Million Dollar Exits Ep.2 with James Clift: Insights On The Success of Building and Selling VisualCV

Hello everybody. I'm KP and welcome to Million Dollar Exits, a special segment on my main show, the Build in Public podcast. In this interview series, I sit down with founders who went from an idea to building a business and then eventually selling it for over $1 million. Hence the name Million Dollar Exits. This is something I'm very passionate about and curious about at this point in my career. I wanna learn and share all the insights, mindset shifts, lessons, and non-obvious tips that are part of this unique journey journey with the next wave of founders who wanna take this path as well. So buckle up and get ready to be inspired and informed. Here's a special shout out to our episode sponsor, paralect.com. Billion-dollar ideas come from every possible niche. If you're a busy domain expert in marketing, sales, finances, or healthcare, and don't wanna spend 6 months just to build an MVP, you'll find Paralect super valuable. Paralect is a venture studio built to design, build, and launch a product for you that is ready to sell in under 2 months. Start with no-code or go full-stack right away. Simply focus on growing your early adopter community and build in public, and they'll take care of the rest. Build your million-dollar startup with paralect.com. P-A-R-A-L-E-C-T.com. Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Build in Public podcast. And I'm your host, KP. James Clift joining us from Vancouver. Thank you so much, James.

Awesome. Yeah, thanks for having me, KP. Excited to be here.

Thank you. For folks who may not know about you, can you give us a quick— I know you are at Durable now, but can you give us a quick recap of the last 10 years of your career?

Yeah, for sure. I've owned businesses my entire career, so I've been gainfully unemployed ever since high school, which is my claim to fame. I've never, never had a job. Which is kind of fun, right? And I think so. I ran a web development company in high school, ran a home services company in university, went back to running a web agency after university, and then very long, tenuous journey of launching products. One of them that we launched was called Visual CV. So top 3 resume and portfolio builders on the internet, built that to about 4 million users, very profitable, and sold that in 2020. So after that, it's really been kind of exploring new ideas. I kind of went through a similar journey, right? Like, hey, I don't have to work work right now. So what should I work on was a very broad question. So I went through a lot of projects, a lot of iteration, and really came back to this idea of, hey, like, what do I actually know best in the world? It's entrepreneurship. It's what I've done. It's what I believe in. It's what I think is what drives humanity forward. And how can we enable more entrepreneurship? So in the past 12 months, I've been working on a company called Durable. We help you launch your business in 30 seconds. So we've got an AI-powered website builder that lets you just get something off the ground running, custom domain name analytics, get it out to the world, start getting customers in the door. And what we're really trying to do is build this entire system for automating and abstracting all the parts of a business you don't want to do and letting you focus on the things that you're actually good at, which is the skill that you're delivering and your unique value. So yeah, that's been a, that's been a journey that I'm happy to talk about as well. So definitely been through all of it. I've ran physical companies, I've ran software companies, and definitely, yeah, I've been through the whole lifecycle of entrepreneurship many times over.

So amazing. Yeah, I've checked out durable.co, by the way, just a few minutes before we joined. I joined And it was brilliant. I thought it was so clever because it picked up my, I think, GPS location, like, you know, my area. And then I'm in Beaufort, so it was showing me like I just made a quick landscaping business website in like 30 seconds and it made copy, it wrote the testimonial and the landing page was set up. And I was like, wow, this is so smart. And I could see like some lead gen agency and this is some, I don't know if you've thought of this or this is a use case that's common, but I could see like a lead gen agency who are tech savvy and smart in like Buford, Georgia, where I live, right? They could just sit here and be like, all right, let's make a list of all these barbershops in our area. Let's generate really mobile-friendly and elegant, well-presented websites for these. And then we'll sell these leads for actual brick-and-mortar stores for a certain rate, certain cut. And I thought that could be one of the use cases. Have you explored that?

Yeah, it's funny, right? So with a, like, I mean, business in general, it's kind of deciding like, what are we going to be best in the world at? And it's either you're picking an existing category, bundling stuff up, making that user experience better or building a user experience that's brand new. So like, is it an order of magnitude faster, better, cheaper than what's out there right now? So what we're actually seeing is a lot of emergent behavior. So like people are surprising us with what they're building. So it is a lot of small agencies that are building websites for other small businesses. Right. It's more brick and mortar than we thought. And it's a lot of like consultants and a lot of international folks too that we didn't expect. So they're living in France but doing business in the US. So we let them write an English website with really great grammar. So it's just when you have a new technology that's just kind of taking it off. It's seeing how people are using it as opposed to like guessing what they're going to do. So we're trying to be not too prescriptive, but like, hey, like this is a tool. It's a brand new technology. Like what happens when we make something 10 times faster, more accessible, more fun? Um, that's the other piece too, is people are just kind of playing around with it too, right?

It was definitely more fun because I was waiting to see what the AI would generate at every step. I also liked the approach that you had, a container approach. I think you were showing like one step, you know, generate the copy there. And then go to the next container of the page, show that, you know. So that was smart because, you know, I'm very impatient. So if I was on the page waiting for the spinny thing, for the whole thing to load at once, would have been poor UX compared to what, what's on the site.

Yeah, and it's funny, right? Because when we launched it, it was— we're like, okay, this is really cool for us internally. But then you show it to people in the real world, and like my mom was like, oh my God, this is magical. My dad's like, oh, you got to see this, John, like come over and look at this. So you kind of see that word of mouth in person. And then that's what we've seen since launching is just like the word of mouth has been incredible. The growth has been— I mean, we're at 100K websites built as of Jan 1st, and now we're like 3x-ing that in less than a month. So we're just seeing this organic spread and like just the emergent behavior is pretty cool.

I love it. I mean, I could do a separate segment completely on just that because I feel like it's such a great product and I love new products. So, but let's table that for round 2. Particularly curious about sort of your life before Durable. You know, if I'm, if I'm right, the million-dollar exit story for you would be the previous company before Durable.

Yes, correct.

Can you give us a, I don't know, like a 1-minute recap of take us through idea to exit?

Yeah. So

leave as much— I mean, give as much details as possible so people can be inspired, hopefully.

Yeah. So at that time, it was probably my— I forget the exact year— year 4 post-graduating university. Like we had literally did everything we could to make money legally on the internet. Right. So I was writing blog posts on Seeking Alpha, like financial blogging. We were doing web design and development to make a bit of cash. We had a bunch of different projects. A few got to revenue as well. So I had one that was like doing virtual events. So about 10 years too early, but we were making virtual job fairs for universities and we had a hiring platform. So basically through that recruitment platform we had, we're like, okay, like, is there something here that we can build on the job seeker side that just makes it really simple and effective to build a resume and get a job because that's a big pain point when you're looking for work is actually just that, how do you present yourself? So yeah, we ended up launching. I mean, the true story was like I was shutting down all the other projects. I was looking at job opportunities. I'm like, okay, like this didn't work out for me. I'm gonna go get a job and maybe do some sales or marketing somewhere and then come back to it at some point. But it was really, okay—

Your background, sorry to cut you off, your background, are you a developer or are you a business?

No, I have no discernible skillset. So no design, no development. Yeah, exactly. That makes two of us, right? Yeah, useless. But I work with smart people, right? So I was looking at like, yeah, job opportunities down in Silicon Valley, that kind of thing. And it was literally, okay, like, or I have this opportunity to build this new thing and let's give it 2 months. That was it. Like, okay, like, I think I kind of just want to try this and see how it goes. So we ended up— we actually acquired the site. So Visual CV was longer story, but they kind of raised some capital, shut down. It was like dead in the water, but a nice domain name. So we ended up acquiring that domain and then building a new product behind it. And then, yeah, first, first few months we started getting some users. So we got a couple hundred users and then we switched on a paywall in October. So this was May 20— I don't know, 2014 or something. Right. Um, but switched on a paywall until we made $2,000 our first month. Like, okay, there's something here. And then we made $5,000 and then we did a launch on Product Hunt and then our traffic like 3x overnight. And then it just kind of grew really steadily since then. So that business from the outset, we're growing Quite quickly with a very small team. So I think probably the best like point in the company was when there was three of us. We're doing thirty k a month in revenue. I was living in Argentina, doing the digital nomad thing. Like okay, this is probably the most successful I will ever feel, no matter how big this gets. Right. And my goal really ever since the onset was hey, I want a business that makes me ten grand a month that I can run from anywhere. Like that was the initial goal because I didn't want to get a job. Really, it was like job avoidance more so than I want to build this massive empire and massive business. So that's what Visual CV ended up solving. Within the first 6 months. And then you quickly reset the goalposts. Like once you see that, you see the growth, okay, now we want to build a million-dollar business, a $5 million business, $10 million business. And I think it's not thinking too far ahead, but really thinking in these 3-month cycles of, okay, what can I launch, get market feedback, and what can get out into the world that will actually be able to see this momentum? And when it works, it happens quickly, which is really interesting. But that period of trying to figure out what's going to work is so hard and so challenging and so nebulous. Like you don't know what you don't know. But yeah, the thing that worked, always kind of works, which is super interesting. So yeah, Visual CV grew. I think our— yeah, within a couple of years we did a couple million a year in revenue, super cash flow positive. So kicking off millions a year in free cash flow. So paying dividends, which is not a thing in startups typically, but we're paying ourselves pretty well. And then yeah, ended up—

Is it still ongoing?

Yeah. So I ended up selling most of my portion to my partners because I was ready to do the next thing. But yeah, it's a great business, still growing really well and just a solid business and a great space. So I think, yeah, that's, that's definitely the— it solved what I was trying to solve for at the time, which was like building a product I liked with a team that I really liked and like solving the financial question, I think, which is kind of a big part of the like step one of entrepreneurship, I think, is like, you think money first, then you think impact and vision next, right? At least for me, right?

I agree. I think thanks for saying that. Because I feel like sometimes people get the order wrong. And I mean, I'm not knocking on anyone. I feel like I've been in those shoes. You know, it's like, it's like, I can't really tell. But the drive, what drives me is impact. When I wake up, you know, clearly money is not guaranteed for you or for me. So obviously, like, you have to be driven by something else. So what drives me is impact, like seeing that, hey, I'm solving a deep pain for somebody out there in Argentina or like Bangalore. Like, this is really helping someone get, you know, get closer to something that they want, you know. But the challenge is sometimes putting one— like, which, which should be before the other, you know, in terms of being strategic about your journey. And I think this is another question. This is sort of like one of my first questions for you is around if you had to go back and, you know, give your younger self one specific piece of advice around financial side of this. And I don't know how much you give a thought at the time because you seem like you were just nomading. But what would that advice be about being strategic around the financial side of this?

Yeah, I mean, I've thought about that quite a bit. I think beyond the financial piece, the number one thing I would tell myself is don't stress about it so much. Like, it's gonna work out. So I think I wouldn't change the trajectory or the impact or all the stuff we built because it leads to a good place, right? And I think entrepreneurship to me is this long-term bet that always pays off. Like, I truly believe that. And it's high volatility but low risk. So, you're going to have periods where it's up and down, it's crazy, but you're always moving up. You never move backwards. And I think over a long enough timeframe, your risk is lower. I think your risk with a job is you get used to a salary, you get used to your paycheck, your mortgage, and then all of a sudden you're laid off. Like, what's happening now? Yeah. Like, holy shit, I have not built this resilience into my, my life, into my finances, into my brain. And if you have one customer as an entrepreneur, then you have a lot of risk. And that's what an employer is, is one customer for your entire financial situation or your family's. So I think that's how I look at entrepreneurship. But the thing I would change is just the stress.

That's brilliant, man. I mean, I think just the way you phrased that one customer thing is brilliant. To your point, because, you know, I was in those shoes where I was on deck, and I was at day one. And I felt like I was doing way more than what my job title was at both these jobs, because that's just the founder DNA that I driving me. However, I was tied to those 2 financial sources and situations didn't work out. You know, the market didn't work out. And so I was part of the layoffs at On Deck and it was so painful because I built an empire and movement around me.

Yeah.

But I was suddenly not valuable for the CFO of the company. I'm not, you know, not specifically me. It was just a bunch of people.

Yeah.

I had to be like, reckon with the truth of like, okay, what do I do now? But my momentum, I built all the momentum and the empire for somebody else. And so I walked away almost with nothing except my brand and all these followers and everything else. But I'm

like— Yeah. Which is more than most people walk away with from a job, right?

Yeah. I told everybody when I joined On Deck, everybody, when I first joined, everybody were talking about building in public and they were like, KP, you're spending too much time on Twitter, too much time on podcasts. And I had the intuition, not the negative intuition around like, oh my God, maybe I could be fired one day. I just wanted to build a moat around who I was as a person and what I have to offer to the world, et cetera, et cetera, that would compound in the long run. You know, not necessarily that I saw the layoff coming because nobody saw layoffs coming in 2022, right? Or '21. But it so worked out peacefully. I mean, pleasantly for me because when I walked out, I still had the motor on me. But still financially, it was a huge jolt. And as a father of a young kid with, you know, he's like 15 months old at the time.

Yeah.

My wife and I, our bills and everything. It was so painful. You know, like it was a jolt and I really wanted to never be in that situation ever again. And I'm like, I got too much firepower in me to not be in this shit, you know, ever again. And it's not no one's fault, but it's my own sort of evolution and thinking like, I gotta be— market should be the boss, not a particular person, you know?

Yeah. And I think the financial piece is like, frankly, one of the most important things to consider with this journey, right? And it depends who you are. I think if you come from money, then you kind of start at a place where you have less inherent risk. And I mean, I know like my downside scenario, I can always move back in with my— I could have always moved back in with my parents or something, which is a luxury too, that a lot of people don't Absolutely. Um, but for me it was really like, how do I solve for money first? And that was the first business we're doing, service company, which is a lot easier to start, to scale, to get to revenue. And it was really like, how do I pay rent this month? How do I eat? We're doing some— I was doing some hustling, like renting my room out on Airbnb and sleeping on my couch a few weekends. But which is fun too, right? I think it teaches resilience to some degree. But yeah, I think it's like money as the— it's not my primary motivator. It's kind of like that margin of safety you want to have to take bigger risks. And now I'm thinking about having a family and everything too, and my— I don't know, retiring my folks and that kind of thing. I think those— like, money's a great tool to solve security. And I think for the way I'm wired, like, I need to have that solved to some degree to feel comfortable to take the big swing. Right. And part of that's maybe salary or savings or— but I think a lot of people underestimate that as well. I have a lot of friends that think they can walk away from a salary and then within 3 months they're like panicking because like there's nothing more addictive than a monthly paycheck. And when that check's not coming in, you're like, damn, my savings is declining very rapidly and I spend a lot more money than I think I do. So I think there's a lot of tactics that you can take to be ready for that. And like mostly it's preparing your brain for that inevitable moment when you start panicking about money. But the reality is like if you want to be on this journey, you have to believe that you will be successful and that over a long enough timeframe it will work out. And money, I think the other interesting thing about money when you're an entrepreneur versus an employee is it's abstracted, right? It becomes not just this thing that someone gives you. It's like this thing in the world in which if you create value, you get more of it, which is really cool.

The more value you generate, it's like you're pressing a button called value. And then there's a chute that's spitting out money. But instead, to your point, it's sometimes disconnected. Like, you're pushing the button of value, value, value, value, value. And then out of like 10 times, maybe like one time you get something out of it. And so there's a sense of like, that's what keeps this game super challenging in a way, but also fascinating. Is that nobody has the key. Nobody has to know. Nobody knows exactly, you know, which is the exact thing you can do to the market to make it give you, you know, give you the revenue you want, right? So you have to keep trying and failing. Yeah.

Yeah. And I think it's the— like, for me, when I sold the last business and I had another project, I just went right back into, we got to make this work. Like, I didn't actually take any time to consider why I wanted to do it. I'm just like, okay, I got a business, I got to make it work. And I had another project that actually got really good traction. We sold that as well. It wasn't a huge exit, but good exit. But it was more like, how do you spend the time to think about what you actually want to spend time, which is the luxury that you've earned from selling a company. But before that, it's like, yeah, you got to get your head down and work and grind it out. Otherwise, to me anyway, you have to earn that right to have the big vision, the big impact, take the bigger swing. Or you do that first, which is totally fair too. I think it just depends on your personality and what you're trying to solve for. And everyone's journey is different as well. It's not— Yeah. This is why I don't like this whole like bootstrapper versus VC-backed versus like, it's not a religion. Like, money is a tool for the job, right? So if your business requires capital and it will be better and you want to run a business that raises capital, go do that. If you want to bootstrap a business, then do that as well. They're both equally challenging, right? It's more what pill do you want to swallow? Yeah. Right. And I mean, you can change your mind too. I think that's part of the challenge with like building kind of dogmatic views on a lot of this stuff is I think a lot of these people that have been like the, the most famous bootstrappers or whatever, like maybe raise capital for one project, see if you like it. 'Cause I've had a great experience raising money. My investors have been amazing and it's been a lot of fun too. And frankly, kind of more fun than bootstrapping in a lot of ways too. 'Cause you can build a big team, you can build, take bigger bets. Yeah. So there's, it's always hard no matter what. And I think it's just picking what, what hard you wanna choose. Right?

Right. I agree. I fully agree. I mean, I, I worked at 2 venture-backed companies and I I've seen that side of the story and I've invested in like 9 of them. I truly believe that venture has a role to play in the ecosystem, you know, but it's not the only way. Certainly at the same time, bootstrapped is not the only— it's, I mean, to your point around, it's like the same no-code versus code debate. And I was like, if it helps somebody and if it empowers someone, I think whatever tools they use is irrelevant, you know? So we've seen Zapier go from, you know, I think they raised a small round initially and then they've always been bootstrapped. Crazy. And then you see Stripe crush it as a, you know, VC-backed company. So there's always like examples on each side. So I have a couple— I mean, I have, I think, 4 or 5 questions. I'm gonna run through them quickly with you. Awesome. I want to pick your thoughts on this. Okay, so here's one. What is something most founders think is important that you don't think is important early on, and someone like me can skip early? In this scenario, I'm an early-stage founder, I'm at the starting line, and you've crossed the finish So what would that be?

This is a good question.

Hmm.

I think everything's important. I think all this stuff is really hard. I think like social cachet is certainly not important. Like telling your— like caring what other people think is definitely not important. I think sometimes you catch people that are doing it for some weird form of social clout and like actually caring about the job title is definitely the least important thing to me. Like that phase is like the early phase is figuring out what you're going to do, what your market is, what your product is, who who your customers are. So I think it's like any form of cachet or social status or anything, like just round that to zero because it doesn't matter. And no one cares what you're doing either. That's another thing people think that it's like what their family thinks is important. No one cares. Right. Like, I don't even tell people what I do 90% of the time. I say like I work in online marketing. Like, it doesn't matter. Like, build something else around your identity that's gonna like give you something to talk about. But like, unless someone is your customer, your investor, your partner, your employee, Just like, don't worry about what other people think. So, that's one thing people think is more important than it's not.

Would you say it's fair to sort of caveat? I mean, would you say it's fair to like let people know, hey, don't come into this game of entrepreneurship if you are in here for the lifestyle, for the Lamborghinis or for—

Yeah, exactly.

Right, for the gram, you know, for TikTok or whatever. Yeah. Is that— I guess that's the message, I think, right? It's like the clout comes much later.

To be fair, it might be still the best way to get to a point where you can buy a Lamborghini. It's like an uncertain outcome. I just think it's a lot. It's not glamorous in the slightest. If it is, then you're doing something strangely. And I just don't agree with that.

From your experience, at least it was not glamorous. And I think that's the real truth.

I think that's 90%. I mean, most of your life is spent behind a laptop, hunched over a laptop. It's not that cool. I mean, Argentina was amazing. I lived a great lifestyle down there, but at the end of Most of my time was still spent behind the laptop, right? Right. So,

do you think of any of the Argentina stuff as, as sort of like, oh yeah, the founder of Visual CV, you just did it because you were there, happened to be there, right?

Yeah. And I look at most of things as like, again, it's just like, what value are you creating and what energy are you putting out there into your business that's going to result in people, people's lives improving? And it's not that— it's not a complex— it's not hard. It's not, it's not complicated. It's just very hard to get that right.

Damn.

But yeah,

I love that. It's not complicated, but it's very hard. That's true. So another question that I have is, did you have— what did you do that was radically different from your peers who started along with you that you think has served you well?

Well, a lot of my peers have taken companies public and are like billionaires now. So maybe I fucked up.

I should— text me those numbers. I should ask what I did better than James. Well, actually, I'm sure there must have been a lot. You know, even if you didn't really meet with them or were friends with them, but like that wave of founders that you were part of at the time, a lot of them must have been left behind or maybe still grinding. What do you think that you've done intentionally, step over step over step, that was slightly different?

I think there's a quality of found— like founders have to be relentlessly optimistic long-term, but short-term incredibly pessimistic. And I think the people that I've seen—

What does that mean?

So long-term optimistic means like, this is going to work out. I'm going to build something Something successful. Pessimistic is like, we need to grind every single day to launch something, get feedback. Like, it's not working, be honest with yourself. And I think a lot of people— that the visionary without substance is a common theme, and you spend a decade on something that's not really working. It's like either a dumb idea, market doesn't like it, but it's not being honest with yourself. You're not reflecting on the actual feedback that you're getting. You can spend a lot of time on something that's not working. And It takes a long time to get something launched that will be working, but you also know within 3 to 6 months if it's going to work or not, unequivocally across the board. If people want the thing that you're doing, the internet's so big that they will discover it, find it. I mean, you obviously have to market it too, but you get market signal faster. It's not a 10-year process to get market signal.

Now it's social. It's like, yeah, you definitely get signal very fast.

It's incredible how fast things can grow if you hit the right thing. I think just being Like honest with yourself is really important. And yeah, I think for me what I did differently, I think, yeah.

You already seem to have answered a bit of this with me. Like I feel like even from the get-go, I felt a strong dose of this is gonna work out energy from you. And it's so, so refreshing to hear that and feel in your presence, be in your presence because it's just so energizing, you know, to just believe that it's gonna work out, right? And not from a delusional point of view. And I'm not just saying like, hey, yeah, we're gonna do it anyway. It's like, not like a cult, but this is hard, But I will figure this out or we will figure this out. So there's this optimism, long-term optimism that I'm already sensing. And combine that with what you just said, short-term, like, yeah, no one owes you shit. Let's go to work, right?

Exactly.

Like, this is great, but then who's going to write the copy on the sales page? You got to write it. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Or AI can write it for you too.

Right. Okay. I guess that'd be easy.

At some point it is going to be easy, but not quite yet.

Small price of $42 per month.

Exactly.

Okay, we talked about that. So what are some of the struggles that you faced early on that you think could have been avoided maybe? And next time around, you know, you're not facing those as much.

Everything, man. Everything's a struggle. I think just, I mean, part of it's inherent personality, right? But it's like the stress is real. And I had a lot of moments of just, you're doing something new. I think that's the other thing is like, If it's your first time as an entrepreneur, like, you have to unlearn everything you've learned. Like, school tells you what to do, jobs tell you what to do, like, there's formulas for this stuff. But entrepreneurship is so nebulous and weird and stressful, you have to make it all up and figure it all out. And that is incredibly stressful if it's something you've never done before. So you are learning and growing every day if you're doing it right, and you should be stressed. But I think it's the difference between good stress and bad stress. Right. So I think for me, it's that, like, Like, I wish I didn't have a lot of that, like, deep anxiety the whole time until it worked. And like, for this new company, Endurable, I'm really consciously trying to have fun, right? Because I think it can be fun, right? And I think even if I look back on the last decade, like, that could have been fun too. It could have been more fun, right? I could have like just woke up and been a little bit less stressed.

How would you, how would you have shifted the focus from— because it seems like your focus was on some other aspect And now this time around, the focus is not on that aspect clearly. And that's like not stressing you out. What was the focus on at the time? I

mean, the money's part of it, I think, just like getting the money problem solved to some degree, but it's not all of it, right? Because $10K a month or $5K a month, like your money problem starts to become solved. I think it's just there's so much like personal, like work that needs to be done to be— it's almost like you got to change the tool, right? You got to improve yourself to a level where it's like, okay, like cultivate that optimism, Um, if you're really stressed out, figure out like other things in your life that make you happy, like sports, family, relationships, whatever. But don't build your whole identity around this. And I think too, it's just the, the nature of the work is often it's not fun. Like, I don't like sitting at a computer for 10 hours a day. It's not that fun for me personally. But it's like, okay, it's a job. Be grateful for the opportunity. Like, like, it's also better than like a lot of our customers have real jobs that are hard and they're doing physical labor. Right. So yeah, we're lucky to be able to help them out and to build them. So I think it's just like a lot of the things, like just train your mind to be somewhat okay with the journey. And it's not saying no stress, like stress is a good thing. I'm an athlete, like that's training stress is good stress, performance stress is good stress. You should feel stressed out before an important phone call or customer meeting. Right. But it's more just the, like that nebulous, like the worst stress is when nothing's happening. That's the hardest thing is that existential Is this the right thing? Does anyone care? Am I going to fail? Can my family eat? That is the hardest thing. I do not have a solution for that besides keep working towards monthly recurring revenue. That solves all of that. Just figure out what you can do to get to MRR. That's the only cure for real anxiety is MRR.

The weird thing about this sort of nebulous stress that you talked about, and I've had my share of this, is that I feel like I'd rather just have the damn adversity than anxiety.

100%. I love a crisis.

Just give it to me. What's the worst that could happen? Like COVID happened, remember everybody was like panicking. I'm like, give it to me, give that damn COVID, I'll deal with it, you know, whatever. But the potential looming chance of getting COVID is way more stressful.

100%.

Because you're constantly second-guessing everything, right? You

know, you're like washing your groceries or whatever.

Damn. Just, and you know, as entrepreneurs or even like as someone who's, I mean, 34 now, so as someone who spent 3 decades of my time on the planet Earth, I've had My share of adversity, so just give it to me. And what's been so unique about sort of being a founder is that there's really like, you don't get the adversity. You just get like—

You have to create it for yourself. You're lucky if you have adversity. Right, exactly. You have to make your own adversity.

You're lucky if your thing just like immediately goes and tanks and you got like the shittiest, baddest, worst product and launch. It's usually like somewhere in the middle.

Exactly, yeah.

So you're like, did that crush? It was great? Or like you get one positive compliment from one customer and then 80 of them visit the homepage go to this sign. I'm like, what is it, right? So, that nebulous thing which you're talking about, I'm sure a lot of folks, you know, will relate to. So, what I'm hearing from you is that how do you sort of cope with it is accept that it's part of the game, you know, and look for areas and focus on areas where it's more fun. Is that correct? Like try to like shift away your attention from that.

Or find a way to make the crappy stuff fun too. Like sending sales emails sucks, but whatever, you got to do it, right? And accept that it's your job that you've chosen to sell. Every job has of crap that you have to do that you don't want to do. I think the other stuff that's like, it's kind of zooming out as well, like whatever, we're minuscule pieces in a vast universe and none of this really matters, is also a good philosophy as well. So I think it's like being able to abstract the whole game and just like, no, it's a game, it's fun, hopefully it's fun, the outcome's uncertain but you'll figure it out over a long enough time frame. I guess all these things have to happen because the, like, what I see people doing is like, I had a friend I just was founding a startup and he was just so incredibly stressed. And I was like, dude, like, if you're not, if you're this stressed now, it doesn't get easier if you're successful. Like the game just changes, right? It's just that you have to find a way to like, like you're like, every time you found it, you're going to be stressed, right? Mm-hmm. But like, if this is the level now, like you shouldn't, you're not, it's not the time. You need more savings. You need more buffer. You need to like lower your lifestyle costs. You need to just be comfortable with the uncertainty. I think that's a lot of the challenge of going from job to no job is like, it's very, very hard for a lot of people. So it's figuring out what you need to truly, honestly, to yourself, be in a position where you can think abundantly and take those risks, right? Otherwise, you're just going to be stressed out and like running around and not actually frantically doing things, but not actually accomplishing anything either.

Right. And I think this kind of anxiety and stress hijacks your Productivity too, right? Like, it's just, you're just not as abundant-minded and as like relaxed as you can be. And it clearly impacts your sales, marketing, and all these other things too, right? So

I will say one thing too that's like I kind of undervalued is the community piece of it. So I

was lucky enough 10 years ago. Yeah. How did you find, what was your support system like? How did you find community in the early days?

So like 10 years ago, there was a coworking space that popped up in Vancouver and I just, there was like, it was kind of underground.

You gotta give a shout out. What is it called?

Yeah, it was called Launch Academy. They're amazing.

Shout out Launch Academy. All right. Yeah.

So within that first cohort, there was just 6 people that I'm best friends with now. So we went through it together, right? So one of them took a company public, one of them built like bootstrapped a $10 million a year company, just a lot of success that came out from that small group. But those are your peers, right? Those are my best friends that you can text. And like, I play poker with people that are running big companies now. And it's just like, oh yeah, this is normalized, right? Like you normalize success, you normalize the stress, you normalize The like the game, and I think that makes it like so much easier. You just kind of the realm of possibilities opens up. You realize like none of these people are smarter than me, better than me. They're just at it long enough, and they got lucky enough that they've been this successful. So I think that's been a huge part of it. And then the next community for me was South Park Commons. So oh yeah, group of yeah, yeah, they're they're yeah, they're amazing. They're a fund, but also like more so community that happens to have a fund. But again, amazing group of people. Kind of the big thing for that was just leveling up my ambition. So just being in that world where, wow, I actually, I wasn't sure I wanted to build a venture-backed company. It was, but being exposed to that environment and the opportunity and the abundance mindset from those folks really just, yeah, made me think a lot bigger as well. And like, be able to like train myself to have the freedom to take the risks that I truly, I wanted to take, but I was scared to. I think that's been a huge part of my journey as well. So those 2 have been like life-changing and career-changing for sure.

Now, the venture-backed thing, is that durable? Or is that the one? That's Durable.

Yeah, yeah, we raised a round in May.

Right, awesome. I just helped somebody, one of the South Park Commons founders yesterday on Product Hunt.

Oh no way, awesome.

Also building a— I don't know if you saw, but he was also building an AI product called Stylized, I think. Shout out.

Yeah, yeah, I know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

That was cool. So I'm like, wow, small world. So another fun question for you. What's something that you believed 5 years ago that you had to unlearn to get to where you are now? I

didn't really believe in venture-backed companies until I raised money. I think that's one thing. I thought golf was a really dumb sport. It's actually pretty fun.

Right?

Yeah. I think like things do happen. If something's going to work, it does happen fast. And I think if something's not working after an amount of time, you just need to be honest and try something else that might have a better chance at working. I think the like long-term vision is really important, but how you get there can change, right? So if you pick a big enough market and a like a specific customer. There's a lot of ways to solve a lot of problems on the internet. I also think the don't underrate trends and waves as well, I think is really interesting. So people are, I mean, generative AI is totally the thing right now, but for good reason. It's incredible and it could be world-changing and I think it will be. So people are like, oh, you're just

on it.

Exactly. Yeah. But that's not a decision because it's cool, but because I actually believe it. But I think trends are a lot lot bigger than they used to be now too. So because things move so fast and the, like, the world is so close on the internet, like, the right trend actually moves 100 times bigger than you think it would, which is where you see like a lot of grifters as well and like a lot of like bad behavior. But also like the underlying thing is this is actually an important thing to consider. Right. And being a part of a wave that's like moving very quickly can be very trajectory changing and really exciting. So I think don't underestimate the wave.

I love that. I'm glad that you brought it up because I feel like it's a very contested point of view because, you know, some people are like, no, we're definitely, you know, we don't want to be bandwagons or like, you know, sort of bandwagon fans or whatever, like basically ride the waves all the time. And then there are people like you who mentioned, like you just said, no, no, waves are good. Waves are showing us some customer behavior change, which I think is key here, right? Like because every wave, I think a successful wave actually changes consumer behavior. Like, we would not be having this online virtual podcast if not for COVID, right? Like, I'm never going to go in person to Vancouver to record podcasts with you. And I've had 45 episodes. I never traveled anywhere. This would not have happened. People would not have been this comfortable just doing an online podcast before COVID So that wave really changed our behavior. And then there are some that doesn't. Like, I think a lot of Web3 got the heat because it was trying to change behavior and didn't. Yeah. People still don't use wallets. Like, an average person doesn't use a wallet.

Yeah.

So I think, you know, some waves really, like with the AI, like my wife is a high school, was a middle school teacher. She's already like looking at that. I'm like, all right, I want to like play with it. I'm like, wow, that's cool. Right. Imagine an English teacher. And she's like, okay, this is really powerful being able to chat with AI. And so I think something—

And I don't think that it's like, don't just jump on it lightly either. Right. I think that's the, so with Durable, it was always how do we make starting a business frictionless? Right. And then what tools tools emerged that made that even more frictionless and better. So that audience, that customer, that mission, that vision didn't change, but it's how do we utilize that to actually solve a real problem for people? And I think that's the difference in doing something that you deeply care about, or at least a user you care about, or a person or a customer. Right. That lets you match these ideas together in a way that creates something magical and more unique and special in the world. And I'm working on this weird theory about I mean, theory of life, but to me it's really this idea of energy. So it's like, what energy are you putting into the world, into your business? What is your team putting in? And that actually shows, right? If you all really care about this, then it's going to show. You're going to have better ideas, you're going to build better products, you're going to have better customer outcomes, your life will be better, and you'll wake up more energized. Right. So if you're waking up every day and you don't have energy to do this thing, then it's really worth a gut check on, is this the right thing? And then you decide, is it because I'm stressed about money or it's the existential crisis period, which is fine? Like, go have a few drinks and like, no, it'll pass. Or just do some work and it also passes. But it's really that, I think, that constant reminder to yourself is this like, is this the thing that I want to do? Is it moving in the right direction? And most of the balance is figuring out, is it me? Is it market? Is it product? And like training yourself over a long enough timeframe, you start getting those questions right. And I actually didn't think I was that good at this. Like, I'm not— it's not like a humility thing, but I was like, I was terrified of failing again, even though I've already succeeded. And then now we're seeing success. It's like, okay, like, clearly I have learned something over the last 15 years that I can apply. And that, like, you don't move backwards, right? The goalposts, like, keep moving forwards, which is the beauty of this world that we're in and the luck that we have to be in it.

Right. I also like to your earlier point about Sort of when you start over fresh after a huge success that you had with the Visual CV, a lot of people don't start over fresh with the level of humility that you had. Well, I haven't seen that, but what I mean is you just sort of had to have had low ego to start humbly again, something new called Durable, and like, all right, we're going to give this another shot, right? A lot of people are just still attached to that first win because they're like, okay, I don't want to fail and look like a fool in public. But you're never going to go to the next step function if you don't try that next thing. And it is inherently risky. Like, you could have— this could have been a dumb move, just like FHIR, right? Like, if 3 months ago this could have turned a whole different direction and like we would be talking about Durable as like, hey, that was a fun thing.

It didn't work out, right?

It didn't work out. KP, let's try it. Oh yeah. So

yeah,

I think that level of humility is important. And what I'm seeing is it's not so much humility, but it's like really driven by curiosity. Like, I'm curious about this and I want to do this and I'm like, so be it if I have to be a beginner.

Yeah. Well, I think too, it's the, like, it's, I mean, the regret minimization is the most trite framework, but it's actually the way I look at a lot of these things. So with like running, like I was terrified to raise venture initially because I'd never done it before. And I'm like, oh, is this going to be like the most stress I've ever felt?

Right.

But it's more, will I regret not having tried? Right. And I think that's entrepreneurship generally. If you're going to look back on your life or your experiences, are you going to regret not trying something more so than trying it. And what's your downside, right? It's okay, you're stressed out, you look dumb, um, you go get a job,

right?

Like, okay, no one cares. No one cares, right? Your investors want you to be successful. They care if you're successful. They don't care if you fail. They care if you're successful. And it's your job to be successful. But at the end of the day, if you try your very, very hardest and do everything with good intention and you work your ass off, I think you will be successful, number one. But if you're not, then at least you tried. And I think That's super important and really simple, really trite, but it's the truth. I think for me, it was playing— I played the game at a certain level. Okay, what does the next level look like? What does the world look like? What is the realm of possibility? If I just decided to, I don't know, go live on a farm somewhere, I would lose that kind of exposure to the adjacent possible, which I think is exciting about the world and technology. Yeah. You don't know what you don't know. So that one opportunity to join South Park led to this, led to this, led to this, and like your life starts expanding in a different way that you didn't know, right? And I think with a job, you can see a linear path and then, okay, wait, I'll go to level 5 and I'll make $400K a year and then level 6 and I'll be a director. So yeah, that's fine. It's great. Nothing wrong with that. But you don't have these like exponential step changes that can happen with like a more nebulous journey of entrepreneurship.

That's a great way to put it. Like it's less linear and more exponential, which means it's very less Like, it's not— yeah, it's just not linear, right? There's no like one step leads to the other thing. It's like step functions, you know? Also, it's like your— the TAM of your impact also compounds with each step. So with Durable, the TAM is crazy high. Like every online business on the planet ever, or whoever, every online potential emerging entrepreneur, emerging founder is like huge everywhere, anybody on the internet, as opposed to Online CV, which would have been like job seekers only, right? So like your TAM—

Even then it was 4 million people. Like, yeah, he's a kid from like Vancouver and 4 million people use the thing that we built. Like, that's absolutely wild. It's so cool, right? Yeah. And then again, like the—

I'm just so happy for you, man. I feel like you're, you're doing it the way I would have done it. And I, I'm so happy to sort of see you a few steps ahead of me and like get the boost of confidence that I think I got. And hopefully like anybody, you know, who's listening to also got where you took your shots, but you did them with the right intention, what I'm hearing. And you just really leveled up at step as a founder as well, you know, and I think that's, that's very key. And personal transformation is part of the journey. So James, I got a unique question for you, which is something that I ask all my mentors. If you were in my shoes, what would you do? And I'll lay out the table, I'll lay out the context here. So you're someone who has a great grasp on marketing and sales, I think very much like your story, you know, like strong business skills, built up a lot of distribution, audience, followers online, whatever. So there's like like some good leverage and assets you have there in that sense and social capital. And now you have, I don't know, 15 to 20 ideas in Notion doc that you want to test out. So

yeah,

you have a technical partner who will help you build some of this stuff and test them cheaply, like 1-week MVPs, that kind of thing. But it's a portfolio approach. And the intention is we want to build something that generates money. It's profitable, that grows fast. It's definitely not a venture intention at the But something that can be a sustainable business that could potentially be exited, but not so much attached to the exit only, but growing a great business. How would you go about this?

What do you actually want to do? Like, what do you actually want to build? If you could just like have the thing that you wanted in 3 months, like, what would that be? Would that be we're making $10,000 a month, we're making $100,000 a month, I go make— I sell it for $1 million in a year? Like, what is the actual outcome you're working on?

Okay, okay, okay, that's a good That's question. a good question. Financial freedom. Like I said at the beginning, I want something like a million-dollar exit so that I don't have to worry about monthly bills or doing consulting gigs.

Okay, so a million-dollar exit. I actually like would abstract a little bit. So is that cash flow? So I got a million bucks in the bank, it's paying like 6%. So yeah, $60,000 a year. So like that's equivalent to a software business doing— you have 2 people, so $12,000 a month in revenue with good net margins. So okay, we want to get to $10,000 month in revenue. I would reverse engineer that first, saying, okay, we've got this list of ideas. One, what do we want to do? I think that's like part of the criteria. What do we actually like doing? What do we believe in? So like some combination of we believe in this. So that's one part of the Venn diagram. Then it's, is there customer demand for this? Is there market demand for this? We've got a big audience. How can we leverage that and use that to build kind of our first customer base? And then like, okay, we've got a bunch of ideas. What do we want to do? What do the customers want? And then how can we build And then I timebox that saying, within the shortest amount of time, how can we get something out that's going to get market feedback? So I wouldn't do more than one. I do one project at a time, but I would sequence it and then really gut check on that 3-month timeframe of, okay, like, does anyone care about this? Are we getting revenue? Are we getting signal? And just looking at it as a, like, the portfolio approach to some degree, but like really being like, you can't parallel process anything. You got to be full-on focused on one thing at a time. What? And then say, okay, like, if we, if we don't get there in 3 months, we don't get to $10K a month, which I think people set their bar too low as well. Like, I think that's part of the challenge of like $10K a month is like, I don't know, 100 customers at $100 a month. It's not that many customers considering you have a big audience and you got something that's valuable. And maybe part of that could be service-enabled, so you tack on some consulting on top of some product stuff. But okay, like, if that's the mark and that frees your mind up to think of the next thing, I think you try and get there as soon as possible. And if you don't, then you reevaluate And maybe you set like some finite cycle at, okay, we're gonna try this for a year and if it doesn't work, I'll go get a job. But you kind of have to like a job for now and then come back to it. But I think you have to like get rid of that underlying anxiety that you're going to be broke forever doing this because it's like, like it's not the truth, right? And it's— yeah, so I would say, yeah, time box it. Pick the thing you want to work on and the thing with the highest customer demand. Figure out which one of those you care more about. Probably customer demand more than what you want to at this point. because you're trying to be a bit more mercenary about getting to that capital point of like making enough money. And then like a million bucks in the bank is like $10K a month in recurring revenue at good margins. So like forget about the million, get to the like recurring revenue. And then if you get to 10, 100 is a lot easier than that. Like 1 to 10 is very hard. 1 to 1,000 is really hard. 1,000 to 10,000.

Would you say so?

Yeah, your first revenue is really hard. I just like getting to a point where someone's paying you for something you built is quite challenging unless you have the audience. Maybe part of that's the Like your audience will pay for it initially and then it's hard to get your next batch of customers that you don't know. But typically if something gets to like 10 grand a month in revenue, it gets to 50. 'Cause why wouldn't it? Like nothing changes, right?

You gotta have something by then. Like there's something that the market wants from you if you're getting 10K.

There's scale. I think another way of looking at it way more mercenarily is like, look at like, like what's venture-backed that's doing really well. Can you build a version of that for a smaller niche as well? So, okay, there's gonna be a category leader in content creation. We've got the general tools like Jasper and CopyAI. Maybe it's content creation for creators and you build the product for that because you know them, you work with them, you can build your own product around that. That's clearly a category. There will be a category leader in every niche of AI content. So it's how do you mash these ideas together in a way that's going to leverage the assets that you have and the skills that you have already. Sorry, that's really specific and general advice.

No, that was good. You got my gears grinding. I mean, one other thing that I wanted to touch on there is you mentioned sequencing. I think that's very key. You kind of brushed it off as if it's obvious, which is obvious to you, but a lot of founders in my stage that I look around and I talk to a lot of people in this stage, they're doing this portfolio of small bets approach, which I think is smart, but they have 3 or 4 SaaS tools that are on the market.

Can I have a hot take? I don't think it's smart.

I love it. Oh, go on.

Like, if one thing works, then double down on it, right? Like, it's— how do you know if it works?

Like, what, what is the—

if you have revenue, right? If you have 8 things that make no revenue, then that is not a very good portfolio either.

Here's the real scenario. If you had, yeah, 3 products, one of them making $100 MRR, one of them's $250 MRR, one of them is $8 MRR, and then 6 of them— there are 6 others, by the way, that are all zero. Yeah. What is the approach?

I would kill all of them and do something that makes a bit more money. That's not very much revenue, right? I think like $250 a month. I'd look at the one that's doing $250 and again, I look at the same thing, users, market opportunity, and revenue. If you have 8 things, your brain is thinking about 8 different things. That's impossible. Think about the one thing with $250 in revenue. How do you get that to $1,000 or $2,500? That is a lot easier than trying to make 8 things kind of work because it's not like you're investing in an exit. A portfolio is something that already has inherent value that you're putting money into. Right. Investing in a port— like, I'm not investing in a portfolio of like plant pots with no like seed in them. Like, that's what this is. Like, unless you actually put effort, it's so hard to get anything working. Like, to get your brain to think about 8 things is really hard. Whereas if you have one thing, you'll have more ideas for marketing, you'll have more ideas for audience. Like, I mean, maybe it's a personal thing, but I think it's very hard to like multitask, especially with a startup, because even with your one startup, there's a million things you have to do. You have to look at product engineering, marketing, customer success, legal, like customer engagement, customer support. Like doing that times 8 for something that's making you $10 a month sounds like hell to me. Like focus on the thing that's working and double down. And I think this idea that it's going to pay off at some point doesn't work because it's not like you're not throwing something into the ether and hoping someone like discovers it and it goes viral. It's like that process of grinding through customer acquisition is going to teach you so much more. If you're focused on one customer base, then you can learn from them, and then that'll give you the pivot that's going to be 10 times bigger, then 100 times bigger. But if you're focusing on, like, I don't know, multiple customer segments, multiple marketing channels, like, you're not in this— like, you're not exposing yourself to enough chance for learning, I think.

Yeah.

And it sounds really distracting and really hard, like having, like, 12 logins for something sounds horrible.

Right, right. I'm glad you share your opinions super candidly, and I think it's important And I don't

have a lot of hot takes. I really like— I don't— I think it like, if it works for you, it works for you. Like, I'm pretty— I don't have very many strong opinions, but that just sounds really hard to me. And I think it's like when you have something that's making $1,000, like you can make 10 grand, you can make 100 grand. Like, that is a lot easier than, yeah, the other alternative.

Under the under— sort of the underestimated aspect of what you just shared is the thing where you touched on where you said there's a million things you got to do to make one thing. go to the next level. And I think that that's true, right? There's like, so even if you pick the winner out of those 3, you still have to do a million things. So if you haven't picked the winner, it's just even more complicated, you know?

Yeah. And just do it for 3 months and see what happens. Like, that's a very short period of time over a long career. And if you pick a 10-year timeframe to make a couple million bucks, then that gives you a lot of 3-month bets. And like, if you can build, which you can, if you can build an audience, which you can, like,

Right.

You can get customers in 3 months and figure out like what kind of business you want to build. What you can reverse engineer a lot of this, but I think it's just like pure intense focus on something lets you learn so much more. And like that will give you a lot more ideas than sitting around like looking at stuff, right? Like that intense focus leads to more learnings and about yourself and about your customers and about what you want to build as well. Sure. And I think we would've never launch like the website product with Durable unless we were in that market every day grinding it out to acquire customers and talk to customers and create that market momentum. Right. I mean, I think that's true for everybody.

So one other tangent I want to take, the same thing, the portfolio approach, right? But if you had a portfolio of like, let's say you have a SaaS product and then you have a service business and then you have a paid community and you had some other service business, how do you reconcile all of this? Would you also say you want to pick the winner Making money and then just, I mean, of course, imagine all of them are making money.

Yeah, I don't think the distinction is that. Like, why not have one product that does all 3 of them? So like, if you have a SaaS product, you can also like combine that with the community and services. And that sounds a lot easier because you have one brand that you can then figure out what you're trying to sell and what problem you're trying to solve. I do think a lot of this, like, I don't follow a lot of the creators, I guess, that have this portfolio. I think it's kind of, I think it's And like SaaS is a really good business model. Community is a pretty good business model. Services is actually a pretty good business model because you can charge more. But yeah, I think it's more starting with the problem and like, how do you solve that problem? And I think it is a focus thing too, because yeah.

No, SaaS is great. However, SaaS takes a long time to get off the ground.

And you might be wrong on SaaS, so you have to go through a lot of cycles to be right on SaaS, right? But yeah, again, like all this is nebulous and hard, but yeah, I think I don't have experience with like trying to run 3 of those things. It sounds like a lot And yeah, maybe it works. Yeah, I don't know. Again, I think if you're really good at Twitter, I think you can do it as well. I think there's certain people that are very good. You might be really good at Twitter too. So, maybe you could do that.

I think, you know, I mean, candidly from my lens, inevitably I have done 4 of these revenue streams like without even trying. Like I have a newsletter that I just write because I love writing. And when I took it as a challenge to write, I mean, do writing, I've written 21 weeks consecutively. And after 6th week, I started putting out ads and saying, hey, looking for sponsors. And I didn't have to work that hard. Ads came to me. So I just was starting to charge them because, you know, of exposure and all that. Podcast I haven't monetized, but my Twitter, I just love tweeting, so I do it.

Yeah.

So a lot of the times what ended up happening is I just loved something so much and did it for so long. My Twitter was 414 followers in 2018. Now it's 40K. I did it just for fun. Like you said, I was just having fun. I wanted to connect with smart people like you said, and it was fun. Now I've got to a point where there's— it's fun, but it's also like operationally heavy.

Yeah.

All right. Now I'm like, okay, I gotta prioritize this shit because there's this 4 or 5 things that are going out of me every week.

Yeah.

And I'm thinking, and of course I have a SaaS idea that I just tested last 2 weeks ago.

Yeah.

And I really, really want to test that. And I've got— when I launched, I got 4 paying customers. Yeah. Nice.

That's awesome.

Yeah. And just like you, I reverse engineered the math and I thought, if I really want this to go, I want it to be at least $30 per month. Yeah. And it's a topic that I'm very passionate about. It's about newsletters.

I love newsletters. Awesome. Yeah.

And nobody's building this newsletter CRM. And I'm like, okay, I see an opening in the market. I could go dominate this thing. So I tested, but now I'm like evaluating, do I go all in on the SaaS for 3, 4 months or do I— or do you hedge 4 or 5? You know what I mean?

So I think that's a really interesting scenario. And I think you can also like, again, looking at sequencing, like one way of looking at what needs to be successful. What do I need to prove for this to be a win? But also, what do I need to prove for this to be a loss, right? So if you said, hey, I just want to grow the newsletter for 3 months, I'm going to work my ass off to do that. If it doesn't get to a point where it's making X amount, whatever that target is, right, then shut it down. Just say, hey, this didn't work. I tried my best. I think like you have to almost trick yourself. Like, it always takes longer to kill stuff than you think. Like, it's so hard to kill something with a little bit of traction. Like, yeah, like my, like my My middle project between VisualCV and Durable, same thing. We had a couple of enterprise deals, revenue. I think we probably did like $50,000 or $60,000 in revenue our first year and a lot of usage.

But it wasn't the kill.

Yeah, but it was like, ah, but once you— I mean, we sold it too. So yeah, I guess that was a good exit. But I should have killed it. I actually should have because it was taking up so much headspace. It wasn't going to be the thing that I wanted it to be, whatever. But you almost have to learn that yourself. What will it take to kill this is a good question too. If I work my ass off on the newsletter and Twitter, for the next month, 2 months, whatever that timeframe is, and I don't get to a point where I want to, then am I going to be comfortable killing it? How do you get to a point where you're comfortable killing it and then going to the next sequence of projects you want to build is one way of looking at it too. Otherwise, you're going to hedge and you're going to be distracted and then you're going to have middling success and you're not going to be able to kill it. I think it's a fun exercise to figure out what the point of— I love that.

The other thing I've been getting some great advice on, which is kind of This is, you know, we can be— it's gonna be a last thing we talk on is this has come to me like many, many times where people said, KP, you will know when you have a hit in your hand.

100%.

Right? And you'll also know when you have just meh, you know? So like, it's like a musician or an artist, you have a bunch of jingles, you like make a bunch of, you know, whatever. And then when you drop the beat, when you play to an audience, you know when you have a hit. And the hit carries itself. Like, it's just like, it'll pull it out of you as opposed to you pushing it so And until you get there, it's okay to fail n number of times or try n number of times. And I'm like, that felt super liberating to me. I'm like, whoa, that's cool. Then I'm hopeful that this shit doesn't work in the early days because I'm like, okay, that's okay. Because once you get to the hit, it's going to—

Doesn't matter. Nothing matters but the hit, right? You only have to be right once. And yeah, I mean, the number of things that I've launched is very large. A lot of projects, a lot of dumb businesses, a lot of dumb ideas. And like, none of that matters once you have a thing that works. And that's— yeah, that solves— success solves all problems, for better or for worse.

Right. Awesome. James, this has been such a blast. I'm so grateful for your time and for, you know, your candor and just your, you know, you seem like an authentic, you know, awesome dude, man. I appreciate you. And thanks for all that you do in the world.

You too, KP. This is great. Yeah. Yeah. Keep me posted. I'm excited to see what you build. I think it's going to be great. So, yeah.

Awesome. We'll keep you in the loop. All right. Have a good one. Thank you.

Thanks, man.