Chattin’ with Josh Little
Josh Little is an incredible entrepreneur because it’s a calling born from within him. He has a knack for looking at problems and finding efficient solutions. e is the founder of four tech companies — Maestro, Bloomfire, Qzzr, and Volley — that have collectively been used by hundreds of millions of people.
His work has been featured in Tech Crunch, Mashable, Entrepreneur, Inc., and Forbes. With two successful exits and third pending, he’s currently on a mission to save the working world from death by meetings with his fourth creation, Volley. Josh understands the importance of both synchronous and asynchronous conversations and tailored Volley to be the one-stop shop for businesses to have efficient and productive communications. It was an honor to chat with Josh a bit and get to see what makes him tick.
Have a listen!
Who Is Josh Little?
Josh Little has carved out an impeccable career. He has built up an incredible reputation as an entrepreneur and doesn’t show any signs of slowing. As the founder and CEO of Qzzr, the world’s most straightforward online quiz platform, he has been behind several businesses, including Bloomfire, a unique social platform which focuses on the future of work, modern concepts and a unique way of thinking. Josh has worked with numerous people and has an impressive resume behind him. He was also the founder and CEO of Maestro, an amazing e-training company.
And maybe the brightest opportunity in his career, he founded Volley in order to disrupt one of the biggest industries known on planet earth — needless to say, he is incredibly tech-savvy and appreciates the benefits that technology can bring in the modern world. He has used his know-how to create forward-thinking businesses, and to him it’s a calling that emanates from within himself.
A Problem Solver
The future of business is digital and the way that we perceive business is altering too. This year alone we have been faced with a new concept of working through digital means and video conferencing. Josh has been born with a knack of looking at problems and finding the right solutions. These solutions are what can assist thousands of businesses in their quest to change their companies for the better. Technology is progressing at an alarming rate, and now his mission is clear: to save the working world from death by meetings with his new business, Volley.
Coordination meetings by telephone, teleconference, or even by videoconference, are and will be more and more frequent. They have the undeniable advantage of offering geographically dispersed contacts to devote the necessary time to the progress of the project without juggling more with a multi-requested schedule. Now, Josh’s new business aims to move forwards by knowing the importance of both synchronous and asynchronous conversations.
But what type of communication do you favor daily? Synchronous communication or asynchronous communication? This question is important, because depending on the mode of communication you choose, you can save more or less time. Synchronous communication is real-time communication between two or more parties. The exchanges are direct and instantaneous. Synchronous communications include face-to-face conversations, meetings, calls, videoconferences or even instant messaging. Josh has worked with numerous startups and people wanting to create new and fresh pathways in business without compromising on time.
A Communication Expert
Josh appreciates that time is business money, and therefore, his new venture promises something quite extraordinary. Josh’s talent to make things happen, means that any business can be elevated from step 0 to step 1. Volley is the one-stop shop for businesses to have efficient and productive communications. Communication is paramount and allows flexibility. It isn’t always comfortable to sit together for hours on end in business meetings, which is why he has created a new concept. Volley — the richness of talk meets the flexibility of text.
Productivity is vital and Volley allows these conversations to continue without interrupting the business’ productivity and time. Keeping things on the go, but not inhibiting the communication, Volley envisions a future where we meet less and communicate more. Face-to-face meetings aren’t always a viable option in business, and if they do exist, they can not only drag but can create a sense of boredom and unproductive behaviors.
Your business’ effectiveness varies depending on your industry, type of customer and their problem. Volley allows these vital communications to appear at lightning speed. “Send a Volley!” is a phrase that Josh penned and has begun to execute. He created this groundbreaking software to help the people who need it the most. He has an incredible history, his career has spanned over many years, with some of his experience within teaching. Now he can take his expertise to the next level, by teaching businesses and other entrepreneurs who need the push with communication and the need to do better.
A Pioneer in the Industry
Josh has also been featured in TechCrunch, Mashable, Entrepreneur, Inc., and Forbes. His work and achievements continue to grow, and now his new mission is to reshape how we communicate in meetings; not only with your team members but with your customers.
Josh’s “out of the box” strategizing has proven to convey a slew of ideas for business. New concepts are forever in our minds in this century. We are likely to see even more from Josh in the future and to craft a new concept of business meetings by destroying the outdated system and replacing it with something tech-savvy and, ultimately, ground-breaking.
Josh Little Podcast Transcript
Charan: Hey, what’s going on guys? This is Charan Prabhakar with the Lemonade Stand podcast. I’m here with Mr. Josh Little, who we don’t know each other that well. We just met today really. We’ve been kind of texting back and forth over the last few week. Josh is the founder of Volley. Here’s the thing. I’m a big tennis player, and so I love volleying and tennis and so I was like, “Okay, is there anything to do with tennis?” It’s not, but what it is, is something so applicable to the world, which is making the world a better place by reducing meetings. When Josh was telling me that earlier today, I was so stoked because I do think that sometimes we get a little too excessive with our meetings, and sometimes we get a little too… I don’t know.
Charan: Sometimes it feels like there’s too much bureaucracy and stuff like that when there’s all these different meetings I have to go through, all these different hoops you have to go through, and Josh’s platform is all about reducing those things, and so I was super stoked to hear about Volley and what he’s up to. Yeah man, welcome to the Lemonade Stand podcast.
Josh: Thank you. It’s great to be here. Thanks for having me.
Josh Little Talks About His First Business
Charan: Absolutely. Now, one of the things that we like to do here at this podcast is to hear your lemonade stand story. Your beginnings [crosstalk 00:02:42] in being an entrepreneur, whether you were a little kid starting a lemonade stand for the first time, or a lawn mowing business, whatever it was. So if you have a lemonade stand story, what is your journey into the world of business?
Josh: Sure. It was kind of a reluctant situation. I didn’t know that my mom was an entrepreneur. She cleaned houses and did odd jobs, wallpapering and painting. And so when I was young, when I was about 11, one of her clients needed their lawn mowed, and I said I would do it, an old widowed woman, and then that led to the neighbor lady asking me if I could mow her lawn. And then suddenly, I had seven or eight jobs down the block and then built and built. So as an 11-, 12-, 13-year-old, I was making more money than I did until I graduated college actually. It did pretty well. But I didn’t know that I was an entrepreneur. That was just a way to make money. I wasn’t even thinking about it, and my parents didn’t think about it that way.
Josh: But it wasn’t until I was in my mid-to-late 20s that I even thought about entrepreneurship again and being an entrepreneur, and yeah, it just made sense, probably from those early-roots, lemonade-stand timeframe [crosstalk 00:04:03].
Charan: Well, it’s interesting because even though you didn’t have that mindset of like, “Oh yeah, I’m going to be an entrepreneur. I’m going to make all this money,” you learned the skill set of it by mowing the lawns and kind of figuring out, “Okay, if I did more of this, I can make a little bit more money in that.” And you ended up making a lot more money than maybe a typical teenager that [crosstalk 00:04:25] minimum wage job or something like that, right?
Josh: Yeah.
Charan: Yeah. That’s awesome.
Josh: Yeah. I remember being bummed the first week I got a job at Red Lobster when I was 16. I worked like five nights the first week and got my paycheck and it was $97, and I was like, “What? This is what work is like?”
Charan: Yeah. That feels like work, right?
Josh: Yep.
Charan: That’s hilarious. So you went to college… Where were you in Michigan for college? I know you said you’re from Michigan.
Josh: Yeah. I went to Western Michigan University. [crosstalk 00:04:59]
Charan: [inaudible 00:05:00] that’s right. Yeah. What were you studying there?
Josh: I studied vocal music. I’m a singer, and so I thought I was Broadway-bound. Then I got married and I thought, “No, that’s not really a good dad job, singing on Broadway,” so I switched my major to education. And I have a degree in secondary education, and I taught public school for a year before I moved on to the corporate world.
Charan: Oh, that’s awesome. And so the corporate world, was that also in Michigan, or did you end up moving out of state?
Josh: Yeah, it turns out the same skills that make a great teacher are the same skills that make a great salesperson. So I found that I was able to be really successful in sales very quickly because of the background and what made me a great teacher. If you can convince 11th graders to learn American history, you can also convince somebody to buy your things. So I did well in sales and then kind of moved from sales to sales training and marketing roles at three different Fortune 500 companies. It was really scratching my own itch at Stryker, which was the last of those three that gave me the springboard to launch my first company as a big-boy entrepreneur.
Josh Little Talks About Becoming an Entrepreneur
Charan: Okay. That’s awesome. So tell me about that first go into your first venture, into being an entrepreneur. When you realized, “Oh, I’m an entrepreneur.”
Josh: Well, actually, I got the bug about five years before that, and I started thinking about what… As dumb as it sounds, I read the book “Rich Dad, Poor Dad,” and it was like a revelation to me. This is things my parents never talked about. I didn’t know you could own your own business. As silly as that sounds, even though my mom did, it didn’t occur to me. I was just in this mindset that you go get a job and you work at this career, and that’s what my dad did. He worked at the power company for forty years. So I got the bug after I read that book, and I started just thinking about different opportunities, things I could do. I’d go to lunch with my friends at work and we’d just talk about the businesses we could build.
Josh: And it got to the point where I knew I had to try, and it didn’t matter the consequence to me. It was like, “Whatever. If we burn our bank account to the ground and go in debt or crash and burn in flames of glory, at least I tried.” I had to feel the wind in my face. I was actually trying to build an e-learning program for Stryker and trying to scale what we were doing from a training perspective. I was building an e-learning program, and it was like a full-time job to work with the videographer, and the 3D animator, and the content writer, and the LMS provider, and try to get all of this together.
Josh: And I thought, “Man, there should just be a company that just does this.” That you can hand your binders and your CDs to, and they go create a bunch of great content, package it up and hand you the keys. And so I tried to look for that company, I couldn’t find it, and that’s why I started Maestro, which was my first company. Turns out almost every other company felt the same way. “There should just be a company that does this.” So now Maestro builds content for Netflix, and Microsoft, and Facebook [crosstalk 00:08:34] and all kinds of cool companies.
Charan: Are you still owner of that company? Do you still have…
Josh: Nope, sold it. I sold it that just a few years ago to my co-founder, partner. She now owns the thing as well as the team, and they’re just doing great. It was the work at Maestro in working with… We got to work with dozens of learning programs and companies that were trying to build e-learning, and we got to kind of see the problems at a meta-level. So it was actually that experience that led to my second company where, while Maestro solves for the 10% of what you need to know to do your job that you learned from training, I thought about, What about the other 90% of what you need to know? How do you learn that? You learn from conversations like this, and calls, and texts, and emails, and water cooler.
Josh: And so I thought, Let’s build a platform that allows you to capture the collective brain of your organization, bite-sized format. So I built Bloomfire, which was my second company, and got that off the ground. That was acquired in like 18 months, and today Bloomfire is one of the premier knowledge-management platforms out there, which was exciting.
Charan: That’s amazing, man. That’s so great. It must’ve been a gratifying feeling to be like, “All right, I’m going to start a company,” and “Oh, wow. I’m acquired in like 18 months.”
Josh: It was, yeah. It seemed a little crazy for a goof ball that started mowing lawns, going to housecleaning jobs with his mom, a long way to come from that background.
Charan: Well, I love it because you have this ability to see a need and to look for resources to help fulfill that need, realizing there’s no resources, and then to say, “Okay, I’m going to start a company.” And just to have that ability within you, that’s a gift in and of itself.
Josh: It is a gift, yeah. And then the experience of having done this multiple times tends to yield dividends because the road’s not as hard as it used to be. But the gift is also a curse, because as I was driving to lunch today, I saw a guy who was jogging with one of those… Or running behind one of these strollers that you can run with, and he’s pushing it forward and running, pushing it, and I’m like, “That is just dangerous. What if he had a belt, and there were two pivot points on the belt, and it was connected…” Then I started thinking about what this product could be and this company could be all the way to lunch. I was like, “What are you doing? You don’t have time to think about stupid stuff like this.”
Charan: Yeah. That’s the curse of being an entrepreneur, man. To think about that, and now you have the ability to execute it. Sometimes I’d run through the same problem when I’m making a movie because I could just be going throughout the day, and all of a sudden I’m like, “Oh my gosh. That’d be fun. That’d be cool story. I could come up with that.” I know the right people to put that together, and then I’m like, “No. Stop. I’ve got like 50 projects already I’m going through and doing, so I got to streamline and focus and just get one thing done, and when I’m done with that one thing, then I can hop to the next thing. [crosstalk 00:11:51].
Josh: No doubt. That’s the discipline.
Charan: That’s the discipline you have to have, right?
Josh: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Josh Little Talks About Volley
Charan: But let’s talk a little bit about Volley and how that became a thing. Because when you were talking to me a little bit about it today and about the ability to streamline conversations really and to eliminate the unnecessary meetings, I thought that, “Man, that’s a great, great idea.” Because so many times, even in the world of filmmaking, I’m constantly dealing with different meetings and conversations and things like that, and sometimes I’m like, “Wait, do we need to be discussing all these things, because it’s taking so much time?” And I think that’s the big thing I realized, was time is an incredibly powerful commodity. And if you’re constantly spending time doing things that you don’t want to be doing or things that are not efficient at all, then you are just getting distracted from the energy you could be putting forward to making your product great.
Charan: I love what you were doing with the Volley, because it’s a great tool for streamlining conversations, making progress happen while keeping things more efficient. I’d love to hear a little bit more about that, so can you kind of walk us through that journey?
Josh: That’s it. Yeah. You’re a great pitchman. What are you doing after this?
Charan: Well, I got nothing [crosstalk 00:13:09].
Josh: Let’s write some content. So yeah, that’s the dream. Workplace communication is inefficient. You have two options. You can either type or talk. And both of those have problems. Typing is slow. You can speak seven, eight times faster than you can type, and typing only gives you 10% to 13% of the picture, because the rest is communicated through tone of voice and body language. It’s not the full spectrum of communication. And inevitably at work, we just need to talk to move work forward, and this is why meetings and why time spent in meetings has increased eight to 10% a year over the last 20 years, 13% this year alone. So we’ve been kind of on this death march of more and more meetings of back-to-back meetings throughout the day to get work done.
Josh: Now the pandemic hits, people that are just sitting back-to-back to Zoom calls all day and feeling that fatigue. And you’re right, there’s all sorts of efficiency when we need to talk, because when we need to talk, even this call, which is virtual, I have to be sitting in this chair at this time to be here and meet with you, and then one of us has to wait for the other to arrive and then the obligatory small talk, and then with the meandering of the conversation down paths that I take us that don’t make sense for your content or your viewers.
Charan: Me too, man. And don’t forget the first little bit of it when audio couldn’t work, and we have to reset so [crosstalk 00:14:49] audio could work.
Josh: And that’s half of the calls, it seems like, because we spend the first two minutes messing around with audio. So what if we just cut all of that inefficiency out, and what if we allowed you to talk… We allowed you to capture the richness of talking, but gave you the flexibility of texting. And that’s the idea of Volley, that you can communicate through asynchronous video. Just like any other conversation you take turns, except with Volley, you record your turn with a video instead of speaking it live. That way, we can have productive conversations that don’t interrupt productivity. It’s kind of the richness of talking with the flexibility of texting.
Josh: And it was really COVID that sort of created this focus point for me, although I’ve loved communicating asynchronously in three synchronous technologies. It was really kind of the focus point that said, “Oh, we need to use this for work. There needs to be asynchronous video communication for teams,” and that’s Volley.
Charan: Well, it’s interesting, when we were talking a little earlier, you were mentioning that in addition to mobile, it really is for your desktop, which I thought was a very interesting thing. Because like you had mentioned before, people at work were using our computers. We’re not always on our phones, we’re on our computers, so we need to be able to communicate via our desktop. I don’t know if there’s this capability, but the ability to even share your screen and share spreadsheets and stuff like that. That is just huge, because then you can get your point across, you’re not getting interrupted by other people, you can just share what you need to share and then someone else can pop in. I think it’s great.
Josh: Yeah. And man, and it gives us many more super powers that we don’t have. It does capture and embrace all of the gifts that humans have in communicating and having conversation, and then allows us to do things like speed the conversation up. Because who wouldn’t want the world around them on 2X. Why wouldn’t we speed every conversation up if we could, so it gives you that magic ability and then allows you to think before you respond. I’m a terrible on-the-fly thinker. I’m terrible at interviews. This is why I get a rash sometimes when I do podcasts. But I’m really good if you just give me a minute to think. Research shows that anytime you can wait more than three seconds before you respond, your response dramatically improves. So we allow things like that, and as well as more inclusivity because everyone has an equal opportunity to hit the record button.
Charan: Well, I think it’s great because A, I think it’s going to eliminate reactionary responses. Something is said and you’re like, “Wait, what? What did you just…” Instead of like, “Hang on. Let me just take a break. Let me think about where that person is coming from and what is being said,” and then you can respond. But at the same time, you also mentioned the ability, and you guys are building this into your system, that even though it is focused on asynchronous communication, you still have the ability to possibly go live video, right?
Josh: Yeah. The goal is to mirror natural conversation, and you and I just today, have been in and out of synchronicity a couple of times. We text, and then we talk live on the phone, and then we texted a little bit more, and now we’re talking live on Zoom. And we just feel like there’s no reason you should need to go outside of Volley. The conversation should just flow the way that it does naturally, but we want to give you, again, that richness of talking with the flexibility of texting when you need it.
Charan: Absolutely. Well, hats off to you man, because this is such a powerful tool. When you were pitching it to me and sharing with me, I just thought, Man, every company needs this. Every company [crosstalk 00:18:51] needs this ability to communicate and talk with each other. I know you have a lot of beta testers right now. Do you have an official launch?
Josh: We are waiting to see if still… We could launch at any moment. We still have a couple hundred companies that we haven’t invited in yet. We have the luxury of having hundreds of companies on the wait list, which is great. I’ve never had that with any of the product launches, which shows people are certainly interested in taking the medicine. But we have to make sure, as product developers, that the medicine cures the disease, and that’s what we’re just making sure under the covers, is this really moving the needle for people? Is there an increase in uptake? Is there three of seven of days usage? Is our K factor right? So those are the metrics we’re trying to pay close attention to. But it’ll be launched by the end of the year both iOS, Android, and on desktop.
Charan: Mac and PC, is that right?
Josh: Oh yeah.
Charan: Awesome. That’s great, man. Well, I’m excited to hear the story of Volley, and how it goes, and how you became a multi-billionaire in [crosstalk 00:20:05]. I’ll tell you what, it really is a great thing. And the fact that you’ve got a huge demand for it is fantastic, right?
Josh: Yeah.
Josh Little Talks About Overcoming Challenges
Charan: I think it’ll just grow from there. So good on you. What a great idea. I love [crosstalk 00:20:23] it when people can come up with such innovative ideas that are so useful, and it’s like, “Oh yeah. That is obviously something that we would need in the world.” So I appreciate you were able to come up with that. Shifting topics a little bit, I want to talk a little bit about your own personal journey as an entrepreneur. Now, every entrepreneur has their struggles. They have challenges that they face like roadblocks that they didn’t see coming. Do you have any specific moment when you were like, “Okay. Someday, Charan is going to come and ask me what is my greatest lemons to lemonades story, and this is going to be that story.” Do you have a moment in your life when we’re like, “Yeah. This was tough, but we got through it and it turned out to be a good thing.
Josh: No, it’s not a specific moment, but it’s a passage of time. And it’s actually the last couple of years leading up to Volley. I started in 2018 looking for my next thing, and I started working on a pickle company, a car air freshener project, RV park roll-up, a venture fund… I worked on about 12 different things, and gave them a decent try at validation, and nothing really stuck. And then I started picking up the car air freshener concept again, and last year, around this time almost a year ago, I was building a prototype and cutting, on my table saw, a block of wood to cut down for the prototype, and the table saw kicked that block of wood and shot into my left eye, and just totally obliterated the eye and the iris. So it laid me out.
Josh: I’ve had three surgeries now, I have about 10% to 20% vision in that eye, very peripheral, but it just stopped me in my tracks for about six months. I didn’t know what I was going to do next or why, or what do I do? Pick up that block of wood again and finish the cut, or is there something else? And I just felt like I had this feeling like there was something else, and when the time was right, it would present itself. That’s when the spring, and COVID, and seeing the world change, and people starting to work remotely, and this Zoom fatigue happening, all coupled with my love for asynchronous communication and video came together as like, “Ah, this is it.” And it was really kind of the early people surveying that looked at the early prototype that I had concepted that gave me the feedback like, “Dude, this is for meetings. This is what we should do instead of meet, is we should talk asynchronously. That would allow us to meet less and communicate more.” It was like, “Oh yes. That’s it. Thank you.”
Josh: That is lemons, getting your eye poked out. Lemonades, if I were building the car freshener concept, it’s a great idea. It would work, but it’s not nearly as interesting or beneficial to the world as Volley I think can be.
Josh Little Talks About What Brings Him Joy
Charan: Absolutely. Everyone talks, man. Everyone has conversations. And so the fact that you’re able to provide a service that can help everyone no matter what type of business you’re involved in, use your service, I think that’s a real winner. Yeah. Good for you for, I guess, pivoting from a block of wood in the eye to being the master of Volley. Now, again, going to another personal note, we talked about this year being kind of a crazy year, right? COVID hitting, and Zoom fatigue, and the world isolating itself from each other. What are some things in your life that have brought you joy?
Josh: I’d have to say my morning routine has brought me joy. I’ve made a goal in building Volley to increase health throughout the journey. Every company I’ve built from the time I start to the time I sell it, I’m fatter, and sicker, and more stressed, and more mentally ill than when I started. And I’ve said multiple times, I’ve got to figure out how to be a CEO and be healthy and happy, and not let this thing eat my lunch because there’s only a certain number of years you can do that sort of thing. So I started the beginning of the year deciding that I was going to exercise every day, and I’ve been able to continue to do that.
Josh: I lift weights and do cardio five days a week, and then walking on the weekends with my family. So it’s that morning routine, which is exercise as well as scripture study, and some prayer and meditation that has really, I think, brought me joy and peace throughout this time.
Charan: Yeah. It’s interesting you mentioned those things. When COVID hit, I was kind of at a weird place because I was in the middle of creating all these fun projects, all these things were coming together, and I’ve always been a bit of a spiritual guy. I’ve always tried to be very prayerful in my life and get guidance from God, because I think for me anyway, I just feel like if there is a being like God, and if he does have all knowledge, man, I’d love to learn from him [crosstalk 00:26:29].
Josh: Lets tap into that.
Charan: Let’s kind of lean into that a little bit and learn more from him. But I did a lot of praying. I remember thinking I want to find more of a deeper connection. And I’ve always prayed and stuff, but I really was digging more into it. One of the things I had felt was, I needed to live more authentically. And I’m like, Wow, that’s an interesting insight. Why have I not been living authentically? And I thought so many things I’ve done in my life, I’ve done because other people said I should do those things. Those things are good, and so I should do them. But when I started doing some really deep thinking about it, I’m like, You know what? That was an idea placed in my mind by somebody else. It wasn’t something I really wanted to do to begin with at all.
Charan: So I started thinking, Okay, you know what? Let me kind of go back a little bit and think of what I would really like to do. And so I decided, Okay, from a physical point of view, I want to do something exercise-wise that’s going to be a lot of fun. I always loved tennis, and so I’m like, I’m going to play tennis. I’m going to play tennis all the time. And it was interesting how much healthier I became just because I started playing tennis all the time. I’m like, This is great. I love it. It’s something I love doing, and it’s giving me a great physical result from it. But then I started thinking more about my own projects I wanted to create, and that was how these Zoom podcasts even started, which is now leading me to be the podcast host of Lemonade Stand.
Charan: So it’s interesting to think your morning routine, that the thing that you do, the thing that you can control, can actually lead you to some beautiful results down the road. And so I appreciate you discovering a morning routine for yourself and saying, “Okay. These are the things I’m going to do, prayer, scripture, study, meditation, exercising,” and constantly doing that so that your creation doesn’t eat you alive. You know what I mean?
Josh: Right. It’s it is kind of the “pay yourself first” mentality. But as an entrepreneur, I’ve always thought, “Well, if I don’t work out and exercise in the morning, I can work more. That means I don’t have to rob so much from my family in evenings or weekends.” It’s an unfair trade, and there’s only a short… You can only do those sorts of things temporarily.
Charan: Yeah, absolutely. Look, when you’re on an airplane and you’re doing those safety precaution things, they’re always saying, “Put that mask on you first before you put it onto anybody else.” I think there’s some really wise wisdom. Wise wisdom, that sounds kind of interesting [crosstalk 00:29:19].
Josh: That’s really wise stuff, man.
Josh Little’s Advice to His Younger Self
Charan: That’s really wise, man, and taking care of yourself first. Well, Josh, this has been so great. I really appreciate getting to know you more and learning about your story. I would love to ask one last question. What would you tell your younger self? The one that is barely learning about entrepreneurship, the one that sees the future and says, “Okay, I want to create something.” What would you tell that young man?
Josh: That’s a good question. I’d probably first say, “Keep the Bitcoin. It’ll be worth more. Just relax.” I know that’s probably not what you’re looking for.
Charan: No, [crosstalk 00:30:06].
Josh: I would say, kind of to your authentic self question is, I now have this principle that I try to employ. It’s kind of one of my top three things that I try to incorporate in my life, which is put all cards on the table. I try to play with all of my cards on the table, we have an open cap table, we have open salaries, everyone can see everything, there’s no secrets. I hold nothing back. That has in times, at companies, turned into what is radical transparency, which isn’t always a good thing, but I try to just live in relationships in a way that all cards are on the table. There’s nothing held back, there’s no secrets, and now there’s the way that you can truly build trust and develop relationships. And relationships are kind of everything because at the end of the day, you need other people to build companies, and to be successful, and to move the world along. Very few endeavors are truly solo endeavor. Usually other people are there as part of the supporting band whether they’re in front or behind the scenes.
Charan: Yeah. It’s so interesting you say that. I feel that more so that when I’m making a movie than anything else because as an actor I’m a part of it, but when I’m producing it, I kind of oversee the whole thing, and bringing the whole team together. Every little part is so vital and so important. Sometimes when you’re making a low-budget movie, which is what I just barely finished making, because we don’t have all the resources all the time, it’s not as efficient as we would like for it to be. But one of the big things that the team had, we all discuss was just the need to make sure everyone feels valued, and that everyone feels a sense of belonging and a sense of importance. Because when people genuinely feel that, they will perform and they’ll perform at their best.
Charan: And so relationships are so important, so yeah, I appreciate you sharing those things. Well, any last word, Josh? Any last bits of wisdom that you’d like to impart to the world?
Josh: Well, only if you’re sick of meetings, go check out Volley at volleyapp.com.
Charan: That’s amazing. Awesome. Well yeah, please, everyone that’s listening, check out volleyapp.com. It’s going to be awesome. I’m excited for it to bless the world. All right. Thank you so much, Josh. Thanks so much for joining me, and we will talk to you soon.
Josh: You bet. Thank you for having me.
Charan: Yep. Thanks so much for listening to the Lemonade Stand podcast, and we hope you enjoyed this episode. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast on whatever platform used to be alerted when we release new episodes. We’d also love to hear your feedback and reviews, and if you or someone you know has an awesome Lemonade Stand story, please reach out to us on social media and let us know. Thanks so much, and have a great day.