Finding investment + partnership for your business with Chris Badgett
Download MP3[00:00:00] Chris: So the, just the overall situation here is Lifter, l m s has two new partners, Jason and Kim Coleman from Stranger Studios, more popularly known for their product, paid Memberships Pro, which was one of the oldest, if not the oldest membership plugin and WordPress and, and that they officially joined on January 1st, and my co-founder of Lifter Thomas Levy exited the business at the end of the year.
[00:00:28] So before that, there was, a period of discussion and figuring things out. That was, in the works for about a quarter, I'd say.
[00:00:37] Matt: Did you present this idea to them, for the details that you can share? Was this something that you were seeking like you wanted? more partnership, maybe some more investment. Maybe just partnering up and like, Hey, how can we do this word WordPress thing bigger and better than the rest?
[00:00:51] Chris: Well, I'm always a, in my DNA is to be a partnership guy, a growth guy, a, let's think about money in a creative way. But as a bootstrapper, I'm open to outside money. So I've always like explored options and whenever I, I meet people I always think about like, Hey, I wonder what we could do together.
[00:01:10] So I'm always like, that program is always running in the background. becoming official business partners is, is like the most serious form of partnership. But I'm, I'm just constantly thinking how can we add more and create more value together when I meet people. But, yeah, like, so, so the way it evolved is, is Thomas and I came to agreement.
[00:01:29] he, he was ready to go explore new opportunities. And me personally, I'm a, non-technical co-founder. I have a lot, I had a lot of options on figuring. exactly how I wanted to, play the scenario. But at the end of the day, I like having technical people who have skin in the game, right there beside me.
[00:01:48] Chris: One of the great things about, paid memberships, pro founders, Kim and Jason Coleman, it's kind of like a two for one deal. So that's a great thing. And, and of course, , my investment in relationships and word camps and the, the community of WordPress, if you will. I've met, I've have a ton of great, technical connections and, business connections and finance connections even within and outside of WordPress.
[00:02:13] But at the end of the day, I, I, I kind of come to like, what's the magic wand scenario? Well, I like having technic. partners, I like people that I, I want more than just money. I want people that know the industry and, and even better know our, our specific niche within WordPress and software, which is membership and e-learning.
[00:02:32] So, as we went through,as I viewed options and explored opportunities, they kind of emerged as like, a great option. And, and at first, I was kind of looking to them, for advice and the more we just discussed things, it just made sense to, and they had some ideas too, of, of being interested in doing something deeper together.
[00:02:53] So it just kind of evolved in that kind of way.
[00:02:56] Matt: Paid memberships, pro lifter, lms [00:03:00] kind of the same thing, right? It's a tool that's gonna allow people to gate, let's say content. Seems like there could be crossover in either direction, right?
[00:03:10] From either brand. Like you could go the, the route of just, I dunno, let's say having an add-on that really isn't a course management or curriculum and you could like launch that to compete against pmp. PMP could probably do the same thing. Create. Course mechanism that like tracks progress and awards people and all this stuff.
[00:03:27] Talking loosely here, of course, but when you two got in or the three of you got into the room to discuss this, how did you make a clear distinction between This is our, this is PMP customer set. This is Lifter customer set,
[00:03:41] Chris: Well, there's a lot of layers to that cake. And what I would say, one layer of it is this is WordPress, so we're a community here and we're pretty collaborative and open. Even somewhat, and I can't speak for everybody, but just in general within this community. People cooperate, and even when there's some competition or overlapping features, at the end of the,that was a concern or just something to look at, because Lifter is primarily a learning management system and it does have its own membership features.
[00:04:12] Paid memberships pro is primarily a membership. Plugin and they had recently, within the past year or two, launched a courses module add-on for their deal. but they also have an integration with Lifter, which they already had. and I think with, with other e-learning tools. So kind of the nature of that WordPress ecosystem where we're all in the same sandbox, so who cares kind of thing.
[00:04:33] We're, we're kind of pushing this industry forward together. At the end of the day, it is, it's not necessarily up for us to decide which who gets which customer. The market in a way figures that out in itself. And just, I've been in this industry within WordPress for 10 years and then out, not including WordPress, just information products and online business for longer.
[00:04:57] What I've noticed in the kind of course creator, expert, entrepreneur, coach, information product niches. People get in their mind, in the market, the type of solution they want, and they start attaching themselves to certain words like, I'm building a membership site, or I'm creating an online course, or I'm becoming a coach.
[00:05:20] Even though all these things are, are vehicles and mechanisms for learning, which is what we built, lifter, l m s around, at the end of the day, the market has, they've already selected in their mind what they need, right or wrong or indifferent. So I kind of, so I've always called it like as a product guy, some people are like membership first thinkers.
[00:05:42] They're like, it's all about the membership. And then maybe they'll put courses in there, maybe they won't, other people are, it's all about the course or courses or I'm gonna build a course marketplace and course this and that, and maybe we want membership features. But the course is kind of like the primary.
[00:05:58] So when it [00:06:00] comes to what the market wants, they're just gonna choose and they're gonna end up looking for a membership plugin or an LMS plugin. So in the, in the lms, in the WordPress space, we've got about five or six main players membership. It's about the same. so yeah, and, and at the end of the day, this is a investment from paid memberships pro and also they're taking an active role in the company, not just bringing money.
[00:06:21] So they're working, inside the company while also still working. Paid memberships pro. but it's not a merger. Like this is not like, our companies have not a hundred percent like, become one under one brand. So what that's where we're at now is,they've come in over into this sandbox and I'm super grateful for them to be there.
[00:06:40] Matt: So losing a, losing a technical co-founder, as he exits the company, will paid memberships pro contribute development work or technical work, or will they advise maybe somebody you bring on as your technical lead?
[00:06:53] well, it's, it's sort of all the above and what I mean by that is paid memberships pro, Jason and Cam particularly. Are both incredible entrepreneurs in and of their own right. as of this recording here, according to the WordPress repository, I think Paid Memberships Pro has over a hundred thousand active installs.
[00:07:11] Chris: So that could be anywhere between 100 and 200,000 active sites, I believe, with the way that that thing works. so they really know what they're doing and they actually started, I believe, paid memberships Pro launched in 2000. 12 or 10 or something like that. It was a, it was a very long time ago, maybe even before that.
[00:07:30] So they're bringing business knowledge. Jason in particular, is very much a C E O at paid memberships pro, but he's very capable of CTO roles, which is what he's doing right. At Lifter, we're also hiring a developer right now position, so if anybody out there listening is a developer, WordPress developer looking for work, reach out.
[00:07:51] Now's the time as we expand the engineering function. Kim is a great leader and entrepreneur herself. She also does a lot of front end design. so we're, I'm basically leveraging and we're leveraging together the skills that they have while trying to. Expand the engineering function, accelerate product roadmap, and also,complete some of our own internal projects.
[00:08:14] Like we have a major web design, that we've we're implementing that, we developed with WebDev Studios and, we need engineering and design muscle to help, finish implementing that out. We're busy, but, we've got the, the leadership in place on the kind of the CTO side, the engineering side.
[00:08:32] We've got more design strength, particularly with Kim. I always love this, this framework. I heard probably I think from David Cancel somebody you and I both know, I heard him say once on his podcast a long time ago. There's this thing of the hipster, the hacker, and the hustler, like this three person combination that makes a great design or makes a great software company right at Lifter lms.
[00:08:54] I kind, I'm kind of like the hustler kind of role. oops, sorry about that. engineering and [00:09:00] it, Thomas filled that role, but the, the hipster, the design talent has never been like our strength. We've always led with. Business strategy, sales, marketing, engineering, features, functionality.
[00:09:13] Chris: Kim's bringing in, some of that design,leadership and stuff like that. So as we grow, the roles may shift around. We, we may,elevate people from within or, or bring in more people. But right now that's, that's kind of the mix of where we're at going.
[00:09:27] Matt: It sort of answers. my next question, which, when I look at, WordPress product owners, business builders, I always look at you as, one of the most, well-read, competent, complete. Builders. I mean, I guess short of the technical stuff, but that's kind of where I was gonna go with this, is I think you had the option to
[00:09:45] just go get another developer and like slot them into, the role of like building the product and you guiding them. I'm curious though. why did you feel like you needed to go and get just more industry knowledge, like get that extra help from strange, like, I know why , but like why does Chris feel the need, to do that?
[00:10:05] Because, and, and I'm saying that because I think there's a lot of people out there who, who would be afraid to do that? Like to go to somebody and be like, Hey, look, I really need you to help me because this is not my strong. And I think you fill, a great, a great hole for, for what the organization needs.
[00:10:21] Chris: Well, I appreciate you saying that, and thanks for what you're saying. You're saying. I am well-rounded, but I'm not a strong engineer. But all the other pieces, I'm, I have a baseline
[00:10:32] Matt: g p T is for Chris. You just go to chat, g p t, you say, write me a WordPress function to display seven courses. Enter
[00:10:39] Chris: For, I did try that actually. I mean, that was on the, on the cornucopia of options, but I wasn't, it's not quite ready. It's not quite there yet.
[00:10:47] Matt: Jason Coleman chat, G P t. Oh God. It's a tough decision.
[00:10:52] Chris: There's a, there's a couple layers to that answer. One is, I have a lot of experience. leading in teams and being like on a management team. Even before my career in tech, like I was a manager in an organization in Alaska that, I was in a three person management team. I'm, I just kind of have a background there.
[00:11:09] I've also been solopreneur, entrepreneur guy myself too, so I know what that's like and I know the limitations of that. part of my, well-roundedness, if you will, is, I'm in my mid forties. I've spent a lot of time studying leadership and manage. and I know the, the benefits of having a functioning solid positive management team compared to trying to go it alone.
[00:11:33] that whole African proverb about if you want to go far, go together. I, I really believe in that. And I also consider myself a low ego person. I don't need to be seen as, like the CEO at the top of the org that, single-handedly like guides, steers the ship. Like I like, I like sharing responsibility and also sharing vision and [00:12:00] collaborating, especially at a high level strategy level.
[00:12:02] Chris: We just make better stuff when we do that.
[00:12:05] Matt: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. No, it's, I, I think that it's, there's an opportunity for more, WordPress product companies to do that kind of thing. Is there a Formula One could follow? Like if somebody's listening to this now and they're going, yeah, I have a WordPress product that I, I think I could pair up with somebody else.
[00:12:21] Like, is there like a pitch deck that people should start with? How should they knock on the door to find. Fit or maybe just like talk to a few other businesses to, to see if there's a right fit. I'm sure there's, that is the biggest challenge, but what did you find useful when you were, kind of going around looking for this new opportunity?
[00:12:41] Chris: Well, I think we already planted the seed with it, which is if I was gonna start a brand new product company, and first of all I should say, Look at WordPress, I see nothing but opportunity. I see a lot of pro products that don't exist yet that could, like, there's a lot of opportunity here. There's kind of this, belief that it's all already been done and the first movers have already moved and all this stuff, but, and, and in some niches they have, but there is more opportunity.
[00:13:05] But if I was, I'm so all in on online learning and membership sites and e-commerce and empowering ed entrepreneurs and education. My life mission and my, my corporate or business mission. Like I'm here, I'm not going anywhere. So this is my niche. but if I was gonna start fresh with a product, I would use that hipster hacker and hustler framework.
[00:13:25] So you get a business person combined with a engineer, combined with a design person who can not just do like web design, but product design, user experience design, user interface design, and. and by business person, I mean somebody that can operate a company, run a company, do marketing, do sales and engineering.
[00:13:45] Like not just figure out what to build, but also be a strategic architect and systems thinker and, protect the business from a, a security and efficiency standpoint like that. person combination is the dream team and there are unicorns type people out there that can do all that stuff, but it's very rare.
[00:14:05] And, maybe you got a couple of those, so may, so maybe you can do it in a two person team. So that's, that's advice number one. If, if you're gonna make the commitment to not go it alone, look at those three buckets is what you need to fill, and you can build team around that as you get bigger and stuff.
[00:14:22] That's it. And the other piece is to really invest in the community and your own self-education. So for example, I met you at a Drift conference. That's where we first met. Met in person, I believe. Maybe not the first time, but I met you there. And that's a, that was like a conference about tech and leadership and marketing and stuff like that.
[00:14:42] So when you immerse yourself in the tech community bigger than WordPress, I've gotten business coaching and, and software groups and stuff that have nothing to do with WordPress. but I also invest a lot in WordPress. I've been to WordPress conferences, sponsored word camps. Organize Word camps.[00:15:00]
[00:15:00] Attended Word camps, and I have a podcast that's eight years old. I like to say I started at the same time as Tim Ferris. He's just better well known than me, but I've been interviewing people in the WordPress community and beyond. So building your network is really important because when a situation comes, like what I was in recently where, okay, I've been building all this network and relationships and adding value and all this.
[00:15:26] It's time for me to ask for a little bit of help here. So I, I went out, and made a list of like, people to talk to and stuff, and I talked to a ton of people, for advice and, looking for insights and, it's important to have your kind of informal board of advisors, both close and, and, and kind of, not necessarily super close to you, but that you check in with when something really important.
[00:15:48] And through investing in those relationships and,also checking your ego and thinking in terms of what's best for the product and the community and, and the vision and perhaps leading through a team. That's how I, that's kind of the framework I use to optimize a situation. And also just, this comes from my background in like, , know, outdoor leadership and wilderness and stuff like that.
[00:16:11] When you go out into the unknown on a mountain or in another country and, and you don't speak the language or whatever, you gotta be okay with being uncomfortable and going through a little bit of pain, doing something you haven't done before. cuz, cuz that fear of the unknown will hold people back from exploring opportunities that can really unlock if you push outside of your comfort zone a little.
[00:16:33] Matt: Yeah, it's interesting how like, sales partnership and, know, just. It really, you just gotta ask . Like you have to just get over that hump of, you just simply, have to ask. And, if you don't, then there there's just, there's an overwhelm, overwhelming feeling of like, well, nobody wants to help me or like a poor me.
[00:16:55] And then you kind of get down on yourself, but it's not the case. Esp, I mean, especially in the WordPress world. I don't know about in,me exiting the podcast world or the audio world to a degree. Even that world was, was very helpful and very, restorative to, to help and, and to guidance and to mentorship and stuff like that.
[00:17:12] And I think that's one of the things that, is gonna be so hard to take away from WordPress in general. Right. This side of, a bit of a side note, but like when you look at WordPress as an industry, as a piece of software, and I think sometimes community can get discounted from the outsiders cuz they don't realize how powerful, it is like the connect.
[00:17:33] for business, for help, for friendship , like, it's so hard to compete against that you.
[00:17:39] Chris: A hundred percent. And I just want to add,one of my business mentors, I did a couple years of training with him, his name's Dan Martel. He's a, a software entrepreneur, coach guy. He's got a new book out, by the way, called Buy Back Your Time. I highly recommend it. I remember Dan saying a long time ago, ask for advice, get an investor.
[00:17:56] And I, I remember when he said that to me, I was like, yeah, [00:18:00] that won't work. Hey, that just happened to me. So like that's, but you know, that was, I, I got that advice a wa a ways back and hey, you know what? That, that mentor was right? . So invest in, I like to say, I heard this framework plus minus equal, where you.
[00:18:16] you, there's people that are further along in the journey. Those are your mentors and coaches and things like that. There's your equals like, similar size company in the fray together, and then there's the minus the people not as far that you mentor. So I've always invested at all three layers of relationships.
[00:18:31] Chris: I think that's also important to not just, be an evergreen mentor or always just hanging out with your peers or always asking for help, but when you spread it full stack like that, it creates really that. rich environment.
[00:18:44] Matt: This is why I come to you, Chris, cuz you always have the frameworks and the acronyms that match up to everything that I need. I just like, I'm doing the right things. I just need to think of it like you. How does, does your day-to-day change at all, like, what does, what does it look like for you now?
[00:18:57] I mean, I'm a systems guy, so like, I have to do, get a lot done every week, every month, every quarter, every year. So like the machine that I've built over,a decade and me and being in business for myself continues to roll on. . But what I will say, like the, one of the cool things about, bringing in new leadership is,you get fresh ideas and new systems.
[00:19:19] Chris: Like, there's some stuff we're doing with product right now that I'm super excited about. Just, learning from Jason and Kim and, and different ways to think about innovation and, and,furthering a roadmap and. And, approaching product and engineering in a different way that I'm super excited about.
[00:19:34] So we've been investing more in product. A lot of people see me as like a sales and marketing guy, but actually what, what, what of the, the thing that I really love and, enjoy and have been doing more of lately is product like, Lifter lms. The what you see today existed in my head in 2013 when we were planning it, right?
[00:19:54] It just, it takes a long time for it to roll out and flesh out and everything. so doing, getting back into more product work and, and stuff like that is, is a lot of fun. But, My day-to-day is, is really not that much different. like the first version of Lifter LMS was built by a guy named Mark Nelson, when we were running an agency that we bootstrapped the product out of.
[00:20:15] And Mark, worked for us and he built the prototype of Lifter LMS in 90 days and we launched it to validate the product. Sold 42 in the, copies in the first week, and that was our kind of seed. . so over time, you just, you build a business around that and just keep that snowball rolling.
[00:20:33] And most of the time it's moving forward. Sometimes it moves back every year. Lifter LMS has made more money than the year before, which I'm super proud, grateful, and humbled by. but you know, we gotta keep innovating. The market, continues to change. WordPress is changing. We have more SaaS competitors.
[00:20:51] So you gotta, you gotta keep going and, and have fun along the way. That's why I'm still here. I, I love this stuff.
[00:20:57] Matt: Right. Yeah. Yeah. No, I, I, I [00:21:00] have been watching you for years now and I you were the only one that I know that still has fun doing this now. I'm just kidding. That has a lot of people that have fun doing this. let's just, I wanna just talk about the, the market in general. The for, folks who are launching their own courses, becoming coaches, educators, and all this stuff.
[00:21:15] My gut tells me that 2023 will see sort of like that same resurgence for. The WordPress freelancer boutique agency thing, just like maybe we saw in 2007, 2008, 2009 ish, with the economy and people like looking for alternative sources of income. and at back then, WordPress was at a perfect storm too, where it was like economy issues and WordPress went from like being just okay to pretty good.
[00:21:42] At that time too. I think that was like version three one or something like that back then. And it was like, wow, like we can do a lot with this. It was like a c f and custom post types, things really started to make sense from that perspective. that's a long way of getting through. Like I think we're gonna see a resurgence in WordPress these days.
[00:21:58] From the services side, your gut was, your gut tell you on people investing and creating courses and educational material and becoming coaches and stuff.
[00:22:07] Chris: well, my gut tells me the same, but the data also does, which is, well first of all, let me just back up and say online education or e-learning is not new. It's been around for a long time. when we have spikes from things like. , oh. I can now do this with WordPress. Oh. global Pandemic. oh, inflation.
[00:22:26] People are trying to figure out different ways to make income. Like entrepreneurship itself is kind of like, like when I first started it was, it seemed more like strange to have an online business. Now everybody has an online business and they're a coach. This and a YouTube cha, all this stuff, influencer this and that.
[00:22:46] So like the trend is like up and to the right. yeah, I see nothing but continued growth and it changes, it evolves over time. Like I remember, before I was a player in the space with software, I have a background in anthropology, so I'm used to like watching people and culture and watch it evolve.
[00:23:04] And I remember looking at the early days of internet marketing, like, 2005 to 2000. and I saw these people like launching these courses and, membership sites. And this is, in WordPress, this is the early days of things like Wishlist member and, and, I'm trying to remember the name of that, theme optimized press.
[00:23:22] Matt: Oh yeah.
[00:23:22] Chris: And, so this, this whole thing has been around a long time, but what what happens is it changes. . Okay. Now there's SaaS tools like, or, hosted platforms like you Dimmy, which has its pros and cons. it's harder to get away with a $2,000 course. the market doesn't want, a million bonuses that come with a course anymore cuz everybody has information overload.
[00:23:43] Now people want. More fidelity or, or like support, not just content, which was the emergence of the coaching industry. Coaches try to figure out how to get the price down so they figure out group coaching and so on. And then this whole social learning thing blends in. Facebook [00:24:00] groups. Buddy Press, buddy Boss Lifter, LMS has something called social learning and this whole social thing.
[00:24:06] Now people are talking about cohort-based courses and it goes on and on and on. Now there's a resurgence of the new.
[00:24:12] Matt: Yeah.
[00:24:13] Chris: are like, okay, I'm an expert. I gotta have the newsletter too, which some people said was dead. So this market, it just continues to both recycle, grow, but pieces of it do die and fall off over time too.
[00:24:26] Matt: Yeah. Here, here's something I've been thinking about. and you're the perfect person to, to help me shape this thought process. So as, Well, as and as people know, as they, once they hear this, I, am on the job market, maybe on the job market, depending on when you listen to this, but looking for a, a new job.
[00:24:43] And Chris, and we talk about this at the top of this episode, that if it weren't for me, doing a WordPress podcast and continuously talking about,WordPress to people for over a decade.
[00:24:53] Chris: It's also adding value. It's not just talking and meeting people. You've, I was listening to you before I really got into the WordPress community. You added a ton of value to my
[00:25:02] Matt: Yeah.
[00:25:02] Chris: It's awesome to be here on your show, all the, all these years later, like it's, you're just like a value generating machine
[00:25:09] Matt: Yeah,
[00:25:09] Chris: and that's the power of media.
[00:25:12] Matt: Yeah. So, so the, the question is, and what I've been wrestling in my head is, let's say others, cuz I'm not the only one becoming a value generating machine is, How will companies, industries, markets evolve as more people like me come into the workforce with a brand and with a side hustle? That is both valuable to the company, potentially hiring them, but also sort of at odds.
[00:25:43] Like if you went into a company like, I don't know, whatever 20 years ago and you'd be like, yeah, I'm here for the full-time job. And you're like, do you do anything else? And you said, yeah, I got a part-time gig somewhere else. And they go, well, you gotta get rid of that part-time gig. You can't have that.
[00:25:54] Like we can't have you here. Do you think things are gonna change in the hiring process and the, and how companies view individuals that have these side hustles that. Educational courses, YouTube channels, small craft makers that sell things on Etsy, but they like, will, will these companies and brands allow us to own what we've built in a nice sharing way.
[00:26:20] I don't know how to, I don't know how to frame it cause I haven't really thought about it much yet, but I think that's where we're moving. There's a lot of content creators, a lot of educators who are gonna go get full-time jobs that otherwise people might have said, nah, you can't have that job anymore.
[00:26:32] You gotta get rid of it Can. We won't have that here. Will they open up to us?
[00:26:37] Chris: They will, and I'm gonna go meta on you, but then I'm. Give details of what I'm talking about. Over time, power transitions from decentralized to centralized and back, it's like a, it's like a curve right now. We're in like a decentralization of power thing, or that part of the cycle. You see it in government, you see it in politics, you see [00:27:00] it.
[00:27:00] economics, the rise of the entrepreneur. There's all kinds of like global trends where you can see power decentralizing. Like even in the United States,there's a lot of talk about de-globalization that's happening. when I was a kid it was all about globalization and the supply chain and getting, using, getting everything from the world and, and being a global economy.
[00:27:19] Chris: But anyways, I'll get off the abstract thing there and bring it home. Building a personal. is like, in my opinion, if you're not doing it, you're doing yourself a huge disservice. And it doesn't mean you have to become like a cheesy influencer or anything like that. It's more about you are a product, whether you realize it or not.
[00:27:42] And the more we use our, content creation machines, social media, or iPhones and YouTube, our fingers and maybe chat. G p t is making us faster now. All this stuff. your
[00:27:55] Matt: you making yourself look like an astronaut slash like King Arthur all at the same time? It's pretty crazy.
[00:28:01] Chris: Yeah. Yeah. . It's, it's, it's, it can be fun. but yeah, like, I'm, I'm just thinking about examples in WordPress that, that people listen to. This podcast might know. Like I always admired, for example, , like Chris Lima very much had his own personal brand, yet you saw him work at some big WordPress companies as an example.
[00:28:17] even, Matt Mullenweg, he has his own personal brand. Like there's the Matt brand and then there's Automatic and WordPress, he's kind of got a three things going or whatever, and he is got, so there's that. so just because you have a strong personal brand, it doesn't mean that. you're go, you have less power in some ways, I think it makes you more desirable.
[00:28:35] Chris: So if you have a strong personal brand, like when, when I saw you going to Casto, I was like, good for Casto. They get to leverage Matt's personal brand. Of course, you add a lot of value to the company and the role that you do there, but, you, you're known as like a, a podcaster and a media guy and a guy that helps other media guy people, and you're passionate about it and the technology and everything.
[00:28:58] So it's a win-win situation. So it's really about growth mindset versus scarcity mindset. And there are gonna be some companies where the legal department's gonna be like, Hey, there's a conflict of interest here. We need a hundred percent of you and your focus. And yeah, but that, when I talk about decentralization, the power right now I think is more on the side of.
[00:29:21] Employee, like the, the, they're the ones that say yes or no to the job. Even today, like in the world, in the more macro, there's talk about like, quiet quitting and all that stuff. These are indicators of power in the hands of the people. So, but a hundred percent build a personal brand and just be yourself.
[00:29:40] Like you don't have to like manufacture something that's different. You meet me on the street on the same crazy. Guy look the same, act the same. I'm still, I mess around with technology. I love courses and entrepreneurship and all that stuff. It's just be yourself and that's, that's valuable to the world.