John Nunemaker (00:00)
Hello, this is John and you are listening to Standing in the Fire where we talk about entrepreneurs being in the heat of SaaS growth. Today we're going to talk about celebrating tech wins with your customers. How can you do it? Should you, etc. And we're hoping to hit on hiring a little bit as well. And like always, I'm going to immediately pass it off to someone else, Kris

Garrett (00:18)
you

Kristopher (00:22)
Well, thank you. You know, one of the things that I've noticed a lot and trying to figure out as we build and build new features and, you know, make the back end more optimized for fireside is, you know, how do you communicate with customers that is true and authentic that like these wins, whether it be, you know, we just upgrade to rail six, rail seven, you know, and those sorts of things, or we have these new features. And I know with new features, it's a little bit easier.

Garrett (00:25)
.

Kristopher (00:51)
But, you know, as consumers, we have a different idea of what's interesting. you know, if we have an email from, you know, a software use, let's say we're using QuickBooks for finance. Do we care that they just, you know, upgrade their backend to 3.2? And I think, you know, we're, we're, a little bit challenged right now. Like we're doing a lot of those improvements and how do we communicate that? Like I've always thought, celebrate authentically is super important.

John Nunemaker (01:03)
No.

Ha.

Kristopher (01:19)
And, you know, how do you guys think about that, you know, in a software standpoint? Have you seen it done well?

John Nunemaker (01:29)
Yeah, that's a good question. I feel like from my standpoint, it's like like you said, authentically, you know, we hit rail six and I was like, yes, this is awesome. And I just happened to have bought, you know, WhistlePig six year and I was like rail six WhistlePig six. I was like, so, you know, celebrate. We'll have have a dram. But, you know, the customers, I mean, I don't think that they probably care that we're on rail six. Like what they care about is like, you know, are my bugs going away? Is it stable? Can I get my job done?

And so that's tricky thing because I feel like from my standpoint, I'm like, I want to celebrate. want them to know I'm excited because enthusiasm like that, it catches, you know? And so if you just go like, you know, it feels like it's been three months where we've been fixing bugs, upgrading things and stuff like that. And if you go a long time like that and you don't celebrate anything, then it feels like nothing's happening. So yeah, I don't know what the right answer is on that, but I like the idea of trying to somehow

Kristopher (02:12)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

John Nunemaker (02:28)
help them understand why it's a big deal. Yeah, so I don't know. That's kind of, I feel kind of split on the fence.

Garrett (02:32)
I mean,

my take is driven mostly by rail six in and of itself while like to us it's exciting because of the amount of work it took and troubleshooting and like, you know, when you're this far behind on things, upgrading things is like untangling this huge big ball of wires. And that's exciting for us once it's done, but it's so tedious and like soul sucking to get there.

But as far as customers are concerned, they're not really concerned about rails six, but that's also not the only thing we've done, right? Like we have, you know, you've done some like spot checking optimizations within the app to speed things up. And, you know, we've heard from customers that they notice things are faster, especially customers with like larger podcasts and that kind of thing. And so to me, it's not.

specifically like we upgraded from Rails 5 to Rails 6 and like we, you know, we're going to have a different Postgres setup and we optimize these in plus one. We have a lot of time to make the app faster and make it such that we can add new code and ship it faster, right? So like we can, our deploys now instead of taking six minutes are down under two.

you know, all these little details where operationally we're streamlining things, it's going to translate to, you know, even though it's not the most immediately exciting thing for customers, the app's faster, and we're going to be able to iterate faster. And hopefully, once they see that, then

the floodgates will open from a feedback standpoint. So they go, oh, wow, they're listening, they're changing things, you know, because, you know, when it had been a little bit stagnant for a couple of years, because Dan, you know, just was focused elsewhere. Now, I think, you know, once people see that signs of life, then it's like, okay, this isn't, you know, just gonna go into a filing cabinet and never get listened to. So

John Nunemaker (04:31)
That gave me

an idea. Like, I almost wonder if we shouldn't send out. Like the subject is just like zoom zoom. You know, it's got like the speeding car emoji or something. And it's just like, you know, hey, it's been a couple of months. you might've saw that we bought it. And then it's like, what have we been up to? And it's like, you know, just maybe three, four bullet points. And the first one could be, you know, we,

Kristopher (04:51)
Mm-hmm.

John Nunemaker (04:55)
I mean, we probably don't want to talk about like stuck MP3, like stuck MP3 was a big issue and now it's not, you know, we fixed that. So maybe that's not worth talking about. We could talk about like, Hey, now your website's rendering, you know, this much faster. Or like you just said, like now we can deploy our deploys went from like five to 10 minutes down to like two minutes. So now we can iterate faster on it. And we made this major software upgrade and database upgrade. Cause we did, you know, read us from three to seven as well. And we could just say like the, know, these took months, but like we're, we're getting

to the point where now we're like looking forward and by the way we also added you know LinkedIn URLs and blue sky handle URLs and things like that like little stuff so it could be like here's you know two three four bullets of like here's how we went zoom zoom for you on your websites zoom zoom for us in iterating on it and better software and then here's like one tiny little morsel that we did that's new I don't know that when you were talking it made me think that right away

Garrett (05:48)
I mean, I think that's dead on and I think we like you said we don't need to explicitly like go into the specific like bug fixes, but instead just simply like well if customers have reached out and had bugs and we you know dropped everything and fixed them so like you know, and these were like long running things and and so we are fixing those as they come in. So if there's ever something that's been nagging you for the last, you know, whatever let us know and now.

John Nunemaker (05:59)
Yeah, good point.

Yeah.

Kristopher (06:17)
yeah, yeah, so I actually like that angle. But my thought when John was talking was, there a, so since both of you are very technical, you you're using technical words when you're explaining these things. And now I have technical somewhat, but definitely not as much as you guys, but I work with lot of people who aren't. And I'm thinking, is the top section like a,

Garrett (06:17)
hop it.

Kristopher (06:40)
here's what we did in a layman's terms, you know, so that they can understand and then have the, if you want more technical, you know, down below, because we do have technical customers, but we have a lot of non-technical, but I do then like it ending with, hey, if you have something that's been nagging you, let us know, because that can be anybody technical or non-technical. And it's like, and then all we have to do is make sure to fix those things.

John Nunemaker (06:43)
yeah.

Yeah.

A lot,

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah, I think that's really cool idea. I love the idea of being like, look, we have a technical and a non-technical audience, you know, and so bringing in both of them, I wouldn't want to do it on every single newsletter we send, but for like one, that could be like a cool way to say like, hey, we're celebrating some tech changes, you know, for the technical folks, here's what it is for the non-technical folks, you know, here's what it is, you know, and I think that could be, I like that idea a lot. That's cool.

Kristopher (07:18)
Yeah, right, right, right, right.

Garrett (07:33)
I think the key is just assuming non-technical and then adding footnotes, whatever equivalent for the more information, you know, like we've been fixing, but speeding it up. we've been making it such that we can make improvements quicker and ship them quicker with less risk and that kind of thing. And then we can explain, we added CI, we've improved our deployments, we've reduced our number of servers, we've consolidated some of the services all of that.

John Nunemaker (07:41)
Yeah.

Yeah, I feel like it's good to have this like recorded because every time I try to think about like what we did and talk about it, I forget all the things we've done. And so it's like sitting down and having recorded, especially like being the one who edits it, I listen back to it. And then I'm like, Oh yeah. And I get all excited again, because I'm like, Oh, we, have done a lot of things. And I also feel like we could create a more technical post. That's like, here's the things specifically the things we did with like, you know, images or videos or whatever, stuff like that.

Garrett (08:05)
Good.

Kristopher (08:24)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

John Nunemaker (08:27)
And then just link that in the bottom that could go out first and then like the actual newsletter that we emailed to people could just link to that.

Kristopher (08:32)
Yeah, a blog post like that

could be actually, I think that might be a place to put it. Yeah.

John Nunemaker (08:37)
Yeah, I like

that. Man, look at that, solving our own problems. We were just like, hey, chat, what's the topic? And now we've actually got something that's useful. any other thoughts on celebrating tech wins and stuff like that?

eight

Garrett (08:50)
I mean,

something with, the fact that we're all remote and like, even though y'all are more or less in the same location, I mean, y'all meet up fairly regularly. you know, like there's definitely an element of that. Like it's nice to be able to celebrate in person and its not easy to do that with me all the way deep hiding in the mountains and like, you know,

John Nunemaker (08:58)
Yeah.

buried in snow.

Garrett (09:14)
So yeah, I mean, don't know how eventually at some point, obviously we'll all meet up and sync up and all that kind of stuff, but you can't do that constantly.

Kristopher (09:21)
well, it's because of what constant like I would say, I know John doesn't travel like a ton because he has like younger kids. And so it makes it a little more challenging too.

Garrett (09:30)
He disappears for one month every year. Like, what are you talking about?

Kristopher (09:34)
Ha ha!

I guess I was just thinking, you know, I agree. And maybe that's something we need to intentionally do. I guess that's where I was going. Like, I think we like it can't be obviously every month, but I think it should be more than once a year for sure. And, know, is it a third party location that makes it a little bit similar, maybe one or two times of difficulty to get there. So it doesn't take Garrett, you know, 10 hours to make a trip. You know, maybe it takes each of us like three, something like that could be.

Garrett (09:43)
Yeah.

that.

John Nunemaker (10:01)
we're going to meet in Kansas.

That's what you're On the plains of Kansas.

Garrett (10:03)
Denver.

Kristopher (10:07)
We

need a radius from Garrett of like, where's the easiest to get to?

John Nunemaker (10:13)
that's the thing about Garrett traveling, you know, anywhere is living where you do in the mountains with all the snow, you basically have to take Huskies out. And then once you know, Huskies to like a van and then a van to an airport. so traveling 10 hours is basically just getting to the airport kind of a

Garrett (10:31)
is just, and, so like our airport here is very much, I think it's like the highest elevation public airport in the country or something like that. so like in the summertime, the air's lighter and so they can't fly big jets in and out because it's at 8,000 feet or something like that. And so

John Nunemaker (10:40)
Humble brag.

Mmm.

Garrett (10:51)
there's that and then a lot of times because everything pretty much goes through Denver and so like lately Denver has been so hot in the summers they cancel flights because even at a mile high when it's over 100 they struggle to get the planes I guess struggle to get off the ground because they don't have enough lift and so like those kinds then trickle down and then this turns into the bottleneck at least if you're trying to get in or out of here

And so flights get canceled, rearranged, and it's, better than it used to be, but it just makes it, you know, kind of a crap shoot.

John Nunemaker (11:24)
Yeah. Awesome. I love celebrating Kris. Kris is actually I think the one that's probably encouraged me to celebrate the most. Like he definitely is always looking like in the first episode we talked about drinking your own champagne and he is like the first one to be like we signed a lease like let's pop some champagne or whatever. I think it was a that's a good topic and like I like all these ideas. So now we have to actually execute on him. Next we're going to talk about hiring. And obviously they feel like

dramatically different topics. think there's some I know all of us have had kind of different interactions about hiring in the last like week or so I feel like and so I was thinking it might be interesting just to talk about a few of those and maybe actually I might have Kris you want to kick it off again since you would brought that then you bring up the hiring you were just hiring some people

Kristopher (12:02)
Yep.

Yeah, I mean, it's in the last like, week, I went from for a different project, just working with myself to four new people now. And part of it was, don't know, dire situations, probably a little strong, but it also is probably a bit accurate of just can't do this all myself in the time that's required. And, know, stressed out, you know, trying to figure things out and, you know,

I don't know, can give my, I can either toss to you guys, but give my perspective. I'll give my quick one and then I'll give my longer one is, you know, this was probably one of the first times in the last six months I've done, had to do a little more hiring of people in person in the US. And I'm very familiar with hiring contractors overseas to do, you know, different tasks. And so I think that's maybe where I've had to do a little bit of learning and trying to do it better this time.

John Nunemaker (12:53)
Mm.

Kristopher (13:04)
of how to manage that, how to vet people. Just I think hiring a startup, an entrepreneur from that perspective is different than if you have like an HR team or if you even have like five people, you might have a more process. so I think talking about like how you guys have done that, think again, hiring, I think it's interesting hiring technical people. How do you evaluate that?

You know, I have a little bit of background in computer science and so I get it more but as a non-technical person, how do you evaluate, you know, coders or co-founders Yeah, I don't know. We can start there and see where it goes.

John Nunemaker (13:39)
Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I just hired someone a couple of weeks ago, so I can definitely talk about it. I feel like on that front for me, it's different than like so it's like you talked about hiring local versus hiring, you international or remote or something like that. So there's a difference there. Another key difference is like hiring at a company where you're in like hyper growth or you're growing really fast versus hiring when it's like you're just going to hire when you have a need or when the right person comes along.

and that's kind of, you know, we're the boat that I'm in now. when I was working at GitHub, I was on the teams that were interviewing and doing tech reviews and asking questions and all that kind of stuff. So I've seen that process for like, you know, a company that's thousands of people and hiring maybe 10 plus a week, just in engineering and stuff. So I've seen that route. That's one way. And that's a very standardized, you know, everyone ask the same questions.

You have like a list of questions you can ask. You can't really go off the path because we know nobody wants to get sued if they ask the wrong thing, stuff like that. So that's a very standardized route. And we had, you know, actual tech projects that people would would do. So we started with like live pairing with them and we found people would get very nervous. And so sometimes that wasn't always the right way. And so then we started moving more towards like, okay, well, let's not do that to evaluate them. Technically, let's give them a project and then have them explain it to us so that it's more

You know, they can do it like they would in real life. And then, you know, can they explain it or not? It's kind of the, where you determine the technical talent. I've heard recently that like, people have been doing like, this is a big problem hiring, especially at like bigger companies is literally people won't turn their screens on, like their, cameras and stuff. So it's like, you go to interview someone and they have their screen off because they're just talking to AI every time that you ask them a question.

Kristopher (15:22)
Hmm

John Nunemaker (15:31)
And it's a legit like big, big problem in some of the tech stuff. And so finding ways to evaluate people where they are not just using, you know, AI or something like that to answer your questions. Like I've heard from friends that are interviewing at bigger companies, not that they are the interviewers and they're interviewing other people where the screen won't come on. There'll be large delays between when you ask a question and when people respond and all this kind of stuff. So that's one interesting point at bigger companies. And then

The last one I've heard is a lot of like this like shadow thing where people are doing like two jobs at once and because they're working remotely and so some crazy stuff like that. bringing it all back to my experience what I did is I currently we're not hiring at hyper speed or anything like that. I don't even like the word hyper speed or hyper growth. So what we are is like look if the right person comes available then let's go for it. So we had the right person come available for box out. It was someone that people that I respect very highly were like

Kristopher (16:05)
Mm-hmm.

John Nunemaker (16:29)
this person is good, you you should definitely talk to them. And how I did it from a first is just like social, like, can we talk and get along? And you know, that kind of a thing. Once you're past that, which that's usually pretty easy. Once you're past that, then it's technical.

Kristopher (16:40)
Mm-hmm.

What's interesting on that, which when you say that's easy, I'm curious what you mean by that. Are you saying it's easy to have the conversation or it's easy to weed people out? Because I've had to do some phone calls that were like 15 minutes and I was like, that was way too long. I couldn't even get to 15 minutes of having an initial call with somebody.

John Nunemaker (16:52)
Yeah.

Kristopher (17:05)
You know, like, I don't know if you've ever had those interactions with like developers where you can't even get through that first conversation. And again, that's probably a no, but yeah, when you say easy, what do you mean by that?

John Nunemaker (17:15)
Yeah.

Yes, I definitely mean easy from the standpoint of like, it's easy to weed them out. And it's also easy for me to have the conversation. because it's just ask questions, you know, ask like, are you what are you into? What are you like? What what are you working on? What are your like? Why do you even want to work with us? Like, you know, it was all like social things like that. Like, what are you curious about about Box out? And like, you know, those kinds of questions are pretty easy to go through. And it's also pretty easy to like having that conversation. I was like, I can have a conversation with this person. Like you said, if it's like brutal.

Kristopher (17:31)
Mm-hmm.

John Nunemaker (17:45)
then yeah, that's a very quick no. And I've had not a hiring related, but I've had brutal conversation recently where I was just like, am ready to be off of this call. You know, and I made it through the whole call, but I definitely didn't want to make it through the whole call. so that's what I would say, you know, from the easy standpoint is probably that. And like, as far as technical, that's not hard. It's like, can they explain what they're doing or not? So I was just like,

Open up a project that you're like that you worked on that you're proud of that you like and then just talk me through it. Like how did you build it. What tech are you using. You know and like it's not the same stuff that I would use but you know do they you know take pride in what they're doing. Can you tell that like they're excited about it. Can you tell that they understand how it's working. I always ask about trade offs. I'm like why don't you do that. Or why did you do this. Or what did you consider instead. Yeah stuff like that.

Kristopher (18:16)
Hmm.

Garrett (18:31)
but true.

Kristopher (18:36)
interesting. So

question to both of you, I don't know, Garrett, don't know when you last hired, let's say a technical person specifically, what advice would you give for someone maybe, so again, I've hired some outsourced developers overseas, so I kind of have a profile to evaluate them by, but how does a non-technical person, so if I was to ask a programmer that, I couldn't say why didn't you do this, why did you do this.

it'd be kind of just be like smiling and nodding. you know, what's a way that, well, again, I'm just trying to think outside the box of like, is it for someone like me to get a friend who is a programmer to help evaluate? Like, how would you recommend, you know, a non-technical person to hire a developer?

John Nunemaker (19:09)
Ha

Garrett (19:25)
So I haven't done all that much hiring from the hiring standpoint, but having done plenty of interviews from the applicant standpoint. I mean, one thing I would say is even the technical companies are horrible at this. And I wrote like a whole huge long ranty blog post. basically, because like for me,

John Nunemaker (19:36)
Mm-hmm.

Kristopher (19:43)
Mmm.

John Nunemaker (19:44)
yeah.

Garrett (19:50)
as soon as the live coding session starts, my brain just shuts down and I might as well be like, it's no longer, I've got 25 years of experience of web development. and that's just the nature of that. Like that's not, it's so contrived and fake and all that, that those situations are just horrid. And so that said the baseline in my opinion is pretty darn low or the bar is low. and I think it's more.

You can still discuss with somebody and have a conversation like think about like, what's the type of working relationship you're going to have with this person after they're hired and have the say, this is what I want to build. How would, how would we start? Why would we do that? So it's still the same kind of thing where, you know, you're just kind of on the fly, like back of the napkin sussing out.

what their approach would be, what the trade-offs would be, why they would make the certain decisions they would make, the options they would present to you, how they would present them. And then you could definitely get a feel for somebody if they're like, I would just use WordPress because I've always used WordPress. You're like, wait, and you know, as opposed to somebody who's like, well, so here's, here's what I've used in the past. Here's why I would choose this. Here's where it would be this project.

John Nunemaker (20:54)
Yeah. Red flag.

Kristopher (20:56)
Mmm,

yeah, yeah.

John Nunemaker (21:05)
Mm-hmm.

Garrett (21:08)
And, know, so could still do the same thing and interview as if it was like, how would we be working together? And like what, what really happens when you're developing, it's not so much somebody sits there and awkwardly looks over your shoulder with no working relationship and silently judges every little decision you make. it's well, right.

John Nunemaker (21:28)
No, I do that. I just hide it.

Garrett (21:31)
you're going to have code or a problem and you're going to talk it through. The coding is such a vanishingly small part of the actual equation. Like, yes, it does take up a lot of the like work time, but it's just not really the super important part, right? Like does somebody add tests or are they just going to roll a bunch of code over the fence without any automated tests?

Kristopher (21:51)
Mm-hmm.

Garrett (21:55)
You know, like to me, that's the simplest non technical thing. Now they can lie about it that's a whole separate thing. But it's like, okay, tell me about your approach to automated testing. Like, and not necessarily at a technical level, because it too, there's people who will take it too far and you can write, spend more time writing tests than writing actual code. And so there's a balance and I think things like that can still be

somewhat quantifiable in a way that could help a non technical person at least understand this person cares about what they're doing rather than they're just trying to make a buck throw this over the fence and leave

John Nunemaker (22:24)
I would say trade offs. Yeah. Like when you said you said that earlier, Kris, that's probably like the best way is like you don't have to say like, why did you use this jQuery thing instead of this, you know, whatever document query, select all. You can just say that was me flexing. No, I'm just kidding. You can instead you can just say what are the trade offs why did you choose that? And what were some other options you considered?

Kristopher (22:35)
Yeah.

John Nunemaker (22:48)
Because feel like everyone can say, because like if like Garrett said, if they say, I didn't consider anything else, that's a that's a flag. Like you always consider stuff, you know, yeah.

Kristopher (22:49)
Yep. That's.

Garrett (22:57)
Mm-hmm.

Kristopher (22:58)
No, I didn't really like that because I think I know Garrett just threw out like WordPress as an example. the thing that a lot of even medium technical people might be familiar with. so use that, use that here discussion of saying, yeah, I mean, you can use WordPress on your websites. I've always used it. Even though your thing may need a really a different solution is better. maybe Shopify is better because of the way that you

Garrett (23:19)
I

Kristopher (23:22)
your, your, your shop, you know, it may be more of an e-commerce platform. yeah. Hmm. Cool.

John Nunemaker (23:26)
Mm-hmm.

Garrett (23:29)
ultimate goal is right. if somebody like if your goal is to create some kind of deeply technical one of a kind startup, and they're like, yeah, let's use WordPress, you're gonna be like, and on the other hand, if your goal is to create a lifestyle you're an and they tell you they're going to go create some bespoke CMS

John Nunemaker (23:46)
Yeah.

Hahaha!

Garrett (23:52)
You know, then you're like, you could tell those are completely out of balance. How standardized is what you want to do versus what they're proposing. And that'll give you kind of a, a read on whether they're at least thinking along the right lines or whether they're just trying to get a project to hack on something they want to tinker with,

Kristopher (23:56)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Nunemaker (24:13)
think one of the really important things too is like, and you can't always do this, but like, try to get face to face with people, even if it's just zoom, something where you can kind of see the interactions and things like that. Like we've, you know, we've hired bookkeepers that are remote, we've hired other people that are remote that we don't, but like, very quickly, I was like, let's get on a call. Like, I want to see your face. I want to see

Are you smiling? Are you happy? Do you hate what you're doing? Do you like what you're doing? You know, there's like little subtle things like that that are like the social side. And then when you get to the technical side, obviously, you know, the trade offs and like Garrett saying, like, what level are they attempting to achieve based on what is actually needed? You know, those kinds of things that are probably make the most sense. So

Garrett (24:57)
they've got weird artwork in the background of like a dolphin in a hoodie DJing.

John Nunemaker (25:03)
I feel seen right now.

Kristopher (25:05)
Haha!

John Nunemaker (25:05)
Cool, anything else on hiring?

Kristopher (25:07)
what I was thinking was it'll be interesting maybe to talk about it again in like three or four months to see how we think about it. Either A, if we have any folks that are helping with our application here, maybe one off, or do we view it differently based on our recent hiring experiences?

John Nunemaker (25:12)
Mm.

Yeah.

Well, the thing that I also that I was going to say that I completely forgot about and then you reminded me is like, how do you find the people? How do you find the people to hire? You know, because I think that's I've had a prior very different experience than you you have Kris, because I'm like, for me, how I found people is like I worked at I went to a bunch of conferences a long time ago. And now I'm going to the I went to them again. And so like, there's a lot of connections there. Like you meet people and it's like, you know, I've always been like, well, I would really want to technically interview them and all this kind of stuff. But I've talked to other people who are like,

Kristopher (25:30)
Ahem.

Yeah.

John Nunemaker (25:58)
I just kind of see if I can get along with them. figure if I can get along with them, the code will work itself out. And I'm like, that's actually a great point. you can probably like if someone if you can get along with them, you can probably teach them or they can teach you anything. And that's, know, that's OK. But for me, it's always come from my connections from that or it's come from, know, where I was working. I worked at GitHub, obviously I made a ton of connections there. There's probably 50 or 100 people that I could readily and would be willing to hire if

you know, had a position that I was looking to hire for. so I think those are two of the places probably where I dip into the pool from Garrett obviously was different than that when, you know, now obviously you're not hired, you're an owner, but when I, like I hired you to work on flipper, was like, we had known each other for a long time. Initially, you know, met at conferences and stuff like that. there's a lot, a long history of interactions. And so what I typically aim for is like,

people that I know that I have long history with that I can I know the communication patterns are already solved because we're going to have enough things that we're going to differ on. So I try and get the communication stuff out of the way. And then it's just like, you know, OK, let's go through the technical stuff. And because we know we're going to be able to talk to each other, let's just get on the same page with that with that kind of stuff and go from there. So I assume it's different for you. Like I know you've actually created like LinkedIn job postings or like others. I've never done that. I would terrify me.

Kristopher (27:18)
Yeah.

Garrett (27:22)
the other thing I was going to say, and it's kind of an extension of what John's saying is, I think, you know, even between a non-technical and a technical person there, and you have to be honest with yourself about this. but there's a degree of alignment you can find in how they work. so whether that's, is this person detail oriented or not? because if

John Nunemaker (27:39)
Mm.

Garrett (27:48)
you're detail oriented, and you hire somebody that's not that can be good as long as you're recognizing that their lack of detail oriented is because they've got more big picture thinking or whatever it is. But if you're oriented, and you're going to want to micromanage somebody, and they're not detail oriented, all that's going to be is frustration. And so, you know, in the inverse to kind of all over haphazard, and you're looking for somebody to help you get more dialed in.

then in that case, you definitely you might socially mesh better with somebody who's more scattered and big picture like you, but you may need some. It's more detail oriented. And I feel like some of those things can be aspects where you can tell if somebody's detail oriented or not. And then if that's true, that's going to translate to their usually to their product, their work, their craft, whatever it is.

Kristopher (28:43)
I got a lot of thoughts that I know we're, let's say running out of time, but so let's say, there's two, there's two ideas I think we should explore in the future that are related to this. We should come back to it I think they're their own topics. But one is, as we talk about, okay, now you hired someone, how do we build that culture? Cause I think that's what I've been trying to think through on two different projects specifically is that internal culture of like, want people, you're no longer always partners.

John Nunemaker (28:47)
No, you're good.

Kristopher (29:11)
you now have employees. so the expectation from them is a little different than, you know, us three working together as like a partnership. And so how do we keep what are the things that I get? Let's not talk about it now, but like, are the things that we can do to make sure they're feeling like they're not going to leave in three months or six months or a year? And the other thing that made me think of Garrett as you were saying that was

I've been wanting to, and I have not done it with any of my new hires, but I want to maybe push for it is, you know, do you do some sort of like strengths finder or gallop, you know, thing so you can understand how people interact and how I know it gets a little more on the corporate side of that, but of getting that those personality traits, I think could be super helpful for communication. And just things that sometimes I've shared with is, I know I'm a very haphazard person that wants to go

John Nunemaker (30:02)
Mm-hmm.

Kristopher (30:05)
by the of my pants and like, not, that doesn't work for everybody. but I don't always know that, right? And so then people get frustrated with me. And I think that communication, like I think having some sort of, again, with employees, you know, potentially having, I'm gonna call them retreats, but like, maybe that's like, what connotation I might have, of understanding personality traits can be super interesting and helpful.

John Nunemaker (30:28)
Yeah, and I like those two points as well. I feel like culture is a really good topic. So I've got it in I've got in the Google Doc, we're covered. So we're gonna hit that soon.

Kristopher (30:36)
Nice.

Garrett (30:38)
I think there's a few points worth thinking about there. One is like, no, just

Kristopher (30:43)
Or we'll do it now. Go ahead,

John Nunemaker (30:45)
Hahaha!

Kristopher (30:45)
Garrett.

Garrett (30:47)
excited about. like having worked at like big companies is like here, our culture, you get a bag with our logo on it. And it's like, okay, well, get a laptop bag, would have picked out my own or, know, whatever. and like, that's the idea of culture or there's the, we're going to have a mandatory happy hour that everybody has to go to. It's like no regard.

John Nunemaker (30:49)
Hahaha

Kristopher (30:58)
Yeah.

John Nunemaker (30:58)
Yeah.

Garrett (31:09)
And I feel like so many smaller companies like yes, there is a culture because it's small and you were all friends and got started. And it's like, do you try to incubate that as the company grows? Or do you accept this is a totally different size company? Not every one of these employees lives revolve around this. Come. Ever. And so then it's like, okay, what do they want other than like, you know, it's nice to be able to pay my bills and afford rent and food and that kind of thing. It's like what

Kristopher (31:26)
Right. Yeah.

Garrett (31:37)
what do you want? And so the culture doesn't necessarily need to be like, oh, we all like to play ping pong together or Mario Kart or whatever. It can be just simply like, I want to get to this next phase of my career or whatever it is. And the culture can be more about how do we support you getting from point A to point B, wherever your A and B are. And then that's more of a corporate culture as opposed to like,

Here, we're going to make everybody like the same stuff and want to do the same stuff together. Right? Like, cause like my nightmare is a bowling party with a bunch of people at a company where I have like two friends. People barely know.

Kristopher (32:14)
what's interesting is, but we'll take the bowling like, if you were let's say, if we're all the same town, like, hey, let's go to like, a cool bowling place in, you know, St. Louis or Vegas or something, we'd be like, oh, like, that would be fun. But once you start adding in, like, the next level, it becomes a completely different experience for us. Yeah, interesting.

John Nunemaker (32:37)
Yeah, I definitely want to talk about about culture at some point because like I there's some good I have some thoughts and then there's also I've heard quotes, that are like culture is like the last month or like the last six months it's not something that's like this permanent concrete thing like you were talking about do you fix it and say this is what we're going to be forever or like, does it adjust as each new person and how do do that? Yeah, that's interesting idea. That's a very good topic.

Garrett (33:00)
It was just like a lot of things. It's like, are you doing it for you or for the employees? Because most culture things are doing it for themselves because they believe it will help retention and make everybody happier. And like other kind of misguided goals, as opposed to like, if it's a culture truly about the employees and the team, or is it about made up things in your head that you believe will happen because you have a better culture because you read a, you know, article in inc.

John Nunemaker (33:06)
Yeah.

Also, bowling is the worst because I always think that I'm gonna be good at bowling and then as soon as I do it, I'm not good. And I'm like, this is so easy. I'm just rolling a ball. Why am I not good? And I hate it. yeah, honestly, bumpers for life. I'm bumpers for life on bowling, so.

Kristopher (33:32)
So dirty.

Ha

John Nunemaker (33:45)
What?

Garrett (33:46)
Switch, the Switch, Nintendo.

John Nunemaker (33:48)
Which bowling? switch.

we. Yes, we see. OK, see, yeah, you're talking switch bowling I'm thinking wii bowling still. That's I'm showing showing my age. I know we're the same,

Kristopher (33:50)
No, switch, switch!

Garrett (33:59)
But now you, the same stuff exists on Switch.

John Nunemaker (34:02)
Yes, that makes sense. have not played it on Switch. That's interesting. I should I should definitely get that and teach my son that I'm amazing at wii bowling because I'm good at wii bowl. I'm not good at real bowling. Yeah, it's bad

Kristopher (34:15)
do either of you guys have any, it doesn't have to be application related, but any wins for the week, or the week and a half, because it's been a while since we've chatted, so it's been like two weeks. So, I'll let one of go first while I think about mine.

Garrett (34:31)
I mean, are you saying fireside related or just into?

Kristopher (34:33)
Anything.

Yeah, I anything. Any wins.

Garrett (34:36)
I mean, the most like, exciting wins for me has just all been from coaching. And like, you know, working with the girls and like giving them feedback on their like shooting or dribbling or whatever. And to me, and this isn't like one single win. It's like every single one of them, because you can't work with all of them individually, you know, and there's like 20. But like all

John Nunemaker (34:52)
Mm-hmm.

Garrett (35:03)
we'll be shooting and then stop by and talk to one of them be like, all right, it looks like, you know, and there's a million things you can do to correct a basketball shot. And so I'll like, find the one thing that I feel like is their biggest challenge at the moment. And I'm like, you know, let's just correct this. I help them. And they're like, okay, this feels really weird. I don't like it. And then they shoot and it stopped.

Kristopher (35:24)
Hmm.

Well, what's the age range? Just high school?

Garrett (35:28)
I like 14 to

18.

Kristopher (35:33)
for context, I was just thinking of that because I've done coaching of swim team, but it's been like three to six year olds, which is very different. So I wanted to get that mental context of like, they, they understand what you're saying and they can make those tweaks.

Garrett (35:41)
Completely.

Yeah.

John Nunemaker (35:47)
Yeah.

Garrett (35:49)
coolest is just simply they're like, this feels weird. I don't like it. And I'm like, I, you know, try to be polite about it, but I'm like, well, that's because you've been doing it wrong forever. And like, so a lot of it is they're kind of at this, like transitional period strength wise, right? Where so like their whole lives that grown up, flinging the ball just to heave it up there. And now they're strong enough to shoot it. Habits are built on.

Kristopher (36:09)
Yeah.

Garrett (36:12)
weren't strong enough to shoot it and so they have to break some of those habits to develop a better shot and It feels weird for them but then as soon as they do it and like I said about 80 % of the time I'll give them like one piece of advice About their specific shot and then they just nail it and it's like yes, and that is like the biggest dopamine hit ever It's like okay. See it works and then they get excited. They want to shoot more and you know, so it's kind of self-reinforcing That's been the thing that like I've just been loving every week

Kristopher (36:40)
awesome.

John Nunemaker (36:42)
Yeah, that is really good. For me, I'm going to be lame and choose work. rails six getting that out. I mean, it just was a lot. Garrett did a lot of effort in actually, you know, doing all the software and stuff like that. But then you kind of work together to try and actually get it working in production. And there was just a lot when you're, you know, outdated on things, it just takes a lot of surprises. There's errors, there's

Garrett (36:48)
was huge.

John Nunemaker (37:07)
Sof other software that you have to update that you didn't even think about, you know, so that that getting that out that made like my last two weeks or three weeks or whatever of effort on that just I was like, yes, so that I would say that was probably my biggest one. And then my second biggest one is I've really been enjoying Riverside for editing. And I'm actually enjoying the editing process of the podcast. I did not expect to enjoy that. So I think those are the two things for me. And that's just fresh on my mind because I did it, I think, yesterday or two days ago.

for episode four. And so I think I'm really fascinated with this whole concept of like, here's a whole stream of content, and then how you can kind of chunk it up into clips and, you blog posts and other things. I just really liked that. So those are my two.

Garrett (37:51)
and this is just kind of a pat on the back for you, John, for like, cause I know how tedious all that is, but for us to have these discussions on a regular basis, record them and put them out there, you know, it's hopefully useful for other people, but if nothing else too, I feel like it also helps us refine a lot of our thinking collectively. We don't always.

John Nunemaker (38:06)
Big time. Yeah, it does.

Garrett (38:08)
Bye Kris.

John Nunemaker (38:08)
Kris,

did you get yours?

Kristopher (38:09)
I

know. Well, I was trying to think of like what direction to take and there's been a couple things. know, November, December, I feel like we're rough for various reasons that, know, some we can chat about in the future. And I feel much more positive, like there's been progress on just various things that I'm working on.

there's a group of people I talk with once a month, like a little like mastermind group and hearing what challenges they have. I think it's very interesting and helpful because sometimes you think as doing like startups and entrepreneurship, you're on your own and like, no, everyone else is just fine and like cruising along. And then you hear people running like VC firms that are like, this is like, I'm drained, you know, and, and

they're in a similar mindset. think that's helpful to I think help get past, because you can talk about it in the group and know that these things, these are just like, I wanna say cycles, but kind of cycles. And so I think that's been good, because I feel like we're just, I guess I'm on a good trajectory. I've been reading and listening to some books. One is, it's a new book that just came out.

software as a science that I definitely want to bring up some topics on future episodes I think could be interesting on testing things out with the different softwares that we have. so I don't know, there's been some good like personal news too, but like maybe too much for the podcast.

John Nunemaker (39:37)
I think all topics are open, you know, so I mean, you just, you just, well, hey, I mean, biggest win last night, again, it's January 10th, January 9th, Kris and I are in South Bend, Indiana. We are huge Notre Dame fans. Kris went to Notre Dame. I worked there and, you know, they, they barely survived on a last minute field goal against Penn State. Amazing game. I had to finish it in a warm bath because I was so stressed. I couldn't even, I could not even.

Kristopher (39:44)
yeah.

John Nunemaker (40:05)
I was pacing and yelling at the TV. was like, I've got to bring this down before bedtime. So yeah, so that's probably the biggest group win

Kristopher (40:13)
what's interesting is, and what we will wrap up is what, know, being in South bend, which is a very small city comparatively, the economic impact that like these wins have even, even when they're not home games is, like obviously the teams make money as they go, but I, but, but as a region, there's actually lots of money that gets generated from each one that goes on, which is

John Nunemaker (40:23)
Huge.

Kristopher (40:35)
super fascinating to how to calculate that. I don't know how it's calculated, but I know that it happens.

John Nunemaker (40:40)
Well, people eat out. They go to watch the games as groups. They order pizza in. There's like even if it's not here, there's a ton. Yeah, I've been actually processing as well. And like the sicko in me is like trying to do the napkin math of like how many more pizzas got ordered and like all these other things. But yeah, it's super cool to see, you know, not on top of, you win the bowl game, you get 14 million. The other kind of economic impacts for just a regular person it's cool awesome.

Garrett (40:42)
.

Mm-hmm.

John Nunemaker (41:08)
Be sure to like and subscribe, am I right?

Kristopher (41:11)
You are right.

Garrett (41:12)
I