January 21, 2024

In our most recent podcast, we interviewed Allan Branch. I've known Allan for a long time since his early days at LessEverything. I went to several of their conferences and also a work shop called LessMoney. Allan always made me feel like a close friend, even though he always had hundreds of people vying for his attention. LessMoney also changed my career. Before attending I was a solo dev working in a silo and afterwards, I had so much more knowledge and friends. 

I always learn a lot from Allan and I wanted to share the snips I saved from the interview.

Calling Random People 1:30
Allan's parents made him call random people at businesses to plan/schedule a field trip. Being able to talk to others and ask for what you want or find a way to get it is so valuable. 

Jason Fried of Car Washing 3:50
Proximity to other successful people is invaluable. Allan's dad was a pioneer in the car wash industry. He drug Allan to conferences and many family discussions were about business.

LessMoney 5:30
This is another affirmation for putting yourself around other people. Especially people in your peer group and industry. You won't meet your expectations, but you'll meet your standards and putting yourself around others that are growing and raising the bar will create a standard for you to follow.

Transitioning from the technician to the business owner 6:40
From the LessMoney workshops, Allan talks about the focus of transitioning from the technician (developer, designer, baker, etc) to focusing on running a business. Sounds a little like E-Myth, right? 

Taking concepts from one industry to another 8:00
Allan took many concepts and lessons he learned from the car wash business to to software, and then later from software to real-estate and brew pubs. 

Funny Steve Story 8:20
Just listen...

Hiring Steve 14:00
Good memories of how the partnership formed

Pirate Ships 19:15
The idea that companies have different identities and Allan says he like building pirate ships: scrappy teams that build quickly and disrupt. 

Having an enemy 20:40
If your company can have an enemy, it not only can help you rally troops to your company but also gives people an ideas of what you do (but just better). Allan's saas LessAccounting was a simple accounting solution, and tons of people hated on Quickbooks so creating marketing around that is super helpful. Using tweets blasting Quickbooks as testimonials and slogans like we suck less than quickbooks. People love underdog story too. 

Mr. T 23:00
You're a small scrappy company. Use that to your advantage. They used Mr. T as a spokesperson (without his permission). The put him on voice mail, error pages, and ads. The worst that can happen is you get a cease and desist from Mr. T and that would be awesome! Constraints breed creativity.

Great Ideas 24:24 (listen til around 27:30)
Jeremy asks a great question about implementing ideas. Most everyone has "good/cool ideas" but they usually end there. Jeremy suggests you need to "make room for creativity". Then Allan remembers a Steve Martin quote: 

Comedians don't have any kind of monopoly on the truth. We're not any more insightful than anyone else. Everyone has funny thoughts; comedians just take the time to write them down. 

Allan relates that to creatives. We all have creative ideas, but the person who is a creative takes the idea and figures out how to test it and refine it.  

Also, creative ideas can be thought of as features in software. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. You have to try out and see.

RIP Steve 30:30
Allan shares some insight into loosing his best friend and business partner. 

Investing is telling yourself a story of X is going to go up because 34:00
It's the same with projects, businesses, etc. This thing is worth my time because...

Taking the MVP Concept to Breweries 40:30
Allan took a lot of ideas from the car wash industry to software, then he took a lot from software and applied to others, like breweries. 

Marketing: When you're just talking about your product, it's boring to your market 41:00
I feel like we all get roped into this position of where we're just promoting our product and it's features and bells and whistles, but somehow, we forget to talk about what people want: the outcome of using the product. 

Manufacturing has 2 stories 41:55
My old boss and mentor taught this to me many years ago. In a manufacturing business you always have 2 problems: either you have too high sales and manufacturing can't keep up, or sales are too slow and manufacturing has to slow down. Software doesn't have that problem directly because usually software can scale, but I do see it happen similarly where sales wants to promise all these new features and either development can't provide them or product teams doesn't want them. "Same with personality, I'm either bored or overwhelmed, there's never a balance." - Allan

Giving other people wins 49:30
Jeremy gave Allan several really nice and respectful comments and Allan responds with kindness and makes an observation that it's really nice to hear compliments and nice things from others and we don't do that (especially as men) enough. But it matters, there's not a lot of celebratory moments, let's be more willing to encourage and congratulate others when the opportunity arrises.