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That's what I like about you - you're alternative, but still not non-mainstream. You're still influential, and thoughtful, and that kind of thing... And so too often do people just go down the path they think they should go down, because everyone else is going down that path, and it's the default path... Or that the al... |
**Jeff Sheldon:** Yeah. I mean, you probably wouldn't be eating lunch with your kids every day had you taken on investment, right? |
**Adam Stacoviak:** My gosh, no. I'd be eating lunch with them. |
**Jeff Sheldon:** Yeah, exactly. And it's not "Slow and steady wins" anymore, it's "How do we get to the next ABC point as fast as we can?" or "How do we double that as quick as we can?" Because the reality is they wanna double their money, they wanna triple their money. That's why investors are investing in things. So... |
\[24:24\] It puts the pressure on your own back, to be more conscious of that... And just to know that there's probably a ceiling. Like, I'm never gonna be a multi-billion-dollar company. Even multi-million. I don't see myself growing to a huge company, because what I like to do is make things, tell stories, and sell t... |
**Break**: \[24:52\] |
**Adam Stacoviak:** \[28:19\] Well, it's one thing to say "Slow and steady wins", it's another thing to live it... But I'd say more so to keep living it. Because you can do it one time, and it's like "Okay, great. This one time, slow and steady wins." But how do you come back to that every single time? Do you feel the ... |
**Jeff Sheldon:** Yeah, definitely not. And if I talk to any other e-commerce friends, or different circles of business owners, and Twitter, and all this stuff where you hear - everything is usually focused around growth, or celebrating acquisitions, or celebrating these big things, and you almost feel left out, like "... |
I'm not trying to be another direct-to-consumer brand that has done amazing things; I think that's a whole separate path, and it's not wrong, but I just know it's not me. I don't wanna be the next Warby Parker, and Harry's, and Allbirds, growing these huge companies, because that's just not what I like to do. I don't l... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** It's about knowing what you want, and that's too easy to say. It's about knowing what you wanna optimize for. You have a particular style, a particular way you wanna live your life, particular things you value... And I think a lot of the journey for an entrepreneur is "What do I personally value?" B... |
And like you had said before, it's one foot after the other, not the other way around. It seems kind of logical, but maybe that's because we've been doing this a while individually, and then -- you know, this is your story more than mine, but I feel like that's the same for me... But I've been living it, so it's easy f... |
**Jeff Sheldon:** Yeah, that stuff doesn't show up on your balance sheet, and when you're pitching someone to raise money. There's all these intangible things about designing a business the way you wanna design it, and I don't think it's a one-size-fits-all. I think some people are good at managers, and good at scaling... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** \[32:12\] Yeah... Learn by doing, for real, basically. |
**Jeff Sheldon:** Yeah. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Let's talk about -- maybe it's too deep, or maybe it's just deep enough, but... Actually trying to ship what you've gotta ship. So it's one thing to make it, it's one thing to design it, it's one thing to even find the unique way to create a video that markets it the way that Kickstarter allows you ... |
**Jeff Sheldon:** Yeah, it's a little bit counter-cultural in the way of Tim Ferriss' 4-Hour Workweek - outsource everything, outsource your life... And I think there's actually valuable things in that book, and valuable things that Tim would talk about... But this idea of "If I outsource everything, I can basically ju... |
For us, outsourcing our shipping, outsourcing anything else that we try to do - the cost of losing customers' trust, or losing that brand recognition and brand value that we built is everything... Because I'm in this for the long game, and I'm not in it just to sell a product and then turn around and start up something... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. |
**Jeff Sheldon:** So it's closing all of those gaps and really making an airtight business to bring it all in-house, have everything here - it's expensive; again, it's the long, hard way of doing it... But I do think at the end of the day the customers get the best experience, and it builds that lifetime value for us. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** You had said something there too about - and this is where we align, too - this idea of... Did you say customers' trust? Is that what you said? |
**Jeff Sheldon:** Yeah. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** I'm trying to phrase it properly... And for us, the similarity to that is listeners' trust. We obviously are a podcast -- podcasts; we have six active podcasts on Changelog.com... We've been doing it for a long time, shipped lots of shows... We have great brand name sponsors, that we love, that help... |
So similar to you, if that's our line, we never break that line. If we break that listeners' trust, it's for nothing. If you're listening to this show and you don't trust that this show is authentic, that I'm literally talking to Jeff, and Jeff is a cool dude, and I've known him for years and love his story, and finall... |
So customers' trust for you - when I read what you're digging, or I know you're launching Analog and for some reason it's applicable to you (or maybe it's applicable to me), but because I trust you, I can think your next thing you launch is probably because you've put a lot of thought into it. That's the brand I think ... |
**Jeff Sheldon:** \[36:21\] Yeah, that's the thing that you can't buy or just pull out of thin air. You can't spin up a new brand tomorrow and have instant trust with people. That's why people have celebrity endorsements and all these things. They're trying to show "No, we're legit, we're legit!" But the better way of ... |
Now it's like, for 12 years we've delivered products. We've built this trust that people don't have to wonder if we're gonna ship their product, if it's gonna arrive, what condition it's gonna be in, if we're gonna take care of them if there's a problem. Our repeat customer rate is through the roof. I don't know what t... |
Now, our top-line revenue number might be way below some of our competitors or some of the people running similar brands, but our loyalty is so strong, and I feel like that's more important to me. I'd rather have the 1,000 true fans, the Kevin Kelly article that's been around for years and years... 1,000 true fans who ... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** You act differently when it's the long road... Like you said, the long, hard road. When it's the long-term, the long play, the long tail. All too often in business do we hear advice, seek advice even potentially, from those who are short-term players. And it's not that they're wrong, it's just they ... |
I can't help but notice you've got this aspect of longevity and very high personal touch in all the aspects of business, and then obviously you have scale problems, as businesses eventually scale, whether you want them to or not... You can control it as best you can, but still, businesses are little animals and they gr... |
How do you follow that line of CEO/business decision-maker/designer? How do you structure your week, your day? How do you even mentally create the frameworks to "Today I'm CEO Jeff, tomorrow I'm designer Jeff. Today I'm packing boxes Jeff', I don't know... How do you juggle all these different facets? |
**Jeff Sheldon:** Yeah, some of that I've figured out over the years; that is truly worth delegating and bringing on other people. I'm obviously not the one shipping out every single product we sell, or I would never have time to make things... And what I've really tried to do is bring in people that complement the thi... |
So finding specific people that you can trust to take those things off my plate - that's what's been the key for figuring out "How do I create this space and time?" And just being self-aware of what I wanna be doing... Like, "Do I wanna be designing all day? Do I wanna be scaling a business all day? Do I wanna be speak... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** \[40:19\] Yeah. How do you do that though and not lose touch? Because that's what I find hard. Delegation - I'm not saying that's not a good answer, but at some point you're like "Now I've lost touch, because I've delegated." How do you keep a heartbeat with the process, in touch with the tangibles ... |
**Jeff Sheldon:** Yeah, I mean - we're still at such a small scale that I don't have like... You know, an all-staff meeting is three of us; it's not like 50 of us. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Right... Okay. And it's usually at breakfast. |
**Jeff Sheldon:** I don't have to be like the Undercover Boss TV show where I sneak back into my company and nobody even knows that I'm their boss. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** That's a cool show, by the way. I still love that show. |
**Jeff Sheldon:** Yeah... I mean, I'm still very high touch on a lot of things, and the processes or the ways that we do things is not like "I don't know what's going on over there." I think I'm very much involved, but maybe the action that it takes to ship a product, or the action it takes to reply to customer emails ... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. Does that make the family dynamic difficult, by any means? Is Thanksgiving easier or harder because of - I don't know, somebody's slacking, or... Just hypotheticals, of course, but at some point there's relationship tension, family or not. Is there some sort of unspoken, or maybe spoken bonds,... |
**Jeff Sheldon:** When people find out that I work with my family, there's two reactions. Either "Dude, that's awesome! You employ your mom and she does all your shipping?" Or "How the heck do you work with your family? I would kill my brother/ I would kill my sister." So I always preface it by saying "For our family, ... |
So there's not really a definite line between "Okay, this is family time. We're not talking about business." I think it blends, because it's all... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Already blended. |
**Jeff Sheldon:** ...one thing, and we're getting together... And I don't think that's really been a problem. I mean, there's times where work probably takes too much precedent, and inventory has physically overrun my parents' house, because that's where all the things are still stored, up until -- a couple of months f... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** \[43:42\] Yeah, that's true. For my wife and I there's times where I tell her about my day, and she's involved in things, too; maybe not in all the details, but she's emotionally and mentally involved, and helps me behind the scenes discuss things and weigh options, and opportunities, and reminds me... |
But she loves me and she's supportive of me; it's a unique process that you have to be aware that "Don't go too far. There's still a relationship there, there's still a marriage there", in my case. In your case it's your sister-in-law. I don't know what your wife has done for the business or where she operates at, but ... |
**Jeff Sheldon:** Yeah, keeping those things in check is hard. It's not always the natural thing, where I'm ready to jump in and play with the kids if I've just had something crazy happen during the day with work. I wanna tell my wife, I wanna go into all this detail about these things, and she's like -- you know, they... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** They wanna do Legos. |
**Jeff Sheldon:** ...and climb all over you and turn you into a playground, and all that stuff... But trying to just get those reality checks. It's more of a self-awareness thing than it is anything, just to be like "Okay, I'm doing it again. I need to stop. I've gotta put work aside, and we'll come back to it later, o... |
It's hard, because -- you know, if I hated my job, maybe it'd be different, because I'd be like "Fine, I get to leave the office early and I don't have to deal with that person." But when you enjoy it, it can have the opposite effect, where it can still overrun your life, but in like a bad way, where the tension become... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Right. What are your thoughts on how you work is perceived by your children? And I'll frame it like this - my wife and I were talking about this recently, and she's like "Babe, it's kind of weird, because your son..." Sure, it's pandemic, let's preface it with the fact that we're all in quarantine a... |
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