Brandon Whichard  0:01  
Dan Balcauski, founder of product tranquillity, welcome to the show. How are you? Good to see Brandon doing well, how you doing? I'm doing fantastic. After our pro long setup it was. That's how you start all podcasts. He's talking about how long it took to get set up. But we'll skip that part. So and we'll get right into the fun stuff. 

Dan B  0:19  
It wouldn't be modern times if we didn't get to complain about you know, remote work in audio video setups. 

Brandon Whichard  0:24  
That's right. So just everybody that's listening, just assume we spent 10 minutes complaining about it. But it all worked out. We're here nonetheless, it's going to be great. Dan, you and I have known each other for a while. FirstNet I think way back at SolarWinds. You're doing some product management. I was doing, I guess, some product marketing. Who knows? It's hard to remember. But this is where I wanted to start. There were crazy times there were crazy times going on. You know, it was their meetings, their spreadsheets, it was all on a simpler time, it was pre COVID. We didn't even know what problems we were gonna have in the future. But nonetheless, what I think is interesting, and we were talking offline, is you in 2017, did what I think many people have often thought about, maybe I should just not work for a while, and I should travel the world. But unlike many people, you actually did it, you actually left the corporate world for a little bit. And you took a sabbatical in 2017. So I want you to just paint the picture. One, like how long have you been thinking about it? And then to what made you actually take the leap? And actually say, I'm going to take some time away and go travel the world? tell them the story. 

Dan B  1:31  
So yeah, I mean, there's there's a lot to that story. So

the seed got planted, you know, many years prior. I don't know if you're a Tim Ferriss fan at all. One of Austin's more recent famous residents, who migrated 

Brandon Whichard  1:46  
my four hour workweek fame, right? Isn't that is 

Dan B  1:48  
exactly those original. And then he has a bunch of for our, you know, x other books, plus a very famous, an excellent podcast. But yeah, I read for our workweek, I think about right when it came out, and probably Oh, 708. And also, at the same time, had a couple of friends who just decided to up in go on long term trips themselves. One of my best friends in the world, he just like, sold everything he owned and moved to Bali. And he's still over in Southeast Asia. Oh, wow. And another friend who went actually traveled for two full years. And so, you know, had those influences. And it was one of those things that I'd always kind of wanted to do, and was always in the back of my mind. And I think the way I describe it to people in terms of making the decision is, you know, your different areas of your life, whether that's your career, your finances, your healthier family situation, relationship with a significant other, right, those are all going to be, you know, either, you know, it's all green to go or they're going to be you know, red lights effectively, right. And there's never going to be a time in your life where all the lights are gonna be green, you're gonna have to run some red lights. And you just have to make that decision. And just and just go if you like anything like this, if you're just waiting for the perfect time, you're never going to go and then all of a sudden, there's a global pandemic, and like, Oh, yeah, you thought you're gonna travel like good luck now.

So so I'm super glad that I went when I did, because now I mean, look, it's still possible anything's I also want to put that out, it's possible for anyone in any situation do. I don't think I was particularly special. I think for an American for Americans, it seems a little odd. But, you know, you know, gap years are very popular with Australians with Europeans.

I met a lot of traveling families on the road, I met people who were traveling for, like, 10 years plus, like, consistently. So, you know, it's one of those things that, you know, I'm glad I did it, and I went when I did, but, you know, I think anyone can can do it, if you really just sort of make the decision. And for me, I, you know, I reached a point in, in my career that I was just like, you know, what, that, you know, the time is never going to be better if I don't go now, like the excuses are just gonna amount and so just I pulled the trigger. 

Brandon Whichard  4:12  
I will go back, let's get let's do a little mini review of four hour workweek because I read four hour workweek, you know, my, my guess was like, famous, like everyone was reading it. So. But like, my big takeaway from the four hour workweek was like, wait a minute, he's just redefining the stuff that he likes to do as like work, right? It was just like, he's actually still working. Right. This is my whole take on I was like, and then he just sort of like the stuff he doesn't didn't want to do. he hires essentially hires, usually people off shores low cost providers to kind of like take care of this administrative stuff. But he's still actually doing work. He just says it's fun. And he doesn't call it work, but it's still work. So I know Yeah, the whole thing was like, I was like, at the end of it, I was like, I don't really buy this. I'm not really buying this. And then of course, like he had the whole idea of he wrote the book, and he wrote more books and he does the talks. And he has this whole thing and I'm like, this feels like a very

pre-packaged, you're really working, you're just doing work you really like with the flexible schedule. So yeah, 

Dan B  5:05  
there's a lot. No, no, there's there's a lot I can comment on there. So I think the way I talk to people about the book is it I read the book while I was traveling and doing the sabbatical. So so it gave me a new perspective on it. While I was on this adventure, I think the way I describe it to people is, it's really two different books. The first third is the one I highly recommend to people. The first third really is sort of lays out a theory of work in life, that is, I think, really refreshing and needed in especially the American culture. Because, effectively, you know, he sort of makes the case that we've been sold this narrative that isn't actually true, which is, you know, work hard, you know, live your whole life for your job, accumulate wealth and status. And then when you retire, then it's the time to sort of live your life and go explore or, you know, learn that language or, you know, go, you know, take up that hobby, right. But, you know, first of all that as a, as a narrative, right, that's only even been possible for maybe two or three generations, it hasn't been that possible for very long, most people throughout the span of human history, you know, worked pretty much until they were dead. So retirement is a relatively new thing. And then, even within our modern, you know, industrialized life or retirement sort of thing, oftentimes people get to that stage of life, and they realize that Oh, like, I don't have the drive to do it. Now. I'm tired or my health or whatever, is not at a place where I could actually go, you know, and enjoy these golden years. Right? Or, or people also, I think the thing is, they have this fantasy of, Oh, yeah, when I retire, I'll go sail the Mediterranean for, you know, years. And it's like, Look, have you have you sailed the Mediterranean for a month, like how you're signing yourself up for to do it for years? And like, you have no idea if you'd even want to get

Brandon Whichard  7:06  
 in Lake Travis for an afternoon. 

Dan B  7:08  
Yeah, exactly. Right. And so, but I think people sort of they tie themselves to work into jobs, that they're not really passionate about, they're doing it for a paycheck for some, you know, unforeseen day in the future, that they actually get to go enjoy their lives. And he's like he's in so he lays out the case that, look, this is, this is not how humans are supposed to live. And here, there's, there's another way. And so you got to put forward this philosophy of sort of mini retirements, which is, yeah, like, absolutely go work, be a value to society produce useful things. But then you'll figure out how to structure your life so you can kind of step away from that. And for six months, go live in another country, and you know, do whatever you want to do with that time, go volunteer for a charity, go, you know, become a tango champion in Buenos Aires, go, you know, learn another language. Right. But But, you know, no man is guaranteed tomorrow. Right? So stop writing this check

Brandon Whichard  8:03  
 really the mini retirement part of the Tim Ferriss I, because I agree that I think that's sort of like the idea of like deferred gratification versus like, hey, spend some time throughout your life doing the things you love and things that you think challenge you and find, find a way to do that. And I think that part is that part I liked. I would agree with that, that maybe so. So here, I'm gonna like summarize our entire four hour workweek review. It's like read the first 90 pages, we'll call it like, read the first one hour, four hour workweek. And then the rest of us like, whatever, like all the other stuff, exactly. 

Dan B  8:32  
Well, he says, He says something else there, which is like, he's like, I didn't I think I'm pretty sure the four hour workweek is like I didn't want to be the old guy with the Porsche. Right? And I mean, you know, if he's made enough money, he definitely can afford the Porsches now but so but but I think what it meant was it like people end up in this race of continued continuing to acquire material possessions because they they've gotten themselves in this treadmill of Oh, I work and then I really don't know what else to do with my money. So I spend it on material things that don't really make me happy. And so I think there's a there's 

Brandon Whichard  9:05  
spend it on experiences, right things that you know, and you realize, I think we can all get mine. Alright, so you read the Tim Ferriss book. Now the part that I think scares people, at least I mean, I'm just going to speak for the audience, maybe just me, it's like, okay, you're going to do this, but then you got to have some money to travel like, right? I mean, that's the first part. So. So what did you do? Did you just like save a little extra money? Did you save up money? You just been accumulating money, you know, did you go go to your retirement? Like, what financial planning Did you bring to like, Okay, I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do a mini retirement. I'm gonna fund it. Like, how did you go through that? Just like I need to pay for this year? What did you do? 

Dan B  9:39  
Yeah, yeah, no, that's that's good. And I so I'll start by saying, as Americans, I think we overestimate dramatically how much a trickle trip like this costs.

And what you actually need to do it so one of the things is that, you know, yeah, if you want to go travel for a year Inside the US, like, that's going to be a very expensive proposition, because the US is a very expensive country, if you go to Thailand or Vietnam or India, or I don't know pretty much anywhere else in the world, that's not Western Europe or the United States, like your dollar goes incredibly far. Also, I met people who literally had barely anything who were traveling long term, the options are limitless to what you can do these days. I mean, I even did a few of these while I was traveling, where you can do volunteer work in exchange for room and board and your meals shelter effectively. And so people just go from, I work on, you know, this organic farm in New Zealand for a month, and then I go, you know, to this other place in Australia, and do the same thing, and then just kind of volunteer that way around the world. So for myself, personally, I was at a stage sort of mid career, you know, I didn't want to fully rough it. But you know, I had been fortunate in some of my work endeavors, and also it was able to, to save money and effectively just travel off of off of savings. But, you know,

really, I think people just overestimate what I think you need to do. 

Brandon Whichard  11:12  
And you're doing this you were by yourself, right? You didn't, it wasn't like you're bringing anyone else along on all along on this. This voyage, right.

Dan B  11:18  
Yeah. So what I what I like to say is I traveled solo, but I was never alone. So that's, you know what? 

Brandon Whichard  11:24  
That sounds like a book right there.

That sounds like a Tim Ferriss book that we should write. That's the next time but go on, what do you mean by that? 

Dan B  11:31  
So

one of the advantages of traveling alone, or traveling Solo is that you have two choices, right, which is, go and meet new people, or sit around by yourself for what it actually is a year and a half. And like, let's just say the ladder is not as not an appealing prospect. I think the other thing that people don't, especially in Americans who are listening to this, don't understand that like, yeah, hotels, if you're going into staying in hotels, like look, I wasn't staying at the Ritz Carlton or the Four Seasons or you know, hotel intercontinental, right, those are those, those are the worst places to stay if you're traveling solo, you know, there's much better options, whether they're like, I mean, these days, super easy with couchsurfing, or with Airbnb and like shared rentals, or with hostels, there's so many options, and you go sort of meet other people, right. And so then also, I just have, through my network of friends that have accumulated over the years have people that just live in far off locations and, and made an excuse to ring them up, be like, Hey, I'm gonna be in your city in a week, like you want to hang out. I'm gonna

Brandon Whichard  12:45  
be staying with you

Dan B  12:47  
to be staying with you. So.

Brandon Whichard  12:50  
Okay, so you Okay, so I think we got it here. So we saved up some money. We got some motivation from Tim Ferriss, and now you're actually going on the trip. And I think your advice here was like, hey, pick low cost or less expensive areas in the United States, which are plentiful. So how did you like when you like, bought the plane ticket? Did you like come up with some itinerary? You know, to your point, like, like, I'm gonna go volunteer, do something to get started? Or was it like, I'm literally getting on a plane, and I will figure it out when I get there.

Dan B  13:15  
Yeah, so it's funny because I actually did when I came back, last year, I did a presentation at product camp Austin on this and the way I described it is a very agile for product managers, the it's very agile approach to my, to my trip planning, like, I don't personally, I've heard of people that plan, like plan for one or two years, to go for a trip, that's going to be one or two years. So like, you know, t minus zero minus a year, right, or like planning a trip. And I just think that's a huge waste of time. Because, like you just, you know, like the the principles of Agile product management, you're just learned so much once you hit the ground, you start talking to locals, you start talking to other travelers who have been on the road for months, they tell you about places you there's not in any guidebooks or that you would, you wouldn't even know if you read about it, that it was someplace interesting, or there was things to do there. Or, you know, you might you might end up in a place and really like it and be like, oh, like, I want to stay here. And oh, but you know, that means that, you know, my other year of itinerary planning now has to change and you have to uproot that and change all of it. I just think it's a huge waste of time. So the way I approach it is in effectively like pillars, or you might appreciate this from the back of the solar winds, the big rocks, okay, yes. Right. Are you ready to back to the good old days? So, so the, the idea pillars are big rocks is that you have you have effectively, a couple of key things that you want to do. And then you're like, I'll fill up kind of fill in all the other details around those. So I knew I wanted to go to New Zealand. I've never been there. I had been to Southeast Asia before, but I've never been to Vietnam and heard really good thing. So I knew I want to go to Vietnam, in like, I gone to Europe before, but never to Scandinavia. So I want to go to Scandinavian countries. I'd never been to the Middle East. I mean, there were a lot of other places I wanted to go but didn't end up but but that was kind of how I thought about it was just like, Oh, I want to go to Petra and Jordan right. And so just a few, but a few of those, right, like less than 10. And then I was like, Alright, I've got a, you know, 10 dots on a map. Let me think of some sort of way that I'm not just constantly, you know, spending a bunch of jet fuel going, backpacking back and forth. One thing I will recommend to folks, if they are looking at this, or the airlines will try to sell you on these round and round the world trip. Tickets, don't buy them, I think they're a huge waste of money. And they have all sorts of restrictions that make traveling this way. Almost impossible. You need like, you need like a lawyer to help you through the fine print. And the tickets are. I mean, they're expensive. And I think they're probably, you know, I travel for a year and a half. And I think I've probably spent less on airfare than I would have if I bought one of those more restrictive. So

Brandon Whichard  16:02  
you basically, like you said, Here, you kind of have some basic, I want to go these 10 places get you get to one and then sort of, kind of just kind of figure it out, like have the experience then decide okay, well, I think I want to do this next place around this time. And yeah, so the ticket for this early. So

Dan B  16:16  
yeah, so So talking to you back in Austin, but I left the trip I was I had been living in Austin. And so when I when I went to go buy a plane ticket, I wanted to go to New Zealand. So I was like, Okay, I'm gonna buy Austin, New Zealand. And while I was researching that trip, I realized that Fiji is on the way Oh, and and Fiji will like they basically do. What other country does this is Iceland, which they want to subsidize people to sort of stop over and spend money in their country. So like, effectively, it was the same price for me to fly and stop in Fiji for a week before I went to New Zealand as it was to just go straight from the US New Zealand. So but that was the only ticket I bought when I left. And I was like, Well, I'm gonna I'm gonna be in New Zealand for a couple weeks, or a couple months. I'll figure it out. You know what I'm done with New Zealand where I'm going next? And kind of went that way and then would Yeah, the one thing other you have to you have to watch out for is what you're doing that I almost I almost didn't make it to Fiji because in the San Francisco Airport was my connection was the very beginning of my trip. There's there's concerns that different countries have about making sure that you have a ongoing ticket leaving their country. So even though New Zealand was two countries ahead, I didn't have a departing flight. And so I had a sweet talk and the people at the counter, just let me go to Fiji because I was like, Oh, it's not your problem. I'll deal with New Zealand people. So let me get on. But you do have to watch out for some things like that. But you know,

Brandon Whichard  17:39  
did you give them like a copy of the four hour workweek you should read this book. This is what I'm doing. I'm on a mini retirement. And you're you're you're killing it, you're killing it with you. You're American. I don't know if that's American with your international flight restrictions. I'm going on. I love it. Okay, so you literally so you get on there you fly fly there. And so, you know, we could probably go on for like three hours about the whole trip here. But let's let's try to kind of think about you know, of all the places you you went like, what is the place that maybe surprised you the most?

Dan B  18:12  
So I got I've got two answers for that. So I think the first is just in pure like natural beauty. The place that took the top was Norway. So the west coast of Norway is absolutely stunning. Um, maybe you've heard of the fjords and they are just magnificent. So I had rented a car in Sweden oh by the way Yeah, rent the car in Sweden and drive it to Norway because everything in Norway is like four times more expensive and like Norway is ridiculously expensive also like every other car is a Tesla Model S which is which is fun. But but yeah if you go rent a car in Sweden and then just just drove basically from the southern coasts you know on up just you know weaving in and out of the mountains it was it was absolutely stunning and did in the height of summer so it was one of those where the sun barely ever set and just yeah would drive until I didn't want to drive anymore and then there's a bunch of camping so you just you just pull out your tent and you know you can you can free camp. If you can find a level spot because most places along the road or sheer cliff face you don't want to you don't I did not have the setup to do to do that. But yeah, so so definitely check out Norway. I think the other thing that was incredibly impactful and surprising in many different ways was I while I was on the trip, I completed to 10 day meditation retreats, which is just I mean by hands down the most difficult thing I've ever done, but also the most easiest silent meditation things silent meditation. Okay,

Brandon Whichard  20:03  
so like even full day's no talking. No, no yeah, there's

Dan B  20:06  
not. Actually no talking is not the most surprising thing is no no reading, no writing, no

Brandon Whichard  20:14  
nothing, no play

Dan B  20:17  
at all the only thinking, yeah, there's there's, there's there's nothing to distract you from yourself. Which is, you know, an interesting and interesting experience sounds

Brandon Whichard  20:28  
like torture honestly as like, although that as I say that I'm like, well, maybe that prepared you well for COVID you know now I'll just live in, you know our buildings and I guess we get to talk to people but that's alright so 10 day meditation, west coast of Norway. Alright, so right now, there's someone listening this or like, they're on the fence. They're like, they've been thinking about doing something like this for their whole life, let's say. And this is your your opportunity to tell them one thing, like, what would you tell him or her right now to get them off the fence and be like, this is the moment do it.

Dan B  21:06  
I think people don't actually realize how easy it is today, with all the tools that we have. It's once you get out there, you could figure it out. Like being able to travel with a smartphone is like being able to cheat like it's, you know, because because I've done it, I've done it both ways. Like I in 2010, I did a three month trip in Western Europe and like Western Europe, also Western, if you want to start if you're scared about starting Western Europe is probably the easiest. Like it's culturally very similar. I mean that the French baguettes, whatever. But you know, but like it like a lot of the same principles apply. Right? The transportation systems works and right. So it's pretty

Brandon Whichard  21:48  
easy to get going,

Dan B  21:51  
it's a way to get going, right? I mean, things you know, everything functions it like, you know, you get into other countries central South America, right, like, public transit is a little, you know, interesting. And, you know, just, there's just different different places have different challenges. Western Europe's challenging, because it's super expensive, and it's full of other Americans

Brandon Whichard  22:11  
doing this kind of thing.

Dan B  22:14  
But I did, I did. That was my first solo trip. That was, you know, extended. So I was like, three months. And yeah, I at that point, I didn't have a smartphone, and I actually didn't have a cell phone at all. And I was that tourists coming out of the subway with the giant math, there's nothing more disorienting when traveling of coming out of a subway in a foreign city because you've totally lost your sense of direction. And now we're trying to like, sort of read street signs. You've never seen another language and like, look at a map, you have no orientation jobs, like sitting down in the corner with that giant foldout map, you know, but you know, these days it's it's just, you know, there's so many tools, your places to stay ways to connect with other people while you're on the road. Good.

Brandon Whichard  22:59  
Go notes, use it. I know. All right. So listen, I this is what I'm gonna, I'm gonna assume post COVID we're all going on a sabbatical. I mean, I think the entire world is going to want to travel so maybe it will but I'm sure there will be many people once. Once we're beyond this pandemic, we can travel so well. Let's just kind of before we kind of get into background what brought you back? Was it just like a it was a time where you're like, I'm ready to rejoin society. I'm out of money. I want like a more stable social life. All of the above? None of the above. Like what what? How do you end a trip like this?

Dan B  23:28  
Yeah, yeah. Um, so my original plan was a year I ended up going for year and a half. And while I say the plan was a year because people were like, dude, you're on endless vacation. Like why even Why haven't ended? Because I think the other thing to keep in mind is the mental model that it's not just a like two. You can't just take a two week trip to Cancun and extrapolate that times. You're 25 or times you know, whatever. Right? Yeah, maybe maybe it'd be okay. I don't know. But you know, it Look, you know, and this goes to the meditation and everything else like you don't get to escape the world you don't get to escape your own problems right? You You get to go everywhere you go right then or you go there you are right is never more true. So you know, like there's there's challenges, right? I mean, you the the day to day, right? Like maybe you're not working a job but like every your whole world, there's no routine, it's turned upside down. Like you don't know where anything is. You don't speak the language. You know, maybe you meet a group of friends and you go to another city and you're having to start from scratch. I kind of compare the end of the trip to like Forrest Gump when he was Yeah, he went running for like, two years every as he's at the end, he kind of stopped, like, kind of done now. Like, I kind of felt like that, like, yeah, I could, I could keep going but like I just kind of done

Brandon Whichard  24:42  
Yeah, kind of fulfilled the, the need there. I think that's I think that's, I mean, I actually get it. I mean, not that I was Forrest Gump running, but like I get it like some point you're like, I've done what I needed to do here like I'm satisfied. I'm ready to move on to the to the next thing. So. All right, well, let's go back in time, and say so because you will Once a software engineer for getting into product management and now consulting, but I thought it may be a good way. I think a lot of people have also thought about this same path. And so maybe here, your history here. So you're a software engineer and probably writing some code and then you decided to get your MBA. And then you went to the Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management, of course. So like, take me through that process. Why did you get an MBA? And why did you go to Kellogg?

Dan B  25:23  
Yeah, so So I started undergrad in the, in the everyone's gonna be a.com. millionaire,

Brandon Whichard  25:31  
graduate high school 99. us, baby, me, yes, we're all gonna be rich.

Dan B  25:36  
Yes, we're all going to be rich, right? So So I went to undergrad to become an engineer, got my degree in Computer Engineering, and then graduated right into the.com crash, which was funny careers. Now, look, it brought me down to Austin, I end up getting a great job with a great company here, actually, National Instruments up north. Excellent, excellent company. And over time, though, what I realized is software engineering was not a fit for me and my personality, I just, you know, I just do not get excited by it in the same way that you know, the top, you know, folks do And for me, like, I'm very competitive, and I and I like to be good at everything I do. So I was just like, I just don't have the passion for this. So I was looking around at what else there was. And actually, I didn't go straight from being a software engineer into into grad school, I actually started going on the engineering management path. National Insurance was an interesting place, it didn't really have a product management function. Like, I don't know if you know much about the history of that company. But it was founded by three super brilliant guys, PhD, electrical engineers, here at UT Austin. And they, you know, built technology for technologists. And so, and I back in, you know, the time I was there early 2000s was like the stories you hear about Google, where the engineers basically ruled the company, because it was founded by engineers, the concept of 20% time for projects, that was a thing, and I and, and really, there was no product management function engineering was basically empowered. Hey, you guys are the smart technologist we hired you guys figure out what to build for other smart engineers like yourselves. So as I moved in engineering management, it was it was an interesting functional role, because basically, I was personnel manager for managing a team of engineers. I was project manager for the projects that were going on. But I was also Product Manager. And so I was responsible for my group's roadmap. Now, that was really cool. And I ended up really finding my sweet spot there, because I was like, oh, like, I'm actually way more interested in this, like, of what like, what creates value in the eyes of customers? And how does how do businesses turn that into dollars, you know, like that process to be was much more intriguing, then, you know, learning proper c++ architecture. So we were real low level two, we were, you know, my group and originally when I started we were writing Windows device drivers. So all you kids with your fancy API's, you don't know anything. Because writing code in the kernel, I blue screen, blue screen, somebody PCs, you have no idea. Um, you know, so but but, you know, it was simultaneously interesting, but also terrifying because I was, I was getting really good credit for creating these roadmaps and everyone, you know, all my senior managers that was, you know, presenting roadmaps to, we're real happy about it. And like, they'd be like, Oh, that's great, Dan, good work. And I'd walked out of those meetings, I'd be like, I have no idea what I'm doing like these guys. Like they they bought it, like, I don't know what was going on. I was like, so yeah. And that's a thing, it gets them, right. But it was just the way the company operated. And I was like, you know, I'm drifting more and more away from, you know, where I started. Now, I'm dealing with managing people, managing projects, having to figure out, you know, how to create value for businesses, and none of that speaks to, you know, the training, I had an undergrad, and I don't think that I'm necessarily going to learn all those skills, you know, next level my skills here. So that's why I started thinking about an MBA. And so, so yeah, and then, you know, so I graduated out of the.com crash also, at the same time, we were just going into the Great Recession. So also another good time to think about getting out of the workforce. So So

Brandon Whichard  29:26  
did you actually a little bit of either the full time thing that you moved to Chicago and did the whole thing which

Dan B  29:31  
which, which I, I don't recommend any other way. If you're gonna go do an MBA, like don't like, pull the pull the ripcord go do the whole thing.

Brandon Whichard  29:41  
Yeah, it's kind of maybe approach it like a mini retirement right? It's like go go meet a bunch of new people learn some stuff, you know, I'm not I guess it can be very expensive, depending where you go to school. So

Unknown Speaker  29:49  
yeah, it's

Dan B  29:50  
it's you got to watch the ROI. You got to watch the ROI. Yeah, sure.

Brandon Whichard  29:54  
Yeah, I mean, what about Kela? Cuz I mean that one, I associated with I think it comes a lot of people like brand management CPG. Like, was that like, have an interest of you? Is it just like, Hey, this is a good school? I'm gonna go check out Chicago. Is there any rhyme or reason to that? going going to Kellogg?

Dan B  30:14  
Yeah, so I'm from Chicago, I actually looked at Northwestern for undergrad, but, you know, 17 year old Dan thought it was too close to his parents to be to be comfortable. Who so this didn't have that? concern? Yeah. Um, but I mean, it's an excellent program, it means consistently top five program. The, you know, the marketing aspect is probably what they're, they're most commonly associated with, yeah, branding CPG. But they send more folks to the top three top tier consulting firms than any other company. I mean, they, you know, back when going to Wall Street was a it was an interesting thing. You know, they were there, right up there. So, I mean, kind of, uh, you know, it's funny, because all schools have their stereotypes, right, like, University Chicago Booth School, right? It's like, well, the, you know, the free the free market economist, finance guy. You know, Harvard is the, it's basically a country club, you know, so all the all the Country Club, both bankers. Yeah. You know, Berkeley is, you know, is Berkeley, Stanford, or tech and in Berkeley more so as well as, like, if you want to get into saving the environment, you know, so they all have their stereotypes. But But you know, I was all stereotypes are when you dig in below the surface, you realize that all those schools are, are kind of tough in whatever area they touch. So, but yeah, I mean, my cousin had gone to Kellogg as well. So that was a that was a strong thing for me, obviously, to be able to go back to Chicago for a little bit. That was exciting. All right.

Brandon Whichard  31:43  
So you get your MBA, and then you get out your base graduating. So where'd you end up working? Post MBA?

Dan B  31:50  
Yeah, so so I was originally looking at going to going directly to small startups, and I don't know why I thought it might be. It was it was the thing to do. And, and I love startups, nothing wrong with it. But I think, you know, out of school, I realized that one I didn't want to go to the Bay Area. I had, I had done a summer internship out there. And just, I mean, as you might tell from the flight from California now, I was at the time business back in 2011. I was like, I don't understand this place. I just like it's a giant suburb. It's three x the price of Austin, it's not as cool. It's a great place to visit. Don't get me wrong, and like not saying anything about the people. But you know, the nightlife in Austin was better. And I actually don't terrible. anybody listening. Austin is terrible nightlife, especially during COVID. So no

Brandon Whichard  32:40  
one yes, I am gonna stop moving here.

Dan B  32:42  
So it was up over here, please.

So, so yeah, so I knew I didn't want to go up to the Bay Area, I was looking at startups. And actually, I ended up talking with our mutual acquaintance. Denny LeCompte, over at SolarWinds. And, you know, he was you at the time solar winds was already fairly large. I mean, 700 employees, I don't know where they were revenue wise, but they were already, you know, public in 2012. And, you know, is the conversation I had with him was really straightforward. He's like, Look, he's like, I understand the appeal of startups. But come here and learn, you know, the ropes around product management that we've, we've created a structure for, obviously, you had, you know, tremendous success, and then afterwards, you could go do whatever you want. And that was exactly I think, you know, he's, he's sort of a whisper, and he tells you exactly what you need to hear. And it works. It worked for me, and I don't regret it at all it was, it was a great learning experience. And, and I think a lot of early product managers, I say it somewhat jokingly, but also, I talked to a lot of product managers who are going to startups, or even worse, folks who are doing another role inside of startups, and they get, they get quote, unquote, promoted into product management. And I just feel sorry for those folks, because they're just gonna get, they're just gonna get battered around by, you know, look, at the end of the day, you can do a lot of things that look like product management inside of the startup and just be massively ineffective. Like, even though you're super busy, and like you're getting things done, you're not necessarily focused on the right things and at the right time, and you don't have you know, a structure a path around you. I think it can be very, very difficult.

So, so I'm glad I got that opportunity. 

Brandon Whichard  34:25  
All right, good. Yes, I think we can all attest to I just maybe just we can go expand a little bit like working in a startup can be very rewarding. It can also be some form of hell. So go into it with your eyes wide open. So just you know, for everyone. For all the fun stories that people talk about and all the business articles there are plenty of failed startups where there were massive politics and a lot of infighting but you know, you know, some of them are good, some of them are bad. Alright, so you did the you know, did the sin product management obviously, we already talked about the sabbatical was fantastic. Sounds like it but now bring You've sort of kind of, you know, if you will kind of taken another transition your career, it sounds like you're kind of moving into consulting. So what's the idea of kind of going from product management? And then when we talk about consulting can mean a lot of things, a lot of people, what does consulting mean to you?

Dan B  35:15  
Yeah, there's,

there's a lot there. So let's just start with a basic definition of consulting. So you're consulting at the end of the day is really just bring in an outside expert. And that can be in, you know, any sort of domain at the end of it. Right, I usually think of consulting deliverables in three buckets. And if you're, you know, if you're a trained consultant, you think of everything in threes. So that was

Brandon Whichard  35:40  
four squares, I thought it was either

Dan B  35:42  
either three items, or a two by two matrix, if you're a good consultant, you can do any any of them. That's the that's the other part of consulting. No Joking aside. But, but right, I mean, at the end of the day, you know, consultant is either going to help you arrive at a decision, create a plan, or help it execute implementation. Those are kind of the three buckets, right. And so there's, there's many different kinds of consultants, but but if at the end of the day, they're all they're outside experts who are helping with one of those three things. And so, you know, I after, after I left solar winds, I went to another startup, I was running product there for a while, and I kind of realized you were doing that experience and my sabbatical, you know, it was my sabbatical, I was spending a lot of time just being like, okay, you know, what's, what's next what I want to do with my life. And one of the things I realized is that you experience at a startup, even going back to solo and some of the projects I was doing, I was running some projects that were your brand new initiatives for that company in different directions. And I was just like, man, a lot of this time I've just been playing without a net. So having just figure things out on my own, not really a strong structure of anyone to tell me which way to go. So I was like, you know, if I'm going to be in that position anyway, I might as well go off and do it on my own, like I just said, then I have just control my own destiny. And if I knock it out of the park, I'm fully responsible. And if I, I failed dramatically, well, that'll at least make a good story someday, when Brandon and I are hanging out over beers. So, so yeah, so I, you know, the thing with, you know, my product management background was incredibly useful. You know, same with the engineering background and the MBA, I think they've all sort of built to a call just a toolset, right? A way of looking at problems way of looking at markets that allow me to help companies figure out where they're where they're stuck. Right. And, you know, it's, I still use many of the the product management thinking or frameworks in, you know, day to day projects I'm doing as a consultant. Yeah, it's not it's not as big of a shift, I mean, title, maybe. But, you know, it's not as big of a shift as you might what's

Brandon Whichard  37:50  
always I think you're a think about the net. And maybe the net works both ways. I think it's kind of an interesting thought around. So often, you know, the belief is that like, hey, being like a W two employee in a product position at a large company, or any companies, it's going to be like a safe job, but I don't know, I actually think over time, you know, it's not super safe, right? You know, there's people coming and going, there's management changes and stuff like that. And like, sort of like being in consulting in some way, sort of like formalizes, what is the inform water company? Like, it's not like, all these companies? Like, are you delivering? Are you getting along with your managers? Are you doing what they want? Are you doing what you want? Can you understand the value you're delivering? Do they understand that value delivery, but when I was a consultant, it's like a natural conversation to be having on an ongoing basis where sometimes when you're at a company, it's like, that's kind of what's happening, but no one really says that it's like, oh, we'll just do the mid year review or something like that. And then, oh, we're moving you out. Or we're bringing new people in. So I've always said like, I kind of like the, the honesty of consulting, right, kind of a free agent, like, everyone's a free agent all the time. Like, why don't we just constantly think like that? So I don't

Dan B  38:55  
know. 100% hundred percent? And I think like, Look, you know, it's very important to when you're doing this, right, like, if you're a surfer, don't confuse yourself with the wave, like, Yes, I've gone independent, but I think there's a giant secular shift. That's, you know, the the amount of freelancers consultants out in the job marketplace right now, is that all time highs? Yeah. Well, well, at least in the industrialized age, right? Like, you go back to the day, right, the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker, those guys were all independent, right? Like they don't have giant corporations, you know. So there's only again, been a short amount of time this total w two structures is happen. But you know, even like a giant company like Google, I was reading an article. I just last year when I first kind of went off on this, like Google has more independent contractors than they do full time employees. And Google has like over 100,000 full time employees, right. So you just think about it, like a lot of these companies are right sort of this, this shadow that you don't really think about. So, you know, I would like to think I'm unique and original, but I mean, there's a ton of folks that I think I've realized that there's you know, both there's benefits to both to both parties, right? There's benefits to the companies and to the end to the You know, the independence? So

Brandon Whichard  40:02  
yeah, like it No, no, like your phrase there ride the wave. So now I know the wave that you're starting to ride is his churn, right. And I know, like, consultants can do lots of stuff. But I know that this is an area that you're sort of, if you will, delving into your expertise, bringing some expertise to about helping companies, you know, reduce churn and, and understand it better. So let's, let's start with, you know, it's very popular topic. But let's start with the basics. Like, what is churn? How do you define it when you're talking to clients?

Dan B  40:30  
Yeah, so um, the concept of churn in most of the time was discussed these days is in the concept of a recurring revenue business. So recurring revenue is just a fancy way of saying a subscription. So if I, you know, pay you hundred dollars in year one, like you expect me to pay another hundred dollars in year two, I didn't buy sort of perpetual license forever, then I could just use the software. And so we were looking at churn is just making sure that you keep those customers around in those follow on years to continue paying. And there's a, it gets way more complicated. From there. I actually have a new blog post coming out on all the different ways and mistakes people make when calculating churn, etc. Something we haven't published already, maybe we published by the time this goes, this goes live. But that's, that's churn in a nutshell. All right,

Brandon Whichard  41:20  
because I think but I also wouldn't feel like if you've worked in a large company in various roles, like there's usually just some meeting with the CFO, financial person, and that your executives are just like, we're losing too many people like or losing too many customers, that's usually just that one starts, at least that's been my thing. And then everyone's just like, why? And then just, I don't know, 1000 1000, convert Enix anecdotal conversations take place, right? Like, this is everywhere I've ever been. So, um, so we think about SaaS companies, right? And you think about,

Dan B  41:49  
which is fertile ground for consulting, right? Because nobody knows.

Brandon Whichard  41:55  
But like, it really is. Usually, it's just like a room of just like me, literally, you know, talking about, there's usually somebody with a lot of data, but like, it's hard to understand what the hell's going on that data. So it usually comes back to like, who tells the most, the best, most compelling anecdotal story about why churn is happening, right? At least that's been my experience. I'm, you know, I don't know, maybe other places are doing it better. So, um, but I think you I want you to touch on like, you know, why do you think it's even more important today? Like, what are some of the things about because there's all these various, you know, as a service model, so like, when you think about all these different businesses, what are the as the service business models that like, are most interested in churn and thinking about it today? Who are the clients that you think are talking about the most?

Dan B  42:38  
Yeah, so. So like, my focus, particularly is in business to business or b2b software as a service companies. Now, there are many other subscription type companies out there, you know, that you think about all the delivery box companies, you got Netflix, I don't actually consider, obviously, Facebook, you're not paying for, right, those are like ad supported networks. That'd be they look at they look at Cust user retention, but it's in a very different model, but my focus is, is b2b Software as a Service. And, you know, the, the key part to this whole, you know, business problem is that, you know, the cost for, you know, that, I guess the percentage of lifetime value that you get from a customer on an initial sale is dramatically different in the subscription businesses than it has been in a perpetual license world. So, you know, when you and I were working originally at solar winds, they didn't have I mean, they had a perpetual license plus maintenance. But, you know, the vast majority of that customers lifetime value was collected upfront on that initial transaction. Now, they eventually acquired some other, your true subscription businesses, and then had to learn, like, Okay, how are these different I mean, the other things that a big thing that also changes in those models as well is that now instead of having like an annual renewal, or maybe multi year, potentially, you have to keep that customer happy on a monthly basis. And that changes how fast you've got to react, as well. So there's a, you know, if I give you the decision to cancel every month, you better be, you're making me happy every month

Brandon Whichard  44:22  
to be on the phone, but if you're answering my questions,

Dan B  44:24  
you better be answering my questions. Right. I don't have time to forget about that. By the time my annual renewal comes up.

Brandon Whichard  44:30  
Yeah. So but I guess kind of get into so when we think about churn and you know, kind of back to that this meeting, I was sort of making fun of like, okay, like we're in they're all telling anecdotal stories, and, you know, there's some marketing people, some sales people, some product people and who knows, maybe some engineering people in there. So I how do you kind of like what's your, you know, back to your two by two matrix or your consulting, like, how do you start to decompose this problem, so that people can if you will really start to understand, you know, what's impacting churn What's your approach there?

Dan B  45:01  
Yeah, so

the one party you didn't mention that's not in that room is the customer often, right? So So number one, I want to go get their opinion. But only maybe tied with that is, I do want to hear from all those people in the building. But I want to hear from them, not what they know, the reason is, but what they think the reason is, like, it just is my engineering data mindset background, like, we're going to treat all of these as hypotheses, and then we're going to go see if we can collect data to to validate, those are not and so and, you know, one of the things that, you know, I'm very adamant about is, you know, the truth lies in the voice of the customer, like, they will tell you everything that's going wrong, right. And like, Look, there's, this gets very nuanced, because even if you start, like, people be like, Oh, well, you can't talk to all the customers you have to look at data is like, okay, yes, all you're talking about then is just different areas of bias in all your data sources throughout your entire life is bias, right? Like what you see, like, like, what you remember, that all has bias, right? So, so yes, we will go and gather that and then see if we can, you know, this, is that what the beauty of the scientific method is, right? It's like, gather hypothesis, gather data, do you know our instruments? Correct? Did we have to, you know, tune things a little bit differently to to get to, you know, proving one way the other? what's actually going on here?

Brandon Whichard  46:25  
Yeah, it seems like the ideal way to start this. I mean, again, this seems like the real value of consultant because most of the time, even if someone is smart enough, and wants to do that, internally, they are usually shouted down, or they whatever, they just are perceived to have some kind of bias, right, or an executive has a strong personality. And they are convinced, the reason that the thing is the chairman is happening is that this one specific reason and only that reason, and and the employees that report to them, you know, just not in the position to necessarily push back on that. So that's like the ideal outside role here.

Dan B  46:57  
Yeah, it's difficult to write because, you know, there's always a danger that the the flashlight is gonna end up shining in your area, some things that you don't want uncovered, or maybe the problem, you know, as, as one of the executives, it's like, oh, it's actually a sales problem, or it's actually a marketing problem, or it's actually a product problem, or it's actually a customer support problem. None of those people one want, you know, what the blame, I guess, but also, right, like, if, you know, if you're the head of customer support, or customer success, or however you look at it, right, like, how do you make a case that it actually is the product, for example, right? Because now you potentially are throwing a colleague under the bus to be like, hey, like product engineering, you're not delivering on what customers are expecting? And that's the reason why. And it's seen, not necessarily with an objective lens, right? And so yeah, it can definitely be valuable in that case, to get a more someone who doesn't have like an empire to build inside the company, right to take a look, what

Brandon Whichard  47:57  
do you think I wanted to get your take on this? The the thing, so I think you're right, I mean, of course, right? There's like, you don't want it your department to be labeled as the bad department. But what I find like, is that many companies like to your thing about this is less about churn, it's a little bit about churn a little bit of product market fit, it's like, many companies really don't truly understand why customers value their product, like they think they do. Right? They believe, and they will often create pretty complex narratives around, we do this for the customer, our customer loves us for this. And that becomes like this, this this religious almost, I don't know how to call it like, you know, the third rail, like the assumption is so embedded in the company that to even challenge that assumption, is to almost like, you know, is to be struck down immediately, right. And so, I find sometimes, like, when you think about churn or anything, right, the closer you get to one of these things that like these, like very core beliefs, and you start to maybe challenge that core belief, like the potential for one, great improvement lies there, right? If a company can kind of embrace something that oh, we didn't quite understand why people wanted it. Or incredible pain. We're like, everyone gets fired, because people just like, you know, it's like anything, the human, the human mind doesn't want to necessarily believe things that are hard, we will find we all do this, we find reasons to not believe something that may be difficult for us to want to believe so I don't know. I just wanted what, like, what is your take when you're doing this kind of work? Have you run into a company? You know, where it's like, wait a minute, it turns out the thing that you think you're solving here isn't really why people want it and if you had any success in like turning company to like, see it a different way?

Dan B  49:42  
Yeah, so so there's definitely I mean, I think, you know, every product manager laments how little their executive team pays attention to what customers actually want. I don't know any customer, any product manager that's happy with their executives, or like,

oh, like you guys aren't

sitting in a room and imagine what the market wants? And and look, I mean, there's obviously visionary founders out there. There's obviously people that that, you know, work that way. I think, man, there's so many different directions, I can go with this. So, you know, I think one of the things you said is you don't want to be the bad department and like, to me, like when this becomes a problem, often it's not necessarily even that any department is bad or is doing a bad job, given what they are supposed to do, right. If you think about the OKR the objective or key results that they're supposed to create, they're doing what they're supposed to do. But as companies grow the What is it? Is it Metcalfe's law, or I can't remember the one that customers experience your your company's functional organization? Right, right. It's it's in your it via your software,

Brandon Whichard  50:51  
Conway's Law. Conway's Law, Conway's

Dan B  50:53  
Law,

Brandon Whichard  50:54  
Metcalfe's law is the one with the network squared, like the network's met Conway's Law that you shift your organization at some point,

Dan B  51:00  
you shouldn't matter why you should, right. And so, so it's not necessarily any departments bad, but it's a misalignment, right? And so if you look at like the customer, what the customer is experiencing, right? Like, they came in on a marketing message, they got sold something by sales, a product delivered something slightly different, right? support doesn't, maybe wasn't trained in the best way, right. So everything sort is good, but it's sort of disjointed, right? And like, it's not, you know, and people, and that's where people start falling through the cracks, especially in like a lot of the businesses that you and I have worked in, which are more like high volume, high velocity type businesses, like solar winds, where, especially as you get companies that have grown to a certain scale become multi product, right. I think you know, what it said before about the touch on this real quick. So we said before, about, like the visionary founders, I think one of the things I've noticed is, companies start to really have a problem in this retention area. Often when the company's potential grows beyond that original founder, like if you think of that original founder, original founding team, like they are the world's best product managers for that business, because they've spent years toiling in the pain and necessity of that market and that need, right, but then a certain point, you know, company starts growing, they hire other executives, those companies, those executives are scaling teams, you know, maybe you have, you know, maybe you have a buyout, right that that founder moves on, or maybe you're maybe they start acquiring other products. And now, though, you know that executives attention are split in so many directions, they stopped paying attention to the jury of those customers, and that's where these problems can really start to materialize.

Brandon Whichard  52:38  
Now, I totally agree. And I think that's like, that's probably the number one number one challenge, right is to, like, maintain that, if you will, that expertise, that customer pain, understanding, and not let it get too diluted as the company grows, because it has to grow. I mean, company should always be negative, the company has to grow, because that's to fulfill more and do more. And that's where you're gonna have these departments. Sometimes I think we look at like, oh, we're just creating departments or was building items like, Well, listen, now, like, we can't have one group do all the support and build the product and sell it right. Like, at some point, like, you have to like scale. So that, I think is is kind of where we get back to kind of this churn conversation here. So so I think you've hit on a bunch of stuff. So like, how do you like when you kind of go through? Is it a matter of going through and like doing some user surveys and doing some customer interviews? And then like, what are you ultimately producing like a report that, you know, with recommendations? Are you trying to get in and actually help the customer? Do some different things when you're actually trying to if you will change that reduce churn? How do you approach that?

Dan B  53:35  
Yeah, yeah. So as I mentioned before, right, trying to really get a hold of what are the theories going on inside the company? So you know, what are the where the executive stakeholders? Where do they think the problems lie, and then other customer facing teams, right. And this could be on the sales side, this could be on the customer support side, this could be any number of areas where we're kind of people are kidding, customer feedback. And then really trying to look at starting to look at at data and where that data supports or doesn't support that. Those hypotheses now, when you get to the world of data that can be, you know, a very long conversation in and of itself, I think, you mentioned before this concept of bias, right? And so if you imagine, imagine you're driving a car, right? And all of the gauges on your dashboard are miscalibrated, right? Like, and you think that, you know, Oh, I got 200 miles to empty, and I'm only going 40 miles an hour, but instead you got five miles to empty just pass the cop going 200 miles per hour, like you're gonna have a bad day, right? And so, so I think like, there's this myth inside companies that like, oh, we're collecting data, we have all these, you know, we're doing NPS and we're doing we're looking at customer support tickets from, you know, customer support executive, or, you know, whatever, whatever it might be. But there's all these little Places bias creeps in that really makes, you know, it's like you're driving with a bad, you know, front dashboard, right? Like, you just you have actually you think you're going, you know, one direction or one, you know, one speed and you're actually going entirely different speed because you know, your, your, your the way your data systems are set up or the way you know, you're getting customer feedback, you know, doesn't make sense. Let me give you let me give you a concrete example of where I've seen this come up very recently, actually. So one thing so first of all, if you're not, if you're not collecting any data, when customers cancel, that's your first mistake, definitely cancel something, right. And like, they don't have to talk to a person, it could be like a embedded survey on your website or a survey monkey survey that gets queued up, right? But like, collect that data, get something. Understand, though, that, okay, now you have data, that data is going to be biased, because especially if you make it as a requirement for people to cancel their accounts, people will select the easiest thing that helps them

Brandon Whichard  56:04  
get done a million times, sometimes just the first thing, whatever, it gets this form off my screen,

Dan B  56:10  
whatever gets me off this call, whatever it gets me, you know, just don't charge my credit card anymore. Amen.

Brandon Whichard  56:17  
Oh, I've done this. Oh,

Dan B  56:18  
so so look. So so so so this is where the data question can get really involved? Because it's like, step one, are you collecting information? Okay, Bad Company collect information. Step two. Yeah, that information is good. But okay, it needs to be like, adjusted with, you know, other things. And, and you'll see, you know, like, if you if you survey somebody, or so say you have like a cancellation form, if they fill out when they cancel? If I send them a survey seven days later, I'll get very different answers. Not necessarily 100, I guess it's different. There's definitely overlap, right? People have their original reasons, right. And, you know, some people are just honest folks who just tell you exactly what's on their mind, you could very different data, if you ask them seven days after they cancel, and be very different if a product manager calls him and sits on the phone for 30 minutes to an hour with them digging into all of the other contextual reasons behind that, right. And I think that's where some of the, the larger value can really surface right and getting the a lot of the you don't get a lot of the whys when you're just looking at the pure analytics. And those those can be like pure gold to actually solving the core issue there.

Brandon Whichard  57:24  
Okay, so that sounds good. So we get some free consulting here. So right, so if I'm not doing anything, one, actually asked the survey, at least the survey, at the end, why you're gonna cancel. If I'm more sophisticated, send up set up some email reminder, send everyone an email seven days in advance, because that is true. Like, if you get me at a better time, like I have more time to do a survey, I'll just be calmer, right? Like, I probably at the time, I will not give you good data, like when I'm trying to get it off the screen. But later on, if I do the survey up, I'm like, Oh, yeah, I have some thoughts on it. And then three is just you know, kind of classic product, classic, anything, just call people and ask them right? Usually, they're happy to tell it all right. All right. Give me one more. One more before we close out What else? All these people because I know a lot of the listeners, a lot of them running in SaaS businesses, I'm sure they have churn, I'm sure their executives are making the meet. So they propose to like, hey, let's collect the data. And what's the next thing that they should do? to like, make it look really intelligent in the meeting? What other tips can you give them?

Dan B  58:23  
I don't know how to make anyone else look intelligent, because I probably struggle with that myself. No, but the once you have data, right, I think one thing that really is important is that, especially in b2b scenarios, you often have different you have different personas, use cases, segments, depending on the term you want to use, relying in that data. And so, you know, in a b2b case, this can get immediately more complicated because potentially you have like solar winds, we sold it software to it practitioners, right. So the IT admin on the other end of the software is using it every day, but he might not be the guy that actually made the original purchase decision or the the decision to cancel, right? Because that might be a manager, a director of it or some some other business stakeholder. So you have what is the data you have about sort of your end users versus your buyers. And then also note that not all your all your sort of company, personas are going to be the same, right? You're going to have people in terms of different behaviors in terms of the value, you know, if if you have a product of any significant depth, you probably have multiple simultaneous value propositions speaking to potentially multiple different customers at different levels. And so understanding like, what are those different groups? What are they trying to get out of your software? Are you serving one group better than others? And, you know, acting appropriately, I think the one one, the way that most people end up doing this at a at a very surface level is by Like arr annual recurring revenue, segmentation, that that can be a good first step. But I think the next step would be to try to look at more like behavioral data.

Brandon Whichard  1:00:11  
Yeah. So I'll throw out two other ones, just some real simple ones, like one. After you've done all that survey stuff, like maybe just instrument the product to actually see what people did like, you know, that report that was like super important. He spent like six months using like, someone actually take the time to instrument like, Did anyone look at the report? How often do people look at the report? How much time do they spend on it that that usually is a very easy one. And again, like people are like, Well, of course, we're gonna instrument it. It's like, Well, you know what, you'd be surprised how often things are just not instrumented and like, and that's your tear thing about bias, right? Like, everyone just assumes, well, oh, that thing we built is great. And people love it. And it's like, well, I've been in many products there. You find out later, like, no one's ever used it. You're like, it's kind of a demoralizing feeling. But you're like, oh, okay, good to know. And the other thing, I'm just going to speak for myself. Okay, you're trying to figure out who to call who actually talked to, like, I did this. The other day, I took a survey I was in a, I had a lot to say about a specific issue. And they gave me the long comment. But like, I went to town, I went, like, however many characters there. I went in there, right? I just because it's always it's just therapy. Like I had a lot to say on this specific issue. I won't go into what it was. But I'm just saying like, if you're interested in like, who you should call it, just like look at your surveys, and just literally look at like, who actually spent time writing stuff in just like word count. That's all you have to do. call those people. In fact, they'll feel great that someone called them because they clearly have stuff to say they know if it's abusive, of course, if it's like bad language and abusive, don't call those people. But most of the time, it's like no, like, they want to tell you right? So. So I did this other day. And I was just like, you know, someone's smart, they would just call me up. But then it's like, then I recall, you're like, yeah, I'm not sure they really care. But who knows. So that would those would be like to my two easy tips to

Dan B  1:01:54  
Yeah, you do that. So So I agree. But there is a danger there. And we'd run into this at some other companies previously, where you can get in a trap, where you end up talking a lot to your power user. Yeah. And your vocal

Brandon Whichard  1:02:10  
customers, of course,

Dan B  1:02:11  
vocal customers, right. And this goes really bad in b2b where people have I'm not a big fan of customer panels.

Brandon Whichard  1:02:19  
Right there think and

Dan B  1:02:20  
through that group, think like focus groups have traditionally shown really bad bias, right? They've dominated by one loud mouth, and then, you know, everyone is in agreement. Everyone nods and falls in line. And look, if you're if you're running a high volume business with 10s of thousands of customers, like why are you gonna make product decisions off of just talking to the same 10 people every quarter? That's a

Brandon Whichard  1:02:41  
Yeah, so let me actually, I guess I'll say this like for people getting started, like if you haven't ever really talked to the customers haven't done a while, I guess just the good easy ones to start with. And people that wrote a lot of comments because they're gonna be talkative, right. But then yeah, once you get the hang of it, and you've like talked enough of those keys, then you start just doing some cold calls, like, who are some people that maybe haven't talked to us, but we need to get them on the phone. So yeah. All right. All right, Dan. So we're pretty much out of time here. So one, you know what everyone should probably do is just hire you. They should just hire you to come in help them with the product, right? And if I wanted to hire you, like, Where can I find you out on the internet's here

Dan B  1:03:14  
on the internet's you can find me at product tranquility. So all one word.com be my website. Otherwise, I'm LinkedIn at Dan Balcauski. b, Al, CA. Au, sk I on LinkedIn. So we'd love to love to hear from anyone who's got any thoughts, you know, I'm always learning so so you know, tell me even if you disagree, I'm constantly trying to update my own bias. So the different ones, right?

Brandon Whichard  1:03:42  
Yeah, we all we all need to update our own bias. Yeah, so we will put links to everything Dan just talked about there. His website, his LinkedIn, if he actually create some content finishes his blog post, I'll put that in there. If not, you'll just have to reach out to him. You have to get it so. All right. Well, Dan, thanks a lot for coming on the show.

Dan B  1:04:03  
Dude, it was so much fun. Thanks for having me, Brandon Of course.

Brandon Whichard  1:04:05  
All right. And if this is the first time you've ever listened to Software Defined talk well welcome glad to have you here. Probably right now in your podcast player just go back hit subscribe if you would like I'm happy to send you a sticker says All I gotta do send me your postal address to stickers at Software Defined talk. COMM. I will be happy to send you a sticker any where in the world. Maybe you live in one of the countries Dan mentioned. I will be happy to send you stickers there. And with that, thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next time.

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