[00:00:00] Gary: Why are there three of them that say hidden slush fund? Or is it

[00:00:03] David: Oh no, that, no you read that wrong? It's Hidden Corvette Fund. That's what that is. That is not to be spoken of

[00:00:08] Gary: If you are really saving for a Corvette, that's your own problem.

Lame.

[00:00:13] David: Oh, that hurts.

[00:00:18] David: Hi everyone. Welcome to the Biz Dev Podcast, the podcast about developing your business. I'm David Baxter, your host, and I'm joined today by Gary Voight.

And only Gary Voight, which means that half of our audience is just gonna be gone because you're the only one I'm talking to.

[00:00:33] Gary: Yeah. Sorry guys.

[00:00:36] David: You're it, man. You're the

[00:00:38] Gary: might get to speak today and then

you're already complaining

[00:00:41] David: no. I'm just gonna do a monologue for the next 20 minutes, just soliloquy. Does that work? How's it going, man? Oh, hey, that sounds a good band

[00:00:51] Gary: it's going, it's actually a song from gang star.

[00:00:55] David: I

[00:00:56] Gary: I know You're a big gang. Star fan. RIP guru.

[00:00:58] David: words. Gang star. Sounds like a bad nineties rap group. Are

[00:01:05] Gary: You were right about everything. You, except for it being bad. No, they were, they're awesome.

[00:01:11] David: Okay, so they are

[00:01:12] Gary: they, they are no more. But yeah,

[00:01:16] David: the gang star is dimmed. Ha. Oh, you see what I did there? That was good. Thank you. I'll be here all week. That

[00:01:22] Gary: be careful. Be careful.

Might be fans listening.

[00:01:26] David: of gang star? No, I'm pretty sure that's not gonna be a problem. Alright.

I think the actual problem there's for new people, not old people, and that not age and company-wise. The problem is a lot of startups and entrepreneurs don't even think about working. On the business. It's not a concept to them, especially if you were one of those people with the tech people, meaning you're the person who does whatever it is that you do, like you make the soap using our

[00:01:53] Gary: the business is just a name for you to do your thing under,

[00:01:56] David: You're just doing, you went off and you were the best soap maker in the world, and you decided you were gonna go off on your own and make your own soap. That is the, you're the tech, you're the person in it doing it. And a lot of times that's fine with you until you realize that your business cannot succeed in any way.

And 'cause when I didn't know that concept. I think Big Pixel was four or five years old when I joined C 12 originally. And they were like, you need to work on the business. I'm like, what are you talking about? What does that even mean? And so it's it's not a regular concept that everyone thinks about, but when you, once someone explains it, it's like a hit to the face, right?

That you're supposed to be thinking about. The future and you're supposed to be thinking about the culture and you're supposed to be thinking about finances and all that stuff. That's what I mean when, or anybody means when they say work on the business and you're like, oh yeah, that makes total sense.

But right now I'm too busy making the soap. Yeah. That's the end the business part. And I was guilty of that. I still get guilty of that. I am curious at what stage in business is that no longer a threat, like we come and go. Where there are times where I will go and have a good long while where I'm on the business, only on the business, I'm doing sales and I'm working on culture stuff and this that and the other.

And then there a few months go by and then suddenly I'm coding all the time. Like at what point do you get big enough that never happens? You never go back in. You know what I'm saying? I don't know when that

is

[00:03:21] Gary: Some entrepreneurs might think like, all right, once I get to a place where I'm stable and things are working through a process, then I'll have that extra time to spend on the business. But believe it or not, once you think you're gonna start to be stable and have extra time and the processes are working, you're gonna find more ways to create more things that need more processes and more time.

And

[00:03:45] David: You're gonna grow, right?

It's if you're the tech, you're the best soap maker, you started your business and make your soap, you're really good at it, by definition, right? You

[00:03:55] Gary: me think of Fight Club when you say soap maker.

[00:03:57] David: That's not soap anyway. You, but you're really good at it, right? You wouldn't have started the business if you weren't good at whatever it is. I'm using soap as a cheesy example. Whatever it is, you were good at it. So it's always so tempting when you grow to dive back into making the soap. You get to the point where you're stable.

Like you're talking about, I, let's say you're at three or four people and those three or four people are doing really great and you're at this nice little plateau, but then you're like, I want to grow. And you bring on new clients. Do you bring more technicians in and now you're working and now you have cash things and whatever.

Or do you just dive back in and start making soap? And that's where it's always this roller coaster. I'm I. Yeah, until you get to the point where you're just so far removed from making the proverbial soap here, that it's just not even an idea that you could jump back in, like maybe in tech.

It's funny for me, one of the reasons that I got out of doing the day to day for a couple years, couple, few years was because I couldn't write the code anymore. For most of the first several years, even when we had employees, everything was written for our clients. I knew how to write. I, and so I would go and double check it, and then if somebody missed a deadline, I would dive in and fix the issues, right?

That was me for years. And then we started writing a language I don't personally know, and so I couldn't do it. I had to rely on the team, which is probably healthier in a lot of ways. But here's the ironic part, I AI came to be, and now I don't need to know the languages anymore, so I can code anything.

And so now I'm back into it. Now I code everywhere. I'm in almost every project again because I can be. And that's just weird. That's unique to our world and our business is soap doesn't change like that, or jeans or whatever you're making. But in our world, that has been a very strange thing. So now I'm back in the thick of it again, and it's weird.

It's cool, but it's weird.

[00:05:48] Gary: It is crazy to see how much the integration of AI into the coding has changed the way we do things.

[00:05:55] David: Oh,

[00:05:56] Gary: crazy to see that it's, it can be super helpful, but it could also be super annoying. But at the same time it takes away limitations, like you said, like now you can go to anything as long as you know how to speak to the AI instead of just actually write the language.

[00:06:12] David: And that is its own skillset.

[00:06:14] Gary: can create stuff in JavaScript that I've no idea what I'm talking about

when it comes to writing the code,

but I chat, GPT will write it for me.

[00:06:23] David: And then that's the thing. It's like there, that vibe coding thing that's real. But the problem is that Vibe coder is some sloppy, nasty mess. 'cause AI will just throw it out there. So where the skillset comes in on that side of it is learning how to talk to AI in a way that a coder only can talk to ai.

And so it's weird 'cause we're hiring, right? Or we've been trying to hire and we're like, what do we hire for? Because normally we say we need a C sharp developer or we need a React developer or whatever, and we say, find a good person, bring 'em in. Let's quiz 'em on that language and make sure they're really good at that.

Now that

[00:07:01] Gary: Yeah. What's the quiz gonna be now?

Prompt AI to build this in less than five minutes.

[00:07:07] David: so now that's exactly the question is so Scott, who's our lead dev, we're like, how do we interview this guy now? And. The, what we've come up with is we're gonna do it in two different ways. We're gonna choose and do a normal technical interview. The old fashioned way, whatever they say they're good at, we're gonna test them on it.

And really, we just wanna know if they know how to code. And then I'm gonna interview them on, do they know ai? I'm gonna show them how we use ai. We have it all written down, big old methodology, how we use ai. I'm gonna give it to them, and then I'm gonna give them a problem to solve using ai. So that's the best we've come up with so far.

But it's just so weird. And I, we've gotten totally off track. I'm, I,

[00:07:52] Gary: Yeah, I was gonna say to bring it back to spending time working on your business rather than in your business, this is also a place now that since you've gotten back into coding, 'cause you can. You can potentially get out of it quicker and then weave in and out without spending a lot of time taken away from working on the business.

You know what I mean?

If you need to jump in on a project and help out, it's not gonna be a week that you have to, dedicate to it. You could do it in a day and then spend the rest of the week. Working on the businesses again. So for the newer startups and the newer entrepreneurs, that's an efficiency where they can really try to capitalize on and get their head out of the actual weeds and back into focusing on the business more. I know that there's always, we've had plenty of consultants on here that you could hire them hourly or whatever, weekly, temporary to try to help

put your processes in place and help you work on the business. Then I can also understand the resistance there of I'll do that when I can afford that, and when I can afford that means that I have to create more of this soap to sell.

So I have to get better and faster at that first before I can go back and dedicate money and time to working on the

[00:09:03] David: It is a

[00:09:04] Gary: And that too can be a detriment because yeah, you're just biting yourself in the tail all the time.

[00:09:09] David: I would say, 'cause there is those people and nothing against those people, specifically those consultants, those PR know partial this and that. But I would say if you're brand new and this is your first rodeo, making your first business that, going through that struggle of learning how to do all those different things.

How to do your finances, how to do your sales, how to do, how to build your culture. You should never farm that out by the way. However you could bring in external people to help with accounting. For instance, no accounting's, probably not bookkeeping or something like that, but how your

[00:09:44] Gary: What's the term? It's not partial. It's fractional.

[00:09:47] David: fractional. Yeah

[00:09:48] Gary: roles.

[00:09:49] David: but, you, those consultants exist to, to lighten your load. But I do think there is a period of every entrepreneur's. Process that they need to struggle with those things. They need to understand

[00:09:59] Gary: Learn. Learn as much As, they can. As, yeah.

[00:10:02] David: Yeah. You need to know how your business works. 'cause our business is different than another business in the same industry because I am different and every founder is different.

Every founder has their own little quirks and their own little ways that they want to do something. So figuring out what that is, what are your quirks as the new entrepreneur? What is your fingerprint? Put that mark on your business like and easy example for us, we are cash only. We don't do debt. We don't go too fast.

We don't go and buy things we can't afford. We live in the world of cash. I'm not saying we'll never get a loan. I'm not Dave Ramsey in it here, but that's a quirk for us. We don't. We don't rely on a credit line, which is very common. I'm not saying that's bad. That's us. And so that

[00:10:48] Gary: But that's something you had to understand how to operate in different circumstances and situations

[00:10:54] David: Yeah. And in practicality,

[00:10:55] Gary: Yeah.

[00:10:56] David: what that means is we have a ton of bank accounts. And they all have little names on it. It drives my wife who does our finances

[00:11:02] Gary: Okay.

[00:11:02] David: our accountant. Absolutely nuts. 'cause I have 'cause this is how I like to open up the bank and I like to see where things are.

It's just how my brain works. And so I have, this is my fingerprint again. I have I think eight bank accounts that all have little names on 'em. 'cause you can name them now right in your banking app. And they all have names and that says, okay, alright, I understand this is reserves, this is taxes, this is whatever, bonuses or whatever.

We save

[00:11:27] Gary: Why are there three of them that say hidden slush fund? I don't. Or is it

[00:11:30] David: Oh no, that, no you read that wrong? It's Hidden Corvette Fund. That's what that is. That is not to be spoken

of.

[00:11:36] Gary: If you are really saving for a Corvette, that's your own problem.

Lame.

[00:11:41] David: Oh, that hurts.

Oh man. I wanted to see it so bad. But that's for a different podcast.

[00:11:46] Gary: So

you're opening you have multiple bank accounts that you check.

[00:11:50] David: yeah. All the

[00:11:51] Gary: to organize and

[00:11:52] David: my wife absolutely bunkers.

[00:11:54] Gary: based business in line.

[00:11:55] David: But that's that's us. That's me. That's how I do it. If you could be a, and here's the fun part. You could be a cash guy just like me, but do it completely differently. And as the founder, you need to understand enough that you can put your fingerprint on it so that you know how your business runs.

If you farm that out to early and it's their fingerprint rather than yours, I think you're doing yourself a disservice. That's just my 2 cents, but that's, that I think

[00:12:21] Gary: Here's an odd question and just for my own curiosity, can you, if you have investors and you take on investors and they have a stake in your company, can you even operate as a cash business or no, at that point?

[00:12:33] David: By definition, you're

[00:12:34] Gary: several line of credits to keep them right? Yeah.

[00:12:37] David: You could, I guess let's let's use silly numbers. Someone gives you a hundred thousand dollars, that's a hundred thousand dollars loan for all intents and purposes right now it's not a bank. They're not gonna call it et cetera.

But it's different when it's an investor. But for all intents and purposes, they want that money back plus a lot more. So you by definition, but from that point on, you have that sitting over in the corner. The rest of your business could be cash. Sure. You could say, I don't take any more other loans.

Yeah, you could do that. But you would have a loan just by definition, over off the side, even though it's not a loan. That stuff gets super complicated, which I very know, like the tippy top of the iceberg there. I'm trying to learn more myself on how that works, just because our clients ask me all the time how it works.

And there's a whole vocab weird stuff like safes and there's other ones that I'm just forgetting. You know what a safe no. It's not the box you keep your guns in. You're a life-sized thing that you keep in your living room, that you keep your guns in. That's not what we're

[00:13:32] Gary: No. It's the thing behind the painting in the living room that you just take a paperclip in a, in a toothpick and you can get right in

[00:13:40] David: Yeah. I just use my superhero to

[00:13:42] Gary: the headphones. Yeah.

[00:13:43] David: Yeah.

I just stethoscope. I use the stethoscope and that's

[00:13:46] Gary: If you just go real slow, it automatically opens. It's

what happens on tv. Yeah.

[00:13:51] David: I am sure that people who make safes, which you know, there's probably 10 of them in the world, they probably look at those scenes the same way we look at hacking scenes in, in

[00:14:01] Gary: or designers look at tech stuff. Oh yeah. The Just zoom in, enhance, zoom

[00:14:07] David: Oh yeah, no. Or.

[00:14:07] Gary: as someone who's been working with pixels for 20 plus

years. Yeah, Never happening.

[00:14:12] David: invent some new pixels. My favorite thing is like every government site just has one big button at any point in time on every screen. It's like log in button, hack button. It's I love that. But anyway

[00:14:25] Gary: is no super enhance, like AI generated super

enhancements. But again it's not, it's guessing. It's, you're not gonna be able to enhance someone's, reflection in the sunglasses of someone sitting at a cafe two blocks away

to find out who this pie

[00:14:39] David: Now I have heard, and I don't know if this is true, I have heard that the cameras up on these satellites are so good that they can read license plates from space. I don't know if that's like a Joe Rogan crazy's conspiracy thing, but I have heard that, that the military version of GPS is so good.

They can read license plates,

[00:14:59] Gary: I know they could read heat signatures

at ground level or subsurface, so

Yeah,

[00:15:05] David: man. So crazy.

[00:15:15] AD: BigPixel builds world class custom software and amazing apps. Our team of pros puts passion into every one of our projects. Our design infused development leans heavily on delivering a great experience for our clients and their clients. From startups to enterprises, we can help craft your ideas into real world products that help your business do better business.

[00:15:42] Gary: What are the benefits of taking that time out and working on the business? What do, what's the return someone can expect or hope for from that, instead of just solely focusing on being in the business?

[00:15:55] David: I would almost flip that question

[00:15:57] Gary: that benefit him?

[00:15:58] David: if you don't do it, you're gonna just hit a wall. You can only be so big, right? You can only fill your bucket if you focus. If you're in the business every day, you come in every day and your head's down, making soap, making software, making jeans, whatever it is you're making, you're gonna hit a

[00:16:15] Gary: off tasks and filling your quota and

[00:16:17] David: yeah, you're just a freelancer for that matter.

Even if you have multiple people working for you, you're filling a bucket because if you're not on the business, then the business, you're not getting your brand out there, right? So no one's calling you, you're not networking, you're

[00:16:30] Gary: about brand. Yeah.

[00:16:31] David: You're not doing. Now, you could have a brand guy who's constantly doing, like we have a brand, Christie's lovely.

She constantly is pushing our brand out there and that takes that off of my plate. But there's several, there are things that only a founder can do. There's the old, my favorite Dave Ramsey story is like, he decided early on to focus on only the things he could do. And in those days, he was the only one who could write the books.

So he wrote the books, but anybody else could. Package the books, move the books, sell the books, et cetera, build the website, all that. He could delegate all that, but he could only do this. And when you're a startup, that list that only you can do is actually quite large. You're the only one who's hiring people.

You're the only one who's getting your name out there. You are the only one who is, taking the time to write some core values. You're the only one

[00:17:19] Gary: And you are the one. I was gonna say, you're the one that has the idea in your head of how you want your company to work,

and that's not something you could just easily, give to someone else to carry through. It's something you've developed in your head over years and years.

Probably working for someone or multiple other companies.

[00:17:35] David: Yeah. Why did you do this To begin with? It wasn't to give yourself a job. I think that's one of those quotes that someone sold me. It was a friend of mine, his name is Bob. Now I'm sure he stole it from someone that I cannot, give attribute to, but he told me, he's no one started a business to give themselves a job.

And that is so true. I can get a job at a lot of places, but I could only run big pixel and I didn't do that. And some of that is a financial thing. You didn't start 'cause you could go make X dollars and if you make X dollars in your own company, you are doing something wrong. 'cause you're taking enormous amounts of risk.

And that should be have value attached to it. But outside of that is you started this company, whatever it is, to do things in a certain way and everyone has a, that in their head, I'm gonna do it better by doing X. Just write

[00:18:24] Gary: There's also I know like for me and for other people that I know. Just using design in that industry. As an example, many years ago there was a big shift in the media and a lot of places that hired designers had design, divisions and all that. A lot of people got let go and then, so there was a big influx of designers being freelance, but then also treating it like it's their own business. And you saw the difference between the ones who took that from being a freelancer and having their own business. To then creating an agency with multiple other designers and turning that into a company or the ones that were freelancing, had contracts at other companies and then got hired by other companies.

You know what I mean?

So they might not have started just, they might have actually just started just to have a job, but then eventually took a job instead of built it out into a larger company.

[00:19:21] David: The old joke was that when we were young, the word entrepreneur meant unemployed.

Fast forward to today, consulting means unemployed. I can't tell you how many people you will see on LinkedIn and whatever, and they've started some consulting business, cool places, rs, cool websites, rs.com or whatever, and all that is a place to fill in. They don't have any clients.

They might have one. There was an uncle somewhere. But they're not real. And it just a way so you don't have a gap in your resume and you start to see those and you start noticing them. My favorite is the ones who have them while they have the job. And

[00:19:58] Gary: availability.

[00:19:59] David: yeah, it's come on.

[00:20:01] Gary: They're unemployed, but they're limited availability,

[00:20:05] David: yeah, call for an appointment 'cause I'm super busy, but and those can be real. But they're often not. Heck, that's, I had a company before called Visionary Online that was basically that for years I even had jobs and it was still on my resume. I think I finally removed that at some point.

But it's just, that's the modern way of hiding that you were unemployed for a while, which I don't really get, but you are what you are.

I think it's important to note, and I don't think you'll actually disagree with me here. Brand is way more than a logo,

[00:20:36] Gary: for

[00:20:36] David: I think. I think

[00:20:38] Gary: the one guy did not understand that.

[00:20:40] David: sure.

And I think though you could almost, they're not quite synonyms, but they often, they're gonna collide. The word brand and reputation are often very similar. What you, who you are, what you stand for, how you do business is your brand. And that's the logo and the pretty side of a brand and hugely important, please don't get me wrong, but if you're not a, if you're not the creative type, the guy who could make a logo and you have no money to go and pay someone for a logo, don't think that you can just say, oh I guess I'm not gonna work on my branding.

That's not true. Your branding is so important. You're building your brand. Regardless, like a good example, you can see all sorts of plumbers and handymen who have just a truck and no logo at all, just a phone number. And they're busy for years, not because of anything on their truck, but because they have built a reputation, their brand, when they, when you know, Joe calls his friend Frank and says, I need a plumber.

That's their brand, speaking to them. It's not the logo. It's that reputation that company has built by doing and standing for something and being something. I think that's important. Again, I love the pretty stuff and we focus really hard on the pretty

[00:21:58] Gary: and those guys that you just mentioned, they usually have their logo done by the sign company that's gonna put the vinyl in their truck, and they're just horrible

[00:22:06] David: Oh, they're bad. And then, and that's

[00:22:08] Gary: yeah.

[00:22:09] David: It's fine. Like one 800 junk is one of my favorite stories. The guy actually found out that phone number is owned by the government and harassed that government agency. It was like they weren't even using it, and he harassed them for years and years.

Finally, they gave him that number.

[00:22:23] Gary: would that fit?

Oh, just about all of them. Okay. Yeah.

[00:22:26] David: It was, it didn't spell anything at the time, right? It was just one 800, whatever

[00:22:30] Gary: Oh, it's just numbers. the number combination. Nice.

[00:22:32] David: And so it was owned by like parks and recreational, like Idaho. I don't, I'm making that up, but it was something, and they weren't even using it and they finally gave him this number 'cause he knew.

I could build off of this.

And his entire brand was simply that phone number had nothing to do with anything. Now he's the bazillionaire and he runs the largest junk company in the country because he had an idea, he had a way of doing things. Anyway, I just think the pretty stuff is important, and I don't wanna discount that.

But if you can't do that doesn't mean you're not gonna work on your brand. You've got a lot to do.

Yeah. And I think if you don't do that first, because I think that's another thing is I like, it's not uncommon for an entrepreneur to say, okay, I need a dot com and I need a logo like day one. I think that's stupid, and here's why.

If you don't know who you are and why you're in business, you haven't written your core values you haven't written a mission statement that says who you are, your logo is not gonna be right. It could be gorgeous, but it's not gonna be right. It's not gonna mean anything.

And you gotta do the non pretty stuff first, then do the pretty stuff.

If you do that backwards, you're gonna end up doing the pretty stuff twice, so don't do that.

Do you think we have enough content for Kristy to not be mad at us?

[00:23:40] Gary: Yeah. Yeah. She's never really mad at us. She's just, slightly disappointed.

[00:23:45] David: Constantly disappointed.

Thank you everybody for joining us this week. We will be back next week with our fabulous guest. I don't know who it is, but it'll be great. You'll love it.

[00:23:55] Gary: You

won't have to deal with me anymore.

[00:23:57] David: Thank

[00:23:58] Gary: See you next week.

[00:23:59] David: Bye.

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