're a Guston nation. You will see how I like. I have. I have. I've taken a week to pause the way I've been communicating because I literally communicate like, this is. I commute over a hundred times, three days in a row to stuff on the Facebook group. And so I kept seeing is now people were doing.