Who Do You Trust More? Yourself Or Your Employer?

Full Transcript

Paul Singh: I just think that there is a certain amount of personal responsibility that we each have to take for our careers. And I think side hustles are the way to do that.

Ed Pizza: I think many tech companies don’t find a great way to speak to moms.

Paul Singh: Brand is really what people say about you or your company when you’re not in the room.

Ed Pizza: What’s more important than a founder, passion or knowhow? And my answer is, yes.

Hey, guys. Welcome back to the Results Junkies podcast. Paul, is it possible that we’re both home two weeks in a row, recording the first two episodes of the podcast?

Paul Singh: Well, we are, but that implies that we’ve been home the whole week.

Ed Pizza: I don’t think anybody who knows that us would believe that we’ve been home all week. And I think we’ve both been gone in between both episodes.

Paul Singh: That’s right. Yep, yep, yep. Yeah. I mean, travel’s picking back up, that’s for sure. But it is good to be home too. That’s… I don’t even know where I’m going with this, but the point is though, is that, yeah, it’s kind of rare that we’re both home for an extended period of time.

Ed Pizza: Yeah. And we’re… Episode one is in the books. We talked about playing not to lose versus playing to win, which is, obviously one of your favorite topics. We talked about how to plus up your revenue without having a bunch of cash for marketing. So, plenty of good stuff in episode one. What do you think about having one of the books now, man?

Paul Singh: It feels good. Actually, so I did a little sneak preview for my email list last week. Sent them a, for anybody that wanted it, I sent them a Dropbox link to the recording for feedback. So, lots of people actually asked for it. I might have even missed a couple, but there were, I think, something like 120 some people that were like, “Yeah, I’ll listen to it.” And then more emails came in after that and I just hadn’t responded, which is awful. But anyway, that’s the value of that email list by the way, is, if you ever want to get the sneak peek on what we’re working on, that’s where I’m going to post it.

Ed Pizza: Yeah. And so, I’m just trying to figure out what the good news or the bad news here is. [inaudible 00:02:23] the good news is, that I’m obviously subscribed to, to the mailing list and get the emails. The bad news is, I apparently didn’t read it because I didn’t know the episode was, was live, sitting in a Dropbox folder waiting for [crosstalk 00:02:34] to download it.

Paul Singh: I don’t even know why we’re friends sometimes.

Ed Pizza: Mean neither, but we did have the burn last night of me calling at the annual mailing list. So…

Paul Singh: Oh. Well, wasn’t a burn, it was fact. I definitely had not emailed the list in like 200 some days or something like that. And-

Ed Pizza: Oh, was it really that long? Oh-

Paul Singh: Yeah. I actually put it right in the opener-

Ed Pizza: … so, I was really accurate.

Paul Singh: … of the email. I said something like, “Hey, it’s been 200…” I don’t know what the days were, but I’d said in the email, I was like, “It’s been 200 days since I sent you an email, so if you don’t remember, here’s why you’re getting this.” So, anyway. No, but it feels good to have that first episode done. I think, we talked about this a little bit in the last episode, but if you’d asked me a couple years ago, whether I’d be recording a podcast, I probably would’ve said, “No.” But it’s actually been interesting to kind have a chance to kind of formulate these ideas, talk them out. And at least from the initial feedback from people that did listen to it, seemed like it was positive, so I’ll take that.

Ed Pizza: What’s the unsubscribed rate bet on the newsletter, since you put that up? That’s really the test here.

Paul Singh: Oh, I don’t… I’d have to go look. The thing is, a long time ago, I stopped looking at unsubscribes because I think my goal is to force people to unsubscribe on every push. It sounds ridiculous, by the way. But somebody, a long time ago, told me that you have to force people to either love you or hate you. And that’s the only way you’re going to get them to critically think about whatever idea you’re putting in front of them.

Ed Pizza: Yeah. I think that, that’s probably a pretty appropriate way to describe most people that know you or I, that they are equally divided. Maybe not equally divided, but there’s not a whole lot of folks that are in the middle saying, “Yeah, those guys are okay.” It’s either-

Paul Singh: mm-hmm.

Ed Pizza: … “I really love that.” Or, “Man, that was something really stupid that Ed said this week.”, which probably happens more than it should. Anyway, for folks that are tuning in for the first time, and as a reminder for folks that were around for episode number one, make sure you hit that subscribe button wherever you’re listening so you can get notified of our new episodes as soon as they drop. We’re going to feeding off the listener questions for a while here, as we get cranked up. So you can email us show at resultsjunkies.com.

And Paul has been lighting up the Twitter. I can’t even keep up. He is @PaulSingh, and I am @Pizzainmotion where you will find me saying the occasional travel stuff mixed in with the business stuff. And let’s jump into some topics for episode number two, man.

Paul Singh: I’m in. I’m in.

Ed Pizza: So, we’re looking down our list today. I got to say that one of the things that you tweeted out last week, which, really strikes the chord of something I’ve heard you say for years, is this whole premise of, there’s this large section of people. And it sort of dates back to my grandfather of, feeling like you’re secure when you have a great employer. And I I’ll paraphrase your tweet, but it was really like, “Who do you trust more yourself or your employer?”

Paul Singh: Yeah. I mean… So, yeah. So I tweeted something earlier this week, where I said that entrepreneurship is less risky than having a job. And I ended it by saying, “Who do you trust more, yourself or your employer?” And the thing about Twitter, as you all know, is that it’s 200 plus characters or whatever, so there’s a lot of nuance that gets lost when you’re just trying to jam into one tweet. But my point with this is, that whether… So, being an entrepreneur is not about what you do, it’s actually how you think about things. So I think for example, the classic, when you think about entrepreneur, the word entrepreneur, the classic thing that comes into people’s mind is. Startup founder, which may or may not be true.

What I’m trying to articulate though, is this idea of entrepreneurship as a way you think. And if you agree with me there, then it’s something that can be applied. This idea of, who do you trust more, yourself or your boss, can be applied to whether you’re starting something, whether you’re in a cubicle at a large company or anything in between. My whole point is, is that I think more people should be thinking entrepreneurially about their careers, about their businesses, about the companies they work for.

And then when you start to think about that really recognize that you kind of have to. Because I think everybody would agree with me that they tend to trust themselves more than the employer, and that’s okay. But then do something about it. And so whether that leads you to a side hustle or whether that leads you to invest in coaching or training for your own career, whatever it means, apply it to your life. But I think entrepreneurial thinking is something that everybody should embrace.

Ed Pizza: Yeah. And I think that in the time that you and I have been on the planet, that’s shifted pretty radically. And it’s interesting in that, I remember when my grandfather passed away, one of the possessions of his that I wanted was a clock that he’d been given by Pitney Bowes [inaudible 00:07:35]. And it had a little plaque in the back about how he had 43 years of service with Pitney Bowes. And I just felt like that was what you did. So I left college thinking, “I’m going to come out, I’m going to get a job, I’m going to work somewhere for 45 years, and then I’ll retire.”

And I had moved onto my second job, like a year after I was out of college. And I sort of bounced around in those sorts of jobs, not realizing that before I went to college, I had taken some of my money that my parents set aside for school and some money that I had saved and I put it into a restaurant I was working in. And I loved it because I came to work every day trying to create something. And I didn’t… I mean, I’m sure I’d heard the word, entrepreneur, back then, back when TV was still black and white and stuff like that. But it didn’t really strike a chord with me. I didn’t really understand it until much later. And I kept going through these corporate jobs and trying to sort of do my own thing and never really understanding that I really wanted to get back to that first thing. And-

Paul Singh: Yeah.

Ed Pizza: … you said something, and we joke about it. Paul and I were on the road together for a handful of years. He came up with this idea to have the tech tour, for folks who may not be familiar with that. And so, I would fly to meet him in places and he’d have his Airstream parked wherever we were going to meet up with founders. And as part of your stage speech in most of the cities, you would talk about how our kids were going to have, not just multiple jobs in their lifetime, but multiple jobs at the same time. And it’s sort of like we’ve pivoted from this thing of, where a side hustle used to be bad. And now it…

Ed Pizza: Of where a side hustle used to be bad. And now it’s almost like people are prioritizing their side hustles in terms of, “Well, here’s my number one side hustle. Here’s my number two side hustle. And if it’s a slow week, then I focus on my number three side hustle.”

Paul Singh: Yeah. What you’re talking about is this thing that I’ve been mentioning to people over the last couple years about how the nature of work is changing. And what I think a lot about is this idea that our parents, like you described there with your grandfather, almost all of our parents worked one job to the arc of their career. For most of us that are of working age… Now, I’m forties, I think I’m a geriatric millennial, or something like that. We’re going to have five or six jobs, or maybe more, but sequentially through the arcs of our career. But I think where our kids are headed, and where the nature of work is headed, is this idea of multiple jobs, and things like that.

That might be a controversial statement, and we’ll see what that means for people. The thing I do want to say is, is that I think that side hustles are an interesting thing. It’s almost if you don’t have a side hustle, people might worry that you’re not growing your skills.

Ed Pizza: But I think the thing is, is that when you look at that, it’s like, there’s this divide I think. There’s people that see side hustles really just as, “Well I want to work when I need money for my next thing,” which I see a lot in folks. [inaudible 00:10:27] “Get off my lawn,” but the folks that are much younger. And then there’s this generation that I think is somewhere in between. And maybe this will filter into our kids’ generation, who the side hustle is, as you said, to develop a skill.

Paul Singh: Yeah. Look, I’m a big believer that everybody should have a side hustle. The primary goal shouldn’t always be money. It could be, but it shouldn’t be. I think you should think about side hustles as a way to gain a new skill, or build a resume publicly, or maybe even make money on the side. The point is side hustle, as a term should not be overloaded, and applied to only making money. I think it is your new resume. It is the way you gather skills these days. Right? And in some cases, could be how you make some money on the side as well.

Ed Pizza: Yeah. When I think of side hustles, as it relates to me, it’s about sharpening a skill, honing a skill that I like. And again, as you say, different things for different folks, I think that there are a number of people who maybe aren’t in love with their day job. And the side hustles the thing that they love to do. Again, whether it makes them a lot of money or not. And I think the pivot for folks, and I think you reference this well, the pivot for folks there is, “Hey, if that side hustle is something that you love, I would challenge you to say, find a way to get somebody to pay you for that side hustle.” Not because you need the money, not because you want to make money, but because I don’t think there’s a better barometer of success than saying, “Here’s this thing you’re really good at, and somebody paid you for whatever that was.” I think it’s the ultimate way to codify that you’re actually good at it.

Paul Singh: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Look, this is a double-edged sword by the way, a little bit. But I think even as an employer now, when I think about the people that I’m recruiting, and hiring, and stuff like that, it’s a double-edged sword because you worry that, gosh, if they have a side hustle, are they going to get distracted from the main job? Or what if one of those side hustles takes off? Will they leave us? And then I got to worry about hiring again. And where I land on this is, is that the side hustle to me is a sign of intellectual curiosity and ambition. And if for some reason one of those things takes off, or somebody else recruits them because of those things, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

In fact, it keeps the pressure on me to keep their main work interesting, and give them a path to grow. But all that to say, I just think that there’s a certain amount of personal responsibility that we each have to take for our careers. And I think side hustles are the way to do that. That opportunity to have a side hustle didn’t exist for our parents. Maybe it did. “Hey, I work at Pitney Bowes, and I own an ice cream shop on the side.” I don’t know. That may have been what a side hustle could have been back then.

Ed Pizza: It could have been. It was less likely, but I do think that when I first got into the workforce, there was a very prevalent side hustle. I just don’t think we called it by that. When I first got into companies, one of the big things that companies did was they said to you, “Hey, if you find a charity that you’re passionate about, and you want to go out and raise money for them, we’re going to match whatever you raise.” Talk about textbook entrepreneurship. It’s just not how we normally think about it. But it’s like, “Hey, find something you love that you’re passionate about, go find a way to raise some money for it, and as a company, we’re going to support that interest in you. And we’re going to fan that flame.”

Paul Singh: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Ed Pizza: And set aside the difference in say the benevolence of, “I’m raising money for charity,” to your comment about keeping it interesting for folks who are working for you now so they don’t want to take the side hustle. The principal’s the same. It’s about looking at the folks that are part of your team and saying, “How can I make tomorrow interesting for them?” And the answer might not be with whatever their “day job” is for you, but it’s making sure that they’re thinking about how they can come to work every day, and be empowered.

Paul Singh: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. The summary of all that, by the way, is everybody should have a side hustle. Now you can interpret it however you want. For whoever’s listening, interpret that however you want, but everybody should have one, it’s good for you in more ways than most people realize.

Ed Pizza: When we talk about this stuff, this pivots into one of the tweets that somebody sent us a couple weeks ago, Juan Pablo was asking, “What’s more important in a founder? Passion or know how?” And it’s such a short question, but it’s loaded.

Paul Singh: The thing is, I don’t like the word passion being used in any business context, because let me just use an illustrated example. There are a lot of people we probably all know that are passionate about sports, but would be poor. There are no physical…

Ed Pizza: Hockey goalies.

Paul Singh: Well, there you go. Right? Yeah, there’s a lot of people that are passionate about things that ultimately they wouldn’t themselves be good at, because there’s a certain amount of training, and genetics, and things like that are required. In the context of business, passion doesn’t really have a seat at the table. I think of this as a venn diagram, if you’re a founder, and you’re trying to start a company, or you start a side hustle, or whatever you’re going to do, in the context of business, it’s a venn diagram. It’s what you like to do, what you want to do, and what other people actually need. And in the context of business, the overlap of those three circles is really what you should be doing. And tying back to the original topic, side hustles allow you to increase those bubbles a little bit, and potentially increase the overlapping area there. But passion, I don’t think has a seat at the table in the context of business.

Ed Pizza: Yeah. And I think I read the question differently than you did. And I’m going to disagree with you on points. I think we’re pretty close on this, but for me, the question is, as Juan Pablo put it, what’s more important in a founder, passion or knowhow? And my answer is, “Yes.” And I’m thinking about this from an investor standpoint, there’s no question that skills are a huge part of it. I think about when we go back, and try to figure out why certain investments fail, a lot of times it’s because the founder just wasn’t connected to whatever the vision was. I’m going to flip that around the other way and not try to talk the negative, because I do that a lot, but I’m going to use an example of a company that we didn’t invest in.

And I don’t remember why we didn’t invest, but then I tried to invest later, and the name of the company is, “Revelar.” I’m not going to remember the name of the founder, but I remember her story, and this probably goes back 10 years ago. She created this device that women could wear while they were jogging that would track their running, and would also act as a panic button to call 911 if something happened. And this was obviously before other devices that we had, Apple Watches, and Fitbits, and stuff like that, all did this stuff for us. And the reason why the company succeeded initially, the reason why…

Ed Pizza: Reason why the company succeeded initially, the reason why she got a lot of traction in my opinion was because of her passion, it was because, as I remember it and I sure hope I don’t get this wrong, her sister was mugged while she was jogging. And so there was physical harm to someone that she loved and she really had a passion to figure out how to fix this. And she really wanted to make this better for other women. And I felt like, I think where she ended up going with that, the arc of the company as I recall, is she had the passion, and at some point she had to know how to know that she wasn’t the right person to run the company, and she went and found a new CEO. And so I think that without having both of those things intermingled there, I think you end up drifting away from the reason you got into it in the first place.

Paul Singh: I don’t disagree by the way but again, back to the-

Ed Pizza: I didn’t think you would.

Paul Singh: Yeah, back to the concentric circles though, that’s what you care about. Like, passion to me is driven mostly by emotion, and in some cases with certain entrepreneurs, a little bit of delusion. And to me, it’s really about what you care about, in that context she cared about the fact that this happened to her sister, and that drew her towards this problem space. And maybe I’m splitting hairs here, and I know we’re not disagreeing, but I do think words matter. I think that as a species, words are how we communicate.

Ed Pizza: Species?

Paul Singh: Well, even it’s how we communicate with each other. But it’s how we, even in our heads, when we talk to ourselves, the words we use. It’s the difference between when you ask your kid, how was your day? Versus, tell me your day. Both of those have the same spirit, but one of those sets you up for a one word answer, and the other sets up a conversation.

Ed Pizza: Oh, for sure. And I think both with children and founders alike ask asking the wrong question is so critical. And you learned this really early on in parenthood.

Paul Singh: Yes.

Ed Pizza: And you’ve learned it very early on in terms of interacting. And I don’t think this is just, I’ll be honest, I don’t even think this is really just an investor/founder sort of thing in terms of me seeing a founder.

I think when I look at folks that I want to partner with on things and I dig into stuff with them, it’s not too dissimilar to my kids. As you say, if I set them up for the one word answer and they give the one-word answer, I think it’s a great barometer into that passion level. And so it’s prompting for that right answer if you will. But again, that people, I think that if you ask someone who’s really passionate about whatever it is they do, and they happen to be skilled at it too. And you ask them the basic question like I asked my ten-year-old son and get the one word answer, how was your day? I think you’re going to get a great answer from the person whose skills are sharp and and they’re looking at how to 10X their business because they want to scream to everyone about what’s succeeding and what’s failing.

Paul Singh: Yeah. I mean, on the investor side of this, I would say that for me when I’m thinking about let’s say a B to C company in terms of, does this founder care enough? And fine if we want to use the word passion like, are they passionate about it? I would say, I want to know what is it about the current systems, or things that they were experiencing? Like, what is it that made them want to start this thing? Is it a repetitive problem they were dealing with? Is it something that happened to their sister? That sort of thing.

And on the B to B side though, I think it’s typically more about domain expertise. So in the context of B to C, I think I’m looking for a first-person relationship with whatever the problem space is, whether it was something that happened to their sibling, or something they deal with every day. And when it comes to a B to B company that I might be investing in, I look for domain expertise. Why is it that this person has decided to solve this problem? And then, what qualifies them to do this? Because there a certain amount of domain expertise required in the B to B space.

Ed Pizza: Yeah, for sure. And when you think about that, when you think about the connection, it’s funny because this was something that I was going to lead the show off with, and partially to needle you and partially to commiserate, though I’ve never been through it myself, but so your wife’s Facebook account was hacked recently, and I think the interesting thing here, when you talk about expertise and that personal connection, we’re both old enough to remember MySpace, and I’m sure there are people listening who maybe have heard the name, but weren’t a part of it. Look, I mean, for the majority of the life of a large chunk of millennials, Facebook was, and has been, and is the primary way they communicate with a lot of their friends.

And when I think of things like what you’re dealing with right now, in terms of trying to get her Facebook account online, and trying to figure out what happened, and all that stuff is like, there’s going to be a time at some point in the future where Facebook isn’t going to be the center of our universe. I don’t know if that’s before the next president is elected or if it’s five presidents from now, but I think you and I both know that someone’s going to come along and see the sorts of things that you’re having problems with, whatever it is. And maybe it’s not this specific problem, but they’re going to have a friction, they’re going to say, “Well, damn it. I want to go start… I need to make this better.”

Paul Singh: Well, yeah. I mean, a lot of great companies have started that way, right? They look at the public customer complaints about whatever the incumbent is and then build a company off of that. In the context of like Dana’s Facebook hack, there’s that personal aspect of like, “Wait a second, did we lose 15 years of stuff?” As an example, the announcement of our kid’s birth, we didn’t, because of whatever, people don’t send birth announcements as often, right? I guess, so it was like, what about the comments on those posts? That was the personal loss that was felt while the account was down. But then professionally one of the challenges was, well, wait a second, she’s listed as an admin on a bunch of our portfolio companies, and were the ad accounts attacked, or hurt, or anything like that?

But my tweet the other day about it was really more frustration about the fact that the overall process, like if the whole point… like Facebook, and don’t quote me on this. But for the last I read, like Facebook, when they do their public earnings reports, and stuff like that, a lot of the KPIs they talk about is related to how engaged the average user is, right?

Ed Pizza: Yeah, dwell time. Yeah, absolutely.

Paul Singh: Okay. so here’s the part that really pissed me off and what drove that tweet that I threw out there, was that on the one hand they want to use a KPI to the public market investors about how engaged their users are, on the other side of it, when those accounts are hacked, even if they’re small ones, or big ones, or whatever, the recovery process says vague things like upload your ID, we’ll be in touch in seven days. And to me that’s weird, how is it on one side of the equation? You’re publicly and privately building systems to engage people and sit on there for hours a day, or whatever it might be. But on the other side, the minute those users have any trouble, now all of a sudden it’s like, we’ll be back in seven days. Now I don’t know what the right solution is there, but that gap between how often I might be on it versus how often your support team might get back to me, that feels strange. It just feels really strange to me.

Ed Pizza: Well, and I wonder, without getting overly philosophical, if that has something to do with the vision of the founders. So if you think about some of the detailed stuff at a place like Amazon, versus Facebook, and how Zuck and Bezos have taken very different tactics on how to get to where they want to get in terms of managing the vision. And not that I’m not that I’m Zuck or Bezos by any stretch of the imagination, but I’ll talk about something that we’ve had as a principal of every company that I’ve worked in, that I’ve had decision-making power in for 20+ years. And that’s with customer interactions we have a hard and fast rule, and we break it frequently, but the rule always exists, and the rule is if a customer reaches out to us we get back to them within 60 minutes.

And I don’t care if it’s a compliment, I don’t care if it’s a complaint, but the customer took the time to reach out to us. And so we have a 60 minute rule. And like I said, we break it frequently because of life and all the other stuff. But everybody knows our standard is we’re going to respond to our customers in 60 minutes. And I’ll tell you, we actually win back so many customers whose line is, “Wow, I didn’t actually expect to hear from someone.”

Paul Singh: That’s right.

Ed Pizza: And this ties back to your comment on Facebook of like, we’ve been preconditioned with a lot of these products that we use that are quote unquote “free,” where in a lot of cases we end up being the product, that the customer service level is going to be crappy. We’re going to get in customer service what we pay to use the product-

Paul Singh: Yes.

Ed Pizza: … which is little to nothing. And I think we win…

Ed Pizza: And I think we win frequently because we exceed the customer’s expectation when something went wrong and said, “Hey, getting back in an hour. Sorry about that.” And people are surprised because they’ve been conditioned to think that they’re going to lob this complaint and it’s going to make them feel good while they’re typing it because they’re getting their frustrations out, and then they’re never going to hear anything again.

Paul Singh: Mm-hmm (affirmative). I know this isn’t on the list today, but on this note, it sort of brings up this point that I’ve been thinking about more and more the older I get, unfortunately, is this idea that brand is important in business and in your careers. And what I mean by that is, is that a brand is really what people say about you or your company when you’re not in the room. I mean, that’s the most simplistic view of it.

Ed Pizza: Yeah, absolutely.

Paul Singh: Right?

Ed Pizza: Yeah.

Paul Singh: And so when you think about, in the context of customer service, product differentiation, like all these things that people try to differentiate on, whether it’s price, product, whatever, are really temporary because there’s always going to be somebody out there that’s going to under-price you or whatever. And so when you think about like, why do we buy … this is a bad, cliche example, but why do we buy Nike versus Adidas versus whatever? It’s because it’s how it makes us feel.

In our business, for example, on the Bump side of things, we have this metric that we look at is average response time. Our customer experience team is not measured by how many minutes they might spend on the phone. That’s not even on the metrics. I mean, I don’t even think we … it’s probably in the database somewhere. We don’t look at it. We look at average response time. What is the average initial time from when a mom contacts us via email, text, or SMS … or phone to when she gets that first response and you’re right. I would love it to be instant, but the reality is sometimes there’s an all hands meeting and nobody’s going to be on the phone, or somebody might respond or email us at 11:00 PM on a Friday night. It’s possible they’re not going to hear anything until Monday. But we want those to be the exceptions, not the rule.

And I think that’s to your point though, some of these larger companies, I think, lose sight of that. I was on my standup with my leadership team this morning and one of them said something interesting of like, “God, there’s all these like big companies like MailChimp has just got acquired for $12 billion and there were these other … ” Anyway, we were just talking about like, God, those companies, there are so many … as users, like MailChimp, I’ve shifted away from MailChimp a long time ago personally, because I thought the software was clunky. But hey, it’s still worth a lot of money. That’s awesome. And it was like, God, maybe that’s terrifying and amazing at the same time.

Ed Pizza: Yeah. And Paul, when you talk about those sort of metrics with a company like Bump, with what you guys are doing, I’m biased here because I watch my wife. But the way her life is scheduled every single minute, every single gap of the day, as you mentioned with your core customer, which I think many tech companies don’t find a great way to speak to moms, they’re sitting here in this space where they have time to get something done, and when you take them off path that kinetic energy goes somewhere else. And you don’t know when they’re going to come back into your solar system. So I think understanding that that’s your core customer and that you have to engage with them quickly is so important in recognizing that it’s not just that mom needs the products that Bump Health is selling, but she needs a different type of service to be engaged in the sort of life that she’s leading on a daily basis.

Paul Singh: Well, yes. I’ll just say yes, but where this takes me, and this might be its own podcast episode at some point, but I’ll just say that where this takes me is you have to recognize that they’re … today’s consumers, whether they are managers at another company or that mom at home, whatever, they are digitally native. They’re not digitally savvy, in the sense that like digitally savvy to me is different than digitally native. Digitally savvy is like they learn tech and they’re cool either way. But digitally native is like, “Hey, it’s kind of weird when you call me. I like text.” It might be different for different demographics, but it might be like, “Hey, I only do video conferences or video FaceTime or whatever, I don’t do phone calls,” or vice versa. It’s different.

So back to where you’re going with this, I think you’re right. If the business is not adapting to the customer’s lifestyle, then there’s probably, at some point, may not be soon but at some point, an opportunity for somebody else to disrupt that. And I think it’s something to think about whether you’re on the business side or you’re sitting on the entrepreneur side. But you’ve got to communicate, the business has to communicate the way the customer wants it to, otherwise somebody else will get in there because there’s just too much friction. Customers today are, fortunately or unfortunately, fickle. So anyway.

And know we’re jumping all around here, but I’ll just say, this brings me to something else I tweeted about this week, which was, if you’re unsure what to build, right? If you’re unsure what to build, what you should do is look at a company that’s in whatever space you care about, particularly look for companies that are over 10 years old, probably over 100 employees, because that tells you that there’s enough staying power, enough revenue to have that staying power. If you find that company, what you want to do is number one, re-imagine it with a deep understanding of it. Like what would that business look like if it started today with a deep understanding of today’s technology? Number two, and to what we’re talking about here, think about what it would look like if that business started today with a deep understanding of today’s digitally native customer, which is true by the way, B2C and B2B. And number three, what would that business look like if it started today without any legacy baggage of the last 5, 10, 30 years of stakeholders and code and compliance or whatever it is? And whatever that is, could be an interesting business to build. I mean, that is the framework I use to keep adding businesses into Bump Health.

Ed Pizza: You’re literally like previewing where we’re going to go next. And that’s … this should be a full, full episode, talking about breaking all that down. And I think that’s a great place to tie us off and say, we want to dig into that super deep, I think going through some of the thread that you put out on Twitter there of the bits and pieces of what you guys are trying to build. I also think we need to get back to some of the stuff that we didn’t get to cover this week that talks about, hey, how has the role of a founder changed over time? I think it was a great question that came in and probably paraphrase the question when we try to answer it. But I think, being an entrepreneur has changed structurally in just the time that you and I have known each other in terms of how to go about things, in terms of … like using your example of how you guys are going about it with Bump. But I think that’s a great place for us to tie it off and say that we’re going to try and pick this up again next week, when both of us have probably already gotten on airplanes again and are back in the same seats.

Paul Singh: Absolutely. And here we are in episode two, had grand ambitions of covering what is this, seven, eight topics? And we covered three, and half of them were weren’t even on the list. So I don’t know if that’s like the … what it? The premonition of what the future looks like or whatever, but we’ll see what the audience says. I mean, if you got comments, good, bad, ugly, you can either flame us online, on Twitter, it’s Paul Singh or Pizza in Motion, or just email show@resultsjunkies.com. Both Ed and I are keeping an eye on that. But criticism welcome, heckling welcome, or compliments. I always love a good compliment.

Ed Pizza: Yeah. The compliments are so boring, but yeah, the best thing you can do is tweet us-

Paul Singh: Speak for yourself. Speak for yourself. I love those things.

Ed Pizza: So tweet at us, as Paul said, shoot us emails, that stuff. We love reading your name off on the air and talking about whatever it is that you think that’s important, that’s burning a hole in you being able to get over that next hurdle. Like Paul likes to say, all that hand-wavy and fluff stuff is probably on some other podcast. So we’ll have plenty of results and plenty of tactics for you guys again next week.


Also published on Medium.