PE, VC & Red Lobster w/ Jonathan Rhyne | Ep. 159

In this episode of the Biz/Dev podcast, David and Gary tackle P.E.s, V.C.s, and—let’s be real—those irresistible cheddar biscuits at Red Lobster (because, seriously, who can resist?). Joining the fun is Jonathan Rhyne, CEO and Co-Founder of Nutrient, who shares his expertise on juggling time, documents, people, marketing, and money like a true pro.

LINKS:

Nutrient Website 

@jdrhyne on X

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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] Jonathan: I would tell you, I've never beat this one rule. Risk correlates to returns. So if you want high returns, you need to take high risk.

[00:00:13] David: Hi, everyone. Welcome to the biz dev podcast, the podcast about developing your business. I'm David Baxter, your host joined by Gary Voigt. Hello. You are very glowy today.

[00:00:23] Gary: I'm glowy.

[00:00:25] David: You're that shirt is intense, man. I don't remember your name. I try to forget you as soon as possible. You know, I had a podcast without you last week and it was glorious.

[00:00:33] Gary: Yeah, I heard it. I heard it. And if that's the case, then I could just tip out after this one.

[00:00:38] David: That's cool. Sweet. Sweet. More importantly, we are joined by Jonathan Rhine, who is the co founder and CEO of Nutrient. Hello, Jonathan. How are you?

[00:00:48] Jonathan: Hi, guys, it's nice to be here. Thanks for having me.

[00:00:51] David: Absolutely. So tell me about Nutrient. Tell me what you're involved in. You've been doing this for 10 years, so no longer a startup. You are now a fully fledged company. Tell me about Nutrient. 

[00:01:01] Jonathan: Yeah, which it's new for me. We actually rebranded to nutrient just under 3 months ago. Our company actually was a mixture of probably 5 different companies, which also tells you a little bit of our story. So when you say we're no longer a startup anymore, I have to remind myself of that because when we founded this company, it was, you know, 3, 4 people.

And we went on that path for almost eight years before we took private equity money. And then from private equity money, my two co founders left and then we went on a different path, kind of the PE path of, you know, acquiring companies and then ultimately rebranding from there. So yeah, it's it's been a journey.

It's been, I guess it'll be the 11th year, going on the 11th year soon, but it's been a very, My blessed and wonderful journey as well. We've had a lot of success, so I can't complain too much. I'm happy to tell you more about it as we get into it.

[00:01:58] David: Yeah. I have to know the name is interesting, right? Where did that, it's a new name. So where did, how did you guys land on that? I 

[00:02:06] Jonathan: Yeah, so we actually, if I told you the original company's name, it was P. S. P. D. F. kit. And if you can say that without stumbling on it the 1st time, you'd be the 1st. So

[00:02:18] David: we actually used that years ago. Like that suite of tools. I think we did. That's how I recognize that. I did not know it was the

[00:02:25] Gary: PDF kits sounds familiar, but I think that there might've been a lot of PDF kits or PDF readers to compete with Acrobat back in the day

[00:02:33] Jonathan: also, we originally started out of the mobile space, which I can tell you my background and how I got into that space, but it was an iOS framework, literally to view annotate, Fill out a form, sign it if you're creating a mobile application, and luckily we're super early to it. So we got some really big name customers like a Dropbox, Box, IBM, SAP, you know, some just really large customer names because we were probably one of the only solutions at the time on there and everybody was late.

To getting the mobile we were in this sort of, PDF vendor space, because, you know, the first question we always get is why didn't Adobe do that? Or how was it competing against Adobe? And Adobe wasn't there. They didn't have a developer framework at all. PDF kit. Was a Mac Os framework.

So Apple had it with Mac os and then they ultimately brought it to iOS in 2017. So they do have the iOS PDF kit. But what you realize is they don't have a lot of people on this. It's not that great. And PDF is a very difficult problem to solve. So we came out of this kind of developer toolkit phase and P-S-P-D-F kit.

If you. I remember Next Step, and if you know anything about macOS development, you have NS everything because that was what ultimately was the predecessor to macOS, and so the idea was, you know, you took your initials, Next Step, and you put them on there and then named it whatever the thing was, which PDFKit was the thing, and it was Peter Steinberger's PDFKit.

So hence PSPDFkit, very you know, logical name for an iOS developer, I'd say. And as we went from iOS to Android to web to back end processing to NET and all of these other sort of wonderful frameworks, it didn't really last. People were very confused by it. They thought it meant PostScript, you know, a lot of things that, you know, People ultimately, yeah, exactly.

So needless to say, we had a lot of brand equity in the iOS space and that was where, you know, most of our revenue originated from, and so you'd be surprised you'd go to WWDC and I don't know, one out of three, if not one out of two waiting in the line knew who we were and knew the name and so it was like Do we get rid of this?

Do we change? And then obviously, as my friend so elegantly put it, after we took P money and kind of acquired a couple of companies, he was like you know, I don't mean to hurt your feelings, Jonathan, but I don't think you can really go public with the name. P. S. P. D. F. kit. I don't think it's really good a job.

And I laughed at him, but, you know, it became. Almost a crutch, because I don't know, it's a very dev, you know, developer tool heavy name, whereas, you know, we weren't all also just in the developer tools name, but I'm not answering your question. So let me get to your, let me get to the actual question you asked.

So why nutrient? If you look at all of our products that we do and the way we think about it we're sort of building blocks or ingredients, if you want to call it. If you think about Intel, the whole original Intel inside campaign and the idea that they're an ingredient that's part of something else.

Everything we do from our developer toolkits to even, you know, our low code integration solutions, even to our workflow automation platform is essentially being put into, I don't know, or being built on top of by a company. And so we thought that, okay, this building blocks, and then we thought about where are we and we're in the document space.

And so it was like, all right, we got this idea of what we call document ecosystems. You think about, I don't know. You're at a business, you have all these documents, all this unstructured and structured data. Nobody really knows what's going on with it. You know, they just collected it and they put it in ECMs and they keep going.

And so we thought of us as like, all right if we're the building blocks that lead to a more healthier ecosystem, you know, what does that kind of corollary to? And then I wanted to create a name that was unexpected. And not something that, you know, somebody goes, ah, yeah, you're a doc USDK.

Yeah. It makes sense. Of course you would be, that's exactly what I would name that company. And so we came with the, with this idea of you that's like macro nutrients and nutrient seems like A familiar word that everybody knows and in a good way. But nobody ever thinks of it when they think of a tech company.

And so we thought it was a really good, unexpected name that once you know, the first thing you're gonna do is like what you did, tell me how the hell you came up with your supplement brand, you know, tech company name. And that leads to me being able to give you know, it's an opportunity for me to tell a story around it.

And so that's really why we picked the name. And we've actually over the three months, I think it's. Done very well, both internally with our company because we had a bunch of people from a bunch of different companies that didn't really feel like they were part of P. S. P. D. F. kit. So now everybody feels hey, we're all part of this new beginning.

And then externally, you know, we're not a reseller of these other companies we bought anymore. Now we actually okay. Yeah, for the first time I'm hearing your story, your company story, and it makes sense. Okay, once I get over the supplement part, yeah, I get this, it makes sense. We've had a lot of success with it so far. 

[00:07:51] Gary: I like it. I like that story too. It's always great to hear a brand story that goes from like the initial version to something a little bit more sophisticated and grown up, which you guys did. But it's also great to hear someone understand the concept of a company name and a logo are not the definition of who you are and what you do.

They're just a symbol to recognize a company. So

[00:08:16] Jonathan: Yeah, absolutely.

[00:08:17] David: But it's, is that so 10 years ago, maybe at least 10 years ago, maybe five plus years ago when someone was advising you At regular startup guy to name your company. Most people would have told you to be as literal as you can be for Google purposes, right? If nothing else for Google purposes. And so you got just horrible names that were just super descriptive.

No question. That's exactly what they did because it allowed you to be Google. You could be found. They would search for whatever you were doing and you would come up by the nature of your name, which is a powerful SEO. Do you think you're able to get away from that long held truth, especially if you wanted the.

com, right? Because Google is imploding right now in terms of not as a company. But as of their influence, right? AI and whatever, if nothing else, AI has started a conversation of what is life without Google and people are finally answering it for 20 years. We, if you would ask that question, you would have an existential crisis and fall over and cry and shake, right?

If you're a small business, because Google was where your revenue came. And now you can have that conversation. So do you think that you're able to be more successful with a name that has nothing to do with what you do? On the face of it, then you could have been 10 years ago. You 

[00:09:40] Jonathan: There's a hard, there's like a long answer and a short answer to your question 1 because I don't know, I think about branding and I think about relationships. With your customers, it's the same as it was. And the basics of the foundations throughout time, right? If I do my customer they have a good experience with me and I solve a problem, provide value to them.

They're going to tell their friends about it. Right and that sort of word of mouth marketing is going to be infinitely better than any sort of. I don't know fake advertising I can do. And then even with advertising, what, how is Google finding me? If you think about the way the Google algorithm always was done is it was an explore and exploit type algorithm.

I'm going to send traffic to your. Site if a person returns back to Google and says, this is going to help me. I'm going to ding you if they don't return and you solve the problem. I'm going to up you. 

[00:10:38] David: Yeah. purchased

by or invested in by a PE company. And for many people, PE is like the boogeyman of finance, right? It's these guys are corporate Raiders, right? That's what they called them. You know, pretty woman when Richard gear was a is the manliest conversation I've ever had when he is Talking about he was a corporate raider and he would buy your company and tear you apart.

That's a PE, right? It's funny how

[00:11:08] Gary: What does PE stand for

[00:11:09] David: private equity. It's big money raised by lots of people. If you, Jonathan, you probably have a better definition than I do. But my point is You hear about the horror stories, you know, they buy your company, they either pump and dump and they give you a bunch of debt and then they sell you off.

So they made the money or they buy all the competitors in an area. Like I've heard that dentists are a big deal where they'll buy all the dentists in an area. And then they're all owned by one secret thing. They all have their own names and then they check the rates up, right? There's a lot of horror stories around that.

[00:11:40] Jonathan: We were always this mix of growth plus margins to get a dividend what I call a real business. You know, We weren't one of these let's earn it and waste money, and then we'll get to profitability at some point later on in the future.

Any mom and pop will tell you that's not a business, that's, I don't know, an expense, 

[00:11:59] David: A 

[00:12:00] Jonathan: this, right? 

[00:12:01] David: Dollar hobby.

[00:12:02] Jonathan: what happened in August of 2022 when interest rates jacked through the roof and really changed SaaS businesses in the software space we were already prepped for it.

so my relationship with insights is phenomenal. I actually worry if I have another investor in the future. It can't be as good as this one I have right now. We've done very well, in a time that software businesses have not done very well. so we've grown, we're still profitable. We didn't have to do mass layoffs you know, these sort of things.

And I've been very, you know, happy to have them as a business partner. You know, they bring a sort of perspective, you know, they're thinking about, The valuation of the business almost exclusively, they're not thinking about operating it. And so they're literally just thinking about what does this look like?

How can we grow this? How can we grow in the best way that we can make money when they go to sell it on? You know, they're only focused on enterprise value. And that's different than when you're a bootstrap owner that you're not thinking about enterprise value. You're thinking about that dividend because like how much money am I making this year is what you're thinking about.

And so it's a different perspective, but. A very healthy and I think valuable one. So I've been very lucky. I do know the horror stories. There are firms that literally only have rollup strategies. They do massive layoffs and there's, they create business value with it. There is something to be said for it.

I don't know if I'd be very good as a leader or owner operator of one of those businesses personally. It's just not what gets me up in the mornings.

[00:13:31] David: Yeah. I've always wondered how those guys who I think of red red lobster, which was destroyed by a PE company, right? They bought them, saddled them with a bazillion dollars in debt, sold all their land and said, have a good one. And in the shareholders, the PE people, they made up mint and you know, we, Lost a lot of red lobsters.

And I'm just saying, if that is your business model, you wake up in the morning and I'm going to buy this company that everyone knows and loves and just eviscerated, how do you do that? I like the idea that PE or whatever VC, all those fun Acronyms. They're here to create value. They're here to increase, make a company like yours better, not just bring it for to death and take money home.

Like, how do you, I just don't get that mindset. And obviously that's not what your guys are doing, but man, that's, I just don't understand how that works. 

[00:14:25] Jonathan: I I'll defend them a little bit because I do think one of the things that happens when you have let's say an unsophisticated market or what they call a fragmented market, you have a bunch of people and this is the way all early markets start. AI right now is a fragmented market.

Everybody and their mother is coming out with an AI startup. This is going to consolidate, you know, at the end of the day, it's like the. com boom, everybody had a website, everything was doing. And then also now Amazon is one of the main places people go for shopping. And I don't know, you know, so this is what happens.

You have in the beginning, everybody comes to it. Everybody comes to play. Everybody has an idea. And then a market gets mature enough where. The actual value created is by consolidating it and you get efficiencies. A perfect example is if you have 10, 10 million businesses that are all paying a CEO and a CFO and a CRO, you know, all these sort of C suite acronyms, management firms, but a hundred million dollar business of all 10 of those combined could create the same revenue and only have one management team.

You just reduce cost. It's a more efficient business and you created more shareholder value for the owners of that business. The problem is normally just rolling up a business doesn't equal. You get into this I don't know, pricing arbitrage. So imagine I have, I don't know, an apartment complex or a bunch of owners that own the individual apartments, you know, maybe if I have every person gets her own cleaning person that comes and handle is it and our own maintenance person that comes and handles it.

If I combine all those into 1 thing, and there isn't some sort of volume discount for getting a 1 cleaning service and 1, 1 construction management that I haven't really created any value. I just combined it all together. And this is where the bad stuff happens. So it's hard to know oftentimes, what is like good operating teams are good operating teams, whether it's private equity, public funds, you know, public related company or a mom and pop store, there's some phenomenal owners that are family owned businesses or bootstrap businesses. There's also some really bad operators that are family businesses.

And so the whole idea is that just not all created equally, not every mom and pops created equally. There's something to the strategy of at a certain scale in a market that's fragmented, rolling it up, getting some operating efficiencies doing it right is very hard. And normally the other thing that happens when market consolidates is things go out of business.

And so knowing which ones that are going out of business that you just bought. That you shouldn't have bought or that should have just naturally gone out of business. You know, all these things are hard to determine and that's the reason good operators and good leadership teams. Or I hate to say it paid in compensation what they're paid.

Cause normally they are better at delivering that sort of enterprise value. And at the end of the day, a private equity firm, most of the time is literally just money. It's investment dollars with some sort of playbook or thesis, and then operators that execute that playbook and thesis. 

[00:17:39] David: So everybody gets mad about how much CEOs get paid and for sure a lot of them would get overpaid. But I always challenged that to say how many people on the planet 10, 000 employees?

Like in run it efficiently. I, there might be a hundred living at any point in time. And so this isn't just, you pick up a middle manager and promote them and he knows what to do, or she knows what to do. They have a very unusual skillset. That's probably useless outside of this very specific.

And so if you're going to find one of those hundred people, like who's going to run apple after Tim cook, like seriously, there might be five people on this planet who are capable of running a business of that scale. And of course that person should be paid really well. Are they worth, but when you start looking at it and you say CEO conversation, that guy makes.

4, 000 percent more than his average worker. And okay, so if I'm going by the math, is that one person worth 4, 000 of his employees? That's the question you're asking. And in some of those cases, as hard as it might be to say, The answer might be yes. Again, Tim Cook, rare thing, man. He navigated Trump.

He navigated China. He did things that no one thought was going to happen. And he's turned that company into an absolute behemoth. Is there any legs to what I'm saying or am I just being a jerk? 

[00:19:05] Jonathan: Without. I'm not going to, I'm going to try to not sound self serving, obviously. I, you know, A1, I invest my money, you know, I invest in Forex trading. I do a lot of things outside of just running a company. And I would tell you, I've never beat this one rule. Risk correlates to returns. So if you want high returns, you need to take high risk.

I think a lot of people see that and they, you know, they see the winners and they don't see the risk that they put it. Elon Musk is a perfect example. Elon Musk was he got 200 and some million from the sale of PayPal and then he almost lost it all between Tesla and SpaceX. He literally floated the two companies with his last dollar and his friends investing in it to reach where he's at now.

Jeff Bezos had a comment recently. They interviewed him. He's talking about AI, but they asked him about compensation because he kept his compensation, his actual equity compensation and his salary compensation the same, but obviously his equity just went through the roof. And if you look at Tim Cook's made money by his options.

He was given in his equity. He was given an apple and he said, you know, a lot of people look at companies not and he looks in terms of how much money they made. But he goes, nobody looks like at a Forbes. You know, top 100 or whatever, based on how much money did they make other people? How much value did they create?

And obviously, you know, Jeff Bezos said, if you look at how much value I've created something over 3 trillion or 2. 7 trillion by creating Amazon for other people, not for myself, right? Yeah, there are, there is two people in this world that's created that sort of value in their lifetime.

Maybe in history it's different. I don't think it's all them. You didn't have the U. S. market, Amazon isn't worth what it is. If you didn't have the U. S. financial market and people investing in it, if Apple didn't have, wasn't part of the S& P 500 and the 401ks and so many millions of Americans weren't invested in them, They aren't the, you know, size and value of them as well.

So there is some benefit of society in the market that you're selling into that. These people get the byproduct of it. 

[00:21:29] 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. Here's the argument there is I'm going to use Apple only because I remember vaguely their numbers. They did a study that said that each one of their employees, the retail employees in particular, were getting, you know, they get paid normal retail rates, but they were generating the somewhere around like 140, 000 per employee.

[00:22:21] David: Cause they just, you know, people would just buy stuff from them of course, cause it's Apple. And so everybody's that's not fair. Cause you're paying that guy 15 an hour or whatever, and he's making you. And it's easy to get stuck in that loop. It's easy to think about that. And you're like it's not the dude just standing there in the store who made Apple 150 K.

Yeah. It's the fact that they make these amazing products that people are clamoring to get that took that. And so you can't, I will say a lot of those companies, that's a value decision, right? There are companies that do amazingly well and make so much money that they do pay very well all the way down the line.

They're there, but there are also companies that do extraordinarily well and keep it all at the top. There, there are examples of both of those and that's a value decision. I think that each company makes, 

[00:23:08] Jonathan: My, my argument here, and then maybe this is because I'm a trained as an attorney. I practice law for 5, 6 years. You know, there's the Delaware and the New York incorporation laws around what boards like job is to do and, you know, the corporations job is to return shareholder value. And the thing that's crazy to me is people talk about this and they get in complaints.

Everyone can own Apple. You can go afford to buy the stock, go buy the stock. And as the stock appreciates, you benefit from the way they run their business as well. Same thing with dollar general. So like the thing that I don't get is why do we create a mechanism? And I we get into this a lot and I'll give you an apple example.

Apple became the I don't know. We're about privacy. And also people were relying on a corporation to enforce privacy and not a society. It's the government society to do that. It's not the business's job to do that. To enforce employees rights. It's the government's job. Look back to the you know, the Rockefeller days and things like that.

The reason we don't have child labor and a loss is not because corporations decided not to employ 13 year olds. It's because the government said, you can't employ 13 year olds. So people have an issue. I don't know whether it be monopolies, whether it be employee rights, whether it be any of this stuff.

Go through your government. That's your place. I go tell them we should write. Yeah, that and not because I think it's. That is the 1 that is representing the voice of the country. Should be this democratic system that the voice of the company should be the voice of those shareholders. And if they break laws.

They should get penalized for it. If they skirt around those laws and consumers find it to be bad for whatever reason, I don't know, ethical reasons or doesn't align with their political values, vote with your wallet. Don't buy them. You know what I mean? You can not decide not to buy their products, but I don't know this idea that you're going to have the business be care about growth, care about employees, care about the society or, and care about all these things.

Come on. That's just a not the way America was founded. And what we set up an economic system that got this to where we are. It also concentrates power amongst the shareholders of a corporation. I don't want Apple to decide. You know, whoever the top holders of Apple are to decide whether we have privacy or not.

No, I want all of us to be able to say, I think privacy is important. You know, 51 percent of us think privacy is important. We want you know, corporations to enforce privacy this way, or however system of government we have to do that. And so that's the thing that kind of bothers me when we get into these Socially political or like conversations and expect the business to enforce socially political.

Thanks. Isn't that what government's for? Isn't that what politics is for?

[00:26:10] David: It's interesting and not to go too far down the rabbit hole, but I think a lot of the corporations are taking it upon themselves because government is For all intents and purposes, not functioning, whether you agree, yes or no, who's in charge, it doesn't matter for the last 10 plus years, whoever won the other party decided our job is to throw gunk into the machine.

And so nothing passes. So now you have corporations going there is no such thing as an internet privacy law. So we're going to do the best we can and make money because Google's stance is. We're going to sell your data for whatever we can. That's if you buy a Google phone or use Google products, which of course I do.

You are saying you can have my stuff. That's fine. And Apple saying you can pay a lot more for this phone. And theoretically you're as safe as we say you're safe, right? Because it's like you said the corporation's making this decision not necessarily the people who were because Our government has functionally been broken and no one's passing any laws one way or the other and that's the much bigger conversation

[00:27:11] Gary: plus the corporations have a big voice to craft those laws of the government with

[00:27:17] David: For sure. But

[00:27:18] Gary: yeah, in a perfect world, the government would be able to protect the people from. Okay.

[00:27:29] David: right? And it's Oh, corporations are corrupt and they're spending all this money to make the government go one way or the other. Sure. I'm not even arguing that, but because our government is broken, no laws get passed anyways.

So it's you can throw all the money you want at it, but no laws getting passed anyways. I don't know what happened. Cause your money just got spent thrown down. Now that you bought that Senator. Potentially, but that senator has no power to break the filibuster and so no law got passed. So I don't know what happened to your money it's a weird situation.

We're in because it's so broken like nothing gets passed except for naming of bridges Like we haven't passed a an actual budget. I don't think since my son was born. It's crazy He's 18 like it's crazy. Not a single budget. Anyway, we have wandered very far off gary. Bring us home. Bring us home 

[00:28:16] Gary: With your experience, what would you give a new entrepreneur, a new startup, a new business owner, as your top three pieces of advice for success? 

[00:28:27] Jonathan: Yeah, this question. I could go in a million different areas just because I feel like I've been doing it now and seeing different phases. The 1st thing, though, I think, and I've always come to this and I am a big Steve jobs fan and, you know, I'm a Child of the 80s. So the think different campaign, you know, I love that campaign.

And I think this idea is you know, we're here for the people that, you know, think big enough and think they can change the world because they're normally the ones that do that, that line really is stuck with me because I think if you're going to decide to go into business, be an entrepreneur, be a business owner, start a startup, whatever it may be, there's going to be times where, you everything's going to have doubt.

What are you doing? Why are you doing this? What do you think, you know, go do what everyone else is doing. And if you don't have that belief inside that internal belief that, man, I don't know how, I don't know when, I'm not sure how I'm going to get above this, but I'm going to do it. I'm going to figure out a way to do this.

That self belief, I think it's so big because it gets you through the troughs. It gets you through the times of self doubt. So I'm a really big believer in this sort of Do you have this self belief that you can make it happen? No matter what people say to you, no matter who tells you this or that, it's call it grit, call it self belief, call it whatever you want.

So I'm a big believer that if you're going to go into business, you need to find that. Um, the second kind of Thing, and maybe this goes to if you can find someone else to go into business with do and at the same time, be very careful who you pick as your business partner because it's like a marriage you're going to spend a ton of time with this person, you're going to go through good times and bad with them.

You should set up structures to make things that I don't know. Make things as transparent as possible for you two or three or however many you have so that it's clear. Make sure you're aligned both short term and long term. And maybe this is the attorney in me, but make sure whatever agreement you have you write it before it gets emotional as in before the decision needs to be made, whether you get bought out or this or that.

But the reason I say ultimately find yourself a business partner is because this is really difficult to go about on your own. It's very lonely. You'll have a bunch of people that work for you, but they won't necessarily think like you do or have this stuff. And so oftentimes having someone aligned that you can vent to, you know, share with share the burden with super, super beneficial.

And then the other thing I like to say, the 3rd thing I'll give it is most business partners or most business owners, you know. There's a book written in I think the 1980s that talked about that. It's like, when you're actually building a business, you need to work on the art of building the business.

So what does that mean? Most people are like the doers, you know, I'm really good at this. Why am I letting, why am I working for somebody else? And I'm doing this, I'm going to go do the job myself. And then they find out, man, there's other parts of the job that they didn't think about other than just doing the work.

Yeah. So I tell a lot of people that are like, I don't know. I'm an engineer. I'm really good at building the software. Have you thought about marketing? Have you thought about sales? Because that also matters and then at some point you want to scale this company where you need to think about not just whether I'm doing it and how I would do it, but how do I get a group of people?

To do that job. And I ultimately tell people all the time, you need to think about more than just what it is you're doing. If you want to scale that business and that can change over time, it changed. You know, I was originally the everything but product builder and now I'm doing everything, but everything, but product building.

Like I, I'm now managing, I'm a manager of managers. And I think ultimately what you have to think about is that system. Cause that business you're building. business. You're building a system that's trying to do something. And so I like to tell people before you get into business, think about those things.

Is that really what you want to be doing? Really self reflect on why do I want to go into business? What's the reason for, because if you, ultimately what ends up happening is business owners get into business. Thinking it's going to be one thing and thinking they're going to do more of the thing they like.

And then all the other stuff I don't know, washing the toilets and, you know, cleaning the toilets, things like that happen. And they find out, man, I'm not actually doing more of what I like. And then they don't know how to build a system so that they can only focus on what it is they want to do or what they think their strength is or things like that.

So I like to, you know, maybe it's a think long term before you get into business, but also think about. what the actual job is that you're doing. I'll finish that with this. You know, a lot of people say, if you want to be I don't know if you want to be a rock star, you better like practicing. Cause it's not all about just being on stage and being the front man and doing rock shows and having the crowd.

So if you don't like practicing day in and day out to get better at it, you're not going to make it as a rock star. And so like really truly understand. What it is every single day, you got to do and whether you like that and you want that life before you go out to business. Sorry. I don't know. I don't know if those are helpful, but those would be my 3.

[00:33:32] David: Those are great. And

it reminds me when my son played basketball when he was a little boy, he was always jealous of these kids who were just so much better than him. Like my kids, just not, they weren't the stellar athletes. And I was like they practice every day. And he's what are you talking about?

And I say that kid right there that you are enamored with. He probably shoots at least a hundred baskets every single day. Every single day. He's no, he doesn't. Yeah, I bet you he does. And come to find out he was the coach's kid. And of course, yeah, he was up doing drills and all this, that, and the other all the time.

And my son made a calculated decision. I don't want to do that. And he never got any good. He stopped working or something. And I think that's funny how so many people think that person just has. Been given whatever, right? And the truth of the matter is they've worked really hard at whatever that skill is, whether the rockstar or basketball player or business person, right?

That person knows everybody in the city. Okay. How do you think that happened? They weren't just

[00:34:31] Gary: Overnight success. 10 years in the making.

[00:34:34] David: Yeah. My, there was a, my favorite thing. It was how I built this Kickstarter. Yeah, everyone thinks we're an overnight success, but it took eight years before anyone even knew our name.

And. That was wonderful man. Thank you so much Jonathan for joining us. This has been a lot of fun.

[00:34:47] Jonathan: No, thank you guys. It's good talking to you. 

[00:34:49] 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.