Omer (00:11.840)
Welcome to another episode of the SaaS Podcast.
I'm your host, Omer Khan and this is the show where I interview proven founders and industry experts who share their stories, strategies and insights to help you build, launch and grow your SaaS business.
Today's interview is with Jesse Mecham.
Jesse is the founder of youf Need a Budget, a software product that helps you with your personal budgeting.
Jesse is a former CPA turned software entrepreneur.
He founded you'd Need a budget in 2004 and has successfully grown it into a multimillion dollar business with tens of thousands of users from all over the world.
Jesse, welcome to the show.
Jesse (00:53.370)
Thank you.
I appreciate you having me on.
Omer (00:55.530)
So I've told our audience just a little bit about you.
Tell us in your own words a little bit more about you personally and then give us an overview of your product and business.
Jesse (01:02.890)
You bet.
So I've been married to my wife Julie for almost 12 years.
We got married pretty young.
And when I speak at conferences and things, I get more questions about the fact that I have five kids than about what I talked about.
So that usually pops up.
But I have five great kids, so I spend lots of times being, you know, a lot of time being a dad.
And we just, the boys and I just got into drones a little bit, so we've been flying stuff around the house that's been a lot of fun.
Omer (01:35.420)
Nice.
Jesse (01:36.060)
And I'm, I just like to like to garden and grow food in my backyard and kind of take a break from the digital world and go really analog with that.
So that's, that's just a little bit about me.
Omer (01:48.710)
Awesome.
Now before we dive into details, we like to kick things off with a success quote just to better understand what drives and motivates our guests.
What is one of your favorite success quotes?
Jesse (01:59.830)
This is one that I just came across a couple of days ago.
It's Peter Drucker and he.
It's just about focus and I think focus has a lot to do with converting prospects into customers.
He says the single minded ones, the monomaniacs, are the only true achievers.
The rest, the ones like me may have more fun, but they fritter themselves away.
Whenever anything is being accomplished, it is being done.
I have learned by a monomaniac with a mission that resonated with me.
Omer (02:31.550)
Wow, that's pretty deep.
Can you give me an example of how, how that.
Or maybe not the quote, but this, this principle of being focused has helped you in your business life.
Jesse (02:42.430)
I, I've noticed over the years that we procrastinate you know, I think human nature, we procrastinate.
And I've noticed that as I've been able to develop the skill to work on the harder, bigger things, the things where you have to really dig in, where you have to have meaningful chunks of time devoted to it, I've noticed that that's where the real progress is made.
And on the flip side, I've noticed there are times when I, you know, you can find little, little things you can do to kind of work around your business.
Little things that give you a buzz, you know, a little bit of a, like a.
It's like a little drug, you know, like, oh, I took care of that tiny thing, I took care of that tiny thing and you're feeling productive, but you aren't actually being productive.
So that, that monomaniac, that was the word that resonated with me from that quote, was the idea that you have this one thing, and I mean this from a day to day level or, or as a company that the same thing applies.
A company that is focused on that one thing, they're really good at will excel.
And just like when you're focused day to day on that one thing for the day, that will really move the needle.
I feel like that's where, where the progress is made.
Omer (03:52.660)
So, yeah, I think that's huge.
I mean, when I was, you know, in a corporate job, it was really hard to try and find that focus time, because your day just gets split up into these little chunks from meeting to meeting.
And now that I'm in more control of my own time, I'm finding that, you know, I've moved.
I'm starting to move away from that guy who would do some little task and go and put it on my checklist just so I could mark it as completed.
To trying to pick one thing every day that I try to focus on and that, I agree with you, that makes a huge difference.
Jesse (04:25.800)
Yeah.
And.
And you can kind of end the day and say, you know, this was, this was a good day.
Like, if you can get that one thing done or those two things done, you can say the day was good and you can kind of rest easy and relax a little bit.
So it's not about being more frantic.
I think it's actually about being less frantic and a little more calm and focused on those important, important items.
Omer (04:45.130)
I agree.
Tell me, what were you doing before you started?
You need a budget?
Jesse (04:51.610)
I was, let's see, that was 2004.
So I was, I still had quite a bit of school left.
I was getting my master's degree in accounting.
And the whole impetus for starting, you know, we call it YNAB for short, was that I could make rent basically.
So I was working on the side.
I was teaching German part time and going to school full time and just, you know, being a student.
So I didn't start off with any big grand plans to start a company.
I really just wanted to.
To make rent.
So I did, I made rent finally.
But.
Omer (05:28.660)
But at that point you wanted to be a cpa, that that's where your career was headed?
Jesse (05:32.820)
Yeah, my career was definitely there.
And, and the school I went to, BYU out in Utah, they had had an.
Or have an excellent accounting program and they do a really good job placing graduates.
And so I just thought I'd go on that track and, you know, staffer and then manager and then partner and make a quarter of a million dollars and live the good life.
Omer (05:55.310)
All right, so let tell me, where did the idea from for you need a budget come from?
Jesse (06:00.590)
It was my own creation that I made for me and my wife.
When we first got married.
We were super, super poor.
We didn't own a car, we didn't own a computer.
Our apartment was awful.
I mean, we were really poor.
We were happy, but just didn't have any money.
And I realized that if we wanted to maximize what little we had, we would need to do some kind of budgeting.
So I originally built a spreadsheet and about a year into that, it was working really well for us despite our meager circumstances, and we ended up selling that.
So I originally launched it on a spreadsheet, which blows people's minds, but it was a great, what do they say, a minimum viable product.
It was a.
You can't get any more minimum than rolling out a spreadsheet.
So that was what I had done.
Omer (06:51.310)
How long did it take for you to go from using the spreadsheet for yourself to finding that first customer?
Jesse (07:02.830)
It was about a little over a year.
Let's see, I started using the spreadsheet in April of 03 and got my first customer in September of 04.
Omer (07:15.630)
And how did you find that customer?
Jesse (07:17.870)
We were running, I think it was through pay per click ads through Google, which thankfully were way, way cheaper back then.
So I could totally manage to just mess every sort of thing up and still have it be okay.
But yeah, it was through pay per click.
Omer (07:36.520)
Before we get into more details, I want to make sure that the listeners get a better understanding of you need a budget.
Can you talk a little bit about who your target customers are and what the top pain points that you're trying to solve for them.
Jesse (07:52.360)
Absolutely.
Our customer we don't define really with demographics, but we define them with events that they have experienced.
The events would be something like graduating from college, getting married, getting into a relationship where they're sharing their finances, buying a house, let's see, having a retirement meeting at work where they recognize that they're behind getting their W2 in the mail and recognizing that they don't have, you know, they made a lot of money and don't have anything to show for it.
So we go off of those events, and that gives us a moment in that customer's life or potential customer's life where they're open to our message that they need a budget.
And the ultimate pain point that we try and fix across all of those events is just the stress that people feel in trying to answer the question of can I afford blank, whatever it may be?
So that is the essence of what we do.
People come to us with all sorts of different ideas.
I want to pay off debt, I want to do this or that.
But at the end of the day, when it's all kind of distilled down to just one thing, they want to know, am I okay?
And can I afford whatever's next?
Can I afford vacation?
Can I afford the light bill?
It's all the same thing.
And so we give them that control.
And that's the pain point that we address.
Omer (09:19.550)
Now, the business today, even though, you know, we're going to focus more on the software side of it, to me, it seems to be a business that's really built around a method, and software is just one way that you help your customers.
It also seems like you guys are a content and education company as well.
Jesse (09:45.290)
Absolutely.
Yeah.
The software, we say this a lot in the company.
The software plays second fiddle to the method.
And we recognize that what we do is we teach and we educate for free and happily.
And then we found that when we do our education effectively, where people are understanding and where they're motivated, then they naturally buy the software.
It's the easiest sale you could possibly make.
So we definitely have thrown all of our eggs in the basket of that method in teaching those four rules.
And it's helped us differentiate in that way.
Omer (10:23.770)
Did you start out by focusing on educating people or no, or did it become a kind of a marketing strategy to help?
Jesse (10:33.610)
It was definitely an evolution.
Right.
So you write your first bit of copy, and then it's horrible.
And then as you learn more about your customers and learn more about your business and the real value that you're adding.
You refine that copy.
So when I first launched, I was, you know, we were just selling tiny bit of the spreadsheet and this is within the first year.
And then I was rewriting my sales copy and I recognized in that process that we had these four rules.
And that was, I mean, I switched the entire, you know, landing page, that front page, I switched it all over to talk about these rules and suddenly my sales doubled.
And I don't mean that like I'm estimating like they truly doubled.
And then the next month they doubled again.
And it went from very small sales to still very small sales.
But for me it was very motivating to see that just the changing of the message was transformational to our ability to speak to the customer.
We were suddenly talking about benefits and hitting them in with, you know, with the pain points instead of walking them through a spreadsheet that doesn't convert anybody.
Omer (11:44.890)
What are the four rules?
Jesse (11:46.490)
First rule is to give every dollar a job, every single dollar, every single penny.
It helps you create what we call smart scarcity, where you become creative and you don't feel like you have infinite money and your decision making improves.
The second rule is saving for a rainy day.
So you look ahead for larger, less frequent expenses like Christmas in a couple months or Thanksgiving here that's coming up or whatever it may be.
And you basically make those into monthly amounts and then you even out those cash flow ups and downs and you do that.
The third rule is that you can change your plan, change your budget whenever you want.
You say you roll with the punches.
It just means that the budget is only as accurate as the information you have.
And so if new information pops up, you just make adjustments and keep going.
And the fourth rule is very unique to us in that we tell people to live on last month's income.
And it's a goal, it's something they aspire to, but we like them to get out of the paycheck to paycheck cycle, kind of step away from the edge a little bit and get some breathing room.
And then their bill paying process is super simplified.
They eliminate the variable income problem that entrepreneurs like yourself deal with and they basically just sleep better at night with that one month buffer, we call it.
So those are the four rules.
That's all we run on.
Omer (13:10.030)
So when I think of budget planning, I kind of have this idea that people are going to tell me, you can't go to Starbucks anymore.
Jesse (13:20.150)
Totally true.
Yeah.
Not that you can't go, but that you would feel that way.
Yeah.
Omer (13:26.030)
Do you tell your customers that?
Jesse (13:28.190)
No, no, the budget's just a plan.
It's like I would tell people, why don't you budget for vacation then if you want to do something fun like, the budget is not a diet, it's a plan.
It would be like saying to a basketball coach, this is probably a horrible analogy, but like going to a basketball coach and the basketball coach saying, well, I don't want to have a game plan because I don't want to restrict my players decision making.
You know what I'm saying?
It's like, well, no, you have a game plan so that you can achieve an objective, and that's.
That's all there is to it.
So if your objective is daily Starbucks, because you love that part of your routine, then yeah, you absolutely do it.
Like, I used to really love golf, and, you know, it's like the most expensive sport ever, but I was enjoying it so much, being outside, buying the expensive equipment.
There was just something.
I was just really loving about it for a while.
And so I didn't get.
I wasn't down about the fact that I was spending $100 on a, you know, rod of metal to pretend that it would improve my putting.
You just, you know, you find stuff you enjoy and you run after it.
I really want a Tesla, right?
Like, I haven't bought one yet, but I really want one.
So one of these days in my.
When my Civic dies, I'll get one.
And we aren't supposed to just be austere, right?
Like, the budget is just a way for you to get what you want.
Most people don't want credit card debt, so that naturally goes away, you know, but it's just, it's just a plan.
Omer (14:58.580)
So that's a great way to frame it.
Okay, so you, you went out, you.
You did some AdWords advertising, you found your first customer.
How much did you sell the spreadsheet for?
Jesse (15:12.580)
I tried it.
$10?
Well, 995.
Right.
I tried it 995, because for me, my rent was 350 bucks.
So I just reverse engineered that and thought, I'm at zero cost, right?
So.
Or virtually.
So I said, well, I just need to sell like 40 of these and I'll make rent.
So a little over one a day, this is my thinking, you know.
And then I launched it.
And two weeks in, I was spending a little money on AdWords and nobody was buying.
And there was a point where I was getting enough traffic you know, you would reasonably expect a conversion to happen.
And it wasn't happening.
So I was chatting with a friend and he said, well, you're selling it for too low, you should double it.
So I went home and changed the price to 1995 and then got my first sale that day.
Omer (16:00.200)
Wow.
Jesse (16:01.240)
So there's that classic.
It's so classic that we, if you're a freelancer or you know, you're selling your product, we always, it's like the owner of the product or the person with the knowledge always discounts what they're providing.
And that's exactly what I was doing.
So I doubled the price and suddenly people didn't think it was cheap anymore and started buying it bit by bit.
Omer (16:26.870)
Okay, so did you change anything else or just.
Jesse (16:29.670)
No, no, it was just the price I promised you?
Yeah, it was 995.
I put a one in front of it, so.
Omer (16:36.150)
Wow.
Okay, so you're starting to get these sales.
How long did it take you for you to hit your goal of $350 a month?
Jesse (16:47.710)
It probably took me like six months.
It was pretty slow.
I mean, it was really bad sales copy, really bad design.
So I was definitely, I mean, I didn't know how to build a website before I started, you know, so I was learning everything along with normal business stuff.
And so it took me a while.
Anyone now with the resources we have now, not that you should become like an info consuming freak, because I think that happens.
I think action trumps information consumption a lot of times.
But with what we have available now, you can kind of pick your, pick your strategy and run with it and you'd be a lot further along than I was.
But once I switched my sales copy over, about six months into it then things really started clicking.
You know, I think I made a thousand bucks one month.
And for a kid in school, it was phenomenal.
You know, couldn't have been happier.
Omer (17:41.040)
At what point did you think to yourself this could be bigger than just selling a spreadsheet online, that maybe there's a business here?
Jesse (17:51.200)
Well, I had a guy contact me and tell me he could improve the spreadsheet and add functionality to it.
And I told him I would rather have standalone software.
And then he was also a Microsoft guy and he said, well, I can build that for you.
So we worked out a deal and he built the, you know, built the app based on the spreadsheet basically.
And we started selling that in 2006.
End of 2006.
By middle of 2008, I knew we were onto something.
I had finally stopped working full time and stopped working on other things and went with ynab, you know, kind of all in on that.
So it was four years before I realized it was really something viable that, that I could get behind.
I was super risk averse, so other people would have realized it and seen it sooner, but I was, I was very afraid of jumping ship.
Omer (18:43.800)
Looking back at those early days, what do you think was one of the biggest mistakes that you made?
Jesse (18:50.520)
Most expensive mistake was building.
I mean, I spent 60 grand building a Mac version of our software that we ended up scrapping completely.
So it went almost to beta and we scrapped it.
That was 08.
So that wasn't early, early on, that was four years in.
But that was super painful.
Omer (19:12.020)
Where did you get the money from to build that?
Jesse (19:14.340)
From the business.
Just.
Omer (19:15.860)
Okay, so you were generating enough revenue at that time too?
Jesse (19:18.420)
Yeah, by that time it was enough.
Yeah, but it was so bad, so painful.
You look back and you think of mistakes, but every mistake kind of, I don't mean to sound trite like you learn from every mistake, but you do.
And so I look back and I can't really fault myself too much for what I was trying.
It's all just kind of an evolution, you know.
And so you just got to kind of be comfortable taking action, adjusting, learning, scrapping and taking more action and just moving along.
I'm much more of, I'm much less on the analysis side and much more on the acting side.
So I think that's to my advantage.
But there have been a few times where I got distracted, where I kind of departed from our core and wish I would have that time back.
But if there was any big mistake I made early on, it was not quitting my job sooner, to be honest.
Omer (20:22.900)
And that's because I was so afraid.
So how much were you earning from the business when you decided to quit your job and go full time on this business?
Jesse (20:33.220)
I was the, it was a full time accounting gig and I think they're paying me about 50 grand a year or so and just as a first year staffer and the business was making probably on track to do about double that that year.
And that kind of shows you how risk averse I was because I was still afraid at that time, you know, think, ah, should I quit?
Should I not quit when I was doing 80 hours at the accounting firm and maybe five hours a week in my business that was doing twice as much, you know.
So it was, it was just, it was a classic example of someone being told like this is what you should do all through school.
You know, this, like, all the way up through school, it's like, get a good job, get a good job, get a good job.
And then in the accounting program at byu, it was, you know, this is your track.
You go to that partner track, right?
And so you just had it ingrained in you.
And so I just didn't have the experience, the life experience.
I didn't have anyone around me that was doing what I was doing.
And so it was hard.
It just took me a lot longer than it should have.
I wasted, you know, wasted a good, good year or so doing that.
But I did learn from that what I didn't want to have in my company as far as culture goes and work hours.
So that, that informed some of my life decisions and kind of what I do for the company that are different than what I learned at the accounting firm.
Omer (21:59.900)
Okay, Jesse, so you, you, you got this idea.
You created a spreadsheet.
You started selling it, started building some, some customers, and then in 2006, you built the first version of the software product was, was AdWords the main way that you were still acquiring new customers when you decided to quit and go full time.
Jesse (22:27.810)
By that time, we had, we had pretty good content marketing.
I had done a lot of blogging early, early on, like in, I had really started blogging in earnest and that helped.
I had my mind on SEO at the time, which back then was.
Was easier, frankly.
But even back then, it's the same.
You just, you got to do good content.
And so by that time, we started getting some traction.
We had some affiliate relationships that were okay and we had organic traffic through the search engines and then the pay per click stuff.
So.
And word of mouth was really starting to help us at that time, which is obviously a tremendous channel.
Omer (23:10.790)
So tell me a little bit more about this Mac application and what went wrong there for you.
Jesse (23:16.710)
I chose the wrong person to build it for me and the guy that I hired to build my original app, he wasn't available.
He had just done it on the side.
So he wasn't available at that time.
And so I hired someone else to do it and I hired the wrong person.
I basically got so anxious to get it going and get it done that I settled on who I hired.
And you just, you don't settle.
So that was, that was my big mistake.
Omer (23:42.020)
And then what happened?
You basically scrapped it and started from scratch again?
Jesse (23:46.900)
Yeah, yeah, I did.
I brought on the guy that had built my original application.
His name's Taylor.
I brought Taylor on finally full time.
And that was in 08.
And that was right about at the tail end of the this other software project that Taylor hadn't been involved in at all.
And so he came on board and was getting up to speed and took a look at the software and we were weeks away from beta, probably even, maybe even days away.
And Taylor comes to me and says, hey, we can't launch this software.
It's really bad.
Like it'll damage our reputation and it won't go well.
And so we scrapped it and started again.
Omer (24:25.370)
That's a lot of golf clubs.
Jesse (24:28.730)
Yeah, it was.
My wife will sometimes remind me because at the time we had just bought a house and the house was super empty and echoey because we didn't have any furniture.
So she was always saying like, man, I could have furnished the whole house.
Yes, you could have, probably a couple times over.
Omer (24:45.610)
So does she still remind you of that?
Jesse (24:47.850)
Yeah, every once in a while.
She's a good sport about it.
And now we do have a couch or two, so she's not, you know, it's not on her mind all the time
Omer (24:56.650)
now.
Now as a business starts to grow, you know, often with growth come growing pains.
Can you tell me about one big challenge that you faced as this business started to grow for you?
Jesse (25:11.050)
One was just the fact that we're all remote.
So every time we add someone new, you know, you're working one on, you know, like two people in a company and you're remote.
That, that doesn't, that's fine, you're on the phone all the time with each other or whatever.
But when you start adding more and more people and you're all still remote, it's challenging.
So we really have to be very intentional about how we get together, how we stay in touch.
We use Slack for our internal chat stuff.
We have a monthly Google hangout where we all come together and video chat.
There's word of an underground meetup where people on the YNAB team give presentations.
We just aren't allowed to talk about it.
So there are ways for us to kind of stay all together.
But we're in Australia or in Pakistan and Scotland and the us, Canada, Switzerland.
So we're everywhere and that's been a challenge.
But on the flip side, we attract really great people because they like the fact that we let them work from wherever they want.
They can travel and they get their stuff done.
So it's a two edged sword.
But that's been a very big challenge that I'm always aware of, always working
Omer (26:28.510)
on how many people do you have?
Right now?
Jesse (26:31.510)
I think we're about 25 or so.
Omer (26:33.910)
Did you ever have any idea that this spreadsheet would end up creating a business with 25 employees?
Jesse (26:41.590)
No, no.
Even now, I sometimes think this is all kind of crazy, a little bit crazy, but you know, it's always one day at a time.
So it's, you know how they say, like it was a 10 year overnight success like that.
So like people say, oh man, how could you do that?
But I've never gone from spreadsheet to 25 people ever.
So I've only ever gone from 1, 2, 3 and 4, all the way up.
And so it's always manageable because you're, you know, you're learning as you go.
And the team that we have is really forgiving of me and you know, they know that I'm trying to figure things out and that everyone's pretty humble, you know, so when mistakes are made, you can, we move along, you know, and we have a good culture in that way.
So.
And it's especially important for me because I do tell them like, hey, I definitely want to have some, cut me some slack, you know, as I try and figure this stuff out.
Omer (27:34.290)
So let's talk about the business as it is today.
What sort of revenue are you doing these days?
Jesse (27:40.970)
We should do about 5 million this year if things go on track, you know, stay on track.
So.
Which is great.
We've grown every year.
We've been one of Utah's fastest growing companies for I think five years, maybe four years.
So yeah, it's going, it's going really well.
And there's, you know, we're always working on the next thing.
There's always something else that needs to be improved.
But yeah, I couldn't be happier with it.
Omer (28:06.740)
How do you generate revenue from the business apart from selling the actual software?
Jesse (28:12.980)
There is no other way that we generate revenue.
That's it.
Omer (28:15.860)
Wow.
Jesse (28:16.580)
Yeah, I mean, I say that I guess materially, you know, like there's probably a few other little tiny things, but Nothing that's material.
Omer (28:27.220)
95% more of that revenue, like 99,
Jesse (28:30.810)
99 and a half percent, something like that.
Omer (28:34.650)
And tell me a little bit about what does the typical sort of funnel look like for your business?
How does these days, how does somebody find you, what kind of experience do they go through in terms of content before maybe they get to looking at the software product?
Jesse (28:54.730)
The biggest, best thing I did early on this was in 2006, middle of 2006, I wrote a nine day course teaching people how to think about their money differently.
And I had recognized because in 05 I had found out I had this method.
And in 06 I realized I could kind of double down on the method and teach that method, you know, in this nine day course.
So I launched an email course.
And the email course is very standard stuff that anyone can do using any number of tools now where you send them out an email every day.
But it doubled my sales almost overnight.
And when I launched that course, it just started moving sales because I was reinforcing my message.
I was reinforcing.
What made me distinct, what made YNAB distinct was the method.
And then I was able to dive deep with that prospect over the nine days and explain exactly how the method worked and why it was unique and why it would work for them so well.
And so it was a great sales tool.
So I would say a lot of our funnel is through email education.
And then we also convert really well with live webinars.
We don't fake the webinars like there are.
Sometimes people will say, oh, I'll record a webinar and then put it up there.
That, that is good.
Like that's, that's definitely better than no webinar at all.
But we run them live.
We probably, I think we teach least a class a day, sometimes more, and probably run 5,000 people through them every month.
So webinars for us have been another distinguishing feature, again where we're doubling down on teaching our uniqueness and not talking about click here, click there.
Here's another feature that would get exhausting and you'd lose.
Omer (30:45.800)
Now, one thing I wanted to ask you.
When I look at your homepage and I see I can get the Software for a 34 day full feature demo.
Why 34 days?
Jesse (31:01.600)
So the software is structured in a month format.
And there's a lot of magic that happens when you roll over from one month to the next month.
So there are some kind of, some light bulb moments that happen in a person's education as they learn about our method and the software.
And that needs.
It demands more than the traditional 30 days.
So it was purely tactical, it wasn't clever or anything.
But we said, well, we got to give them at least enough time to roll over to another month and see how things work that way.
So that was where the 34 days came from.
But I do get asked about that because it is, you know, it's not 30.
So it kind of stands out a little bit.
It has.
Omer (31:41.010)
Maybe that's.
Yeah, I thought it was some kind of marketing.
Yeah.
Jesse (31:44.740)
Maybe it's helped us.
I've never tested it to see, you know, how it worked.
Omer (31:48.740)
What's the one thing in your business that you're most excited about right now?
Jesse (31:54.180)
Honestly, I used to make.
I was in an OB class in college in my master's program, and I thought that it was the worst class ever.
I loved my teacher, but just the content I just thought was not applicable and squishy, you know.
And now I think about OB type stuff all the time.
That's where I kind of obsess.
And so what has me most excited is I've stepped away from developing the product or having any real interact, any real input on the product beyond kind of, hey, look where we're at type things.
I've stepped away from that and I've now really realize that I get to design not a product, but I get to design a company with people inside and with our own unique vibe and culture and things that make it great to work here.
And so designing a company, it turns out, is very intriguing and it's very challenging and it gets me up and gets me going.
I'm thoroughly enjoying that aspect of it.
So it's been a transition and I'm still learning, but I'm enjoying it a lot.
Omer (33:11.690)
Okay, it's time for our lightning round.
I'm going to ask you a series of questions and I'd like you just to answer them as quickly as you can.
Are you ready?
Jesse (33:19.690)
I am ready.
Omer (33:20.490)
Okay.
What's the best piece of business advice that you ever received?
Jesse (33:25.690)
Focus.
Pick your one thing and focus on it.
Omer (33:29.850)
What book would you recommend to our audience and why?
Jesse (33:33.250)
The Millionaire Next Door.
It's a personal finance book, but it will get owners of businesses to question their own personal burn rate.
And if your personal burn rate is reasonable to low, then suddenly business becomes a lot easier.
Omer (33:50.530)
What's one attribute or characteristic in your mind of a successful entrepreneur other than focus?
Jesse (33:57.890)
Well, this is funny because I was going to say add, but just embrace the fact that if you're an entrepreneur, you are probably clinically ADD and just embrace it and be okay with it and move along.
Omer (34:10.990)
What's your favorite personal productivity tool or habit?
Jesse (34:15.390)
I'm a big, big getting things done disciple and I use things to do it.
Omer (34:22.430)
If you had to start over tomorrow, how would you go about finding that next business opportunity?
Jesse (34:28.210)
I would just chat with people.
I would just figure out where there's some pain and then I'd probably first provide a service to them manually and then see if software could start helping me in the manual process.
Omer (34:40.130)
What's an interesting or fun fact about you that most people don't know?
Jesse (34:47.490)
I can do a lot of pull ups.
How many I could probably put in If I'm fresh, like 30 to 35.
Omer (34:58.270)
Wow.
All right.
And finally, what is one of your most important passions outside of your work?
Jesse (35:05.230)
Learning.
I think work to me is just learning, but learning.
If you can't learn anymore, it'd be hell.
So I love learning new stuff, any topic, anything at all.
Just fascinating.
Omer (35:20.560)
All right, great answers.
Thanks, Jesse.
Jesse (35:22.520)
Thank you, Amir.
That was fun.
Omer (35:24.560)
I got to say, I.
When I was looking around and doing research for the show, I kind of looked around your site and I loved that picture of you with your family on your about page.
You know, great, great looking family.
And it kind of hit me as well in terms of it almost seems like you have.
You kind of also were very focused on a planned birthday schedule as well with like your kids being 2, 4, 4, 6, 8, 10.
Jesse (35:51.790)
Yeah, yeah.
Everything is like clockwork in our household.
Yeah, right.
You know, so the only thing that looks good is the fact that they're evenly spaced, but man, it is a wild house.
But it's fun, you know, I wouldn't have it any other way, but yeah, it does look fairly meticulously planned.
So you can ask my wife about it.
If you ever chat with her, she can tell you.
Okay.
Omer (36:12.430)
All right, Jesse, I want to thank you for joining me today and talking about ynab.
I really appreciate you sharing your experiences and your insights with our audience.
And thank you for letting us get to know you a little better personally as well.
Now if folks want to find out more about YNAB, they can go to you needabudget.com and if they want to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that?
Jesse (36:33.100)
They can catch me on Twitter if they want, I'm at Jessie Mecham.
Or if they want to email me, I'm jesseinab.com so they can shoot me an email there.
I'm on LinkedIn, but that's not as, not as good as a nice social media solid email.
So I'm happy to chat though.
Omer (36:48.210)
Awesome.
Thanks again, Jesse, and I wish you continued success with ynab.
Jesse (36:51.570)
Thank you.
I appreciate it.
