Rob Walling

And realistically, they'll probably make more money if they don't work for a bootstrap founder.

So how was it that at Drip, when we were bootstrapped, I was able to hire some of the best talent in town without paying them as much as they could get from other employers.

And keep those folks, like none of them left, you know, even though I was not, I mean, I feel like I'm a good leader and I'm a mediocre manager is how I would phrase it.

And when I mean a leader, like I can paint the vision, I can paint the picture of where we're headed and get people really excited about it and get them on board.

And then week to week, day to day management is amazing.

fine, I can do it.

It's just not something I'm super excited about.

But learning how to do it well enough, this comes back to the grind.

If I'm not excited about it, why did I do it?

Well, because I had to.

A, I wanted to make more money as a manager at these companies.

And once I started companies, I had to be good at managing and motivating people.

And so even if it wasn't something I wanted to do day to day, it was what would make me a successful entrepreneur.

And that goal I valued far above enjoying every minute of every day as I was building these

Lesson number 10 is that learning how to hire and how to fire are founder's superpowers.

So at almost every org, yeah, almost every org I was at after I was a developer, I became involved in the hiring process.

And there were two reasons for that.

is I would come in and do really good work and write code that wasn't buggy and I would manage myself and then I'd slowly start being a tech lead and people look to me for guidance and I was opinionated about things in a right way without being a jerk.

And then I would raise my hand and say, I want to be involved in the hiring process.

And one of the reasons is I wanted to control who I worked with.