The Slog | Episode 11

In this episode of the BizDev Podcast, David and Gary start the show off by discussing the recent New York Times article, “What Bosses Really Think About the Future of the Office”. Next, they pick up where they left off on the conversation about “The Slog”, what does it mean to go through the slog as a startup, and why you must keep going. Then they wrap up by discussing Iceland’s mocking video of the Zuckerberg’s Metaverse with their new tourism ad.

Here are the links to all mentioned articles in this episode:

New York Times - What Bosses Really Think About the Future of the Office
Gizmodo - Iceland Skewers Mark Zuckerberg's Metaverse With New Tourism Ad

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David Baxter - CEO of Big Pixel

Gary Voigt - Creative Director at Big Pixel

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David Baxter has been designing, building, and advising startups and businesses for over ten years. His passion, knowledge, and brutal honesty have helped dozens of companies get their start.

In Biz/Dev, David and award-winning Creative Director Gary Voigt talk about current events and how they affect the world of startups, entrepreneurship, software development, and culture.

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Transcript

David: 0:00

And the other thing that's really funny is he custom made a net that it's not a net, it's a piece of wood with a string over it so that when you graze it, it'll act like a net, if that makes sense.

Gary: 0:10

Yeah, it won't bounce it, you'll have a little bit of give there. It's the

David: 0:13

rest of its solid woods. So as opposed to normally hidden, you hit the net, it just stops, right. I'm

Gary: 0:18

just trying to imagine you hit the net. Here it comes right

David: 0:20

back at your face. So that's weird. Hi, everyone. Welcome to the biz dev Podcast, the podcast about developing your business. I'm David Baxter, your host and I'm joined as always by Gary Boyd.

Gary: 0:35

How's it going? Man? It's going good. Good to be back in.

David: 0:38

We have so long Well,

Gary: 0:38

we've done so many of these episodes now that it's like we just got to 10 and I

David: 0:43

was very excited about that. I cannot believe it's been 10 weeks. Because we do one a week and that's a lot longer than I thought it had been. It's so it feels less than that. Feel good feeling like we're getting in the groove. All six people who listen to it every weaker are enjoying it.

Gary: 0:58

I think it's becoming our wives and more fun, and slightly less bad.

David: 1:05

I think you're I think you're aiming for the stars there.

Gary: 1:08

No, I really, it's really fun to do so.

David: 1:10

But it's it's a good start. It's a good start for fun.

Gary: 1:14

Just want to get back to that. 10 episodes

David: 1:17

for the mighty 10 episode.

Gary: 1:19

big milestone.

David: 1:19

Yeah. Big, big mess. It's funny, we use Buzzsprout to publish this thing. And they are very good. I get emails and they say, Hey, you had 20 People listen to your podcast, you've had 50 people. And I'm like, I know these numbers are tiny, tiny, but they still make you feel really,

Gary: 1:38

especially when the email comes with like a nice, like, celebratory trophy with confetti behind it. And like Marilyn Dunn is awesome.

David: 1:47

No one I mean, the numbers are still so tiny. I mean, at some point, I guess they start going into real numbers 1000s and 10s of 1000s. And whatever. As long

Gary: 1:55

as we're not going into the negatives, we're good. So

David: 1:58

no one's kicking us off yet.

Gary: 2:00

I will pay for podcasting.

David: 2:04

When you're well at some point just so bad, they just kick you off. Apple says you do not meet our requirements. So today, we're going to talk about this article I found in the New York Times, where they interviewed a bunch of really good big CEOs like Sundar Pichai, from Google, and the leader of PwC. And Miller Knoll, which I didn't know was the name of the company here at Herman Miller are the chairs, Aeron chairs that everyone loves? I'm sitting in one right now. And all these people, and they were talking about, hey, what do you think about the future of the office? Now the pandemic has happened now that remote work is a thing. What do you see this as the future? So I thought this was really an interesting point. And I thought it was worth talking. Yeah, some

Gary: 2:50

of it. I read through it. And some of it seemed a little predictable. Some of it seemed like, yeah, that makes sense. But I was a little caught off guard by some, I guess the guy, the guy who runs the is it a hedge fund? Or is it just a financial institution and PwC? That is big old consultant. It's a consulting firm. Okay. Yeah, his opinions well valid, and he made some decent points. But yeah, I wasn't expected to read that from him. He believes everybody should be back in the office. And he believed that the only way for younger employees to actually climb the ladder and get better at their job is through interacting with older, more experienced employees, meeting people face to face shaking hands talking about work in the lunchroom, being there on a set schedule, like it was really buttoned up nine to five, kind of, I guess, what I would consider an old school mentality of going to the office every day type work,

David: 3:44

we'll see. I thought that was to me, the meat potatoes, from my perspective, because everyone's talking about, hey, remote work is the King, I don't want to come to the office anymore. And I understand that. And in full disclosure, big pixel is all US based workers, but we are been remote for years, we have not been together, I haven't met half of the people who work for me, just because of the nature of our work. So we the other dealt with these problems,

Gary: 4:10

that industry can also dictate if that's necessary for what he does. If you're meeting with people, and you're talking about their finances and where they're going. They want to see you face to face and have like, some sort of sense of trust on who you are as a person for meeting you and talking to you and building a relationship over time. That makes total sense. Yeah. So in that situation is completely valid

David: 4:32

in our world. I originally in my head when I started the company in 2013. I had the idea that I was going to have an office with a roomful of devs. And it was going to be awesome. And for lots of different reasons in our history that did not work out and we ended up using a lot of contractors and then we hired most of those contractors. And so I had to deal with this same the questions everyone's asking now about because because of the pandemic I was Asking five years ago. So I struggled with the exact same thing is how do you build a culture here? How do people really relate here when everybody is remote? Now this was before zoom was really usable. I mean, we had a ton of ones that were all very bad.

Gary: 5:15

This was probably the Zoom was like the email and GoTo Meeting phase of remote work.

David: 5:20

Yes, you had go to meeting you had WebEx you had all those. And they were they function, but they were not nearly as easy as zoom. And in that generation we have now. And what I thought was really interesting, though, and you nailed it, the guy from Price Waterhouse, I think he's 100%. Right? that a young person. So if I'm 40 years old, I've been doing my job for 15 years, or 30 years old, I've been doing it for five or 10 years, I know how to do my job, right. And I can do that isolated in my home office or whatever. But if I'm 23, and I'm straight out of school, I have no idea how to work not really. And I think you taking that purely, I think you're going to really hurt that person's ability to grow as a, as a worker, as a manager, especially if they never get face to face with someone like that fresh generation right out of school that's coming out of this pandemic, I think they're going to be adversely affected in their careers compared to you're on 40. And this remote thing is fine. Yeah.

Gary: 6:16

Now, it's also because that's what we grew up with. And that's what we came through. And that just seemed to be the established way things seem to be changing. So I don't see that it would be impossible for them not to I just see, it would be difficult, it's definitely a challenge that's going to have to come up and like you said, just being around an older employee as a mentor type role just to kind of learn, even if it's not how to work, or do your specific job, just how that company runs, and what they expect of you. Because not everything is going to be you know, in a document download or over a Zoom meeting with an HR rep, you're going to have to learn the ins and outs.

David: 6:53

Maybe I'm an old guy, but to me, there's all the intangibles that you missed out on like your your boss's boss's boss, you run into him, or her at in the elevator, yeah, or in the lunchroom and you strike a conversation and you both find out that you're into coffee, and you talk about that, and you just built a relationship there that will serve you know, on accident, this is all serendipity kind of stuff,

Gary: 7:17

where you went to the same and you miss that. And then next thing you know, you were talking about the football team? You

David: 7:23

Yeah, you know, or you're both interested in same sports team or whatever. And that starts a conversation. He's like, Hey, I'd like talking to you. Why don't you come help me with x project? Right? And your career path literally just changed? Absolutely. But I don't I can't say I even when I run a remote company, I can't say that. I don't miss that. Our devs you know, struggling with a problem and they get up and they go to the lunch room and they're getting water or whatever. And they're noodling on it someone walks in, and hey, how's it going? Well, I'm struggling with XYZ. Hey, have you tried this? We've lost? Yeah,

Gary: 7:55

we just have random before, it's not someone they would have really expected to ask or have an answer for them. So it's not like they would reach out specifically to that person. But like you said, it's just

David: 8:06

they don't want to bother. Right? Right. I don't want to bother you. Because Because now it's it's I'm reaching out to you and I interrupting your day, you already were off out of your desk, you're already taking a five minute break or 10 minute break or whatever, you're not bothering this person, you ran into them in the break room, I totally get that. But at the same time, all these other people who say hey, you don't have to come to work anymore. I totally get it. The younger generation is going to insist upon this. Now, I agree with all of that. But I will say that it still strikes me as wrong in my head. This is because to me, it's like my guys, I have a thing that if I am talking to someone, one of my teammates, and it's after five my time I feel guilty bothering them. It's built into me that the day is supposed to be over five or six, right? So if I'm pinging you at 630 at night, because something blew up, I feel guilt. But these guys, a lot of our teammates, they don't start until 10. Or they took three hours off because either goes up, do something personal and they're fine working right there. They're fine working from till eight o'clock at night because they took a big chunk of the day. And that is still weird to me. The Work Day has changed for sure. So last week, we mentioned the concept that I talked about a lot with my clients. It's called the slog. And I wanted to dive into that a little deeper, because I think it's it's an important subject and almost every business owner at some point in their career has gone through what is this long, well done. So the slog is it. The word literally means to work hard. But in my context, when I say it's time to go through the slog, it is the time of a startups life. It's early on, but it can be a very long period of time, where the fun exciting stuff is over. And now your job is to make the world care because I've mentioned it before, but every startup I have, or even business owner existing business who's creating something new, anyone creating something new, everyone secretly believes that when they put turn the lights on, and it's all done, that suddenly people have been waiting for this thing. And they're going to all show up. And they are in every I tell that story to every startup and they say, Oh, not me, I totally have a realistic expectation. But I've seen the light in their eyes. So here's the scenario where the slog begins. So when you come to us, and you say, Hey, I've got this idea, I'd like you to help me build it great. The first thing we do is we give you a design. And boy, the client just lights up, right, I can see for the first time, I can see my ideas in front of vision. It's gorgeous being brought to life. They're being brought to life. That's right. And they're all excited. I mean, this is they are on cloud nine the world, it couldn't be better. And then we start building. And we start deploying, and weeks go by and we're building and building and they're excited, because they're again, they're seeing their dreams come alive. The building is being built. And then we're finished. And we've got everything up. And we go live. And boy, they're excited. The bells are ringing in their head, and they're all there they did just beside themselves giddy like a bad girl at Christmas. And then no one cares. And that's right. And then and everyone and even the ones just Oh yeah, I'm totally realistic about this. You can see the light in the IDI. Yeah, unfortunately, because no one cares. And I tell them this honor times. But everyone and I wouldn't be fair, when I started this podcast, you know, I had secret dreams that 1000s of people were waiting to hear the dulcet tones coming out of my mouth. No one cared. No one cared. And, and that's fine. But the slog is where startups go to die. And this is what I try to tell everybody about because I want you to know it's coming. I'm not a very big believer is I want you to go through life with your eyes wide open. You can you know, know that you're about to do something hard, know that you're about to do something stupid, that's fine. It's your call, you're an adult. But just know that it's coming. Right. The slog is that thing. So when whenever one is done, and no one cares, and you're not making any money, and you're, you know, your visits to your site are single digits, maybe double. If you're excited and have an exciting day, your job is to keep going and to keep pushing. And to keep making those phone calls when everybody says no, I'm not interested, when everybody is just annoyed with you. This is what the slog is so and it can last for years. Well,

Gary: 12:43

it might seem like, since this thing is done being built, and it's there, it's living, you might consider that, okay, so we're at the end stage of this, everything is done. We're actually that's basically the time we have to start. And you have to start doing that, I guess, information out to the people that need to hear it and somehow, well, then audience or build some sort of,

David: 13:06

I want to back up with that, because it's important what I tell everybody in this. So many startups do this wrong, including our clients, much to my chagrin, when they say it's time for me to start building this. I tried to change the conversation. And now it's time for you to market this. Look, I don't have anything to show, get. That's not the point. Your job is to sell the idea to people get on podcasts, do whatever, build a list, a mailing list, whatever it takes, get your name out there and start talking from day one. Because even when you have something to show, no one cares, build the hype, get that process going while we are building otherwise, you're literally starting from a dead stop. And you've spent all this money. And if you started earlier, you kind of have a rolling start. It's not a fast start, but it's at least rolling rather than just dead. Because then you can build the hype machine up and you can say, hey, this is coming. It's like It's like we there's a store that just opened near us called crumble. They make cookies. And six months ago, they put their sign up said crumble cookies. My wife started stalking them every week,

Gary: 14:29

and she heard it before. It was a brand new not until

David: 14:32

she saw the signs she wouldn't load them up and said, Oh my gosh, I must have these cookies. She'd never heard of them before. And she started stalking them for months and months and months and they finally opened and it was a glorious day and we bought good but she but that sign was such a statement to her right it was it was coming. And that's the kind of thing Hey, this we're going to solve your problem whatever you're in my wife's case it was she needed cookies, but it could be whatever your startup is all about. And that needs to start early but the blog is where I want to make sure of is that I'm clear on, if you're in it for the money, if you're is you started this idea because you want a quick sell, which I get all the time, which to me is a yellow flag. And I tell them that, hey, if you're in this for the money, you're gonna, you're not going to make any money, you're going to spend a lot, you're going to lose it. Because that desire to make this big exit, to make your sell the business for millions of millions of dollars, even if that's true, even if that actually happens, that's years away. Right? And in between now, and that magical day is the slog. And that slog is going to be brutal, it is draining it is, it's no fun. And if you're in it for the money that payday four years from now, is not going to keep you going, you're going to bail, almost guaranteed. I've seen it I've seen it many times, that if you're in it for the passion, because you want to solve this problem, because you love what you do. The slog is so hard. But you're going to get through it, you're going to push through it, if you're enjoying what you're doing, you're going to keep going that's that's the nugget I want to get across.

Gary: 16:12

So I can consider this the the same story that most startups who are successful and do end up maybe selling their business down the line, kind of similar backstory where they're all just passionate about solving that problem, getting it out into the world and trying to affect as many people as possible in a positive way. Not in for the quick fix.

David: 16:33

Well, it's you reminded me, so one of my favorite podcasts. And if you're listening to us, then you need to go and find how I built this, which is one of the best podcasts on startups on the planet. They interview startup founders, the big ones, Airbnb, Kickstarter, whatever. There's tons of them. And every one of them's Great. One of the things I thought was interesting about Kickstarter was they were talking about overnight successes, and everybody's like, you know, Kickstarter is an overnight success. It's like we were here eight years before we got any traction at all eight years, or we were trying different things. We were pivoting, we were doing this but we had the core idea and we wanted it to be successful. And so we kept at it. And so everybody's saying oh overnight success, no eight years. And Airbnb is the same way. Now they have an amazing story where they sold cereal and crazy stuff get huge gotta loosen that podcast, but

Gary: 17:29

it is a guessing at both of those companies, when they were in the slog, were actively trying to promote themselves and act. That way, their idea, the

David: 17:41

way out of the slog is exactly what you're saying, you've got to make people care. Because no one cares. If you build it, no one will come. It's not the Field of Dreams here. It's the opposite. Your job as the founder of the company is to be the greatest cheerleader on the planet and make people care. That's it. That's the only job. And when people tell me when we're starting Oh, well, you know, I can't do tech. So you're really important to this equation. And I'm no, no, no, let me flip that on the head. At the end of the day, I am 10% of your success. If I build you the greatest app in the planet, I am 10% of your success. Your success is 90% on your shoulders, founder person. And you need to remember that and keep that in drumbeat. I'm a very small part of this, which leads us to a different discussion about how much you should give in and if you're if you're giving equity away to a developer, how much you should give away. I will dive into better now. Yeah, I'm not going to dive into that now. But I will say is not as much as you think. Because it sounds like they are critical and that they're the only people on the planet and they're, you know, and they'll sell themselves like that, but don't fall for it. We could talk about that in detail later. But the the slog is, it's slow. It's long, but the way out, is to make people care. It's that simple.

Gary: 19:05

So now we're going to move into the metaverse and take a trip. I know you probably didn't think it was available for everybody yet, but if you go on YouTube, you can see Iceland has made it available to everybody. It's not the metaverse though what is it? That's the Iceland verse.

David: 19:19

I loved this Okay, so if you haven't seen this video, which we'll put in the show notes because you probably haven't it is beautiful and perfectly done that dude looks just like Mark Zuckerberg. He nailed the creepy factor that we talked about previous weeks.

Gary: 19:34

But he nailed it. He nailed the mannerisms that they like the just the background the atmosphere the little sarcastic.

David: 19:41

It didn't make me want to move to Iceland to oh my gosh places funerals. But yes, it the video is is this guy tell him that you don't need a metaverse. It's all right here. It's it's a wonderful video.

Gary: 19:53

Complete and immersive. Water feels like water. So

David: 19:57

100% immersive I think did another one what the other thing I love he called it the Iceland worse work. It wasn't a Wii, it was a W. You did that once. And I'm like, that had to been on purpose. But they did another one where you could go to a website and record yourself screaming, like, you're angry scream and they would broadcast it over loudspeakers and make it echo in the mountains. Wow. Yeah, does it mean cuz it's just like, you know, just rock out there, just volcanic volcanoes. And it was a there was another one of these ad campaigns. I just they they've got their finger on the pulse. They're tourism people are spot on with

Gary: 20:44

Yeah, this has to be done by the board of tourism. And just, they even say in this that they don't really take themselves so seriously, and they're pretty easygoing. But, man, it's perfectly timed. Perfectly done. Yeah, very well done. It's worth it. I want to go to Iceland.

David: 21:01

Oh, my gosh, what you know, it's, it's weird, though. I had always been told that Iceland was poorly named Iceland and Greenland had their names reversed. Because Iceland is actually covered in green. And Greenland is actually covered in ice. But that was pictures. Everything was ice. So now I'm just confused. So now I need to go to both just to make sure

Gary: 21:22

I knew a guy from Reykjavik. When I was

David: 21:25

Reykjavik, you're saying? Reykjavik Reykjavik.

Gary: 21:28

I'm sure he already knows

David: 21:30

the Hard Rock. I had a t shirt from there.

Gary: 21:33

Exactly what you imagine it was. Can I use the surfer actually tall? blond kid blue eyes looks like he's from I guess, a candy box from Switzerland or something? Yeah. Just stereotypical. His name was Joe. No accent or anything like. So did you grow up here like this is when I first met him. We work together. He's like now I'm actually from Iceland. Like, Well, if there's people there.

David: 21:58

It's not just polar bears. What in the world?

Gary: 22:01

And the way he explained it to me. Apparently, the city life is insane. Almost like New York City and La combined. The country is like the best vacation you'll ever take to get away from things. He said. Everybody's super nice. And from what he was describing, I'd really like to go visit.

David: 22:20

Or the one thing I've heard, again, sounds like an ad for Iceland. And yet neither of us know what we're talking Oh, that means their video worked. That video worked, right. We're talking about in our little podcast. One thing I've heard about their nightlife is because they have so many months where there's no darkness. Oh, well, and vice versa. Like the the you know, they've six months that it's all sun in six months where there's no sun kind of thing. Yeah. Their parties go into like three four in the morning because no one's tired. Because there's it's sunny out. It's It's very strange. But I definitely think that they nailed the metaverse thing to bring it back. I'm bringing it back full circle here, too. Because we've been talked about the metaverse so much. And nowadays I think everyone is talking about the metaverse, it is getting to the point where it's you It almost makes me wonder if they all got together and decided. Now's the time. Now's the time we've been wanting to do this for so long. Go from Iceland.

Gary: 23:17

And Iceland, people have legs.

David: 23:19

They have legs in them. They have a much better their Iceland versus their legs. That's

Gary: 23:23

right, and not the Microsoft Icelanders. On that note,

David: 23:26

I think we're gonna take our legs and walk out here July. We

Gary: 23:29

didn't have any questions, but we no question

David: 23:32

because we are working on YouTube because I think that's going to be a way to get more comments because it's easier than sending an email. But if you do want to send an email, feel free to do it. Hello at the big pixel dotnet will get to us and we will read them and we will hopefully be able to use them on the air and answer your questions.

Gary: 23:52

And here's to the next 10 episodes.

David: 23:54

This right, we're gonna start on number 11 This is number 11. What am I saying? I don't even Yep, this is number 11. All right,

Gary: 24:02

I'm done. Content creators work.

David: 24:06

Content creators unite. Alright y'all, thank you so much. We'll talk to you next week. See you again.