唯一の競合はコストだ——ジェイソン・フリード

I want to start with what you told me last night that you feel the best way to make a product or the best way to make a product for you is by you are the actual customer. You are making the products that you want to use. Yeah. I don't know how to do it any other way. Like I this is how I've always done it. So back when I was 15 16 I started in software making stuff actually something called FileMaker Pro which is like way back when you can make these databases for yourself. And I I made this database to keep track of my music collection because I was loaning out tapes and CDs to friends and never getting them back. So I'm like, I need a way to keep track of this stuff cuz I keep losing these things. So I made this product which I eventually called audio file, but I made it for myself. It was just this this database, right? And I made a nice interface cuz I liked art. I like making stuff. And so I made this thing and uh I I eventually just decided that like I'll put a little text file in this in this archive of the software that said if you like this, send me 20 bucks. And I put up on AOL. So this is like pre- internet, right? Put up on AOL. And I got this envelope, actually an air mail envelope, the one of those with like the red and blue check marks, like old school like envelope from and it's from Germany. And I opened it up and someone had printed out this this piece of paper. Uh which was the thing I included with the software and gave me a $20 crisp US bill, right? And that was the moment I think I all clicked for me, which is make stuff for yourself. There's probably other people out there like you who want what you want and make it available to sell. So, you are the customer. You are the audience. It's you, you, you. And then there'll be other people just like you. We're not all that unique. There's plenty of people who like what we like, plenty of people who don't, and there's plenty of products for them, too. But there's enough that like what you like. And so, that's why I got started.

That's something you talk about a lot. Can you talk about your the importance of keeping cost low, small teams, and then you want essentially like no fat anywhere?

Okay.

Does that work with products too or features of products?

We have in the past. So from from base camp 1 to base camp 2 was a total rewrite. From two to three was a total rewrite. 3 to four was not and four to five which we're working on now is not. But it's a chance to revisit a lot of fundamental assumptions about what the product does and how it works. And I'm always trying to make I'm trying to buck the trend, right? human nature is is about expansion typically. Like things tend to expand, but in the physical world, there's also like limits that push back on those expansions. Like if this mug was burning hot, like we would know that's a bad design. If if this handle if there's no handle here and I had to hold it this way, uh maybe not a good mug. Like there's there's physics here. Like you look at this if this thing was made of of a really really fragile material or something that would like melt if it got wet, you'd be like that's a bad design. like there's some things that are telling you this is a bad design. In software, you don't get that. Software can be anything. It's infinitely malleable. And what ends up happening is because there's nothing pushing back, it just expands forever and gets worse. Software slides downhill. It gets better for a while then slides downhill. So, I'm conscious of that and I'm always trying to make sure that every new version we make of something is a little bit simpler in the fundamental ways than the previous version. It might have more features, but the experience hopefully is simpler. That's like the big challenge and actually the frankly like the most fun part of of of building products over the long term is can we buck the trend of having them slide downhill and instead like maintain and make them even better over time.

It's hard. And that's fun. It's a bit of a puzzle. It's a bit of pushing back against the forces of nature typically, which again would be to expand. It's forcing us to come up with clever solutions to problems. It forces me to understand what something really is and not like what it could be or what I think other people think of it as, but like what is this really trying to do? And it's fun to have these insights. So like my my favorite thing in life, frankly, is to like have an insight. And I don't get to decide when I have them, right? No one does. if you just like have one, right? Maybe it's in the shower, maybe it's whatever. You just have an insight. And it's cool to work on a problem in software and then have an insight about how to make it simpler. And I find that for me, for whatever reason, I bounce into those insights very frequently making software, more so than pretty much anything else I do. So, it's fun to make something new because I get to have more insights into how to make it simpler and better. And that's just like what for whatever reason that that's where they come from, like the shower and the software. A lot of the conversations that Jason and I have are about craft, about the importance of putting your soul into your work and making the best possible product that you can. Our conversations remind me a lot of the conversations I have with my friend Kareem, who's the co-founder and CTO of RAMP. Ramp is the presenting sponsor of this podcast. And Kareem is one of the greatest technical minds working in finance today. Kareem is obsessed with crafting a high quality product and using the latest technology to constantly create better experiences for his customers. RAMP has one of the most talented technical teams in finance and they use rapid, relentless iteration to make their product better every day. In the last year, RAMP has shipped over 300 new features. Ramp is completely committed to using AI to make a better experience for their customers and automate as much of your business's finances as possible. In fact, Kareem just wrote this. AI is all I think about these days. It is our duty to be first movers and push limits so we can make the greatest possible product experience for our customers. Many of the fastest growing and most innovative companies in the world are running their business on ramp. Make sure you go to ramp.com to learn how they can help your business save time and money. Let AI chase your receipts and close your books so you can use your time and energy building great things for your customers. Get started today by going to ramp.com. We we were talking a lot about this conversation I just had with Toby Luke, I know both you and I admire him.

And what I love about Toby that you have in you as well is like when you talk to him, the next response out of his mouth is like not predictable.

No I I I would not trade my business for anyone's business. In fact, it'd be a downgrade. Anyone's You could pick anyone if any, if you got to decide if you got to decide. You're like, "Jason, would you trade this business?" I No. Any business I wouldn't take. I'd take mine over anyone else's business. So, like I don't have

And I remember when I was getting started being an envelope guy. So the envelope to me there's there's this two sides of business basically. There's the envelope and there's the letter. The envelope is the outside the shell. The business the vehicle that holds the letter and the letter is the product or products. I'm a product guy. I love product. That's all I care about. The business side just has to exist to hold the product, right? Like it just that's the vehicle in which the product travels in. But I don't care about the envelope. so much. But there's lots of people, and I remember this early on when I first started my business. I was thinking about the brand and and the business and how big it could be and what how do I describe it and what do I call it? That's all envelope work. That's like all on the outside. And I think there's a number of people, and by the way, it's fine. All this is fine. What I'm getting at is you got to know who you are and what you want out of yourself and what you want to do. And if you're an envelope person, that's fine. If you're a product letter person, that's fine. But you got to know who you are. I know I'm not an envelope person. I don't just want to build shells. that gets filled and then I sell it and build another shell. It gets filled and I sell it and build another shell and gets filled and I sell it. I want to just work on the letter and the the envelope is just the thinnest little thing that needs to be there to hold the letter. I think playing entrepreneur is like spinning up businesses all the time and making all sorts of stuff and giving it a name and giving it a logo and trying to raise money and and coming up with valuations and talking about all this stuff and there's like nothing of substance inside that yet. Maybe there will be, but in a lot of cases there's nothing. There's just losses and and then it's like a ma mad rush to get out at a certain valuation for other people who put money in. Like that's like turning a business into an asset, a financial instrument. It's just not interesting to me. I want to make things. I want to build products and and that's what I do. Again, that's what we do. And just the idea of of a business being a financial instrument is just like it's anathema to me. I it's just kind of it's repellent actually.

Well, I would say this. Um the more mass of an object, the more energy it takes to change its direction, right? This is just like this is getting back to basic physics. A thick sh When I think of this stuff and sometimes these metaphors don't perfectly line up, but in my head I think of like a thick business. It's it's hard to change. It's heavy. It's massive. It's it's there's too much distance between it and the customers and it and the product. There's space like right you can imagine like if you just imagine something very thick. This is the thing that matters and you got to go through all this and compress all this down to get to the thing that matters. Like I don't like that. I think the thing that matters should be big and that the rest of it should be as thin as possible. And so that's what we've tried to build at 37 signals. is a very thin business with a thick set of products that are good and solid and real and generate real profits and are real businesses. And then the rest of it is just enough to hold it all together. That's like my vision for business. It's not the only vision. I plenty of people way more successful than me don't see it this way. I don't care. Like this is just how I see it and how I'm sharing it. But and and it's ma mainly just to show people that like you don't have to go big. It doesn't have to be a big thick heavy busy company. It can be very thin and then focus on the product and get to a place where you can find out people like you. Get to this place where enough is enough and then maintain. Another way to think about this for me I always go back to these sort of weird metaphors is like you know there's the hockey stick right chart right that is like unappealing to me. I like more of like a metaphor where it's more like um like a rocket into orbit. So I you got to get off the ground and you got to break free of of gravity, but then there's a point where you actually just want to sit in orbit and sort of maintain. You want to be within a certain range and fluctuate a little bit up, a little bit down, but be in this comfortable place where you're just orbiting. You're not breaking a force anymore. You're not pushing super hard. you're maintaining and and maintaining a level of quality, maintaining a level of enjoyment and just orbiting now. And I think that that's a really wonderful place for businesses to be. But I wouldn't encourage you to be trying to get to orbit year two. You got to be like on the ride up to break free of all the forces that are holding you back. But then you should also find a place where you can settle in in orbit versus people who I think are just busy constantly trying to grow, grow, grow and get as big as they possibly can. And I always say like why? I'm like so what if you if you're massive and you're twice as massive? Like so what? Why? Why? What's that all about? And they may have an answer for you. I I don't I don't I don't know what the answer would be other than like just growing for growth's sake.

Explain more about that. Well, you'd have to ask a question. That would be like, so what? I don't know. [laughter] Like, why why grow? I I mean, maybe that's not a good one, but um for example, like

You asked for it.

I I don't I don't actually even like the term, frankly. Okay. Like executive officer.

chief? Chief executive officer of what? Again, like of what? Like we make decisions. That's what we do. We make decisions. We make products. We hire great people that we like. We find people with zero drama. Like we put together a team. We set out to make things. We take really good care of people, really good care of our customers. We make good products that we really like. great products hopefully, right? Um, I got to leave a little bit of of of room there for some humility. Like, we can always make better products. So, I'm not going to call our products fantastic. They are good. Great. There's always room for for making those better. But, as far as as like being a CEO and whatever that's supposed to mean, I don't know what the hell that means. Yesterday, I answered like 200 emails from my customers. Is that like some people would say that's irresponsible for a CEO to spend their time emailing customers? Like I think it's the best thing you can do,

Yeah. But like they need to listen to founders because they're all like this. The the the best entrepreneurs and founders in in history and I think what me and you bond over is exactly that. Like I all I care about is products. I don't care about anything else. I think the way you think of yourself as a designer.

Is that correct?

Okay.

You're not a presumptuous person. I didn't mean it that way. I know you didn't.

and he made every single executive you have to spend a day or a week or a month or whatever it was on customer support. Yeah, we do the same thing. We haven't done that for a bit, but we used to do that. We should do it again actually. We used to have this thing called everyone on support where people would do it for for a day uh rotate through the company. Um mostly so I would do it and so David would do it and now I do it anyway. Um but it's very important I think um you know there there's a there's a there was a when I lived in Chicago, there was a grocery store down the street called Olivia's. There still is. Um, and I got to know the owner. And I appreciated the fact that he got to know his customers personally because they'd walk in the store and he would say hello, right? That's how I got to know him. I don't unfortunately have that opportunity. Like, we have hundreds of thousands of people who use our products. And it's it actually frustrates me that I don't know all of our customers. Like, I could walk past on the street, I could walk past 75 of our customers on a given day and I wouldn't know that. He would know cuz he would know who they are and he knew their family, the whole thing. So, I've always tried as best I can to get as close to I can't get as close to our customers. We have too many of them in that sense. But whenever you sign up for Base Camp, the first thing you see is a letter from me um with my email address, my signature and my email address. And I want my customers to email me. I don't want to hide from anybody. There's no AI, there's no assistant, there's no levels between it all. Just write me. And people do all the time. And we have in our books as well. We have our email address in our books. I want to get as close to pos as possible to the people who use the things that we make. Not just to make them happy because I want to make myself happy, too. We are the first customer of our products, but to understand what they're doing with them, to understand the language they use, how they describe them, who they are. I want to know these things because somehow it permeates me and I and I just I get to feel what it's like to be them and get to understand what it's like for them to use the lever that we've made for them to move something. And there's no other way to do that for me than to just share my email address cuz I don't get to meet people in person like this guy who runs a grocery store. But I love businesses like that. People who I love the dry cleaners been there for 40 years. I love the local grocery store. I just love business. Those to me are so much more interesting than the billion dollar whatever. I just don't

Yeah. They could I'm sure get more sacks of bread from that. It's actually comes like in a sack, you know, like the big baguettes or whatever and like they just run out. They're done. They maybe usually it's like 2:30 or something. There's no hours on the door. They close when they close when they're done for the day. I just there's something to me very poetic and beautiful about that. And like again enough. It's just it comes back to this idea of there's enough in that they're done for the day. It's enough. They sold enough. But he does that because

Like where does this end? Well, we could stay open till 6:30. I mean 7 probably. We could do 7:30. Someone's still at the door. We could do eight. You could you could see how this doesn't end and how a a business like that could consume everything and then you begin to not like it because there's nothing else in your life but that then you're so attached to it like you can see how this could expand to that degree. I I just think this idea of like well you're done at 2:30 is healthy. I think the business lasts longer because of that. I think like if you think about like you don't probably get bored of a business like that. There's something about that versus this idea of a business that you have to maximize and fully fill all your time, all your energy, everything, all the I just I don't I I can understand the appeal there for a while, but I also think there's something very just simply beautiful about enough. Now, I don't own that business. They might wish they had a lot more revenue and sold a lot more sandwiches. So, I I also want to recognize the fact that I'm looking at this from the outside. I'm an objective observer. I don't know the realities of that business, but I'm just observing what I think is a beautiful thing. Uh, which is a business that's been around for a long time, familyowned, does enough business for them to support themselves and their employees, make great food for their customers. Like, isn't that what this is about?

You take the 27?

Yeah.

The reward for good work is more work is to keep going.

the beauty about this for me is that somehow we've managed to build this system, this thing, this company, these products that sustain over a long period of time that allow us to enjoy our craft and our work over a long period of time. And we are in control of that as much as we can be. The market can change. Anything can happen at any time. But I can control my cost. I can control my quality. I can control my messaging as best I can. And we can make the best thing we can over time and keep making that thing. Like that's like that's why I want to that's what I want to do. This is my whole point. I don't want to trade my position with anybody for anything. I can love what other people do too. I do like there's great products all over the place. I'm like, "Wow, that's an amazing thing that someone made." Like, for example, um, one of my favorite products is the Concept 2 rower. Are you familiar with this?

I don't know anything about the company, but I can reverse engineer that. I bet it's a badass killer company, too. Because that's how I look at things, by the way. I look at the products, not the companies. Look at the products and go, "Oh, that's a great product. I bet that's a great company." Or, "This this product is is nah, I don't like this product. I bet the company's kind of I do this for people. If you can make a great product, you're probably interesting person to talk to.

My answer is boring. Just more of this.

I mean, that's essentially what it is until

I've read all your books. I've listened to almost all your episodes. We've shared a bunch of meals together. Um and I never even knew that you just did the day thing too because that's what I was like I just feel I was like I try to make a good 24 hours and then I was like, "Oh, I like this day. So like I'll do it again tomorrow." And I had this line that I said uh by accident. I was like, "Well, all a great life is is just a string of great days." So like all I focus on is just let me make a great day. And I told you last night where it's like the way I think about very similar to what you're doing or what I'm doing is like I'm just laying bricks and like today I'm making a podcast and tomorrow I'll make another one and a few days later I'll make another one and then I'll let the score take care of itself because I just like doing this and I do it the way I want to do it and I want to make a great product. And so my answer to that question is just like this like I just want to be making more podcasts. I know I'm going to be reading books forever. that that's the only unbroken habit I've ever had in my entire life over 30 something years. I can't stop reading. So, I'm going to be reading books. So, that's my what my other podcast is about. And I like talking to smart, interesting people that do great …

Yeah. Great answer. And if one day you decide you don't want to do this anymore,

I don't.

I think what ends up happening is, and you see this in in my world, you see it everywhere. Everyone follows everybody else because when you're paying so much attention to what everyone else is doing, you tend to just that's the way you think it has to be done or can be done. You're not open to like alternatives because you don't see them anywhere. And then you get a people people then build out of fear like gosh, they're doing this, they're launching this, I have to meet them. There has to be parody between my product and theirs. Then you end up following everybody. I don't like that. I like to take inspiration. If I'm going to take inspiration from anything uh productwise, it's going to be outside my it's it's the Concept 2 rower. It's not another piece of software. I'm not inspired by their software. I like buildings. I like furniture. I like uh concept 2. I like watches. I like other things outside of my world that I can sort of admire and and understand and sort of get fired up about. And I don't know if those things come back. I don't think they need to come back. Like, everyone's always like, "How does that come back and help you build your business?" Like, I don't know. I don't care. Why? Why does it have to? Why does everything have to come back to business? Like, why does everything have to influence your decisions? Like, these are all things that just happen. They exist in your world. They they happen to you and they and they form you and you're not even aware of most of it. and and you just become like I think if you admire a variety of different things and pay attention to different things and enjoy a walk in the woods like a few days ago I was just it's like 4:45 you know California here the light is just beautiful at the end of the day I'm just sitting outside looking at the way the sun is raking over the hills like I'd rather look at that than it's piece of software I'm learning more from that I'm getting more from that than I am a competitor's product I don't want to look at that I want to look at the sun I want to look at the ocean I want look go for a walk. I want to look at nature. I want to look at great furniture. I want to be in great architecture. Like that fills me up in a way. I'm getting enough of the software world by being in it. I don't want to soak in it. I want to soak outside of it. And then my only soaking in the software world is my own stuff. That's enough. It's enough for me to focus on.

I just like there's something really cool about islands that like have evolved on their own. I just like I don't know. I've never been to the Golopagus. My wife's been. She asked me if I wanted to go. I didn't want to go because I I it's too far, but I should have gone probably. But um actually, I didn't want to go, frankly, be there. Part of that was it was too far. I also felt like like let it Can we let it be? [laughter] Although I it's got to be I mean, she loved it and I'm so glad she went and the pictures are incredible and it seems like an amazing experience. But there's something very cool about um things that have just evolved on their own that are not influenced by other things. And I try to think of us as the Galopagus. I don't think of us this way really, but like conceptually there's I don't like use the word the Galopagus island of the software and I don't use that, but I do think of us as um actually an insular group focused on solving a problem our own way without paying too much attention to what everyone else is doing. I'm like aware of it because I live in it, but I I'm not seeking out ideas from other companies in our field. I I think that that's actually a slippery slope. It is because we see so much copying in our industry. Like someone has a successful product and then all future products for the next three years look just like theirs. That says to me that there's a there's danger here. Don't fall into that trap. Our stuff looks different than everybody else's stuff. Our stuff works differently than everybody else's stuff. Nothing works like base camp fizzy. It's all different. And some people hate the way our stuff looks and works. Fine. Don't care. We have enough people who love what we do. Um, and it's an expanding pie of people who are into what we do and we love what we do. And again, that's like enough for us. Even your landing pages look different. They're essentially a letter from you describing Yeah.

Yeah. I wouldn't like I I always try to build things that I would want to see. Like I build the company I want to work at. Um I hire the people I want to work with. I try to write I do all of our writing. So all of our I don't do the design on the I work with our designer to do a lot of that. But um he's sort of the visual uh person there. Um but I do all the writing and I I want every word to land with meaning. This is again like thin thick. I don't like thick stuff, thin. Like, how can I just get to the right point, but not be sterile? It's a problem sometimes when getting to the point you need to be sterile. So, like there should be a little bit of bounce, a little bit of rhythm in the writing. It should feel nice. Um, you should be carried through it. It there should be some momentum in there. And I just love doing it. That's my favorite thing to do. Actually, the company's right. We just do stuff that we like. I like that style. If you look at my product demos, I always do the demo for the product, like the launch. They're long and they're unedited and I screw up a bunch and I don't care. Like this is if I was sitting with you, what I want to try to get to with this kind of stuff is if I'm showing you something my our product literally you're like behind me or sitting next to me and we're looking at this thing together. If I screw up two minutes in, I'm not going to go let's start over. I'm just going to keep going. And so that's how I want these to feel. I want to like connect with people in a real way. This is like a real person showing off a real product. This is a real person writing a real thing. My name's on it, my signatures on it, my email's on it. Like, we are who we are. We are, we represent ourselves as we are. We are not a corporate entity hiding behind a structure. We're not a CEO or we're a CTO hiding from our customers. We don't have a board. We're not like, we don't have any of these things. It's just us running the show. And the show is open for anyone to see. And, you know, we open source most of our of our work. We're very open about sharing everything we know as best we possibly can. I just feel like there's no reason not to. Um I I just I just want to be direct and clear with people and like hopefully they like that and some people don't. Some people like, "Oh, you guys are too small. I can't trust you." Like I'm not out to convince anybody of anything. Like that's the other thing. Like I I don't want to convince anyone. I don't like marketing language. I don't like tricks. Here we are. Here's what we do. Here's what our product does. Like that's the best we can do and that's the best I want to do. And I think it's the honest way to be and and take it or leave it. Like some people don't like it. That's totally fine. I get it.

rugs. Okay, I'll tell you the story. I was in Wisconsin um in this little town called Mineral Point, Wisconsin. Small little town about 50 mi west of Madison. And I was wandering through this gallery. Strange like it it was this weird building. It looked like a like a junkyard inside. Like you peered in, it's like what is going on in here? something in and I saw some like old man on the back. Like there's going to be something cool here. So I knock on his door. I walk in. There's some rugs hanging, but there's also like junk everywhere. Anyway, he comes out and you're like, "Okay, this guy's a character. I love characters. I love old people. There's something going on there, right?" I'm like, "Who is this guy?" So he's he's a Nav He collects Nav he's dead now, but he collects Navajo rugs. Um so anyone can't go there today is what I'm saying. But he collects Navajo rugs. And I was looking and I I find them very beautiful. They're very simply patterned and the colors are very vibrant and they're very interesting and there's just I don't know what it was that they spoke to me, right? Um, and I don't want to analyze why either because I I I find that that's a great way to ruin any experience is to try to figure out why. Just does it or does it not? It does. I love these things for whatever reason. So, I go in talking to the guy and I noticed that they have a lot of errors on them. Like there's what I thought was an error. Like there's geometric shapes. So, their their rugs are very geometric. they're they're stripes, they're squares, they're triangles, they're all sorts of different shapes. Um, and a lot of them like weren't quite right. You know, you can like look at a shape and go, it's not they're trying to make a perfect triangle, but it's like not quite right. And I and I asked him about that or there's a stitch that's off, very clearly off. I'm like, they could have just taken that out and redone it. And he said to me, he said, you know, and again, I don't know if this is true, but this is what he told me. Um, which is the Navajo, like they don't see those as mistakes. They're just like a moment in time. And he he related it this way. He's like, if you're walking on a path, if you're climbing a mountain or something and you're going on a path and you trip or you stumble or whatever, like you don't start back. You can't take that stumble back. It just happened. The Navajo leave these in their rugs because they just happened. And this is a record of what happened. I love that. I just thought it was like so lovely and I've tried to do that with the things that I do. I mean I I don't like want to leave typos and stuff like that's not quite the same thing but like if I make a mistake on a video or something or whatever like I whatever that's what you would do in the real world. So I'm comfortable with that. I've always found that to be very um just again a very beautiful thing that that like these are not mistakes. Mistakes are a concept we put on ourselves when we do something that wasn't what we intended. Why does that have so much weight? Maybe what we intended was wrong, too. I don't know. Does are these rugs worse because there's a stitch off? No, they're not worse. They're better. And that's kind of what I'm striving for with this stuff is not to take things so damn seriously and build a company that's afraid of itself and afraid to do anything wrong and afraid to have an opinion. You know, all these companies, not that's a very broad statement. And all these companies, you know, like everyone's afraid. Companies are afraid like they have PR people and they got to talk to lawyers before they publish anything. Everyone's afraid of everything of of of of saying something wrong, doing something wrong, being wrong in some way that is not endearing. I think people want to do business with people and they have to do business with companies because companies provide a lot of product. But I think they really want to do business with people. And maybe this is why I like the the dry cleaner. Maybe this is why I like the grocery store. Maybe this is why I like running my business my way. I feel like people are dealing with people. We don't have a big corporate structure. We're just 62 people currently doing the things that we're doing. We're all accessible, all reachable. No one's hiding from anybody. This is what we do. And I just find that to be there's there's a again a thinness, a directness to that which just has an aesthetic value to me that I can't quite explain. Um it's like the quality that cannot be explained. I think it might have been Christopher Alexander or something who was an architect uh who who talked about this. I might be totally off on this, but I think conceptually the idea was you can go see buildings in in like in in native villages and there's no architect that made any of this stuff. They didn't have any architects. They had people making places for them to live and work and worship. And there's a certain quality to that which is not um textbook highquality but is beyond high quality because it's a perfect fit for what they wanted for themselves. That's the kind of stuff I like to build.

And she was like thought it was hilarious that I didn't edit out the fact that I was mispronouncing all these French names. And I'm just like I don't know. I'm like reading from the book. I'm like I don't know what this is. I don't speak French. Like so I'm just going to I'm going to do this phonetically. But it was endearing to her that I didn't like, you know, look up how like act like I speak French or anything else. Like this is I read books and I'm just guessing at how this is pronounced.

Um and and it's like but you see it all the time. It's like just I don't know what I don't know how to pronounce French words either. Like I'm not even going to try. I'll just say what I say and read it phonetically and like you could even say like I would even go like I don't know I don't know how to say this.

Yeah.

it was the love behind the product.

Yeah.

yeah it's a great thing it's amazing thing you just used the word tool a few times do you um identify with Toby Luke just like I'm just a tomaker I'm just a yeah I'm a tool maker

that's how you think about Yeah, I don't I I'm in the So people like what do you do? I'm like I I go I'm in the software business so they understand what I do, but I don't like that term. I also don't like I'm in the tech industry. I'm not I'm not tech I'm not a tech person. Like I don't like that. I make tools. They just happen to be made of software. That's all I know how to do. I don't know how to make things out of wood, but I know how to make things out of software and code and design and conceptual ideas. And so yeah, I make tools. We make tools. We make levers. It's just a lever. It's a lever that lets you do more with it than you could without it. That's all it is. You can move more things. You can organize more people. You can come up with better ideas. You can see those ideas through. You can make progress with the products that we make. That's what a tool is for, to make progress.

I barely look at numbers. I know you barely look numbers, but it's just numbers on a screen and those numbers are happen to be big, but like you can't you don't understand that. He doesn't feel it. I remember there was a um Mark Leonard of Constellation Software did this podcast. He talked about one of his most fulfilling jobs he ever had was not you know starting and compounding you know whatever it was 50 million to 80 billion or whatever he's done with pure software

and even to this day he said he could go I think it was like a kid or a young man maybe was in his 20s 30s back then but you can go to where the stone wall that he worked on 30 years ago and he's like point at he's like I did that I made that

Oh, now you move to Malibu.

They're not crystals. I was going to save that in case you ask me. They're not crystals. I'll just find something at the beach or I'll find something interesting with a cool pattern in it and I just like I just like it. I don't know. I love nature. I love all the textures and patterns and colors. Like for example, you know, when you're coming up as a designer in the early days when I was designing like identities like logos and stuff, you kind of would go you'd go through these like logo books or like corporate identity books. Um I think there was an organization called um I want to call it brand but maybe I'm wrong. print actually was this magazine that had all these pictures of business cards and stuff and every designer I know would look through other business cards for inspiration for like color patterns and pallets and layouts and like I I'm like go outside like the best designs ever are right there. That leaf is the best it's ever been. Obviously, it's like survived and evolved. This is a great thing. And so I like if you want to find great colors, look at a bird. Don't look at a book. Like, look look look look at a leaf, right? Look at the ocean. Look look look look look go to a tide pool and just look at the colors in that tide pool. Look at the way the light reflects. Like that's the real stuff. And what for I have goosebumps like for me whatever it is whenever I talk about this like it's just fundamentally real to me and I just love it. And like I love the screen too. I love making software too, but probably because I'm in that a lot. I really like not being in that too.

right now, I do. [laughter]

Yes. You said if you sold your business, you're never going to use a computer again.

I Yes. Jump off the cliff.

Right. Exactly. So, like, you know, I I want to be out. I want to be out there. I think it's just a wonderful So, so the screen is wonderful. Software is wonderful. Computers are incredible things. And that right now is like an amazing time for computers. Like one of the most amazing times since the web back in the late '9s or mid '90s really. Um and and it's cool to live through both of these moments. Um but I'd still rather um play with some bricks and and work on a stone wall even though I don't know how. Um like but that wouldn't pay my bills either. So I have to be practical. Like I built a great software company. I like this stuff a lot. I don't know how to build stone walls, but I wouldn't mind playing with them. The bills are taken care of. [laughter]

One of the people I most hope to get on the show and I want to talk to is Christopher Nolan.

And so if you think about the the justosition between like you make software, but you want to be on a hike outside, you know, you want to like look at the ocean, right?

He doesn't no he doesn't have a smartphone. So no GPS. He's got to go up to somebody like how do I get to the deli or whatever.

Yeah.

He's not emailing you the script. Okay. He is printing it out physically.

till you're done reading it and then when you're done

amazing

being outside, reading physical books, not looking at a goddamn screen.

I think probably more recently, frankly uh than than I I don't think I I think I knew what I liked like to do, but I don't think I I'm not sure I still know fully who I am, but I um that's the big question, right? Like who are we and the whole thing, right? I don't I don't totally feel like I should no one should be certain about that. But I feel like I've come more to my own actually since getting married and having kids. Looking back on who I maybe how I was, how I acted, how I was in the world. Um I'm glad I am who I am now than who who I wouldn't want to be that person again.

I think I was Yeah, I was I was definitely like more of a punk, you know, like a young

Did you?

John Mackey. I don't know if it it was in the episode. I can't remember. But this guy keeps trying to get me to do psychedelics. I think we talked about at the end I was like I'm not doing psychedelics. What did you do?

I'm not here to convince you to do drugs.

Do you think you're you think about things similarly to him?

I just I just read it, just an episode on it. And when I hear you speak, I'm like, you he's he's just like, we live in a magic world. A lot of stuff's not you have a you have an intelligence that is not coming from your brain.

You mentioned this point like

and it's very memorable. What does that mean to you?

So, big margin of safety is the way of safety. A lot of cash, high profit margins. You still pay attention to your

I don't know how I'm coming off. I'm not I tried to be pretty. No, you're like a soulful dude.

It's not a scowling face. The kids call it RBF.

I know. Yeah. Anyway, um I I think I was more maybe aggressive or I I don't even I I kind of don't remember myself actually. Like I'll just pull it back to something else then I'll come back to this thing in my mid30s perhaps. But we don't do like postmortems. I don't look back on things. I don't like to look back on things. Actually, Jimmy Aine sat in that exact same chair and he said, "I have no rearview mirror."

So, you're like, "What were you like at 35?" Like, "H, I don't probably more aggressive, but I don't really know." And I'll tell you why. I I don't like to look backwards. First of all,

Can I guess? I don't know what it is.

and I believe that to be true like

Very fascinating. Everything we make is a reflection in a moment in time. Could be a day or could be a year. 100%. That's exactly how I see things, which is I did what I did. I did the best I could or the worst I could. Whatever it is, it it was what I did and there it goes. Now what? like that doesn't mean be an … to people and like just you can be an … like that people other people remember what you did too. So like they'll remember what you did. So you you want to just be a good honest person anyway but like this some people might hear this that's why I'm saying this. Some people might hear this and go well that's an excuse to just do whatever the hell you want. There's no ramifications to any of these things. There are ramifications to these things but they are written in history and that is that I've always just tried to do the best I can. This is why I'm going to tie this back to to numbers. It's like we don't have revenue targets except for like I want to be profitable. I don't have sales targets, revenue targets, user targets. I don't have any of these things. We just do the best work we can. Like a target shouldn't make me do better work. I should do better work because of the pride I take in the work that I do. Like and and the seriousness in which I take the work that I do and the enjoyment in in the work that I do. Like I'm going to do the best I can. That's what I do. That's all I can do. That's all I should be doing and I don't need something to try to tell me that I could do better had I aimed for some target. The target is the work I'm doing now. That's the best I can do. So fully on board. He said it more eloquently than I did. But that's how I've always felt about this stuff. Which is why I don't like measurement. I just like the product. The product is the measurement, not the number things that people have done in it, used it and whatever. I it is what it is. the number, the money is ultimately like the the the byproduct of making something good. It's not the reason to do it. People are in search of certainty all the time. And I think it's nowhere to be found. Um and so but but it makes people very uncomfortable not to know like why this happened or and by the way, I shouldn't say it's not to be found. Like if you're making widgets on a on a on a on a line and like all the widgets supposed to have a circle in the middle and all of a sudden the circle's off like you can trace that back to where the machine went offline and like you can figure out some of these things. Of course, if like they're mechanical and you can you can track it all down, but like most businesses are not mechanical in that way. They are a series of decisions, ideas, timing, market conditions, competitor conditions, perhaps your mood on a given day, all the way it rolled out, what other news was happening in the day, the thing like to try to pinpoint the answer and then to go, okay, now next time we know not to do or to do and to feel like you now know something that you actually don't know, but to be so certain that you do because you figured it out. I think it's really dangerous. Is that why I've heard you say a few times that you don't think you you could start you could do base camp again today?

The amount of friends that I have that sold a company and just thought like I'm like I'm good at company building and then their second shot is not going well or ended in failure and really made them question who they are.

I think that's true. You don't know why it didn't work and you don't know why it worked.

But it's people don't understand how devastating that is where you sold a successful company. First of all, it's almost nearly impossible to build a successful company like just a tiny percentage that humans have that have ever existed have been able to accomplish this goal. This is why I started one of the shows cuz I want to celebrate the people that have done this and say, "Hey, if you want a role model, maybe we should, you know, people that build companies and products that make other people's lives better. Those are maybe good people to like listen to hear speak. They probably know some … if they've been doing it for multiple decades. Turns out, you know, they have a lot of wisdom or they've acquired a lot of knowledge in that. But it's so devastating to have had that. And then in in the case I always think of Trader Joe, you know, cuz again, talk about different you me and you bond over the fact that like we want to make products that are different. Yeah. I'm not interested in making a me too product.

Then lives another few decades.

Thanks for listening. Joe Columbo or I don't know how to pronounce his last name. I don't know how to pronounce anything. Joe, I'll call him Joe Colbo. Your accent, please. Do your

this guy's life, you could tell he's full of regret.

Full of regret.

Yeah.

decades ahead of you. That's beautiful. when when you were talking about selling a company and then maybe your next company in this entrepreneurs's life is not as financially successful as big as well respected. I I I've never heard a great definition of like what like what success means and the best answer I ever heard to like what is success to you actually came from Steve Jobs and it was beautifully simple. It's like did I make something I'm proud of? Yeah. And that's the way I think about it. Like for your podcast, you need x amount of listeners. It's like, no, did I make something I'm proud of? talked about one of the first Rick Rubin tells the story the first time he met Jimmy I. Jimmy's already a legend. and he's 10 years older than Rick, so he's like was well known and Rick plays either with some other music executive and Rick plays him this song he just produced and he said some he said Jimmy said something that changed like his life or the way he thought about things. He goes and Rick's like and Rick's like what do you mean I'm sure you can like you're better at this than I am. You have a lot more experience than I do. You've been doing this a lot longer. Of course you can make something simple. And the point was that you don't know what you don't know. And so he made this beautiful simple thing and then you tend to like think need to add more things to it and make it more complex where Jimmy just again like that's just the way it is when you're with him. He just he'll say one sentence he just gets right to like the heart of the issue. It might [clears throat] have been Rolex. It might have been I mean there's a few could have been like an Omega Speed Master. They just maintained the same design. Porsche 911 similar Oh yeah. basically perfect. Yeah. Has everything I need, nothing I don't. Look at the updated version, whatever. 2010. Yeah. Right. Well, I'm drawn to the first. By the way, I don't think the new one is bad. So, like, it's just that what attracts me is the purity of the first one because that is the purest form of the idea. And I love ideas and insights. Someone had an insight to design a watch that looked like that. And then from there, everyone based their designs off of that initial thing. But there was a time when that was the first thing that looked like that. That gets me going. I just like, for example, like you know, you take a a Rolex Daytona today and you look back at the first one in 1963. To me, the one in 1963, not just cuz it's older, it's better in my opinion aesthetically because it's the purest form of the concept of the idea. Everything else from there has been layered on because they need to sell more and they need to come up with a new version, a new model and this is what happens. Like they wouldn't couldn't still sell that first version. That's like not the way the world works. You have to keep making new stuff, right? Purity and like the the pure idea like the pure form of the thing. Could you use the word essence or no? is part of it. I think maybe you could. Um what's the French word for essence? I want to hear you say it. um uh Assants. I don't know what the hell it is, but it's it's more about the the um the it's to me it's purity. It's like that's the beauty is that this is the initial idea. This is the original concept and this is the first execution of that idea in three dimensions in in a product. actually the the the gym I used to go to had some old concept getting back to the concept two old concept two rowers and I actually really liked looking at the early ones and then looking at the changes over the years and in that case is in that case the changes were more functional like they used better materials that lasted longer and stuff but the idea the fact that this idea of this product that's so good today was so pure back then and still kind of the same thing like just gave me I'm I'm more attached to the brand because of that like they didn't just add stuff to add stuff They added stuff that literally did improve things. Not just to sell new models, but to you could see the material changes. Meanwhile, like a lot of things like watches and stuff, it's just like new dial colors and new stuff just to kind of sell more. Um it's funny because it's a great product based on the original Honeywell design that that Drifus designed. I forget his first name. or whatever. But actually the thermostats don't that's the alarm panel that has it's like a huge iPad screen. Anyway, screens and screens and everything's a touch screen. Everything's a big black glass thing with too much stuff on it cuz you got to fill up the screen. You can't just have a tiny screen. You got to have a big screen. And if you have a big screen, you got to put stuff on it. So, you put stuff on it. Um, a dishwasher couldn't be used the first time without an app to register it. So, like my mom wants to do the dishes, like they don't work. She had to call the house manager guy. He had to come down. He's like, "Why doesn't this work? We plugged it in and oh, there's an app. I got to get an app." Like, what? You're adding and not making it better Yeah. you turn the TV on and the channel that you were on would be on. Like that was good. Like you actually It's amazing. Like you can't do that today. Like that's actually not even a possible thing. Like you turn it on and you're back to some like menu with all the options again. It's like how do we go backwards? I call this the great regression. Thermostats have gotten worse. Nest maybe is an exception. I'll give grant them that. Good product. Really good product. um a big alarm panels, a lot of panels, a lot of thirdparty products with big glass screens, bad touchscreens often bad. In fact, car manufacturers um with the exception of Tesla because Tesla's is outstanding. But everyone else who put a bunch of screens in their cars, they're starting to move back to dials again and buttons again because people are like, "This sucks. Software is hard and a big piece of glass. There's no tactile feedback. I can't do it and I have to look at it. There's no muscle memory cuz I'm not sure I'm confirming what I'm doing." Like these are bad things. So that technology can get worse and then it can slide back and hopefully can get better again and new lessons can be learned. But it was a revelation to me to go into a new home with the state-of-the-art stuff and see how backwards it was. And I'm in technology. I'm not like again I'm not a light. I'm not afraid of this stuff. I get it. But to see how bad it's gotten, like the [clears throat] light switches, like literally what when we rented the place, my my agent who who found it and whatever and did the negotiations and stuff, he's like, "Hey, they want to like do a walk through with you." And I go, "Cool. I'll be there tomorrow." And I thought the walkthrough was going to be just like, "Here's the house." But it was like, "No, here's how you use the lights." You're like, "I have to What? What?" Like the best interface ever was like the switch. It works on off. Beautiful. It's almost like It makes me think of, again, I'm going to tie this back to Rick Rubin since we've been talking about him a lot. He has this concept of a I don't know. I don't these guys are close to them. I ask him, but uh he has this idea of ruthless edit. And so he's like, "Okay, you made 30 songs for your album." He's like, "Pick the five that you absolutely can't live without." Okay. So, now we have a five song album. It's a perfect album. Maybe it needs some more. So, he was like, "But then we decide out of the 25 left you're you you see this like timeless design of the 1963 Daytona and you're like, there's nothing to add to it. do you remember going up to PCH? There was that burnt out. They left. You could tell Exactly. It was a You could just You knew it was a 911. But immediately the other cars next to it burned out. I have no idea what it is. That was just it was like I know exactly what that is. I think about that all the time. I think product you should think about this. Uh Jerry Jerry Seinfeld has this really interesting um concept where he says dosage matters Yeah. To just sit there. When I asked you about um like timeless design, go back to Rick Rubin. What I love about him and that that exchange between him and Jimmy I happened, you know, probably 40 years ago. Rick would say is like somebody playing the piano, just the piano and a piano and a beautiful vocal sounded great 50 years ago, sounds great today. That's right. It'll sound great or 50 years from now. So when you try to revive Johnny Cash's career, this great song called Hurt, which I listen to. It sounds great today. Let's just go back to the essence of what we're actually building. And I think, you know, not many people building products, you just gave the perfect example, but there's no essence there. They're not even using their own products. No, this actually ties into some other advice that Jeff gave us uh way back right when we first we first met him, which was that he told us to focus on the things in our business that don't change. He goes, "There's going to be plenty of things that do change, but make sure you focus on the things that don't change." And the examples he gave us were um said something like, "10 years from now, people are not going to wake up and go, I wish uh Amazon's customer service was worse." They're not going to wake up 10 years from now and go, "I wish it took longer to get a product from Amazon." They're not going to say 10 years from now, I wish Amazon's prices were higher. So these are the core essence elements that he clearly invested in. Things are coming faster than ever. Selection. Another one is like people aren't going to wake up 10 years from now and go, I wish I couldn't get this on Amazon. Like every more selection, faster delivery, great customer service, fair prices, even competing against other people and offering the lower price even if Amazon doesn't sell it. Like these are the things in his business that he knew would never change. and he can still explore a whole bunch of other things because they do a lot of other things but don't lose sight of those basics is something that he really instilled in us and something we've tried to focus on. So that this idea of what is the this is the essence like what is the essence or the purity or the the core fundamental basics that really matter um and don't lose sight of those because it's very easy to lose sight of those because they can become boring like we've done that for a while let's do something else and you can kind of lose sight of that. It's just like I'm obsessed. You said you like old people. People always say I'm obsessed with old people, which is funny, but I'm just not obsessed with old people. Do you remember talking about this last night? I was like, Jason, did the math? for 54,000 hours? I don't know. Tiny tiny amount probably. Yeah. I mean Yeah. I I suppose I mean like again it's it's it's like one day at a time. So it wasn't that wasn't intended. I was just laying bricks. I just keep doing it. I mean and then it just adds up and the past gets bigger and adds up and that's what happens. But yeah, I've always admired things that have stuck around for a long time. We used to have a podcast back in the day called The Distance which was a podcast that we did a few years of businesses that had been around for 25 years or more. And maybe that's not even that long all things considered, but it's quite long for most. That's incredible. And it was awesome. And most of these are family-owned small businesses. They just nailed some things and got them right. And I love businesses like that that have been around for a long time. There's something about I'm not talking about us here, but there's something about um if it's been around that long, it's not a fluke. You can like have something that's hot for a while and it can go it can go out. That's kind of a fluke or like a a trend or a fad or something. But to be around for a long time signals that there's something is repeatedly right about this thing. Right enough to stay in business for a long time. A lot of these businesses are tight. Like you could have a a dry cleaner that their margins thin and maybe it just is enough for them to get by, but they'd rather still be doing that than something else. And so they're in it for a long time. It's not that it's like a great business, but it's a sustainable business. And that to me is a great business. If they can keep doing that, there you go. It's the same insight you had earlier with the leaf. You're like, why don't you look at this leaf? It has evolved forever. Do you know who Mark Spitzagel is? I read his book called The Dow of Capital. And this was probably like seven years ago. He runs this uh this hedge fund. he has an entire chapter in that book on conifer trees I love it. I've often thought of our business as as as an oak tree. I love oak trees. Oak trees are like trees that I love. I don't think about as the acorn so much. That's cool though. Especially a acorn. Amazon. There you go. Whatever. Wonder if he thought about acorn as a company. I remember that I remember reading that like that's not a good association they don't sell kadabas there do they don't they don't it's amazing um the everything store doesn't sell kadabas okay Yeah. The line I have on this that reappears over and over again in these biographies is you just stay in the game long enough to get lucky. There's going to be something that happens year 5 10 15 20 usually an innovation invented by somebody outside your company you can take advantage of uh the example of this like Coca-Cola with refrigeration they didn't invent refrigeration but it drastically expanded their market he needed that difficult time period to then grow and to realize all the things he was doing wrong and this is he well he had that huge spike in stock price, which you talked about, and then the the it going down. But it's when he realized, oh, like I'm cosplaying. there's not one right way to do something. There's probably a hundred at least 100. I want to go back to what you just said, though. Like, you know, something could be hot, it could be a fad. The maximum I have for this is time is the only like time is the best filter. It's the filter the only filter I trust for businesses for ideas for books. I usually read a lot of old books but for it works for people too because like a huge influence of my thinking is like Charlie Mer and his whole thing is like you need to build a seamless web of deserved trust with high quality people. And the only way you know if somebody's high quality is time and in him and Warren's case they knew the same people for decade after decade after decade. I'm rereading the book Snowball. It's like the 700page biography of Warren Buffett right now. And the amount of friends that he accumulates in his 20s, 30s, 40s that are still around when they're in their 70s and 80s is absolutely remarkable. The time is the the for a business time carries most of the weight is is another maximum. I got that from Munger because he when you read Porsche Zmanac, his thing is that you should master there's only a handful of big ideas in all these different disciplines. So you know biology, physics, economics and he's like and if you just master the big ideas he says those few handful of big ideas carry most of the freight Yeah that's a big part of it too. This is a bit of an aside, but it's tied to it. Um, and I think it's important to talk about is pricing. So, with Base Camp, for example, nobody can pay us more than $299 a month. Okay? It doesn't matter how many users you have. So, you could be a big enterprise and $299 a month is the most you can possibly our prices go way way low, but that's the most we allow you to pay us. Now, many of our competitors will like, "Hey, you want to pay us 50 grand a month? You got 2,000 seats? We'll take it." I don't want their money because what I want is a static group of customers. Like if you think about static like an old TV, like the dots, they're all equal sized. You should be able to pick out 10 random customers and lose I don't want to lose customers, but if you could pick out 10 random customers and lose them, I think you have a good business. If you put out a 100 random customers and lose them and be okay, you have a good business. What you don't want are a bunch of outlier companies that you cannot afford to lose. You don't want customers that you cannot afford to lose. And so by equalizing our pricing and not letting anyone pay us more than anybody else, we create a bunch of small units which are individual customers. And if you take one out, it's not like Django where the whole thing is going to fall. Like it doesn't matter in a sense because everyone's essentially equal no matter how big you are. And then we can develop software for the customer base as a whole and not for a handful of customers that pay us a lot more than everybody else. And that's the enterprise game is paying is is getting as many seats as you can and landing these whales. And I just don't find that interesting. I also don't find it durable. Durability is about a lot of small things and if someone wants to chip away at some of those, it doesn't matter because there's a lot more left. That's kind of what we're aiming for with durability. So, one thing that we haven't touched on which I think is really important, we've danced around it a few times, you've mentioned a few times, is that you are all intuition. I want to hear your thoughts on intuition and I want to hear how you refine your intuition. I mean intuition for me is just is is making decisions that you're comfortable with. I mean like and and and not look actually you do want to look around. You want to pay attention to things as many things as you can in a sense but ultimately you have to be willing to make a human decision about something and stick by it and stick behind it. Um I think these these things these decisions come from somewhere where you can't quite define where they're from. Like it's not like there's one thing that tips it over. Intuition to me is like a a collection of a lot of things that you can't quite split apart that lead you to make a decision. And um that's how I'm driven. I I I I go by gut. I go by intuition. Whether it's a pricing or a product decision or a feature or a new product or a name or whatever it is, we don't test things. We don't uh do focus groups. I don't we occasionally AB test for fun, but not like because it matters. Um, and uh, and and that's it. Like I'm not looking at numbers. I I've never seen a spreadsheet that's ever made me do anything. Like I don't want to make a product decision because a spreadsheet told me to. That's just like a thing. And there's a lot of other things that can tell me to do other things. I don't want to value this because it's like a spreadsheet with like numbers on it. Like that's just a thing. and and so I'm very careful not to put too much weight into something that purports to be more valuable than some other feeling I have just because it has numbers on it. Um, now of course I don't want to do stupid things. I'm not going to like throw $50 million at a a Super Bowl ad. Like I'm not going to do that. Um, so like your intuition has limits too, but everything we do is based on just kind of what we want to do, what we feel. I want to feel into these decisions and go I feel good about this. No matter what happens, let's do it anyway. You just do things. You make decisions. I mean, to me, like it's all about time under the curve in terms of making decisions or area under the curve, sorry, I think is the is the actual correct way to way to phrase that. Um, so the more decisions you make, um, the more time you have, the more intuition you're refining, but you don't like actively refine it. It's not like you're you don't practice intuition, you just make decisions. And the more you make, the more you make, the more it sharpens everything up. It's like um it takes the takes the edge off I think eventually as you make more and more and more and you're tumbling these things around essentially you end up with like a nice smooth orb and it feels really good to have that in your hand and uh and uh it's just it feels right and that's kind of where you want to get to. So you want to have this place where when you make a decision you're like this feels like the right decision. I'm not afraid of this decision. I'm excited about this decision. It could go wrong and I'd be okay with that too. Like I just know that this is the decision I want to make right now and I'm lucky to be in this position where I can make it. No one can tell me I can't. Like that's another part of intuition because you can have intuition that keeps hitting a ceiling and someone else says no and then you don't get to use it. So intuition has to be used I think to really be enjoyed and uh that requires again back to independence back to uh optionality as well. Jason, one of the coolest things about my job is that I could have somebody like you that I've read and has shaped my thinking over a decade and a half. We become friends. you get to hang out and then you also get to, you know, come on the show and then share all the things I love about you for everybody else. I really appreciate the time today, man. This is … awesome. Yeah, you bet.