The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 338: Jason Fried - How To Create The Ideal Company Culture (It Doesn't Have To Be Crazy At Work)

Episode Date: November 11, 2019

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk Episode #338: Jason Fried Full show notes can be found at www.LearningLeader.com Text LEARNERS to 44222 to learn more Jason Fried is the founder & CEO at Basecamp. He's the co-author of Getting Real, Remote, REWORK, and It Doesn't Have To Be Crazy At Work.  Basecamp is a privately-held Chicago-based company committed to building the best web-based tools possible with the least number of features necessary. Their blog, Signal vs. Noise, is read by over 100,000 people every day. Jason believes there's real value and beauty in the basics. Elegance, respect for people's desire to simply get stuff done, and honest ease of use are the hallmarks of Basecamp products. Notes: Commonalities of leaders who sustain excellence: Willingness/ability to know what's the work worth doing The skill to discern what's important How to develop that skill? Must become a good auditor of your time.  Practice.  Look back on what you've done.  Analyze what you do? Discern what's worth it. Remote work: Basecamp has 56 employees in 30 cities around the world... Why remote? "You don't want the best people, you want the right people."  The odds of all the right people living near your headquarters is small. The business started in Chicago with three people. They hired DHH to be their first programmer.  He lived in Denmark.  Then they hired someone in Utah.  "It just worked.  We didn't worry about where, just wanted to find the right people." Jason never writes a business plan -- No 1, 3, or 5 year plan.  They work in six week project increments. Why? "Planning is simply guessing.  Setting your course over a guess doesn't seem like a good idea.  We have an idea of where we're headed, but we work in six week chunks." What Jason learned from Jeff Bezos:  "People who were right often changed their minds." --> Be willing to change your mind when better evidence presents itself. The "anti-goal" mindset: "(Financial) Goals are made up. There's nothing about them that's true.  They are guesses... Made up numbers." "Asking if I hit the goal is the wrong question.  Asking if I enjoyed the run is the better question." "One of the problems with setting goals is you are a different person when you set them than when they need to be met."  You grow, evolve, and change. "Too many companies focus on numbers instead of their customers." --> That is because they have number based goals to hit.  It can ruin the customer experience (Jason had a terrible experience trying to cancel his satellite radio service) Qualities Jason looks for when making hiring decisions: Communicate clearly - "You must be a great writer."  Much of their communication is done in writing.  "We look at the cover letter first.  That must be good.  If that's not well written, then we do not look at the resume." Quality of character - "You must be a good person.  We hire people that we want to be with.  No ego.  We like to hire people that use "we" and "us" instead of "I" Must be able to give and take feedback - Need to be coachable.  "For designers, we give them a project to do in the interview process and then we provide them feedback.  If they can't handle it, we will not hire them." Transition from individual contributor to leader... How to do it well? "It is REALLY hard. Very few people are born being good managers." "Come to terms that you can no longer do everything." Advice Jason got from Tobi (CEO of Shopify) - "As the CEO, you are working on longer term strategic initiatives.  You don't get to feel the day-to-day progress that people lower in the organization feel."  Need to get comfortable with that. Some of the benefits at Basecamp: Fully paid vacation every year for all employees ($5K), 3 day weekends all summer, $1K/year in continuing education outside of your job, $100/month for a massage, $100/month gym membership, $2K/year charity match, paid in the top 10% of your salary range as if you lived in San Francisco (even though no employees live in San Francisco) Why do it? "It's the right thing to do.  I wanted to start a business that I wanted to work at.  We're a company that cares about service." "People are not the place to save money.  They are the place to spend money." "Give people their time.  A contiguous block of time every day to do their work."  Don't muddle it up with meetings in the middle of that time. "I'll work hard now so I can relax later" is not the optimal way to live.  Create the habits now to enjoy it as you go.  "Later" is where intentions go to die.  "When calm starts early, calm becomes the habit."

One of the problems with goals is that you set them for the person you are not the person you're going to be when you actually Achieve that goal so if you set yourself up for a five-year goal Well five years from now you're gonna be a different person and those things that you thought were important five years prior may not be important when you actually get there And so you're different person all the time think about yourself five years ago or ten years ago like you probably I'm sure there's some stuff you're embarrassed about about yourself or there's some stuff maybe you're proud of yourself like There's things that I did 10 years ago, I would never do that again or whatever it would be. I don't want to set myself up today and assume that five years from now or 10 years from now, I'm going to want the same things. And so that's one of the problems with long-term goals, in my opinion, is that you set these things up, but you don't take into account what you're going to want when you get there.

We are opening up applications for our next learning leader circle. We only do this once per year. And think back to the great conversation I had with the legendary Jim Collins, episode 216. He said, Ryan, before you get too caught up in the why, in the what, you need to first be very intentional about your who. Who will be your friends? Who will be your mentor? Who will you help? Who will you choose to surround yourself with?

That will be the single greatest determining factor in your long-term success. And I would ask you the same question. Who are you surrounding yourself with? Do you want to be surrounded by growth-oriented leaders that are willing to push you? We've added specific curriculum and elements so that by the end of the year, you'll have tangible outcomes to measure your growth

and be a more effective leader, both personally and professionally. These groups are intentionally curated and kept small. Time and again, the thing that people say they love about these groups is the relationships they're able to build with one another and a show. short period of time. If you'd like to apply, go to learning leader circle.com. That's

learning leader circle.com to apply. Welcome to the learning leader show presented by Bricksey and Meyer. I am Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Text, learners to 44222. In order to join tens of thousands of learning leaders from all over the world, received mindful Monday updates what I'm reading, writing, watching, thinking about. Also, Give you the opportunity to be part of my book launch team, which is coming very soon. Texts Learners to 44222. Now on tonight's featured leader, co-founder and CEO of Basecamp, Jason Free. Jason is responsible for leading 56 people across 30 cities from all over the world.

Also, a best-selling author of multiple books, including as most recent, it doesn't have to be crazy at work. A few of the topics we discussed. Why he doesn't create five, three, or even one year plans and why you shouldn't either. And then how to set up your work life to enjoy it right now. Instead of living for tomorrow, Jason has created a business where people can enjoy their work each day. Then why he doesn't set goals for his business and what he does instead and how you could implement the very same thing in your world. work regardless of where you work or who you work for.

This one is so useful and very counterintuitive, which I think you'll like. It's Jason Freed. All right, my man, Jason Freed. So good to have you here on The Learning Leader Show. Welcome, man. Thanks, Ryan. This has been in the works for years, so it's exciting to do it. And I'm fascinated by the way that you think.

So I'm very curious to ask you, what have you found when you think about the people, point in your life as well as those you surround yourself with. The ones who have figured out a way to sustain excellence over an extended period of time. What have you found those people seem to have in common? Well, it's funny. It's funny because I'm thinking about some stuff they have in common and then I'm going through my head right now and then I'm thinking about, wow, they also don't have things in common.

But one of the things I think that's kind of standard is this willingness to or this ability, I would say to be able to separate what's worth doing from what's not worth doing. I think a lot of people I run into are very busy all the time. And a lot of them, you know, if you start to talk to them, you find out like, what are you busy with? And as they tell you, in my head, I'm starting to go, you know, you probably shouldn't be spending time on that. That's probably not worth it. The best people I run into, though, are ones who are really only spending their time on things that actually matter. And so I think developing a skill to discern what's worth doing and what isn't worth doing, is probably one of those things that is fairly common among people I've met who are, let's say, performing at a high level.

Now, some people, though, who I've met who are performing at a high level are just constantly busy with stuff that doesn't matter when they haven't developed that skill well enough. But I do think it's a pretty common skill and a really important one for anyone who wants to actually move forward versus just kind of running on the treadmill in place. How would somebody listening develop that skill? it's you know it's hard because it's um it's a it's a matter of like being a good editor you know so like how would you become a good editor let's say you're a book publisher and you're an editor and you need to become good at that like like anything it's it's a matter of practice but it's trying to figure out like looking back perhaps on things you've done recently and go was that worth doing like why did why did i do that so it's a matter of asking questions and and being very

reflective, I think, at least that's a way to practice this, you know, because moving forward, it's hard to practice. You have to kind of look back and go, those seven things I did this week, was that worth doing? Like, were they worth doing? Were they worth doing? Why and why not were they worth doing? And just being able to spot those patterns. So as new opportunities come up in front of you, you can kind of discern which ones are worth doing, which ones are not. So I would just start to look back at your week. That's a great way to start. Like, let's say last week. What did you do last week? Kind of document it, write it down. And then really pick it on and go, would I want to do any of these things again?

Were these things I really had to do? Or these things I thought I had to do? What of these things do I regret doing? What was not worth doing? What could have been shorter? You know, like just kind of reflecting that way, I think, is a great way to begin to practice what it's like to have to edit your time. Yeah, I would imagine this is a practice you have in place of self-reflection of analyzing your behavior to ensure that so that you can regularly improve at this really important skill. Less so now, but I used to do that a lot more frequently.

Now I've kind of gotten much better at it, so it's a little bit more natural for me. But I still make mistakes moving forward. So one of the things I make mistakes doing right now is like saying yes to things that are far in the future, because there's really no costs to that. You know, if someone asks you to do something, let's say speaking at a conference or something that requires travel. So I live in Chicago. If people ask me to speak at something in Chicago, I almost always say yes because it's a relatively easy thing. to do. But if I have to travel, it's disruptive. I've got two young kids at home. You know, I have to leave them with my wife. It's a disruptive thing to have to do that. So I tend to prefer not to travel

to give speeches unless I just maybe do a few a year. But point is, is that if someone asked me today, hey, you know, could you give a talk at our thing in May next year? It's really easy to like be flattered by that, obviously, as you should be. But then also, it's kind of easy to say yes, because you don't have to do anything right now. It's like the ultimate form of procrastination. Like I'll just put, I'll just say yes. Like that sounds fun. I get to go to Arizona.

All right, that sounds great. But then when it comes time, I find myself wishing I hadn't have said yes so easily to so many things far in the future. So the thing I'm practicing doing now is making sure that if anything's that far out, I'm pretty quick to say I can't make a commitment right now. So I'll say like, and I know that's difficult for a conference or whatever, but I'm just honest with people, I can't book months in advance for something that requires travel. I'm sorry, I just don't know what it's going to be going on in my life at that time.

So if there's a speaking slot that's open a month ahead of time or six weeks ahead of time and you want to ask me again, I'd be happy to consider it then. But right now I simply just, I can't say yes that far in advance. So that's the thing I'm currently working on practicing. So you're the founder of CEO at Basecamp. I believe you currently have 56 people who work for Base Camp in 30 countries. Is that accurate? 56 people probably yeah probably about 30 well not country sorry 30 cities sorry yeah yeah mostly in the US and Canada and then we have some people in Europe and then

also in Hong Kong and Australia why have you found the in South America too yeah why have you found the remote because there are people listening out who work at a big company who that the remote style is just not part of it and and one of the things I wanted to do the reason I want to talk to you is to open people's minds to the to the potential to make a shift to this style of working and the advantages to it. What have been the advantages to you? Previous guest, David Hennemeyer Hansen, DHS, your co-founder. What have been the benefits to you guys for having your work structure set up in this manner?

Yeah. So it's a great question. The primary reason is that we get just to hire the best people we can find them at or where they are. The idea that the best people, first of all, every company says, like, we want the best people, right? Everyone says that. And you don't really, that's not necessarily true. You don't necessarily want the best people. You want the right people.

But regardless of that, it's unlikely that the best or slash the right people just happen to be within, let's say, a 30-mile radius of your headquarters. You know, like maybe, but probably not. There's probably great people in another state, in another country, another location, other continent. And so we've just kind of opened our approach. Well, we've opened our eyes basically saying, like, let's look all over because they're great people everywhere. And as long as you're comfortable working remotely and you have the systems in place and the processes in place and the software in place to do it, it's pretty easy, actually. And in fact, you end up with better people, I think, because the pool is larger. And you can also go where there's less competition.

So I don't mean like for wages, but I mean like there's a number of people. who work at base camp who would never been able to get a job like this because they live in a small town on a farm or something or in a small town somewhere. And they're excellent, but there's no one else looking to hire them because those jobs don't exist there. So we can find great people without having to fight for great people. And I think that's one of the really, really big advantages of working remotely. Was this a decision you guys made from the very beginning? And can you take me back to that time too? So two-part question, as far as your philosophy at the very beginning when you were getting started and what it was like as you were building it.

Yeah, sure. It wasn't really our philosophy. It just kind of grew into that. So the fourth, well, I started the business in 99 with two other co-founders. And David, David came on later. But the three of us initially were located in Chicago. And there was a fourth employee. There was another employee.

We had actually four people all located in Chicago. But the fifth person, or the first programmer, I should say, that we ever hired was David. and David just happened to live in Denmark, in Copenhagen, Denmark. And I just didn't think there was going to be a big deal. Like, we met via email, we met on law, we met via email, we talked back and forth via email, we talked back and forth versus, or like on some instant messaging platform. I think it was AOL at the time, AOL instant messenger or something like that. And we just sort of like, this works.

Like this is fine. We can work this way. There was never a question like, well, you have to move to Chicago or whatever. He just, he eventually did move to Chicago, but he hasn't lived. in Chicago anymore. It doesn't matter where he lives. Like we just work remotely. And so he was the first example of that. The next program we hired after that was in Utah. And then we just started doing that and just kind of didn't really think about remote versus local. Just where can we find the best people that are the right people for us? And it turned out some of them were local and some of them

were remote. And since we kind of grew up with this as a company essentially, like our fifth person was remote. And then after that, we quickly became a primarily a majority of remote company. it all just sort of worked out. And so it wasn't a plan, but it quickly became obvious that it was a good path to take. And so that's kind of how that whole thing happened. You've written in your book about the facts. So I'm going to bounce back and forth between thoughts as well as notes I've taken from your book, your most recent book, which is titled, it doesn't have to be crazy at work. You guys have great book titles, by the way.

Thank you. So you've written that you don't have plans. No plans. It's no five, three, or even one year plan. You make it up as you go. So again, why is this optimal for you? And why could this be optimal for someone who is currently working as a mid-level manager in a big company that happens to be a lot of the people who listen to this show?

Yeah, that's a good question too, obviously. Because I think your first point is important, which is like what I'm sharing with you today is what works for us. Now, I believe a lot of these things could work for other people, too, but primarily we're sharing what's worked for us. And everyone's different, everyone's unique, and everyone's got a different setup and the whole thing. But for us, what we found, and I do believe this to be true, by the way, in general. But for us, what we found is that planning is simply guessing. And that's okay, as long as you recognize that that's the case.

And to, like, decide what you're going to do over the next five years based on a guess feels a little bit perhaps. irrational is the wrong way to put it, but perhaps it's like isn't the best idea. Isn't the best way to think about like setting your course over the next five years based on a guess? Now, when people say they're based on a plan, then they feel more confident, but a plan is just a guess. And so we just try to strip away the official language and get down to what it really is, is we have no idea what's going to happen over the next five years. We don't know what's going to happen in the market. We don't know what's going to happen with competitors.

We don't know what's going to happen with the economy. We don't know what's going to happen politically. We don't know what's going to happen with wars. You just don't know. There's so many things you don't know. know, they have an enormous influence and impact on your own business. You are out of control of most things. And so, you know, for us, we just figure like, we have an idea where we're headed, like what direction are we roughly heading. But we basically figure out what we're going to be

working on over the next six weeks, six weeks at a time. And that's kind of how we do it. The reason why we think that's useful is because we're able to take current conditions into account and adjust accordingly. If you, plan out one, three or five years, you have to know current conditions are going to be different than what you expected because there's no way to predict what's going to happen down the road. And so by, you know, by planning that far out, you're basically saying current conditions don't matter because we're going in this, we're doing this thing that we decided to do five years ago. I'd much rather say, we have a general sense of where we're headed directionally, big picture stuff

maybe. But as far as choosing what to do, we're going to choose what to do what we do, as we go six weeks at a time so we can always adjust and never get too far off course. I think that's the most realistic way actually to work. Now, to get your other point, which is about like what about a mid-level manager at a large company, you know, one of the things that's different about us is that we try to make sure

that we stay small for a good reason and that we don't have a lot of interdependencies inside the company, which means that each group, each little team can function essentially independently and not have to wait on this other group do something for them or this other group to do something for them and this other department to do something for them. Not always true, but most of the time teams can work independently at Basecamp. And a lot of larger organizations, teams are very intertwined and interdependent,

which means one can't move without the other. And if one moves, it moves everyone else, which is why it becomes much harder not to work with a longer term plan, because you need to coordinate a lot of different groups. So it is harder to do this at big companies. But the thing I always come back to is like how well do you think your system works like you know are you if you talk to a lot of mid-level managers and people at large companies they would say like things are horribly inefficient here things don't work as as as planned things seem to go on forever everyone seems to be working their ass off they're really they're really stressed out uh we're working long hours like things aren't shipping on time things are late like if that's the list of things

then that's not normal either. So, like, I recognize that planning might be valuable in some respects, but in many cases, it might be the cause of some of these problems. So I would just encourage people to peel back at least one layer and go, instead of making a five-year plan, maybe we'll just do three. Or if we're doing three, maybe we can do one. Or if we're doing one, maybe we can do six months? Like, can you step back one level and just don't go out so far?

And that's like, these are these little steps you can take to maybe, possibly, make some progress and change the way you're working because a lot of people are just simply not working well and they know it, but they think there's only one way to do it, which is the traditional way, which is making long-term plans and sticking to them. It seems to dovetel with an article you wrote, I believe Jeff Bezos, did he come to your office and speak at one point? And he said, people who were right a lot of the time where people who were often changed their mind doesn't think consistency of thought is a particularly positive trait.

It's perfectly healthy. Encouraged even to have an idea tomorrow that contradicted your idea today. Is that part of the not really planning farther out than six weeks type mentality? It is. I mean, on any given day, I changed my mind. I disagree with myself. Like the answer I just gave you, I probably could disagree with that too. You know, like you just kind of have to.

You have to be able to play multiple sides of something and see the whole picture and change. take different points of view and the whole thing. I think it's really valuable and important. And by working in these six-week cycles, which is what we call them, we're giving ourselves permission to change after six weeks. Like, you need to commit to something. You don't want to change every day because then you're not going to make any progress. But six weeks is enough time to see something through and then decide what we want to do next. It's also, the other thing that's nice about six weeks is that if you're working on something you don't like, it's almost over before it started, which is really important because one of the worst things from morale in a business

is working on something for a long period of time that you don't like and that that that thing will never end. It's like, I don't know when this thing's going to end. It could last six months. It could last three years. It could last five years. Who knows? And I don't like it. So I might be stuck on this for quote, forever, essentially. I mean, of course, it's not forever, forever, but it might feel like that. And at base camp, if you're working on something you don't like or, you're, you're, Because look, not all work is wonderful. There's maintenance projects. There's bug fixes.

There's stuff that just isn't glamorous, let's say. But hey, it's only six weeks, max. So you can do that. And you know it's almost over. And that's a really liberating way to look at work, which is I'm not going to be stuck on something forever that I don't like doing. That's how you lose morale. That's how you lose people.

That's how you wreck teams. And so six weeks is sort of like a release valve for us. essentially it lets us sort of blow off some steam stop. And we also, between the six-week cycles, we take two weeks off, not off of work, of course, but like off of planned, structured work. So during those two weeks, we call it like a cool-down. People can sort of roam around the business and fix little things they want or kick off a little mini-projects of things that have been on their mind or fix some other issues that have been going on. They haven't had a chance to do. So we have these six weeks, two-weeks break, then six weeks, two weeks, two weeks break,

And that's sort of how we move forward. And we're always able to adjust that way. And it works out really well for us. Let's talk about goal setting. I know this is a topic that you write about a lot. And I'm fascinated by this, particularly in my own work of working to build a business. In fact, actually, I will just leave it that wide open because I want to hear you kind of espoused your thoughts on the anti-goal mindset. Yeah. Here's my issue with goals. Similar to plans, they're made up. So at some point,

you make up a goal. We want to get to, like in the business context, to have a company. Like, we want to get to do our first million or first 10 million or first 100 million or we want to get our, we want to get a thousand customers or 10,000 customers. Like, they're always round numbers, which means like there's nothing about them that's true. They're just like guesses. Like, it's easy. 10,000. Let's do 10,000. It's not. like let's do 942. It's a thousand or whatever it might be. And that right there should set you up to go, hmm, like this is just a made up number. It's a convenient made up number. And if I don't hit it, I'm going to be disappointed. Like, why would I want to be disappointed by something that I just made up

that doesn't really have a basis in reality? Now, in some cases, there might be some goals that do have a basis in reality. Most of them do not. Most of them are just targets that people set out. and what ends up happening is you either hit it and then you set another one or you don't hit it and then you're disappointed or other people are disappointed. And now the thing is is that if you're way off the mark, it's in some ways not that disappointing because you're like way off the mark. But what's sort of difficult to deal with is that if you're close but you didn't hit it, then you start to feel bad. For example, and I've talked about this in the past, like, I realized this one day when I was just running, I jog a lot. And there was a moment like in the past, I'm like, I want to run just like a six minute mile. It'd be nice to run a six minute mile.

Maybe I was running like seven minute miles or something or seven and a half. I don't even know what it was. But like I like to run a six. And you're all pumped up and you want to get your six minute mile and you end up running a 604, which is not a six minute mile. You're four seconds short. Now, if I had a goal set for six minutes, you could probably be pretty sure that I would be a little bit upset by not hitting that goal. I was so close, but I didn't get there. Now, it could be motivation to do it next time, certainly, but I might next time I might make a 603 or 602, or maybe I'll never get to six, because six is just a round number I pick.

Maybe I'll never get there. Maybe I'm not capable of that. The thing is that asking if I hit the goal to me is the wrong question. The right question is, like, did I enjoy the run? that I get some fresh air, did I move my body, that I pump my heart? Like, you know,

did I get my pulse up or whatever the other things that are sort of interesting about? Did I get to run through the woods or whatever it might be? Did I take a break from work? Like, those would all be yeses. But the goal would be no.

And why should I feel like my satisfaction hinges on this goal that I made up versus like how I actually felt about the run itself? And so that's kind of how we think about work. which is that we don't set revenue targets or profitability targets other than being profitable. We don't set growth targets. We just do the best work we can.

Just like when I go out for a run, I want to run the best I can. I should be happy with the best I can. That doesn't mean I shouldn't try hard. We try hard. It doesn't mean we shouldn't try to get better. We try to get better. We want to do the best we can. But I don't need to set out an artificial target to try and get there and set myself up for

possible disappointment or hitting it and then just setting another one and just setting another one and be on this perpetual motion machine of always just setting new goals. Like, how about just do the best you can? Like, I want to just be in a mindset where I ask people for their best work, they give me their best work, they give themselves their best work,

and that's what we do versus measuring people up against numbers that I made up. So that's my general rant on it. The other thing that's interesting about goals, someone else said this, this isn't my line of thinking, but I totally agree with it,

which is that one of the problems with goals is that you set them for the person you are, not the person you're going to be when you actually achieve that goal. So if you set yourself up for a five-year goal, well, five years from now, you're going to be a different person. And those things that you thought were important five years prior may not be important when you actually get there. And so you're a different person all the time.

Think about yourself five years ago or 10 years ago. Like you probably, I'm sure there's some stuff you're embarrassed about about yourself. Or there's some stuff maybe you're proud of yourself. Like there's things that I did 10 years ago. I'm like, I would never do that again or whatever it would be. I don't want to set myself up today and assume that five years from now or 10 years from now, I'm going to want the same things. And so that's one of the problems with long-term goals, in my opinion, is that you set these things up,

but you don't take into account what you're going to want when you get there. So anyway, that's my general rant, and I'm happy to follow up in any of those details if you're curious. I think the question, I have multiple questions out of that. One is you've built something at you. your company as the leader of the company. And so there may be people who are working out or driving in their car right now thinking, you know, that sounds great. And maybe I'd even want to go work at his company. I'd love to work at a place. However, I'm currently working at a pretty good company. I like my job. This just doesn't realistic. Do you think that your philosophy on goal setting,

it could be implemented anywhere? I do think it's realistic. Here's the thing. There are different kinds of goals, obviously. For example, if you want to get a promotion, like, that could be a totally fair goal or you want to get a raise. Like, those are fair goals to have. But those are more like achievements and that you want, of course, work to be better at your job. You want to demonstrate a mastery perhaps of, or mastery is the wrong word. Masteries, like, takes a whole lifetime and we rarely get there. But, like, you want to show your boss or your manager that you're improving on a certain

dimensions that are important to the company are important to you. So, like, that's, that's sort of an achievement you're after. The things, and I'm, of course, like, okay with that. Like, you want to learn something new. You could say that's a goal to learn something new. And that, that's fine, too. What I'm talking about when I get to goals in terms of business goals are these specific, like, numbers that companies tend to set. Like, we need to grow 28% next year or else. Like, or we need to We need to sign up our 100,000th customer or else. Like, you know, those types of things to me are unhealthy compared to things that are more like, you know, achievement driven for your own personal growth.

Like, I believe in working to get better at things. And in some cases, you get better at things because when you get better at something, you might get paid more, you might have more responsibility. Those things are all totally legit and reasonable things in my eyes, of course, and including with their own employees. We set out some things that we would like people to get better at, but it's not, we don't lay them out in terms of a specific goal. Like hit this number of revenue or whatever it may be. Like, I mean, are you guys, are you guys beholden to any shareholders or is it you and DHH own it all?

Because I think some people have to give a quarterly business review. And I know I live in this world. And part of that is making sure you're on track for because then they have to take up the chain and report to the board or whoever it may be. And if they miss a quarter, it is really, like we did some crazy things in corporate America. I remember when a quarter looked like it could be bad. And it always just didn't feel great to be part of that machine. But a lot of people listening are dealing with that right now. And so I think how does it work at your business?

Yeah. By the way, I think that's a great point. And I actually want to expand on that for a second because you can tell when companies are goal-driven in a bad way. So, for example, I just tried to cancel a satellite radio service. I guess there's only one satellite radio company, so I'll say the name. So serious. I tried to cancel serious recently.

And it was a major hassle because they have an entire department, retention department, built to prevent people essentially from canceling or talking them out of canceling or offering them other offers to prevent them from canceling. I just weren't done. I don't listen to it anymore. I don't want it anymore. And I had to jump through an enormous amount of hoops. to cancel. Now, that's because these companies don't want to lose customers, which I understand,

but also because there's numbers that they're asked to hit, and they probably have a retention goal and this whole thing. And so companies begin to focus on these numbers and stop focusing on their customers, what it's like. Even losing a customer should be a fair experience for the person who's leaving. Like, it should be a good experience. It shouldn't burn bridges. Like, I don't want to sign up for a series anymore after that. Like, I don't want to. And by the way, they make signing up really easy and they make canceling really hard. This happens when companies have targets and goals that they're trying to hit. And you end up tossing out ethics, you end up tossing out the customer experience,

you end up throwing a lot of other things away just so you can hit that number. So to your point, I know corporate America is filled, I mean, especially if you're a public company or you have, you know, shareholders that you have to deliver for, people are trying to hit numbers. And if they don't hit numbers, it's funny. Like if they're a penny off, you know, in earnings or something like that. It can cost billions of dollars. I just don't want to live.

I personally don't want to live in that world, and I've chosen not to live in that world. And there's a lot of companies out there who don't run that way. Smaller private companies or larger private companies, they don't run that way. Companies that have been bootstrapped versus taking a bunch of outside money with expectations of growth and selling or mergers or acquisitions or whatever. They don't run that way. So all this, for me, at least, is a conscious choice. I can't, of course, speak to the situation that someone finds themselves in or their stuck in a job where their boss is demanding certain sales quota or whatever, and they got

hit it or they get fired. Like, that's just, I can understand how difficult that situation must be. I don't want to put any of my employees in that situation. I don't want to have to live under those rules. And I don't want any of my employees to have to live under any rules that I don't have to live under. So we just have decided to sidestep that whole thing and do it a different way. So what I'm saying here may not directly apply to someone who's stuck in a situation where

they have no power over the situation, but at least I think what's important is to hear that there are alternatives to running a business. You don't have to run it on the quota system. You don't have to run it on a goal-based financial system. You don't have to run it on, we have to grow X percent this year because we did it last year. If we grow less next year than we did last year, like, things are going to hell. There are other ways to do this. And at the very least, someone who's listening who can't do some of these things, hopefully they take solace and understanding that there are other places out there where work does run a little bit differently and that there is hope if you're stuck and you don't like that kind of kind of world other people though thrive in those

situations some some people love the quotas they love the boiler room field they love the sales numbers like they love that stuff and that's fine too of course it's not me it's not what i'm into so i don't want to denigrate what they're into it's just there are different perspectives out here and that's what i think's really important to share i think though in order to do that part of it is you have to be really good, thoughtful, and intentional about who you choose to bring on to your team. And so I think that leads me to the next part. That is applicable to anybody, especially a manager, is that the most, my dad told me this

from when I got my very first management job, he said, look, these, the people that you are about to hire and the ones that, unfortunately, you'll have to let go from time to time, they're either going to make you rich and famous within this company, or they will make you poor. and unemployed because they'll get you fired. You have to get this right. Hold your standards high. Do it right. Take the necessary time. And I have to, I have to think that this is, has got to be part of your structure too. When you are looking to make, let's say, regardless of skill, so take the skill of the particular role, if they're an engineer or they're building something that right, like that's, that's just table stakes. You've got to have that.

So let's look at just the quality or the characteristics in people. What do you look for and people to bring on to our team as far as the makeup of them? Yeah, great question. And you're right. Like, who you hire is everything here. So in no particular order, although actually I will start with probably the most important thing. And like you said, aside from like being able to do the work, like that's table stakes. Right.

So you have to be able to be able to be a great writer. The majority of our communication at Basecamp is written. This is primarily because we are a remote company, but also because I think it's better to write than to speak oftentimes when you're trying to share ideas with people. So you have to be a good writer. And that comes through in the cover letter and it comes through in your communications with us when you're applying for a job. And we simply will not hire somebody who isn't a good writer or a great writer. A great's probably a stretch. You have to be a good, solid writer.

You have to be able to communicate clearly. You have to be able to explain yourself well. This is a really important trait. So we look for that. We also look for, and in fact, just to reiterate or to expand on that for a second, when we hire, we look at the cover letter first. We don't look at the resume. And if the cover letter isn't well written, isn't clear, isn't thoughtful, we don't even get to your resume. So like, or your CV or whatever people call it.

So like, it really comes down to the writing. That's the gateway first. So there's that. The other thing we look for is just a certain, and this is a subjective. thing, but a certain quality of character, they have to be a good person. Now, again, that, you know, everyone has their own rules there for what that might mean. We've done a good job over the years of finding people who we just, who we want to work with. These are, you know, that's kind of the way to think about this. Like, would you want to be friends with this person?

Is this person share certain values that you share that you, that you carry, that you believe in? Like, would you want to spend your day, eight hours a day with this person and work on something together for a long time. Like if they think they're great and their ego is pounding and they're pounding their chest, I mean, their ego is showing, like, probably not. Like, that probably wouldn't be the kind of person we'd like to work with here at Basecamp. And some companies, like, that's what everyone's looking for is like a bunch of type A people. And there's nothing wrong with type A people at all. But it depends on how they how they express that. So if it's all about them, then that's probably going to be a problem. If it's all about their ego and it's

all about them taking credit for things. So during the interview process, I'm always curious about finding out like the things that they've done and how they speak about those things like are they trying to take credit for everything because very few things are done independently they truly independently there's always other people involved and so I like to hear we versus I or or you know my team versus versus me that kind of stuff so I'm looking for those kinds of things there they're not necessarily giveaways one way or the other but I'm just kind of looking for that kind of stuff and I'm just looking for about how you know trying to understand how people live what they're what their philosophy of life essentially is in a way. So we're kind of looking at those sorts of things.

I'm also very, very curious about how people take feedback and how they give feedback. Can they handle it? Some people cannot handle negative feedback. So when I'm hiring designers, we always give them a project to do, like the final, let's say the five finalists for the job, we give them a project to do. And then we critique it. And even if I like it, I critique it, because I just want to see how they respond? Like how can they, how do they handle a disagreement? How do they handle, you know, me saying like, I'm not so sure about this. Can you explain why you did that? Or like, this doesn't feel right to me. Like, I just want to kind of understand what it would be like to work with them because we're critiquing each other all the time here at base camp and trying to figure out the

best way to do something. So how they take feedback, how they give feedback is very important. So I could go down the list. But those are, those are three things. So there's character, there's writing and there's feedback and there's, you know, ego. Is it showing too much? Are they kind of selfless in a sense? of course you want to have a strong sense of self, but also like you don't want it to be all about you because we just want to extrapolate here. When I hire somebody, I think about working with them for the next 10 years. So it's not about a job they're going to be here for 16 months, 18 months, 24 months, and they're out or eight months. It's like, this is a long-term commitment.

So I really care about, like, could I see myself working with this kind of person over a long period of time? And sort of kindness and fairness and a sense of like just trying to do great. work with other people is really important to me versus someone who I would get tired of very quickly if they're just trying to take credit for everything because that's not the way we run here at base camp So part of the role of the leader is making higher decisions which we just talked about and I'm curious about your growth When you initially started you were basically a player meaning you had to do all of the frontline work as you grow and change and evolve you grow from being a player to a player coach and then to to mainly a coach to use a sports analogy where you make that shift from individual contributor to manager and leader. And that's a transition that a lot of people listening either are in the middle of will go through or have gone through but are struggling.

Or they just want to do better. What has been the key for you as you've thought about your evolution as a leader from initially doing everything as the frontline guy and now leading? everything. It's so hard. It's like one of the hardest things for me. And I still struggle with it. So when we were first starting the business, I mean, I did all the website design and did all the writing. I did all the HTML. I did all the CSS. I did like all the coding for the websites that we built way back when. And I did that for a long time up through when we built base camp. I did it and I did it through our other products that we built, backpack and high rising campfire and right board and whatever. And then we had a very long time. And then we had a very time.

version to a base camp, and that's when I began to not be as involved in the day-to-day building of the thing anymore. The company was, we're embarking on our second major version of Basecamp. This was back in 2012, and I did a lot of the initial design work, but I started to not implement the work as much. We had a larger team at the time, and I realized, like, I can't do all these things. It's not good for anybody for me to do all these things. Other people have to grow into these roles. And my time is better used strategically, thinking about the big picture, thinking about the whole system. And I began the transition, I think, back then in 2012. And it's been a struggle for a number of reasons. Number one, like, you're really good at something.

You've gotten really good at something over your career. And then you start to do less of it. That's sort of hard because you have to do new things now. So there's learning new things that you're no good at. You know, no one's like, well, I shouldn't say no one. Very few people are born excellent managers. Managing people is a really hard thing to do. And you kind of have to, like anything, you have to practice. I mean, there's always virtuosos in every field. Like someone learns how to play piano at age four and they're amazing at age five and like, whoa. But like, just management is a skill too and you have to develop your skills over time. So you have to practice. So moving from an individual contributor into a management role, even though I owned the company,

I was always an individual contributor. Moving into the management role was just hard for me because I'd never really done that before. So that was hard. The thing I'm struggling with now is, is I actually want to get back into playing again as an individual contributor sometimes. And my skills are rusty. And it's embarrassing, actually. I'm embarrassed in a sense because the things I used to be good at, I'm not good at anymore. I could get good at them again. You know, I can learn them again.

I still know the basics. I'm still dangerous enough. I can do what I need to do, but I can't do everything I want to do. And I have to kind of get back into it. And I need to have the time to get back into it again. I need to pick up a project to get back into it again. For me, I feel like now I've become a pretty good manager of people. I think I've become a pretty good leader of a company.

But I kind of crave a little bit more of the day-to-day individual contributor stuff on little projects here and there. I don't want to take anyone's work away from them. But like little things here and there, I want to tighten up or fix up or clean up. It just takes me longer now and I don't understand it as well as I used to. And that's been the struggle for me right now. So that's kind of where I'm at in my career, which is that I'm no longer good at things that I used to be good at.

I'm good at other things, but I still want to have those skills. And so I'm trying to figure out how to get back into that. It's just a little bit harder to do. What advice would you give to a person who's going through that process right now? Like maybe prep something that you learn, say, oh, man, I wish I would have known this as I was going through. I know you'd admit that you're still struggling at times with this, but is there a piece or two? And I'd imagine you meet with people regularly that ask, ask your advice. What would you say to them?

Well, I think if you want to stay good at something, you have to keep doing it, first of all. Otherwise, your skills are going to atrophy, just like your muscles will atrophy. You don't use them. They start to go away. And your mind's the same way. All these things are the same way. So if you want to continue to be good at something, you can't just think that you used to be good at it and you'll remain good at it forever. You've got to keep your skills sharp.

There's that. And then the other thing is that it's just like the harder thing, I think, is just coming to terms with the fact that, you can no longer do everything. As your company begins to grow, there are other responsibilities that need doing. And if you're the leader of the business, like, I've got to think strategically. I've got to think about new product launches. I've got to think about timing. I've got to think about press and publicity. I've got to think about other things. And there's no shame in those things. I remember though, I was talking to, or I wasn't talking, I was listening to Toby who runs Shopify. He's a CEO over at Shopify. And he was talking about what he's, he still codes here and there,

kind of like I still design here and there, but mostly his job is as CEO, which is strategic. And when he first started doing the more strategic work, he started thinking to himself, like, what am I doing? Like, am I doing anything important? Like, does this stuff matter? Like, I used to the code and make something. And at the end of every day, there's like something that I did that was so clear that moves something forward.

Strategic work is more like long-term thinking and planning and considering and that kind of stuff. And like on a day-to-day basis, you feel like you're not. making as much progress. And so having to come to, coming to terms with that was also a challenging thing for him and for me. But eventually you realize that someone has to do this work. And hopefully you're good at it and you enjoy doing it. I do enjoy doing it. But it took me a while to feel like I was even being productive at all. Like it's so clear when I'm being productive when I'm doing design work, because before I do it, there's nothing and after I do it, there's

something. But when you're talking about like CEO style, strategic work or thinking or that kind of thing, like, it's a lot less concrete. And coming from an individual contributor role into this kind of role, that's something that was, I think, more shocking, which is you feel like you're not sometimes you feel like you're not doing anything of substance, but of course you are. You're just doing something that has a longer time frame so you can't see it. And also, you have to make more important decisions in these decisions, like a lot of people's jobs depend on the decisions you make. And you have to think about the gravity of this stuff. So anyway, Fundamentally, I think if you want to stay good at something, you got to practice it, so you've got to leave time for yourself to practice it.

And if you don't do that, you cannot expect yourself to be good at it. And it's also a bit harder, much harder, I think, to pick up lost skills down the road than it is to just put a little bit extra time in as you go to maintain those skills. So I'd consider, I would encourage people to maintain their skills if they really like those skills. One of the areas that I find fascinating about your company is you have amazing benefits. And I'm going to list off a few of them and then ask you a specific question about one in particular. So some of your benefits, these aren't all of them, three-day weekends all summer, 30-day paid sabbatical every three years, $1,000 a year continuing education stipend for something outside of work, $2,000 a year charity match, monthly massage at a spa, $100 a month fitness club membership.

And one that I find interesting, instead of giving a cash bonus, you will pay, as long as you've been at the company for a year, pay each year for someone to go on vacation, not only giving the time off, but actually pay for the vacation. Can you, one, hit that vacation one first because I think that's very rare. But then two, just your overall thought process around these incredible benefits. Sure. First, let me just say, for anyone who's listening, we didn't offer all these all the time. So this is now, we're into the business 20 years. Like we've layered in these things over time.

So we couldn't afford to do most of these things, most of our existence, and we've been layering things in. So right now, I feel like we have an amazing benefits package, but we've been at it for 20 years. So let's start with the vacation one. We used to give cash bonuses for a few years, and they were arbitrary because we don't have performance targets and numbers to hit and the whole thing. And we don't have people here who we don't have salespeople. So we don't have any roles that are natural fit for bonuses based on performance. So we just kind of arbitrarily picked numbers based on like how we felt the company did that

year and how we felt a person did that year. And it was kind of a disaster, to be honest, because you give someone money, let's say, I'm just going to make up round numbers here, you give someone $10,000 bonus, okay? And then the next year they get a $7,000 bonus. Now, on paper, it's like, well, that's, quote, free money. Like, that wasn't part of your salary. You should be excited to get more than we told you we'd pay you. But of course, it's less than you got the previous year. And all of a sudden, like, people are upset.

And they're asking, why did I get less this year than last year? And you kind of explain and you do your best to explain. arbitrary at the end of the day. It's more of a feeling. And we kind of created the situation where, like, we were just making up numbers for people, and it was damaging, even though it was more money than they were being paid. And so we decided to stop doing the bonus thing and stop doing the cash bonus thing. And instead, we said, let's just, let's give people an amazing experience, something they'll never forget. Now, if you give someone a $4,000 bonus, they're going to know that for a few minutes, then they're going to spend it on stuff and pay some bills off and pay some things, which of course

are important things, but five years from now, they're not going to remember that $4,000. It's just like it's going to fade into their existence. If you give somebody a trip and you send them to Tokyo for a week or at, you know, you don't send them somewhere, but they choose a trip. Basically what we do is we set up a dozen or so amazing trips to amazing places around the world and every employee gets to choose one and we pay for it. All expenses paid. We take care of setting it up, the whole thing.

So maybe you go to Morocco. Maybe you go to Tokyo. Maybe you go to Montreal. maybe you go to somewhere in Brazil, maybe you go, you know, somewhere in Thailand, a lot of amazing places that you can go or somewhere in Europe, wherever it is. And that is a trip that you may not have taken on your own. It's a trip we're encouraging you to take. It's a trip that says, like, go see something interesting in the world, go get some more perspective and go enjoy yourself. It's on us. And you're probably going to remember that trip. There's a good likelihood

you're going to remember that trip. Let's say the trip cost five grand, which is about the budget per person. you're going to remember that trip more than you're going to remember $5,000. And so we've been doing this now for, I think it may be close to 10 years, perhaps, maybe a little bit less than that, maybe seven years. We've been doing these annual trips. And they're big hit because people get to see something in the world. They get to know their company wants them to do something outside of work. That's the other thing.

Like we want people to have reasonable lives outside of work. So here's one way for us to like shove you out the door and say, go, please, leave, go have some fun. and we're going to support you on that. So that's been a big hit. And every year we come up with a dozen or so different trips. And of course, if someone wants to go somewhere that's on the list, we'll happily pay for that trip as well, up to about $5,000.

So, yeah. And as far as some of the other ones, like charity matches, these are things that employees recommended. So we didn't have a charity match for many, many years. An employee said, hey, how about matching charities? I give a lot. Like, I love my company to be behind me. That makes sense.

So we do a $2,000 our charity match. Also, a lot of our benefits are based on improving people's lives at home versus at work. So many companies have benefits that really benefit the company more than the employee. So, for example, a company might give you, like might cook dinner for you at work, like free meals after work or something. That's really designed to keep you at the office longer. It's not really designed to give you a free meal. It's like, no, don't leave. Don't go home.

And for us, like, we provide fresh fruits and vegetables for people at home. not at work. So at home. So we will pay for a CSA share, like a community supported agriculture, farmers market share kind of thing for every employee. So their family or themselves or whatever they have going on at home, they have some fresh fruits and vegetables at home. So they can cook something that's healthy. That's kind of a nice thing to do. So a lot of our benefits are based on like the vacation one, the fruits and vegetables, the continuing education stipend, which is about supporting people in whatever endeavor they want to pick up. So if you want to learn how to play guitar, we'll pay for that. If you want to learn how to throw a pot on a ceramic wheel, we'll

pay for that. If you want to learn another language, we'll pay for that. Like, these things don't have anything to do with work, but they have things to do with supporting our employees and making them more interesting people and saying, like, we want you to do things outside of work. So that's sort of our angle on benefits. They should really benefit the person and not the company. Of course, at some level they come back to benefit the company because you have more interesting people and you have people who are more relaxed and more rested and have more perspective, but really it's about the people first. Why do you guys do that?

It feels like the right thing to do. We care about the people that are here. It's one of these things like coming back to, way back to when I started the business, I wanted to start a business that I would want to work at. And a lot of the decisions that we make are based on that notion. Like, is this something we would want if we work at this company? And I would love my company to be supportive of me if I'm donating to charity. I would love my company to be supportive of me of having, you know, fresh food at home.

I love my company to be supportive of me of encouraging me to go see something interesting in the world that I might not normally see on my own. If I want to learn how to play guitar, it'd be great if my company help me out with that. Like, these are all things that I think would be amazing things for a company to do for their employees. And so that's kind of why we do it. And it's like, yeah, you can look at retention numbers. Our retention numbers are incredibly high. We pay really wonderful salaries as well. We do all these things.

But we do them because we care about the people. And there are things that we would want for ourselves too. And they also, I think, hopefully show that we're a company that cares about people. And we don't just pay lip service to it. We're not just here to do your dry cleaning for you or like keep you at the office later. Like those are again things that keep you at work. I'm sorry, or cook a meal for you at work. That's what keeps you at work.

We really want to support the people who work for us. We think they're great people. And it's also one of the wonderful things you can do is a relatively smaller company with high margins. We have very high margins. We're in the software business. We have 55, 56 people. We can afford to do some of these things. If we had 400 or 500 people, we probably couldn't afford to do all these things.

So it's like, why not? Why wouldn't we? Is almost kind of how we feel about it, which I know, like, there's no end to that. And of course, there are ends to our benefits. But it just feels like the right thing to do. And that's kind of one of the things that we always think about. Like, does this feel like the right thing to do or not? And if it does, then we'll probably do it.

Yeah, there may be a person listening who actually runs a business similar to your size or even runs a team within a company that wants to implement some of what you've done because it's the right thing to do. And also, from a work perspective, does increase retention rates, which leads to more profitability as a whole. But that's the devil's advocate view is maybe works for him, but they could be a lot more profitable and that wouldn't work in my business. And so you guys have made a choice to be less profitable but have happier and healthier employees. Yeah. I mean, for example, the,

the vacation thing is $5,000, roughly $5,000 per person. We have roughly $56 people in the company. So that's a quarter million bucks a year, right? We could have put that in our pocket instead. It doesn't seem worth it to me. It seems worth it to spend that kind of money. And here's the thing. people are not the place to save money. People are the place to spend money. This is at least my philosophy. So we pay people at the top of the market rate salaries, top 10% in San Francisco market, which is we don't have anyone who lives in San Francisco,

but we still pay San Francisco rates. We pay all these amazing benefits to people. And I just feel like if you're going to skimp on anything, don't skimp on people. So pay, pay for people, invest in people. I see these as investments in people. And that's just our point of view. So yeah, certainly we could save more money. else for, but I'd rather save that money on rent. I'd rather save that money on not spending

money on advertising. I'd rather spend that money on or save that money on not, you know, doing X, Y, and Z versus trying to like save it on people. So we invest in people. And like, I think I just tweeted something on a few days ago. I don't remember the exact numbers. I could probably find the tweet. But we have 56 people in the company. 33, I think, was a number of which have been here for more than five years. A number of them have been with us for more than seven years. And I think there's 10 people who've been with us for more than 10 years. These are current employees. It's very expensive to hire new people.

Every time you lose someone, you lose a lot of institutional knowledge. Like, if I'm going to take care of anyone, I would take care of my people. Like, why wouldn't I want to do that? That's where I want to spend my money. So anyway, that's our point of view. And here's the thing. I want to say this too, because some people are going to say, like, I can't afford to do. I agree with you, but I can't afford to do these things.

And I would say, we couldn't afford to do these things for a long time either. Figure out the things that matter and try and do those things first. But one of the most valuable things you can give anybody at work is their time. So a lot of companies, a lot of people have basically, or a lot of companies have taken their employees' time away from them. People are stuck in jobs or they have no time to get real meaningful work done, which is why they have to work nights and they have to work weekends and they have to work early in the morning or they have to work on the commute.

Because when they get to work, you can't do work at work. You're being beat up by meetings and conference calls and being pulled away and distractions left and right, and no one has time to themselves anymore. So something you can give people that cost you nothing and gives them everything is giving them their time back, letting them have more time during the day to themselves, making sure everyone has a full eight-hour day is our goal at Basecamp. If we're talking about goals, there is a goal there. There's a number. A full eight-hour day to themselves, basically. The company doesn't take any of their time intentionally. And so people have their day to themselves. They can do their work. And we trust them to do

their work, and they get it done. But if they only had, you know, 15 minutes, you know, here and 40 minutes there and 32 minutes here and 15 minutes there, it's very hard to get work done in that capacity. So anyway, giving people a full day to themselves is something you can give them. And if you can't give them a full day, give a full afternoon, something. So if you're going to have meetings, like have them in the morning. Don't spread them throughout the day. Give people a contiguous block of time to themselves. That's something you can do right now. It doesn't cost you anything and will benefit everybody. So you can think of benefits in different ways. You can think of them as monetary benefits and those are mostly the ones we've been talking about. But you can also

think about autonomy and time and trust and and responsibility. And these are benefits as well. And you can layer those on people without it costing you anything. Look up Paul Graham's article on a maker schedule versus a manager schedule. I think that's what you're talking about giving a contiguous block of time. Your tweet, by the way, is out of the current 56, people who work at base camp, 33 have been with us for five plus years. Of those 33, 25 have been with us for seven plus years. And 10 have been with us for 10 plus years. There you go. Thanks for finding that. So one of the things I wanted to close with was kind of the overall philosophy and framework. And then I actually have one more question after that. Bad habits beat good intentions.

There's a quote that people say, I'll work hard now so I can relax later. And you said that that's just not how it works. Create the habits now to enjoy it as you go later. is where intentions go to die. When calm starts early, calm becomes the habit. Yeah. Thanks for picking that one out of the book. I think the thing is, is that you'll hear this a lot, especially with new people who are getting into business.

And I understand the pressures. I really truly do. And people feel like they need to work basically endless hours, 80, 90, 100 hours a week to get somewhere. And I understand the feeling. The thing is, is that you're building habits. everything you do builds a habit, whether you like it or not. And if that's the habit you build, that's the habit you're going to keep.

And it's very hard to break them. So if you think that the only way to get ahead is to work 80, 90, 100 hour weeks, like, you're never going to give that up. And the notion that at some point down the road, things will get easier. They don't. Things get harder. Business gets harder as you go because you have more people and more growth and more expectations and more competitors and the markets change. Like, things get a little bit harder, actually. They don't get easier.

So I think this notion is what's important, I know it's a bit aspirational because I'm sure I put in some long hours at times when I was, when I was, you know, 19 or whatever, I totally, or 20 and 21, like, I've been through a few of those, but I caught myself pretty early because I realized like this is not sustainable. I don't want to do this. I'm exhausted. This is not getting me anywhere. And so the earlier you can get into good habits in anything in the world, in, you know, in exercising, in reading and whatever it might be and eating well, whatever these things are, get into those good habits because they build upon themselves. And you don't have to do anything other than continue to do those things to get better and better and better at them and more and more and more out of them. When you have to break habits, especially as you get older, it becomes harder and harder to break habits because you have more history with the habit. People just burn down and break down. I mean, like, you'll have people who are in their 40s who just simply can't work, you know, more than 40, 50 hours a week, but they've only known how to work.

work 80. Now they don't have good time management skills. Now they're kind of stuck. So it's really important to form good habits early. And that's how you'll get better and better at those over time. By the way, how's base camp doing overall? Base camp's doing great. So we've been in business as a business for 20 years. We've been profitable every year for 20 years. And we're doing great. I mean, like business is great. We've had the years that have been better than last year, for example, but last year was one of our best years still. So, like, you know, this is the thing. We're not on this, like, endless hockey stick trajectory up.

You know, we kind of are on a steady trajectory up, and sometimes there's some down blips because we spend money in different ways. And what I'm talking about is, like, we put more money to something last year, so we're less profitable last year than we were the year before and the year before that. But that's fine, and everything's good.

Like, we're really in a good place. I'm really happy with who we're at. We're going to launch a new product early next year, which is going to be really exciting. and then we're going to begin working on a brand new version of Basecamp next year as well. So we really like where we're headed and we're really excited about the future. One last question. So you're sitting in front of a young, ambitious, smart person who wants to make a positive contribution in the world.

And they say, Jason, I love the way you work and the business you've built. What is a piece of advice or two you would give me to make a positive contribution in this world? That's a heady, really good question and really meaningful, so I don't want to be flipping about it. I think, first thing I think is realizing that you don't have to feel like you have to change the world. I remember, you know, I've talked to a lot of young entrepreneurs and I remember being one too. And there's this notion that like you want to make your mark and change the world. You're setting yourself up for almost impossible odds. So what I would encourage people to do is figure out how to improve their odds of success.

so they can actually have an impact. The notion that you're going to change the world, like you're basically buying a lottery ticket, pretty hard to do. And then you might have no impact because you're shooting so high that you're not going to hit that and then you're not going to be able to do something.

But if you can find a sustainable path where your odds are fairly decent for making it, and of course, like building a business, the odds are always against you, but, you know, it's hard. But let's say you can not shoot for the moon, but you can shoot for,

like instead of trying to build a business that's worth a billion dollars, Maybe you build a business worth a million dollars to start. Like kind of go in phases and stick around. And if you can find out how to stick around, you can actually have impact. If you don't stick around, you're going to have zero impact. So it doesn't matter how big the dreams are, you actually have to be able to execute on these things. And sticking around is the only way you're going to be able to do that.

So my suggestion would be find something that's sustainable. Don't get ahead of yourself. Don't set your goals so high that you're not going to get to them. Or, you know, again, like I'm not a big goal person. But if you are, like, don't say like, I want to be a billion. a dollar business, like, you know, you're just setting yourself up for not being able to do it. So find something you can do and then build off that base. That's what I would recommend people do is take some small steps to get somewhere where they can actually have an impact and then keep going from there.

Love it. Jason, thank you so much for investing your time with me today. Where would you send my listeners to learn more about you online? First of all, thanks for having me on. This is great. The question's really wonderful. Basecamp.com. You can follow me on Twitter, which is at Jason Free. F-R-I-E-D, one word, of course. We also have a podcast people might like, rework.fm. So if you like some of the stuff, we talk more about that stuff on our podcast. And then also we have a blog, which is really popular, called Signal versus Noise. It's Signal v.n.com.

or 37SvN.com is like a shortcut to get there. So 37svn.com. So check those out, and that would be probably a good collection of places to go find out more about us. Highly recommend following you on Twitter. Always thoughtful, all for useful advice, as well as specifically the podcast episode where you guys discussed hiring your head of marketing. I am fascinated by the hiring process and how to do it well because I know how important it is.

I've lived it through the good and the bad. That's a really good episode that shows how in-depth the process was. And I just found it entertaining, too. So I encourage you people to listen to that one too now that you're listening to podcasts, It's another one to go check out. And the book, it doesn't have to be crazy at work. Like all your books, I love the style man in which you and DHS write. I encourage people to get that as well.

So Jason, thanks again. It's been a long time coming. It was absolutely fantastic to have this with you. And I'd love to continue our dialogue as we both progress, man. Absolutely. And thanks for having me on. I'm glad we could finally make this work. Awesome.

Thanks, man. All right. Take care. See you. Wow. I knew Jason would bring a. number of counterintuitive ideas to this conversation, but I didn't expect it to be basically every single aspect of the talk. But that is why I loved it. I thoroughly enjoy speaking with

really intelligent people who have well thought out ideas and reasons behind what they do. And it is very evident that Jason has that. A few of them that really caught me off guard, at least speaking with him, even though I've read about these ideas, the thought of not having any plan or goals, specifically the goal one. I've always set goals. I've worked in sales my whole life and had sales numbers to hit. So the thought of not having that in place is absolutely different for me, but something I'm going to reflect on to potentially think about as I work to build my business.

Then the importance of being a great writer. I believe that writing equals clarity of thought. The process of writing my book, I certainly learned a lot about myself and what I believe because I was forced to get it down on paper, and I encourage you all to do the same. And then the importance of being able to give and receive feedback. Being coachable and being a good coach are very useful skills regardless of your role. certainly if you want to be a leader. You have to be willing to be coached as well as coach and help others.

So those are just a few that I pointed out, but there are many other parts of this that I found useful. I hope you did as well. If so, I would love it if you would tell a friend or two, perhaps one that has never listened to the Learning Leader Show and tell them why this episode with CEO of Basecamp, Jason Freed, could be useful for them. Thank you for continuing to spread the word and giving me the opportunity. to do what I love on a daily basis.

For that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so much. Talk with you next week. Can't wait. We are opening up applications for our next learning leader circle. We only do this once per year. And think back to the great conversation I had with the legendary Jim Collins episode 216.

He said, Ryan, before you get too caught up in the why, in the what? You need to first be very intentional about your who. Who will be your friends? Who will be your mentor? Who will you help? Who will you choose to surround yourself with? That will be the single greatest determining factor in your long-term success. And I would ask you the same question. Who are you surrounding yourself with? Do you want to be surrounded by growth-oriented leaders that are willing to push you? We've added specific curriculum and elements so that by the end of the year you'll have tangible outcomes. to measure your growth and be a more effective leader, both personally and professionally. These groups are intentionally curated and kept small. Time and again, the thing that people say they love about these groups is the relationships they're able to build with one another in a short period of time. If you'd like to apply, go to learningleaders circle.com.

That's learning leader circle.com to apply. Okay. Awesome, man. Thank you so much. I really just, I could hear the way that you think for each answer, and that means a lot to me, that you're so thoughtful about it. So I really appreciate that. It makes it so much better to hear that you care so much about each and every answer. Yeah, it just, I was sitting here at times had to remember I'm recording a podcast and not just being kind of a student.

So thank you for that. Yeah, you bet. My pleasure. Really, again, thanks for having me on. The questions are really thoughtful, too. I think they're great. It's hard. You know, you talk to a lot of people and do these podcasts and a lot of people don't really come prepared.

I feel like you really came prepared. And that's, I really appreciate that. And it's rare, actually. You probably know, you probably listen to all the podcasts. It's rare. So you're doing a good job. Thank you. Yeah.

I think the work, the work like anything else, if you put the work in early, it makes it better when you have the event. So I appreciate your kind words. It means a lot. I'll be sure to follow up when this thing goes out. It'll probably be pretty quick within a few weeks. So I'll let you know. Wonderful. Cool.

Very good. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks, Jayz. Okay. See you. Bye.