Detailed Notes
Many developers and entrepreneurs start with a side hustle, but eventually reach a point where hustle alone isn’t enough.
In this discussion, Rob Broadhead and Michael Meloche reflect on their interview with Antoine Person and explore what it really takes to scale a side hustle into a company. They talk about the difference between working in your business versus working on your business, why systems and processes matter, and how founders can move beyond trading time for money.
You’ll also get a practical challenge to help clarify your business direction and align your messaging with the company you want to build.
If you’re building a consulting business, starting a side project, or trying to grow beyond the hustle stage, this conversation will help you think differently about scaling.
Topics Covered * The difference between a side hustle and a company * When hustle stops working * Why systems and automation matter * The “carrying buckets vs building systems” mindset * How mentors and networking help founders grow * A practical challenge to clarify your business direction
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Learn more: https://develpreneur.com/scale-a-side-hustle/
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Chapters
00:00 Intro 00:32 Good thing / bad thing 01:45 Recap of the interview with Antoine Person 04:30 Business vs company mindset 08:10 When hustle stops scaling 12:30 Busy vs productive 15:00 Carrying buckets vs building systems 19:10 Foundations vs tools 22:40 Mentors and networking 26:00 Weekly challenge 30:30 Closing thoughts
Transcript Text
and we're going to hit record. and we are back for our weekly challenge extravaganza. Uh this week we talked with Antoine Pson and uh we're going to talk a little bit about what uh what we discussed there and then get into our challenge for the week. First we will do an actual introduction this time. This is the developer podcast. Building better developers is actually I guess the YouTube show right now. The bonus Friday. Hey, let's get going. Let's have a good weekend. And I am Rob Broadhead. I'm one of the founders of Developer, also the founder of RB Consulting, where we help you with a technology reality check, help you figure out what you need to do before you step into that big investment. Actually, in our pre-show way before this, Michael and I talked about an example where somebody really should have done those kinds of things, cuz sometimes you need to know what you got before you start asking people to build things for you. Good thing, bad thing. Uh good thing was uh it's I guess it's sort of like in the bad thing. So good thing was we went down to Lisbon for the weekend and it was phenomenal. It was great. We had all kinds of cool places that we went. We stumbled into a beer and wine spa uh that was basically we saw a sign as we're walking down the street. We said, "What's that?" Next thing you know, the next day we're like, "We're going to go hang out at the spot for a while." So, we had a really good time. Uh bad thing is is our time here is starting to come to a close. As much as I have enjoyed Portugal, we are pretty close to wrapping up. Our days here are numbered, at least for this time around. Uh, another bad thing is, well, I guess we'll say it's a good thing is I get to hand this off now for Michael to introduce himself. Hey everyone, my name is Michael Mash, one of the co-founders of Developer, Building Better Developers. I'm also the founder of Envision QA where we help companies build custom test software uh to essentially automate uh streamline your uh applications, your business to make your business run smoother, faster, and get things done. Uh good thing, bad thing. Uh good thing, weather's been beautiful. Spring is here for now. uh in Tennessee. Uh bad thing, all the wonderful weather and freezing we've had has caused some uh repairs that need to be done. So, it's a small hit to the pocketbook, but that's why we're here. We're here to uh move things forward this season. And uh let's talk about Antoine. >> Mhm. Sounds good. So, we're going to dive in. Uh, Antoine was a really fun conversation because while we've had a couple of coaches and talked about mindset and things like that, um, I thought there was some really good stuff that we we stumbled upon, we'll say, when we were during this conversation uh, with Antoine. One of it is he really talked about uh, what I liked is that we got into separating out a business from uh, a company basically is sort of like that. We talked a lot about the the startup phase, we'll call it the entrepreneurial stage. Sometimes I refer to it as the survival stage. And then we talked about like post that where you get into the growth phase or the scaling phase early on. And this is I think it's a key point for all of us from a side hustle point of view. There's a point where you're you're hustling. The hustle is the deal. You're out there, you're working, you're doing all this stuff. You're it is blood, sweat, and tears. you're investing in what's going to become the company at some point. That has to become a process. It has to have something that is not you based or hustlebased. You have to have a point where you can actually start bringing other people in and scale it up and do those things. Um it's very interesting as I was having a conversation with AI as I tend to do occasionally um and was talking about this and one of the things that AI mentioned was that very rarely does a uh a boutique consulting type of you know side hustle entrepreneur consulting business in particular grow to actually like hire people and grow to the point where it can scale. That's like and I hadn't really thought of it because most businesses fail within 5 years historically. Don't know if that's still date. I mean that's that may be dated stats but feels about right. It also is funny enough about the same time that businesses have to grow beyond hustle where you have to actually like you got to start having procedures. You have to have processes. You have to bring people in. You just can't do it yourself. Not just the stuff you don't like. the stuff you like also you have to start being able to hand that off and grow it uh based on that. And I loved uh there's a lot of stuff that Antoine brought up in that that phase. He gave a hard number of it even where he was talking about like you can get to about you know $10,000 a month but then at some point like now if you're going to grow beyond that the business is going to require somebody else. And I think that's a little bit it depend not a little bit definitely depends on the line of business you're in because some I think you're going to be limited at a lot lower some you're going to be limited at a little bit higher but there's definitely that point where there's I think of it as there's a point where like you can only give so many hours and then you can't grow after that you've got to find a way to essentially manufacture hours either you don't sleep or you have to find ways to scale you have to automate stuff you have to hire people you have to do those pieces So that's a lot to kick this one off. So I want to throw those out and just see what your thoughts are or dovetail or just like jump in on those. >> Yeah, conversation with Antoine was great. Like you said, you know, we we talked about, you know, going from a business to a company and the distinction between the two and we've talked about this before. In fact, we really talked about this heavy when we talked about, you know, building better businesses. uh the our season of that because that was back when I was going through that co-starters, relaunching my company and a a lot of things he talked about are what I had to go through. These are things that businesses have to go through though. If you want to take that side hustle and turn it into a business, turn it into your full-time job. You know, that $10,000 a month may seem steep, but you know, take your salary, cut that down to what you're making per month, and you got to take that even further down to like what your hourly rate is. You have to figure out, can I walk away from my job and do this full-time? If you do, you need to have that hard decision of I need to make X. How do I do that? Can I do that with my business? And if I can't, how can I change my business to get me to that point so I can quit my day job, focus on the business, and grow it into a company? I liked his idea though of taking it from a business and turning it into a company because that's when you become real. That's when you go from just something you're doing to a legacy. And I really liked his him talking about, you know, building your legacy. Are people going to remember your company? And a lot of us don't think of our businesses that way. We just think of it, hey, we like what we're doing. It it's fun. Uh we got into this because we have passion for it. And you really do have to kind of have that mentality of drink your own Kool-Aid sometimes to get you passionate about what you're doing to grow. The other thing I liked though was how we talked about um the mentors and going out and finding the people that have already done what you're trying to do. You know, we've talked about this before and that a couple weeks ago even I talked about, you know, I've kind of lost that energy a little bit because I've been working in the business too much. And what made me think about that too was when you get siloed, when you're really in your business and working on your business, you're not networking as much. You're not talking to other professionals as much. You're just working. And I forgot how much that energized me to be talking to people, to go out and network with other business people, to work with others in the industry or even other business uh entrepreneurs. And because what it is, it's that energy. You're talking to people that are doing what you're doing, that are succeeding at what you're doing or learning like you, but you're talking to people that have done it, that have succeeded, and you're kind of feeding off of that energy, and it helps drive you. So, if you That's kind of my take from our discussion with Antoine. It was a kind of a really nice reminder of uh hey, if you want to be a business, if you want to grow that business to a company, you still need to be doing these things, not just working on your business. It's it was just a good reminder of that. >> Yeah, I love this is something we've used many many times. Am I being busy or am I am I being productive? and he really talked about like you can be working very very hard on your business but if you're not doing the things to scale it to build it then you're just not doing what you need to do and that this is a trap we fall into a lot. Part of it is the, you know, part of it is the in versus on as we're just working our butts off and we're, you know, we're billing hours or we're producing product and people are buying our product, but if we're not picking our heads up and scaling and looking at how do we make that better? How do we do it faster? How do we essentially the key is how do we move from swapping money for time to something that's bigger and something that's better? And it it does it goes to like automation and systems and hiring other people and all these other things that you could use to grow a business. And I trust me I like I 100% have been there where it's like but I don't have time to work on my business cuz I need to work in my business cuz as Michael said like you you got to make payroll. You've got to pay yourself. You know even if it's just you you have to make the payroll to yourself. You have bills to pay. You've got to you need money coming in. And so it's really been um for me it's really been interesting that I've had a lot of of nos that have been part of my adjustment in the last little bit last I don't know 6 months to a year stuff like that is it's basically like these are the things that I need to say no to these are the things that I need to not do these are the things that I do that make me feel busy and do you know they have some level of payout but it's not the payoff that I really need. It's like being able to I will give a quick uh example I got years ago. Uh somebody shared me is it is so there's a there's this tribe that's you know they need water. They're you know couple miles from the water source. They're in a place where they don't have run you know running water or anything like that. And so they hire um you know they they hire two guys cuz they're like we just need this help. So, the one guy is just an engineer type that's just like, "Okay, I'm going to like you pay me, you know, $5 an hour and I'm going to be like bringing buckets from the I'm going to I'm going to bring buckets from the uh the river to you guys and you guys are going to have water." And they paid this other guy and he's more of like a architect type. So, he goes away for a while. He's not bringing water. He's not that. He goes away for a while. He invests in building a pulley system from the river to the to the city, you know, to the town. And so it comes back six months later and now he he's built this thing and now water is coming and he doesn't have to carry it. And the the moral of this one is are you going to be the guy that carries the buckets or are you the guy that's designing something that will do that for you? And it's it's a very to me it's a very like just raw example. And I know we have all of our different things we worry about and how we say, "Well, I'm not really just carrying buckets." But honestly, like AI, if nothing else, has shown us that even if you're very good at writing code, you're probably you're carrying buckets at the end of the day because that stuff's going to go away. That is going to be like, you know, code has become less and less of a skill. Like I I have to start beating that drone because I worry about this next generation of developers. If you think that the fact that you know Ruby or that you know Python or that you know Java or you know C# or whatever the heck it is. If you think that matters, you're going to be in trouble because that is very quickly going to be something that is not going to matter. Uh the way things are going, it is way too easy to move stacks to change those. That stuff's going to flow so quickly. And I'm in the same boat. There's so much stuff that I've spent time learning and now I'm like that was wasted time. I'm I got something out of it. But now I'm like that doesn't really help me that much. there's other things that I need to do. Um, and I think that's really where we got into it. And part of this is the coaching thing. I think that, you know, he did touch on this is that you need to have somebody. He said he talked about not having a a coach that's like a niche coach or mentor as much as just somebody that can help you with the core stuff. If you don't have the foundations, you need somebody to help you with the foundations. Or maybe you have some of the foundations. I mean, like I can point to myself. I have an MBA. I've learned all this stuff. But there are certain things like you know like marketing stuff that I'm just not my thing. That is like I can know it all day but I don't do it. So there's things like that that we need to find other people. We need to find other ways to off you know offset that stuff. We need to have uh in some cases processes and procedures and things in place best practices that we can do it anyway. So foolproof so that even if we don't have that skill we can still get that thing done. And this this is what coaches and mentors will give us is a different perspective and say this is something that you're you shouldn't be wasting your time on this. But then also the this is how you solve this problem kind of a solution. And these are a couple like key things that I think we got Antoine that were really long-term value bombs that we got out of this. Thoughts on those? Yeah, it I I liked your distinction with the buckets and the poly system because given like you said where we're at with AI where things are going, you can't just focus on code anymore. Things are changing rapidly. So, we need to be able to adjust and adapt quickly with that with this discussion with Anton. Focus on your foundation. What it is that you want your business to do, what is your business about? And then forget the tool. Like there are plenty of tools out there. AI is making it very easy. But lay the foundation down for what it is that you want to achieve. What is it that your company is going to do? Come up with the best solution for that. Figure out how you're going to grow the company. Where you're going to position your company. And then worry about marketing and branding later. But focus on the core. or focus on those foundations. focus on streamlining the business automation and then figure out how to take it to the next level and keep that mindset of how can I keep up with change because in the current state of the world, the current state of technology, things are changing very quickly and you need to be able to have a foundation that can pivot and shift with the changes in the market and the changes in the workspace. So that was one of the key takeaways I had from Antoine and our discussion is b running a business really hasn't changed. There are certain core components you still need for your business to be a business to grow into a company. The tools to do that are changing but the core ideas and foundations have not. So focus on those. get stronger at that and then just learn to adapt, learn to grow with the changes in the current uh you know with the changes that are happening. >> I think that leads us to a challenge that um as I've done a couple times sort of has like evolved while we've been having this discussion. This is actually something that I did for myself for RB consulting uh months ago to some extent uh actually now years ago u a year or two ago and I didn't do it with AI but now AI allows you to do some of this um and this is sort of like a followup to what Michael said. So think about what you like what you want. What is your ideal company? What is it that you want to build? what is it you want to do? And then take that and hopefully you've because we've talked about that a lot. Hopefully you have some level of that. Write that down. Write us like this is what my company should do. Now, if you have a company, if you have a website, if you have marketing material is take your this is what I want to do and actually probably without even sending that in, take all of your like have AI look at your website, look at your content, look at your marketing material and say what does this say? What does this company do? And then figure out does that does it match what you what you think your company does? If not, how do I get there? or do I get there? It's like this is where I think it becomes a thing because if they're not going to be a match and they probably won't. I'll just unless you're really good at marketing stuff like that. This is how I started was with a marketing person looked at the website and said this is what I see and I liked some of it and some of I'm like no that's not what I want. And so now it becomes how do I change those things? Now part of it was changing the company itself. Part of it is changing what we focus on. Part of it is changing what our processes are and and what we are looking for in in customers and everything else. Part of it is our marketing. Part of it is our branding. Part of it is like how do we productize or have services and what do those services look like and how do we constrain them? Uh there's a lot that comes out of this conversation. But it starts with really understanding what do I want? And if you're really lost, take your resume, especially if you're a side hustler and you're just getting started or something like that. Take your resume, throw it into AI and say, "What would be like the top five best businesses for me to run or something along those lines." Give it as much background as you can on yourself and say, "Based on this, what should I be doing? Where should I be going?" And have conversations. Don't just take the answers as as gospel. Ask questions about that. Say, "Well, what about this? What about this?" or even throw stuff in there and say, "I would like this kind of a thing." Maybe just start with here's my resume. Here's my background. I want to run I want to create and run my own business. What would be good opportunities based on where I'm at? Because what it's going to do is just like an HR professional or even just like a coach, they're going to go look at like what is the typical makeup of people in certain areas and they're going to see what do you match? AI is really good at doing this. It's a match engine. It'll just go find you stuff and say, "How about this? How about this? How about this? And then you start that conversation. So the challenge is is to question who you are. Question your side hustle. Question your focus. And within that outside out of this challenge should be your target should be your goal. This is where I want to go. And it may take you this one may take you a little bit because depending on where you're at and what you think you want and what you like and what you don't, you may have to try some stuff out even. But on the other end of this challenge will be clarity and it will be uh a match that you will have energy doing what you want to do because it is what you want to do. So you got to be very honest. You can't like you can't go into this with too many preconceived notions because it may tell you things that you're like oh I don't know if I want to do that because I have some notion about that's not the job I want. Give it time. Think about it. dig into that a little bit and see what is going to be the the match for you. That was a lot. Thoughts on that or additions and and comments, editorial comments? >> No, just remember this is a journey, folks. And these challenges are meant to help us grow and become better at what we do. So take that challenge, go into the weekend and muddle over it, you know, and then come up with a plan for Monday or if you feel ambitious, work through the weekend on it. And uh let's you know, give us your thoughts in the comments as to how the challenge went. >> Uh 100%. And if you if you would want uh if you want any feedback or, you know, anybody to give you a little bit of a sounding board, we'd love to do that as well. As always, love to help you out wherever we can. and uh to have those kind of conversations because I I can't I don't we could go a whole season. I could talk about the conversations I've had and how this has uh adjusted some of the things I've done and some of it's been some of it's been very minor tweaks and some of it has been like major adjustments because it's it's things where the website for example did not match the other stuff that we were trying to sell. So, it's like part of it is like getting your brand on, being on brand and on message and getting your vision, all that kind of stuff straightened out so that it's consistent and so that you have for yourself a set of constraints to know that like what should I say no to? What should I say yes to? Huge to be able to do that. And you might find yourself uh pleasantly surprised as well. I think this is good enough for this one. We're going to wrap this one up. You have your challenge. You have your weekend ahead of you. We theoretically have our challenge on our weekend ahead of us. This challenge is something we'll continue. I've been working on for a while. Sure. Michael will continue on it as well. We'll let you know if we have any great insights, but also we'll be back here next week for the same thing. More of a challenge. Uh but also diving into next week. We have a yet another uh interview. We are marching our way towards the end of season 28 27. >> 27. Gosh, I can't even I I can't even keep track. We've had so many seasons now. season is 28. This season's 27. >> So, >> forward momentum. >> We are. Yeah. Um, lots of Yeah, we got plenty coming. Uh, we've got lots of people lined up. We've got some really good conversations ahead. I'm looking forward to being able to share some of those with all of you and some of the challenges. We got some really cool challenges coming ahead as well. As always, we appreciate so much your time hanging out with us. Go out there and have yourself a great day, a great week, a awesome weekend, and we will talk to you next week.
Transcript Segments
and we're going to hit record. and we
are back for our weekly challenge
extravaganza. Uh this week we talked
with Antoine Pson and uh we're going to
talk a little bit about what uh what we
discussed there and then get into our
challenge for the week. First we will do
an actual introduction this time. This
is the developer podcast. Building
better developers is actually I guess
the YouTube show right now. The bonus
Friday. Hey, let's get going. Let's have
a good weekend.
And I am Rob Broadhead. I'm one of the
founders of Developer, also the founder
of RB Consulting, where we help you with
a technology reality check, help you
figure out what you need to do before
you step into that big investment.
Actually, in our pre-show way before
this, Michael and I talked about an
example where somebody really should
have done those kinds of things, cuz
sometimes you need to know what you got
before you start asking people to build
things for you.
Good thing, bad thing. Uh good thing was
uh it's I guess it's sort of like in the
bad thing. So good thing was we went
down to Lisbon for the weekend and it
was phenomenal. It was great. We had all
kinds of cool places that we went. We
stumbled into a beer and wine spa uh
that was basically we saw a sign as
we're walking down the street. We said,
"What's that?" Next thing you know, the
next day we're like, "We're going to go
hang out at the spot for a while." So,
we had a really good time. Uh bad thing
is is our time here is starting to come
to a close. As much as I have enjoyed
Portugal, we are pretty close to
wrapping up. Our days here are numbered,
at least for this time around. Uh,
another bad thing is, well, I guess
we'll say it's a good thing is I get to
hand this off now for Michael to
introduce himself. Hey everyone, my name
is Michael Mash, one of the co-founders
of Developer, Building Better
Developers. I'm also the founder of
Envision QA where we help companies
build custom test software uh to
essentially automate
uh streamline your uh applications, your
business to make your business run
smoother, faster, and get things done.
Uh good thing, bad thing. Uh good thing,
weather's been beautiful. Spring is here
for now. uh in Tennessee. Uh bad thing,
all the wonderful weather and freezing
we've had has caused some uh repairs
that need to be done. So, it's a small
hit to the pocketbook, but that's why
we're here. We're here to uh move things
forward this season. And uh let's talk
about Antoine.
>> Mhm. Sounds good. So, we're going to
dive in. Uh, Antoine was a really fun
conversation because while we've had a
couple of coaches and talked about
mindset and things like that, um, I
thought there was some really good stuff
that we we stumbled upon, we'll say,
when we were during this conversation
uh, with Antoine. One of it is he really
talked about uh, what I liked is that we
got into separating out a business from
uh, a company basically is sort of like
that. We talked a lot about the the
startup phase, we'll call it the
entrepreneurial stage. Sometimes I refer
to it as the survival stage. And then we
talked about like post that where you
get into the growth phase or the scaling
phase early on. And this is I think it's
a key point for all of us from a side
hustle point of view. There's a point
where you're you're hustling. The hustle
is the deal. You're out there, you're
working, you're doing all this stuff.
You're it is blood, sweat, and tears.
you're investing in what's going to
become the company at some point. That
has to become a process. It has to have
something that is not you based or
hustlebased. You have to have a point
where you can actually start bringing
other people in and scale it up and do
those things. Um it's very interesting
as I was having a conversation with AI
as I tend to do occasionally um and was
talking about this and one of the things
that AI mentioned was that very rarely
does a uh a boutique consulting type of
you know side hustle entrepreneur
consulting business in particular grow
to actually like hire people and grow to
the point where it can scale. That's
like and I hadn't really thought of it
because most businesses fail within 5
years historically. Don't know if that's
still date. I mean that's that may be
dated stats but feels about right. It
also is funny enough about the same time
that businesses have to grow beyond
hustle where you have to actually like
you got to start having procedures. You
have to have processes. You have to
bring people in. You just can't do it
yourself. Not just the stuff you don't
like. the stuff you like also you have
to start being able to hand that off and
grow it uh based on that. And I loved uh
there's a lot of stuff that Antoine
brought up in that that phase. He gave a
hard number of it even where he was
talking about like you can get to about
you know $10,000 a month but then at
some point like now if you're going to
grow beyond that the business is going
to require somebody else. And I think
that's
a little bit it depend not a little bit
definitely depends on the line of
business you're in because some I think
you're going to be limited at a lot
lower some you're going to be limited at
a little bit higher but there's
definitely that point where there's I
think of it as there's a point where
like you can only give so many hours and
then you can't grow after that you've
got to find a way to essentially
manufacture hours either you don't sleep
or you have to find ways to scale you
have to automate stuff you have to hire
people you have to do those pieces So
that's a lot to kick this one off. So I
want to throw those out and just see
what your thoughts are or dovetail or
just like jump in on those.
>> Yeah, conversation with Antoine was
great. Like you said, you know, we we
talked about, you know, going from a
business to a company and the
distinction between the two and we've
talked about this before. In fact, we
really talked about this heavy when we
talked about, you know, building better
businesses. uh the our season of that
because that was back when I was going
through that co-starters, relaunching my
company and a a lot of things he talked
about are what I had to go through.
These are things that businesses have to
go through though. If you want to take
that side hustle and turn it into a
business, turn it into your full-time
job. You know, that $10,000 a month may
seem steep, but you know, take your
salary, cut that down to what you're
making per month, and you got to take
that even further down to like what your
hourly rate is. You have to figure out,
can I walk away from my job and do this
full-time? If you do, you need to have
that hard decision of I need to make X.
How do I do that? Can I do that with my
business? And if I can't, how can I
change my business to get me to that
point so I can quit my day job, focus on
the business, and grow it into a
company?
I liked his idea though of taking it
from a business and turning it into a
company because that's when you become
real. That's when you go from just
something you're doing to a legacy. And
I really liked his him talking about,
you know, building your legacy. Are
people going to remember your company?
And a lot of us don't think of our
businesses that way. We just think of
it, hey, we like what we're doing. It
it's fun. Uh we got into this because we
have passion for it. And you really do
have to kind of have that mentality of
drink your own Kool-Aid sometimes to get
you passionate about what you're doing
to grow. The other thing I liked though
was how we talked about um the mentors
and going out and finding the people
that have already done what you're
trying to do. You know, we've talked
about this before and that a couple
weeks ago even I talked about, you know,
I've kind of lost that energy a little
bit because I've been working in the
business too much. And what made me
think about that too was when you get
siloed, when you're really in your
business and working on your business,
you're not networking as much. You're
not talking to other professionals as
much. You're just working. And I forgot
how much that energized me to be talking
to people, to go out and network with
other business people, to work with
others in the industry or even other
business uh entrepreneurs. And because
what it is, it's that energy. You're
talking to people that are doing what
you're doing, that are succeeding at
what you're doing or learning like you,
but you're talking to people that have
done it, that have succeeded, and you're
kind of feeding off of that energy, and
it helps drive you. So, if you That's
kind of my take from our discussion with
Antoine. It was a kind of a really nice
reminder of uh hey, if you want to be a
business, if you want to grow that
business to a company, you still need to
be doing these things, not just working
on your business. It's it was just a
good reminder of that.
>> Yeah, I love this is something we've
used many many times. Am I being busy or
am I am I being productive? and he
really talked about like you can be
working very very hard on your business
but if you're not doing the things to
scale it to build it then you're just
not doing what you need to do and that
this is a trap we fall into a lot. Part
of it is the, you know, part of it is
the in versus on as we're just working
our butts off and we're, you know, we're
billing hours or we're producing product
and people are buying our product, but
if we're not picking our heads up and
scaling and looking at how do we make
that better? How do we do it faster? How
do we essentially the key is how do we
move from swapping money for time to
something that's bigger and something
that's better? And it it does it goes to
like automation and systems and hiring
other people and all these other things
that you could use to grow a business.
And I trust me I like I 100% have been
there where it's like but I don't have
time to work on my business cuz I need
to work in my business cuz as Michael
said like you you got to make payroll.
You've got to pay yourself. You know
even if it's just you you have to make
the payroll to yourself. You have bills
to pay. You've got to you need money
coming in. And so it's really been um
for me it's really been interesting that
I've had a lot of of nos that have been
part of my adjustment in the last little
bit last I don't know 6 months to a year
stuff like that is it's basically like
these are the things that I need to say
no to these are the things that I need
to not do these are the things that I do
that make me feel busy and do you know
they have some level of payout but it's
not the payoff that I really need. It's
like being able to I will give a quick
uh example I got years ago. Uh somebody
shared me is it is so there's a there's
this tribe that's you know they need
water. They're you know couple miles
from the water source. They're in a
place where they don't have run you know
running water or anything like that. And
so they hire um you know they they hire
two guys cuz they're like we just need
this help. So, the one guy is just an
engineer type that's just like, "Okay,
I'm going to like you pay me, you know,
$5 an hour and I'm going to be like
bringing buckets from the I'm going to
I'm going to bring buckets from the uh
the river to you guys and you guys are
going to have water." And they paid this
other guy and he's more of like a
architect type. So, he goes away for a
while. He's not bringing water. He's not
that. He goes away for a while. He
invests in building a pulley system from
the river to the to the city, you know,
to the town. And so it comes back six
months later and now he he's built this
thing and now water is coming and he
doesn't have to carry it. And the the
moral of this one is are you going to be
the guy that carries the buckets or are
you the guy that's designing something
that will do that for you? And it's it's
a very
to me it's a very like just raw example.
And I know we have all of our different
things we worry about and how we say,
"Well, I'm not really just carrying
buckets." But honestly, like AI, if
nothing else, has shown us that even if
you're very good at writing code,
you're probably you're carrying buckets
at the end of the day because that
stuff's going to go away. That is going
to be like, you know, code has become
less and less of a skill. Like I I have
to start beating that drone because I
worry about this next generation of
developers. If you think that the fact
that you know Ruby or that you know
Python or that you know Java or you know
C# or whatever the heck it is. If you
think that matters, you're going to be
in trouble because that is very quickly
going to be something that is not going
to matter. Uh the way things are going,
it is way too easy to move stacks to
change those. That stuff's going to flow
so quickly. And I'm in the same boat.
There's so much stuff that I've spent
time learning and now I'm like that was
wasted time. I'm I got something out of
it. But now I'm like that doesn't really
help me that much. there's other things
that I need to do. Um, and I think
that's really where we got into it. And
part of this is the coaching thing. I
think that, you know, he did touch on
this is that you need to have somebody.
He said he talked about not having a a
coach that's like a niche coach or
mentor as much as just somebody that can
help you with the core stuff. If you
don't have the foundations,
you need somebody to help you with the
foundations. Or maybe you have some of
the foundations. I mean, like I can
point to myself. I have an MBA. I've
learned all this stuff. But there are
certain things like you know like
marketing stuff that I'm just not my
thing. That is like I can know it all
day but I don't do it. So there's things
like that that we need to find other
people. We need to find other ways to
off you know offset that stuff. We need
to have uh in some cases processes and
procedures and things in place best
practices that we can do it anyway. So
foolproof so that even if we don't have
that skill we can still get that thing
done. And this this is what coaches and
mentors will give us is a different
perspective and say this is something
that you're you shouldn't be wasting
your time on this. But then also the
this is how you solve this problem kind
of a solution. And these are a couple
like key things that I think we got
Antoine that were really long-term value
bombs that we got out of this. Thoughts
on those? Yeah, it I I liked your
distinction with the buckets and the
poly system because given like you said
where we're at with AI where things are
going, you can't just focus on code
anymore. Things are changing rapidly.
So, we need to be able to adjust and
adapt quickly with that with this
discussion with Anton. Focus on your
foundation. What it is that you want
your business to do, what is your
business about? And then forget the
tool. Like there are plenty of tools out
there. AI is making it very easy. But
lay the foundation down for what it is
that you want to achieve. What is it
that your company is going to do? Come
up with the best solution for that.
Figure out how you're going to grow the
company. Where you're going to position
your company. And then worry about
marketing and branding later. But focus
on the core. or focus on those
foundations. focus on streamlining the
business automation and then figure out
how to take it to the next level
and keep that mindset of how can I keep
up with change because in the current
state of the world, the current state of
technology, things are changing very
quickly and you need to be able to have
a foundation that can pivot and shift
with the changes in the market and the
changes in the workspace. So
that was one of the key takeaways I had
from Antoine and our discussion is
b running a business really hasn't
changed. There are certain core
components you still need for your
business to be a business to grow into a
company. The tools to do that are
changing but the core ideas and
foundations have not. So focus on those.
get stronger at that and then just learn
to adapt, learn to grow with the changes
in the current uh you know with the
changes that are happening.
>> I think that leads us to a challenge
that um as I've done a couple times sort
of has like evolved while we've been
having this discussion. This is actually
something that I did for myself for RB
consulting uh months ago to some extent
uh actually now years ago u a year or
two ago
and I didn't do it with AI but now AI
allows you to do some of this um and
this is sort of like a followup to what
Michael said. So think about what you
like what you want. What is your ideal
company?
What is it that you want to build? what
is it you want to do? And then take that
and hopefully you've because we've
talked about that a lot. Hopefully you
have some level of that. Write that
down. Write us like this is what my
company should do.
Now, if you have a company, if you have
a website, if you have marketing
material is take your this is what I
want to do and actually probably without
even sending that in, take all of your
like have AI look at your website, look
at your content, look at your marketing
material and say what does this say?
What does this company do? And then
figure out does that does it match what
you what you think your company does? If
not, how do I get there? or do I get
there? It's like this is where I think
it becomes a thing because if they're
not going to be a match and they
probably won't. I'll just unless you're
really good at marketing stuff like
that. This is how I started was with a
marketing person looked at the website
and said this is what I see and I liked
some of it and some of I'm like no
that's not what I want. And so now it
becomes how do I change those things?
Now part of it was changing the company
itself. Part of it is changing what we
focus on. Part of it is changing what
our processes are and and what we are
looking for in in customers and
everything else. Part of it is our
marketing. Part of it is our branding.
Part of it is like how do we productize
or have services and what do those
services look like and how do we
constrain them? Uh there's a lot that
comes out of this conversation. But it
starts with
really understanding
what do I want? And if you're really
lost, take your resume, especially if
you're a side hustler and you're just
getting started or something like that.
Take your resume, throw it into AI and
say, "What would be like the top five
best businesses for me to run or
something along those lines." Give it as
much background as you can on yourself
and say, "Based on this, what should I
be doing? Where should I be going?" And
have conversations. Don't just take the
answers as as gospel. Ask questions
about that. Say, "Well, what about this?
What about this?" or even throw stuff in
there and say, "I would like this kind
of a thing." Maybe just start with
here's my resume. Here's my background.
I want to run I want to create and run
my own business. What would be good
opportunities based on where I'm at?
Because what it's going to do is just
like an HR professional or even just
like a coach, they're going to go look
at like what is the typical makeup of
people in certain areas and they're
going to see what do you match? AI is
really good at doing this. It's a match
engine. It'll just go find you stuff and
say, "How about this? How about this?
How about this? And then you start that
conversation. So the challenge is is to
question who you are. Question your side
hustle. Question your focus.
And within that outside out of this
challenge should be
your target should be your goal. This is
where I want to go. And it may take you
this one may take you a little bit
because depending on where you're at and
what you think you want and what you
like and what you don't, you may have to
try some stuff out even.
But on the other end of this challenge
will be clarity
and it will be uh a match that you will
have energy doing what you want to do
because it is what you want to do. So
you got to be very honest. You can't
like
you can't go into this with too many
preconceived notions because it may tell
you things that you're like oh I don't
know if I want to do that because I have
some notion about that's not the job I
want. Give it time. Think about it. dig
into that a little bit and see what is
going to be the the match for you. That
was a lot. Thoughts on that or additions
and and comments, editorial comments?
>> No, just
remember this is a journey, folks. And
these challenges
are meant to help us grow and become
better at what we do. So take that
challenge, go into the weekend and
muddle over it, you know, and then come
up with a plan for Monday or if you feel
ambitious, work through the weekend on
it. And uh let's you know, give us your
thoughts in the comments as to how the
challenge went.
>> Uh 100%. And if you if you would want uh
if you want any feedback or, you know,
anybody to give you a little bit of a
sounding board, we'd love to do that as
well. As always,
love to help you out wherever we can.
and uh to have those kind of
conversations because I I can't I don't
we could go a whole season. I could talk
about the conversations I've had and how
this has uh adjusted some of the things
I've done and some of it's been some of
it's been very minor tweaks and some of
it has been like major adjustments
because it's it's things where
the website for example did not match
the other stuff that we were trying to
sell. So, it's like part of it is like
getting your brand on, being on brand
and on message and getting your vision,
all that kind of stuff straightened out
so that it's consistent and so that you
have for yourself a set of constraints
to know that like what should I say no
to? What should I say yes to? Huge to be
able to do that. And you might find
yourself uh pleasantly surprised as
well. I think this is good enough for
this one. We're going to wrap this one
up. You have your challenge. You have
your weekend ahead of you. We
theoretically have our challenge on our
weekend ahead of us. This challenge is
something we'll continue. I've been
working on for a while. Sure. Michael
will continue on it as well. We'll let
you know if we have any great insights,
but also we'll be back here next week
for the same thing. More of a challenge.
Uh but also diving into next week. We
have a yet another uh interview. We are
marching our way towards the end of
season 28 27.
>> 27. Gosh, I can't even I I can't even
keep track. We've had so many seasons
now. season is 28. This season's 27.
>> So,
>> forward momentum.
>> We are. Yeah. Um,
lots of Yeah, we got plenty coming. Uh,
we've got lots of people lined up. We've
got some really good conversations
ahead. I'm looking forward to being able
to share some of those with all of you
and some of the challenges. We got some
really cool challenges coming ahead as
well. As always, we appreciate so much
your time hanging out with us. Go out
there and have yourself a great day, a
great week, a awesome weekend, and we
will talk to you next week.