Bonus Episode: Jason Fried Didn’t Mean to Blow Up Basecamp. But He’d Do It Again

[Music] hello everyone welcome to the 21 hats podcast I'm your host Lauren Feldman this week in a special bonus episode Jason freed talks about why things got crazy at softwar maker base camp and what it is meant for the business as you may recall in the spring of 2021 freed CEO and co-owner issued a blog post edict eliminating a slew of benefits shutting down a committee that had been attempting to address diverse issues and barring discussion of all social or political issues on work forums female produced a backlash that culminated in a third of the company's 60 some employees choosing to leave the rupture was especially stunning coming at Bas Camp which is since rebranded by returning to its original name 37 signals and which has long had a reputation for treating employees well including offering remote work long before it was commonplace when the story broke some business owners applauded freed for taking a stand others wondered how any policy that resulted in the departure of a third of a company's employees could be worthy of Praise even in Good Times owning and running a business can be a lonely Pursuit our hope is that these weekly conversations will let owners know they are not alone in facing challenges same thing with our daily newsletter the 21 hats Morning Report which Inc magazine recently named the best newsletter for business owners and which you can subscribe to at at 21h hats.com where you can also find transcripts of our podcast episodes and lots of other articles and interviews the episode is titled Jason freed didn't mean to blow up base camp but he'd do it again welcome Jason thanks so much for doing this it's really great to talk to you yeah great to be here Lauren thanks for having me so I just want to start by asking you uh it has been more than a year now and the dust is settled how are you doing how uh is the business doing I'm doing great the business is doing great uh it's definitely a rough few weeks back in uh April of 2021 you know I'm sure you'll get into this but we decided to to make some some changes internally specifically around discussing politics at work things had been sort of ramping in a direction that felt like we weren't making the kind of progress we wanted to make there was a lot of tension internally a lot of people distrusting one another um it represented a lot of what's going on in America which is just everything became very divisive everything was seen through certain lenses it got in the way in a way that was not just a distraction but actually a real negative energy and as a business owner I I decided like that's not why I started this business I didn't I didn't get into this business for this reason I got into this business to to build things to make things with people who wanted to make things which is you know software specifically and we wanted to get back to just focusing on the work that we're here to do and so we made some decisions to to uh to say we're not going to be talking politics at work and we knew that would be controversial but maybe not we certainly didn't anticipate what was going to happen um which is that about a third of the company decided to leave over this uh decision and so um we can go into all the details whatever you want to talk about that's public but suffice it to say it was a difficult time emotionally the business didn't suffer at all which was really interesting but um definitely uh you know we were all over the news all over the media all over social media there's a lot of discontent uh and losing a third of third of your employees in one Fell Swoop is difficult um but we've recovered we've since hired uh 45 new people we're actually bigger than we've ever been bigger than we were prior to people leaving um and it's actually kind of reignited a new ambition in us which is uh one of the wonderful things that can happen uh in a crisis you just have a chance to to reevaluate and that's what we did and that's what we're headed now what do you mean you know historically we've always tried to keep the company as small as possible we don't want to do that anymore but we also don't want to grow beyond our means so we're not taking money or anything like that we've just decided to grow a bit um and and not say no to growth essentially so prior to to April of last year we had about 60 some odd employees now we have clo close to 80 um now after hiring a bunch of new people and if we need 85 we'll get 85 if we need 92 we'll hire 92 you know um in before it was like 60 sort of our limit we had this sort of self-imposed limit to keep the compan small but we've just decided let's just see what we're capable of still doing it our own way still doing 100% self-funded through customer revenues so all the principles remain but we've sort of taken the governor off and with that we're going to build some more products too so we have base camp today we have hay.com which is a new email service we built we're going to build another product soon we're going to start on that next and after that we have another product idea we'll probably do so we're going to kind of get back to the way we used to be in the early days which is that we were a multi-product company building things every few years new new ideas that we just couldn't sort of ignore uh and we're going to head back in that direction now with more people so we can do more things at once have your revenues grown since last year as well our revenues are uh kind of flat um right now but we anticipate them growing uh we had to invest a bunch of time actually as major distraction of course as you can imagine so there's a lot of Feature work and product work we weren't able to do and uh We've sort of picked that up now so we're anticipating growth moving forward but the last year was kind of flat how has the uh the new email product hey done um it seems like a very ambitious task to try to introduce a new email platform at this uh stage in our uh internet life have you been able to build it the way you hope to yeah I mean hey is a very interesting thing because on paper it's a terrible idea right we we're like we're basically you know entering the arena where Google uh Apple Yahoo Microsoft uh I think guess Verizon these are the top five email providers in the world they're all free basically um I outlook's not free on business side neither is Gmail on the business side but essentially Mass Market they're free and um we decided to build a pay email service so we don't have a free version it's pay it's 100 bucks a year but we felt like there were so many problems with email and email is actually a wonderful thing but it's just sort of died on the vine and been ignored and sort of been neglected and then we had a variety of of new ideas to bring to email that we thought would radically improve the the experience and um you know the big bet was would anyone pay for it and uh we have over 40,000 paying customers um that are paying for for for email with us which is wonderful and we have a lot of ideas for the product over time and we're going to do a lot more stuff and we're going to build probably build a calendar soon for it and some other things so we're going to take it we're going to keep investing in it and keep going this Direction with this new thing but the thing is is that everything about it has to be novel so if we just kind of slide back towards well let's just make another Gmail and let's just charge money for it it's not going to work what people found in it were new workflows new ideas a rekindling of energy uh saving people T tons of time and helping people manage email in a way that they couldn't before before email was a major chore and now it's more of a joy for a lot of people so uh so far so good can you give us a small example how how do you rekindle energy and save time with an email program well for one um one of the one of the things that sucks about email is that you get emails from people you don't want to hear from this is sort of the number one issue with email really you love email when you get an email from someone you care about but it's all the other emails you don't so of course there's a spam filter like all things but spam's not really the problem anymore you end up getting emails from people uh that you don't want to hear from Services you don't want to hear from things you somehow got subscribed to and so the number one thing when you start using hey is that you get to screen people in or out you get to decide if you want to hear from them you get to decide if you want emails from them if someone sent you an email you don't want to hear from them you just hit no and you'll never hear from them again so it's a way to protect your attention and your time number two there's a bunch of hacks emails built up all these hacks so for example if you use Gmail and you read an email and you want to get back to someone later but you don't have time right now you typically would Mark that email as unread and that sort of an indication to you that you need to like deal with it again later which is such a hack because unread does not mean I need to get back to them later and so with hey we built in all these workflows one example is if you read an email and you want to get back to someone later you hit this button on it it says Reply later it puts it into a nice neat little pile and throughout the day every email you Mark is reply later piles up in the the small little pile then you click the pile later on in the day let's say 4:00 near the end of the day it opens up all those emails stacked one on top of the other and you can reply to them all at once from one screen without ever having to go back to your inbox without ever having to see any other emails just the nine emails you need to get back to people later on you can do that on your own time in a really streamlined interface so we have all these workflows that people have hacked to work before but now they work like out of the box in a really intelligent thoughtful way and so it's a combination of these kinds of things that makes hey radically different email platform and um we're really proud of it and customers are loving it and we're we're we're fired up all right so with that snapshot of where you guys are kind of today I would like to go back and think about what happened and how you look at it with some distance and perspective now you talked about it growing out of the decision to eliminate the discussion of politics and uh at work you know I think that's something that a lot of business owners can relate to I mean no nobody wants their employees spending all day debating politics uh the issues of the day but I think at the heart of this question I think a lot of those employees for at least and again I should emphasize I wasn't there but I did read the reports at the time I think there was some sense that this wasn't just about not talking about politics it was about not dealing with issues within your company that some of your employees at least felt needed to be dealt with is that that not how you saw it well I think that's that's one lens that you can look at it through you know the thing about specifically around political discussions at work is that you can't put them in a in a little wrapper and just have political discussions at work because what ends up happening is especially in this day and age people then create sort of profiles of each other and assumptions about each other and where people stand on certain things and some people can't work with people who believe this or believe that and the thing is it work we need to work together so it was beginning to color all sorts of other interactions and and there was distrust and if you can't trust one another at work like it's busted it's just flat out busted so that was the primary thing now as far as other things you know I'm not sure specifically um which issues you're referring to but a lot of the stuff pointed back to these discussions and these distractions and the inability for people to trust each other and people just stopped giving each other the benefit of the doubt we we also um eliminated some um benefits at the same time so part of the learning here is that we did a lot of things at once which I still feel really good about all the decisions we made I think they were the right decisions for our company but when you when you pile on a bunch of change at once you know typically You' say like it's probably a good idea to do it all at once but it's also a hard moment to do it all at once because it feels a bit punitive and that's one of the things I learned through this process is that some people felt like they were being punished um it felt that way and that's not something I I I wanted anyone to feel feel um but clearly that that was that was one of the ways people felt but as far as some of the benefits we we did um change some things where we felt like some of our benefits were a bit paternalistic like essentially trying to encourage people to live a certain way outside of work and that just felt it just felt wrong to us it was a change like we we'd historically been very much a company that would you know for example we would pay for people's fresh fruits and vegetables at home we would because we thought that was a good thing to do we would pay for people's continuing education and not just around work topics but any topic so if you want to learn how to be a cook or you want to learn how to speak Spanish or whatever we'd pay for that you know we'd also had this this like massage benefit like if you want to get a massage we we'll pay for that kind of stuff and at some point we started asking ourselves like why are we involved in people's lives outside of work we don't want people to talk about politics at work we also shouldn't be encouraging people to behave in certain ways outside of work or beyond the actual work itself so we pulled some of those things back at the same time we also introduced a new profit sharing plan which gave people more cash in their pocket which they could spend on whatever they wanted versus US telling them that we'll pay for your massage or we'll pay for you to learn Spanish like you do what you want with your own money that was sort of our another change that we made and so some people took issue with some of those things but uh again I still feel like it was the right decision I would make all the same decisions again if we had the chance one thing that I I do recall people referring to was what came to be known I gu guess as the the list of funny customer names uh that kind of made fun of non-eurocentric uh customer names and the sense was that this was sending a message potentially to customers certainly to employees who saw it that you know diversity wasn't necessarily welcome uh at this company and there was a committee set up to to deal with it and that's one of the things that I think ended at the same time you were referring to from the reporting anyway there was a sense that people felt they were making progress and then the rug was pulled out from under them is that how you see it looking back at it well I can I can address the things that were public so there's of course in any story like this there's all sorts of things that that are that are um not public um that that can't be discussed but the list of names was was a list of names that people on the uh support team had been collecting over the years it was a terrible thing that we were doing shouldn't have done that some people knew about it um I had known about it early I didn't know it still existed I thought we'd put an end to it but we didn't apparently some stuff came out about it internally and some people had real problems with it as did I I don't like the fact that we were doing that at all and my opinion was at that point like you can choose to how do you want to deal with this so you can say we made a major mistake um that was a bad idea um let's make sure we don't do things like that again and move forward the problem was is that this became a very political issue because it became became an issue around like well what does this what does this mean about us and so there was a there this is all public so I'm comfortable talking about this there was a line of argument that we are just a few steps away from committing genocide um if we're talking about names like this that to me is a a significant stretch too far that all of a sudden we're like literally a few steps away from genocide that that's that that was the understanding some people had internally and then if we didn't come to terms with the fact that we were nearly genocidal then like you know we we needed to revamp the whole company and and we needed to come to terms with this and it felt like you know that's just like not what this is at all you can make mistakes you can own the mistakes and you can move on without having to pull that particular mistake to the most extreme possible thing like genocide is the most destructive horrible thing human beings can do to one another like that's not what this was at all nowhere near it nowhere close to it we weren't headed in that direction I just feel like you know at some level you got to go okay no that's not we're not talking about genocide at work we're not genocidal none of us here are that can we just move on and so um that was something that just felt like it was it was way too far and that sort of line of thought was not something we were going to to accept here internally so that was that now as far as this committee that was set up we're not a committee-based company we've never been committee based companies we don't make decisions based on committees we don't investigate Things based on committees we have people who are here to do certain jobs and those people have the responsibility to do those jobs and so um sort of a a committee had been formed and there was like I think 18 people in the committee and you know months had gone by and there had been no recommendations specifically and it was just like look we're not doing committees here we're not doing committees here it's someone's job to take whatever XYZ is seriously and they will do that job and we're going to move on and get back to the fact that we have work to do here and there's individuals with responsibilities and that's how we're going to be um and so we made those decisions too that we're not going to have any committees at the company make that formalize just so everyone's very clear about that and that of course rubs some people the wrong way understandably so I understand why they be rubbed the wrong way by it but that's the decision we made and a company is a collection of decisions um and Leadership and and some things we just said we were not comfortable doing anymore we're moving on from that and that was that and for some people that was that was too far and I understand that we offered a really generous Severance for anyone who felt like this was too far for them so it wasn't here's the door it was here's a number of months to help you find a new position um somewhere else and um you can choose to take that or you can stay here and uh and it's up to you it's each individual person had to make their own decision at that point but it was a very tough call to make but we felt like it's still the right call Jason was it clear to you that uh with a reference to to genocide that the intent was to suggest that right there at base camp folks were getting close to genocide or was it an attempt to suggest that the othering of people who may look or sound different is a step in the direction of genocide well it was it depends who you talk to but the whole concept that we're all of a sudden talking about genocide at work and that we're uh involved in that discussion in any way to me is just off base for discussions at work this is not genocide we're not talking about genocide here that's not what we're doing here we build software a mistake was made um and was what was really interesting was that um the people who made the list were actually many of the people who complained about the list so the whole thing was just so absurd in a lot of ways but the bottom line is like we're not talking about genocide here like this is not coloring our discussions at work this is not what we're doing here so um I understand why people are upset about the list I was upset about the list I feel terrible about the list it's a terrible thing to do but you can also admit that and move on versus sort of soaking yourself in the worst possible version of what that could be and what that could say or that we have to come to terms with some deep um you know horrific outcome somewhere else that someone else could come to because of this sort of thing it's just like it's just not the kind of thing we want to spend our time on at work and so we moved on from that I think we should emphasize that in talking about these conversations happening at work we're not talking about an office environment right you've been remote since for the beginning or early on uh We've mostly been remote we we had an office but the majority of our compan has been remote essentially kind of forever we've been around for 23 years and you know what was very interesting about this this whole thing too um is you know we've been long-term Advocates of remote work still are we are 100% remote we will stay 100% remote but and the past we'd seen each other as a company at least twice a year so we had um flown everybody into Chicago where our office was and we'd hang out socially as a company twice a year so even though we were remote we got to see each other be in the same space with each other share meals share laughs see each other's faces see each other's three dimensions you know and during covid you know we we hadn't done this for for close to two years um and I think what ended up happening was there was a distancing of the humanity in evolved here it's very interesting first of all people were of course cooped up and I'm not blaming this on on Co I'm just saying it was it was an interesting circumstance to not have seen each other for a while and then begin to look at each other in these interesting ways these unusual ways and sort of not have the the the in-person meals Smiles Hangouts as a reset to go hey we're all just people here trying to work this out and figure this stuff out we've since done a Meetup we did one in Miami earlier this year and it was wonderful to see each other again so so I I really do Advocate I do think it's super important for people to see each other a couple times a year but I absolutely advocate for remote work I think it's a wonderful way to work did it give you pause at all I mean at any point did you think you know maybe this wouldn't have happened if we were working uh in an office and maybe we should consider you know switching you know going hybrid or trying something a little bit different yeah you know uh I don't know it's it's possible there's always the counterfactuals you don't you don't have you don't really know but I I don't know I mean people are in this in this current environment in this country you know since what the last you know eight years or so um people who see each other all the time hate each other at the moment like it's it's you know I'm not sure that would have solved anything but but I do I do think though that that you that you do um need to reconnect as as humans share the same air be in the same space have a meal and I I did see some some disc forming between people who historically had been pretty close pretty tight um so it was very interesting to to see I I don't know I don't know I I I think the undercurrents were there and I think pretty much every company is dealing with this and some companies are going to try to tow the line I think which I I think is a really tough line to toe others are going to make decisions others are going to make calls um about what what they think is appropriate at work and what they think isn't and what's interesting or exciting to me is that this this is why I I love small businesses is that every small business is an experiment we've always treated our business as an experiment we've done a lot of things most companies would never do um and we will continue to do that and we'll continue to see how it plays out over time and I I love that different companies can experiment in different ways and and we'll see how it all pans out over time I mean time is the only judge here you have to look back on these things to know how they ended up panning out but um we're very comfortable with how things ultimately turned out as difficult as it was and and those in those weeks uh after after the the decision we made it's easy to imagine in the aftermath of what you've just described that a a storyline could take hold in your industry that there was an an issue at base camp that there was uh discussion and dispute and that you kind of shut down The Descent now I've heard what you had to say and I know that's not your view of it uh and I'm not trying to make you repeat that but you you could imagine given the facts that we just discussed that that storyline could develop and that it could suggest that maybe base camp isn't interested in having a diverse Workforce has that been an issue for you we did shut down political discussion in work or at work on our work systems we said in the announcement you're free to talk to your your fellow co-workers anywhere you want you can set up a WhatsApp room you could do you could set up another base camp account but where it comes to work where we're working because we use Bas Camp to do all of our work the product we cannot be mixing politics I and work in that space so yes we did shut that part of it down and I still think that was the right decision to make just as if people if people were having religious debates at work if people were actually in a physical office and someone put a Pulpit in the middle of the office or a soap box got up and started talking about what they believe in front of other people while people are trying to do work people would go what what are you doing like I'm trying to work over here this actually would be a lot clearer if this was a physical thing people would go that's sort of line or not really what we should be doing here it'd be sort of strange so I'm very comfortable with that decision I don't think it's been a problem for us we uh H just hired 45 people from all around the world we have more people now outside of the US than inside the US I think diversity is an interesting topic it's not one or two dimensional it's many dimensions we have people all over the world working for us now also by the way we pay everybody the same exact amount no matter where they live in the world there's a lot of things we do that are really Progressive and really Equity based and really fair that most companies don't do lots of companies dock your pay if you move to a city for example that has a lower standard of living or live in a country with a lower standard of living we don't do that at all so we're trying to raise people up but no I I'm very comfortable with with what's happened here and where we're at what we believe and I think we're an incredibly Fair company I think our history shows that we are this is a very divisive topic and people can look at it through whatever lens they want um I think we've been exceptionally fair over over the years and continued to be so um and lead in a number of different directions around really fair workplaces I mean another thing we do for example is we have a $70,000 minimum salary everybody works at 37 signals gets 70 grand minimum no matter what this includes customer service roles and any any roles that are typically considerably or paid considerably less to me that that's that's actually about Equity it's about being really fair to people it's about basic basic fee basic standard of living costs it's about a a fair living wage Baseline salary most companies don't do that most companies use customer service for example as a place to to basically try to get the cheapest people they can and treat them the poor as poor as they possibly can because they know there's an endless well of people who are willing to do that job that's not how we look at things so you have to look at different lenses and think about what these things are and uh and and how a company overall treats its people how it takes care of its people and I I would put our record up against anybody on that did you do anything uh deliberately to address the diversity issue to try to make it clear that 37 signals is a welcoming place for all types of people well I just think that we are no we didn't do anything specifically different no I mean we've been doing it the same way we've always been doing it for 23 years so no we did not make any deliberate changes to that we are willing to hire the best people we can find anywhere in the world no matter where they live no matter who they are no matter what they believe no matter where they come from um as long as they're willing to focus on the work that we have to do here and we have a we have a um a statement in our job ads about this it's very clear that we we we are totally comfortable with whatever you believe whatever you think whatever you do in your personal life but we as a company don't take political positions and we don't discuss politics at work and this includes social politics and all sorts of different varieties of politics so we We are continuing to be the same company we've always been um and we're going to hire the best people we can and um wherever they are they're going to be so that that's how we've decided to to continue to hire and run the business the timing of this was kind of interesting I mean this this all hit you you lost as you said about a third of your employees heading into what came to be known as the great resignation a time when you might have had trouble hiring filling slots in any case was it difficult to get fully staffed no so whenever we put job ads out we typically get between a few hundred to well over a thousand applications people want to work here at this business people want to work at a company that they care about they want to work and do great work with employees they really respect they want to work at a place that does not suck up all their time in meetings they want to work at a place that allows people to be flexible and live wherever they want and work wherever they want we do 4-day work weeks in the summer so 32h hour weeks we don't expect more than 40 hours a week out of anybody people have a lot of freedom a lot of agency here they get to make a lot of decisions on their own people want to work in that environment and it shows we've had had absolutely no problem whatsoever keeping people or hiring people so that's not an issue for us and you I think people who work in this industry understand what kind of business we are they understand what kind of jobs we offer they understand what kind of things they get to work on and they understand our general philosophy of business which is incredibly appealing to a large number of people you know again the good news is that there's a lot of places to work and a lot of different ways to work if you want to work somewhere that doesn't suck up your days in meetings that's not full of red tape that's not telling you every last single thing to do but you actually have a lot of room a lot of agency to do the things that you want to do and to hone your craft 37 signals is a wonderful place to work and people know that I know that's true that 37 signals has been considered that special kind of place to work I'm sure a lot of the people the third of the employees that left had felt that at one point too it must have been very painful to see that many people that you'd work closely with pick up and leave how did you process that it was it was it was really really painful um first of all I understood all their decisions um I understood why they would make that decision um and um we helped them leave in a way where if they couldn't be here anymore they'd be well taken care of I lost some people who I'd worked with for 10 12 15 years it was very personally difficult I reached out to a number of them and never heard back um and that was personally difficult as well but I also recognize that you know they have their own reasons and it's not up to me how I how they should feel like they're going to feel how they're going to feel and if they don't want to talk to me that's totally fine and understandable you know there's some really rough moments like I'm I'm glad you know I I spent a lot more time with my family my wife and my kids really kind of reentered me and reminded me what's important here um and that was incredibly helpful I spoke with my therapist a number of times you know it was a very challenging thing for us nothing like this had ever happened and I think because we ran a relatively small business and worked with a number of people for a number of years I mean I think at that point I'm trying to remember exactly I might be off on this but I think about half of the company the average tenure was about 7even years and in the tech industry that is unheard of and it should speak to the kind of company that we are we were and we remain um which is a place people want to work a place people want to do great work not everyone's going to agree with some of the policies but those who do can stay here for a long long time build a wonderful career and to to lose some of those relationships was painful and very difficult but again I I understood it um I didn't hold it against anybody I still don't today um I understand why they did it and I wish everybody really well and and I hope they they find something that's better for them out there and luckily there's you know everyone who's worked at our company can get a job anywhere else no problem this is one of the best places to have on your resume and and it's I think everyone landed a really wonderful job somewhere else and and I wish them all well did you have to raise what you pay people uh considerably I mean it seems likely that could have happened anyway given the labor shortage and the competition uh for Tech Talent well like like everything else we do we do things a bit differently so um we Peg our salaries to the 90th percentile so the top 10% based on San Francisco rates so our in our industry San Francisco is the highest paid City we use a service called Radford which is a a salary Surveying Company that surveys thousands of companies and you you you send them their data your data and they send other companies who are part of this who subscribe send their data in and you can um figure out what your peers pay and we match our salaries we just Peg them to the 90th percentile so we pay basically I mean essentially there's always going to be a few companies that are going to pay more but we essentially pay top of the industry rates and so if salaries go up we pay more if salaries go down we don't drop your salary so uh We've we've not always we've done it this way for the past I think it's been something close to 10 years or something like that um so we didn't change we change with with with the with with with the industry um and of course in our industry um salaries have been going up up up up and up and so our our pay goes up up up up and up and the reason we do this is because everyone gets paid the same who is in this exact same role doing the exact same work so this is another point about Equity we I don't care uh anything about you other than the work that you can do um when it comes to salary you don't have to negotiate for yourself you don't have to deal with a manager and and who's who always has the upper hand you know my my feeling is that people should only have to be good at their job and be good to others they shouldn't also have to be an ace negotiator to get what they're worth so we pay pay people like the most they're going to get anywhere basically this includes and we also do profit sharing based on tenure so the longer you've been here the more you make regardless of your salary regardless of your position another thing about equity so if you're in a customer service which is a a relatively lower paying uh job here compared to a principal programmer who makes much more um and you've been here for nine years you will get the same exact profit share um no matter what your salary is so there's there's a whole bunch of things we do which are really fair for people and people can take home a lot of money who work here especially for a long period of time um so that's that's how we we do salar so we don't you know we don't renegotiate salaries except when the when the rate changes based on the rad data so what is the upshot given what's happened to the the marketplace given that most tech companies have gone remote and this competition has heated up are you paying considerably more than you were based on the the formula that you use well it resets every year so there's only been about a year or two um most positions I think went up a little bit um it'll be very interesting to see what happens this year with inflation we also have a inflation adjustment but it'll be very interesting to see what happens now because there's some there's some um salary uh inflation happening because companies are actually having a hard time finding people so they have to raise salaries and so those companies that raise salaries um of course send that data back to Radford and our our Baseline will be adjusted so but we we figure that stuff out in December so we do that once a year so we'll see what happens this year uh there's also been a significant number of Lay layoffs we don't have any layoffs we're not going to lay anybody off we've never laid anybody off so um we you know we've been a very steady steady place to work um that pays exceptionally well and has really wonderful benefits and um we'll see what happens this year with uh with the Radford survey data in in December you sound thoroughly engaged and excited were there moments when you thought about you know what this has been good I've done this for 20 plus years i' I've kind of had enough I don't need to do this yes for the first time ever so um and I've been running this company for 23 years now and um there were moments for the first time where I go I I don't know if I should be doing this anymore um I don't know if I want the responsibility anymore um maybe I'm not qualified anymore uh maybe I'm not engaged enough anymore if my if my mood is wrong is how does that affect the company I I had these thoughts um and um I still have them from time to time um but I I I'm so excited about what we're doing now because this whole crisis was again a moment to reconsider we've decided to to sort of go all in and see what we're actually capable of without putting any self-imposed limits on ourselves within reason of course we still are a profitable company we want to be profitable we've been profitable every year for 23 years we're going to keep that streak alive but now I want to see what we can do I've got some new product ideas we're about to launch a brand new version of base camp which is a really big deal um we've got a new ad campaign coming out soon which we've never really done any advertising before like really advertising so we're doing that that's been a real thrill to work on and we hired some new wonderful people we have a new coo her name is Elaine she's incredible we had a COO about 5 years ago for about a year and we we hadn't had one previous or after and it's been a huge help to have someone else help run the day-to-day um so David David is my business partner so David and I can focus on the on the vision stuff on the bigger picture stuff and I think what have happened was um without having a COO on board David and I were sort of doing a lot of things that we weren't particularly good at or actually interested in doing and that distracted us and it at that point you start to go like I what am I doing I don't really want to do this anymore but now I'm back doing the things I like to do um which is which is really energizing it's very exciting to be here right now and um I'm I'm newly energized that said how much longer do I want to do this I don't know it's a really good question I mean how much longer do I deserve to do it is another way to think about it and it's like 25 years could be a good number for Me Maybe I keep going after that I'm not so sure um but right now I'm I'm definitely focused on the next couple years because we've got a lot of stuff we want to get done and then we'll see what happens at that point and in general we've always been a company that's made it up as we go so we figure things out as we go we don't have long long-term plans this includes product design this includes uh strategic decisions this includes a whole bunch of things and so I'm I'm keeping that too I've got like a you know some thoughts about where we're headed some thoughts about what I want to do but I'll constantly reconsider that as we go and see see what makes sense going all in and seeing what might happen are you thinking about or have you actually taken any outside uh investors no not interested I I so I get emails like one or two emails a week from from VC firms and PE firms and all sorts of different investors who who want to put money in and we're just not interested in that we're not going to do that we'll never do it under my watch we can do everything we want to do with the revenues we generate from our customers fair and square so I don't want outside money I don't want the pressures of outside money I don't want the obligations of outside money I don't want the timetable of outside money I don't want to work for someone else which is essentially what happens when you take money um we've got everything we need to do everything we want to do and um if we can't do something we won't do it versus going out to figure out how to do it by raising more money not going to do it so for again for disclosure back in 2006 we we sold a small piece of the business to Jeff Bezos I was going to ask about that yeah so we we we sold a small piece of the business to Bezos um that money went to me and to David so he bought some shares from us none of his money was ever in the business or will ever be in the business and um it wasn't Venture Capital it was it was founder shares off the table to take a little bit of risk off the table for the two of us back in 2006 two years after we launched base camp the product where we didn't know what was going to happen and we figured let's put a little bit of money you know work really hard let's put a little bit of money in the bank so in case this all goes to hell or something like at least we didn't squander all that so that's that's the only outside involvement we've ever had um but it wasn't venture capital and not a penny went into the business itself so is he involved at all um we used to talk to Jeff like once a year we'd have dinner or something like that and and hang out a bit we spoke with him I think it was last year we spoke with him before that it had been a few years we talked last year about we should start talking again like once a year or something like that but um nothing's on the calendar right now so I think we'll check in occasionally we don't have a board so they have no say over we do um they're minority very minority investors you know or owners I should not investor but they're owners so we're in LLC so they get distributions every year from our profits so that's how they make money because we're not looking to sell the business or anything like that so they get some of that and um they're 100% hands off we just like send them uh you know some numbers every year uh and uh we send them a check and uh you know quarterly or whatever when we make distributions and and that's sort of the end of their involvement but Jeff was really helpful early on when we had some fundamental questions about like What mattered in a business and gave us some great advice and then um you know again we've called on him a couple times but nothing else nothing else is he's not involved in any other way did you talk to him at all after uh what happened last year we talked to him um yes but not about that we just caught up I think this was last year yeah this was right before he announced that he was stepping down from Amazon as CEO so I'm not sure when that was but it was like literally a week or so before that which I think was after what we did um pretty sure it was maybe we talked about it in passing but it was mostly just catch- up time and uh talked about a whole bunch of topics but I think the best bit of advice he ever gave us I'll share with you which he I think shared publicly elsewhere too which is um most businesses are focused on are are sort of obsessed with chasing Trends and the latest latest latest now Amazon does do a lot of that too in exploratory ways but he said the great businesses focus on the things that won't change so he he gave me some examples he said like I don't think people are going to wake up in 10 years and say I wish Amazon's selection was worse people aren't going to wake up in 10 years and say I wish Amazon shipping was slower people aren't going to wake up in 10 years and say I wish Amazon's prices were higher or I I wish people I wish Amazon's customer service was worse because you know you got to find the things that people are going to wake up 10 years from now and want from your business the same way they want today and invest in those things continue to invest in those things and um they're going to always pay off because most companies are just focused on the new things and they forget the basics that really matter to people so figure out what those things are for your business and and and make sure you're investing in those and not just chasing the the new shiny thing even though you want to still explore new things but get the fundamentals right first I think you've emphasized in the past that you really haven't set goals for the business um even on a year-to-year basis there wasn't you know we need to reach this level of profitability or revenues or whatever it might be it was more we're going to take on projects we want to do we're going to work really hard and we'll see where we are at the end of the year do I have that right yes and that's still the way we are even with the sense that you are going all in and looking to see what the you know what limits you might surpass you're not really changing that approach no I mean for example we're doing some Performance Marketing explorations and you sort of want to track like what how they're doing but as a business we're not goal driven um we've never been um our our feeling is like we're just going to do the best work we can period I'm not going to do slightly better work because um there's some false number I made up or some fake number I made up that I have to strive for like people here are here to do the best work of their careers um they're here to hone their craft and I want people to be intrinsically motivated just to do great work that's why they're here and we let them do great great work as I said before they can actually do their job here which is unusual in most companies you don't have time to do your job you're you're mired down in meetings and distra distractions and red tape and all sorts of stuff every six weeks we decide what we're going to do over the next six weeks when those six weeks are done we've got a few weeks to figure out what we're going to do over the next six weeks and that's how we we prod forward six weeks at a time roughly we have some general directional ideas of where we want to head but we don't really track metrics on a on a broad level don't have big time KP what kpis or okrs or growth targets or Revenue targets or customer targets we want to do better we want to grow because that's a healthy thing to do in life and in work but whether or not we grow 12% or 4% or 6% or we're flat for a year like it's all good it's all good it's all kind of the same to us um and uh you know the the longterm moving average needs to be sort of up and to the right you know that that's sort of a General Health indicator which we'd like to see continue but it's not we're not specific about like exactly what that needs to look like listen Jason uh this has been great I appreciate you taking the time and I I know this wasn't all happy talk I know we were talking about a painful period but you've answered all my questions and uh put no restrictions on this conversation and I really appreciate that I appreciate you having me on and and giving me the time and um and giving me the space to answer the questions and thank you for for that absolutely wait wait don't leave yet if you have a question or a comment that you'd like the 21 hats owners to address send it to me by replying to your Morning Report or by email at Lauren 21h hats.com that's l r n21 hats.com do it now before you forget and don't be afraid to tell Jay what you really think you can take it and if you got something out of this conversation help us reach more business owners tell a friend subscribe and review us wherever you get your podcasts follow us on Twitter subscribe to the morning report at 21h hats.com this episode was produced by Jess Theron founder of blank word Productions okay now you can leave thanks for listening everyone [Music]