Document & Automate Your Way to a Vacation When Running a Startup

05/24/19 • 38 min

The guys talk about strategies for creating systems, documentation, and automation to separate yourself from your business so you can hire employees, get it ready for sale, or even take some time off. Balancing good customer service while being efficient with your time is also discussed along with reasons Honeybadger doesn't use automation for customer service.

Full Transcript:
Starr: 00:01 I probably should have muted that, so you couldn't hear the toilet flushing.

Josh: 00:05 I don't know whose it was, so... You just needed... There, there you...

Josh: 00:11 Okay, so, Starr. There is, there's your intro.

Announcer: 00:16 They're just three amigos making their way in the crazy old world of software as a service.

Announcer: 00:22 Welcome to Founder Quest!

Josh: 00:26 Oh, that reminds me, I was going to... during that decision-making thing, I was going to say we'd be a lot cooler, though, if we used a blockchain, like to decentralize, since, you know, we're totally like a, you know, a remote, very decentralized company, like we should have a blockchain for a decision-making process.

Ben: 00:42 For real, scan that audio trail.

Starr: 00:43 Yeah.

Ben: 00:44 To make sure that-

Starr: 00:44 The future. The future's now.

Ben: 00:46 ... make sure that Starr doesn't go back and change the decision that we made?

Starr: 00:52 What?!

Josh: 00:52 Uh-huh (affirmative).

Starr: 00:52 Why am I getting this flack?

Ben: 00:53 Well, you know, because you know that I would be the one that would actually be doing that sort of thing, so that's why I'm the...

Josh: 00:58 Well, it's more to protect against Ben, yeah, so it's like a digital gavel.

Ben: 01:01 I'm the totally random element in this outfit, that's for sure.

Josh: 01:05 Yeah. The wild card.

Ben: 01:07 Yes!

Josh: 01:08 The joker.

Ben: 01:08 The joker!

Josh: 01:10 And plus I could buy more video cards, so that I have more weight, my decisions have more weight.

Ben: 01:14 There you go.

Starr: 01:16 All right, so let's catch people up. So last week, we talked about some issues involving systems, like what are our systems for decision-making? And we talked about our quarterly conclaves, our process for doing that, and so this week we're going to be talking about systems and continuing the conversation, this is one long conversation that's just been split up into two.

Starr: 01:36 And we're going to be talking about managing employees, we're going to be talking about daily operations, about ops and all that stuff.

Starr: 01:45 Yeah, let's get going! So like what... we started with nothing, we started with no systems, errors would come in, and Ben would see them and he would manually write out an alert email, and send those out on Gmail. And since then, we've like, we have systems out the, uh... I can't say it on iTunes, I'm sorry, but we've got lots of systems!

Starr: 02:07 So how do we coordinate a bunch of, like three of us are independent workers, we've hired a bunch of independent workers, like how do we coordinate between those?

Ben: 02:15 I think that the technical term you were looking for there was "wazzoo."

Josh: 02:17 Wazzoo?

Starr: 02:18 Oh, okay, most definitely was it.

Ben: 02:20 You know, one of the things that was really crazy early on was, it accelerated so rapidly. Like, I remember, in the early-early days, when we first started this out, and most of the day I was thinking, you know, because we had jobs, so Starr and I were working for a start-up, and I was thinking, "Ah, this should be great! I have two incomes streams, right? Like I have my day job, and then Honeybadger just will be doing its thing on the side, it'd be a cash machine, it'd be awesome!" And then, it didn't go that way. Like-

Josh: 02:51 Then reality struck.

Ben: 02:52 Yeah, the reality struck, where, like, Starr and I are sitting there, at our day jobs, and all of the sudden Honeybadger's on fire, and it was like, "Oh, we got to go take a lunch break right now!", you know?

Starr: 03:00 Yeah.

Ben: 03:01 And so, like eventually, that just... its like the pressure was too much, right? We couldn't do both, and so we had to dive in on Honeybadger. But a lot of that was because things were just growing so rapidly, and traffic was coming in, and things were falling apart, and like in that one server that we bought initially, right, had to become two, and so on. But-

Starr: 03:21 Yeah.

Starr: 03:21 And we did not build this thing for a scale, people. We did not prematurely optimize.

Ben: 03:25 &n...

Full Transcript:
Starr: 00:01 I probably should have muted that, so you couldn't hear the toilet flushing.

Josh: 00:05 I don't know whose it was, so... You just needed... There, there you...

Josh: 00:11 Okay, so, Starr. There is, there's your intro.

Announcer: 00:16 They're just three amigos making their way in the crazy old world of software as a service.

Announcer: 00:22 Welcome to Founder Quest!

Ben: 00:42 For real, scan that audio trail.

Starr: 00:43 Yeah.

Ben: 00:44 To make sure that-

Starr: 00:44 The future. The future's now.

Ben: 00:46 ... make sure that Starr doesn't go back and change the decision that we made?

Starr: 00:52 What?!

Josh: 00:52 Uh-huh (affirmative).

Starr: 00:52 Why am I getting this flack?

Ben: 00:53 Well, you know, because you know that I would be the one that would actually be doing that sort of thing, so that's why I'm the...

Josh: 00:58 Well, it's more to protect against Ben, yeah, so it's like a digital gavel.

Ben: 01:01 I'm the totally random element in this outfit, that's for sure.

Josh: 01:05 Yeah. The wild card.

Ben: 01:07 Yes!

Josh: 01:08 The joker.

Ben: 01:08 The joker!

Josh: 01:10 And plus I could buy more video cards, so that I have more weight, my decisions have more weight.

Ben: 01:14 There you go.

Starr: 01:36 And we're going to be talking about managing employees, we're going to be talking about daily operations, about ops and all that stuff.

Starr: 02:07 So how do we coordinate a bunch of, like three of us are independent workers, we've hired a bunch of independent workers, like how do we coordinate between those?

Ben: 02:15 I think that the technical term you were looking for there was "wazzoo."

Josh: 02:17 Wazzoo?

Starr: 02:18 Oh, okay, most definitely was it.

Josh: 02:51 Then reality struck.

Starr: 03:00 Yeah.

Starr: 03:21 Yeah.

Starr: 03:21 And we did not build this thing for a scale, people. We did not prematurely optimize.

Ben: 03:25 &n...

Previous Episode

Siloing Together, How to Move a Company Forward While Working Independently

Two part special! In part one, the guys chat about decision making in a siloed company structure and the challenges of making sure everyone is on the same page. That's not all! More details about the secret Honeybadger conclaves are leaked, dirty laundry is aired about the logo scandal that shook the company to its core, and America's favorite Honeybadger is revealed!

Full Transcript:
Ben: 00:00 Yeah, maybe you want to omit that from the whole thing because we probably don't want the FBI come and knock on the door and ask us, "Hey, what other customers that we have here might be...

Josh: 00:08 I like that it's a good story and...

Announcer: 00:10 So did those guys really name their app after a meme? Huh? Buckle up, fellow kids. It's time for Founder Quest.

Josh: 00:20 I mean, okay. Once you get that Trump tweet out there it brings down the hammer on you.

Ben: 00:26 No collusion.

Josh: 00:28 I like the Ben Findley's suggestion that we kind of just put out a no collusion preemptively. Like, you know a disclaimer tweet.

Ben: 00:34 Right, right.

Starr: 00:36 That works. That's law.

Josh: 00:38 Right? Yeah. I think it is.

Starr: 00:40 It's like calling shotgun.

Josh: 00:40 Right? Yeah. Just call no collusion ahead of time.

Starr: 00:46 I just wrote a message to my friend, the orthodontist to ask her about how people sell stuff to orthodontists.

Ben: 00:51 Direct mail, direct mail.

Ben: 00:54 I've always wanted to do direct mail, like designing postcards and putting them in the mail.

Starr: 01:01 You know, I'll give it to you. Like direct mail does have this sort of appeal to it, but also it's like I've never actually bought anything from direct mail. I don't think.

Josh: 01:07 You know what's big business in direct mail, is political mailers.

Starr: 01:13 Oh yeah. So let's get into those. So my friend... I'm just going to describe this in case we decided to put it in the podcast. My friend, the orthodontist, was described a marketing issue that they have. They have to do this process manually, and it's real pain in the ass. It doesn't really map well to any generic marketing solutions because they have to coordinate between a prospect who's also a patient.

Starr: 01:36 So it was medical stuff involved. They have to get in touch with their dentist, and so there's like a two party thing happening. And she's like, "Yeah, you should build me this software."

Starr: 01:45 So I just messaged her and was like, "Okay, so how do people actually buy software in orthodontist land? Do people come and like demo it for them? When they buy do they come back, and then train the staff?" Because all that stuff just sounds like a lot of work, boys. Like I don't know how to do that.

Ben: 02:06 Well. That's pretty easy to do, but yeah, that's a lot of work.

Starr: 02:08 No, I mean I would know how to do it, but I don't know how to like manage people to do it. You know what I mean?

Ben: 02:14 Wouldn't it be wild to have like a fleet of reps out across the country, out showing software and like a real enterprise-y business. On that note, an area of software sales that I've always found interesting and intriguing is school systems. Like they had the most horrendous software ,and I'm pretty sure it's only because they have to deal with companies that have to deal with their purchasing process.

Ben: 02:39 And so these companies are like, "You know what, because of your messed up purchasing process, I'm going to force you to use this craptacular software. Ha! Take that."

Starr: 02:48 Oh totally, totally. So my partner Evie was a... she used to do web stuff at this well-respected local university that I will not name. And it was just amazing hearing about the amount of money they were paying for a new CRM. Like a CRM in 2019, the University of Washington... Which is not the school that she worked at. It's much bigger than the school she worked at. Their CRM is WordPress, but no. This little private school has to have this weird enterprise-y CRM because it does all this things, meets all this requirements.

Starr: 03:28 It's like they're paying something like twenty thousand a month for it. Like, it's insane. It's insane.

Josh: 03:33 CRM or CMS?

Starr: 03:35 Oh shit. A CMS. I always get those confused. No wonder nobody calls me. No wonder I suck at sales, guys.

Ben: 03:42 You are not going to be a sales rep, Starr.

Starr: 03:44 No, I'm just publishing my sales leads for the world to see. I don't even realize it.

Ben: 03:52 We talked about Josh's food truck dream, and like one of my dreams once there's sunset money involved, and I don't really have to work anymore, what kind of things would I like to do? I think like volunteering to replace the craptacular software at schools is something that I would like to do.

Ben: 04:12 I'm just ...

Next Episode

Chunky Bacon! Let's Geek Out About Early Ruby & Rails.

The guys chat about the early days of Ruby and Rails and discuss how the developer community has changed from a more individual hacking pursuit to more of a team sport. Ben also talks about his experiences at the very first RailsConf and teaches young whippersnappers about Why The Lucky Stiff, Shoes, Caboose, and Chunky Bacon. Lastly, is BadgerConf morphing from running joke to a reality? Tune in and find out!

Full Transcript:
Ben: 00:00 All right.

Starr: 00:01 All right, are we good?

Ben: 00:02 Yep.

Josh: 00:03 Yeah, I'm already up to one megabyte.

Ben: 00:05 We are so good.

Starr: 00:06 Dang. Okay maybe we might have to back up for maximum quality, I don't know.

Ben: 00:10 We'll see how it goes.

Announcer: 00:11 They've been in business for seven years, and they still don't know what they're doing. I guess a podcast seemed natural. Here's FounderQuest.

Josh: 00:23 It should be. I've got terabyte in here, so hopefully we'll...

Ben: 00:26 Yeah. Now you're glad you bought the big disk.

Josh: 00:30 Yeah so I can podcast for an hour without crashing my computer.

Starr: 00:34 Oh that's awesome. So I have been up since four o'clock. Ida woke up at four and decided she wasn't sleeping anymore...

Ben: 00:42 Ouch.

Starr: 00:42 ...so I may lean a bit on your guys for things like making sense.

Ben: 00:46 I've been up since 1:30 because...

Josh: 00:48 No, Come on Ben.

Josh: 00:48 Oh damn, Ben, you always have to one up me.

Starr: 00:54 Alright, so, you guys recently went to RailsConf. You came back, thankfully. You weren't lured away by all those, I don't know...

Starr: 01:07 This is what I mean when I say I'm tired.

Starr: 01:10 Yeah, so you guys went to RailsConf and...

Josh: 01:13 We did get distracted by elixir along the way and...

Ben: 01:16 Today's gonna be the punch drunk podcast.

Starr: 01:19 Yes, yes it is, oh man. You guys recently came back from RailsConf, I was here in my little home office, not at RailsConf, editing the show all on my lonesome. I'm feeling pretty lonely and wistful, and now you guys are back and I'm so happy.

Ben: 01:36 You know what the best thing about RailsConf was? You didn't have to step outside to go to it. Because of all the sky bridges there, we stayed in the conference hotel, which was three blocks away from the conference center. But yet we walked through a sky bridge all the way there. So handy.

Josh: 01:53 This was in Minneapolis right?

Starr: 01:56 You know, I think that's a theme, I don't think I've been outside at any of the RailsConfs I've gone to.

Ben: 02:01 Really?

Starr: 02:03 No, even Atlanta, didn't go outside, tried to walk someplace for lunch, let me tell you, you don't walk places for lunch in Atlanta. You get in your Escalade.

Ben: 02:16 I did a lot of walking around outside in Kansas City.

Starr: 02:17 So how many RailsConfs have you guys been to?

Ben: 02:21 Oh wow.

Starr: 02:22 I've been to, I think, three or four.

Josh: 02:25 I think I've been to, two.

Starr: 02:26 I've spoken at two.

Josh: 02:27 Because I didn't go to RailsConf for a really long time because I went to RubyConf every year.

Starr: 02:33 Yeah.

Josh: 02:33 And I just never got to RailsConf until, I think Phoenix was my first year at RailsConf.

Starr: 02:40 Was it because you were trying to be one of those hipsters that who's like "I don't do Rails, I'm a Rubyist."

Josh: 02:44 Yeah, I don't do Rails, just tell me about garbage collection, okay.

Ben: 02:49 I think I've been to about eight of them.

Starr: 02:50 You went to the first one right?

Ben: 02:52 Yeah, well there's actually two first ones.

Starr: 02:55 Well that's confusing.

Ben: 02:56 Yeah, funny story. So the first official RailsConf was Chicago, but the first international RailsConf happened before the first official RailsConf. And the first international RailsConf happened in Vancouver, Canada.

Josh: &nbs...