Prioritize Productivity Over Popularity

Welcome back to the episode of the Startup Therapy Podcast. This is Ryan Rutan, joined, as always by my friend, the founder, and CEO of startups.com. Will Schroeder will you and I both know the trap visibility feels like momentum, but attention isn't exactly traction in most cases. I think today we talk a little bit about this trade between applause. Outcomes and maybe make the case for less performing, more building. And will, this is nothing new. You can go back 20 years.

Uh, and, and you've got a story about a particular investor who called you out a little bit and they, maybe we start there. Yeah. Yeah. This whole concept of. I wanna be as popular as possible and build my, my brand. I went through it before social media existed and, and I did it like, like the old fashioned way. Right. And so, um, are you mailing people letters? Actually, I wanna, what was the old fashioned? They had work, right?

Yeah. Yeah. So I, um, I'm living in Santa Monica and this is like 2007 ish Uhhuh, and I was just over the moon. So I had three companies that I was running. I had, you know, a couple that are, were venture funded at the time, like I was so on top of my life. Right. And at the time I was so excited to finally have lots of peers because remember I was coming from Columbus, Ohio, which is awesome, but not a lot of peers. Yeah, I feel that right now. I feel that right now. How's that?

Just, just left Antigua, Guatemala for Oh yeah. Right, right. So right now I'm out seven nights a week and I remember like uh, Sarah and I, in the first full year that we were in Santa Monica, we hosted over a thousand people at our place. I mean, it was just nuts. I'm gonna go out on a limb here. And guess the place wasn't all that big either, so that was a lot of events. Oh, no know what it was. Or two big ones. We were in a building that had the most amazing rooftop pool.

Okay. And so, so we would rent the whole rooftop and have events up there. It was bananas, but, but gimme a sense for frequency. 'cause a thousand people, like So you fit a thousand up there. We're not talking one night though. I I, oh, we were talking every other night from this period in time. So like, yeah, it was every night nonstop. But that's okay. This is, this is a perfect setup. Because that's where my focus was, Uhhuh. Right. And to be fair, these were some amazing events.

I mean, we had incredible founders, like a lot of the founders that are well known in the startup community. Uh, guys like Sean Rad from Tinder, you know, who started Tinder, Jamie Simoff, who started Ring, et cetera. Those were all the guys that were at the parties. Yeah. Uh, and these were all the guys that I was meeting for the first time and having an amazing time with.

Anyway, we, uh, uh, you know, we're doing all these events and I'm doing yet another speaking event where it's some startup event and I'm up there talking about my business, but really about startups and, you know, whatever. As I'm kind of networking after the event, one of my investors in, in this company called Afford It, uh, walks up to me. He's this great guy. He's a Persian guy named, um, Cameron Poor and Johnny. Right. Uhhuh and Cameron, who's very forward, right? Very forward.

Cameron sold price grabber to I think Experian, if I recall. It was a long time ago for $300 million, I think in cash, and you became an angel investor. Invested in my company. He walks up to me, doesn't skip a beat, and he says, what the fuck are you doing here? I was like, whoa, dude. Right? I mean, not even a high will, right? Yeah. I was like, come again. Right. Uh, I was scared. I was like, what just happened?

Yeah. He's like, I just put money into your company and every night I see you at another one of these events. What are you doing here? Why aren't you back at your company, building your company? I was like, damn, dude. Yep. The problem was he was right. He was right. That's a thing. That's a thing. Yeah. High level thinking. High level thinking. When they said engage in high level thinking, high level conversations, they didn't mean just being on a rooftop near a pool.

That wasn't quite what they had in mind. You know what's so funny, right? I was just thinking about this. I think about how many times it would have been awesome if someone had pulled me aside and said, what the fuck are you doing? Yeah, it was a gift. It was a gift. Doesn't feel like it for the first 10 or 15 seconds. It's not, maybe not even the first 10 or 15 minutes, but a couple days later you're like, you know what? Well, the, there's something, well, the reality is I had no answer.

Right, right. I was like, well, I mean, I'm technically, you know, talking about the company, but I'm really personal brand building and just having fun. Right. Yeah. I was doing it because it felt good I was doing it. 'cause it felt good 'cause yeah, I, I'd, I'd get up there and, and people would clap when I talked and you know, people would invite me over for dinners and high-fived and all these things and everybody kept saying how great my business was and all these things.

And I realized that I was getting more addicted to the validation then any level of productivity. I think that's tension's a sugar high. It is, right? It is. But unfortunately it comes at the cost of, uh, progress, which is probably more of like a slow burn protein. Right? Gotta be real careful there. How far we shift that diet. Yeah. And, and so I, I looked at it and, and I really analyzed it.

I mean, Cameron really did me a favor, and Cameron, if, if you're, if you're listening, watching, thank you for doing me that favor, please be more kind next time. But also thank you for the favor. He's like, wait, what do you mean I didn't shove you into the pool? So I like being kind. Anyway, so we ended up, you know, we don't like saying. We've gotta change our focus. Uhhuh our, our focus was, again, me getting out there and me doing the events and things like that.

And I remember around this time, this is sort of related, right? There's a guy that you know of, uh, Dharmesh Shaw. He's the co-founder of HubSpot. Sure, and I've known DMH for a really long time. Uh, not super well, but like we started kind of the same business back in 2004 and that's how we got to know each other. I remember around that time that I was doing my publicity tour, DMH was just heads down building HubSpot. I remember what he told me what HubSpot was.

I still had no idea what it was back then, but I remember around that time he started to just arc hard 'cause Dartmouth was actually working. Right. Like where I was out, like shaking hands and high fiving. Yeah. He was back home working. That's the thing, man. And, and those, like, when you're doing it though, it's, it can be so confusing because those likes can feel like lift. Right, right. Like again, like applause is not a KPI. Right. But it can feel like it. Right. Right.

It can feel like lift. Until you check the runway and then all of a sudden it becomes very apparent. It's like we don't seem to actually be lifting off and the end of the runway's getting closer and closer and closer. Here's where you see it now, here's the modern day equivalent.

Social media, obviously. Yeah, a hundred percent. And, and, and that's why I said likes feel like Lyft. I was thinking like, right, right. Bringing the modern context, but I was like, oh, but there weren't likes back then. Sort of kind of, you and I don't spend enough time on social media, and I assume you, you, you could make that as an argument for the better argument, for the worse. However, when I'm on there, all I keep thinking is. Who has time for this?

Who has this, this much time for this and at what expense? That, that's always my thought. Social media for me, man, it you'll appreciate this. It started to feel like the new version of meetings about meetings. It feels like what I'm doing when I'm not working and I just can't, I can only tolerate a little bit of it at a time. I'm like, I know I need to be out there. I know I need to be engaging and I want to be. Yeah, I legitimately do.

And yet every time I'm on there it, one of two things happens. Either I look at it and I go. No. And I run away or I get sucked in and I go down the rabbit hole and then I come up like a day and a half, two days later and I go, holy shit. A lot of engagement happened and nothing else. Like Right, exactly. I'm behind on all the other stuff I was supposed to be doing and it never feels right. And I'm not saying it's impossible to do both.

A, a good example who, of someone who I think is superhuman is David Meyer Hansen. He is all over x. 24 7 all the time on a million topics, and the guy's releasing product all the time. Now he also built his business 25 years ago. True. So he's got a bit of a headstart on this one. But you know, he and Jason Fried have always been out there, you know, always been, and, and they're, they're phenomenal marketers in that way, but they also get shit done. Yeah. They get shit done.

Uh, d HH is also like winning races in a car simultaneously, while, while tweeting and, and building a business. I don't understand how Yeah. That guy's, the next level, you get that Elon Musk level, right? Where somebody who's just like so invested, uh, can do both. Yeah. But, but I think that's incredibly rare. I think most of what I see. Are people that are wildly focused on that attention. And again, I wanna say I get it. I mean, I, I've lived it. I get it.

We're in a business that is just riddled with insecurity. Riddled with insecurity. Oh, for sure. Right? For sure. So like everything about what we do. Lacks validation, whether it's, Hey, is my idea any good? Am I any good? Did I get anything useful done today? Yeah. When I post something, whatever, it's, and I get likes and comments and validation, which is really what we're talking about. It makes me feel good. It makes me feel good at a time when I'm not feeling particularly good.

And I think that's where, that's the where the trap starts. That's exactly it. That's, I was getting ready to say that's, that's the glue that, that's that that sticks us to the trap. Right, right. When we can turn. Uncertainty into a validation, hit however small or however useless. Right. Simply by getting those likes, getting those high fives, it makes us wanna stay there. Right. As opposed to just running back into the abyss.

So I'm not curious about why it happens, but I think we do need to shine the light on it and make sure that people do see why it happens and understand that they do need to be careful how much time they're spending there and, and whether or not they're, they're actually.

Getting stuff done, you know, because I think there's, we can run into this thing where it's like a performance mindset versus a a builder mindset. Who am I spending my time for right now? Right? Am I spending my time doing something for my audience? Or am I doing something for my, my users, my customers, my clients, and I, I think that's where we have to be really careful not to say that balance. Right? Right.

Exactly. And I think for a lot of people it, it becomes a bit of like a self-propelling PR machine. Yeah. Like you're more focused on how is the PR performing Sure. Than how is the business performing? Yeah. I see this a lot really with funded companies where they get to a point where they're like, everything has to be, how does it look? Yeah, yeah. Let's release this product or make this statement. Not necessarily 'cause it's the most important thing, but because it'll attract more investors.

Let's do this because it'll get better attention. Let's post this because it'll, it'll, we think it'll go viral on, uh, social media. And I look at that and I'm like, okay, but is that really the best thing for your business? Like, is that actually gonna build the business? Yeah. And the answer is usually no. Which I think is interesting. Yeah, for sure. I, again, like, you know, popularity doesn't equal progress. High fives don't equal product market fit.

And I think there's something else that's really dangerous that can happen there is it can actually lead you in in the wrong directions. Right? Right. Instead of really validating stuff with the people that that matter the most. Right. Not that having an audience is a proxy isn't a bad thing, but I think there are times, and I've certainly fallen, uh, prey to this where because I started to get validation around a concept or something, I started double down on that.

Because it's happening in social or it's happening in, in, within my audience or, or my network, as opposed to I've tested this within the actual user base, within our customers, within our clients, right? And it's achieving the results we want there. You can actually start building the wrong stuff simply based on that signaling, and that is super, super dangerous. I remember watching this in real time years ago.

The fact that you probably don't even remember this company is, is such a perfect why. It's gonna be a perfect example.

It, it was called Quibi. Okay. And a lot of people won't remember this, but this was, this was co-founded by Meg Whitman, who was the rockstar, CEO of eBay back in the day. There we go. Yep. And Jeffrey Katzenberg. Right. You know, actual, uh, total g within the, in the media space. And it was supposed to be short form content. I guess in retrospect, it might've been what TikTok is now, you know, minus the social network. Ryan, they raised 1.75 billion. Dollars, billion dollars. Right.

At a time when that was absolute bananas. Right. That was the rest of what got funded that year. That's a lot now that, that was all the money back then. Right. And the reason I'm bringing this one up, it's not to, to knock a failed startup. It was all Quibi ever was, was a press release. It was, it was a $1.7 billion press release that never became an actual company. Right. And that's where the, the press and the tension and everything else becomes the product.

And I think when that happens, it becomes real dangerous. And I see this within startups and like I said a moment ago, where they're like, they're posting everything on social media. I'm like, okay, but are you getting anything done? Like what's happening behind the scenes? Right. We went viral. Yeah. Okay, cool. But did virality net you any customers? Because if, if your viral moment led to zero customer acquisition or zero growth in any other way, then what are you actually doing?

I'm not worried about making the viral, I'm making worried about making the payroll. Yeah, let's focus on that. Perfect.

Yeah. Right. And, and I think what happens though is that as you start to invest all of this energy on what I'm gonna call popularity, it comes at a tax of focus. It comes at a direct tax. And I, and I witnessed that firsthand when I was at that, you know, whatever that event was that, that, that Cameron approached me at and I was giving whatever speech I was giving. I was not at the office that I, I was taking that time and that energy away from what I could have spent at the office.

And, and incidentally, that business failed. Did it fail because I was at networking events? Maybe not. Right? Maybe not. But it didn't help. It certainly didn't help. Right. It's not where I needed to be. Every event, every post, every, every one of these activities has a price. Yep. And you, you pay for it in things like product, you pay for it in things like. Revenue in hiring in all these other places where you're just not spending your time. Right. I mean, it really is just that simple.

There's a, there, there, you know, we're playing a zero sum game when it comes to our time. Right? And anywhere else we're putting it means we're not putting into those places that might might matter most. Now again, this isn't, this isn't a case against social media. This isn't a case against publicity. This isn't a case against being out there and, and gaining some visibility in the world. But it is a cautionary tale against creating some balance there. You know, something that's really.

Funny about everything we talk about here is that none of it is new. Everything you're dealing with right now has been done a thousand times before you, which means the answer already exists. You may just not know it, but that's okay. That's kind of what we're here to do. We talk about this stuff on the show, but we actually solve these problems all dayLong@groups.startups.com. So if any of this sounds familiar, stop guessing about what to do.

Let us just give you the answers to the test and be done with it. I feel like you get to play that game.

You get to play the brand building game. When you've earned it from, from productivity. Sure. Yeah. So, so going back to the, the example I gave with Dharmesh at, um, at HubSpot, Dharmesh is on social media a lot, but the dude's a billionaire now, right? He does much money as much as he wants. He already won. Right? And so, like when I see somebody do it after the fact, right? You know, our, our, our good friend here, uh, Dan Martel, right? Dan. All over social media now. Right.

For, for folks that don't know, uh, reason, we know Dan, uh, we bought one of his companies, uh, clarity that fm Dan, uh, we've known Dan for a long time, but, but Dan's all over social media. But to Dan's credit, the reason he can be all over social media is because he already built a successful business behind it.

Correct. Right. So like, Dan paid his dues and now he's going for the views. Right? Yeah. But he's actually on the right order. Where I get concern is when you flip it. When you're like, I wanna be really popular and maybe I'll build a business. Yes. In that end, poorly, most of the time it does, man. It does. I I think that brand building is almost a pure cost center until the product starts to print proof or profit. Right. One of the two. And ideally profit. Right.

I, and again, like nothing wrong with doing some brand building, but I think it, it cannot be the center of the universe. It cannot be your, your sole focus until you're, you're further along to your point.

Building on that some more, like this happens a lot with venture funded companies because they get into this moment where all of a sudden they have money and validation. Yeah. But they haven't had to produce yet. It's a very dangerous trap and maybe where I was when I was out giving those speeches, we had just raised some money. Yeah, I was gonna ask. Right. Not crazy money, not Quibi money. Right? Right.

That'd been cool, but, but you get to this thing where big name investors just put money into you. Right. So you're feeling pumped and validated about that. Right. Okay. You want to go out and you want to tell that story, which makes sense. There is some value in telling that story. However, there has to be a part of us that at the same time says. Right now, this is just a honeymoon period. It means nothing. Right. Right.

This doesn't actually become real until we show up with the revenue to back it up. Right, exactly. And they're after, you know, profit and sustainability. Yeah. And I think for a lot of businesses they, they can't seem to get the importance of that. Front and center. Yeah. I raise money doesn't equal, I've built a business. Right. Correct. That comes later. Correct. If at all. Yeah. But I think when we're in that, I raise money. I feel great going out on social.

I feel great going to the conferences. I feel, you know, great. You know, running around town telling everybody how much, how much money I've raised and I, and I get it. I get it. I did it. Yeah. Yeah. But at the same time, it's like, yeah dude, but you also have to show up. Right. And it's kind of hard to show up and build the business. You, you're telling everybody you're, you know, you've raised money to build without actually being at work, doing your job. Yeah.

And, and I think honestly, like there's, there's an exponentiality to this trap too, because the inputs start to multiply with your popularity. Right. Mm-hmm. Because now all of a sudden, like as, as it starts to work and you start to get into those feedback loops, and all of a sudden you got dms, you got invites, you got panels, you got all these other things you need to do. Absolutely. Which is constant context switching. Right. Which is just, it's, it's such a killer for, for founders.

And we get so caught up in these external optics and saying like, well, how will this look? As opposed to, what will this do? Right. And I think we gotta be super, super careful when we start to tow that line. I also think at some point all that investment can also build the wrong brand. Lemme give you some examples. Sure. Right. So I, I think for some folks they get into this and a lot of social media anymore is personal social media, which is good.

Which, which is authentic, you know, which it should be. The problem with that is it makes it harder to differentiate. So if, if I'm getting tons of likes about my political views. Right. Awesome. Your personal brand is, you know, really getting solid, but is that helping your business? You know, I, I've watched this in different ways.

The founder and CEO of, uh, of Coinbase, Brian just blanked on his last name, was very staunch about being. Republican conservative views. I mean, from the start, he has been, um, unflinching. And while I don't agree with all his views, I respect the fact that that, you know, he's willing to stand in front of it, but now he's taking his personal views at the expense of Coinbase, right at the expense. You wanna take that to another level? Elon Musk, right?

Look at the damage he's done to Tesla building his personal brand. I, I still don't understand how there haven't been actual, like, settled lawsuits outta some of the stuff he's done. Like it, he's definitely crossed the line. Like I get, like there's a time where like sometimes you see the founder is like the star of the show. Mm-hmm. And all of a sudden the product is just a prop.

But he's taken that to an entirely different and very uncomfortable level, which, you know, statistically absolutely none of us will ever get to soon. Right. The only comment for a very long, we should have so much to risk. Right? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So. What I'm saying there though is there is a point where your personal brand building is mis pointed.

Either it's really about you and your businesses happening to benefit from it, or you don't realize the correlation between the shit you say online. And how that affects your business. Right. There's an, oh boy, I, I'm, I'm trying to remember the, the name of another, it was like a, um, an online screen printing business. And this was like earlier in the year. Yeah. And they took a, a really, um, tough line with voting Trump and a bunch of other, like pretty significant stances.

And again, this, this had like. Whether you're on either side of whatever party you're with and whatever. Uh, this isn't, this isn't commentary on that. I'm saying when they took that stance, I remember watching the comment thread after they took that stance being like. I've been with you for years and I'm leaving. I'm blah, blah, and I'm thinking to myself, dude, there is a point where your personal brand or your personal feelings has a detrimental effect on your business.

Now, some people will say, that's okay that I'm willing to bear that cost from my beliefs, and you know what? I will, your business do, you will standing on my principles. True. You, you, you bet. And I get that. And, and again, I'm not really trying to, to push back on standing up for your principles, but I am saying. These are examples of where your personal brand, so to speak Yeah.

Can affect in a negative way your business or said differently where you're building you and your business happens to be tagging along. Yeah, that's what I was saying before, like the founder is the, is the, as the star and, and the, the, the product just becomes a prop at that point. There's a fair amount of people who don't even know that these people have a business. Ask nine outta 10 people, you know, I'll, I'll pick on Dan.

Ask nine outta 10 people what Dan's actual business is, and they probably can't tell you. Yeah, they're like something to do with abs. I'm guessing maybe, I don't know, like probably we probably, we could never stop picking on you anyway.

Anyway, my thing is that for those folks that are out there in their, their brand building, and again, I think it's a lot of attention seeking in validation, seeking behavior at some point. You gotta be like, damn, dude, if, if all I'm doing all day is just kind of building my brand or reinforcing my insecurity, really, where does my business benefit? Right. What, what, what is happening there?

Yeah. Yeah. And I think it is, it is tough too because then to some degree it's like, well, can you even really separate those things? Right. Does that just mean that founders of, of companies, of certain sizes. I can't really have a personal brand that is maybe at odds with the, with the company's brand. Right. And, and certainly you see this in corporate, right? Like there, there are very few corporate CEOs who are allowed to have their own crazy ass personal brand, right?

And, you know, we're, you know, but we're still IBM. On this side of the fence. Right? You just don't see that, right? It's not the way it works. Uh, so corporates figured this out. Startups still haven't, right? We've seen this play out for the worst. I agree many, many times ever.

Well, on the corporate side too, they've had, in some cases, decades of being able to establish a brand or establish the culture, establish the presence, and when A-C-C-E-O comes out and goes way off the mark, now again, it's different if you are a. Wildly successful. CEO I'm not saying you can't do damage C Musk, I'm, I'm not saying you can't do damage, but like you've already done the productivity part, right? Right.

And now you wanna have a voice, you wanna change politics, you wanna be Reed Hoffman at LinkedIn, you know, standing up for the Democratic Party, so be it. Right? Yeah. But re, Reid Hoffman's already put in his. You know, he built freaking LinkedIn. Right, exactly. He's good for the rest of us who haven't built shit, we're not in that position. Like, like when we are out there kind of, uh, championing, we are not building our business. You know, we are not like laying those bricks.

And when I'm out there, you know, I don't on social media, which isn't enough, I'm being honest. I feel guilty the entire. And I blame Cameron Pours and Johnny, by the way, right. Whatcha doing out here? Yeah, exactly. When there's that angel and devil on your shoulder about Uhhuh, you know about decisions. Cameron is definitely the devil. He is like, what the fuck are you doing? Get back to work. Yeah. Yeah. And he is not wrong man.

To what extent do you think it's a, an order of operations thing?

Like more of a timing thing? So like, is it just that at, is it necessities that at the beginning we sort of have to choose company brand? Over personal brand until product market fit retention, you know, are undeniable at that point. Right. Is that, is, is that the case? I think a couple things. Is the business sustainable are, are you making more revenue than you have costs? That's a cool time to start changing focus. Right. Which most of us aren't at that point yet.

I think another part of it too is being very cognizant of the cost of that activity. Again, there's benefit to it. When I look at, um, you know, what, what Sam Parr has done with both the hustle, when, when Sam was running the hustle and, uh, now with his podcast, now he's running Hampton, et cetera, Sam's outside personality is the product, is the brand, right? It it is. And so it works. But in that case, that's an a wildly aligned composition. And Sam knows it. He's very good at executing.

Yeah. I would argue that very few of those exist where, where that even can be the case, right? Correct. There's just gonna be certain types of brands where it's like, it just kind of doesn't work here, right? Like there isn't a personality type that just aligns with the SaaS that we're building in a way that actually makes it, makes it matter. You bet or look at another personality like Jason Kanis, right?

Jason has mostly throughout his career, and I known Jason for a very long time, um, throughout his career, has been a media guy. You know, when he was Silicon Alley reporter, like in the late nineties, um, he did web blogs. Like a lot of people don't remember this. It was like the core, like he sold it for like $20 million back in the day, maybe more to like a OL. Jason was a media guy. Now here's an interesting thing.

In the mid two thousands, Jason did a little bit of a pivot, and he started a company called Mahalo, right? Mahalo was supposed to be a human powered search engine. It was actually a great idea. It was a great idea at exactly the wrong time. Right. And it was basically going head to head with Google, which was ballsy. And so, you know, Jason was doing that, but Jason was still doing what, what became, um, this weekend? Startups. We shared office space at the time with Jason.

He let us use some, some, some desks, you know, where we needed in Santa Monica and Jason was in there every day recording and, you know, building the Jason were in the media thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But he's always, that is the business, correct? Well, but Mahalo failed. Now, did Mahalo fail? 'cause Jason was in the other room interviewing Mark Seus for about vc. Maybe not. But it wouldn't have hurt again. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I I I can't imagine you're gonna try to outrun Google.

It probably should be the only race you're participating. Exactly, man. And again, I, I'm not knocking Jason. I, Jason's a super introspective guy and, and I'm sure he's had his own thoughts about what it was, and I'm sure Pride has done his own podcast about it. But even when I was sitting there right, watching him record, I was thinking to myself, you should probably be in the other room, dude. Yep. Don't you get Cameron Pour and Johnny. Oh, funny thing is, uh, I'm Jason's board.

Elon Musk. Talk about a guy who had, have no problem telling you how he felt about getting back to work. Yeah, yeah. Especially back then. Anyway. I'm sure he heard about it. Yeah. Yeah. But, but I think about that and I think, man, this attention seeking behavior, you know, has a certain cost to it. I think it's, you know, part of it's a balance, but I feel like, and, and I'm curious your thoughts.

I feel like, like we talked about, there's a threshold where you've paid your dues and you get to be out there, social opinionated person, and then there's a part where you haven't. Yeah, and I think part of that is a, is a function of, of focus and, and just being able to like, like we were saying before, like you, when, when you no longer need to spend every waking second figuring out how do I get this thing to profitability? How do I make payroll? How do we get the product actually launch?

Yeah. Well listen, once that's behind you. You've got a little bit of tailwind, then you can choose how to spend the extra momentum. But until you, until you do, I, I see. Because we work with founders from, you know, cocktail napkin idea all the way through, through publicly traded companies and at the early stage of that.

So if you're still, you know, waving that cocktail napkin around, trying to get the ink to dry, and I see you putting a lot of energy into trying to build momentum around the personal brand. Even if it's sort of kind of aligned with, it just still doesn't feel right. Right? Like there are times where a little bit of thought leadership if you're trying to, you know, grab some clients and, and that is an important piece of that and that's been identified and it is a marketing activity.

Sure. Yeah. But so often it just feels completely dissociated with it. And I, I don't think that that's the right time or place for that. I do think you have to. Earn it in a sense that, and it's, it isn't about, I don't want people to mishear me. This isn't earn it in the sense that like, well, you have to become something before you're worth listening to. It's not what I'm saying. It does help though. I'm saying I don't want to see you spend your booster rocket.

Yeah. Launching the wrong damn thing. Right. Meaning your personal brand or just some notoriety or some publicity as opposed to your product, your customer, your service. Right? Like that's where I want to see you put that energy. The way I look at it is for folks that are out there building a real company. Yeah, they're usually too busy building a real company.

Yes. Like, because it takes incredible amounts of focus and time and it's nearly impossible to envision that intense level of focus while responding to comments on frigging TikTok. Right? Yeah. Like again, I understand like for some folks they pull it off beautifully. I think very few of them, and the people that I do see pull it off beautifully are freaks of nature. Right. Almost like, like business freaks of nature. Right? Yeah. And, and they can do it. I'm not one of them.

Like, I'm a pretty productive dude, but if I'm on Reddit arguing with people over, you know, whatever topic, I'm not back home building product. It's that simple. I've gotta choose a place to put my time. You do. And I think you have to be really careful here too. And if we think about what the kind of the difference between popularity and progress. One of those is a fairly durable good. The other one is not. Right. Popularity is super perishable. It has a shelf life by nature, right?

You can be popular one minute. If you don't keep working at being popular, you're likely to become unpopular just because somebody else is gonna step into the limelight, right? Even if you try to stay popular, it's still very perishable. Um, we've seen plenty of people push the line and go from, from popularity into inanity, right? And that can happen really quickly too. I've always just had this feeling that, you know. Quiet work ages well. Right.

The things that we're doing, the real magic that's happening off camera is where most of, I mean, it's where all of it happens, right? You can go talk about it on camera. Yep. But are you really doing anything that's of note of meaning to the company, to the product, to the customers that that's happening out in the world? Generally speaking, in my, my experience, no.

Look, I think for a lot of founders, like they're out there and they can, they have a choice. They can either spend their time. Building the business or spend their time building their brand. Yeah. You usually can't do both with the same veracity. And so I think in the early stages, you have to look at every one of those external interactions.

You know, every, every post, every comment, everything that you're doing, uh, in building that brand, every networking event, uh, every trip to be at a conference, et cetera. I think you have to look at that as a cost. As a tax. I know people think of that as an investment, and maybe someday it becomes that, but not when you still have a company to build. The most important time spent is investing in the company, in the product, in the people in management, not building externally.

Once you've made those investments and hopefully you get those returns, then you can reap the rewards of going out and building your brand and telling the world about how great you are. But until you've built. The product at home. Until you've built a sustainable business at home, you haven't earned the right to spend all of your time externally, brand building. And I hope that changes. I hope one day you do make that investment and you get that reward.

And maybe both of us can be online all the time talking about our successes. Until then, get back to work. Overthinking your startup because you're going it alone. You don't have to, and honestly, you shouldn't because instead, you can learn directly from peers who've been in your shoes. Connect with bootstrap founders and the advisors helping them win in the startups.com community. Check out the startups.com community@www.startups.com to see if it's for you. Could be just the thing you need.

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