Transcript:
Erick: Hello friends. My name is Erick Cloward and welcome to the Stoic Coffee Break. The Stoic Coffee Break is a weekly podcast where I take aspects of Stoicism and break them down to their most important points. I share my thoughts on Stoic philosophy as well as modern wisdom and do my best to share my experiences, both my successes and my failures, and hope that you can learn something from them all within the space of a coffee break.
This week's episode is another interview episode. So we're going to be talking with Geoff Roberts from Outseta. And I will let him explain a little bit more in detail what his company does. But a couple of weeks ago, I got an email from him. I'm subscribed to his email list. And he talked about how some of the things that he had done in his company were very counterintuitive to what a lot of companies do.
And a lot of the principles in there kind of reminded me of somebody who looked at the world through a more stoic lens. And so I thought it'd be interesting to get him on here. And even though I usually talk about Stoicism from a more personal aspect, I really like to bring in things from the business world, from all types of, excuse me, areas, because I want people to understand that Stoicism is a very holistic philosophy.
It's not just about you personally, but about how it integrates with society as well as your professional career. And many other aspects of life. So, welcome to the show, Geoff Roberts. Geoff, go ahead and introduce yourself.
Geoff: Erick, thanks so much for having me. Uh, everybody, I'm, I'm Geoff Roberts. I'm a co founder of a small software company named Outseta.
Uh, I'm talking to you today from San Diego, California. And excited to dig into the things that we're doing differently in our business that certainly have a stoic aspect to them.
Erick: Alright, so I guess give us a quick history on Outseta. Talk about how long you've been in business, kind of what was your inspiration for starting the company, and what's the biggest problem that you solve?
Geoff: Sure, so Outseta is a 8 year old software business now, so we've been at this for quite a while. Um, it is a, essentially a tech stack to start a, another software business, a SAAS business, or a membership type of business where you're charging recurring subscription or membership fees. Um, and we, we started the business because we had built previous software companies and sort of saw the challenges.
Uh, involved in those companies, um, when it comes to software, you have to basically buy a whole handful of different software products and stitch them together. Uh, just to kind of have the basic operational needs of a software as a service business met. Um, so we knew that was the problem we wanted to tackle.
Uh, we also knew that we wanted to do a series of things that are quite different in building the company. Um, and really at the core of that objective was keeping the company as small as humanly possible. Uh, both in terms of headcount and generally in terms of the types of things we'd have to worry about in the context of operating the business.
So we're doing, um, a lot of different, a lot of things differently, but the idea is how can we sort of distill the company down to the most critical fundamental parts and focus on only those things.
Erick: Excellent. Yeah. And in this article, uh, it's called growth by elimination that, that was very much, you know, what I got from that.
And, uh, it was pretty impressive. I think we can kind of just go over the sections. So the first thing you talk about is that. Uh, you've taken no VC funding at all. It's all been, uh, basically growth led, uh, and being reinvested back in the company. What was, what was your main decision behind that?
Geoff: Yeah, so our, our co founding team came from a previous tech company that did raise venture capital, uh, and it was not a reaction to having a terribly negative experience or anything like that.
Actually, everything worked out fine. But when you take somebody else's capital and venture capital specifically, um, you, you lose control of your business in a lot of ways. Um, there's another party, whether they have, um, true ownership in the company and decision making power over you or not, um, that has significant influence and you're basically committing to.
Needing to grow the business as rapidly as possible for eternity. And we just said, we want to build a company that's successful. We, you know, want to have financial success just like any other company. But that didn't feel right to us. We don't want to work in an environment where growth is the only objective that that matters at all times.
And we knew that staying independent and bootstrapping the company was a big part of that. So we just said from the get go, pretty much no matter what, um, even if venture capital comes knocking at our door, we're not going to take it. We're going to move at a slower pace, uh, and try to build the company in a way that's more sustainable and healthy.
Um, and also just more enjoyable for the members of our team.
Erick: Excellent. And one of the things you mentioned in there, which we can probably, we'll get to in a second, is about kind of the equity that each people have in the company. Um, what I thought was, I, you know, what you have titled their salary negotiations and that, I think that was the part that really like, you know, gave me like a double.
You know, I did like a double check, like, wait, did I just read that correctly? A full time salary at Outseta is 210 per year, straight across the board.
Geoff: Yeah. We call it our, our choose your own adventure compensation model. This is kind of the most tangible thing, um, that people get excited about when they learn how we, we operate.
But, um, the idea was simple. Uh, again, we want to keep the company small and we said, how does a small company compete with a larger company? You've got to attract really talented people and you need to incentivize them to act like owners in the business. So how do you do that? Um, the obvious answer we came to was you make them owners in the business.
Uh, and we came up with this model that we think is attractive to relatively high caliber people that gives them an opportunity to have ownership and also fits into their lives. Really regardless of where they're at in life or what their priorities are in life. So the three kind of pillars of the idea are the full time salary for every employee is 210,000 a year.
You can choose to work anywhere from one to five days per week. So if you say you're working one day a week, you're not making 210,000 a year, but you're paid off of that pay rate. You're making 42,000 a year. If you work two days a week, it's 84,000 a year, all the way up to that 210,000 base salary. And you can also elect to work at any number of days per week, earning equity in the business and everybody earns equity at exactly the same rate.
So just as a simple example, let's say across all of our employees, all time, 10 total days had been worked for equity in the business and I've worked two of those. I own 20 percent of the company It's really that simple. So the idea is people can come on to our team. We don't waste time with salary negotiations Everybody knows what the deal is when they join You can kind of pick the mix of cash and equity that works for you.
And we think that we've created a ton of alignment within the team because everybody is an owner in the business in a material way.
Erick: Yeah, that's and again, that's incredibly shocking. And I guess, you know, especially considering what we see, you know, it's kind of either one or the other. And you work for peanuts and you get some equity or you work for.
Um, you know, make a whole bunch of money and then you, you don't own anything in the company. And this was very egalitarian, so it was very, very kind of almost anti Silicon Valley. And I just found it to be immensely, immensely surprising. So where did you come up with this, the idea? I mean, what was it that inspired you?
Was there anybody else that you looked to and said, “Oh, I really liked that model. That's something I want to do”.
Geoff: Yeah, there were lots of, lots of little bits of inspiration. Um, but really like the, the core idea at the. End of the day is to keep the company small and attracts a good people. And we kind of walked it back from there.
I would say generally, um, I feel like it's known at this point that like the way you build wealth in this world is you have to own a piece of something. Um, and having worked in companies that use the traditional VC model, the reality is even in hugely successful companies, the employees are typically the ones that get relatively left behind and it's tough for them to ever.
Make any sort of real wealth because they simply don't own enough of the business. Usually the co founders and some investors do. So we said, how do we give people on our team an opportunity to really have meaningful ownership? That's where the equity model came from. Um, there's really no specific rhyme or reason to the actual 210,000 a year salary.
We just kind of said, what's a very good salary that we think will help us attract. Um, pretty high level talent. Absolutely, you know, there's particularly software engineers on our team that, um, could go out and make a lot more money than that elsewhere. Um, but I think part of what's been so beneficial about this model for us is we've kind of planted our, our stake in the ground and said, this is how we operate, this is how we work, and people select in or out.
If it works for them and they're excited about it, they Come running and knocking at our door. If it doesn't, and someone wants to go work at a Facebook or a Google and make a lot more, they, they have the opportunities to do that. And I think it's been really beneficial from, from that perspective, but a couple other, um, just companies or influences that come to mind.
Um, certainly, uh, the CEO of a company called Buffer, uh, it's another software company that operates kind of similarly, uh, has always been something of an inspiration. And there's a book by, um, a guy named Frederick Leloux, uh, called Reinventing Organizations, which was a huge influence as well. That really advocates for a management philosophy called self management that I think is very stoic in many, many ways.
Uh, but the overarching idea of that book is hierarchy isn't necessarily helping us run organizations. You can build these smaller teams where people don't have authority based on a job title. You sort of earn influence by good decision making by doing good work. People come in and sort of work in a more organic fashion, if you will, like we don't have really tightly defined job descriptions.
I kind of do the marketing work because I am the marketer on the team and the engineers do the engineering work because that's their skill set. So the idea is very much we can bring people into the company, sort of figure out where they're best able to contribute and let them do their thing without the need for a lot of oversight.
And In operating that way, is it less structured? Yes, certainly. But we think particularly for the kind of level of people that are a little further along in their careers that are on our team, that's also really fulfilling in a way that is going to help. You know, them be happier with their work and enjoy their work more.
Um, so those are some of the ideas behind it.
Erick: Yeah, I can certainly relate to that. Um, throughout my career, usually the jobs that I stayed the longest at were when I was kind of in charge of a whole project. So I wouldn't, I'd be the developer and the project manager, you know, and the DBA cause I was a full stack developer.
And so I pretty much. You know, own the project from start to finish, or I was on a very small team where I owned a large portion of it, or it was very collaborative, and so it was very easy to work within that, um, I think probably the one I liked least, or the ones I liked least was when I would work on You know, very large team and I would be in charge of this one little piece, do this one little thing.
And that was, that was pretty much it. You know, it's kind of like, even if I was just doing the backend work, if I owned the whole backend or most of it, then I was, I was much happier doing that because then I knew the whole system inside and out and so I could make sure that everything worked better together.
So I, yeah, that, that whole thing of self management was something that I. I thrived at and I appreciated that autonomy that, you know, he's kind of like, Hey, this is what we need to get done. Here's the data needs to get done by go to work. I'm like, okay. Yep. And that was much, much easier. Yeah.
Geoff: It's been kind of funny watching, um, some of our newer team members just assimilate to the environment.
Um, you know, it, it, it sounds great at first and then you find yourself in that environment. And some people just thrive right away, but there's almost always an aspect of wait a minute. No one's telling me what what to do. I just kind of wake up and, um, you know, get to get to work on whatever I want to work on, frankly, but I think the key part that people miss when I talk to them about this is that everyone thinks this is this unorganized kind of chaotic free for all.
But the key is transparency. We, we give everybody in the business access to all of the information on the business. They can look at our bank account, they can see our financials. Um, everybody does customer service in our company. So we're so sort of deeply. Um, in the thick of all aspects of the business and everybody understands the business and everyone's an owner in the business.
So we think that that just creates enormous alignment for everybody to wake up and do the things that they think are going to push the business forward. And so far that, that has been very true. Um, we have. An enormously low level of conflict in terms of what we work on compared to any other company that I've ever been in.
Erick: Yeah, I would tend to think that something like that would do a lot less kingdom building, which is the idea that there are some managers who get into play or get into place in a position of power. And what they try to do is build out their department so they have the highest head count. They have, you know, the most resources.
And it's, it's basically an ego thing because they just, even if they don't understand what half of their products are doing or what half the project is doing, it's, it's about how can I make sure that I get all of this stuff? And if it's, if you don't really have a hierarchy like that, nobody can really kingdom build because, you know, it just doesn't happen like that.
You have to collaborate. It's, it forces you. to understand those things in a much deeper way.
Geoff: Yeah, there's, there's no, um, there's no title to be had. There's no raise to be had. Um, the only thing you can do is show up and do good work that makes the business more profitable or increases the valuation of the business.
And we're all on level. of our ability to do that. So, um, a lot of those issues just kind of fall by the wayside. And, um, something in the article that you mentioned that I keep coming back to in a lens that I try to look at our business through is there's kind of four activities in the business that we want to spend time on and everything else we try to like completely delegate or eliminate from the business in general, the four things are building our product.
We're a software company, so you've got to build the software, uh, marketing. So we need to make sure people are aware of the product that we've built, providing great customer service. We think that's just a critical aspect of building a software company and then hiring people to our team, which is something we don't spend a lot of time on because we want to stay intentionally small.
But anything outside of that, we kind of look at it and say, okay, those are not the core activities that are going to push this business forward. How do we eliminate those things from the business or delegate them away altogether?
Erick: Yeah. Yeah. Which brings me to kind of the next section of your article where you talk about how you, you got rid of salespeople.
You have no sales department at all.
Geoff: Yep. There's no, so two of the things that are abnormal and in terms of our structure, aside from just no hierarchy. Um, there's no sales team and there's no dedicated customer service team either. So from a sales perspective, having been in tech companies before, again, that did the more traditional venture track, um, as soon as investors or anybody else wants to grow faster, they immediately turn to, we're just going to throw bodies at the problem.
Uh, and that typically comes in the form of salespeople. And there's no doubt, um, in most companies I've been in, excuse me. Uh, more salespeople equals more sales. Yes, that tends to be true. Uh, but as you add in those additional salespeople, you're almost always adding in more inefficiency. And with each incremental higher, you're actually becoming less efficient as a business.
We saw that and said, if we want to stay small, can we eliminate sales altogether and just be completely focused on product led growth, which is a. Sort of a tech term, but for those not in the tech industry, it basically just means you can come to our website. You can try our software for free and decide if you like it and buy there on the spot.
Um, nobody's going to talk to you. Nobody's going to sell you. Nobody's going to follow up with you. Um, and without a doubt, there's some inefficiency in that. I'm, I'm sure if we had salespeople, we would probably be a slightly larger company. Um, but. We would be operating differently and we'd have a bigger team.
And would we be as, as profitable or whatever? Um, who, who knows? We've just elected to operate this way, very, very intentionally. And it's kind of a constraint that we operate within. The other one is no support people. Um, so similarly when tech companies scale, they throw a whole bunch of bodies that support oftentimes those people ultimately are just escalating issues to somebody.
Like yourself, who's a CTO or a software developer who can actually fix the problem with the software. And we said, again, there's inefficiency there and sort of unnecessary headcount there. If you reach out for customer service, we want you to interact with somebody who can actually solve your problem rather than just escalating it.
So everybody on our team contributes, uh, every single day to customer service. Again, that's something that's probably unattractive to a lot of people, uh, but it's just something where we said, this is how we operate. If you join our team, this is what's expected of you. And we think there's a lot of benefit to, uh, really in any organization to having everybody be that much closer to the customer.
Erick: Yeah, I can imagine customer facing for everyone. Certainly, I mean, you start building those relationships, especially if it's a larger customer and they're having some technical issues. I know that the customers, when I ended up having, you know, because I worked for a small company for a number of years where I was CTO, and I was still developing, I was still doing a lot of customer interaction, especially on the technical side of getting our software set up on their systems and so on.
And oftentimes the most problematic ones were the ones where I got to know them the best because we were solving a problem together and we got to be really good friends, even though, you know, you would think that, oh, we had a big problem installing this. They'd be angry with you, but it became the reverse and that we were solving it together.
And we got to be much closer because we, you know, we're going back and forth and trying to make sure that we can troubleshoot what was going on. So that's, that's interesting. Um, absolutely. So you also have on there, you know, you don't, you don't even budget anything or you don't have a particular budget.
You just simply, this is how much cash we have. If we, you know, if it's a reasonable expense, just take care of it. If it's something bigger. Obviously, then we need to sit down and have a discussion about that and yeah, that's, that's interesting. So when you do something like that, is it, is it up to kind of your approval at the end or is it that you take a vote and you know, for some of the larger expenditures?
Geoff: Yeah. So there, there's sort of three, three different ideas packaged up here, um, which is we operate without budgets, um, performance targets or forecasts. Um, I, whenever we talk about this, I get the most questions about budgets because people are like, there's a financial reality in the business. How do you operate without a budget?
How do you know what you can spend? How do you know what you can't spend? Um, and again, it just comes down to transparency. All of our employees know how much cash is in the bank. Um, they know exactly what our like payroll expenses are every month. So everybody's got this complete picture and in short, it's very informal.
Um, what we sort of do is if. You want to spend money and it's a small, smaller expense. Let's just say under a thousand dollars, you have the ability to go do so. If it's something that you think is going to benefit the company and you need access to a tool or ticket to a conference or whatever it might be.
You don't ask. There's no one to ask. You're, you're part of this team. There's no boss to go for, for approval. Um, just make it happen. No, no questions asked. Um, for something that is truly larger, that would be like a significant investment for the business. We absolutely expect you to recognize that this is a significant expense for the business that's going to come at odds with maybe other things we want to invest in.
You bring it up with the team, you make your case, you, um, you know, you go get advice from other experts, or if you're the subject matter expert in this particular area, you make your case for it. And we will discuss it and make a decision about whether that's, uh, something we want to spend money on or not.
Uh, but it's really that informal. The general idea is that for these smaller expenses, employees don't have to worry about, um, getting approval or, or anything like that. And, uh, it's, it's been shockingly smooth. When it, when it comes to, um, the performance targets, um, and the forecasts, we look at that a little bit differently.
Um, our mindset there is just kind of, you know, a forecast, uh, or a performance target. These are sort of arbitrary numbers that are put out there in an attempt to control what the future looks like. Uh, and you can't, you can't control what the future looks like. I mean, just, you know, coming off the back of something like, like COVID here, um, markets are volatile.
The world is volatile at large. Um, certainly we have an idea of the general trajectory of our company at any time. But why are we going to set some arbitrary target and then decide that we feel good or bad based on our ability to hit that target if we're doing all the things in the best interest of the company every single day?
So we're, we're really trying to adopt that long term mindset. If you're always doing what we think is in the best long term interest of the company, we'll end up in a pretty good place.
Erick: Yeah, that kind of reminds me there's a saying that I mentioned on my podcast quite often, which is that, you know, failure is just missed expectations.
And oftentimes you're the one who sets those expectations. So if you're, if you think you're failing all the time, look at your expectations, you know, they just might be completely unreasonable or completely unnecessary. And you know, the Stokes talk often about. Accepting things as they come, you know, because you can't control the outcome.
You control the process and by focusing on your process and improving your process and your goal is to always just get better at whatever it is that you're doing. And that's what success is. You may never achieve that goal that you want because There are factors outside of your control, but if you're continually progressing and you're controlling the process, then, then that's not a failure.
Geoff: What more can you do? Absolutely.
Erick: Yeah. So that's something that I, I, I found, you know, again, everything I was reading on there, I'm just like, oh, this sounds like a stoic company. I mean, just really just how everything is done. Um. So with, with some of the financial things we talked about, do you, did you find it hard at first to trust people like that and just kind of like, okay, here's, we're opening up all the books, doing things this way.
Do you, have you ever done anybody abuse that? I mean, you don't have to name names or anything like that, but
Geoff: we, we have not, um, whatsoever. We've had zero issues with anything trust related within the business. I would be the first one to tell you. Um, operating this way requires a super high trust environment in general.
Um, you need to build relationships with people that you trust, but I think also to operate this way, you need to be a person that just. Sort of defaults to trust. And then if, you know, someone breaks that trust, certainly you, you, uh, can cut them out or react to that, but you, you need to, you need to lean that way.
By default, I have had versions of this conversation many times with other startup founders. Who will just sit here for an hour and pepper me with what if this, what if that scenarios? And certainly, um, our company is maybe more vulnerable in some ways because we operate like this. Uh, but I would say for us, it started with our, our co founding team.
There's three co founders. Um, we had all worked together previously for a significant period of time. And frankly, our desire to work together had a lot more to do with wanting to prove that you can build a company this way than the actual product idea that we ended up building. So we started with a really high trust kind of nucleus or core of the team.
And from there, um, I would say we, we definitely hire through referrals or through our networks quite a bit. Um, those people that we don't hire that way. Um, we almost always work with, uh, people in a contract, uh, basis first or give them some sort of paid test project where we really get an opportunity to get a feel for each other.
Um, and it just forces you to hire slow, which I think ultimately is a really good thing. Um, I'm a huge proponent of these single biggest. Most important thing that any company does is, is hire good people. Um, and I'll, you know, if it takes three extra months to find the perfect person, I'll take the three extra months every single time.
Erick: Yeah, no, I think that's really important. Cause I was going to ask if you had any. Any particular, you know, things that you do to look out for, for red flags and people that you wouldn't want to hire, you know?
Geoff: Yeah. Um, I, I would say honestly, uh, it's certainly not foolproof, but there's a few things that come to mind.
One is just talking about this stuff and publicizing this stuff. It tends to attract, um, people that are, that these ideas appeal to, um, we're not, we're not attracting like. The really sharky type of people that are out to maximize their own, you know, personal income to the highest extent possible. And I think that kind of helps in and of itself.
Um, but we do have escape hatches. Like we have an operating agreement and there's a way to fire people from the organization. If. Collectively, the team thinks they're, um, you know, they're not up to snuff or whatnot. There, there is a way that if people have equity in the company and want to leave, we have sort of a formalized process by which we can buy back the equity that they hold from them.
So we still have, um, you know, means of. If things did go wrong, dealing with that, uh, but one of the things I'm most proud of so, so far is in the eight years we've been in existence, nobody that's joined the team has ever left. Uh, I know that's not gonna, that's not gonna stay forever, but, uh, I'm, I'm happy to say, uh, the entire team is intact.
Erick: Wow. No, that's, that's great. And it just, it kind of reminded me, I just finished up, uh, a book from Brian Klass called Corruptible. And it was just all about, you know, how corruption happens, who's drawn to You know, leadership positions, you know, the type of people who are drawn to that, you know, plus, but one of the biggest things was just that having an organization where, you know, it's hard to be corruptible or, you know, basically if the system is set up in a way that it's hard because as soon as you did something that, and it sounds like that, that's also kind of there in that if somebody withdrew, you know, 5,000 from the bank account, because everybody has access to it, everybody would know pretty fast that somebody's trying to cook the books here.
We're trying to do something a bit unethical. And so by having that trans, I think you, I think you kind of nailed it, that transparency. And that's what he talks about in there as well. The transparency for leaders especially, um, is incredibly important. So like, you know, that just, I think that was one of the biggest things.
And it sounds like you've created a culture there where. That isn't even an issue simply because this is how we're going to be doing it. You know, we're, we're going to trust everybody. We're going to create a culture of trust and transparency. So you can't really get away with doing anything that's untrustworthy because it'll be noticed very quickly.
Geoff: That's a hundred percent. Right. And I think the other kind of interesting point here is a lot of people look at the model and say, you know, with, with no hierarchy, who is providing leadership? Like, how does, how does that work and how do decisions get made and. Um, in, in practice, of course, there's still leadership within the company.
And, and frankly, I play a big part of that role. I would say, um, while we don't have titles, um, if there was someone that plays a role akin to the CEO, it, it, it is me. Um, and it's not because I have positional authority that says I am making the decisions and I need to be the one broaching these tough topics or anything like that, it's more so because that is.
that I have that I can bring to the team and some of the other people on the team, frankly, don't want to play that position. They want to write code or they want to do design or they want to focus on these other areas. I enjoy the leadership aspect. So I do play a bit of that role, but what it sort of means is I am much more of a facilitator than a decision maker.
So to give you a really kind of, um, More sensitive topic. So when it does come to to pay increases So in our case, not everybody is working five days a week for the 210k some people are working two days a week or three days a week or whatever it might be and Once a quarter we sit down as a company and we say okay, we've increased revenue by X amount We can increase somebody's pay if they want it And we have this discussion where someone is not just being assigned a raise, but we have an open discussion about who should we allocate these funds to.
And we had to come up with a process to have those conversations in a fair way. And we look at things like how long you've been, um, with the company, when your last pay increase was. The needs of the business at that immediate moment. If you know, if you're a developer and we need more development, you're more likely to get the pay increase this time, but we also look at personal factors.
Um, you know, if we have a employee that is. More senior and more financially independent in their own right versus a younger employee that maybe just had kids that is kind of cash strapped We fold all these things into consideration and we we have a discussion about it And sometimes we do have to make hard decisions Uh, but rather than me being the person that makes that decision because I am the CEO, um, I am just the one sort of facilitating this discussion and we, we vote on it as a team.
Um, so it's just a different way of making decisions and organizing ourselves. But we, you know, at the end of the day, we still have to make, um, you know, all the decisions and have all the same problems that any other business would have.
Erick: Well, that's interesting. So it. It sounds like it's almost become like a family in a way in that it's like, what's going to be the greater good with our decision making on this.
And even though I may have done, I may have been there for 10 years and I've done all of these things. This person needs it a little bit more and they've also done really good work. So for the longterm benefit of the company. That's where it's going to go. That's
Geoff: a hundred percent people. I'll, I'll call it out, cause I know people get jumpy about it. People get very jumpy about the word family when it comes to business. Um, and I under, I understand why. Um, I think it, it's a team and we treat it, we treat it like a team and what's best for the team is best for the company longterm.
Erick: Yeah, absolutely. And I say family, not in like, you know, you guys are hanging out every weekend doing those kinds of things, but just more than you look at it as, I mean, I mean, you spend a lot of time at work and work is very important and the people you work with are incredibly important to you. And if they're not, then, you know, there have been jobs where it's been hard for me to leave where I didn't want to, but there were circumstances where it was just like.
You know, I need to get out of here. This just isn't good, but I'm going to really miss you. And I'm going to miss these things. And then there was somewhere I left where. I was just like, God, I can't get out of here fast enough. Um, yeah,
Geoff: yeah, but yeah, the, the, the real idea that we're, um. After, like at the end of the day, it's not so much about how do we organize ourselves or how do we stay small or any of those things, the end output that we want is I want every member of our team to sort of look up at the end of their career, the end of their time at Outsetta and say, Outsetta allowed me to do the things that I wanted to do with my life.
It, it played an instrumental role in enabling. Me, yes, to have a enriched and, um, you know, nice professional experience, but it also gave me space to do the things that I wanted to do on my life outside of work. And I think that all of these ideas are ultimately trying to foster that environment. And my belief is if.
We sort of nurture the person and their lives, they will in turn nurture the, the company. It's kind of this harmonious relationship between, uh, employee and employer, or at least that is what we are after. Whereas I feel like in a typical organization, it's like, how does the company extract value out of the employee?
And it's, it's very one way.
Erick: Yeah, no, that, I mean, that is, it is basically a concept that, that exists in there. And I think that, um, I don't know if you read Cory Doctorow, but he often talks a lot about kind of an extractive economy and how, you know, companies, you know, first they, you know, first, you know, they'll often start out as good companies.
And then over time. It's like, how can we extract maximum value from our customers? How can we extract maximum value from our vendors and then from our employees? And it's always this kind of clawback type of thing. Um, I think I was reading, he, he discusses how Amazon, if you are a top seller on Amazon, you're basically paying 51 percent of your revenue back to Amazon because of all of the little hooks that they have and everything you do that you, you have to sign up for all of these things in order to reach that point. And so rather than being a neutral platform where, you know, Hey, if you have a good product and you're good at marketing it, here's our store for you.
It's well, if you want this little thing, then you have to pay us this percentage. And if you want this little thing, and then you also have to, we have to be the ones to handle your logistics. And so. You know, we're going to charge you extra for that. And then, then, then they turn around and copycat a lot of these products as well.
And so it's just, it's a very extractive, um, type of model and thinking. And I just, you know, whenever I got contacted by people who were like, Hey, do you want to work at Amazon? I was just like, no, I. I don't want to work for a company that that's their mentality and that's the way that they think. Even if I'm in a department that doesn't think that way, if the overall structure of the company, that's what they're doing, then that's, that's going to be hard for me from a level that, you know, just from an ethical level, from my standpoint, I don't want to be involved in something like that.
So I, I applaud you for, I applaud you for that. I find that, that pretty amazing. Um, so coming down on your article again, chargebacks. I thought that was interesting.
Geoff: Yep. So, so this, this is, this is very stoic. Um. So chargebacks occur in a digital business or software company. Um, if a customer buys your product and then basically says that they, they didn't, um, they're, they're trying to get out of, of paying for.
Something that they signed up for. And almost every instance, um, it happens more than you would expect. And software companies and online sellers like Outsetta, um, oftentimes spend a lot of time, um, sort of battling these customers that initiate chargebacks. And there's a dispute process and the customer presents their case and you present your case and, uh, the, the banks or the powers that be decide who's right.
And whether. The customer has to pay or whether the, the business, um, has to refund the customer. Um, and it's this big stressful process, which 90 percent of the time the business loses, they almost always, uh, rule on behalf of the customer for whatever reason. And particularly in my world, I talked to all these other founders of software startups and they sit there and they battle this stuff day in and day out and they're pulling their hair out and they're frustrated that they never win and they spend a lot of time on it.
And to me, this one was just so obvious. You, you win at such a low rate that if you, and it's not even like looking at it from a financial perspective, although that's the point I'm making here. If you look at the investment of your time and the amount of stress that you take off for the amount of money that you might actually win through all of these disputes, it makes zero sense.
It would be like the worst, the worst ROI on your time imaginable. And the reality is a lot of people do this because they feel like they were wronged. Somebody came and showed up and paid for a product and said they didn't. Um, and now it's costing you something. So I get that it's this. Undesirable circumstance, but from my perspective, if I can just wipe my hands and not think about that, that's what I'm going to do.
And, and that's what we've done in the case of outset, uh, um, all time, we have never even disputed a charge back. Um, I know the dollar figure of what that's cost us. It's cost us some money, but what it's. Helped us gain in terms of time and stress the ROI is through the roof positive, at least in my mind.
So it's just another example of looking at something and saying, no, we're, we're not going to do that.
Erick: Yeah, no. Hey, yeah. And that's definitely a very stoic thing of just recognizing that, you know, it's. You have very little control over the situation first off and recognizing that is really important. And then secondarily, it's like, you know, is it really worth it?
Is it worth all of the stress? And then, you know, like you said, recognizing that it's kind of an ego thing for some people. I think that's kind of the third thing. It's just like, you know, because they feel like they're wrong. Then it's like, yeah, they might've been, but you know, is, is it worth holding onto that?
Um, it's like when I moved here to Amsterdam, I was trying to find an apartment and it, I spent months going to different apartments and not getting any. And then I ran into this guy who's like, yeah, I'll get you an apartment, showed me an apartment. I paid some money on it and we were supposed to meet up and then he disappeared.
And I was like, Oh, you know what? I had a, I should have followed my gut on this one. I ended up losing 5,500 euros on that. And yeah, it wasn't, it wasn't good. And I felt, I felt kind of more stupid than anything, but, you know, and I, I recognized what I had done and I was just like, I was disappointed. I was frustrated, but I wasn't angry about it.
And I had some people, I talked to some friends about it. They're like, Oh, does that make you mad? And I'm like. Why? And they're like, because this guy screwed you over. I said, well, the thing is, I can't find him. There's nothing I can do about this situation. So me getting angry about this is me choosing to be in a bad mood that won't change anything.
Geoff: Yep. Absolutely.
Erick: And I just, once I recognized that, I was just like, okay, I'll just let it go. And people are like, Cool. Wow, that's, are you some kind of Zen master? And I'm like, no, but I've just recognized, I recognize there's nothing I can do in this situation. So me getting angry about it is deliberately choosing to feel awful for days or weeks and brooding about it.
When it's not going to change anything at all. So I filed a police report and they said, yeah, well, you know, it happens a lot, probably won't hear anything from. And I said, yeah, but it's, it's one more data point. So if somebody else reports on this guy and then somebody else reports on this guy pretty soon, if there's enough of them, then you guys have a, have a good, you know, track record to actually be able to go after him at some point, if it turns into a bigger thing.
And so for me, it was just like, all right, let's go ahead. Just let that thing go. Um, yeah. And I don't see that pat myself on my back, but just to show people that stoicism actually really does work. And I mean, if this had been 10 years ago, I would have been fuming. I would have been raging probably for days about it and just been like, Oh, I can't believe he did that to me.
And I, and this time it was just like, well, that was a dumb decision.
Geoff: So let me, so let me, let me ask you then. I think a lot of people in that situation, right? The. The emotional aspect of the situation takes over and it's your natural reaction to feel frustrated and wronged and all that type of stuff.
How have you trained yourself to break out of that cycle when you still have those feelings? I'm sure, but you're recognizing that they're, they're not suiting you and they're, they're not going to be productive for you. How do you, how have you learned to let go in that scenario?
Erick: For me, it's just been that practicing of that objectivity.
And just when like, even just from small things, so when I wake up in the morning, if I'm feeling kind of crappy, like I did this morning, I woke up and I was just kind of in this sour mood and I couldn't, I couldn't attribute it to anything, but I just felt it there and rather than going, trying to push it away or giving into it, I just noticed it and was like, Oh, this is interesting.
This is what I'm feeling today. Wonder why I'm feeling that? So I journaled about it for a little bit and nothing really came out. Just, yeah. Just some basic anxiety. I'm moving into, uh, like I said, a leadership coaching career. And so that's totally different than anything I've ever done before. And it's been more challenging than expected.
So I think there's just some, some fears because I've been living off my savings and, you know, not bringing in as much income as I would hope by this point. So there's that fear of like, okay, you know, how am I doing this? You know, am I going to be able to do this? And so on. Just recognizing that and being, you know, I'll figure it out and I have, you know, if I need to, I can go get a software job somewhere.
I did that for 25 years. I'm sure, you know, I've got the skills. I'm sure something would come up with that. Um, But a lot of that just came through a lot of practice. And I think the biggest thing that I did was about three, maybe four years ago, I meditated for 60 minutes a day for 60 days in a row. And just sitting in that practice for that amount of time, Kind of rewired my brain and I did a number of things.
I think the first thing was is that I got to know my own brain much better. So when I would have, when I was trying to meditate, you know, and my mind would get distracted and float off into wandering thoughts, then I would just notice what I was thinking about and then bring my focus back to my breath and just do that for an hour.
And that's all I did after you do that for a while, you start to get comfortable in your own mind and you understand how to kind of uncover things as just because you get to know it better. I think the second thing was, is that over doing something like that, it's kind of like your brain starts your unconscious subconscious, whatever you want to call it, starts working through a backlog of all this stuff that you didn't really deal with before.
Because sometimes I just have random thoughts about things from 15 years ago. And I'm like, Where did that come from? You know? And so it was almost like he was able to kind of get through a backlog of things and. And I felt that after that, that 60 days, like, like it had seriously wired my brain in a way that helped me to be more calm in so much that even being in the moment of emotional distress, I'm able to step back very easily and look at things objectively, not be offended by what other people say.
to take things more lightly. You know, somebody says some stupid opinion, I can just be like, well, that was kind of a dumb opinion. Okay. And, and understanding that it doesn't have anything to do with me. It's just their opinion about something. And yeah, I think it's, it's kind of, it takes a lot of work and it takes a lot of just that self awareness and introspection and taking time to reflect.
Writing in your journal and it's just it's a consistency thing. I think more than anything
Geoff: is meditation still something you do daily or
Erick: Actually, I haven't for quite a while just because like I said I got to that point where I feel like when I'm in that kind of emotional distress I can I can just step back in the moment and easily figure out what it is and then slowly move things in the right direction and I think a lot of it is is also because of that, there's an acceptance.
So when you feel something, you just accept it for what it is. You don't try and push it away. And that just accepting, this is what I'm feeling right now. And as, yeah, I think there was, uh, it was either a Stoic quote or a Buddhist quote, but it was something like, you know, When you sit in your emotions, you recognize that they are just like, you know, a rainstorm passing by.
It may be raining this moment, and in an hour, it's sunshine. And your emotions are exactly the same way.
Geoff: How do you, um, how do you think about the relationship between Stoicism and Buddhism? Um, I certainly see that sort of, um, awareness aspect to both, but how are they the same and how are they different?
Erick: Yeah, I always joke around with people that Buddhism is, or that Stoicism is Greco Roman Buddhism. You know, it's, the principles are very, very much aligned. Um, there's a, they have Amor Fati, which is acceptance of everything that happens in your life. So Amor Fati meaning love your fate. That it's not just about accepting it, but learning how to love everything that happens to you, because one, it's going to happen anyway.
Whether you like it or not, the universe doesn't care. And so you can either have a bad attitude towards these things that are happening, or you can choose to have a good attitude toward them. It's all up to you. And so that's, you know, and that's a very Buddhist thing of just like, it's your thinking around things that cause your suffering.
And I think that that's, you know, one of the, the eternal, what is the first eternal truth is that life is full of suffering. And most of the sufferings are from attachments. Yep. Makes sense. Yeah. Stoicism is very much that same way. Have you studied Buddhism or?
Geoff: I, I'd say I've studied Buddhism and Stoicism about the, the same, meaning I have a slightly beyond surface level understanding of, of both.
Um, but they obviously appeal to me and, and manifest themselves. Uh, In my life, in my business, and in other ways too.
Erick: Yeah, I was going to say that, I was going to ask what, I mean we talked a bit about some of the things that influenced you in coming up with this idea. Um, but you also seem to have a very calm, easygoing manner and just very, very comfortable in your own skin.
Um, where do you think that came from? Cause you seem reasonably young, probably. I'm not sure how old are you.
Geoff: I'm, I'm 38. Um, I am definitely a relatively naturally calm person. I think that is just part of my disposition. Um, when I was younger. I certainly had, and I still have to an extent, um, a competitive streak.
So it's not like I'm just like totally, totally vanilla. Um, I also have a bit of a hedonistic streak. Uh, if I, if I'm honest at times, um, I think I latched on. You know, there's a million different cliches for it, but I, I latched on at a pretty young age to the idea that you've only got one life and, uh, you might as well make something of it.
And a huge part of my perspective on the world is you should be having fun and enjoying yourself. And, uh, you know, that doesn't mean you spend your whole life. Sitting in a bar or, you know, doing hedonistic things. It means you have to figure out how to make these other areas of your life, including work, um, work in tandem with this idea that you want to enjoy life as much as possible.
Um, so I think that's like the game that I'm trying to win in terms of life is like, who can, who can be a good person and have the most fun and, uh, having a calm disposition. Naturally, I think those are sort of the two forces that have shaped a lot of how I work and live my life in general
Erick: Interesting.
So what what would you say? You've kind of attributed your ethical framework to meaning what? What, what was it, you know, was it your parents, was it religion, was it, because a lot of people are like, a lot of people are funny, they'll ask me because I used to be Mormon and I left the church and they're like, well, what keeps you from being a bad person then if you don't have religion?
And I'm always like, I don't have to be religious to be a good person. You know, I can still be highly ethical. In fact, I think I'm more ethical now than I was when I was a Mormon.
Geoff: Yeah, uh, mine is totally my parents. It has nothing to do with religion in my case. Uh, my, my mom was, uh, raised Protestant. My dad was raised in an Irish Catholic family.
Like they, they both went to church when they were kids. Um, but they, they brought me to church when I was very young. Um, the sort of famous story in my family is when I was four years old, they, they brought us to church on Easter and I told my mom, I never wanted to go back again. And she said, fantastic.
We were hoping you would say that. Um, but my, my, uh, my parents are pretty, pretty intellectual. And my dad in particular is, is. Very science based. He's, he's, he's an, he's an engineer himself, but, um, he sees the world through a very scientific lens. Uh, but they both have always been big on, you know, being a good person doesn’t, it doesn't come down to worshiping anybody, it comes down to the quality of the decisions that you make and, um, just generally, like, be a good person, do the, do the right thing, even when it's hard, even when you have incentives not to, um, and I wasn't taught really anything beyond that, except, um, those ideas by two people that lived them.
Um, I'm the first person to, to tell you, uh, I don't have a story of growing up with like a ton of trauma in my family life or anything like that. I had two parents that were really wonderful examples and I'm lucky to say that.
Erick: Yeah, that's wonderful. I, I, mine was kind of the opposite, unfortunately, but, um, but I don't look back on that and go, Oh my gosh, you know, and you know, it should have been this way or should have been that way.
It's simply, it was what it was. And I can recognize that with my father, there were plenty of great things about him, but that he was doing the best he could and, and his childhood was much worse than mine. So the fact that he was even the father that he was, was a vast improvement on the way that his father was.
And then when I had my kids, you know, I was a much better father because I recognized like that is not what I want. And so my kids grew up in a, in a pretty healthy, healthy way. And so I was pretty happy and happy that I was able to break that cycle for my kids because I didn't.
Geoff: Absolutely.
Erick: It was, it was not a good thing.
Um, even though my own life for a lot of it has been chaotic as I've worked through this, which is why stoicism for me, it was such a grounding thing. And finally reaching that point to, to, it's been the thing that for me has helped me to be the kind of person that I always thought I could be and really to be able to think about things in a very deep way.
Have a clear framework that helps to illustrate those things where that self awareness that, you know, I'm not doing, not doing a good job of explaining it, but, um, it's like, I always felt like I was a bit smarter than what I was able to achieve, but I didn't know how to think well, and stoicism has been that thing that has helped me think in a much more better way or a much deeper way about a lot of things
Geoff: and how, and how valuable is that?
I mean, whether it's, Stoicism or religion or meditation or whatever it might be. If you have a tool that does that for you, um, that's incredible.
Erick: Yeah. And that's part of what, like, like I said, my, I mentioned before we talked, uh, my friend Trevor, who lives in Southern Oregon, we're working on a thing together called building the unbreakable, which we're going to be putting out pretty soon.
And what I love about our relationship is that we met through my podcast. And, you know, I was living in Portland at the time and we just hit it off. We ended up having a Zoom call. We scheduled for an hour just to, you know, get to know each other because we were both in software. We were nearby. He was a listener and we ended up talking for five and a half hours.
And it was just one of those things where instantly, and he's one of those people in my life where if I were going on a trip and I needed to give somebody my laptop with its password, because I wasn't sure if I was coming back and they needed to clear up my stuff, he'd be that person where I can like, here's my laptop, here's my password, I trust you and wouldn't even have to think twice about it.
And that's one of the things that, that I've loved about this podcast is I've met so many people. Who become very close friends who also ascribe to that type of ethics and that type of trust. And so for me, it's just been, it's been nothing but a positive in my life. Awesome.
Geoff: Yeah, a podcast is an amazing, amazing vehicle to meet people in general.
And, uh, You know, have an environment like this where you can sit down and chat with a person where, frankly, you, you know, in most cases, you wouldn't do this unless there was this thing called a podcast happening in the background.
Erick: Yeah, yeah, it's definitely helped me meet some great people like Donald Robertson, who's big in the in the stoic sphere, has written a number of books.
And I've gotten to know him through having him on my podcast twice, and I was on his podcast last week. And cool. He's just this great, warm, friendly guy from Scotland. He lives in Montreal. And, uh, you know, cognitive behavioral therapist and just really intelligent and so warm and, you know, it's like I get to meet these, these really great people.
And, uh, yeah, so I, I consider it, you know, it's, it's been a real blessing in my life. And I've, for me, it's been great because I've used it as my public therapy. So most of my episodes are me just talking about an issue with stoicism. And usually it's a problem I'm struggling with, and then it's like, okay, how do I use stoicism to solve this problem?
This is what I did. And then I turned around and share that experience with other people. Cause I figure if I'm struggling with this, probably somebody else's too. A hundred percent. Yeah. So, well, I appreciate your time. We're coming up on an hour here. Um, I've really appreciated having you on this podcast.
So like I said, how you run your business to me was just something that I had never seen anything like that. I'd read a little bit about buffer probably about 10, 15 years ago. Um, and how they ran things and how it was very controversial in Silicon Valley. Cause people like, Oh. You can't run a company that way and, and yet.
And it sounds like you're, the way that you have your company structured is, is something that I, I really admire. And, um, something I'll have to consider is I, you know, work with Trevor. I'm, I'm building out what we're doing. So, cause I really.
Geoff: Thank you. I appreciate the, uh, opportunity to come on and share a little bit about it.
And, uh, I will be listening to more of your. Your podcast episodes and, um, would love to just learn more about stoicism in general and how I can incorporate it more.
Erick: Yeah. It's been, like I said, it's been life changing for me. So I'm kind of an evangelist in a way about it, you know, but, uh, but. Because it's just one of those things where there's no dogma to it.
It's like, here's a set of principles, some ideas, some ways to think about the world. Take what works for you. Don't, you know, if something doesn't work for you, then don't use it. But it's just a way of approaching the world that I've found to be incredibly beneficial of using rationality to handle your emotional states.
And that for me was probably, that's probably the one of the most core things about it. And found it's been really incredibly helpful. Well, thank you again for your time. I'm going to sign off to my podcast listeners here. So, and that's the end of this week's Stoic Coffee Break. As always, be kind to yourself, be kind to others, and thanks for listening.
Hey friends, thanks for joining me on this episode with Geoff Roberts from Outsider. So, I really enjoyed this, and one of the things that I wanted to highlight. And I appreciate what he's doing with his company and hope you found it interesting. If you have any comments or questions you would like to send to me, please do so.
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