What's your founder operating philosophy? | w/ Rob Snyder

Well, Rob, welcome back, man.

Yeah, welcome back. You, uh, you told me before this started, and I just want to get it on tape, that you're going to the A&M game this weekend. You're flying up to go watch Texas A&M and Auburn, but your biggest— your thing you're most looking forward to is this podcast.

So yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. Actually, having battered Aggie syndrome from like years and years of suffering through our football seasons. That's actually true. Like we are— there's a lot of optimism in Aggieland, which means that Auburn is probably going to come in like a freight train and just like run right over us.

Speaking of freight trains, you said this, this article hit you like a freight train. So I'm excited to get into that.

Yeah, yeah, totally. Before we do that, however, I think all of our listeners are wondering how, how weightlifting is going at the moment.

It hurts. So like, I, I have an almost 7-month-old baby and I'm not sleeping well at night, not because she's not sleeping well at night, but because I am dreading waking up in the morning and having to do, having to lift whatever thing I'm lifting the next day. It's just, it sucks so much.

You know, some of your like anger being directed away from your 7-month-old daughter and toward like, I iron things that you're picking up and putting down is, is probably not a terrible thing.

Yeah, no, no, no. You know, some mornings it's also very helpful to just set, like, you know, you look at the bar and you're like, all right, like if I don't lift this, my whole family goes without food. Right.

And you're just like, exactly. Yeah. Knowing Grace, I doubt that y'all would, that, that would be a good, the good equation. Well, I'm excited to jump in today. We are talking about two things. Your, your latest blog is called What Is Your Operating Philosophy? Subtitle: Plus Canvas with All My Frameworks in One Place. The second one is kind of mind-blowing and incredible. So obviously we're going to start with the other part of it. The operating philosophy is a super interesting concept. Let me give— I'm going to read something here, Rob, and then I want, I want your reaction and the context on this. Uh, you write, everybody has an operating philosophy. We all choose to take action or take no action. Our choices and actions reveal how we believe the world works. Of course, very few people have deliberately decided on their operating philosophies. We're rarely even aware of our operating philosophies. If you look at your calendar right now and infer your operating philosophy, the result will surprise you and might disappoint you. This is a brutal activity. Having done that, That is totally true. It is a brutal activity, but Robert, uh, Rob, what's, what's going on, uh, with, uh, like in your world that made you, led you to write this?

Yeah, it's, um, honestly, I don't know where this one came from. It just came to me. I think I was driving at the time and I was, this like idea just came to me. There's this quote that's kind of been living in the back of my mind that I saw. I think it was on like Twitter back when Twitter was Twitter. Uh, and it was, like, if you look at your calendar, does, you know, do you see that you're serious about your goals? Right. Which I think is like a, I think that's like an interesting and provocative statement, but what we've been talking about, like a lot of the demand frameworks are like inferring somebody's to-do list based on what actions they're taking. Well, in this case, I was like, huh? Right. Like we can basically infer what they believe about the world. By looking at what people do during the day and how, like, do they spend their time just thinking and lost and, and, and, you know, not making progress. Do they spend their time doing stuff that's not relevant? And then I turned that, like, thought process onto my own calendar and I was like, oh dear Lord, like, there's actually something really interesting here of, okay, if I just look at how I spend my time, both like what I spend my time on and how I approach whatever activity I'm doing, what does just that information tell me about how I believe the world works? And that's not a fun thing.

Yeah. Yeah, totally. It's, I like it because it's so one, it's very easy. Actually, I don't like it. I kind of hate it. Like having, having done it, but it's as a tool, like just looking at your calendar, figuring out where you're using your time. It's just incredibly revealing.

And I don't know why I haven't done that exact diagnostic previously, but let me, let me, but I think the important thing is not just saying, okay, how am I spending my time? Like, I think the, the, the really punch you in the soul kind of thing is like taking that and saying, okay, here's how I'm spending my time. What does that tell me that my actual beliefs about how the world works are? I don't know if those words made sense in that order, but like, what does, what does that tell me about how I actually think the world works?

Yeah, totally. Let me run, I think to make this point a little bit more tangible, I'm going to run through some of the examples that you have in the blog and then let's, I'll want your reactions to it. You give 5 of them. One of them is if we choose to spend our time heads down building product, not talking to customers. I'll just run through these other 4 and then we'll choose 1 or 2 of them to do. Yeah. Second one is if we try to sell, but we go through the motions reluctantly. Third one is if we keep doing the same thing every week, despite making no progress, like that's another gut punch. First one and the third one, real gut punches to me. Uh, fourth one is if we experiment in multiple directions at once. Uh, and then the fifth one is if we try to build a product for an industry we don't know, without getting firsthand experience in the industry. Let's, let's choose one or two of those, Rob, and make the operating philosophy, uh, like very tangible for the listener.

Yeah. Yeah. So, okay. Let's, why don't we start with, um, actually the second one, if we're trying to sell, but like, we're going through the selling motions reluctantly, right? Like we spend a lot of our day just kind of like drafting kind of outbound emails, or we show up to sales calls unprepared, or we're like, you know, we're not, You, we kind of were approaching the sales process like we're doing it, but we're not putting our soul into doing it. Right. Like I had that experience where I was making 50 cold calls a day for, I don't know, months. And I just hated it. And I didn't, I approached it like I did the work because I had to do the work. I felt like I had to do the work, but I wasn't really trying to become good at it. I wasn't trying to become great at it. And now that I have this concept of the operating philosophy, right. I can look at that and say, okay, what was based on what I was doing in that situation? What was my actual belief about how the world worked? Well, the, my belief was that like, frankly, like I'm the hero in this situation, right? I just deserve success because I'm going through the motions because I'm doing the quote unquote right things, right? That was my set. That was my revealed philosophy about how the world worked. Works. And that's really hard to admit.

Yeah. It's kind of a trust the process without like self-criticality or, or something like, like that, like you, the, the going through the motions thing.

Yeah. And it's like, you know, underneath that, or maybe like the core thing there is that like, I deserve to be successful. Like the world owes me something such that if I just If I just show up to the right things, I'm going to be successful, right? Like, that's the under— and that, like, I don't believe that's— when I say that out loud, I don't believe it, but I'm acting in a way that implies that I believe that. And so the tension there between what I actually believe, which is like, nobody owes me anything. I'm not going to be successful by just showing up. Right. I actually have to make things work and I have to figure it out. Nobody owes me anything. You know, look, I have to show up and make it happen is in direct contrast with how I'm actually behaving. And so these philosophies are in contrast. And what do I do now that I can look at these two things? Right. Do I change my behavior or do I go deeper into, you know, this, this awful, awful place?

And one of them's dominant, like the thing that you actually do is much more important than the thing that you would profess. Like that's the thing that actually turns into like what your company becomes or if you do or don't have success. Another operating philosophy that I think I wanted to test on you is like, that seems common-ish. I don't know how common it is. You know this better than me, is that fundraising is success. In the startup community, which sort of like leads founders to do a lot of pitch competitions. It leads to really trying to line up like the best investors probably before it's necessary as a stamp. But with the kind of reflecting on why, you know, that might happen, it's like the idea that if I get Sequoia, whoever it is that's investing, As a result of that, I will, my company will be successful rather than building the successful business first. Is that how you, you think about the, like that space?

Yeah, I think so. I think I might take that when, when I see founders doing all of those things, like, and I, I think if you are a founder who is doing all of these things, I would encourage you to just look at your calendar and say, what is, what is actually my operating philosophy based on this? My take on that is that the operating philosophy there is I deserve to be a successful founder. Being a successful founder is high status. I deserve that. And so what I am doing is I am spending my time behaving like a successful founder behaves. Yeah. And like, that's the, that's, and so we're, I think that's just like the simplest way to make sense of somebody who is doing those things.

Yeah. Yeah. Like mimicking the example of other successful founders that, or big businesses that like sort of like have gone through that route.

Or yeah, I have this, I have, you know, I watched The Social Network. It seemed awesome. Right. And I have this mental model of what a successful founder looks like. I want to look like that. That's why I'm doing all of these things and that's how I'm spending my time. And like, you know, I may, if, if you ask me that directly, I'm going to say, no, of course not. I'm trying to build a real business here, but my actions reveal my, my real philosophy behind all of this.

Yeah. Yeah. Um, let's, are there other common operating philosophies that you see from founders that, that you work with that are worth going over?

Yeah, I think so. I think the main ones are reluctantly doing the thing that's important, right? Because I feel like I need to check the box. So sales is the easiest possible example here. The second one, um, or like avoiding sales even, right? Just heads down building product says like, I think I know best and the world should thank me when I arrive. Right? Like that's, that's kind of like the, the kind of revealed philosophy, the operating philosophy. The other one that's really really hard is the one that you mentioned, the third one. I'm curious why this one stood out to you. If we keep doing the same thing every week despite making no progress or like kind of no change in progress.

Yeah. I mean, it matters to me. That's just like thinking through long stretches with Cumbre Media. I was doing very like very similar things and I was, you know, one thing is like outreach to the same types of organizations, which when it wasn't working, I wasn't fast enough to change that or to be self-critical and like go back to the drawing board on it. But yeah, it just felt, it felt comfortable. Like for me as a person that is routine-oriented, like going through the same motions every week was something that was very natural to me when that wasn't, that totally wasn't the right thing to be doing.

Yeah. And I think that's, I think that's like the revealed operating philosophy of a lot of us is that we're just like, we want to be comfortable. And we think that we are owed success if we just do the right thing or we just keep, we've always been successful before, so why wouldn't we be successful now? And so we can just do the comfortable things. Like Instead, like, that's, that's clearly wrong when I say it out loud. And yet we behave that way. And so what we have to do is we have to like look at our calendar and say, okay, this is what this operating philosophy is demonstrating to me. How would I, how should I structure my calendar going forward such that my operating philosophy reflects what I actually think?

Yeah. Yeah, totally. And what would you say are— we've, we've kind of gone through the critical ones, um, you know, not, not enthusiastic about enough about sales, a little bit too self-confident, putting your trust in the wrong places. What are the most useful operating philosophies that you see from, from founders? Like if you could, if you could rewire your brain to have one or two of them.

Yeah, I think so. I think the operating philosophy is, is essentially a, a statement about how the world works and therefore what I should do. And so what I've been trying to do is develop, when I kind of like realized that I didn't know anything when we were stuck for 2 years at zero and then we went zero to $4 million ARR in 2 years and I didn't understand why, like I just, that, was like, okay, I actually don't know how this world works. I've read every single book on this. I've, I've listened to every podcast, like I, and I still don't understand it. That's led me to try to build up this kind of model for how the world works, which we can, we'll get into the canvas and all that kind of stuff soon. And then therefore, what should I do based on how I believe the world works? And so for me, the, the kind of like core pieces of the operating philosophy or like what I should do are based on how I think the world works. And, and so the core, like, what should I do? One is focus on demand.

Hmm.

Two is like spend my time focusing on demand and, and selling and like doing whatever it takes to figure out demand and ignore everything else. It's like pretty simple once you, once you say, okay, here's my theory about how the world works. Therefore, what should I do?

Okay.

It's, it's literally just this. And then the hard part is saying, okay, now look at my calendar. Does that actually reflect that I'm focused on demand and I'm not just doing the same things over and over because they're comfortable?

That's, I really like how simple that is, Rob. It's like wake up in the morning, eat your breakfast, whatever. And then the first question is like, what is demand? And if you're like, if you're starting with that as a question, if the answer is honestly like, I'm not sure yet, and letting that guide you, or it's like, I know demand and letting that guide you, that just, that just feels like the right way to ground, uh, like ground an organization or ground your like founder philosophy.

Yeah. And like everything else. So what my sense is that basically everything builds off of demand. Right? Like, so demands, what are, what are people trying to achieve? That tells me what to build on the supply side, or that like at least gives me the, the shape of something I can build on the supply side and I can decide how to do that elegantly. Okay. Demand plus supply. Well, my business is just a system to that finds demand, delivers supply, and repeats that. And so everything else downstream is just like a, It's a, again, we'll talk about this, but it's a factory to repeat that demand-supply case study. Okay, cool. Therefore, still, I'm still focused on demand, but like, what is the bottleneck in that system? Well, I should just focus there. Cool. Solve that, move to the next one. And it is like, once you have these pieces and once you kind of like see the world this way, it becomes quite simple to know what to do. It's very difficult to do that for all the reasons we've talked about, about like what our operating philosophy is revealing itself to be. But all of those challenges are not because it's complicated. The challenges are just all because we don't want to do these, the, the core things.

Yeah. Yeah. Difficult, but not complicated is, um, yeah. Something that, that's come up a couple times in, in comments from founders too. Well, I'm going to test a couple things with you, Rob. Yeah. How would you respond to somebody that says like, personality, like where does personality play into this? Like, I'm an introvert and like selling is harder for me than somebody that loves talking to people. Like, where does that, how does that interplay with, that's a, I'm throwing out a hypothetical, although I also am an introvert, but like how would you respond to that? Is it's like you're, how does that play with operating philosophy?

Yeah. Okay. So you're, so What I'm hearing there is basically an excuse. Like, it's, it's, you're, you're going to say, okay, cool. I believe the world works in such a way that I need to go and sell things. I need to go out there and sell things, but because I'm an introvert, I think I should succeed regardless, like without doing that. It's like, okay, cool. Good luck with that. I don't think those two things work together. You don't have to be an extrovert. To sell. We're both introverts. I'm gonna go curl up in a ball after this as, as per usual. Uh, but, but like, okay, you're using the, the thing of you are an introvert. The fact that you're bringing that up says that's an ex— that you're using that as an excuse because you believe the world works in a certain way and that you shouldn't have to follow the rules of the world, right? And I think it's, you know, when you look at it that way and say, okay, maybe I should change how I believe the world works because I think introverts can still be successful. Or like, I don't think sales requires you to be an extrovert necessarily, right? It just requires you to have a different philosophy about sales. If you think sales is a bunch of like conference glad-handing and I'm going to convince you and I'm going to take you out to steakhouses, like that's not actually how sales works. So maybe you need to change your view on how the world works. Or, you know, maybe you need to change that story in your head that says you can't do it.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to take that recording and send it to my therapist for the, for the next session that I have. You know, one thing thinking about operating philosophies is that it starts with a belief about the world and it eventually becomes what your business is. And let me, let me give an example from as I was reflecting on Kumbre Media, I think when I, when I do the audit of my calendar and what it says about what's important, it's heavily weighted toward content development. It's heavily weighted toward audience growth. It's heavily weighted toward like collaborations with organizations that I think about as, you know, esteemed. It's very— it's lightweight to commercially successful, honestly, which is I'm sure. And like all of those things came true. Our audience grew. We developed a great product for audiences. We worked with, you know, we continue to work with like the best whatever organizations. And it's taken me years to get to like sizable contracts. And I think that that's— it's like it started with a belief on if I do these things, then success will happen. And there's a bunch of reasons why that's wrong. And so I think if, you know, if founders like do an audit, you know, as they do their audit, not just of how am I spending my time, but what has my company become and what does that say about where I invested, um, where I invested my time and energy and what I thought was important because it, you think it's important and then it becomes thing like there's a, there's a direct consequence there.

Yeah. And I think let's, let's talk about how often, like why this is a very hard thing specifically for founders because The operating philosophy is not something that we've actually really had to deliberately think about up until now. In school, what was your operating philosophy? It was just like, get good grades, do a couple extracurriculars, look good for the college review or for the whatever the next thing for the job applicant, like for whatever it in a corporate job, right? Your operating philosophy is usually given to you. I think literally at Bain and McKinsey, they gave us a, a rubric that was like, Here's how to be a 5 out of 5, right? Here's how to get whatever, distinctive, right? I was like, cool. That's the checklist. I don't need to think. Yeah. I don't need to think deeply about the world. I'm just going to do these things. Got my 5. Sweet. It doesn't matter. HBS, right? It's like, okay, what's the, you know, oh God, we're going to get in trouble for this one.

Neither of us were very good at HBS, but I don't think either of us were getting whatever the 1s or whatever the top score was.

Speak for yourself, sir.

I'm okay. Maybe.

Okay.

It's a, it's a different, different issue. The professors were very impressed with you. I'm not sure about your peers, Rob.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But you know, no, like at, at, at HBS, there's like a, you know, are you making quality comments? And you can have a, you basically just, okay, there's a strategy to game that. And I've heard of two. One is just wait for someone to say something dumb and attack, right?

That was just great.

Or two is wait for the conversation to go off track. And then be the person who brings it back on track and professors will love you. Right. And, and so, uh, yeah, like, and so the point in that is that in most things up until starting a company or like, you know, becoming an exec somewhere or like there's relatively few domains where your operating philosophy actually matters and it is not necessarily just handed to you. And we usually show up in startups with a shallow and like not even clearly articulated operating philosophy. It's usually what we talked about before. Like, I want to look like a successful founder. I've been successful everywhere else. I deserve this. And so I'm just gonna start kind of like doing the things that successful founders do in my head. And what that reveals is that I'm actually not serious about this and I don't really have a theory about how the world works. And you know, sometimes, sometimes that actually works and you take off and it's like, cool, I never need to think about this. But Most of the time what happens is you just get punched in the jaw repeatedly, just, and, and that, that is terrible, but it's a chance for you to, to take a look at your operating philosophy and realize that like, okay, I actually need to have a kind of way of thinking about how the world works and how I should spend my time. And once I have those things, right? The only thing that's different between successful founders and unsuccessful founders is how they spend their time. So, okay, cool. How should I be spending my time given how I believe the world works?

Yeah. And listening to you articulate that and bringing it back to, to demand, one part of that, which has been super eye-opening for me is like, if part of your, of your operating philosophy is that demand exists. Agnostic of if you do, like demand just exists in the world and you have to find it. Like that has a huge implication for how you, uh, like spend your time. You end up searching for it and rather than trying to create it or sell it or like do these like other, you know, other tactics.

Yeah. Yeah. And so, yeah, that kind of leads you to, okay, you get punched in the jaw, you like realize, hmm, maybe I don't know how the world works. Right. I need to figure out how it works. Well, that's a really hard task. It's something I've been trying to do for like 10 years now since I started getting punched in the jaw. And like, uh, the question is, where do you even start? Like, what's the start? Okay. Now I've, I've accepted I have no idea how the world works. Now what? And so it took me like years to figure out what the starting point actually was. Cause you could start on, well, I think the world works such that great products grow, right? Or I think the world works in a variety of different, like, I think it's all about the people on the team, or I think it's all about hype or whatever it is. And so for me, it was like getting down to like, okay, what, what do I think is the foundational component here? And to me, it is actually demand thanks to Bob Moesta, Ryan Singer, and like a couple other variety of random esoteric French philosophers I've read. But, um, uh, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

Of course, obviously, as one does find inspiration in business from, I don't know.

So, so, but okay. So the, the, you start, and this is where like you're, you're building a model of how the world works begins on my side. It's demand. It's why does anybody do anything? Why does anybody buy a product? Right? Because, and that for me is the starting point because we can't force people to buy a product. It's just not a thing. So buyers have choices. That's capitalism. Love it. Great. Useful. They have choices. Why do they make certain choices? Why did I, I don't know, buy an extra 35-pound weight plate instead of buying taco chips? Like, I don't know. Right? And so, so we have to come up with some sort of a model for why people buy anything. Why people do anything and everything can build off of that platform.

Yeah. And a similar question, why did I buy taco chips instead of a 35-pound weight plate? Like, it's just, it's just flipped with me. Turns out that one's actually quite easy.

I just— can I actually say it and say a story about weightlifting here about, about the operating philosophy of weightlifting that I thought of?

I'm sure our listener is dying to hear this.

They've been waiting for this one. So yeah. So, okay. So I realized, so I was on set 2 of squats. The first set of obviously the heaviest weight I've ever lifted. First set, I did 5 and I felt like I was going to die. Second set, the third rep just like was awful. It was the worst thing ever. In that moment, I was like, I can't do any, like, I put the weight down on set 3 or on rep 3 instead of going all the way through rep 5. What does that tell you about how I believe the world works?

I have no idea, Rob. I don't know where you're going with this. Okay.

Well, it's, it basically, it reveals that I believe that I should like that, that I should be able to get strong without doing the full workout. Right? Like, and so I had that realization and I was like, Damn it. Right. And so, and so now my mornings are even worse because I had that realization of like, okay, how, what do, what, what does this say about my philosophy about how the world works? I have to like, I don't, I don't think you get participation points in the gym. Well, you just don't. So anyway, that's my random aside.

You don't get, yeah, it turns out participation points you don't get in very many parts of life. The, the, What we're, I'm going to have to do after this is go to Peter Attia and copy and paste his medical disclaimer and drop it at the stop of this, that everybody should talk to their physician or somebody qualified about their, their exercise strategy. Rob, anything else on, on operating philosophy? And maybe like one question more on operating philosophy before we jump into the unifying theory. How do you change it? Like, let's say, let's say we do this diagnostic., and, you know, somebody's like, yeah, I, I see that there, maybe it's not as bad as like what we've described, but like there's some holes in it. Like they, they're like, okay, what I would say is different from what I'm doing. How does, how would you work with a founder? How, what would you tell founders that want to change their operating philosophy to be more demand-oriented?

Honestly, I feel like if you, if you're being honest with yourself, it's gonna be bad. It's gonna be really bad when you look at your calendar and, and say, does this actually reflect? What, how I believe the world works. And, and so my thing would just be, are you being honest with yourself? And when you look at it in the cold wind of, of reality and, and, and, and really compare what your operating philosophy is versus how you think the world works, that's gonna do all the lifting for you as long as you just, you like don't try to avoid that.

Yeah, for me, I had like, I was washing dishes, having an argument with myself, trying, like trying to get over the self-justification of the way that I spent time doing it. And, um, you know, at a certain point, I wish I remember what exactly it was, but it was, it was kind of like I was holding like really tight onto, uh, the idea of what I was doing previously and I was just like, I don't know, I just like relaxed a little bit and that let me reflect a little bit more clearly on what I needed to be doing.

Yeah. I think we all have this kind of like, I'm the hero, I can't be possibly wrong.

Yeah.

Kind of like story playing out in our heads as a self-defense mechanism and we kind of bend the world to that. And so I didn't realize we were going to get like deep into the emotional side of things here, but like, but, but yeah, like that's a, that's a very real barrier. And when you, when you look at it like you did, right. And it's just like, wait, why am I doing that? Yeah. Do, do I wanna succeed more than I wanna keep this story playing in my head?

Yeah.

And it's like, oh, okay, cool. Well, what's gonna work? I'm just gonna do that.

I mean, I think we, I think we're actually just constantly wading into the emotional part of being a father. That's like 80% of the game, but, um, Uh, yeah, I think it was what it caused me to do was confront some things that I was actually pretty insecure about with how our business has performed or not performed and accept that those were consequences of the way that I was spending my time and what I was, what I thought was important. And, uh, when I stopped trying to defend it and I was just like, okay, let's just observe that those things are happening and this is how it's developed. Rather than judging that necessarily. That helps me like kind of like move to the point of this is what it says about my operating philosophy, just as a point of reference. I don't know if that's how anybody else progresses through this. Want to jump into the unifying theory, Rob?

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So like all of this is a preface to say the really cool thing about this is that yeah, I've been working like the, I've been trying to work on a model for understanding the startup world, which turns out I have not yet to find anybody else who has done it. It's very strange that nobody else seems to have done this, but screw it. Why not try to do it? And so we, we are gonna like, you can basically base everything off of the starting point of demand. And so you start with demand. You say, why does anyone buy anything? You kind of create a demand model off of that, which is like, Demand is about the project on somebody's to-do list. Imagine like if we can see our potential customers acting throughout the day, we can infer their to-do list and okay, we can probably see what's on their backlog or what they're struggling with there. And if we put something in front of them that says, hey, is this the project on your to-do list? Are these the options you've considered? Does this option fit what's on your to-do list better? Cool. They will rip it out of our hands if those things are true. So what that tells us is demand is the baseline. Are, then supply is what they pull if it fits their demand better than their alternatives. Cool. Jump to the next level. Our business is just finding demand, delivering supply that fits demand. That turns into what feels like one case study. And then our business just is a system to repeat that case study. And you can think of that system as a factory. With 3 steps from like, how do we get people to talk to us or to, to visit our website or whatever? How do we generate pipeline of potential customers? How do we turn them into actual customers? How do we turn actual customers into people who would be weird to renew? Okay, cool. That's a factory. And that factory just produces basically identical case studies. That's the model. We can talk about some nuances all around that, but with that model, you can basically say, okay, If I believe that's how the world works, therefore, what should I do?

Yeah. Yeah. And what you've done is created, is this the right way to describe it? Like an open source tool map. Basically, it's a Miro board that you just walked through, I don't know, 6 concepts, something like that, which we've dove, dived, diven.

I have no idea. Dived.

Jumped deeply into my mastery of the English language is the only thing better than my, my capabilities in selling. But, but the like we've, we've gone into some of these concepts, but what you've done in this, which I think is kind of extraordinary, like everybody literally should just like go to the blog post or go to the— we'll put the link in the comments, visit this Miro board. It has Rob's concepts just like laid out and you can track What I found myself doing, I'm actually gonna, I'm gonna share my screen here. Um, what I found myself doing while I was going through this, and Rob, maybe you can orient us, um, orient us to this, was I was tracking until I found the point at which my system was kind of broken, like it wasn't working. Um, I'm sharing my screen now and you can kind of see like these boxes are elements of Rob's theory. Um, and so here on the left, we start with demand. We have the foundational model for startups. And I was reading through this and thinking like, okay, yep, got that, got that. Boom. Like, this is a real pain point that I'm not— that, or pain point is a loaded word. It's something that I'm not doing well. And it was a helpful refresher. But how would you say, why, why are you putting it together this way and how should founders be using it?

Yeah, so this is, this is essentially my model for like, how does the world work and therefore what should I do? How do startups work? And, and so, um, my goal, so this is actually kind of what I've been doing for the past 10 years, but it's just been living in my head. And then I explain it to people and people will nod, but they won't see the whole picture of it. And then I am trying to like keep all of this in my head too. And it's kind of hard. And so this is just me laying out all the different components and how they fit together in, I don't know, my, my kind of like not quite right, but I think directionally right model for how the world works. And it, and there's just, you know, when you understand demand, you've got some questions based off of that. Right. And so how does that fit with supply? How does that fit with a case study? How does that, okay, how do we take demand and turn it into a company? Like, what are all the pieces there? And then like, okay, once we know that there's a sales component here, how does sales actually work? If we like, and And if we understand demand, sales works very differently than if we don't understand demand. So all of these pieces have to kind of like connect to form one coherent way of seeing the world. And, and so that's, again, we've talked previously about just how awful my brain is. This is the representation of it because I have, I have to understand how all the pieces work together.

Yeah. Yeah. Let's, let's dive in a little bit. So you walk through demand here, like how should, how should somebody read? Is it just top to bottom? Like tactically, like how should they jump into this?

Yeah. So they should just read it top to bottom. It's just kind of like written as like, what is demand? Why do people buy things? Why do, what does anybody do anything? And so what we often think, like at, at first it's just trying to like disabuse what we typically think. Demand is not pain points or problems or desire for supply. These are different things. Let's just kind of like carve out how these things are different. And then like, okay, what's the difference between supply and demand? Okay. Therefore, what is demand? Right. And as, as we've described, right, there's a buyer, a single person who has a to-do list in their brain. They prioritize one thing at a time on that to-do list. And when they prioritize that thing, they consider different options. Right. And so that's just a model for how demand works and From that, we can then say, okay, given that model, why would anyone buy our thing? Well, we have to believe that somebody's prioritizing something. They consider options and their existing options are not good enough for them, such that we offer something that actually fits what they're trying to accomplish. They will rip it out of our hands. That is the model for demand. That is the model for pull.

Yeah. Yeah. I think this is this is awesome. We're going to run up against time here, but in particular for me, like these two are probably my favorite. It's, you know, there's the demand, which as we mentioned earlier, I think it's just like constantly remind yourself. And then the foundational model for startups, which is another one you have right here with between the repeatable case study and the case study factory. You've got some other ones that are, you know, how demand works at scale. You've, you've essentially outlined like if there was a Rob Schneider course at Dartmouth Business School or, or, uh, Tuck Business School or, or at Stanford or Harvard or something like that. I imagine it would follow this. Like you've just got the frameworks here in, um, like in one spot. It's super helpful. Go, I would encourage folks jump into it, poke around.

Um, it's kind of— And the other thing too that I'll call out is this is unfinished. I'm going to keep working on this basically forever. This is what I am working through. And while we're going through this podcast, while I'm writing this newsletter, What I'm trying to do is fill the gaps in this. And so at the top, there's a list of things that I think are gaps. And if you have things that you think are gaps, like reach out, let us know if you think there are holes, if there are gaps, or if there are things that are not right. The goal for this is not for me to say this is done. The goal is to say, this is my starting point as of right now. Let's see how the world works. Let's explore this and let's like build awesome companies as a result of it.

Yeah. Yeah. I love it. All right, Rob, we are, we're gonna run up against time here in a, in a moment. We have, I think the mailbag that's worth getting to is that somebody drastically overestimated the number of listeners that we have. 37 said privileged to be among the 17 listeners. It's actually 4 listeners, I think, that are just like, that have accidentally left it on repeat.

I was 2 of those.

And so, yeah. Okay. Real, real talk. My mom found, actually found our podcast. And so I had to own up to some comments I made about her being the listener early on in, in like episode 2 or something like that. But anyway, there's some nice comments.

By the way, fun fact, my, this isn't gonna go great. My mother-in-law told like, she was like, oh man, I have, I'm subscribed to so many newsletters. I, I had 8 pages of newsletters that I've subscribed to since yesterday. And I was like, oh cool, have you subscribed to my newsletter? And she's like, oh no, I'm pretty choosy about what I subscribe to. Damn.

Oh man. You know, I think if we, we need to think about how to angle our topics to get into the mom, you know, that the mother-in-law newsletter circuit like that, that might be a huge market that we haven't, we haven't realized yet.

Honestly, there's a newsletter I have brewing in the back of my mind on like the, the, uh, throughout pregnancy and like first year of child, like all the businesses that exist that are like different situations along there. So, uh, no one's going to listen to that, but, but that might be relevant. I don't know.

Maybe, uh, at some point. Um, uh, you know, maybe before we, before we cut off completely, you also, you put, you hide it in a footnote, but I think it's a super insightful one about how operating philosophies apply apply to other domains in life. Actually, you say, you say it in two parts. You say your customers also have an operating philosophy, which is a great reminder of like what they're doing, what their calendar is set up like says something about what they think is important and where success comes from. And then you say it also applies to other domains. Can you dive into those two real quick, Rob?

Yeah. So I'm actually thinking about extending the demand model because I think there's a question of where does demand come from? That I haven't actually really dug into. And I think there's a mix of forces and philosophies that, that, uh, the interplay of those is likely. So if you look at your customers, if you just observe your potential customers for a day, you're going to see them doing a bunch of things that do not reflect how they describe their day. And you're going to, you can infer their operating philosophy from that. And you, you, um, that is going to be very helpful in designing the right thing, which is why, by the way, I don't recommend doing a bunch of discovery interviews. I instead recommend what? Going and visiting them and watching them, right? And, and seeing this in person because you're basically developing, they might talk a big game about, you know, oh, I care so much about retention and customer retention and all that stuff. And you go and look at how they, their actual operating philosophy, they don't, they, they talk a big game and they actually don't do anything because they don't seem to behave as if that matters. And so that I think is important. And then the other thing that I think is like the final gut punch that I'll leave you with is I was thinking about the, like, operating philosophies are, uh, it's just, it's, it reveals how you believe the world works in basically any part of your life. And so if I'm not listening to my wife as she talks, what does that say about how I believe the world works? Right? If I'm not paying attention to my daughter when I'm taking care of her, as you know, like very, or if I'm distracted, if I'm in my own head, what does that say about how I believe the world works? And that has actually been a really useful thing for me in my personal life to just say, okay, right? Like I have this story in my head that's going on that, you know, I'm a great husband, great father. Am I, and am I, am I demonstrating that? Is that actually what is revealed by my actions? Right. And I think that is, uh, yeah, a brutal thing to think about and to be aware of in the moment. Uh, but to the extent that I think, okay, but to the extent that your operating philosophy reflects reality. Like how the world actually works. I think that's like a key to staying sane. And then you were kind of like, basically the connection between how you think the world works and how you act and your operating philosophy, the difference there can cause a lot of mental suffering, I think. And so I think the difference between how you think the world works or how you think you behave and how you actually behave causes a lot of suffering. And then the difference between your operating philosophy and the world as it is determines whether you're successful or not.

Very interesting, Rob. And this is great because it'll allow me to promote this podcast and like the parenting category and the relationships category and the mindfulness category. No, but I totally, I totally agree with it. And similarly have been thinking about like my, some of my relationships and what that says. And I, you know, we're not going to get into it now, but I think it's, it's related to culture, like operating. It starts with operating philosophy and then it leads to culture. And that can be family culture, it can be business culture, it can be like many, many school cultures, things like that. Well, Rob, anything else before we, before we drop?

No, this is probably the most brutal episode we've done. So I'm sorry. Yeah, I'm sorry if you've made it here.

Yeah. Unfortunately for the irreparable damage and bleeding ears that, that we have. Leave, uh, leave comments as always. We'd love to, if there's questions, poke holes in whatever, like, uh, as always, Rob's developing this stuff.

Or suggest books, suggest people to read, suggest things that I should see. Cause it's, cause yeah, I'm always trying to find something new and interesting.

Yeah. I love that. Or topics you'd like, you'd like Rob to hit, um, in future episodes. All right. We'll catch y'all next week.