Episode Transcript
Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 0:16
Once upon a time, there were 10s of 1000s of makers struggling. Every day they built for hours and hours but didn't chip and didn't earn enough income one day, the no code wealth podcast came to help them find a way because of this, makers became founders and live the lives they deserve. Because of that, founders live lives of abundance, freedom, and creativity. That's what I'm really all about. Hello. My name is Aziz and from being a poor boy born to a single mother in North Africa, with no opportunities, just your hard work to failing multiple startups yet learning a whole lot to barely escaping alive the war in Ukraine. Even living as an illegal immigrant. I've lost everything twice, and now I'm rebuilding my life. One more time. 1% a day sharing the wisdom of luminaries I've interviewed on this podcast from Google executives to Amazon, Microsoft, Forbes, Technology Council, Harvard Financial Times, and even a priest from the Vatican church. Everyone is welcome, here. So let's begin. My guest today is Ana Bibikova. Ana is a two times founder who had a $4 million business but burnt out. And now she is working on Nigel The Introvert as well as Wizen Guides, mentoring startups. Ana, how are you today?
Ana Bibikova 1:58
Hello, hello, thank you for having me Abdulaziz. Very, very appreciate this opportunity to charge to your audience and to obviously, I'm feeling good, thank you.
Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 2:13
I'm feeling honored, excited and very curious about our episode today. And I will begin with this question, which is very, very useful to the audience. And it's, since you're now mentoring startups, what do you notice? Or do you feel are the common problems that you see startup founders, especially first time founders make? And what solutions or perspectives Do you offer?
Ana Bibikova 2:44
Thank you for this question. It's a perfect one. I would like just to fix a little mistake that you made in the beginning, introducing me to your audience. It's not me gel. It's Nigel, the introvert and it's not reason why isn't good guides. So why isn't it comes from being wise. And so the name is pretty easy to remember. And thank you again, for the question about the things that I noticed happening to especially first time founders, actually first time founders, any founders can fall for this LSC happening, and again, and again, I've been feeling actually about it recently. So, because I volunteer as a matter with international startup accelerator programs, like the founder Institute, and maybe your listeners or you have heard about it, it's one of top five accelerator programs that operate globally, they're the most popular one the most well known one would be obviously, Y Combinator. Then there is mass challenge and the founder Institute they have had whereas in the US, but they operate globally, they have programs for Europe, Australia, Asia, I mostly deal with founders from the Middle East and Eastern Europe because that the timezone were operating the same. And what I see most happening to founders all over the world are normally the first timer is it's actually this, the magic of tech. We tend to fall for it. And it's actually a very natural thing to do. Because if you're if you work with tech, if you're deep in tech 24/7 If you constantly think about it, how to build a startup, how to grow it, how to bring it in front of your prospective audience, how to get your first customers or how to reduce the churn if you already have some, you constantly, you constantly think about technology. Because it's so powerful because it provides so many new opportunities, it makes you basically so powerful a gives you power you use, you eventually fall for this halo effect. I don't know if you're familiar about consumer psychology or behavioral science or things like that, or in general, human psychological biases. But Hello effect is a very common thing that happens to us on a daily basis. It happens when we take them the aspects, they're sorry, hear from the person talking about a subject or something that we think is that sorry, dative that we trust that we invest our trust in and spread this expertise that we believe the person has on any other topics that this person will be talking about. I'll give you an example. There's been a research recently that people who were like this, this doctor doctor, medical robes, Doctor robes, that basically the uniform that you write in the hospital,
these people they could be talking on any subject at all, like, like cryptocurrencies not absolutely unrelated to medicine, cryptocurrencies, I don't know, like finance, financial investment, real estate deals, anything, they could be talking about anything. And on average, people will trust them more than any other person who is not dressed into this medical suit into the uniform, that we subconsciously associate with some kind of expertize authority, right? Because doctors are people with trust, if we don't trust them, we don't go to see doctors, we, we basically trust them with our lives, with our house with everything, the most valuable thing for us our own life. And we trust doctors with this. So what ever see a person who we subconsciously consider to be a doctor, because they are wearing this doctor suit, whatever topic they will be talking about, we will trust them more than any other person who is not wearing the same suit. So that's how halo effect works. And it's several natural thing that is rooted in our human nature, because it makes us basically human. It ensures that through that our life lifetime, we will learn more than say, like average baboon, or a cat or a dog will know more, because we don't have to check our premises every single time we hear new information. If the information is coming from a trustworthy source, like a teacher and mentor and educator or a doctor, we, subconsciously we believe them, we don't have to check out the premises every single time we don't have to check out and go to, I don't know, to space to check out the Earth is round, right? Because there are authoritative sources, the sources that we trust, they don't they told us that that stuff is wrong. We don't have to check it out every single time or thinks about I don't know, again, there was big, big conflicts about vaccinations, right, so many people, they did not trust vaccines. But those who trusted they relied on there. They they did it because they were reliable sources, like scientists who were talking about the tests about the ways they tested vaccines, and so on and so forth. And so because we have this, inbuilt in our mind, like bias, or it's not a bias, it's a feature of our mind of our human brain, that we just trusted sources, and we don't check the premises every single time. We trust our mentors, and that's how we learn faster, because if we if we didn't trust them, we would have to spend more time on checking out the information. So this creates that. Like, that's where the the halo effect is rooted in in this in this feature of our brain. And so getting back to the founders. So being inside tech, I'm talking about tech all the time and be fascinated by the power of tech with somehow take this halo effect, and we transfer it to tech itself, starting to believe that tech is power, that everything is about tech, that building startup is about building a relevant tech, that building a successful startup means just building better tags than others.
This is a mistake. And there are a bias, duplicate that almost like nine out of 10 founders, especially the first timers fall for, they start thinking about technology, the ways they would build and craft their product, how they're going to. They think about the product architecture, what other features they would add, instead of thinking about the business, instead of thinking about the customers, and instead of thinking what kind of problems this technology is going to solve? Is there even a problem that this technology is going to solve? And if there is a customer segment that resonate with this problem? Is there a customer segment that is already interested in solving this problem with the relevant technology or without it? So this is the most common mistake that I see. And again, you probably seen on social media, there are memes that are distributed by many people about the first time founders and the second time founders, how we learn from our mistakes when we start adding features, for the first time when we build our setups for the first time. And then when it eventually fails, because there is no way around it, it fails. If you only think about features, not only about the customers, then you become a second time founder and you learn from your mistakes, and you start doing it in a different way. That's not how it happens in the real life unfortunately, like, again, the stats are very gruesome, are very sad. Maybe three out of 10 founders actually learn from their mistakes. But most don't, unfortunately, most keep on shipping these products without considering other ways of doing things. And they fail and they fail and they fail. And eventually they just give up. Because they they just say I'm so unlucky, I just can't do it anymore. And it makes sense because especially if they build this product as a side project side hustles if they have their day job they doing, it's very hard to it's very challenging to keep building products, they don't take off if you just eventually lose any motivation. And have you found other things to do and be passionate about. And they just stop being aspiring founders, they carry on with their lives. That's what I see happening most often.
Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 13:24
Thank you. That's very interesting. It reminds me of a video of Jeff Bezos about being customer focused rather than a product focused or technology focused. So it's a very deep wisdom and to ask you then about that, since you believe in personality types and being an introvert or an extrovert and sorry for the pronunciation. I French was a language I speak before I learned in English. So sometimes I will pronounce things and Hans a way. It's do believe there are personalities that are a lot more comfortable being entrepreneurs and founders may be people who are risk takers who are don't stress under uncertainty, and therefore, it's more of a personality kind that turns you into a great founder. Or even when people are doing what you're doing before they succeed. They're going through a period of uncertainty and that's very stressful to most people. So, how can they deal with that, you know, one of the problems I assume about people just focusing on the product and releasing it before they get market feedback in order to get market feedback to that day will be to stress to not know the what will happen and so they will release it and therefore when they have failure, they have an answer. So is it a personality type are successful entrepreneurs Born with the right uncertainty, tolerance, tolerance, genetics or for you, it's 100% and methodology and a way of approach that can be learned. And it has nothing to do with the personality.
Ana Bibikova 15:15
That's a good question. Actually, you know, one of my favorite books on entrepreneurship and that I totally recommend every first time founder or aspiring entrepreneur, especially if you're someone who is trying to build small business or medium sized business, or bootstrap founder, one of my favorite books that I would totally recommend to read is that email or AMS revised down by mouth, Michael Gilbert. It's a book that was written already three years ago, maybe even more. He has edited and revised it obviously, recently, like, maybe 510 years ago. But the basics haven't changed. It's the same story. Have you read this book, by the way that he makes? Or enterpreneurship news? Okay. Yes. Amazing. So you know what I'm talking about?
Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 16:16
Your business? Your business? Yes.
Ana Bibikova 16:20
Yeah, that's one of the core ideas. That's actually the quote that many people remember from it. But that's not what I think is the main point of the book. The main point of the book is that you have to combine or have to wear different hats to be successful. You either have to wear these hats professionally, almost on a professional level. Or you have to hire someone or to partner with someone find a quote or find a co founder or a partner, who will who would help you wearing this hat successfully, because there is no way around it. So you can't build a successful business being just a craftsman. So it was that that's the types or types of hats that Michael Gilbert suggests to wear craftsmen, and intrapreneur and the manager. So the craftsman is someone who is actually making stuff and maker, what a startup industry, it would be a developer, probably, if it's like a web business, if it's not web related, it would be someone who actually invents the product, the solution, and actually builds it and architecture of the product. The entrepreneur is someone who is doing sales and marketing, who is bringing this product in front of the audience's eyes. And the manager is someone who is building the system around it all, all the workflows, of the business processes of the operations, how the data is extracted, how the customer feedback group is created, how's the customer services done? All these small details that many, many founders, they don't even think about it, you won't believe how many founders totally forget about customer service role when they start building their business plans, or when they even launched their startup. And then they eventually found out wow, there are customers, and they're sending some kind of requests to ask, come place ticket notes that we have to somehow solve and we don't have anyone who can deal with it, because we didn't think of it. You want to remember how many times I've seen this happening, especially obviously among bootstrapped founders. So there are three kinds of personalities, we kind of had three kind of roles that a founder should play, or hire someone or partner with someone who would be happy with playing these roles to be successful. So it's not only about the product itself, and how its structured. It's also about marketing and sales, about bringing it to the public, and also about building structures around all the processes around it. And if we get back to the personalities, they're obviously different personality types that would correlate better with different roles and different functions inside the business. So if we refer to the My Favorite classification, like Marilyn Wilson, breakdown of personalities, maybe basically the fact driven personalities, analytical types would be more relevant to the managerial functions, right? To, like intrapreneurship functions, and maybe to, to make our function there, again, the analytical type is good, but the intrapreneurs intrapreneurship function, the one who would be delivering the message spreading the word around
doing marketing and sales, maybe expressive type, or their relationship driven type types will be more relevant. But if we look at it from all different perspectives, we eventually will see that the core skill every founder should have is the skill of active listening. So, if you're able to listen to your customers, if you're able to listen to real people conversations, what they're talking about, if you're able to not just wait for your turn to say something, but really listen to what people are saying, and process it and analyze it, and like capture these pain points and transfer them into actionable insights into products that will be solving the problem that that skill is relevant to all stages, all roles and all the hats that successful founder to be very, so it's super important for obviously the maker, because it would help capture the pain points and real life problems, not the imaginary ones, not the only the problems, not to scratch your own itch constantly and solve the problem that you have. But they're actually the problems that real people out there in the real world, the problems that they have. Obviously, it's super important for sales and marketing. Because if you can capture that this kind of insights, you can translate it into the language that your customers are speaking, you can use their own words, you can use their own descriptions, to address to them from your landing pages, and make your messaging like right to the point, make your messaging so targeted, so, so precise, that it will resonate with your specific audience. And obviously, it's very important to build systems, because it kind of helps the system builder, the manager has to listen to all the sides, and find the balance between business goals and can take ownership goals and the maker goals and the creativity and like their reasonable part of the whole of the whole venture. And it's important to listen to your own self as well. Because especially if you're building your business solo, if you're a solo founder, it's very important to listen to your own signals, where to stop and start recharging. Because the risk of getting burnout is very high. And it's real. And I can I can talk about it from my own experience,
Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 23:33
actually. Yes, that was my very next question, since you're very familiar with burnout. And you mentioned that now, I want please two things. One, how to detect when a founder is almost burning out, because often they're so busy that it's too late, they realize they burned out, and also second, how to recover from it or what to do in order to both be productive and efficient and effective, but never really get to burnout. And finally, and I'll ask this. How does it feel really when you burnout? How can you describe it? So if someone can understand? Are they tired? Are they depressed? Are they burnt out?
Ana Bibikova 24:18
Well, I can't say how it would look like from the medical or I don't know, psychological point of view. Because I'm not a doctor. I'm not a psychologist,
Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 24:32
but the halo effect.
Ana Bibikova 24:36
Yes, because, you know, I've been studying these kinds of things for many years. I used a lot of behavioral economics findings to build my businesses because it was something that I was passionate about for years. And I figured out that I could use it effectively in my businesses. That's Probably one of the reasons they grew so huge. But on the other hand, the business growing so huge it led to my being burned out. Well, to make a long story short, I think it's very contextual. And it's very specific to everyone it might be. Some people might experience it in one way other people might experience it in different way, I can say how it looked for me. So the early science was the early science. Now in the hindsight that I see when you wake up in the morning, and you're not looking forward to the day that's waiting for you. If you're not excited about things that you're about to do, if the only desire that you have is to hide under a blanket and stay somewhere, because you're just dreading the upcoming day, you you just start thinking the first your first thoughts about the negative aspects that are coming, because obviously, there are good days and bad days, right, there is never like a perfect day that you don't have any downsides. Most probably, you will have a downside, most probably there are things that you don't like doing. But if your first thought is only about negative aspects, only about bad things, that lousy things like things that you hate to do, then it's a clear sign that you're moving in the wrong direction. It's a clear sign that you're isn't doing it in a wrong way, or you need a recharge. So the reasons again, for the burnout could be different. Some of the reasons for some people, it's just a you know what, when you work 18 hours a day, or 14 hours a day for weeks and weeks and weeks, without like taking holidays, and taking days off, eventually you'll get there. So there is you don't have to guess you don't have to like evaluate the options, it's not 5050, eventually, you'll get too burned out. If you if you stick to this kind of schedule. It's very important to have days off. But even if you do have days off, and eventually you start feeling very disappointed, very depressed, very unhappy about things that you're doing. Again, it's a good sign that burned out is his way, he's somewhere across the corner. And the good, it's a good sign to stop for a while and start thinking what are you doing wrong? Because for me, I just turned out to be a horrible leader, I believe I just lacked this. Again, managerial skills, maybe I was such a control freak, as I believe many founders suffer this. Like when you when you start building something from scratch, and then you start hiring people because you just can't cover all the basics, you just can do everything, to start hiring people. And obviously, you keep on thinking that okay, I will be anyway better in doing this than any other person. So for me, I believe it's important to to not to lie to yourself and to admit from the very beginning that you will be hiring people better than you that just to say honestly, and to sad, as a rule of thumb, that you will be hiring people not because you just need someone, just some kind of players, just someone who would replace you, someone who will be covering things because you don't have time to do it, anyway. But to set it as a rule of thumb, that for every specific function that you will be hiring someone, you will be hiring someone who is better than you. And because I didn't do it in the first place.
I could not like trust them with delegating everything. I kept on thinking that if I was doing it, it would be better the results would be better. So it's important to get rid of this mindset and to admit that other people can and should be better and doing what you've been doing all along. So the most important thing is to pinpoint the functions that you are better than anyone else in and carry on with doing this. Obviously, if you're a tech founder, you will be always prompted to focus again on the tech side. But one I keep on seeing is actually founder, initial founder is the one person who is no one that the founder could be better in delivering the message about your product. No one than the founder could be better about in actually building the brand around your product, talking to customers. So I highly recommend focus, even your tech person, focus on the marketing and the branding side, much more than on tech. Because I mean, anyone can write code. Anyone can, like do user usability testing, everyone can do unit tests. Have anyone can do that. Like what? I don't know, I upload the new source code to the GitHub, but you will be always the best person to talk about your story to talk about the brand, and how you came up with grading it. So no one can do it better than you. And because that's not what I did. I was so deep down in like managing routine operations, doing things that I was not passionate about. I eventually lost any interest, any passion about what I was doing. And you know, even big revenue, you can be passionate about money eventually. I mean, it's good when you start getting the revenue, you feel like happy and excited for several months. But eventually, if it just keeps keeps on growing, you can be passionate about money, you don't get you the passionate about your first customers about maybe your first 100 customers, every single one will be like, Wow, it's a new signup. Wow, it's in your subscription. Wow, it's the first annual subscription. Yeah, you will be excited about those. But when I saw 101, it's so well, one sell them, you don't get excited anymore. It turns into rain. And you can be passionate about just revenue. That's not what people get passionate about. And, yeah, just don't let yourself drain in this rain and things that you don't like doing. Because that's what happened to me. And yes, I was depressed. Yes, I it was, like I said, I started being sick constantly, like catching these viruses and colds almost every single week, because my immune system just gave up. It's all very connected in our body, our emotional state, our physical state, it's all connected. And so when when you when you're very drained emotionally, you can get when your emotional level is negative, you can get positive results I just created. Yesterday, I posted this visual, in my international the introverts project, about the energy level and how it's connected to our results. And that's what happened to me. So when your emotional state emotional energy is very low, it's negative, you start getting negative results everywhere on the physical level and business outcomes as well.
Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 34:02
Thank you so much. This was so valuable, and very enriching. And if people want to learn more about you, they want to follow you they want to discover more about your project. What are the best social media for them to do so? And I'll make sure to write your Twitter in the description.
Ana Bibikova 34:24
Yeah, sure. So I have I'm pretty active on Twitter and LinkedIn on Twitter, it's very easy to find me with a handout no tech, Anna. And that's like the core idea of my speech in the beginning, right? Don't be so focused on tech. Focus on other important aspects. So that's my pitch. That's how I tried to deliver the message on Twitter as well. No tech, Anna, on Twitter. And on LinkedIn. It's easy to find me with my first and last name and I'm BB cola. I also have a website and it's by an aspiring founder, all in one single word and aspiring founder. There, you can read some of my blog posts and you can sign up for my newsletter that I launched recently. If you're interested about interested about Hello FX, and all the aspects that how I use behavioral marketing stuff in growing my retail business, how these things I use now how I help founders to use this biases and, you know, like aspects of subconscious brain to boost their revenues and to engro increase the conversion rate for them were businesses. I also launched a newsletter that's called the hidden brain marketing and you can sign up for it on my website.
Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 35:52
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And I wish you a great day. Keep going on. Ah, this is wonderful.
Ana Bibikova 36:02
Thank you Abdulaziz. Have a great day.
