Running a lifestyle business is awesome, contrary to what the VC's say. Figure out your life goals and fit your business to achieve them rather than worrying about 10x-ing. The guys also talk about why developers seem to experience higher rates of burnout than other professions and share their own prevention and coping solutions. Let's FounderQuest!
Links:
The 'Badger Life Blog Post: https://joshuawood.net/badger-life
Full Transcript:
Starr: 00:01 I had the voiceover guy, the voice of Barney who does our voiceovers. I had him do an intro that involves three guys trying to find personal happiness, and I may have used it once. I don't know, I just feel kind of lame putting it on there because I'm like this is too earnest. My 90s teenager self just won't let me be that earnest.
Ben: 00:22 We're pretty earnest, when you think about it.
Announcer: 00:25 Three developers, one mission. Build a business to nurture personal fulfillment. It's not stupid, it's FounderQuest.
Josh: 00:36 The Badger Life was the title of the blog post I did too that was kind of on this topic.
Starr: 00:42 Oh, that's right.
Ben: 00:43 Josh is the expert on that-
Josh: 00:45 I was just looking at it.
Ben: 00:45 We'll just have you talk the whole episode.
Josh: 00:47 No.
Ben: 00:48 Monologue.
Josh: 00:48 I mean, you want to have an episode, right? My talent is like just breaking the tension with the dumb jokes.
Starr: 00:57 Oh, I thought that was my talent.
Josh: 00:59 Well, clearly we're in trouble because Ben is the only one who can actually like talk cohesively.
Ben: 01:06 So Josh, what was your motivation for writing that blog post?
Josh: 01:11 I think just kind of sharing our view of the world. And I think we found a certain level of success with this now, and it's been something that we've been ... It's a kick that we've been on for a while, and I think it's one of the reasons we started the business was we were early starting the business to have, I think, like as a carryover from the last episode.
Josh: 01:38 We never really start the business to be some sort of like, to get us a bunch of fame and power, anything like that.
Starr: 01:44 Wait, what?
Josh: 01:48 Maybe Starr did, but yeah. I don't know, like we always ... I think the book that I had read and it's probably corny because this is .... I don't know if cliché at this point but I remember like I had just read The 4-Hour Workweek, and I was like, I want to start something that doesn't kill me and still makes a good living and all that sort of thing. That was for me to achieve my financial goals and stuff.
Josh: 02:19 I wrote this blog post, I think it was the last year. I think it's been a little while since I wrote it but-
Starr: 02:27 It's only been a year?
Josh: 02:27 Yeah, I just kind of talked about how we do things.
Starr: 02:30 Wow.
Josh: 02:30 I think it was already a year ago since I wrote that.
Starr: 02:33 I was going to say it seems like a decade ago, but ...
Ben: 02:36 Yeah, I would guess two years ago.
Josh: 02:38 Two years ago?
Starr: 02:39 That's because I have a small child so.
Josh: 02:44 Again, same here. So I don't have much of a concept of time at this point. But I have a feeling it wasn't as long as we're thinking, long ago as we're thinking.
Starr: 02:56 Yeah. So the post was called Badger Life and it sort of describes how we work, the things we value as company. And, man, the response to this was amazing like people were getting in touch with me. They're like, "How do I do this, Starr?" And I was like, "I don't know, man. Get lucky."
Starr: 03:13 Oh, no. I just ruined the podcast. No, everybody is going to unsubscribe now.
Josh: 03:19 Gosh, Starr.
Starr: 03:19 I know. I know.
Josh: 03:21 Well, I know like ...
Starr: 03:22 Ben is the one who knows everything. I'm just along for the ride.
Josh: 03:27 We had a few people mention when we were hiring, as we've hired a few people recently after being a company of three for a long time, and we've had people tell us that through that hiring process that they had read this blog post and it was one of the things that made them want to work with us.
Starr: 03:48 A question for you, Josh. Are we a lifestyle business? Are we a lifestyle business?
Josh: 03:54 I freaking hate the term but let's say, we probably are.
Starr: 03:59 Wait, what?
Ben: 04:00&...