Relative Sizing w/ Thrivner | Ep. 147

In this episode of the Biz/Dev podcast Gary and Christie chat with the Thrivner team behind the new Thrivner Planner app, Emily Wallace and Dori Stiefel.

Links: 

Thrivner Site

Thriver Planner

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David Baxter has been designing, building, and advising startups and businesses for over ten years. His passion, knowledge, and brutal honesty have helped dozens of companies get their start.

In Biz/Dev, David and award-winning Creative Director Gary Voigt talk about current events and how they affect the world of startups, entrepreneurship, software development, and culture.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Dori: So we have the husband who said, yeah, I told my wife I'd be back in an hour, it would be an easy thing and then he just pauses and he It was a 13, right? The effort was way higher

[00:00:13] Gary: Hello, and welcome to the BizDev podcast, the podcast about developing your business. I'm your host today, Gary Voigt, and I am joined by my co host, Christy Pronto. Hello. How are you? 

[00:00:23] Christie: I'm fabulous, as always, Gary and yourself. 

[00:00:26] Gary: Pretty good. Pretty good. Now we're missing David today, but that's good. The show is always better without him. So

today we have two guests. So please welcome Emily and Dori. Emily and Dori are the masterminds behind Thrivner. Emily is the managing principal and Dori is the co founder. I see here that Thrivner Incorporated offers strategy and program development. Can you guys give me an idea of what that means on a broader level? 

[00:00:51] Dori: We discovered early on that it's really fun to write the strategy and imagine the big picture, but where the real fun comes in is actually making all of the things happen. And so we developed early on a capability for doing both almost at the same time. 

[00:01:07] Gary: Now, what is this strategy actually for? Are you, is it like a consulting business that comes into other smaller businesses or startups or? 

[00:01:15] Dori: We have done that in our 18 years, but what we've found is our best place is to work inside of an organization where either something isn't going well. Or a new challenge has been set either by the board or in the cases of our government customers by a legislative body. And so you're faced with a new requirement to make something really big happen.

And if you just do the strategy, then all you have is a thing to wave around. And if you try to implement immediately, you end up with nothing around you to structure and keep the agreements. So we found that the two together are critical. 

[00:01:54] Gary: Yeah. So I'm trying to get, you said you've been around for 18 years, so you're not exactly a startup, but I'm assuming you have worked with smaller companies or newer businesses trying to get something off the ground. 

[00:02:04] Dori: All the time. Yes.

[00:02:06] Gary: so I'm assuming by now you guys probably have a process that you've whittled down to from experimenting in the past and stuff like that.

So

coming up with that process. Depending on the size of the business, whether it's a small business or a big business, or even a government business, like you mentioned before, do you guys have to alter your approach and the process in which you come up with the strategies and procedures for these companies based on not just their needs and size, but I'm assuming smaller companies might not have the resources for that.

Grand strategies compared to larger companies. So how were you able to adapt to those two different versions? 

[00:02:42] Emily: A couple of ways. One, in our work as consultants, we tend to, our work is very bespoke. So a lot of times the work is very much creative work, problem solving that serves that customer.

It's like putting on a custom suit. That said, There are ways that we have found to make the process more simple, and we are big fans of borrowing from maybe not exactly the sector that we're working in. So one part of our company does develop software, and we have found the sprint methodology for developing software actually works really well for developing strategic plans.

And we've done this now across multiple customers and different kinds of organizations. What works great about it is that you are broadening your pool of who are the interested participants and why are they there and why are they interested in the outcome While at the same time you're keeping everybody super focused on the outcome.

So to be able to go from, let's say your five days are consecutive, a Monday where you're like, wow, we have to write this whole strategic plan to a Friday where you've not only written the bulk of your strategic plan, but you've tried out your new big ideas on stakeholders who really care about what's in that strategic plan and you've gotten a little bit of feedback.

That's a pretty good one week of work. 

[00:04:11] Gary: Yeah. That's very similar to BigPixel started as just like a small custom software shop and then it's grown a little bit over the years we've been in business for now over 11 years. But at first I think the agile strategy, we use that plan. But we morphed it to fit our group a little bit better. 

[00:04:29] Emily: bit 

[00:04:29] Gary: So

just little things like instead of having sprints, we have stages and it's like our pricing structure is a little bit different. So we have to evolve around that. But yeah, what you were just mentioning, it reminds me exactly of almost how we start a project as well, with get all the information first, do what we call us like a design stage, which is just, I'm sure where you guys are just learning.

Piecing the ideas together, coming up with like

a real quick kind of prototype or methodology to see if it works. And then continue from there and repeat the process. 

[00:04:57] Emily: Exactly. And when you're working with an organization who is headed in a new direction, right? So typically people need strategic plans because it's time for one. Maybe they have new leadership that comes in or maybe as Dori was saying, They got a big new assignment, right? So maybe somebody said, Hey, you've been in X business.

Now you're in Y business. That could be their board. It could be Congress. But, to develop a new strategic plan and then to have people invested in it and ready to go get it done. Yes, let's do that. Yeah. 

[00:05:32] Gary: You brought up something that brought two questions to mind, but first

I would

imagine that you also have to really manage expectations of the client. If their idea or their goal might be something that's a little bit further than what that they can achieve in the short time or in the short term, or something that they have to make, maybe cut down into smaller chunks and then turn that into a process to achieve.

So how do you guys adapt to maybe a smaller business that has,

And they have a new feature or something that they need to add, which of course is Adderall, but you have to pull them maybe back down to reality and kind of guide them through that process a little bit better. 

[00:06:13] Dori: I

don't know if I buy your premise, Gary. One of the things that we find is that people tend to think about going smaller when they're struggling with the capacity to figure out how to go bigger or how to execute it if they were to go. And that usually happens because they're taking a very. Stepwise approach.

We're going to do this thing, or we're going to do this thing. And that we hear the word all the time, one thing at a time. And so that can be great. And that often works if that's what everybody is used to, because they all fall in line. But if you start to imagine that feature and then you realize, oh, but while we're going to do that feature, we need to do this other feature at the same time.

So to be specific, we have this in our software all the time. We just developed our first piece of software. We're in the middle of our second piece right now. And all the time we realize that there are eight features that are on the way to the one.

[00:07:07] Emily: that 

[00:07:08] Gary: Yeah. Yeah,

I can see that.

[00:07:10] Dori: And so what we use our ability to think this through for other organizations for ourselves.

And we say, okay, how do we head towards that bigger picture outcome all at once? And how do we line up all of the pieces to happen simultaneously? And then have it step along so that it isn't overwhelming for us. And so that's how counter your premise. I don't know how that how you see that reflected back

[00:07:34] Gary: No, that makes total sense. And I see that happening. That happens with us too. I guess maybe I phrased it wrong. I didn't mean that you have to take their dreams away from them.

What I meant was they might say, I want, I want you to build me a mobile app that does this. By December. And then you're like, okay that sounds like a great app idea.

I were really into it in order for it to do that. It also has to do, like you said, a, B and C first. Let's say you're selling something. You can't sell anything if you don't have a payment structure and payment structures take a while to set up stuff like that. So you might have to manage their expectations as far as, planning out.

How this is going to be implemented through the course of time, instead of just cutting short and saying, no, we can't have that .

You mentioned, you've built some software of your own and I see here that you guys have a productivity app. 

[00:08:23] Emily: So it's Thrivner Planner. And Thrivenr Planner does help people to keep their commitments every day. There's an opportunity to look at the urgency and the effort involved in each of the things that people need to do. And that unique visual is helping people to be able to get their day complete and also keep their commitments. 

[00:08:45] Gary: Productivity apps are huge. There's a lot of them out there. There's many that follow like the GSD, whatever methods and stuff like that. I find myself. always, watching the promotions of the videos or hearing people talk about how their productivity structure and how they get things done.

And it all looks and sounds amazing. And I really want it to work for me,

but I can barely ever find anything that actually works with like the way my brain works a lot. But I was curious to find out if you built yours out of something that was going to be an internal tool. That you then wanted to sell, or did it start completely as being let's build a better productivity app for this one specific.

Niche market.

[00:09:30] Emily: So it did not start as an internal. Tool, but it did start out of our own personal frustration. So when we originally started designing our software, I had gone back to using a paper planner probably for a couple of years to the horror of many people around me. Mostly just because our work is very dynamic.

It has a, aha, Gary is holding up his own planner. Oh, Christie has one too. This is 

[00:09:59] Gary: But I also use, I use apps too. So it's 

[00:10:02] Emily: it's Hard 

[00:10:03] Gary: out how to

get them all together. So I'm curious to find out what 

[00:10:05] Emily: all together. Actually Gary, that's really common. In a lot of our user interviews and focus groups, we find that this is pretty common, and that there are people who are using one software at work, but a different software personally, or maybe together with their family members.

So we find that too. We find that there are people who in their work app, The to do might say X, Y, Z, but then in their personal, what they are keeping track of, they write down X, they write down Y, they write down Z. So they are further breaking down the steps so that they can both feel a sense of accomplishment, but also feel like they can get their arms around whatever that task is.

So you all are in very good company. And because of this personal frustration, we wanted to have something in particular where we could visualize better the effort that goes into completing whatever that task is, the effort and the urgency. How big is this thing to get done? How much does it take for me personally to get this thing done?

I want to be able to see that visually. Instead of everything written in a list that takes up the same amount of space on the screen or on a piece of paper, I want to see it. I want to see that relative sizing. So that is part of what is at the heart of the software that we developed. 

[00:11:36] Gary: That kind of sounded similar to assigning what scrum points kind of an 

[00:11:40] Emily: Oh,

Gary, you are after my own little heart right here. Yeah. The concept of relative sizing when we read scrum almost 10 years ago was so like light bulbs flashing all the things. It was so formative for us that yes, we are big fans of relative sizing. 

[00:12:01] Gary: Christie, did you have something? I'm sorry I interrupted you earlier.

[00:12:04] Christie: No, you didn't at all. I was just everything that they're saying about the relative sizing and then the creating your list, not only for the task at hand, but then strategically for the accomplishments and seeing all of that. It really spoke to even how I structure my own self. And then also to. Sometimes we have the discussions internally, especially when we bring new people on the team and everyone works differently is, some people like just, here's the task and that's the task and they don't need it broken down until let's say that we use ClickUp into the subtasks, but then when Gary and I talk and then he and I are fleshing out a project, we like to say, okay, yes, here's the idea, but then it's, you have to really like subtask, subtask, subtask, subtask and just work backwards to get to that, to get to that goal.

So it's having that skillset to do both and then be able to maneuver amongst. Those that you're working with that I think makes it most interesting and dynamic for our group. So when you're talking about all of those things, it's just that synergy. It spoke to me. I liked it a lot is that the putting your arms around the concept itself, the task itself and giving room for the accomplishments and the congratulations along the way so that it doesn't feel so overwhelming.

I think that's really important. 

[00:13:12] Dori: We were really fortunate. You asked the origination story for the software and it was our own pain point, but we also were able to base it in deep research, both out of the literature and research about behavior and social science and out of the interviews and behavior with people who tell us their stories, right?

So we have the husband who said, yeah, I told my wife I'd be back in an hour, it would be an easy thing and then he just pauses and he It was a 13, right? The effort was way higher. 

[00:13:38] Christie: Yeah.

[00:13:39] Dori: So we do see that middle ground is needed. And so where, what we're addressing is, what is it going to take for me to get there? What do I need to count on from others to get to my outcome? And can I succeed in time? Because what we've found

and discovered is that's where the kind of the sorrow and the stress are coming for most of the people in our target.

And of course, we have a sense of who our market is. One of the things that I noticed in your interchange, Gary and Emily, is we have started to deal with the challenge of people when they're starting a project or an organization tend to have to do a lot of it themselves. And there comes that moment where you realize that as much as you would like to do it all yourself, something has to be shared with somebody else.

And that amount of scoping that you and Christy are pointing to is really interesting to us because some people don't need as much of it and others need it to know what action, by whom, by when, with which, you know, which criteria for satisfaction when it comes back. And so we've been setting ourselves.

A goal in the software right now, what we do is we leave that independent to each person to say how much you share out to somebody else. And that way it's independent of our preferences. It's up to the user to do that. But we are getting, we are understanding that we need to do better at helping people know when and how to do that.

Cause it's just not clear for everybody yet. Not even for 

[00:15:03] Christie: Yeah,

and it seems to that also helps with the more I'm hearing you speak about it is the productivity level as well, because like you're saying, and you said something that really caught my ear about what do I expect of others or what I need from others to accomplish this goal.

And I think you can have all the processes in the world right that's the first. That's the first step of it. But then that those can become arduous if you're all lost in them and don't know what there is to accomplish them How many of us put off that one thing on our to do list, because we think it's going to take this, and this, and really after we do it, we're like no, I hate myself because it took two seconds and I could have done it much quicker.

So having that expectation set so that your team knows, Hey, here's this mega idea that I have, and it may seem mega, but really this is all I need from you and you to really get this off the ground and then that excites people because they own a part of it. So your success is their success. And then also too, I think a big Gary and I had this conversation all the time of what makes people the most happy and the most productive is feeling like they're happy.

They're heard, they know what they're doing and that they can have ownership over it and thrive in that. So yeah, that productivity goes hand in hand with that too. The process and the productivity, I would think. 

[00:16:14] Gary: Now you guys mentioned, this is the second iteration of it. And I'm assuming that means it's the second bigger iteration of it, but you're constantly adapting it and moving on for it. Where can people see this app? Is it available like in the app stores or is it specifically a product that you guys sell directly or. 

[00:16:31] Emily: So it is available in the Apple App Store. Thrivenr Planner is available for iOS right now and later this year it is getting its web component. So we are very excited that later this year it will be available for iOS and for the web. 

[00:16:48] Gary: And I'm assuming with any new projects, you guys take on a new client, you require them to use your software, correct? I'm joking.

Part of the contract. 

[00:16:56] Christie: yep.

[00:16:56] Emily: it is not a requirement, but it is something that we are immensely proud of. And Christy, to your points about what it takes to work with other people and to do that really well, those ideas are very much baked into the software. As Jory said, this is not about our preferences. We have a lot of places in the software where the user is setting their preferences.

Their preferences and a lot of these ideas about how to work with people, how to do it productively, how to do it efficiently, and perhaps even joyfully. Those are ideas that we are exploring in a book, and so the book shall be out in 2026. So we are in the process of writing and also courting some publishers. 

[00:17:47] AD: BigPixel builds world class custom software and amazing apps. Our team of pros puts passion into every one of our projects. Our design infused development leans heavily on delivering a great experience for our clients and their clients. From startups to enterprises, we can help craft your ideas into real world products that help your business do better business. 

[00:18:16] Gary: Okay. So my next question is two parts, because this directly has to relate to what you just said do you guys, is this something that you guys bootstrapped and built on your own, or do you have investors helping 

[00:18:26] Dori: So both of us have backgrounds where you do go out for investments. In this case, we chose to do it ourselves as the company. And the reason was the original answer. We wanted to be able to base it in both research and practice. And what I'm a futurist. So we actually based it in what's coming as well from the future.

And we didn't want to be on a cadence that was driven by the other money. We wanted to be on a cadence driven by those three interests. 

[00:18:50] Gary: You just segwayed into my next question and answered it at the same time. Okay, my question was going to be, regardless, right now we are living in, the hype era of AI everything. So it seems every app you use on your phone, on your laptop, wherever, Has these three little stars that shine telling you, you have to pay for, your new AI assistant to make your life better.

And now a productivity app seems like the exact place where people are expecting AI to be injected into it. Have you been bitten by the AI bug? And if so, how are you using it? Or if not, I might applaud you and say way to go. And why not? 

[00:19:28] Dori: Oh my goodness. No, not bitten by the AI bug. And only because we did everything as outcomes based about what was needed out of the software and what was needed by users. And so far, there isn't a match yet between AI and what is needed in those cases. And the second there is, of course we'll put it in. 

[00:19:48] Gary: don't want to have them make like crazy funny emojis for 10 a month. That's not helpful. 

[00:19:53] Dori: I like the business idea. I'm writing it down.

[00:19:55] Gary: Being sarcastic. 

[00:19:57] Dori: yeah I think AI is interesting, coming from the futures view, what we thought it would end up looking like in the market and what it's looking like right now are very different. We're just not there yet for the software, but I could see some features in the future that would absolutely benefit from it.

Maybe not the emojis, but we'll see. 

[00:20:14] Gary: Dori, you mentioned that you are a futurist and that sounds awesome. Can you give us just like a small summary of what that means to you and how does that change how you look at the world? 

[00:20:25] Dori: The second part I reflect on a lot because I won't ever know the difference from, how much of it is just growing up over time and how much of it has changed because of the training. But the point about being a futurist in this context is to look not just at the threads of trends and forecasts that are shifting. But also look at how overall systems are changing and then what are the unintended consequences of all of that at the same time? And so the narrative form of that I like to think about is if you imagine a single technology like AI, it's easy to think about the sparkle that adds in the moment, but then if you start to expand it out and imagine it becoming part of other products, other services, other technologies, and then you expand that out and think about the unintended consequences of each of those things.

Then you start to see what might be possible for the future. If you want it to be a part, person creating it and also what you need to think about if you're in the seat of say policies or other things that need to be thought about ahead of time. So I think about being a futurist more about standing 500 to a thousand years from now and saying what's possible in that timeframe and what are our choices today need to be to make those possibilities still available. 

[00:21:39] Gary: So in this journey between what you do for other clients and what you've done on your own, building this software Do you have any kind of like bumps in the road that taught you any hard fast lessons that maybe you could share with us? 

[00:21:52] Emily: We are big fans, as I alluded to previously, of finding your people, and whether that is your employees, the vendors, or the experts that you work with, we're big fans of finding your people, and we do a lot of diligence. It's to find the people that we're working with, and sometimes that goes great, and we have years long relationships with people, and sometimes that's really tricky.

So I think we had an, we had something with an accountant a few years ago that was very challenging. Dori, do you want to fill in a little bit about that? 

[00:22:27] Gary: I don't need any specifics. I was just 

curious if there's any kind of overall business lessons that might've

[00:22:33] Dori: I wouldn't add in the specifics, of course, but, you ask about bumps in the road. And for us, it was actually a really cool learning point because we were so relationship and we are so relationship based. We'll always stay in the conversation and figure out how to make something work.

Coincidentally, we're both in long marriages and a long business relationship.

So

we do, we do try to find a way. And what we learned from that bump in the road where it just wasn't working, right? The agreements weren't. weren't working out either way. The conversations just weren't producing the results.

That sometimes you find an expertise that isn't a fit and that the next step is to make a new choice sooner than just trying to keep, you want to make it work and at some point you have to choose again. And so our bumps in the road have usually come when we didn't choose fast enough to choose again. 

[00:23:19] Emily: Yeah, you can pour a lot of energy into trying to keep something that isn't working going for longer.

Yeah, trying to like put some band aids on it and keep it moving along. And I think our lesson is sometimes It's just better to have the hard conversation, everybody make some new choices, and try again. Yeah, don't be afraid to unhook from a thing that's not working. 

[00:23:45] Gary: When you guys started this, was it a small team, like just you two and maybe a couple other people, or was it just you two, or did

you 

[00:23:53] Emily: It wasn't me to begin with. It was

[00:23:56] Gary: just all Dori. 

[00:23:57] Dori: We've always had a small team, that was the core and different customer base, based businesses. So that was just the original idea. And then when we realized a little bit like the story about pivoting, from finding your expertise and finding people who can do the work that's needed, we realized that we can only do so much one by one.

And so that pivot to products and other ways of sharing information and being useful seemed, I think we got to it almost too late. Again, I think, that unhooking or hooking in early, our tip for that now would be when you see that you're already ready to level up or that it's starting to get really great, go for it.

Then go early and level up as soon as you can. And so now we're doing that, but at the time it took us a little while to get there. 

[00:24:47] Gary: I asked you guys about any kind of bumps in the road. Now, do you have any kind of aha moments or any kind of,

Ideas that you couldn't tell us that just went off perfectly something great to happen. And you weren't expecting that really electrified you to keep going. 

[00:25:02] Emily: I'm going to share one thing that I think we've done that has really helped the culture of our company. And that is several years ago we started a book club. And our book club is something that I think anybody who's ever worked with us or had the chance, once in a while we invite people who aren't who aren't with us day in day out to participate in book club too.

And I think any of those folks would tell you that it's amazing. We rotate who chooses the book. We typically will read kind of business books or that's also how we first came across Sprint, it's how we first came across Scrum. We read them for a book club. So that we read together.

We rotate who chooses the book. We rotate who facilitates the discussion. So it's been a nice build to help build some of those facilitation skills and some of our colleagues. And we have now read something like 70 books over the years. We've been at this for a while, so please understand this didn't happen overnight.

And I would say we read seven or eight books a year. It's not exactly once a month. It's more like once every six weeks or so. But the opportunity to read together to have some inside jokes about which authors need a better editor to have some shared aha moments and some shared hey, that's really smart.

What would that look like if we were incorporating this idea? What would it look like if X or Y customer? Did this thing, right? And so to have those more creative conversations and ideas and to make that part of what the company does every month, I think, has been really powerful for us over the years.

The cumulative effect of that has been undeniable.

[00:26:45] Gary: Yeah. And you mentioned culture too. That seems like a great way to include everybody into that culture. I don't want to brag. We don't have a book club, but We've read two books as a

[00:26:55] Emily: Outstanding. Are you going to share which ones you read?

[00:26:58] Gary: Yeah. The first one was called traction and I found it. It just was not my style, but lots of good lessons in there, for business organization and processes and stuff like that. The second one, I think it was the, was it the ultimate or the perfect team member?

[00:27:15] Christie: The ideal team player.

[00:27:16] Gary: The ideal team player, that's what it is, but it had the concepts of humble, hungry, and smart injected into your organization.

That one resonated with me a lot more. Not sure which one. Christy, did you read both of them or just? 

[00:27:29] Christie: Yeah. And then David always sends me Alex Hermosi's everything so that, yeah, no, I definitely think the ideal team player resonated more with me, and I think it was more just because it's more personalized and less formulaic as to, I think

[00:27:44] Gary: Yeah, it was written more like a narrative.

[00:27:47] Christie: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

But again, the whole concept, like Emily said, of just who cares what each person thinks, right? Because we're all going to think something different. It's the coming together and sharing the what did you think that sort of spawns new ideas, which makes people feel closer to each other too, which is that's a very cool thing to do.

And also too, I think, because I'm a big dork, I would think that, And thinking of what you ladies do and bringing people to the table who are in, maybe they're bringing a new idea or they're in an arduous process and things have just not been working and they really need you and your services and watching that evolve to that ideal aha moment where you see it become easier for them, where something clicks with them and all of that work you guys have been doing for the months.

They're finally like, Oh my gosh, this is working. I'm seeing our goals come to fruition. And that human moment for me, I would think is so exciting. It's like that it's. Yes, of course, you're getting a paycheck for what you're doing, but it's like you really are helping people. Things are hard and processes suck and taking data and making it relatable and palatable and making you grow is really hard.

And it can mess with your mind and with your spirit. And so seeing people like get to that moment where they're like, Oh man, what you just put together really helped me. I'm thinking of this differently. That I just think that's really cool. I must be really cool for you guys to say. 

[00:29:02] Dori: Oh, I was just nodding at you, Christy, and I was thinking, we see it in that form, but the other form, and I'm sure this happens for others as well, is that the idea comes or the success comes back with somebody telling us about it, and they don't know that we were a part of it, and that

[00:29:17] Gary: Oh, that's even better.

[00:29:18] Dori: really

[00:29:19] Christie: cool. 

[00:29:19] Dori: So it'll either be, something like, oh, you really should look at this work. It'd be right up your alley, right? 

[00:29:24] Gary: Nice. 

[00:29:25] Dori: Yeah. And you humbly say, oh, yes, I'll look at that. It's really exciting. And for us, those are really good moments to, to see that the circle of communication and of the idea is moving outward and expanding.

yeah, I definitely hear you, Christy. 

[00:29:38] Gary: Yeah, it sounds cliche, but it is true that when you see your ability to help someone else succeed is also your success, and you can thrive off of them being happy about that's definitely worth it. Every single Regardless

[00:29:52] Christie: what we see in software development.

[00:29:53] Gary: it. 

[00:29:54] Christie: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. 

[00:29:56] Gary: so we need to have a culture meeting and convince David to stop his Dungeons and Dragons club and start a book club instead. 

[00:30:03] Christie: That's what all of our monthly meetings are. Dungeons and Dragons. What's the

[00:30:08] Gary: Have you heard this podcast? Who wants

[00:30:10] Christie: Yeah, I know. 

[00:30:11] Gary: We're just bagging on him because he's not here. So maybe he'll listen to it. 

[00:30:14] Christie: He's the best.

[00:30:15] Gary: Okay I'm not sure which one of you want to take these hard hitting questions. Investigative journalism coming up here. You could. Tag team if you want, that's fine.

But we're down to our final questions. You guys have had a pretty long, I shouldn't say long. You guys have had a lot of experience in what you do. And you've worked with big companies and small companies that have used to, as you've said, and you're even your own company when it comes to developing your own products.

So you are more than qualified to answer these. What would you say are your top three pieces of advice for any entrepreneur, new business or startup? 

[00:30:48] Emily: I think our top three pieces of advice, and I'll explain just a little bit about each, but we mentioned already to find your people to revisit who those people are often and also to level up while you're succeeding.

And this is a riff on something that Dori said earlier. But finding your people to have a base of support around you, whether that is your employees, your vendors the people that you're working with and working for, but making sure that those are your people that really, They fit with you. They resonate with the mission of what you're up to.

You all have just great synergy together. Work should be fun. Work does not have to be a slog. And we are big believers in finding the joy and also finding the people who want to be up to something big. Big proponent of find your people. And the revisit? If it's not working, make a change.

Don't continue to invest in something that's not working well, that's not serving you, that's not serving the things that you're up to in the world. And then level up while you're succeeding. We see this one with customers pretty frequently. The desire to be in their success and enjoy their success, I would never deprive anyone of that.

And also in that moment of success is the time to look around and say, Oh, this is what I need to be doing next. Here's the next thing that I'm going to be up to and starting to move toward that. While you're still in the moment of success, instead of cresting and moving into the trough of something that is a little more resting in your success, we're big fans of continuing to level up all the time.

Level up while you're still succeeding. Don't wait for your success to crest. 

[00:32:42] Christie: Love it. 

[00:32:43] Gary: Dory, did you have anything to add or did Emily sum it up perfectly? 

[00:32:46] Dori: Perfect. 

[00:32:47] Gary: Yeah, no, I love the idea of the leveling up while you're still in that energy flow where you could just keep moving up. Like you said, enjoying your success and then getting to that low, right before starting another project, that can be a dangerous little area where you get comfortable and then you're like, man, do I really want to start something else?

Or do I want to just wait and see what happens? Yeah. So that could be a little dangerous. So if anybody wants to either download your app, which we know now is on the app store, or if they just want to learn more about your products and services or YouTube in general, where can they reach out? 

[00:33:18] Dori: Oh Emily said the app now is available in the Apple store as Thrivener Planner, and then we'll do a launch for that when the web version is available. And then the website is just Thrivener. com. Thank you for asking us that. 

[00:33:32] Christie: I'm obsessed with all of this. You can feel the energy from the way you speak about yourselves on your website and then just having the conversation with you here, I think that resonates with people.

And it was very interesting when I saw that and I'm excited that we had you on here, because I think. Much to what Dorie said about being a futurist is that you, we will need that lift up and prioritizing our goals, realigning, and then put, giving ourselves every tool we have in our toolbox outside of artificial intelligence, using our own intuition and our own intelligence and our own processes, and making that the catalyst for our own success.

That is the now, that is the future. And so you guys are that. So I'm, I was thrilled. I'm super psyched that we gotta do this. 

[00:34:12] OUTRO: Hi, I'm Christy Pronto, Content Marketing Director here at BigPixel. Thank you for listening to this episode of the BizDev Podcast. We'd love to hear from you. Shoot us an email, hello at thebigpixel. net. The BizDev Podcast is produced and presented by BigPixel. See you next week. Until then, follow us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Threads, YouTube, and LinkedIn.