James Rose is the co-founder of Content Snare.
With wit and wisdom, he shares the joys of developing a product that resonates with a market one never anticipated, emphasising the critical role of customer feedback and the importance of adaptability in business growth.
Our chat with James takes a dive into the essentials of bootstrapping a startup and navigating the complexities of global team dynamics.
Learn how Content Snare's origins in a software development agency provided the springboard for a self-funded enterprise, and how hiring the right attitude has propelled their team forward.
James discusses the significance of test projects in the hiring process and underscores the effectiveness of asynchronous communication in managing a distributed team.
Closing the loop, we explore the link between intense work and essential downtime that startup life demands.
You can connect with James on LinkedIn and check out Content Snare.
James Rose is the co-founder of Content Snare.
With wit and wisdom, he shares the joys of developing a product that resonates with a market one never anticipated, emphasising the critical role of customer feedback and the importance of adaptability in business growth.
Our chat with James takes a dive into the essentials of bootstrapping a startup and navigating the complexities of global team dynamics.
Learn how Content Snare's origins in a software development agency provided the springboard for a self-funded enterprise, and how hiring the right attitude has propelled their team forward.
James discusses the significance of test projects in the hiring process and underscores the effectiveness of asynchronous communication in managing a distributed team.
Closing the loop, we explore the link between intense work and essential downtime that startup life demands.
You can connect with James on LinkedIn and check out Content Snare.
making the right decision on something is more important than the hard grind most of the time, like make the right call. And the only way we're going to make the right call is we've got a clear head.
Speaker 2:From reading fiction or going for a walk or whatever, you know 100% like going for a walk or like having a shower and it's like totally classic and I think the only reason the reason showers work, from what I understand, is like you're not thinking, you can't be on your phone, you can't like you're not listening to anything and you've got this like nice feeling. I guess experience that you're thinking about Like you're not really like it shuts your brain off from thinking about all this other crap and allow well, in a way, because you start solving problems kind of on the fly, it's the same as going for a walk.
Speaker 2:James is the co-founder of Content Smear and he'll talk a little bit about what Content Smear is all about the amount of people that come up with some idea and just run with it instead of trying to work out if someone's actually going to pay for it. That's the biggest thing in startups is and I didn't realize this until recently. I thought no one did that anymore. It was so like really bad at just coming up with silly ideas and running with them. You'd be like what is the point of this product? No wonder you don't have any customers. Why didn't you ask some people first? Right, validate your ideas, talk to customers, get the feedback. If people aren't interested and they're not paying you like, that's usually a good sign that you shouldn't be doing it.
Speaker 1:Hey everybody, it's Greg Sheehan. Welcome to my podcast, where you will hear from a range of guests, including those from the startup world and those that have had incredibly interesting lives and some stories to tell. I would really appreciate it if you could hit the follow button and share this amongst your friends, but, as you know, time is limited, so let's get on with it and hear from our next guest. My guest today is James Rose. James is the co-founder of Content Snare, and he'll talk a little bit about what Content Snare is all about shortly, james. Welcome to the show, greg. It's an honor to be, here, mate, thank you.
Speaker 1:We were introduced by a guy who's infamous in the accounting industry, trent McLaren. So big shout out to Trent Trent, if you're listening. We made it work. James and I are here together Now. One of the things I have learned actually about James is that he, some time back, was actually a podcast host in his own right and actually had a number of podcast episodes. So he's got all the gear, he's got the right microphone here, so hopefully the audio quality from both of us is okay, although I still think I could do better with my own audio quality.
Speaker 2:Oh, there's always more money to spend, right.
Speaker 1:There's always somebody wanting to take your cash, that's for sure. James, I'd love to start before we get into content snare. I'd love to talk a little bit about your personal origin, so how you got to be an entrepreneur. Was that something that you grew up dreaming of? Were you the kid with the lemonade stand? Like what's childhood, james?
Speaker 2:what did he look like? It's funny you ask that because this comes up in on socials all the time and in you hear people talk from stage and how they've always had this entrepreneurial thing. I couldn't be further from the truth. I was like Mr Conform to all of the normal, like life stuff. There was no rebel, there was no entrepreneur, there was no anti-authority. It was like go to school, do really bloody well, get the degree, get the engineering job, do that forever. Kind of wanted the house and the white picket fence and whatever and all that sort of stuff. And then I don't know it kind of just all swapped at one point.
Speaker 1:Because you're a technical founder, technical co-founder, so you've done a lot of stuff in and around software engineering, but you also seem like a guy who can kind of do that more general business sales thing. The fact that you even had a podcast probably makes you a little bit rare in that regard. How does being a technical co-founder impact on your approach to being a startup founder? Does it make it easier?
Speaker 2:or does it make it harder? I think there are some things. It's definitely easier. I mean just to back up, I have. So we had two technical co-founders. So now I am kind of I don't do any coding anymore and I miss it dearly Like if there's anything that gets you into a flow state and like makes the whole day evaporate.
Speaker 2:I used to go to work when I had a job and, like you know, start work, oh God, it's midday. I better have some lunch, you know I better have some lunch. You know, oh God, it's time to go home. Those kinds of days just don't happen.
Speaker 2:When you're a business owner running you know every hat wearing every hat in the business. But when it comes to certain things, the technical background helps a lot, you know, like actually working out what developers to hire, for example, or knowing if someone's full of it. I think it helps a lot in sort of automation and productivity world because I can see how pieces of different apps might fit together so I can connect them and don't have to do that work anymore. Right, and that's why I think you know I've done so much. Automation helps a lot of people with automation over time and also like speccing products, like as a software founder, knowing how stuff fits together before you tell a developer like this is what we want it to do. I think that definitely is helpful, as having that technical background tell a developer like this is what we want it to do.
Speaker 1:I think that definitely is helpful as having that technical background. So tell us a little bit about the origin story for content. Sneer, was that something that just came to you in a dream at night? Were you out for a run, were you trying to solve a problem and therefore build a business around it? Like what was the origin of that?
Speaker 2:so content sneer is actually our third well, more than third software product. It's the third that actually made money, like there was many others that kind of never. We sort of abandoned or scrapped. So we always knew we loved the software model and we're always looking for a problem to solve with software and we had a web design agency and software development agency for a while in the middle there and that's how we found a lot of ideas. Right, it's just seeing problems that our clients had.
Speaker 2:But in the content snares case it was somewhat of a dog food problem, like we're feeding, like it was our own problem, right. Like getting information from clients to build websites was a pain in the ass. We didn't recognize it necessarily. At first. I actually I had a different idea, completely different idea for the product.
Speaker 2:It was in like a briefing tool, but I spoke to I think about 15 other designers that I knew, like other web designers, and just was like tell me about your process, start to finish, and what sucks the most. I didn't sort of seed them with any idea of what I wanted to build at all and all of them focused on getting content from clients as being the biggest pain in the ass. So that was kind of like the pivot before it even started. Like, oh my God, like, yes, we have that problem and I actually have some ideas on how we can fix it Right. So that's how it was started. Just to fast forward, it's no longer just for web designers, it's used by mostly professional services. Now, like, accounting is actually our biggest segment, because it turns out everyone's sick of chasing clients for stuff.
Speaker 1:And I'm from the accounting industry. I've spent way too many years to kind of add up in and around the accounting industry and, yeah, one of the massive bugbears is both for the accountant and for the client, I suspect is getting information off them. It's time consuming and, as a professional, time is money literally, and it's filled with friction. There's lots of backwards and forwards, so how did you go about starting to solve that problem, because it's an endemic issue?
Speaker 2:so the like I said the initial version was actually for web designers and marketing agencies and all just about making it easy for the client to provide you that information. So it was kind of like a place for people to go through and type in information and like upload photos for the website and that kind of thing. But there's two big pieces right In the whole like making it easy. Sorry, three big pieces. It's like making providing a simple experience for the client so they don't have to like log into another portal, they can clearly see what's outstanding. So it's just like a simple checklist. That checklist that they go to it's all auto saved. So we knew that from experience that if you use like a forms type tool a lot of people will use for questionnaires, they get like some of the way through it. If they get called away or close that window or don't hit the save button, they lose all that work and it's like, oh yeah, they'll get very, very cranky, let's say um, and I'll probably just never actually come through with it again because I just can't be bothered doing it all again. So like just making that experience easy is one. The automatic reminders is the second piece, because you've got to remember to check in with people all the time and sometimes you don't want to, you feel resistance to it because it's like I feel like a pest, I'm pestering this person for stuff, whereas if it's like an app doing it, you can blame it on the app. And thirdly, it's actually guiding people through the process. So we kind of knew this.
Speaker 2:I wouldn't say we had all this like plans from day one. We allowed for it but didn't realize, like how important these three sort of pillars were. But yeah, the last bit is just like showing people what you need in a way like that's free of industry jargon. We always say that you know. Imagine you're talking to your most difficult client. If you're asking for a document, it's like pitch your most difficult client and explain to them what you need, where they can find it, like what it should look like, all that kind of stuff, because if you can explain it to them, it's like everyone else will find it easy, or your other clients. So that was kind of a long-winded way of saying all these things are kind of what we had in our minds, but the products changed a lot over time, obviously. But yeah, that's the stuff we knew. We had to automatically remind. We knew it had to be easy and we knew we had to explain to people what we needed them to give us.
Speaker 1:And how did you find the accounting industry?
Speaker 2:Like what brought you to the accounting industry to the point where you realize they hit this issue. So we acquired a lot of users through just organically, like people Googling for the problems they had and finding us through that way. So that naturally attracted various industries. Like it kind of just happened at some point where we kind of realized it could be used for other industries and we noticed other industries signing up. Like I remember speaking to a lawyer being like oh yeah, we know this isn't made for us, but you know, we're so happy we made this work for us and blah, blah, blah and it's saved us all this time. And we went maybe there's something there looking at other industries but we were looking at probably five or six different industries as the next one and we kind of we got lucky. We had like a stars aligning moment because we couldn't decide which was the next most obvious industry.
Speaker 2:But within one week sorry, two weeks we had an amazing video testimonial from an accountant in America that went you know what this has been so good for us. I'm like, do you want to say that on camera? And they were like hell yeah. And then one of their, someone they work with, saw their onboarding experience with content snare and went, okay, we want that too. And gave us a video testimonial within like two weeks. And at the same time we had someone reach out from a document management system in the space in the account for accountants and he said he was interested in acquiring us because the industry needed what we did. And that was like we just were like, oh my god, this is all these kind of things that happen in quick succession. We've got to go into accounting Like it's clearly solving a really big pain point there.
Speaker 1:And how have you found working with the accounting industry? I love the accounting industry, but I also understand and probably get, its frustrations. How have you found that?
Speaker 2:It's funny, like accounting has such a not a bad reputation, just like make people make the butt of many jokes about, like how boring or whatever it is. It has been the complete opposite of my experience. Just the events and the people. I have such amazing and great conversations, people, people are super outgoing. I remember the very beginning I reached out to a couple of influencer types in the space, being like, ah, let's see if they'll talk to me about this like problem we want to solve. And they like got on a call with me and I was like, ah, let's see if they'll talk to me about this problem we want to solve. And they got on a call with me and I was like what the hell? That was so easy. Why are all these people so open and friendly with their time? I'm just not used to that.
Speaker 2:I feel like digital agencies were a lot harder and accountants have been super friendly, super open, really forthcoming with feedback, totally happy to help out. We had customers of ours go to Zerocon with us. I was, like you know, totally happy to help out. Like we had customers of ours go to Xerocon with us. I was like I've tried this idea. I was like because I don't have any salespeople. So I was like, would you want to come and man the stand and show people how you use content? And they're like, yeah, cool. I was like what's going on? I don't know. My experience has been amazing.
Speaker 1:I've had. So funny. Actually, when you reference, you know, an event for accountants with people who are not from the accounting industry or haven't been to something like a zero con, and I can see, you know, them kind of rolling their eyes and going, oh my God, what would that be like going to some sort of event for accountants, and they get there and they, you know, know, it's not quite Coachella, but it's, it's, but it's up there right like there's literally I don't know 4,000, 5,000 people, djs, you know, merch stands. It's incredibly well, well put together.
Speaker 2:It's out of control.
Speaker 1:It's so much fun it's so impressive and there's a bunch of people around the profession now who are in their 20s and their 30s and they're cool young people who are financially trained and just understand a debit from a credit. So it's pretty cool. So tell me a little bit about the journey to date. So you got started with Content Snare and then start winning customers et cetera. How's that journey gone to date and how's it going now?
Speaker 2:I mean great since switching well, I didn't really switch to accounts. We still have lots of different industries come in. So accounting makes up about 30 of our customer base and that climbs every month but it just so. It's like slowly overtaking as our predominant industry and I don't know if we've had a single negative growth month ever, especially since moving to accounting. Like you can zoom out on our growth chart over time and you can clearly see the inflection point where the graph of the growth sorry, the slope of the graph changes.
Speaker 2:And that was kind of around the time where we really dedicated to accounting. So again, when I say that like we still have plenty of other industries and still most of the features we build are very, still generic because everyone's like I was saying, everyone's got this problem. It's just like a few integrations and things for specific for accountants that really that they really love, that makes it sort of when I say we focus on accountants, like that's usually what I'm talking about. But yeah, I don't know if that answers your question. I mean, it's going well and it doesn't seem to be changing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and In terms of growing the company, have you needed to raise external capital? Have you bootstrapped the whole thing? How have you gone about doing that?
Speaker 2:I think I'd call it self-funded rather than bootstrapped, because you obviously need some money at the start to build the thing, and so we had a little bit of cash from our software development agency. We were very lucky there in that we had basically a project that was able to one or two projects that we were able to keep and shut down the rest of our clients because it was for a really, really big client and that was kind of the funding source for the initial development. But we've been positive cashflow for quite a while now and it's actually really nice. I guess to tee back into your previous question we're at a point of growth now where it's like every couple of months we can seriously look at hiring some kind of external help, whether it's like an agency or another team member or whatever. So we're actually finally getting to that point where it's just like oh, I don't have time to work on xyz, like let's put someone in place for that, yeah, so, yeah, it's kind of nice and the toughest part of the journey so far.
Speaker 1:What have you experienced? Where you were like god if I'd known that at the beginning I might not have, I might not have done this or a moment where you had your head in the hands well.
Speaker 2:So two things there I'd say was something I wish, because you kind of said I wish I knew this earlier. I mean I wish I knew earlier that accountants and professional services how much better clients they would have been because we bounced around on that for a long time, because I spoke to accounts and bookkeepers who didn't really see the need for it in their particular business, with their flow, and it just so happened that the people I spoke to were like the wrong subset. I didn't realize, like everyone else kind of was like wow, this is amazing. So that was a bit of a bummer. But I still think the most difficult thing in business is just people. So hiring, firing, finding the right people, recruitment, finding agencies, you know external people as well I just find it's by far the hardest part Like it's really hard to find good people and even harder for me personally to let people go. I just hate that process. So much.
Speaker 1:Why do you think that is? I mean, you know, I think most people find that tough, but do you? Is it something that you find particularly tough? Are you overly empathetic? Is it? You know what is? What's? What's behind that?
Speaker 2:some people find it easy well, I think firing people if you find firing people easy, there's, yeah, probably a very low amount of empathy in there. Like I wouldn't have considered myself like a super empathetic person I didn't think I was but like I can tell you like two of the hardest things I've done are firing people and breaking up with someone you know like I don't know what it is. Obviously it's been a very long time since I had to do that Been with my now wife for like 13 years, but 14.
Speaker 1:Anyway, she probably won't listen to this.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I guess it is an empathy thing, right? I don't know, just letting people down sucks especially, like because you know they're going to have to go find another job and that's hard and that process sucks for them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and what do you look for when you're hiring? Is there something that you approach? Are you skills-based? Are you attitude-based? What is it that you typically look for?
Speaker 2:I am probably not the best example of this. I mean, I feel like our processes are pretty good, like we have a pretty good process to find the right people, like our first pass. I don't even look at their resume. I actually have like four open-ended questions on the application form and that's really all I look at. Because if someone's not willing to go to the length to fill out some open-ended questions in a good way and like one of them or two of them kind of requires them to actually look at our business a little bit and it's really clear who's gone to the extra effort to go and do that, you know, to research our website. Like I just ask people like what's the contest they're doing, who's it for, sort of thing, and some people will just put some generic crap that they read in the job post or put in like two words or something, and it just makes that first pass so easy to delete all those people, so that I think what's going on there is that's more attitude to me right, rather than skills is that they want the job. They're like they've got that attitude. They're like willing to put in the extra effort and attention to detail.
Speaker 2:But then, when it comes to the hiring itself, it depends on the role. So obviously, developers need skills, right, I'm not going to hire a developer based on attitude, because they need to know how to code stuff and we can't be training them. We don't have the resources to train them just yet. But recently, you know, we hired someone for marketing and sales where they were not the best fit skills wise.
Speaker 2:But attitude I think it's really really important there, because marketing, I think, can be taught fairly, like a bit more easily than development, and one person was just clearly so much more enthusiastic and had done the research and learned about the product. And so, like I do go towards attitude on most hires rather than skills and sort of attention to detail, for example, like I don't know if that can be taught as much as like someone, like if it's an assistant role, whatever, like someone that needs that attention to detail. I'll try and tease that out in like test tasks. So we usually do a test, paid test project to start with. So between the application and the paid test project, like that's what I'm looking for, depending on the role, and most people I know in like who run businesses, do gravitate towards attitude as being more important Cause again, like you can teach skills but you can't teach attitude.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and are the team remote? Are you in offices? What's the deal there? I kind?
Speaker 2:of thought what we had was somewhat normal, and it depends what circles you're in I guess like a community of entrepreneurs, the way this is completely normal. But when I speak to other businesses they're like wow, like that's crazy. Like just to start, I've got one person on, we've got a team of, I think, 11 at the moment. I've met one of them in person ever. Yeah, so that's kind of which you know. I guess I thought that was kind of more normal these days, but for a lot of people it isn't they these days, but for a lot of people it isn't. They're all, yeah, around the world, remote, mostly working at home or co-working spaces.
Speaker 2:The most recent hire they have a really cool setup. They have an employer of record, I guess you would call it. They're like a sort of a labor hire agency in South Africa where they get all their remote people to come together in an office if they want. They don't have to, so they get that cool office atmosphere. But they're all working for different people, which I thought was interesting. I mean, obviously this is like a lot of accounting companies have BPO's or whatever in the Philippines, but yeah, this one was in South Africa. They had a really cool looking office, the classic startup thing with ping pong and drinks and all that sort of stuff which I thought was like. I actually want that for my team, cause it's kind of hard when you're working remote to get that fun part of going to work which you know, so that that's a new, new experiment for us, I guess hey, just let me pause you there for a second and tell you about some help that's available for startup founders.
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Speaker 1:Let's get back to the show. Yeah, the remote thing's really tough, I think, in terms of building culture. It's certainly my experience. So when and having built a culture that was, you know, we had a little almost a hybrid of some in office, some remote and actually just even just sharing culture across offices super, super challenging the fact that you've got people around the world are they all sort of, you know, contractors? Do you have to get involved with tax stuff and engage something like a deal to do cross-border tax issues, or do you try and just keep that as super?
Speaker 2:simple as you can. Yeah, we do try to keep it simple. It's quite annoying in Australia whether the whole employee versus contractor thing, you know, because they say if someone's an employee, you need to do super and you need to do work cover and all this sort of stuff, and it's like, how do I do super for someone who lives in croatia? You know it's there. So, yeah, we try to keep it simple. That's why I like this employer of record model too, so it becomes like as an industry called employers of record, where you're paying like a company that does the local hiring. I think that's like one of the proper like way to do it. But yeah, otherwise it's sort of the contractor model.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and how do you deal with building culture? Is the building of culture critical to what you do, or is it not so important, given that you've got almost a gig economy workforce going on?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's hard. I do, like the customer-facing stuff. There needs to be a little bit of culture, right? The developers I don't think it's as important, a lot of devs just like getting in there and getting stuff done and making things. So, yeah, I don't know, I probably am not the person to listen to on this, because I wouldn't have expected us to have an amazing team culture, right.
Speaker 2:But then I asked some of our team for like I wanted to put like a testimonial on our job application from our existing staff and one of them came back and said, like amazing culture, low tolerance for bullshit, like micromanagement and pointless meetings and all this sort of stuff. And I'm like, okay, well, I guess that's our culture is just laid back and chill and being flexible with time and letting people work whenever the hell they want. We're not like, oh, to do a phone call with like you need to be available, like you're 3 am, you know. Like there's none of that. Like I think our culture is just kind of relaxed and yeah, yeah, and maybe that shows through to people on our team which I didn't realize until recently and how do you deal with time zones?
Speaker 1:because no doubt you've got people across a whole bunch of time zones and it's the one thing I feel like if we could just flatten the earth and have the sun land on all places at the same time, how do you deal with that at a practical level? What do you do?
Speaker 2:It is tough, it is very tough. I mean again, with developers it's often not that big a deal because they can work on something, come up with a bunch of questions, roadblocks, you know, plan something out and then write. You know, while we're asleep they'll write out like a big list of questions and then we can jump on in the morning and answer all of those right. It does suck to not have that like immediate sort of feedback on things, but I mean that kind of works. I'd say the biggest thing for us because, again, like there's normally at least a little bit of overlap where we don't do a lot of meetings unless they're necessary. So that isn't that important. It's just asynchronous communication through slack and that gets us by on most things. You know, like everyone's kind of in their own lane doing their own thing. So support are answering, support questions, sending messages to the development team if they find a bug or whatever. You know it's all just done in slack and it can be asynchronous. Like none of this needs to be like immediate, so it hasn't been a big problem.
Speaker 2:I'd say that the biggest problem is when you're onboarding a new team member and you need to do that, some of that face-to-face time initially like I'm going through that right now and it's the worst time zone because South Africa and the UK for us is really bad because it's 5, 6, 7 pm calls, which is rubbish my brain is shut down by that point and on that it's the demo, demo calls and calls with customers in alternate time zones. So like on one day I could talk to someone in the US on the Eastern time zone over there, which is like a 7am call for me, and then I could do a 6pm call on that same day in the UK, which is just crap. That's the hardest thing. But that's the person I'm onboarding now is going to start handling. She'll be on the same zone to handle those two extremes for me, which is going to make life so much better, right? So I think it's just getting. You know, our developers are all on fairly good, similar time zones except one, so they get together and have their own conversations.
Speaker 1:Plus, it's the Saturday pain in the ass too, right. So the fact that the US is on Friday when you're on Saturday, just a real pain.
Speaker 2:Yeah, which I mean in a way it makes Mondays really good, because there's almost no calls that happen on Mondays because it's still Sunday for them. Yeah, so you've only got like sort of four, four and a half days of actual overlap, which I don't know Like. It just works. Like I was saying, like maybe we could be more efficient, but we're okay with it where it is. And developers you know, the developers can still go on and do their things, the support team can still provide support. Marketing is very much asynchronous. It's not like we're delivering projects. That's the big difference here. It's right, like software, almost everything's asynchronous, except for calls with customers. Everything else is just kind of happening in its own sort of lane and there's occasional, you know, things that need to go between them, like a bug, like a bug report from support or something, or feature requests or whatever you know.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, I think it it's, it's working okay, and so what would you say is your superpower? As an aussie founder, I know with aussies and kiwis very much alike here. We don't typically like to talk about the things that we're really good at, but you will have something that you know when you're in this mode, the zone of genius, if you like. Things just work better, they flow better when you're doing that. What is that for you?
Speaker 2:Two things I think. One is workflow automation and just automating things. You know, like my previous role was a control systems engineer and so the English version of that is like making big machinery run by itself or through code, right, and I love that so much and I don't get to do that anymore. I love the work. I hated the, let's say, people just working with and for dickheads was a problem.
Speaker 2:I have worked with a lot of awesome people. In fact, my business partner is my old boss, but yeah, so, using things like zapier and make to automate workflows in our business man, I can do that all day, but it's just you gotta slow down at some point, like, and it carries over into home automation. Like you know, right before I jumped on this call, I called out the I'm not gonna say her name the amazon device. I said a couple of sentences to her and she, like turned on my lighting, turned on the power source for my camera, turned on the lights behind me. You know all of that. Like, I just love automating all that sort of stuff, so that's my superpower. And I think the other thing is like just networking and being at events and building a network and partnerships and that kind of thing.
Speaker 1:They're like my two primary things it does strike me as rare that you are a very good communicator. As I said, you did a podcast, you know for quite some time. You're a really good communicator. You seem like a natural, a guy where sales would actually come relatively easy to you as a function. Yet you are a software developer which you know not to not to put people in a box, but a lot of software developers wouldn't necessarily love.
Speaker 2:No, you're right, sales process that's kind of real you think, probably I think I'm very much in that like jack of all trades, master of none, kind of thing. Like I wouldn't say I'm amazing necessarily at anything and I'm totally okay being like that. Like I, I get like into hobbies and I get kind of 80 of the way there or like I don't know, not even that, like 60 to 70 and I'm like happy with that and I'd never get better than that. I'm never going to be a master at stuff, but you know, I kind of like having semi-skills at a lot of things.
Speaker 2:Do you get bored quickly? Yeah, oh, yeah, hell, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm surprised I'm still in this business. You know, like I guess it's because, as a business, you do so many different things that it's never quote-unquote boring. So because I'm like how am I still doing this same business this many years later? Like I would have thought I would have gotten over it, but no, because how long has content snare been around now? Content snare started in 2016, but we started our business in 2010.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Right, okay, so you've been going at this basically the whole time you've been with your wife.
Speaker 2:Yeah, pretty much it was around the same time. It's funny because my goal was always to go and live abroad for extended periods of time and I got to that point in our business right as we got really serious and she had real jobs and couldn't do that and I was like, oh, what's the worst timing on this? But it is what it is and is she?
Speaker 1:you know fully across the fact that you have to work weird time zones and that you are taking calls first thing in the morning and last thing at night. Is that or does that create tension? Is building a global business?
Speaker 2:I mean, again, we're both just chill. If our company culture is chill, we're pretty chill in our relationship too. So it just works. I mean, I think and I'm also working towards not having to do that so much. It's been difficult now that we've got a kid and another one due very, very soon, because obviously, you know, if I'm doing it on a call at six to six, 30 at night, that's like peak witching hour, you know. But we try to balance it, like before she was pregnant again, she would go to soccer training and at that exact same time, you know. So I'd do, I'd do my part, you know. Try to balance it out a little bit, I don't know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's, it just works yeah, it just, it just works well for you. So, in terms of ways that you, you know you get away from the business, how do you recharge, how do you sort of find inspiration for getting back and doing another day's work?
Speaker 2:yeah, I guess. I mean there's a couple things. If it's in the middle of a work day, I like just going for a walk, you know, like getting out, and that you can expand that out into like multi-day hikes, which we haven't done in a very long time because I had knee surgery actually almost exactly a year ago, which I'm only just getting to the point now where I could do something like that again, and also my wife's been pregnant, so that's kind of gone out the window for a little while. But those like getting outside, you know absolutely. You know I haven't been able to go snowboarding in years. I used to skateboard but I blew my knee. So like a lot of those things are actually gone right now. It it's a lot of FPV, first person view drone flying, so it's kind of getting like a manually flown drone, there's no GPS in it and just ripping around a park and through trees and yeah, I find that a lot of fun but yeah, you're a bit of a tinkerer.
Speaker 1:Are you somebody who likes to play with, like you do, home automation as well? You enjoy that.
Speaker 2:I do, but as well, yeah, you enjoy that I do, but I don't do it enough because it's a time thing. You know, I spent so much time on the business that almost nothing goes on that. But working that's like the goal right is is working less so that those things have more time.
Speaker 1:But yes, tinkering is a lot of fun and how do you sort of with your co-founder? Just what? Just the one co-founder, yes, yeah, how does the relationship you know work? Either well or not so well at times. Like, how do you manage that co-founder relationship Because, as we all know, in the founder community they can be tough relationships to have at times.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think we're very lucky again and I don't know if it comes from us both being pretty chill and relaxed, like neither of us are like this crazy go-getter where we're just like we're going to strive for these huge numbers. We're not like a mini Elon Musk or something. We're not trying to just take over the world, we're just happy building our thing. And he works a lot more than me. I think it's a combination. He's doing what he loves, he's coding At the same time. I think he goes too hard sometimes and I think he knows that as well. But yeah, I don't know. Like we both have similar goals.
Speaker 2:We knew each other for a long time before we started a business at a work capacity Like he was an engineer and then became my like manager essentially, and I, we both knew the way each other operated for a long time, many years before we actually started the business together. And you know it's been a long time. Now. I think we should. We just get on, it's just easy. And I think and you know it's been a long time now I think we just get on, it's just easy. And I think a lot of it is just attitude and wanting the same same kind of thing and having complementary skill sets.
Speaker 1:Now I think it just works and if you were to have a disagreement, is that something? Because you don't like? You know it's like not wanting to let somebody go and say that they're being fired. That doesn't come easy. Do you find it easy to deal with things that you do disagree on, to talk about that, or do you avoid it Like what's the standard?
Speaker 2:I mean, it's almost like a cop-out, but it's just, and this is the same as on my relationship. We almost never have serious disagreements, right. Like I don't know, maybe because we're kind of similar in a lot of ways. Actually, that's not necessarily true with my wife. There's a lot of similarities, but also a bit of opposites in a lot of ways too.
Speaker 2:I don't have a good answer to that, because we just haven't really had to do it. We have disagreements on how a feature should work or what features we should prioritize and that kind of stuff. But I think usually we're pretty on the same page on a lot of things, which may be a bad thing, right. But there are times where we might disagree on the priorities and we'll just make our cases for it, and one of us usually comes around. You know, it's very rare that we both butt heads that hard, that we're like completely on other sides of something. A lot of the time, when it comes down to it, it's funny like someone will be really passionate and the other person won't be that passionate about that particular issue. So I was like that's not a hill I'm willing to die on. Let's go with your option, right? Yeah?
Speaker 1:let's keep moving, and is this something that you like? Do you consume a lot of your startup related material podcasts, books on the topic?
Speaker 2:not so much anymore. I've gone off business books and trying to chill out from podcasts. I'm actually like I've made it that an intentional part of my life to go back to fiction books and whatever, because otherwise it's it's just burnout man, like between having a child who's running around all the time and like this business and then, like you know, I used to go to the gym and in between sets I'll be listening to podcasts. I go for a walk, I listened to a podcast and it was all business content. Before bed I'd'd be reading a business book and that's like the recipe for burnout, especially for me now. Like I was better at it before having the kid, but now it's like it just there's never ending, right. So now I'm actually not consuming much I do. There are, like, if you want to know some things, some books and stuff that I like, I'm absolutely happy to share some, but yeah, but you're reading fiction.
Speaker 1:It's interesting because I was just earlier this morning interviewing Chris Grant and Charlie Crisp from Unyoked, and Unyoked is an off-the-grid cabin experience and they have a lot of founders go and stay there, because we do get burned out in the founder community and we kind of overdo it, and so you know, creating experiences that allow you to get off the grid, clear your head, et cetera. The reality is, in startups, making the right decision on something is more important than the hard grind most of the time, like make the right call and the only way we're going to make the right call is.
Speaker 2:We've got to clear head from reading fiction or going for a walk or whatever you know A hundred percent, like going for a walk or like having a shower, and it was like classic.
Speaker 2:And I think the only reason the reason showers work, from what I understand, is like you're now you're not thinking, you can't be on your phone, you can't like you're not listening to anything and you've got this like nice feeling. I guess experience that you're thinking about Like you're not really like you're. It shuts your brain off from thinking about all this other crap and allow well, in a way, because you start solving problems kind of on the fly, same as going for a walk, you know. And if you start listening to a podcast instead of going for a walk, like my strategy which I need to get back to for solving problems that I couldn't work out, you know I'm like I want to build, like I want to spec out this new feature, but I just don't know how it all fits together. You know it's just like okay, go for a walk, no audio, and just think about that problem, right, and a lot of the time I'd be dead set like three minutes into the walk and I've, like, got the solution.
Speaker 1:It's incredible, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, just freed up your brain to be able to do what it is good at doing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and sometimes it'll be very, very quick, and then you're like, oh, what am I going to do for the rest of the walk? I'll think about something else.
Speaker 1:Exactly, and is there a philosophy or a mantra that you like to live life by things that are important to you and the way that you go about life?
Speaker 2:Oh, that's a hard one, because whatever I say is probably like not what I'm actually living right now, but I'm working towards, and it is really that like trying to be ruthless on working on things that matter and automating anything that can be automated is kind of I wouldn't say like I have this stuck on my wall or something, but they are things that I try to do.
Speaker 1:you know, like I only work on important stuff and automate everything else and and my final question is really around and this is a question I very rarely ask because I find people are kind of thrown by it or they're not even necessarily on this page Is there something that you believe in strongly that very few people do believe in? So it's something that's maybe counterculture, counter to what a common person would think and believe.
Speaker 2:That's a hard question. Yeah, I don't know, like there's probably some things I'd prefer not to say on something that's going to be public.
Speaker 1:There's some controversial stuff. That's cool. You don't have to share that.
Speaker 2:It's usually, yeah, one of the topics you're not allowed to talk about anything like political religion, yeah, all that stuff. No, I don't Not really. I think, yeah, I don't know. Like I said, my history has been very rarely, you know, anti-authority or like crazy out-of-the-box stuff, so I don't think I've got anything for you, sorry.
Speaker 1:No, no, no, that is good and actually I did say that was the last question, but I promise this is the last one. Any advice for founders? You know you've had some time as a founder. You've journeyed along this path for a while. If you were talking to you know, 10-year, 15-year younger James, what would you say about starting in the startup world?
Speaker 2:Talk to customers more actual customers. Validate things before you do them. You know we've been pretty good at that, but sort of every iteration of things we do in our business we get better at it. Like the amount of people that come up with some idea and just run with it instead of trying to work out if someone's actually going to pay for it, that's the biggest thing in startups is, and I didn't realize this until recently.
Speaker 2:I thought no one did that anymore, was so like really bad at just coming up with silly ideas and running with them until I actually went to some startup events again because I stopped going to them years ago because I got sick of having people pitch me on their stupid ideas and I mean, they're not're not all stupid, obviously, I'm just like but there was a lot of that where you'd be like what is the point of this product? No wonder you don't have any customers. Why didn't you ask some people first, right? So I think that's like the biggest thing. And I went back to some startup events recently and kind of got thrown straight back into that and I was like damn it, like people are still doing this Like validate your ideas, talk to customers, get the feedback. If people aren't interested and they're not paying you, that's usually a good sign that you shouldn't be doing it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. People just fall in love with their ideas, don't they? They fall in love with their ideas. They believe that that's going to be the you know, the elixir to a problem, when actually the problem doesn't exist. Or it's not a problem that people, or it's not enough of a problem.
Speaker 2:You know, like Content Snare, we plateaued for a long time when we were still focusing on web design, marketing agencies and we knew everyone had this issue. But whether it was like they're not willing to spend money like our pricing, you know, maybe there's a disjoint there, maybe it wasn't the perfect fit for that particular use case, maybe there were some other factors, I don't know, but there was a point where it was like, does it make sense to keep this going if we can't get any bigger? You know, like we've exhausted everything that we know to possibly do, except a new industry which just breathes life back into the business. And it's been freaking amazing, right. So sometimes you'll be banging your head up against the wrong wall when you could just go like over there instead.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's definitely a need for this product in the accounting industry. I know that for sure. And for those of you in the accounting industry that happen to be listening to this, check out Content Snare. I will actually include the ability for people to connect with you on LinkedIn and via Content Snare in the show notes. James, thanks so much for your time today. I've really enjoyed getting to know you a little bit better. Again, shout out to Trent, who many people in the accounting industry know, for introducing us. James, thanks so much for your time today. Really really appreciate it. Thanks for having me, greg, it's been a lot of fun.