Connect with Ben Bozzay
DNS Filtering / Device Management company: https://www.techlockdown.com/
iPhone monitoring app for parents: https://livingroomapp.com/
Meet Ben Bozay
[00:00:05] Doug: Hey, what’s going on? Welcome to “The Doug Show.” I’m Doug Cunnington, and today I’m chatting with Ben Bozay. Ben is a software developer, and he’s the founder of Tech Lockdown and the co-founder of Living Room. He was frustrated by easily bypassed consumer screen time tools, so he adapted enterprise-grade cybersecurity and mobile device management architectures to solve personal digital addiction and focus challenges. One of those deals where he, uh, basically solved his own problem and realized there were other people with the same problem out there. So Ben, welcome to the show. How are you doing today? [00:00:42] Ben Bozzay: Hey, thanks for having me on, Doug. I’m doing great. How are you doing? [00:00:46] Doug: Really awesome. And what I invited you to the studio and you were willing to make the drive. Um, we live in the same metro area, but it’s far enough away, and I was like, “Ah, you know what? I don’t want you to sit in traffic.” So I’m glad we were able to work it out. Um, and maybe next time you, you join in the studio, we could figure out a way to, you know, make it work.Like I said, I hate traffic myself, so I, I’m an old man now, so I’m like complaining about traffic all the time.
MRR and Products
[00:01:13] Doug: So one thing I wanna jump into here is, um, where your business is currently, kind of in the middle of the story. So we’re recording this in, uh, September of 2026, can you tell us a little bit about maybe, you know, what’s the one-line summary of your, um, your company? then, you know, maybe revenue numbers, margins, um, churn, all the gory details. I know you can’t share everything, but as much as you’re comfortable just to give people the idea of the scope of your business. [00:01:52] Ben Bozzay: Yeah. So, uh, like you said, I’m the founder of Tech Lockdown, and I co-founded an app that I launched a year ago. Um, Tech Lockdown is my bread and butter right now. It’s, it’s how I’m paying the bills. Uh, it’s me and a, a contractor who helps with support. Um, the MRR for the business is over 20K at this point, so I’m able to pay myself a salary and focus on it full-time instead of juggling it alongside, you know, like a full-time job, which I’m sure you’re quite familiar with, with, you know, how these things typ-typically go.Um, the traffic numbers are still hovering around 50,000 visitors a month, uh, to the Tech Lockdown website. But I’ve experienced a lot of volatility with AI search summaries and, uh, Google’s recent algorithm change that they made like a, a week ago. Um, but that company’s still in great shape. It’s been growing.
Um, I have some exciting things I’m releasing for it. And, um, yeah, the, the concept, like you said, it’s, it’s basically like if you were, um– You’re getting access to cybersecurity tools, uh, pers- for personal use or for your family that are set up to, like, be something you can’t get around because an enterprise uses stuff that can’t, can’t be bypassed, right?
Um, and then the Living Room app, the more recent thing, uh, that has been doing great, and it’s been steadily growing. Uh, partnered with another software developer to work on that project. Um, it’s, uh, currently we just hit 4,500 MRR on that, which was a decent milestone. Um, and the audience for this one is a little bit different.
It’s we’re, we’re targeting parents who are trying to basically set up an iPad for a kid, and it’s, like, totally safe. So it, like, records the screen when the kid’s using the device, and so you know exactly what they’re doing. Um, so, like, I, I always think about if I had to give something to an eight-year-old, I wanna be sitting right next to him, and I wanna feel like I know exactly what he’s doing with it.
Um, so I thought– Originally, I thought that concept was a little bit too niche. Um, but I’m surprised that, like, I’ve been able to find customers for it, and it seems to have a really promising future.
[00:04:09] Doug: Cool. Very, um, very amazing. And we’ll get into your origin story. We’re gonna talk you know, how you grew the business originally, which is kind of the standard, um, content website story, which is kind of interesting. We’ll also get into some YouTube, strategies and your experience there, and, um, yeah, of details.But one thing I’ll, uh, press you just a little bit, and you can– Uh, I’ll make it easy, but is it safe to assume, because it’s a SaaS product, that the margins are, we’ll just say very good?
[00:04:48] Ben Bozzay: Yeah, they’re very good. [00:04:49] Doug: Okay [00:04:50] Ben Bozzay: I’m not, uh … My fixed costs are a little bit higher now because I started, uh, renting an office just because I’ve got a toddler at home, and it was a little bit too much working from home. [00:05:03] Doug: Okay [00:05:03] Ben Bozzay: so that’s probably my highest fixed cost is, like, a private office that I’m renting right now [00:05:08] Doug: Gotcha. And I’m just curious, how much does that cost? ‘Cause like, again, we’re in the same metro area, and there’s, like, obviously different levels of quality of the place or how noisy or quiet or co-working versus, like, a private room. So yeah, how much is your office? [00:05:23] Ben Bozzay: So I’m paying 750 a month, uh, for a pretty big office with, like, windows. Um, I was fine with living in a closet, honestly. Like, I tried to rent an office, uh, like something that was basically the size of a closet for 300, but then the, the only thing they had open was this one room. The quote I got from, like, a co-working space was, like, 1,400 for, like, like a cubicle, uh, you know, a, a glass cubicle.Like I, I was a little bit surprised, and I’m just … I’m past the point where I need the whole, um, you know, uh, kombucha on tap situation. I just wanna get in and grind, you know?
[00:06:00] Doug: Right, right. You could buy a shitload of that at Costco for way cheaper. [00:06:04] Ben Bozzay: Totally, yeah [00:06:06] Doug: Okay, cool. So again, congrats on the business, and thanks for letting me press you on that.Early Hustles and College
[00:06:11] Doug: When we were chatting earlier, you mentioned that you’ve been basically an entrepreneur since you were a kid. Do you have any s- like stories from when you were in high school or something, trying to get some stuff going? [00:06:26] Ben Bozzay: Yeah, I think the, probably the first thing that sticks out to me was, uh, I think I was like 14 or 15 and I was really big into Legos when I was a kid. Um, and so I was just like, “Hey, I’m done with Legos now. Like, let me just like get this stuff out of my room so I’ll sell it on eBay.” And just from the research of like…‘Cause you have to research your listing, right? Like what do other people sell this thing for? How do they present it? What are the things that are successful? So I got really into eBay and I started noticing like there’s all these unoptimized listings that have these gems in them, like it’s underpriced and there’s these bulk listings where the people don’t know that if you packaged it differently you could make like double your money instead of just selling bulk.
So I sold my Legos and then I started buying them and reselling them and like I made like, I made like $1,000 in profit over a summer which was like pretty big deal for me at the time, like 14 year o- 14 years old or 15 or whatever. And um, just kind of screwing around and like it w- it, it just like scratched an itch.
Like I, I was excited when I bought something that I could resell and just like trolling through listings to see which ones were not optimized that I could basically repackage. Um, not a sustainable business obviously, like maybe some people could do it, but I just like the arbitrage, um, concept to me started to make more sense, uh, at a young age.
Um, yeah, I think that’s pro- probably my earliest memory right there.
[00:08:03] Doug: Or your parents like, “Why are you getting so many packages and have to send so much?” I mean, it’s like basically doing that, right? [00:08:10] Ben Bozzay: Yeah, I was like always ordering stuff and my, my mom was, uh… She got a kick out of it. I think she knew from a young age that I was gonna do that kind of thing. Um, but I think the, the funniest thing that I did was I bought, I bought like a mini… They’re called mini figures. It’s like the little, little Lego men.And I, I was like, “Huh, people seem to like these specialty items. I wonder if I can just like get this helmet and paint it black and like cut off part of it and call it a specialty item.” I sold this thing for like $25 and it blew my mind, just blew my mind, and I, I don’t even th- I don’t know what my mom really thought about that.
Maybe, uh, maybe she wasn’t monitoring too closely. Um,
[00:08:54] Doug: I mean, you’re adding value. Like it was a specific need, in air quotes, for somebody. I never had gotten into Legos too much, [00:09:03] Ben Bozzay: Good for you. [00:09:04] Doug: Yeah, respect. I mean, people are into it. One of my friends, um, yeah, like his… He has a toddler, and his, yeah, his son’s like super into it, and he was like, “Oh yeah, when I grew up I had like so many.” I had a handful, but I think I just, I never… I don’t even remember, like, actually putting together much of anything. It was all just like a little mess. But anyway, that’s all good. So you, um, you had some, you know, fun buying, selling, arbitrage, pretty fun. Um, you go to s-school. I take it you go to, uh, college probably, software or [00:09:37] Ben Bozzay: Yeah [00:09:38] Doug: Corporate world, give us a little synopsis of that timeframe, and then we’ll launch into the business. They kinda… can compress it a lot. I don’t know how many years you were in the corporate world, but what’s the story there? [00:09:51] Ben Bozzay: Yeah. Um, so college was a bumpy ride for me because, um, yeah, I just… I started out, uh, at one school, I transferred. I, I… At one point, I really didn’t wanna be in college. I was studying business. Um, that’s my degree. It’s business management. And, uh, which is maybe a little bit surprising, uh, but y- y- college was just not clicking for me.It wasn’t the environment that I really enjoyed. I got stressed when I couldn’t work on other things. Um, and so I ended up shifting to a school where I could, like, work at the same time, ’cause I was in, like, West Virginia somewhere in this place where, like, the only thing you could do is maybe w- work at Walmart, and I just, like, couldn’t do that.
So I, I remember being up late at night i- in, like, the library, like, working on business ideas because in the back of my mind, I needed to escape college and escape that, like- cookie cutter path, I guess. It just didn’t work well for me. Um, so I, I was in, uh, the DC area, and I got an internship at an IT staffing company, and I still don’t even know what that means.
I don’t understand what they did. I don’t get the value they added. I f– I think the whole thing was a scam, to be honest.
[00:11:12] Doug: Sounds right. Yeah [00:11:14] Ben Bozzay: yeah, it just was like they were throwing around all this terminology that made no sense. And, um, I guess what I realized is, in that experience, I really did not like the traditional corporate path.I thought it looked like a life I didn’t wanna live. And so I spent a lot of time, even while working this internship and going to school, figuring out, like, how do I not do this with my life? Like, this, this does not seem like a good life to me. Um, so I started doing, uh… I w- I had s- taught myself how to build websites, and I was getting more into technical things, and I realized that people would pay you to, like, do that for them, but without hiring you as an employee.
So it’s called freelancing, as you, as you know. Um, but yeah, I was, I was a freelance, uh, web developer for a while, um, in college, and I, I remember getting a contract where they were paying me, like, 35 an hour or something like that, and it was just a mind-blowing amount of money for me at the time. Um, and I started to realize, like, wait a minute, like, it is way better for me to do technical things than, you know, just go sit in a cubicle somewhere.
And people really like stuff with leverage, and software has leverage to it, and this is, like, the best way to do business. So I just spent an… I was obsessive with, like, learning programming, um, building projects. Uh, then I, I started– Uh, I built, like, a tool to help me find clients, um, basically through Craigslist and these, these open source feeds.
And then at the school I was going to, um, my professor in entrepreneurship, uh, saw some of the stuff I was doing, and he told me I should apply to their incubator program. So I pulled an all-nighter and applied ’cause the deadline was the next day, and I was, like, one of six people that got into this thing.
And, you know, for the next, like, year or so, I got to work on this, like, lead generating tool. Um, they gave me, like, a very small stipend, and they gave me, like, two teammates that didn’t give a crap about it. But, uh, sorry if they’re watching this, but they really– It was, it was my dream, right? It wasn’t, it wasn’t their dream.
Um, ultimately, that didn’t work out, but I ended up being a freelancer for, like, the next three, three to four years and doing that full-time. And, uh, yeah, so, like, I was in college, but let’s just say I wasn’t in college mentally.
[00:13:43] Doug: Right. Gotcha, gotcha. Did you eventually finish and get your degree or [00:13:49] Ben Bozzay: Yeah, I, I got it. It, it, yeah, I got the degree and, um, it was honestly a pretty easy degree, so I didn’t … I skipped most, most of my classes, and I, and if, if I went to class, I was, like, working on client work in the class. [00:14:04] Doug: Skal [00:14:04] Ben Bozzay: And so there was, the funny thing is I went to graduate, and one of the professors had no idea who I was and asked me, like, if I was in the wrong place.And I was like, “Oh, yeah, I was in your class. I just went on the first day and then I never showed up again.”
[00:14:18] Doug: Which is, um, that’s like my stress dream. It’s like you go… Do you have these stress dreams? You go to the first [00:14:23] Ben Bozzay: Oh yeah [00:14:24] Doug: of class, and then, you know, I’m like, “Oh, well, I got this final,” and I show up, I’m like, “I think I went.” I’m like, “Oh, fuck, I didn’t go to any of the classes.” And that’s a recurring dream. It’s a very common [00:14:35] Ben Bozzay: Yeah [00:14:36] Doug: Um, it… By the way, I don’t give a shit about the degree. Congrats, but I, I assume, like, I know probably for my family it was like, there’s some family expectation. It’s like the parents really want you to go and get it. But I really… I mean, looking back now, I’m like, probably could’ve skipped it. I took like six and a half years. Did the, I mean, similar to you, where it was a co-op program. I, I worked like every other term kind of thing to pay for it. But anyway, um, during [00:15:05] Ben Bozzay: Well, what was your degree in? [00:15:07] Doug: It was, uh, computer engineering, so actually like straight… I mean, like, I did a lot of coding and software and hardware stuff, and then, like, never used it in an actual job. [00:15:17] Ben Bozzay: That’s awesome. Good for you, man. That’s really hard [00:15:20] Doug: it. Yeah. Thanks. It, it was extremely hard. I did not love it. And to your point, there were, I mean, m- multiple times, like every 18 months, I’m like, I quit? And l- or like find another degree? Like, this is extremely hard.” Um, and because I was working at, I was like, seems like a really horrible existence.” And think, um… Ooh, what, what year, uh, were you doing the freelancing and in college? What, what range? [00:15:54] Ben Bozzay: Uh, it might’ve been 2017, [00:15:56] Doug: Okay [00:15:57] Ben Bozzay: 2015 to ’17, I think. And then I started, like, a web agency and, like, took my clients and merged with another freelancer [00:16:05] Doug: Okay. And I was just trying to, to gauge, but are you a fan of “Office Space”? Do you know the movie “Office Space”? Okay. [00:16:12] Ben Bozzay: Yeah, I’ve tried to get my wife into that. We’ve, we’ve watched it twice, and I, I’ve gotten a chuckle out of her, but [00:16:18] Doug: oh [00:16:18] Ben Bozzay: not like a full-on hearty laugh yet. I’m working on it [00:16:21] Doug: you know, it wasn’t, uh, l-loved immediately, but I saw it, like… I mean, I was interning at, at the time in like ’99 when it came out, and I was like, “It’s kind of funny.” I love it more now, but I was like, “Oh no,” like, “This is exactly the path that I am walking down, so [00:16:40] Ben Bozzay: Yeah [00:16:41] Doug: keep that in mind.”And, um, anyway, yeah. And I– obviously before your time, it came out, like when you were a toddler or something like that. But it’s, um, it holds true. Yeah, keep watching it. It gets better and better. Um, okay.
SEO Freelancing to Cybersecurity
[00:16:59] Doug: we’re moving forward, so you were getting into web design and building websites, and you got it– I mean, naturally that leads to SEO. So tell me your experience with SEO. I mean, this is like the prime time, like when I was building websites and stuff, like that 2015 to 2020 timeframe. So what’s going on with you? Are you learning the content, um, engine and just SEO in general? [00:17:26] Ben Bozzay: Yeah. I mean, I was, uh, I, I, I did a bunch of projects that were web-based and j- none of them worked out, but I was always looking at, like, uh, like, you know, learning about long-tail keywords, and I, I remember there was this tool, uh, I think it was literally called Long Tail Pro or something. Do you remember that? [00:17:46] Doug: Yep. Yeah, yeah. Spencer [00:17:48] Ben Bozzay: And, like, Screaming Frog and all that. [00:17:50] Doug: totally [00:17:51] Ben Bozzay: Yeah, yeah, those, those were, like, the… Those were the tools of the time. And I remember the long tail stuff made a lot of sense to me because I was thinking like, “Okay, I could have a 0% chance of ranking for something that has a lot of traffic, or I could have, like, 20% chance of getting on page one for something that’s really specific.”Um, and that worked. Like, I, I remember making a hobby website ’cause I, I, I played, like, video games at one point, and I was recording myself playing the games. And I was like, “I bet there’s people that wanna know how you do this.” And so I packaged up a website that was literally… It was literally called Record on PC.
Like, g- pretty typical government, government name for a product. Uh, and I just started publishing this content, and I got, like, a trickle of traffic to it, and it was really exciting to me, um, just the fact that I could make something and just put it out there and someone could find it. And I, I did the long tail approach early on because, like, it– there was this big thing about your domain rating, and if you’re not up to this certain point, like, don’t even try.
Um, and then I kind of… I tried to do the backlink thing for a while, and I just never… I, I forget who it was. Um, it was, like, Backlinko, uh, Neil Patel. Do you know who that is?
[00:19:14] Doug: Yeah. Neil Patel, he had, um, I for- his was s- I forget his, uh, Backlinko was Brian Dean. [00:19:23] Ben Bozzay: You’re right. [00:19:23] Doug: And [00:19:24] Ben Bozzay: Yeah [00:19:25] Doug: Neil Patel, it was like something sprout or, uh, I can’t, I can’t remember. Go [00:19:30] Ben Bozzay: Yeah, I just know he sold it. [00:19:31] Doug: Yeah. [00:19:32] Ben Bozzay: Yeah. But I, I read a lot of, um, Brian Dean’s stuff, and it was, it was a lot of like, how do you get backlinks and, um, the thing that did stick out to me was you should, you should make content that people want to share because it’s, uh, it’s helpful. Like genuinely helpful. So don’t, so don’t just like make something that you wouldn’t read and follow yourself.So I started putting a lot more effort into making something, and then when I would share it, I would feel like not embarrassed about sharing it. You know, if I p- if I post it on Reddit and I link to it, I would think to myself like, “I’ve given away so much for free here. These people can’t possibly be mad if I reference it because it’s just a free thing.
Like, how could you hate that?” And it, it did work. Like, I started getting… And especially for my more recent projects, people, uh, want to solve problems and, uh, there’s this, you know, the, there’s this thing called reciprocity, where if you give someone something, they kind of owe you something subconsciously.
So they’re more likely to like say yes to other things that, that you ask them for or, or be more likely to share something. So that really stuck out to me. I don’t know if I would’ve thought about that if I hadn’t read Brian Dean’s stuff. And also, ’cause there was this big thing about making skyscraper content and making things that people would share and like infographics and stuff.
I never did any of that, but I got the point, which was like, make useful, u- useful things. Don’t just like throw out fluff that isn’t helpful to anybody and expect them to like wanna help you out by giving you a backlink.
[00:21:12] Doug: Right. Yeah, and it, um, I, I wanna say, like, things started to get, they do, more saturated. Marketers ruin everything. Like, when things start working, then they’re like, “All right. Let’s scale this.” there were more tools coming out to help people do, do this in an automated way, and now it’s just off the charts.I mean, the number of emails that I get for, “Hey, listened to the last show. Really love how you and Ben talked about the challenges of entrepreneurship.” I’m like, “Fuck you. You never listen to the
[00:21:45] Ben Bozzay: I know [00:21:46] Doug: of here.” So a- and there’s– I mean, I feel a little bit bad for the, actual employee, like the, the podcast, low-level employee.I’m like, “Ah.” I mean, I wanna write back something mean, but they’re just doing their job, you know? Anyway, so you never got into the link building game, but you were just trying to be helpful, and tell us, like, about… So w- uh, actually, what year are we roughly? ‘Cause, uh, trying to draw a timeline, and you did get laid off.
Like, we do share that in our history, uh, where we were working on
[00:22:25] Ben Bozzay: Yeah [00:22:26] Doug: had some experience, and then lost our corporate jobs, and then we had a decision to make. But yeah, where are we in the timeline here roughly? [00:22:34] Ben Bozzay: Uh, we’re probably, we’re probably like 2015, 2016, [00:22:38] Doug: Okay [00:22:39] Ben Bozzay: where I really started to get the handle on SEO. I’m freelancing, so I was, uh, I was selling like web design, web development services. I was setting up email for people. Like I, I worked for this– I w- was a contractor for a nonprofit and they’re just like, “Hey, our email is terrible.”And I was like, “Okay, I’ll migrate it– you over to, uh, Google Workspace and, and do all that.” And I just got a kick out of like, I can do all this stuff with technology now and people need this and they’ll pay me like, they pay me like 55 an hour sometimes for stuff that I couldn’t get paid 55 an hour in my career path.
Like it just wasn’t a thing at that time. And obviously I wasn’t working 40 hours a week and getting that all the time. But, um, I started to see like what people valued and I was reading a lot about value-based pricing. Um, I forget, I forget the exact, like, thread that I’m pulling on here, and sorry if this is a little bit off topic, but this is one thing I did realize when I was freelancing is, uh, if I say that I’m selling something valuable to someone and I charge too little, they won’t believe me.
And what they’re paying for is the outcome, not necessarily the hours that go into it. So I changed around how I was pricing things, and I stopped selling, uh, hours in a lot of cases, and I started selling, like, very, um, c-very constrained, uh, scope of works tied to, like, a fixed price. And I was– I, I remember selling– I sold, like, an e-commerce site for, like, $8,000.
And it was just n- I’d never sold anything f-for that amount of money before, and it was, like, a Shopify site. Um, and it was really– And I realized that the person I sold it to thought it was too, too cheap still. And, um, conceptually, I was like, “$8,000 is a lot of money for a e– for a Shopify site.” But I realized, like, they want their problem solved, and then I was giving them the confidence that I could do it.
Um, and, and at the same time, they would, they would want things like SEO. And the fact that I knew SEO, and I could say, like, “Hey, these pages are pretty whack, man. Like, you’re– Like, the URL is like an ID. You know? Like, make– Let’s, let’s go to slugs. Let’s, let’s change the permalink structure to slugs. Let’s, like, do some really basic optimization here.
Um, there’s no meta tags on the pa-” Just, like, really basic stuff. But to, to the non-technical crowd, this is like speaking a totally different language, and what they’re hearing is, “I have a chance of getting customers by this, like, technical thing you’re doing.” Um, so this is around, like, you know, between 2015 and 2017.
Um, and then I, I started an agency, uh, with, with a colleague that I was co- uh, another, like, a designer who we would work together. He would get me to do development, and I would get him to do design on projects. And we realized, like, it would be better to just team up because I’m doing value-based pricing on you, and you’re doing it on me.
So let’s just, like, do it at the same time so we don’t have to, like, play this game every time.
[00:25:48] Doug: Right. [00:25:49] Ben Bozzay: and that was, like, a two-and-a-half-year stint. [00:25:52] Doug: Cool. All this on the side, right? [00:25:55] Ben Bozzay: Uh, well this is actually full-time. So I’m full … I went from like senior year in college doing freelancing to like out the door, I’m doing it full-time, and then going into, um, co- co-founding an agency basically, doing that full-time [00:26:09] Doug: it. Okay, cool. And classic– A great value-based discussion there. Classic example is, like, the locksmith. You lock yourself out of the car, and they walk up, they get you in there in 30 seconds, and you have to pay, like, $300 or $400, and it’s because of the outcome, not how long it takes. Because, I mean, you would’ve been stuck locked out of your car for hours or whatever, or you would… [00:26:36] Ben Bozzay: Sure [00:26:37] Doug: Yeah, so value-based, and yeah, great way to reframe it, and then you’re like, “Oh, an hourly person.” Like, I, I am giving you this solution. Like, here is the new, the new world [00:26:49] Ben Bozzay: Right [00:26:50] Doug: your problem. So okay, great. You do this for a few years. Let’s fast-forward to, um, we’re in the COVID timeframe. So what happened then? Tell me about your, your job situation, and this is the origin of, you know, solving your own problem here, right? [00:27:07] Ben Bozzay: Yeah. So I, um, the, the agency I co-founded, we did, did that for like two and a half years. It ultimately didn’t work out. The partner accepted a job from, uh, one of our customers and, like, got a really good job out of it. And then I had to go back to the job market, and at this point I’ve never had, like, a big boy job.Like you know, I’ve had an internship before this, but I’ve just been working for myself. So I’m doing the interviews. Um, I’m not even sure what to go into. Like, should I do marketing? Should I do software? Should I do, uh, consulting? Um, so I was, like, interviewing at all these places. Um, and I eventually got a job at a cybersecurity company as a s- like, a d- developer in their, uh, web department.
So, like, all the web marketing stuff. I was, uh, one of th- uh, one of, like, three developers on their team. And this was, like, just seeing another world. Going from, like, working crazy hours for yourself, working for, like, 10 different people, trying to make payroll, to, like, cushy job at a cybersecurity company where they cater your food.
Uh, your expectations are like, “I have two weeks to do this?” You know?
Corporate Success Unhappy
[00:28:24] Ben Bozzay: Like, it was just wild to me. So I went in and just immediately started killing it. I was like, “This is poorly done,” like, “We’re gonna fix this.” I– And so, like, I, I did well at this, this company. I got moved to their product, uh, team. I got, uh, promoted to a senior title.I was put in charge of projects. And also, I was very unhappy. Like, I was, I was kinda like telling my wife all the time, like, “Yeah, things are going great. I don’t wanna do this for the rest of my life, and I don’t wanna do this even for, like, another five years. Like, I gotta get out of this.” Um, and then, and then co-
[00:29:00] Doug: What, why was it so draining? [00:29:03] Ben Bozzay: It wasn’t, um, it was, wasn’t draining and I, I liked, uh, leading projects and stuff, but it’s– I think it’s in the back of my mind, it’s, it’s, uh, the knowledge that I could build something for myself and capture the full upside of that and the, and the downside obviously. But you work for somebody else, even when you’re getting paid a, a salary, I’m just never ha-happy with that because I want to not have someone to tell me that I have to join this meeting at this date and time, and that I, I have to like fill out these like quarterly reviews and play the corporate game and join these like waste of time meetings.Um, so it just isn’t– it’s– money is like… I, I, I feel really privileged even saying this stuff out loud right now, and I’m realizing how it sounds. But just intuitively I know like this is not how I’m supposed to live my life. I should be doing something else. Um, and so I would always like, you know, I, I would work a lot long hours, but then on the weekends and like nights and early mornings, I would work on other ideas that I had with like the, the hope that maybe one day I, I wouldn’t have to work for someone else
[00:30:17] Doug: Gotcha. Yeah, totally makes sense. There’s a lot of waste in the bigger systems, it does– I ended up in middle management, so if you end up there, then you can actually, like, be super lazy. and there’s a lot of waste in the system. Like you said, you showed up and you were like, “I have two weeks to do this thing that [00:30:39] Ben Bozzay: Right [00:30:40] Doug: like, a day and a half?” of whatever the meetings and the planning and the other, again, just admin and overhead that’s, uh, all the waste in the system. Which is, I mean, it’s necessary, but if you could peel that away, then you’re like, “Oh, wow, the margins are way higher working for yourself doing the exact same work.” Like, a sickening amount, like 2X or something like that. So anyway. All right, so you’re working there for a little while, doing well. You get promoted. going on next?COVID Habits Side Project
[00:31:11] Ben Bozzay: Well, I’m in, um, we’re in the 2020 timeframe. Uh, I’ve– I’m working remotely partially, and then I’m in office for the, you know, one day a week at this place, and COVID happens, and they– there was that, like, three-week period where they locked everything down and, like, you couldn’t leave your house or someone would yell at you.Um, and at that time, I started to realize, like, okay, I’m, like, alone in this apartment getting, like, way too much internet time, and you have the stress of, like, COVID at the same time. So I was just realizing– I was, I was starting to form an unhealthy relationship with my devices and, you know, realizing that I need to s- I need to, like, take this very seriously and l- set up some guardrails around how I’m using, you know, my devices to break some bad habits.
And I was really big into reading, um, books about habits. I, I was, like, doing power lifting and competing in some, um, sports on the side, so you have to be very habit-focused to even make that successful. And so I was always reading those kinds of books, so I realized, like, okay, for this problem, I just need to make it so that there’s a lot of friction between me and, like, a bad habit so that it stops becoming automatic.
So but since I’m a software developer, I know that the bar for that’s pretty high for technology. So I went, you know, I drew on my experience in cybersecurity and was like, “Okay, I’ll just– I’ll set up things the way an enterprise would when they have a lot of money on the line, and they can’t have an employee doing anything shady on their device.”
So I set that system up, and I realized this has solved the problem for me. Like, I’m loving this. Like, I can be working in, in my apartment and not feel like I’m around, like, a box of donuts, you know, like, all the time
[00:33:09] Doug: Yeah. [00:33:10] Ben Bozzay: if that’s even a problem. I mean, some people don’t care about donuts, but it’s a problem for me sometimes. [00:33:14] Doug: Yeah. I’ll eat them all. [00:33:17] Ben Bozzay: Yeah, so like I came up with my own system and realized, all right, if I have this problem, there’s like a ton of people having this problem. So I just– I made a, a YouTube video and a Reddit post about it, and I, I vlogged my whole system. I, I had like a… It’s probably the most boring YouTube video of all time, but I think 300,000 people have watched it at this point.Um, but I was getting all these comments from people that were like, “This is great. I’ve– This was a, been a huge problem for me.” And then people asking to pay me to like set things up for them. And so that’s the light bulb moment, like, okay, there is something here, and it’s something I’m kind of interested in.
So, um, I started blogging about it a bit more on, on like the Medium platform, and I would make YouTube videos, and I’d promote them on Reddit. Um, but I didn’t, I didn’t sell anything, and it was, it was like a side project because my full-time job was like pretty intense. Like, I was put in charge of like two projects every quarter that I’d have to deliver every– on a weekly basis, like an update to the whole engineering team.
So I couldn’t slack at all. So this was like early, early morning and weekends when I was doing this. Um, but yeah, that’s kind of when I, I realized like, I think there’s something here
[00:34:35] Doug: Gotcha. And then it was through, um, the Reddit post, your blogging and YouTube that you had, like, the initial audience. Can you talk a little bit about that approach just generally? [00:34:50] Ben Bozzay: Yeah, so the YouTube video, um, it’s– it got a co- it got, like, 10,000 views pretty quickly, which was, like, I, I haven’t had anything do that, uh, before really. And the Reddit post went on the front page, and it stayed there for a while. Um, and I was just getting a lot of interactions from people, which is a good s- it, it’s a good sign that there’s reciprocity involved when people are taking time to even comment.Um, and from there, I just started publishing on Medium ’cause I didn’t have time to, like, throw up a website and, and all that stuff. And people started, uh… I started seeing the metrics on Medium and realizing this stuff’s actually ranking on Google now, and partially because I’m driving traffic from Reddit and from YouTube, so I think there’s some algorithm thing happening behind the scenes where it’s seeing the social traction and prioritizing me on search engines.
Um,
[00:35:46] Doug: Got it. [00:35:47] Ben Bozzay: yeah, that’s– that was the story. [00:35:51] Doug: And then, um, well then, I mean, the thing is, like, you didn’t have any ulterior motives at the time. that selling something is a, is an issue ’cause, like, you have to have a reason to do whatever it is you’re doing. But you were like, “I’m sharing this information,” and it was actually helpful. you obviously, y- you were realizing like, “Oh, wait, people are offering me money.”Paid Membership Layoff Leap
[00:36:14] Doug: So how did you transition that into some revenue? [00:36:19] Ben Bozzay: Yeah, I realized, like, I, I would have to come up with something that allowed myself to scale because I can’t be doing, you know, meetings or whatever alongside my job. And I had no interest in doing, like, consulting for people w- for that problem ’cause it just– it doesn’t work remotely to do that kind of thing.Um, so I decided the best way to do it was to fund, fund myself doing research and writing these things, and the best way to fund myself would be to do paid content, which you’re obviously familiar with ’cause you’ve, you’ve been in the course world before. Um, so I built a, a website, and I put up all my free content there.
I redirected it, and then I had, like, “Here’s the premium portal. If you want, like, setup for each device step by step instead of going through 50 of, 50 of my articles and piecing it together, pay for this membership, and then you get access to it.” Um, and that was how I’d interact with people. And then some people would email me, and I would kind of point them to the guides, but I wouldn’t spend a lot of time, like, doing consulting over email.
[00:37:29] Doug: Okay. And obviously, um, one issue with this– Well, and h-how did you do the pricing? How did you charge? I was gonna say, you know, that timeframe, I think maybe online courses weren’t as popular. People were like, “Let’s do, uh, memberships or communities,” or whatever kind of stuff the kids are into these days.But obviously, once people get this shit set up, they don’t need to keep paying you. It’s like problem solved, like they’re done and they’re, they’re out the door, right? So how’d you set it up initially?
[00:38:02] Ben Bozzay: Yeah. Well, that, that would have been the smart thing to think about from the beginning. But I went straight into like, “Here’s a subscription that’s monthly, and hopefully you’ll stick for more– stick around for more than one month and after you’ve read the material and implemented it.” Um, and so yeah, I, I…It was like $7 a month. It was like a very small membership fee. And so I didn’t make much money off of this within the first year. But I was just kind of thinking of the MVP approach, where, um, you know, you try to get something very focused out that helps you prove traction. Like, will someone give me $1 for this?
Will it, you know– Is this valuable to anybody? And then you layer on from there. So I wasn’t too concerned with like, I need this thing to be super profitable, and I understood it’s flawed to have like– to expect someone to subscribe for 12 months. But I had like the roadmap in mind of like, there’s gonna be paid content, but then I’m gonna bundle in, uh, something that I’m already selling, like telling people about and just making it part of that subscription.
So they’ll get this paid content, but the main reason they’ll stay around is to, is to stick with that service that I’m recommending
[00:39:13] Doug: Gotcha. Okay. Cool. And then, uh, you got laid off [00:39:18] Ben Bozzay: Yeah, so this– fast-forward to, like, ’23. This was 2023, um, or 2022. I’m, I’m at the cybersecurity company, very burnt out. Having lots of, you know, issues at home as a result and just realizing, you know, I really wanna go do my own thing. Um, but I j- I’m not quite there financially, and I’m preaching to the choir here ’cause you’re into, like, financial independence and stuff.I wasn’t financially independent enough to be able to, like, lose my full-time job and do it full-time, and I don’t even think it was making two– $2,000 a month at the time. It was, it was, like, lower than that. So I realized I needed a little bit more time for the side project to be able to pay for, like, my expenses.
Um, and so I basically took a job offer for a demotion at another company for a very easy job, uh, switching from, like, a very promising career path where I’d just gotten promoted again. And you c- you can imagine the conversation with my wife was like, “Yeah, I just got promoted. Also, I’m gonna take a demotion with the hope that someday I can leave that job kinda quickly and do my own thing.”
Um, and she actually was, like, very much on board with it, uh, which was surprising to me. But so I, I left the cybersecurity company, killed my career, right? Just, like, cut the head off right then. Switched to this very easy job, which was surprisingly paying pretty well. And then I had a lot more energy to, like, in my free time I could do, you know, work on the side project that I really wanted to work on and I wasn’t as drained mentally.
Because even if, you know, you’re, you’re doing something for, from 9:00 to 5:00, if it’s intense 9:00 to 5:00, you don’t have the energy in the morning or at night or on the weekend. You need that time to, like, uh, recuperate, right? So this other job was, you know, it was an, it’s a typical 9:00 to 5:00, but it was like I didn’t have to think as hard basically.
Um, so I did that job I think, I think it was four or five months and then the company laid off like 10% of the workforce and I was, you know, uh, last in first out basically.
[00:41:35] Doug: Okay. Yep [00:41:37] Ben Bozzay: but also I was like this totally makes sense. Like I would’ve laid me off too. You guys hired me into this team that didn’t need anybody.I’ve got nothing to do, um, and this work is not hard and you’re paying way too much ’cause the, ’cause the hiring bubble. So I totally understood the decision and then I, I basically just decided like all right I’m gonna focus on my side project full time and see if I can, uh, grow it but I’m also gonna look for another job at the same time ’cause I don’t really believe I can do it
[00:42:08] Doug: Gotcha. So interesting. So when you, um, y- you understood why, um, you were getting laid off, how’d, how’d you feel? Were you like, is, um, devastating,” or you’re like, “Okay, um, now I have a chance and I, I didn’t have to quit to try and do it full time. Like, someone gave me a little push”? [00:42:36] Ben Bozzay: Yeah, I mean, well, let me know if this matches your experience, but I was… It was a mixture of, like, being stunned. You know, you get the email and you’re locked out of everything. You’re like, “Whoa, I’ve never had this happen before.” And then excitement, like, it’s, it’s a mixture of, of fear and excitement almost.And then being… Going through this, like, back and forth of, like, how am I gonna pay bills? What if I can’t get another job? What if my side project fails? Uh, was it kinda like that in your situation?
[00:43:07] Doug: A great description. Yeah. I was like, um, k- similar although I didn’t go to another, um, job. I just got laid off from a company that I worked, uh, at for about nine years. But I was just like, “Ah, yeah, this has been kind of a drag. Totally makes sense.” I was like, “All right. Now I have a chance,” and I didn’t even have to, like, quit on my own.So yeah, it was pretty good. I mean, I, I was, like, pretty excited, like, right away.
[00:43:41] Ben Bozzay: But did you already have like in the back of your mind like, “Okay, if I get laid off, here’s what I’m gonna do”? Did you ever have that going in parallel? [00:43:49] Doug: I, I think so, but I wasn’t sure. So this was about 2015, I had a month or two of success over the last two years. So, and it, it was like a rollercoaster ride. So I would make like, um, like full-time income for like a month or two, and then it would like drop off. So think just algorithm updates or, uh, Amazon affiliate commission rate changes or something like that.So just all of a sudden external forces like really kill the revenue. I knew some things that could work, but I wasn’t sure what. So like you said, at some point someone was like, “Hey, can you build a website?” And I was like, “I know how to do that.” So I tried a few different things all at the same time before I arrived at like, this is the kind of work that I wanna do that like suits my personality well. extremely similar in that when I got laid off, I think I was maybe making like 1,500 a month. So really cool on the side, not close to like full-time income though.
[00:45:07] Ben Bozzay: Right. And yeah, I t- I d- I totally get that. And I think in my case, we had just bought … Yeah, we had just closed on a house. [00:45:17] Doug: Oh, dang. [00:45:18] Ben Bozzay: yeah, and, um, we were planning to have a, our first kid, uh, and I didn’t really wanna, like, slow down the timeline. So I basically just put, like… I put as many stressors on my plate as possible, and, um, I interviewed at places after this too, because, uh, yeah, you just like, you, you have to be s- responsible.And I think the hardest thing happened, like, I th- it was I think a few months after this. I got a job offer that was more than I was making before, and I remember thinking to myself, “If I take this thing, I’m about to have a kid. I will never have this opportunity again. Like, I will never be able to, to do this.”
And I think my wife actually convinced me to basically not take it, and that we would basically be very careful with spending money. Um, so I, yeah, I don’t know if I would’ve done it, because I w- I would’ve, I would’ve felt too much responsibility,
[00:46:22] Doug: Yeah [00:46:22] Ben Bozzay: with a, with a kid on the way, um, and, like, paying for a mortgage on, and all that.So a lot of credit to my wife for even, for any of this stuff working out, honestly.
[00:46:32] Doug: Yeah, really. 100%. Yeah, ’cause my wife was not into it, and even, I mean, even when I basically stopped working, I think she was still, like, shocked that it had ever worked out at all, and I, like, worked for myself for, like, a decade is… It’s pretty funny. Um, but yeah, [00:46:49] Ben Bozzay: Well, it’s kinda rational. [00:46:50] Doug: Yeah. It is. like, uh, she’s just way more conservative and I mean, even better with money too, but, like, from an entrepreneur standpoint, it’s like you don’t have all the information and you have to make decisions, and you don’t know if it’s gonna work. Um, can make… I mean, you could set things up to reduce risk and downside, and I think that’s probably the way to go. but yeah, yeah. Great that your wife was like, “Go ahead. Give it a shot.” Um, it makes [00:47:22] Ben Bozzay: Well, have you found that your, your intuition has, like your gut feel for things, has that gotten better, especially now that you’ve had more time under your belt? [00:47:33] Doug: I think, so I haven’t been doing a lot of, um, I guess creating or building things recently. So I think maybe my intuition’s worse because now as an older, uh, hopefully wiser person, I think I got really lucky with timing, and I’m like, “I don’t know if I could do anything again.” It’s one of those, um, [00:47:57] Ben Bozzay: Yeah, totally [00:47:58] Doug: Dunning-Kruger effect where I’m like, I know a lot and I’m like an expert in several things, so I feel like I don’t know anything because I know a lot about certain things.So I’m like, “Oh yeah, I think my intuition is probably worse, um, than it used to be,” ’cause I think, um, personally, I’m just like, “I don’t think I could do a lot of the stuff that I, I should probably be able to do.” I don’t know.
[00:48:23] Ben Bozzay: Yeah, it’s, it’s funny. Um, have, have you ever watched Shark Tank? [00:48:27] Doug: No, I never. I, funny enough, I never have [00:48:29] Ben Bozzay: if you go on, um… Yeah, Shark Tank was very helpful because there are all these people that go up and they, you know, they pitch on the stage to these billionaires and millionaires. And they’ll go up and be like, “You know, my name is, is Don, and I, like, I made this, like, fur toy for puppies, and I make $600,000 a year, and I’m just trying to grow it.”And you’re like, “And I’ve, I’m working out of my basement, and, like, I still hand mail everything.” And you’re sitting there going like, “What are you talking about? Like, you’re not making money doing that. Like , like, you’re lying or something.” Uh, and, uh, and in the back… Also with that, you re- you realize that, you know, some people, it’s just like putting one foot in front of the other, and you, you learn from your mistakes, and you make it work.
But then as you get older and wiser, you know about all the things that can go wrong. So your intuition is like, “Ah, you’re gonna get crushed by Walmart, dude. Like, don’t even do that. Like, why would you even bother?”
[00:49:28] Doug: Yeah, [00:49:28] Ben Bozzay: just like, “Oh, here’s an idea. Let me go do it.” [00:49:31] Doug: Yeah. Yeah, 100 per- I mean, it is one of the, those magical, um, combinations where you have to be, like, naive enough to try it, but, like, smart enough to, like, execute, and, like, the intersection is, like, where some cool stuff happens, so. Um, okay. So I, I do see we’re, uh, we’re going a, a little bit long, so I’m gonna fast-forward on this story just a little bit here.A couple of things I wanna ask you about.
AI Copycats Growth Wrap
[00:50:15] Doug: So when, um, and we may have to put placeholders in other stuff catch up some other time in the future, but when you, um, were developing the, tool and the strategy and, and that sort of thing AI coding was not as big, and I think now it– I mean, whenever there’s a successful product, there’s always copycats or people trying to come into that market ’cause they see that it’s profitable. I’m curious how AI coding and people trying to just, like, copy successful products, where I’m sure, I mean, the strategies are probably like, “Go out and find products that look like they’re [00:50:44] Ben Bozzay: Yeah [00:50:45] Doug: Try to reverse engineer them.” I’m sure there are YouTube channels and people just trying to teach that. So what have you seen over the last, I don’t know, two years when AI coding has become really powerful? [00:50:58] Ben Bozzay: Yeah, like when, when I started out, I was, I was hand co-coding everything. Um, I was having to be really thoughtful with architecture choices, uh, ’cause I couldn’t maintain things or put out fires during the day. So, um, what was good about that is, is I got a lot of experience that I think people now are not getting, and why you make certain decisions, why, why…what the trade-offs are, why you don’t do certain things that you could do if you’re using AI. Um, so I, I got a good amount of judgment that I think an incumbent wouldn’t necessarily have just because, you know, you have training wheels on now. Um, but yeah, in the last– I’d say more, more so the last year with like Fable and Claude getting much better at agentic coding, I’ve had a lot of people try to copy what I’m doing.
I’ve even have customers who the reason they’re a customer is they’re trying to reverse engineer it, and I even will like get on calls with people that have told me, “I’m building a competing product. I wanna learn your secrets. Uh, can you do a call?” And I’ll just do it for the fun of it, um, and then try to get them to like, “Hey, why don’t we just like partner and, you know, work together instead of you just like competing?”
And Yeah, so it’s, it’s hard. And I, I have, um, colleagues in the industry that, uh, have their, their, they’re leading businesses in the same type of niche and, uh, focusing on different things that have been overtly ripped off. Like I, I had a call with a friend last week who was like, “Yeah, this customer had Fable go through and like reverse engineer th- from the binary level,” like which is very, very hard to do, and open sourced it, and basically has been trying to cannibalize my business.
And I have no legal recourse because he’s overseas in some, some country where like there’s no hope of you doing anything about it. Um, so yeah, I think there’s this constant threat now that you used to not have. It would take longer for someone to pop up and start doing the same thing when they realized it was profitable.
And it’s also risky for me to go on and just tell people like, “Hey, here’s this thing that’s pretty profitable and I, I think it’s a good business.” Um, but I’ve also learned some things that I think these people miss. And one thing is, is there’s the marketing side to a business, and it’s very hard to acquire customers at, uh, a profitable price point.
Um, and a customer acquisition cost is the thing… Customer acquisition and the cost of it is what kills a lot of startups before they even get off the ground. So you have to solve that along with the technical hurdles, and then people actually have to trust you because you’re, you’re asking them to put like really sensitive stuff on their devices, and you don’t even have your face on the thing you’re building.
Or if, or if you do, you don’t like have any personal history with it, or you don’t really care about it, and people can’t exactly connect those things. So, um, I’m aware that there’s a good bit of ignorance behind copycats, but I’m also aware that there’s, there’s a segment of my audience that would go to a copycat.
And that’s okay with me because they’re maybe not the customer I want around anyway, if, if like they’re extremely focused on cost and they’ll just like go take something that ripped me off and they don’t even know who the person is or if, if the product works. Um, so yeah, it, uh… I will say it’s been a challenging time because of that, but s- despite all this, my business has been growing and, uh, I’ve been able to ship more because of A- AI.
Uh, but I’m, yeah, constantly dealing with, with that threat.
[00:54:48] Doug: Yeah. It, it’s interesting that there are certainly parallels. Um, I mean, it’s like a timeless thing, right? Uh, in business. Like, if s- something is successful, people will try to copy it whatever meet market demand. And I do remember, like, with just the online courses that I did, even still, I mean, I put out some course in, like, 2014, and I get little alerts that people are still trying to share it on whatever the… know, you could join the websites [00:55:23] Ben Bozzay: Hmm [00:55:23] Doug: all the courses unlocked, and I’m like, “Why are you taking a course from, like, 2014 about link building that is completely irrelevant?” I mean, this is nonsense. I, I know it’s just a weird marketing thing. But all that to say, when I first saw it, it really bothered me in 2014, then I was like, “Am I gonna try to battle these people or just keep moving?”‘Cause those are not customers I want anyway. can fuck
[00:55:50] Ben Bozzay: Yeah. Yeah, totally. Yeah [00:55:53] Doug: so is there anything that you’re doing, like, specifically to account for that, um, just from the business perspe- perspective or marketing or anything like that? [00:56:05] Ben Bozzay: Yeah, I mean, I, I put a lot of effort into building a, a marketing asset, which, um, like when I publish content now, there’s a very high chance it ranks for what I try to rank for. And I spend a lot of time describing the business across a lot of different content streams so that what– AI knows what Tech Lockdown is, it knows what Living Room is, it knows the challenges it’s solving for.So when someone searches for really specific things like, um, how do I, uh, prevent my kid from listening to music that I don’t approve of, right? Like very niche, like very long tail term. Um, the AI search has been actually helpful in the sense where I’m getting probably 10,000 searches less each month now because of these changes, but my s- my, um, my hit rate is higher.
I get more people that sign up with less traffic. And I think it’s because, um, AI will do a fan out search query based on someone’s just garbled like I spoke into the microphone and described my problem in a paragraph. It does all these, um, sub-queries that are more specific. It compiles it into a summary, and you’re a lot of times used as a source.
So, um, there’s that, and there’s also YouTube content where that’s indexed on Google now. These transcripts for these videos is used as a source in a lot of these, uh, search– searches. So you can– Like, it’s a good idea to use other mediums here. And I realize a lot of competitors, like, weren’t willing to make videos, uh, that were actually helpful.
And so that’s an advantage I have as well is, like, I, I make videos, they get indexed on, on Google. People– Uh, almost every customer I talk to is mentioning a YouTube video. Some-something that they saw or some article they read. So, um, inbound’s a big focus. I don’t pay for ads because I’ve never figured that out.
I don’t know if you ever figured out ads, but I just burn money with it.
[00:58:10] Doug: Yeah, yeah. Never, never quite worked out for me either. as we’re wrapping up, like I said, we’re, we won’t end up covering everything, but we’re gonna actually do a second episode where we’re gonna talk, um, personal finance stuff so people can check that out. It’ll come out, uh, next week. But one thing I was gonna ask is have you thought about, um, selling or setting things up so that you can sell?I mean, what’d you say? You’re at, uh, MRR of 20K. You could probably sell it for a pretty nice chunk. Um, you may have to stick around for six months or whatever kind of deal to transition it, but is that something that you have thought about?
[00:58:55] Ben Bozzay: Um, yeah, actually I had a company, a competitor actually approach me about, uh, buying me out, um, earlier this year actually, because, uh, he realized the marketing asset that I have with the business and that he could really, um, throw it at his products. So, uh, yeah, I mean, I– the offer didn’t make sense like from a, especially from a fire perspective.I wasn’t gonna be able to retire off of something like that. So I think it’s important to have cash flow, uh, especially in the volatility with like the job market, and I would be an idiot to sell something that I either couldn’t retire off of or would require me to look for a job in five years when I don’t know what the market’s gonna look like.
Um, I have thought about it, and there’s other things I would wanna work on. Like, I probably wouldn’t just like go sit on a beach somewhere. Um, but yeah, I just… I’m not sure if people are in the mode to acquire things as much now, ’cause the mindset is that I could just build the same thing. Um, so I don’t know if I’ll ever get an acquisition offer again like the one I got this year.
[01:00:05] Doug: Gotcha. Yeah, it’s very interesting, and it would be– I mean, it’s the perfect, like, strategic acquisition where, like, they have something running. Maybe they have figured out ads, and then they could, like, layer on your organic growth, um, and, like, low acquisition cost and all that stuff. Anyway, al-always interesting, especially, like, as I look back, it’s like I always should’ve s-sold anything sooner, and then I observe friends where it was like, yeah, they…It was always too late. But you– I mean, different financial goals and constraints overall. Um, last thing, you mentioned, um, in another interview that I listened to over on the Niche Pursuits podcast, um, you mentioned that you started with YouTube, you did a few videos, and then you kind of, like, took a break a little bit.
I mean, YouTube can be, um, challenging from the motivation standpoint, um, from, you know, content you’re gonna cover that fits the marketing funnel. So are you gonna, like, keep doing the same video, like, every week or something, or are you gonna, like, build a bigger funnel? But, like, where are you now with YouTube? Like you said, it seems to be a very good channel to bring in the right people that do convert into customers.
[01:01:33] Ben Bozzay: Yeah, I’ve, um, I’ve tried to make YouTube work. Like I– The first probably five or so, maybe six videos got like, you know, a couple hundred thousand views across all of them, and the more recent ones I’ve made, like, you know, a good one might get 3,000 views, something like that, and then a-another one might get like 300.It just varies. Um, and I don’t really… Uh, there’s all kinds of problems I have with YouTube where like the audience is kind of split. You have parents that, that want solutions, and then you have adults that want solutions for themselves, and I’m kind of talking to almost two audiences, which is you’re not really supposed to do that with YouTube.
I’m no expert. I just read some stuff that was like, “Have this one way that you do things and talk to like one segment. Don’t try to talk to everybody.” Um, but I’ve discovered that, yeah, I’m just not– I’m probably not a great YouTuber, but the thing that I think I do well with YouTube is I make things that, uh, people search for and they find.
So my analytics basically show that, uh, if anyone watches the video, it’s because they found it in search on YouTube or on Google, and the video, like, it’s helpful. It like walks someone through how to solve a problem, uh, and then it’s usually like I pin a, a comment that links to something relevant, like a resource.
So I would have like a written guide for the video that I link to. People go to that, and they see CTAs for related stuff, right? Um, so I’ve tried to really… Like I can’t, I can’t be a YouTube influencer. I’ve realized that. I can, I can like make YouTube videos, but I’m just not an influencer, and I won’t have like…
I don’t have that gifting, I guess. Um, I’d love it if I could hire someone to do that, but what I realized is that, uh, as the founder, you’re really the best person to sell a lot of the time, or it has to be someone with equity. It can’t just be like someone you’re paying on, on a contract. Um, so I have not– I haven’t cracked the code, but I have gotten a lot out of YouTube.
[01:03:39] Doug: Yeah. It’s an interesting, medium overall. but I think you’re looking at it in a healthy way, ’cause like if people really get into it, it gets weird. Yeah. So, okay. We’ll, uh, we’ll wrap this one up. I think we got through a good chunk of it. Hopefully, I mean, I think the story is really, you know, fun to hear about, and then the challenges along the way. where can people find you if they wanna follow along, check out some of the stuff you’re working on? [01:04:13] Ben Bozzay: Uh, yeah. So my– the thing I’m spending most of my time on is techlockdown.com and, uh, that’s the device management, DNS filtering, all the, all the stuff for locking down devices. Um, I have a Twitter, but I don’t… or X account, but I don’t post on it, um, so I’m not even gonna mention it. And, uh, there’s livingroomapp.com which is the iPhone and iPad app that, uh, parents use to monitor their devices.Surprisingly, adults use it for like an accountability app that’s really strict. Um, but those two things are like my bread and butter. That’s what I’m spending all my time on right now and, uh, if you, if you wanna email me you can contact me through one of those websites and I’m happy to talk to anyone that emails
[01:05:00] Doug: Very good. a lot. Really appreciate it [01:05:03] Ben Bozzay: Yeah, thanks for having me on, Doug. This was fun