James Clift - Founder of Holopod

When you have teams from Netflix, Barkbox and Surveymonkey signing up for your brand new platform, you might be onto something. Today we're going to talk to James Clift of how he took a problem that he was having at one of his existing startups, create a solution, continue to tinker with it, and next thing he knew, that solution became a startup of its own.

3, 2, 1.

Hey, what's up everyone? We're back again with another episode of founder Journey Rounder, Dirty Fridays. You're hopefully getting used to these now and you're enjoying them. Today we've got a exciting entrepreneur. Just like every week, it's an exciting entrepreneur because there's people that I know that are doing good shit and people that I know will be able to give you good advice and life experiences. Today is James Clift. James is a Launch Academy OG. He was there in 2012, one of the first companies accepted into our program. And I've been able to witness firsthand him grow and turn into this awesome entrepreneur that's really well traveled and down to earth entrepreneur. He's now onto his third startup. First one's Karma Hire and then Visual CV and now Holopod. I mean, I let James dive into it, but James, hey, welcome to the show. Give our audience a quick background who you are and what you're building.

Yeah, I think I owe all my success to you, Ray and Launch Academy. So we'll start there. Give Ray some credit. So I've been building companies for, believe it or not, the last 15 years. So like I started my first company in. It was probably 15. We're importing cars from the US and flipping them in Vancouver. Vancouver.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Cars.

Oh yeah, 15.

Flipping cars.

Yeah. So when the dollar was like almost at par, I guess that must have been like 16, but the dollar was at par. Like you could buy a VW golf for like 12,000 bucks and then if you brought over the border, you could sell it for 18,000. So we did that like three times, me and some buddies, and that kind of got me on that path to like looking for, looking for different hacks and like different businesses to build. So I had like a little web design company for a while. I graduated university and just started trying stuff. So I had this project in university. I had some business partners there. We thought that might have been a good idea. It was like a daylighting system for commercial office building. So some really cool hardware like track the sun reflected into the ceiling and created like a more natural light within an office space. So we won 20 grand in business plan competitions and thought that that would be enough to fund. Fund four people to work on for a full year. So we quickly learned that that didn't work out and then ended up building a web design agency. And then from there went on this really weird journey of. I probably launched dozens of products in the last 10 years. One of the computer we went through Grow Lab, which is like Canada's version of Y Combinator back in the day. It's now highliner. They've evolved somewhat as well. This really weird Trying to throw everything at the wall. Hope one of these things sticks. Learn from those iterative experiences. And ended up building a project called Visual CV. We launched it in May 2014 and grew that to about 4 million users. Very profitable business. And I just had a partial exit from that in February. So I've kind of moved on to my next thing now. But it's. Yeah, it's hard to reflect on it because it just kind of happens and you get used to it. But I had no idea what I was doing 10 years ago. I still don't really know what I'm doing, but I've learned a few things along the way as well. So it's been a pretty fun journey. When I actually stopped to think about.

It, the quintessential entrepreneur. Throw shit at the wall, see what sticks and navigate your way through the crap that will. Right.

I wouldn't recommend it. It's not a. It's not a very. It's not a very like, smart path to take. Like, I think if I was like, if I was smart, I would have said, okay, I want to learn how to do this thing. So I'm going to get a job. I'm going to work for a startup for a few years and learn these skills and then perhaps start a company. I was just like, fuck it, I'm gonna do it. See what happens. It was a very hard way to do it, but I was lucky. It worked out for sure. But I don't think I would have done it any other way too. I'm not really well designed for the real world, I don't think.

I definitely want to jump a little bit back into Visual CV and some of that journey there. But what are you working on now? You've got your partial exit and you're moving on something new.

Holopod.

Tell us about Holopod in that industry.

Yeah, with Visual cv, we're an early adopter of fully remote work. We. We had a. I mean, small team but we had engineers in London and Poland, designers in Brazil and using Slack as their primary communication platform. So I was kind of a dick. Like it was just kind of this like free for all, right? So I was like, I didn't even know what time it was in Poland. I'm sending messages at all hours in the day. It's kind of this like freeform communication tool with no standards on top of it. And I don't want to interrupt the people that are that I'm working with, especially as an engineer. Like flow states are the most important thing. So if you're. Your boss is bugging you about some stupid thing in the middle of the night, like that's not a good experience, right? So we built Holopod as a side project to try and add more visibility to Slack. So I want to know like one, I want to signal to my team like, hey, I'm busy right now, don't interrupt me. I'm trying to focus and work on something and vice versa. Figure out what they're up to and let them kind of opt into that communication instead of being this like opt out thing. So we built Holopod as a side project to automatically manage your Slack status, manage notifications, trying to create more context and visibility around remote and launched that as a side project on the Slack store in November. And then Covid hit and then everyone started signing up for it. So we got like companies like Netflix, BarkBox, SurveyMonkey. Some like Massive companies started signing up for our project. And I luckily the timing worked out really well with Visual cv. So I was on my way out transitioning a new CEO in. I'm like, all right, I guess I got a new business. So it kind of just organically happened. The timing worked out really well and now we've got this broader vision of how do we actually create a remote workplace that is much better than the Office ever was. Kind of without these distractions and notifications and all these things that we've added as noise to our day. Like how do you actually make an environment that's calm, helps people work more effectively and collaborate without all this back and forth and kind of wasting time, like sort of. So that's the ideal vision is what does a world look like where you're not bombarded by notifications every day? You can get your work done, connect with your team and feel good about it and have some more balance back in your life is what we want to build there.

And so this is really ironic because so you're using Slack and you're faced with this issue and you scratch your own itch, you built this solution. But Slack itself was the team at Tiny Spec, Stuart Butterfield's gaming company, they're building a game called Glitch and they had this issue with internal communication and so they built this tool which ultimately became Slack. And so Tiny Spec Glitch, the game didn't do too well, but so they had to shut it out. But then Slack spun out of it and they built this company that's now is multibillion dollar mechanics helping companies all over the world, entrepreneurs all over the world. And you now, ironically, were using Slack and you had this itch and you addressed it and now you've got a company that's spun out of it.

Yeah, I think it's this. Just like the more you exercise that muscle of, hey, I don't like this thing, I want to fix it, then you can start executing on this stuff really efficiently.

Right.

And you meet people who can do it too. Right. Like other people have this problem. How do you discover it and it's not, I don't know, just like, yeah, it was annoying me. It was pretty much it. I want to make this better. I think there's a better way to do it. And I think there might be a business here. There might not be, but eventually you start to learn the signs of what is momentum and what makes sense and is the market adopting your product and liking it. And then, yeah, I think we got something here.

You started to transition out of Visual CV back in February and you had this product and idea on your hands. A lot of entrepreneurs, after they go through an exit, they want to take a break, but you jump right back into the fray of things. Why?

Yeah, I think I'm a glutton for punishment. My plan was to like, I had the perfect setup, right. So like, I partially exited. I've got cash in the bank, I'm still getting a check from the company. Everything's moving in the right direction. I could probably go do anything right now and it's a good time to do it. So part of it was Covid hit, so there's nothing else to do. Like, I'm sitting at home anyway. Might as well start building software and building a company. I think the other piece too is it's hard to find momentum. Right. That's the biggest thing in startups. It's hard to find something that has any hint of going from 0 to 1. And I think it's a nascent Talib quote. But anytime you see any hint of Something that might be successful, that might be big, that might be interesting. Just jump into it and see what happens. It wasn't a decision of, hey, I want to go do this for the next 10 years. It's like, oh, there's something here and I'm enjoying it and let's see what happens. That said, like, I've wanted to like shut it all down like dozens of times in the last six months. Just like, fuck it, I don't need to do this. Like, why am I doing this? Why is this so hard? Like, so I think a lot of it this time around, I'm really trying to enjoy the process a bit more. So like, as cliche as it is, right, like the outcome isn't that important to me here. It's like I want to build something that's great, like a really great product that I love to use and, and other teams love to use. And I think there's a lot of value there. But really trying to focus on that and not like, not worry about all this extraneous stuff. But my problem too is like, I'm so sensitive when things go wrong. Like if there's a bug, like I was up all, all week last week. Cause this one bug that was like just like destroying me and I can't do anything about it. Cause it's like our engineers have to solve it. But like I get that obsessive over details and stuff. So I think those are, those are things I gotta figure out and work on. But there are also qualities that I think leads to some level of a successful product too. So there's a balance somewhere. I don't know if I found the balance yet, but yeah, I don't know.

It's a great segue. I want to talk about balance. There's two ways that we can go down this path and I want to cover both. But with Visual CV, you were able to build the team, get 4 million customers, generate shit ton of revenue. Let's face it, you guys are making a lot of money. You guys didn't have a lot of investors and so you're very cash flow positive. You didn't need to go raise an A round or anything like that. So I want to kind of talk about that realization of do we need to raise money or no? Let's just keep building it off of profits and keep more equity for ourselves and less stress. But also I want to touch on the fact that you start backpacking around the world. You're traveling while you were the CEO of this company and you had this massive growth spurt going on. Pick one and then we're going to hit the other one afterwards.

Yeah. So I read the Four Hour Workweek recommended reading, I think about a decade ago. And that was my only goal. I want to build a business that makes me 10 grand a month, that allows me to travel the world and kind of like, do whatever I want, more or less, right? So that's the freedom line for me back there. It's like, okay, 10 grand, I can, like, I can travel, I can work from anywhere. Like, I believed in. Not so much remote as a concept, but like, yeah, sweet. I work on a computer. I can do it from anywhere. So that was. That was like in the back of my head while I was doing all this stuff. It's like, I want to. I just want to travel and have that freedom to do what I want to do. So I don't know if it was. I guess it was a conscious decision, but it was kind of like, we have this. This business that is generating cash. It was in a position where I could do it. It got to a point where it's like, okay, we've got a team in place. Like, I think we can operate remotely. And it was experiment. Let's go move down somewhere with a decent Internet connection. And that was Argentina for three months and see what happens. And then the business, like, tripled in that time. So I don't know how correlated it was, but it was like, okay, like, maybe we don't need to be in a specific place to be successful here. So part of that goal was just that, I don't know, I was 22. Like, why not, right? Like, it's fun. It was really fun and really enjoyable. And it was kind of just like, I'm going to pick up my bags and go somewhere. And I think it got pretty, like, almost too easy to do that too. I was like, in Argentina. Then I came back. I was in Europe for a month and came back and it was like, definitely not the best, like, focus, the most focused that I've ever been. But I think we're lucky enough to have a business that, that, that did grow organically and we were executing on the right things and made some of the right decisions so that that worked out. I will say that it's like this idea of free, like, it's more in your head than the business, right? Like, I hit that 10k mark and then nothing changed. I was like, oh, we got to hit this and this and this, this. Like, so it wasn't like some, like, I didn't just relax after that. Right. I think, like, you're free to go travel and do whatever you want, but you're business. Like, you're always thinking about it. There's always that, like, innate level of stress that something's going to go wrong and something does go wrong. So it's like on the surface, like, I had everything right and like, I had time, money, like travel, all this stuff. But in my head, it's still like, you're constantly thinking about all these thousands of decisions you can make every day and trying to figure out which one is the right one. And then you have like, all your identity tied up in it as well. Because this is what I am. I'm a founder, I'm a CEO, whatever.

So.

It'S wonderful, but it's also not the answer, I guess, like all that extraneous shit.

Let's dive into that. Because that's the whole purpose of this Founder Journey series is to talk about the taboo things. The things that nobody wants to talk about are the unsexy sides of being an entrepreneur. So you had this whole sexy exterior of being able to travel and you're a CEO. You guys are killing it with revenue. You've got a team that's be able to handle the company with you not there full time. But what was the drawbacks? What were some of the challenges or hindsight looking back, things that you didn't realize that at that time, but you're realizing now, like, okay, that was dangerous, or that wasn't something that's the best in my best interest to do.

Yeah. I think one thing that's like, it's pretty lonely, right? Like, it's a very kind of selfish lifestyle where you're like, it was my business and like, I had a co founder, but we didn't. Like, we didn't. We weren't like best friends. Right. There wasn't like a ton of communication there. It was like, we're business partners and we work together. So it kind of felt very, like, isolated. Right. You have your other partners, you have your employees, but you're kind of just there and it's like, oh, I'm making all this money now. Like, what do I do with. Who do I share it with? Like, so there's part of that. And especially when you go travel or you don't, you lose a bit of that sense of community too. Right. You have to rebuild that. I was lucky enough that I met some amazing people when I was traveling that were kind of in the same boat. So we connected there. But I think the loneliness is real. At least it was for me. And I am a person that I'm not really an extrovert. I'm probably in the middle, but I think my happiest days are working with people that I get inspired with and like, having that community and like, like those Launch Academy days, right? Like that first year of Launch Academy was like, probably the most exciting of my career because we're all trying to figure it out. No one knows what they're doing. Like, but you have that camaraderie and that like, connection and that community and then you kind of move away from that when, whatever, you have some level of success. So I think that was a big piece. Like, we didn't have that. I didn't have that support network or even just the environment might not have been right. Like, it was super fun, but a lot of it was like, you're still just sitting at a computer trying to figure out what to do, right? So it's not that glamorous. At the end of the day, that is. Your job is sitting down and typing stuff on a keyboard and thinking about it, right? And expecting that to be like the most satisfying, wonderful thing in the world is not true, right? Like, this is your job. You got to do your job. You got to do your job. Well, it's not, it's not a fluffy thing. It's like you're choosing to do this, so you got to do it. But yeah, so I think like, that was a big part of it is that loneliness and then like, what else, what else went wrong in my startup life? It's kind of that paradox of choice to some degree, right? Like, freedom to do anything does not equal happiness, right? Like, you could do this, doesn't mean you should do this. So I think you lose a bit of your sense of purpose is like, oh, like. And not like I was like billionaire wealthy or anything, but for like a 22 year old with that much time and freedom, it's like, it's a lot of opportunity to get into trouble too, which is also fun. But, like, I think I didn't really have a clear sense of what I wanted to be or who I wanted to be. It was more like, I want to not do this. It was like, I want to not get a job. I want to like, do my own thing. But I didn't really, like, embrace that narrative of like, hey, I still don't even do that. Like, I'm, I'm an entrepreneur. Like, I'm a business builder. Like, I Don't have that, that switch in my head, I guess. Like it's. I still have that self doubt and still that insecurity, that anxiety, whatever, whatever it's coming from. But I think that the confidence in what I was doing, there's always that fear that it's all going to fall apart. Because you see it, right? You see like Google changes an algorithm, your traffic drops 30%, like your lead engineer quits and you got to figure out how to keep the servers up. Like, there is a lot of things that are risks and like really weigh on you too with all this stuff. Right.

And so how do you deal with some of that? Especially when you're a digital nomad traveling around the world? Yes, you've got some camaraderie of people that you met, but you don't know them that well. So who helped you or how did you cope?

Probably alcohol.

One of my best friends.

Yeah. Good red wine, a little bit of scotch. I think you distract yourself more than anything, right? Like it's. Yeah, you go out and you party and it's fun and you like, you kind of have to recover from that, which means you're trying to like, get back to work. And it's like, it's not a great coping mechanism, but like it was kind of the best one I had at the time. And I wouldn't, I don't know, I wouldn't not recommend it, but I wouldn't fully recommend it either. It's like, if it works, it works, but it's not like you're not solving anything. And usually you make the problems worse like a week later. Because now you're hungover and your brain doesn't like, it doesn't like itself.

I like how you said you're hungover a week later. That means you're drunk for an entire week.

Yeah, exactly. Sobered up. Yeah. There was a period where it was a bit too much. Definitely a bit excessive. But yeah.

So being that digital nomad traveling around what we're seeing, some of the things that, again, hindsight, looking back, that helped shape you into who you are today. Like holopod and that realization of having remote workers and what people are doing with the time and day probably would not have come to you as easily if you did not have this journey with the first company.

No, not at all. And I think it's such a, it's such a gift to have that ability to do that. Right. And it's like, I wouldn't trade that experience for the world. It was like, it's the best, some of the best memories of my life. It was so much fun. It was amazing, right? Like you're running a business in another country, you're meeting new people, you're having new experiences. You're like staying out till six in the morning, dancing at some random club and buenos. It was fucking awesome. It was so much fun. And then that freedom too, right? Like so many people don't get that opportunity to travel, right? Like you get your two weeks vacation a year and that's something that I've always had to like. I went to business school, I majored in accounting. Like I have this like shivers run down my spine when I think about like working for a big four accounting firm. Like, I'm just so scared of that. Right? So it's just like that freedom to kind of look at the world a bit differently, right? Is I think it's such a gift and like really powerful. And yeah, like if you have the opportunity to go work somewhere, like you should definitely do it. It's like, it's sweet and it's like, it's definitely worth that experiment. And I think you, you often learn that. It's. And it's a good lesson to learn. Like, hey, like I like home sometimes. Like you might, you want to find your place, right? And like you almost have to get that out of your system. Like the more you travel you like learn all these new things, have these new experiences and they're like, oh, like Vancouver's pretty sweet. Like I like these things and kind of figure out what you're trying to solve for, right? So place is a big part of that and like seeing new places. But like place is not the most important thing to me.

I read somewhere this is probably even a deeper statistic around the world, but in North America, most especially America, most Americans haven't even traveled outside of their state, let alone outside of the country. And you'd imagine obviously in Europe it's a little bit easier to go from France to Spain. You just jump on a train and you're there. Flights are cheap and whatnot, but especially from a North American perspective, people don't know what the rest of the world really is other than what they're seeing on the Internet.

Yeah. And you have these crazy experiences too. Like I was down in Buenos Aires and we got an interview with Y Combinator. So like that's a 10 minute interview and it was in person. So I flew 18 hours to get to San Francisco. So it's like through Buenos Aires to Chile to Dallas to San Francisco, our 10 minute interview, and then flew to Vancouver to see my mom for like three hours. Flew back down, flew back to Argentina. So it was like going from like, that was a bigger culture shock. Like going from Argentina to San Francisco was like weirder than going to Argentina. Like you're in this, like, you go to like this place where everyone's on their Bluetooth headsets talking about business and work and all this stuff. I was like, mind blown. Like, what is happening here? This is such a weird place. San Francisco's so weird. So you have these like weird experiences too. And I think part of it's like you build resilience, like being outside of your comfort zone. Like, I didn't know how to, like, I learned Spanish on the plane on the way down. It was like, I don't even know what I'm doing. Like I didn't know research. So there's something I think that's like really powerful, but just throwing yourself into a situation and like just seeing if you can figure it out. And that's the, that's what I think is like a really important thing to internalize is like, you'll be fine, you'll figure it out. And not like it's a dangerous scenario, but you're leaving all your friends, all your family, you're in a new environment, like, you don't know what to expect. That's a really good quality, I think, to learn because it's adaptation. Right. And that's what your business is going to need to do anyway. It's like you throw yourself out there, see what happens, try and figure it out. That's entrepreneurship, I think. Right.

Well, it's actually going to dive into that next. We talked a little bit about the shivers down your spine that you get when you think about working for a big four or any nine to five job for that matter. But which are great things to do. Especially when you talk about do you live to work or do you work to live? Some people work so that they can go travel in the world for a month or whatnot. But how do you explain to your friends that aren't entrepreneurs why you do what you do?

Yeah, it's funny because jobs are actually getting better now too. Right. So it's like if you work in tech and you work remote, you have a pretty good job and have a lot of freedom. So it's gotta be something different that's driving you. Right. I don't talk about it that much with my friends that aren't in it. Right. It's just Like, I don't define myself in that way. My family barely knows what I do. But like, yeah, James is successful and like runs a company or whatever. But it's like I think having people that are in the same game is so valuable because you can have those conversations, you can have those like those conversations of like, about money that you wouldn't have with anyone else about like your revenue, your growth, your challenges. Like someone's some your co founders, you're breaking up with a co founder. Like all these things that no one can relate to because they're not in that same world. So like that's why that like community piece is so valuable and so important. But yeah, to my friends, like, yeah, it's like I run businesses and that's kind of what I've done. And no one, you kind of have.

Like a segregation, like your non entrepreneurial friends, you are there to play squash or you're going to go have a fun night out or you're going to go camping or you're going to go travel. And it's a way for you to kind of extract yourself away from business because you don't have to talk about it with them. But then when you are with your friends that are in entrepreneurship, it's an opportunity to really dive into other areas of support or help or passion that you have for what you're doing with them because they get it. Or they may not have the answers, but at least they can sympathize or help you try to find an answer.

Yeah, you can go a bit deeper, I think. And then I think like for my friends in the traditional accounting world and stuff, like it's fun because they understand all the business, like all the cash flow statements and all the tax stuff. Like we talk about taxes a lot with my accountant.

What you can, right?

Yeah, exact, Exactly. But I think one thing that I haven't really understood that much is like, it's kind of not that daunting to me, I guess at this point, right. It's like I've seen success to whatever level and I've seen my friends become like ridiculously successful. Right. And we all kind of start in the same place, like trying to figure it out. Like no one's that much smarter than anyone else. No one works that much harder. So it's kind of this, like it opens up a layer of the world that I don't think a lot of people do get to see. Right. And I'm super lucky to like have lifted the veil on that a little bit. Right. It's like, holy shit. Like, like, I don't, like, no one was a millionaire when I was growing up, right? Like, we had decent middle class jobs. It was never talked about or thought about. Like, starting a business was not a thing. So just to like start being in that community, doing that, like exercising, trying one thing, like, it's just like, it's a mindset more than a skill set. I think it's just like, oh, this is possible and oh, that thing's annoying. I want to fix it. I want to solve this thing. So it's interesting talking to people with real jobs, which are great and probably a lot less stressful, but going from like, I want to do this, like, I have an idea. I'm just like, well, do the idea.

Why wouldn't you do that?

That sounds reasonable. It's a good idea. But there's so much more to get past. I think once you haven't done it before, right? It's scary. It's really scary. There's a lot of like, things that you don't understand. You have to put yourself out there and like, take the financial risk and all those other things. So, yeah, I envy the real world sometimes, but I don't think I would ever choose it for myself because I don't think I'd last a day in a real job.

You've been really valuable, giving some real valuable insight and you've given generous time to our audience. Kind of wrap this up with two specific questions for you here. The first one is going to be an app or a tool outside of Holopod that you think would be instrumental or has been instrumental in your journey as an entrepreneur that our audience might benefit from. Or it can even be a philosophy. Doesn't have to be like a digital tool. We can open it up to some other things, but something that you found instrumental to making you who you are today.

So there's apps and tools. I think the biggest thing is find five people in your life that are trying to do the same thing, that are trying to figure this out, that are trying to build businesses. Like, that is the most valuable thing in my life by far. Is that like the first cohort of people that was that I met and became good friends with, like, and growing together, like, that's been like the most valuable thing and changed my thinking and mindset more than anything else. It's that community and that like that group of friends that's trying to figure this shit out. It's not like, it's not some, like, I want a mentor Or I want an investor. It's like, find some buddies. You want to hustle on this stuff with you. And like, so much more creative ideas are going to start flowing. You're going to try different things. Like, that's the hack. Find some friends who want to do this stuff, like the apps and the tools. I don't know if there's anything that stands out there, but find some friends who really want to figure this out.

The power of that network, especially at the early stages when you're just trying to figure shit out and you're trying to deal with problems, just surrounding yourself with other people that are going through the same things that you are, even though they may not have the answers. It's just misery loves company, right? You want to be around those type of people. So I guess the last question would be, what's your advice for an entrepreneur starting something today, that could be that advice, but let's pick something else. What would you have wish you had known today, starting this new company that you didn't know back when you were starting Visual CV or some of these other companies that you started?

I would be very careful to make sure I'm failing a bit more spectacularly than it was in the past. So I think it's easy to get caught up in this idea that, like, hey, I'm starting a company, I've got a vision for what I want to build, but there's a fear of actually getting that out to the market. It's easy to, like, sit and write blog posts about how you're basic. But, like, true failure, you should be learning as much as possible at all times. So it's like you should either be talking to customers, writing code, shipping stuff, like getting it out there, trying to generate revenue. Don't fall into this trap of thinking small where it's like, want give me a bit of money for this thing? It's like, no, actually try and execute on something big that you're excited about and kind of maybe solve your own problems. But yeah, because I think with, with my, my first, like, I don't know, dozens of projects, it was kind of like really grasping at anything that's going to generate, like, revenue, right? So it's like, oh, someone's going to pay us for this thing and this thing and this thing and this thing, but you don't have that cohesive vision about what you want to accomplish. Then you end up just treading water quite a bit. So I think it's like, figure out what you want to try and build. Like Build it, get people to use it. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. But like, get to a point where you're learning really quickly and then you'll get better. Don't just get stuck in this kind of small, small worldview or small, small vision and not in like the silhouette. Like I'm not a visionary Silicon Valley guy, but there's, there's a, there's a place for adopting that just for like, just for a couple days a week or a couple days a month. Like, hey, here's what I actually want to build, here's what, what's exciting. And I think that like that idea of thinking big and like actually getting stuff out there is something that I haven't done enough of in my career. And I would definitely have done more of like when I was a kid or a bit younger.

When you were a kid still pretty young man. I was 20 back in the day. James has been awesome insight. Really appreciate you taking the time to share this with our audience. We're now at that point where it's your turn to ask our audience for something. What can our audience do? What's your call to action?

I would say like in the next like three months I want you to launch something like pick a domain name, build a landing page, something you want to build and ask like 30 people if they want to use it or not. And that's like lesson one. And then eventually it's like make your first dollar. Selling something on the Internet, like that is such a life changing thing. Is that like that agency moment I remember when I just like literally sold. It doesn't have to be like a startup. It could be like, hey, I know how to do TikTok marketing and I can find 10 businesses that need that. Like that is such a moment of agency that is super powerful. So like, yeah, make your first like $10 in the next three months and see what that leads to. Because to me it led to some pretty cool shit and I think that's very achievable for a lot of people.

Go on Selfish plug From a launch perspective. We've got online courses and resources that.

Can help you do that.

Our launch course is live and available.

Sign up for those.

But to James point, it's get it.

Out there, ship it.

Don't be afraid to put something in the hands of customers because you're never going to learn what works and what doesn't work until it's out there and you're getting data back. James, this has been an awesome conversation. Thanks again for taking the time. Hopefully you enjoyed it. I'm pretty sure, and I'm almost certain our audience loved it. Keep building great things and we'd love to see more from Holopod.

Thanks Ray. Appreciate all that you do man.

Launch Ventures is for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs. If you enjoyed today's episode of Founder Journeys, please like share, follow and check out our link in bio for all the other good stuff.