What's up, everybody? This is Cortland from IndieHackers.com, and you're listening to
the IndieHackers podcast. More people than ever are building cool stuff online and making
a lot of money in the process. And on this show, I sit down with these IndieHackers to
discuss the ideas, the opportunities, and the strategies they're taking advantage of
so the rest of us can do the same. Today, we have a very special guest on the podcast,
the one and only Eva Allen. Hi, Mom. Happy Mother's Day.
Hey, thank you. Happy Mother's Day.
Thank you. Welcome to the podcast.
I am so excited to be here. I am shocked. Is this like my Mother's Day gift?
This is your Mother's Day gift. Okay, so am I going to get another gift or is this it?
What do you mean this is it? This is the most specialist gift any mother could ask for.
Oh, God. Well, I'm humbled. I can't...
The world's best Mother's Day gift in history. Thank you so much. I can't believe you guys
think that much of me. I'm kind of impressed and shocked. Let me ask this question. No notice?
No? Okay, Mom, we're going to have you on the podcast, and we're going to ask you
three questions and prepare, because if you really know me, you know this is not me. I don't like-
But without notice, it's now a surprise. Exactly.
If it wasn't a surprise, there would be a worse gift.
How are we going to surprise you with a Mother's Day gift if we don't surprise you with a gift?
Yeah, but typically Mother's Day gifts are what mothers want, but I mean, this is great. I'm not
complaining. I'm just a little bit shocked by it all, but thank you.
Honestly, I don't like typical gift giving. I don't know if you guys have ever done the
love languages and it's like physical touch, quality time, blah, blah, blah. But one of them
is gift giving, and that's like, I always score the lowest whenever I take any of those quizzes,
because I don't like giving gifts, and I especially don't like giving gifts when I feel expected to.
So any sort of holiday, whether it's Christmas or Father's Day or Mother's Day or birthdays,
when it's like, this is the day that you get somebody a gift, is like the worst day for me
to give a gift, and every other day. Okay, but does that mean that when you are
not expected to give a gift, that you do give gifts?
No, I also still just don't like giving. But I like the sort of intangible,
it's the thought that counts. I like the experiential things. I like going on trips
together, doing a podcast with you, Mom, I think is a cool gift. It's like more my style, my vibe.
So I read The Five Love Languages, and it was a really, really good book,
and receiving gifts is one of the love languages. And I think when it comes to gift giving...
I like that. That's my love language. Receiving gifts.
Who doesn't like receiving gifts?
But typically, when you give a gift, it's something that you want to make sure the receiver wants.
You don't go out and just randomly buy anything. You go out and you put thought into it. When
you're picking out a card, you want to get a card that's really appropriate so that when the person
reads a card, they feel like, oh, this person really loves me, or this person really knows me,
or this is a perfect card, that sort of thing. So you might not like giving gifts, Courtland,
but I guarantee you like receiving gifts, right?
I like receiving them a little bit, but it's also anxiety inducing, both giving and receiving,
because it's like, well, if someone gives you a gift and they didn't put a lot of thought into it,
you got to pretend to like it and pretend to be happy and pretend it's what you wanted.
And meanwhile, you're making plans for how you're going to give it away because you don't really
want to put this vase on your table. Have you ever re-gifted?
All the time. I re-gift books mostly. I'm not going to read books.
Have you ever told anyone that you were re-gifting?
If they're close enough to give me a gift, I think they're close enough for me to tell them,
I don't want this, I'm giving it away.
I think it can be really, really stressful. I remember, I don't know, maybe 20 years or so ago,
my girlfriend and Shireen and I were sitting down making a list of all the people we needed
to buy gifts for at Christmas time, and the list became monumental. I want to think we each had
like over 150 gifts to buy. So what we decided to do, okay, for all the, all the young people
between the ages of 10 and 15, we're going to get them all one thing. For all the men,
we're going to get them all robes. For all the women, it was just so impersonal and so stressful.
And then we got to the point of, okay, we're going to go to each other's houses and we're
going to spend like two days wrapping all these gifts.
Whose idea was this? It sounds like, like this is hell. This is the seventh layer.
It sounds like Scrooge. You ever see Scrooge with Bill Murray where he has to give everybody
a gift and he's the CEO and his secretary just reads a list of names. If he likes somebody,
he's like VCR, VCR. And if he doesn't like them, he's like towel, towel.
Well, let me tell you. So we, like a year before we decided we were going to learn how to wrap
gifts professionally and we went out and we took this gift wrapping course. And oh, it was just a
matter of all, you got to have the perfect paper and the perfect bow and tie it perfectly.
That was the last year. I don't know if you guys remember going from getting gifts that were
totally wrapped to now all your gifts come in gift bags. That was a result of the experience we
had the year before, having to wrap over a hundred games outside of the gift giving and gift receiving
game. So I've noticed no shift at any point in time. I just feel all I, all I notice is the anxiety
when gift giving. It's like a homework assignment. It's it turns a joyous occasion of connection
and to like something where you can either do it right or you can do it wrong and you've got
to prepare in advance. I'm like, I'm a master procrastinator. I do things at the last minute.
You can't really give somebody a good gift at the last minute because you've got to do all this
stuff. Like Rand Fishkin, mom, he's the founder who hosted this Italy thing that Channing and I
went to a few weeks ago. He lives in Seattle and him and his partner Geraldine, I would describe
them as master gift givers. Like I went over for dinner at their place, I think like November 2020
after I moved here. And then in December I came home one day and there was this huge gift basket
outside my door and I opened it. It was like the most thoughtful collection of like knickknacks.
They're like, oh, Cortland, you mentioned that you wanted to start cooking. So we gave you,
you know, like some very fancy Italian like salt and different, you know, sauces. And you mentioned
you like old fashioned. We have you some like a collection of bitters and like this had like
every single thing I had said, they had like found something amazing and put that in the gift basket
and wrapped it up with an amazing presentation. And I was like, number one, stunned because like
I'd never gotten such a good gift from someone who I like at that time had barely even known.
And then number two, like max anxiety because like, what am I going to get their return?
I have absolutely no idea what they would like. I have no idea what to give. I don't even know how
to write a good thank you note. And it just feels like homework to me sometimes. So it's a lot.
We should talk about your background moms. It's nobody, nobody listening to the show knows you.
Obviously, you're a mom, Channing and I are twins, born two minutes apart. I'm the younger one.
And I think you are probably the reason why we're entrepreneurs because you were always an
entrepreneur when we were growing up. Like I've had friends who asked me like, how do you think
you could, why do you think you could just start a business? My buddy Adrian asked me that in
college. And I was like, why do you think you can? And I had that response because I had always
grown up watching you run your own businesses. And it was never weird to me. Like you never worked
for some huge faceless corporation. You always sort of work for a very small group or work for
yourself. So why don't you tell us about the business that you started, why you started it,
how you came up with the idea, because even I don't really know the story behind that.
I just remember being a kid and just knowing that you work for yourself.
Okay, so when you guys were born, I stayed home for quite a while because just the whole
thought of putting you guys in daycare just petrified me. And when I did decide I had had
enough, I hired a retired pediatric nurse to come into the house because I felt like that was giving
you guys the best. Boy, was I wrong. But at any rate, I had taken a job with a computer
maintenance company. I don't even want to want to ask what happened with this pediatric nurse,
but just continue the story. She just didn't do the job that I thought she
should have been doing. Wait, what did she drop us? Like, what did she do wrong?
Well, let's just say one day I came home early and all three of you guys were asleep. And that
just was not good. Just was not good. The three of you guys were asleep. That was then I think
I gave her like a two week notice. But to make a lot of your pediatric nurse and I did. And it
got to the point I'm here. I'm going to be honest with you guys. I'm type A personality. You know,
I'm busy all the time. I like to go. I like to do things. I like to be around people. And I can
remember when my girlfriend Carol, whom you met Mallory and Brittany's mom came over to visit.
And you guys are probably two. And I was so used to just working. I didn't want her to leave. I
said, Carol, please don't leave. You know, go back home, get your PJs, get your work clothes for
tomorrow. You can spend the night. This is great. Just start to be around adults. I decided, let me
go back into the world of work. So my background at the time was sales. And I'd taken a job with
Microfix. And if you guys remember, Jerry gave you your first computer. I think it was a Christmas
gift. You guys were probably three. I think you were three. I think you wanted to use a computer.
And I mean, you didn't even know how to use a computer. But I use a computer. Was that an iPad?
Yeah, I was selling computer maintenance. And my job all along, it's always been sales and marketing.
Take a job with a company that my job is to find the customers, which, as you guys know,
as entrepreneurs is extremely difficult. So back then, it was, okay, where do you get your leads?
You use the yellow pages. Okay, there were really no other sources. We had the Atlanta
Business Chronicle. And I just spent years dialing for dollars, looking up, okay, let's look at the
top 100 companies in Atlanta and put together my script and get on the phone and convince them
you need to be buying this product or service from us. Well, to make a long story short,
after a couple of years with him, I decided to go out on my own because having small kids,
I ended up putting you guys in daycare. But every time I turned around, somebody was sick.
And I thought, well, I can sell, you know, if you can sell, you can sell anything. It's all about
having the ability to figure out how you're going to find these customers, figuring out what it is
you need to say to these customers, how to get them to trust you. So I still feel, but I still,
to Cortland's point, I still feel like when people have a day job, like a nine to five job that they
don't like, for whatever reason, they don't think, Oh, well, I'll just do this myself. Like, like,
did you have other, were there entrepreneurs that you knew? Did someone put this idea in your head?
Or did you literally just say, screw it, I'm going to do it myself? I decided I'm going to do this
myself. And at the time, you know, computers were brand new, and folks were selling computer parts,
you know, all these companies had these throwaway laptops, these throwaway desktops. And, you know,
if a hard drive crash or system board died, they needed a replacement. And everything I had read
was, you know, you can mark these parts up 100%, 200%. And I decided, you know what,
what is the worst thing that can happen? I can try and I can fail. And hopefully, if I fail,
I'll learn something that can try again. Everybody said, don't do it, it is not going to work.
You start a business, you're going to have to start 10 different businesses in order for one
to succeed. You know, I had so many naysayers, and I think that helped me decide, you know,
I'm going to do whatever I can do to make this work. So what if 95% of all businesses fail
within the first five years? 5% of them don't, maybe one, one of these businesses will succeed.
Mom, I'm really happy that you're willing to take that risk for yourself at our expense.
It wasn't really at your expense. It was actually at the expense of not being away from you guys,
because in my mind, if you're an entrepreneur and yourself employed, guess what, you've got freedom,
you can go to work when you want to go to work, you can get off when you want to get off.
I didn't know, because I was brand new at it, that I was going to be working all the time.
I didn't realize, you know, I was going to have to wear every single hat there was.
So I had this computer business, I outgrew the sunroom, which is where I started.
I moved into an office in Stone Mountain. I hired Adrian. Initially, I was delivering the parts.
Like, where did you get the money? Because I assume you have to, like,
buy these parts and then deliver them to people.
You had to rent the office, all of it.
Yeah. How did you fund the business? I actually went to the bank and got a small
business loan of like $15,000, which back then was a ton of money.
And in my mind, it's like, I've got to be able to pay this money back.
How much runway at that time was 15 grand going to get you? Like, how much before you?
By the way, that's around $32,000, $32,000 today.
I didn't run out of money, because one of the things I sold were PS2 system boards,
and I paid like $150 for them, and I sold them for $995.
By the way, not a PlayStation 2.
No, not a PlayStation.
No, not whatsoever. So that's kind of how I got started, and I enjoyed the freedom.
It was hard. I mean, starting any kind of business.
How were you buying these boards for $125? Who's buying these boards for $900?
PC Parts Exchange. What I did is I went online and I looked at the computer suppliers out there,
and PC Parts Exchange in Texas was one.
It was just a matter of getting on the phone and, I guess, begging.
I'm trying to start this business. All I need is this opportunity.
Please give me a chance.
And when you say went online, like this is way pre-grew, this is like yellow pages, right?
Yeah, 1990, 1991. Yep. Picked up the phone. I had a laptop at the time, desktop at the time.
It's a pretty epic arbitrage business to sell parts for that much money.
How much money did your business make? Like, how much was...
That business only made, I think my revenue was like $70,000, $80,000. That is about it.
But back then, that was not bad money.
That's a huge amount of money. That's like $150,000 today. That's huge.
And that's with you and one employee, right?
That was with me and one employee, and then I had the expenses and I had an accountant that,
you know, once a week came by and I gave them all the information on my revenue and my expenses.
Chuck Campbell, I still have him today.
So how much profit would you say? $70,000 revenue?
Probably, I'll venture to say probably $25,000 profit because the market was really, really high.
All right. So enough for you to sustain a living, but you weren't killing it.
You weren't like... No, I wasn't killing it. I was able to pay the exorbitant daycare bill,
but to me, it's like I at least am doing something worthwhile. I am fulfilled.
I feel like I'm contributing. I feel like I'm important. I'm making a difference.
And you're working from home or you're bringing your kids to the office.
You're bringing me and Jane to the office. Yeah, I had a room for you guys. I did.
And that room had your PlayStation, your Nintendo, you know, it was ideal.
What was the daycare that we were in, La Petite?
It was La Petite with Miss Julie. I remember one and only one thing from La Petite.
I remember the outside of the building and then I remember that I was right-handed and
Channing was left-handed. Exactly.
And they were trying to do everything with his right hand.
They pretty much were trying to explain to me that right-handed kids are more successful than
left-handed kids and that what I needed to do is make sure when you rode or when you ate,
it was with your right hand. And I thought that was the most ridiculous thing ever.
So to this day, I have to explain to people everything that I do naturally. So all sports,
if I shoot a basketball, if I throw a baseball or any kind of ball, I do it with my left hand.
But if I do any formal things, if I am eating food with a fork, if I'm riding,
then I'm using my right hand. Yeah. But I tell you the advantage of having that start,
doing what I did, the very first computer you guys got came from Microfix. And that was really
the beginning of, I guess, Courtland, your interest in computers.
Yeah. I remember sitting down on your computer at your office and I think you were using like DOS
at the time. Absolutely. All I cared about was how to play video games. And so I learned how to
install games. And I remember you coming in and you had no idea what we were doing. And you're
like, how do I get it back to normal? Put it back to normal. Because even though you were the
computer expert, you were the computer parts expert. You knew what parts to ship to different
people and who to call, but you weren't a software programming computer user expert.
Not technical whatsoever. No, not at all. So what happened? Why did you stop? Why not
just keep growing that business? Well, what I did is I got rid of that business I had,
and this goes back to I had chosen a partner at the time. She wasn't really a partner. She was
a full-time employee that I had hired. And she utilized a line of credit and credit card for
things that were non-business. And that was pretty much the beginning of the end. You guys
were getting to the point, you're really, really busy with sports. And I just really didn't want
to continue, you know, the parts business. It was really, really taxing. So I decided at the time,
you know what, find something else to do. And that's exactly what I did.
Go on to detail about this unscrupulous business partner using the credit cards.
Well, what she decided, she wanted to get into investments and it takes money. And I had an
American Express, a corporate gold card. So she decided, I think someone that convinced her,
you know, if you use this credit card, we can invest and you're going to make double the money
and you'll have the money back before the bill is due. So and she was my right hand man. So she
opened all of the bills every single day. So, you know, she opened the bill and all of a sudden.
What can go wrong? Invest, invest your personal stock. Exactly. Money with personal funds with
non personal funds. Absolutely. Absolutely. And what ended up happening, because she was,
you know, writing checks, paying the bills I trusted her. We ended up getting a late,
late notice American Express bill wasn't paid because, you know, that's a bill that has to be
paid in full every single month. And I went to her and asked, you know, first of all, why
something's wrong. Initially I called American Express because I thought, you know, you know,
someone had gotten my American Express card and had this erroneous charge on it. And, you know,
I was given the information and then reached out to her and it's like, Oh, I'm sorry. I'm going to
get the money, which she never got the money. I ended up, you know, eating that. How much money
was it? Let's see. It was about $19,000. I think it was about $19,000. So she's supposed to be like,
at least offer you a return on the bill. She did. She tried to pay that debt off. And I think
I probably ended up getting maybe five or $6,000 back of it that she got for her parents. Remember
what she invested in? Like, did like her investment pan out? I want to think it was diamonds. I want
to think it was diamonds. I want to think it was a diamonds. She's supposed to be helping you with
your business and she's using your credit card. I mean, she was up until that, up until that point,
she was, she was phenomenal. I mean, whatever needed to be done, she did. And she was just a
great, just a great asset up until that point. So I got out of that and I ended up my background
being sales. I took a sales job with an SAP company, staffing company out of India. And so
I went out, you know, found the companies here in Atlanta that had SAP, Coke, Georgia Pacific, and
some others. And once I was able to get some contracts, next thing you know, we didn't have
any people to fill the roles. So they decided to teach me how to recruit. We brought Madan over
from India, whom you met, Courtland. In fact, I think Madan helped you get your first programming
book when you were like in middle school, because that's what you said you wanted. A job. A
four inch thick Java programming book that I didn't read. It was like four inches thick. And
I think you were like 11 or 12. I don't know. But at any rate, so that's kind of how I got started.
Was this a point where so Courtland has his PC and I have my PC. And randomly, the CD ROM drive
just starts randomly going in and out. And then I hear Courtland snickering in the background. Was
this because you taught him how to code? And he instantly went to how do I? I had two interests
in computers. Number one, trying to code a video game, which eventually turned in trying to make
websites. And number two, trying to learn how to hack your computer channel so that I could control
it and drive you insane whenever I wanted to, which I was super successful at. And you only
succeeded at one of those things. No, I made a lot of websites and I hacked your computer dozens of
times. One thing I remember, I don't know if you remember this Courtland, but I think there was
some sort of an update Microsoft did. And there was a problem and you ended up calling Microsoft.
Do you remember that? I think you were in middle school. Did he ask to speak to Bill Gates? No,
hopefully not. I wouldn't be surprised. But that's the beginning. I mean, quite honestly,
you know, I went to work for Mars. I ended up learning how to recruit. I fell in love with
recruiting because it's just an opportunity to, you know, find these hard to find people,
these purple squirrels for these roles that were nearly impossible. And it was just the chase and
just the thrill of being able to find this person that I didn't think I'd be able to find and, you
know, place a person. It's a good hire. So you have been, you're a certified entrepreneur. You
have entrepreneurial history. You've been listening to the Indie Hackers podcast too, because you're
a very supportive mom. How many episodes would you say you've listened to of Indie Hackers so far?
I have listened to, uh, I'll venture to say at least 150. Okay. I want to give you, I want to
test you. Yeah. I was like 250 episodes. I want to, I want to test mom, Channy. I want to give her
like, you know that book, the mom test, the mom quiz. You said you've been listening to the show.
I want to, I want to quiz you. It's going to be easy questions. Question number one,
what was your favorite episode? I actually had two and I like Nomad List. That was one of the
first ones I listened to and I thought this is so cool because I kind of saw it as recruiting.
You know, here it is. You want to travel to these different places. You go to this site and see,
you know, what resources they have. So it's a match. You go here. I can go here because they
have what I need in order to do the thing I want to do. So I really enjoy that episode. I enjoyed
key values, that staffing. I enjoyed the cookie episode. There were quite a few. You like all
the real world businesses that are really the real world business. A lot of them, quite honestly,
I don't have a clue as to what I'm listening to. Um, I really, really don't. I try to stick with
it and I try to understand what's an NFT. NFT is a non-fungible token. And I tried to listen to
your episode about Bitcoin and cryptocurrency because I really want to be in the know.
I really, really do. I want to stay up with what is happening in the world, where people's attention
is going. And I didn't have a clue. I tried to take notes. I had a legal pad. I kept, you know,
rewinding, going back, taking notes. And then I decided, well, maybe if I go to YouTube and then
pull up a YouTube video, like crypto or Bitcoin for dummies, maybe that'll help. But after about
two or three hours of that, I decided, you know what? This is not for me. I have aged out. I don't
want to know about cryptocurrency. I don't want to hear about NFT. So you haven't invested,
you're saying, in any crypto yet? You know what? A friend of mine is involved in crypto and she
convinced me, she convinced me to put, I think, $250 into crypto. I can't even tell you what the
thing is called. I can't even remember. Did you buy Dogecoin? No, it wasn't Dogecoin. It wasn't
Dogecoin. I can't remember. Well, honestly, I'm impressed. How are you doing? Oh, I know.
The last time I looked at it, I did this like three months ago. It was like, is it something
called like a Miriam or something like that? Ethereum. Ethereum? Yes, that's what I invested
in. You own some Ethereum. You probably lost half your money. All I know is it went from 250
and it's now 70. I'm done. The trick is just don't monitor it and forget about it. You're
supposed to buy low sell high and not buy high sell low. Okay. Okay. Next question. This should
be a softball if you listen to the podcast. What is an MVP? MVP? What is an MVP? It's like a product,
minimum value of a product or something. Something along those lines. Minimum viable product.
Okay. But what does that mean to you? What problem does that solve?
It solves a problem of somebody having a need for that problem.
Okay. I'm going to say it's an. Okay. Did I fail? Did I fail?
I was shocked you got NFTs. You got a favorite episode. MVP minimum viable product.
So what exactly does that mean? MVP? It means when you start off building something,
you don't want to spend six months a year, two years building like this humongous,
gigantic app and then unveil it to the world and realize somebody even wants it.
You want to build like the minimum viable product, the smallest thing you can build to test your
hypotheses and see if the market wants it, what they like something super simple. So if they like
it or they don't like it, you can quickly sort of iterate on it and improve it.
Okay. So I got a 50. I got a 50 or two out of three, two out of three. We have more questions.
What is, I'm going to give you some hard ones now. What is SEO stand for?
Search engine optimization. Bam. And what is that?
What that is, is let's say I'm looking for something on the internet and I type in,
let's say I type in indie hackers and the first three pages are all indie hackers.
So you've made it to the top of that search. Okay. I think three out of four. What do you
think, Jenny? I think that was good. That was impressive. Not bad. I kind of want to hit her
with another crypto one just to see. I don't know anything about crypto.
You actually talked about this, but you may not have known what you were talking about.
What is the metaverse? So the metaverse, it is, it is the internet of things. It's everything.
It's artificial. Okay. It's not the internet of things and that is not this thing.
Okay. Is it artificial? It's artificial intelligence.
Okay. That answer about the metaverse is probably better than like every other podcast.
I don't know. I felt like it was kind of buzzword. I think he passed. I don't know what the
minimum bar is to pass on this. It's like it's virtual reality. Isn't it virtual reality? You
don't really, it's not what's real. It's what's not real, but appears real.
It's like the crypto. So when you buy a, you asked, you asked us about getting an Oculus Quest 2.
Yes. If you, if you did that, you would enter the metaverse, right? Like that,
like that's the space that those games are supposed to operate in. Yeah. So it's like a,
I don't know, an environment that's computer generated and not real. Have you, have you
gotten this? Have you started, have you started playing it yet? No, I actually went to Best Buy
about a month ago after, you know, we got Carl and Ayanna, Ron and Lillian got, you know, the
other one, one as well. They didn't have any. So I'm just waiting. I'll go back and get it. It's
Oculus Quest 2. I'll do the fitness part of it. How old are you now, mom? 63. 63, you're going to
be 64 in June. Pretty close to retiring. When are you going to retire? You know, I keep thinking
about it. I have a little bit of a fear. In fact, Channing talks to me about this all the time. I
probably will never retire. And when I think about retiring, I'm such a busy body. I'll probably rest
for a few months, clean out some drawers, some closets, get bored and then figure out what it
is I want to do. Because to me, I don't know if you guys remember, I've just always been,
you know, motivational, positive thinker, positive affirmations. And I used to have
positive thoughts on the phone every single week. On the answering machine, which nobody today even
knows what an answering machine is. I know. My favorite thought had something to do with,
you know, something to look forward to. And then when I think about retirement, you know,
my favorite thought was most of us act as though material things in wealth are the chief requirements
in life to be happy. But all most of us really need is something to look forward to. And so when
I think about retirement, I think about what is it that I'm going to be looking forward to
every single day? You know, I want to be happy. I go back to what my father always used to say,
you know, if you're green, you're growing, you're ripe, you're rotten. And that's just the process
of I want to learn, I want to grow, I want to continue developing and, you know, being all that
I can be. And I think about my mom, you know, age 97, saying, you know, I should strive to learn
something new every single day. And it's like, what am I going to do? And Channy and I talk about
this quite often, Cortland, you know, he had me read the book Successful Aging. It was a really,
really good book, really about you should never retire, you never should retire. And, you know,
I think about I'm an entrepreneur at heart, you know, should I try to come up with a book,
101 things, incoming college freshmen shouldn't should know when they go to college? Should I
come up with, you know, some sort of program for senior citizens? I was a fitness trainer,
I've had an activity club in the past. That would be fun. I don't know if you guys remember the
Heritage Club, but you know, everybody was saying, Oh, we don't have enough funds. I put together
this club of about 40 people. And we tried to do something fun every single month. I thought about
that. Should I do home staging? I love that I've done that with friends. Should I get into the CBD
business or the cannabis business? I should do something for sure. Because I think, you know,
two of my heroes, Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger, those guys were like, literally in their 90s,
Charlie Munger is 98. And he just gave a talk about why you shouldn't be investing in Bitcoin,
like two weeks ago. And I think they are old and wise and motivated and happy because they have
never turned their brains off. They've never stopped working. And I don't want you to do
that either. Keep doing stuff, keep hustling, keep working on stuff. I love these ideas. And I think
most of the ideas you listed kind of fit your personality. So yeah, I think so. And I've even
got two entrepreneurial sons. We're not going to let you retire. I've even thought about what can
what can I really do? Maybe I can go to indie hackers and find somebody that needs somebody
to be on the phone because my strength is I've got great customer service skills. I love being on
the phone. You know, folks are telling me go to these sites where you can, you know, pick a job
for a month or two and make X amount an hour and do it for a month or two. And when you're bored,
it's over, start something different. So I'm I mean, I'm really thinking about tomorrow, guys.
I get an email every day from someone and somebody on any hackers complaining that somebody cold
emailed them or spammed them or found their email in any hackers. And I can't wait till the emails
I get are people complaining about you and say, hey, Koralan, somebody claiming to be Eva Allen,
like your mom. Well, the Allen Brothers mom is like trolling the entire website,
finding everyone's emails and sending them spam. I like it. Oh, my God. We'll give you an
indie hackers job. I like I'm all for nepotism. Honestly, I think the idea of being able to work
with your family members. I remember joining Stripe and Patrick's like, well, what do you
want out of this deal? I was like, you got to hire my brother. And he just like winked at me.
He's like, I get it, you know, because Stripe is founded by two brothers. I love the idea of
working with people that you love. I love the idea that Channing and I work together on any
hackers. We meet every day. And mom, you look forward to I think more than anything to hear
you say it is to just eavesdrop on our conversations and just sit there in the background
while we're talking about any hackers. And so after you retire, we're going to give you an
indie hackers job unless you start your own company, which I think it would be so cool.
And Koralan, I don't know if you remember when you had started indie hackers and we were trying
to figure out how you can make money because I'm like, you can't have a business. I get you wanting
a community and I get you, you know, being in the situation you're in and wanting to help people in
the same situation. But how are you going to make money? And remember when we put together,
my husband and I put together the list lever and I put together a list of all the companies to reach
out to. I mean, I had we had Google on there. We had Stripe. Oh, the people to the people to
advertise to. And Stripe was number one on my list was like the number one. Okay. Once I get my
sales pitch down, once I'm like really good at landing advertisers, Stripe is like the perfect
fit. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. But you did reach out. I kind of have a theory that it's kind of
in different people, this desire to constantly work. Koralan, I call you manic all the time.
I think I'm manic. I think half the people that are entrepreneurs are really manic. And mom,
I kind of think you are that way too. And so in a lot of ways, I mean, I'm a very big advocate of
this idea of never retiring. I kind of think that you don't need that advice. But I mean,
I don't know. In our society, we have like a space carved out for that. So if anything,
I think you just need to give yourself permission to not retire and just find a thing that you want
to do and make it a little bit more about that. And obviously, Koralan and I both have executive
assistant roles wide open for you. If you want to help us do the things that we already do.
As long as I don't have to deal with Excel spreadsheets and all of these slack and all
of the stuff I don't even have a clue about. Sometimes I feel like I've kind of aged out.
Naval has a sort of quip he does where he talks about the three most important traits to look for
and a startup founder, and he's an investor. So he's looking at people who are going to succeed.
And the three traits are intelligence, integrity. So mom, your business partner,
Adrian will not qualify under integrity. And the third one is energy. So Shannon,
I don't know if everybody's manic, but I think definitely good sort of founders have a lot of
energy. Mom, you got a lot of energy. I hope to see you be, you know, come on the Indie Hackers
podcast as a guest. Next time we can interview you about your new company.
Oh, awesome. Well, I would look forward to that.
All right. Well, I think that's about it. Shannon, you want to take it away?
Just another happy Mother's Day.
Happy Mother's Day, mom.
I tell you, having you two have just been y'all have been the highlight of my life.
Um, I feel like being a mom, being a parent is the hardest job you could ever love. It's really is
the greatest job you could ever love. You guys have made me the proudest mom on the planet. And
a lot of times, you know, folks will call and say, well, you did pretty good with
Cortland and Channing. What advice do you have for my daughter? I wanted to call you and,
you know, it's just, it just brings back so many wonderful memories of, you know,
things that we put in place. You know, love and limits is so important when raising kids and,
you know, being consistent with discipline is so important. More important than anything is just
being a good role model. And I hope I've been a really good role model to you guys. I know a lot
of times I make you crazy. A lot of times, you know, you'll share things with me and I tell you,
I think it just makes no sense what you just said. But, you know, I'm just so happy and so fortunate
that I have you guys. And that, you know, we've got the communication that we have and we've got
the relationship that we have and that you guys keep me around. Love you, mom. Happy Mother's Day.
Love you. Thank you.
Happy Mother's Day.