Adolfo: [00:00:00] I was in stealth for a while doing this too. And so I, I wanna come from underneath.
I wanna surprise, you know, and slowly, like, grow from there rather than to make a big sort of, you know, rain on everyone type of thing. Uh, so, so that's m- a guerrilla type of approach and, and, yeah, to, to, to, you know, to eat the roots, so to speak, you know, to, to, to take the space is, uh, is the goal.
You are listening to the Go Earn Your Salt podcast, brought to you by Salt Electrolytes. On this podcast, your host, Riley Rogers, explores the stories of people who get after it, get things done, and earn their salt. You will hear from high achievers who discuss what makes them tick, how they got to where they are today, and where they're headed tomorrow.
Perhaps this podcast will help you go earn your salt
Riley: Today I've got Adolfo Storanda, the host of the Forever White Belt podcast, and I'm, uh, super jacked to have Adolfo on [00:01:00] here. We're, um, we're, we're friends from the jujitsu world, and just from the, um...
He... I sponsor his podcast with, with Salted Electrolytes, and, and we've gotten to know each other a little bit through that. And one of the things that really intrigues me about Adolfo is this, this idea... The name of his show is called Forever White Belt, right? And that's, that's got a, a really cool connotation, is just always being this student, always being willing to learn, and, and that made me excited to talk to you, man.
So Adolfo, welcome to the show.
Adolfo: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me, Riley. I really appreciate it. Such an honor
Riley: Oh, I'm, I'm so excited to talk to you, man. So, so talk to me about you. Like, who's, who's Adolfo? Where'd you grow up, and what, what did life look like as a kid?
Adolfo: Sure, yeah. Um, I grew up with a, a single mom in San Francisco. Uh, I only spoke Spanish till I was five, and then we moved to Northern California, Santa Rosa, California it's called. And, uh, at that time there were no real Spanish-speaking [00:02:00] people there. We were one of the first families, uh, there to do that, so I lost a lot of my Spanish.
I grew up on, like, cartoons, learned my English through that, all my friends. Um, and in public school, you know, your typical latchkey kid of that time. I'm a Gen X-er. Um, and, and, uh, yeah, it was, it was a r- you know, kind of a rough kind of, you know, by myself kind of youth there, uh, sort of surroundings.
Northern Califor-ornia people are very groovy. There's a lot of, you know, uh, weed and forestry and, uh, just a weird amalgamation of a blue collar, uh, influence and that kind of thing too. Um, a lot of fun, a lot of kind of feral kids that we were, and, uh, you know, got really interested in martial arts. Uh, wanted to learn to protect myself and that kind of thing.
I was never really the tough guy or anything like that. Uh, quite the opposite. Uh, I like akin myself to sort of the quitter in a way, right? So one of my jokes that I often say is that if you opened up my closet, you would find like a karate gi, a unicycle, some [00:03:00] juggling, you know, clubs, a magic kit or something like that.
Just things that you pick up and toss really quick as soon as I ran into any sort of resistance or anything like that. So it was the opposite of like the grit that a, you know, a kid could have. Um, so that was one of the, the beauties that martial arts sort of taught me was, uh, how to persist through those things.
Finally, you know, how to, how to push through something later in life. Um, yeah, so and that was kind of it. I've always been really interested in creating, you know. So w- we talk about the podcast, your podcast, uh, creating things and producing things. Uh, I was a musician for a while. Uh, I got into tech, uh, taught myself that, and, uh, like web development and that type of stuff.
And, uh, yeah, that's always been, uh, super important to me is just, uh, creating stuff and, and, uh, martial arts.
Riley: So you, you said something there that's interesting to me was that, um, that you would toss things aside that, at the first sign of resistance,
Adolfo: Yeah. Yeah
Riley: did that... When did that start to change in you? [00:04:00] 'Cause I, I so identify with that, man. As a kid, like, I, I remember plucking on the guitar a little bit, and it was like, soon as it was hard to put my fingers a certain way, I was like, "I'm
Adolfo: Yeah.
Riley: You know? But Mario Brothers, dude, I could, I could, I could put some time into that stuff.
Adolfo: Yeah. Yeah. Uh, that was much later in life, you know? It was, you know, uh, 30s, 40s, something like that. Way later. Uh, it's never, it was just never really natural for me, and it really blew me away speaking to all the athletes that I speak to and everything, um, how a lot of, you know, a lot of these people are really tough guys and they just get at it, you know, and everything, and that never came natural to me, and that was something that I had to really force myself to do from a, from a young age.
Uh, and, and I was always terrified. I felt like, you know, whenever I tried something new or something like that, it felt like jumping out of a plane or something like that for your first time, you know? Um, so, so yeah, it was only until recently, like, uh, like I was saying, the 30s and 40s or whatever, that, uh, I'm like, "Okay, I gotta, I gotta sit down and focus."
And I, [00:05:00] I thought I was kind of alone in that story, or definitely the minority, because just the, the general sort of, uh, you know, narration out there or the, the sentiment out there is that when- whenever I hear people on podcasts or, or shows, they have, you know, they're this, like I, I keep saying, they're very confident, you know, tough people and smart, uh, always winning type of, uh, uh, people.
And then I'm like, "Well, what about people like me?" You know, "What, what ha- what about us? What, you know, do we get cast aside?" Um, so yeah, that's, that's kind of, uh, where I turned it around. I realized, oh, oh, we just need to adapt differently, you know?
Riley: Hey, um, I'm curious, man. I, I... Just hearing you talk about that, how you're, you feel like these guests you have on your show, for those who don't know, it's a jujitsu podcast, so you're always interviewing athletes, right? And sometimes I wonder... You tell me, you tell me this. This is just a theory I have, but it's sometimes the thing that we attribute to someone else's grit
Adolfo: Mm-hmm.[00:06:00]
Riley: is sometimes just something that they just really enjoy it.
So in, in their head, it's not really like they're grinding through. It's not, it's not hard every day. They're just having a good time doing it. But because they're having a good time, they can persist through the days that aren't so fun, right?
Adolfo: Right
Riley: what again, that's, that's kind of, kind of my own theory, but what's your thoughts on that, man?
'Cause I know with like jujitsu and I, I, I think we're always talking about, yeah, it takes grit to do this thing. I'm just like, yeah, sorta, but I just have fun with it, so it never feels like I'm... There's days when I feel like I'm grinding, but most of it I don't. Yeah, I'm, I'm just having fun
Adolfo: Yeah, it's, it's, uh, awesome that you, you mentioned before like Mario or what- or whatever, you know, um, uh, video games. Some people, you know, you can really burn the candle at both ends when you're into, into it, right? And, uh, I've been developing, uh, some software recently, some gym software called BatAdmin, and, um, and I'm really passionate about it, you know.
And I, and I'm doing just that right now. I'm burning the candles at both ends, staying up really late [00:07:00] coding, you know, all night, all morning when I'm sleep- you know, when it's soon as I'm... Even when I'm sleeping I'm dreaming about it. I wake up, I'm thinking about new features and things I can offer. Um, and it was like that for jujitsu as well, right?
And or music when I was doing that too. Um, that I, you know, we would play every show, every opportunity, every party, every garage, anywhere, you know, um, in terms of with the bands and stuff that I was in. And y- yeah, exactly. I think, I think that is... I think you nailed the, you know, you nailed it right on the head there that, uh, y- you can dive deep into those things.
And plus I'm like an, if you can't tell, I'm like an ADHD, you know, kid without the H. I was just a ADD. And, um, so, so yeah, when I found one thing I was all in, you know, all in. Because if not, as I mentioned about my closet, you know, there's... I can rarely read one book at a time. I have like three or four books set aside and I read maybe a chapter here and there kind of thing, and that's the way I get through books when I can, uh, or consume content.
[00:08:00] And my tabs in my browser are multiple, you know, tabs. Same sort of thing. It's just how I operate. Um, so when I do feel I need to hammer down on something, I, I know now I need to shift into, into that mode, and then I have to have tools in order to, to get through that, whether it's like a Pomodoro method or something like that
Riley: What, what is that? Describe that to me. Pomodoro
Adolfo: Po- uh, yeah, Pomodoro method is, um, something where you can, y- you can set different time limits on different things.
Like I'm gonna focus on one thing, let's say writing, whatever. I'm gonna write for 20, 25 minutes, and then I have a little timer that goes off and says, "Hey man, you need to stop now and have a five-minute, 10-minute gap," right? And that's essentially it. And then, and then you repeat the, the cycle, and it just helps people like myself to, uh, you know, to operate in, not to get scattered all over the place and then, you know, I'm off to Mario whatever for an hour or whatever, and then, "Oh, oh yeah, I gotta write," you know, or, or something and come back or, "Oh, you know, I probably should eat," you know, that kind of thing.
So it's just an, a w- one tool of many tools, you [00:09:00] know, to,
Riley: That's
Adolfo: help operate. Yeah
Riley: Yeah, I've never, I've never heard of that. That's, that sounds kinda cool 'cause I, you know, you talk about coding, right? Is it... Do, do you have a coding background?
Adolfo: I do, I do. Mainly front end and, you know, I got a, a weird like, uh, background because, uh, in tech I've worked in a lot of startups, major financials, and that kind of thing. It was all happenstance by accident. I went through all the dot com booms and busts. I've seen Steve Jobs talk at Macworlds right when they were starting, like multiple times when no one wanted to go to those things.
Um, so I, I've been in the center of it. And I used to have a podcast called Nerd Stalker in 2008 where I interviewed a lot of the tech CEOs and things like that of, uh, various, you know, really big startups now, like, uh, U- Uber at the time, and, uh, I, I have a lot of funny stories of that kind of thing. Um, but yeah.
But yeah, and then I studied things like, uh, interaction design, uh, user experience, customer experience through, you know, these larger kind of companies like Cooper and, and, uh, Adaptive Path, and these names in this kind of realm as well. So I, I have a weird, [00:10:00] you know, expertise in, in terms of like coding knowledge as well as like a design user experience sort of knowledge as well.
So it, it really helps out with what's happening now
Riley: So do you, when, when you're in this mode, man, of, of, you know, you're in coding mode, right? And
Adolfo: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Riley: Tell us the name again, 'cause it, it went by kind of fast. It was
Adolfo: Mat admin, like mat administration. Yeah. So, uh, I should probably give some preface on what this thing is. It's, uh... So one of the things I identified, you know, having spoken to so many gym owners and operators is that, uh, they're using this gym administration type of software, right? To basically check their students in, convert their students, sign them up for memberships, um, keep track of them for things like, um, promotions and, uh, attendance and, you know, billing and, and the usual kind of that type of stuff.
You know, I show up, I track and convert a student kind of thing, or a member. Um, and then I realized [00:11:00] what they were being charged by this, uh, relative to w- this sort of CRUD application. CRUD is a create, you know, write, uh, update, delete kind of thing. It's a, it's a tech term. Um, and, and I was just shocked at the gap of, you know, they could be paying anywhere from like four to one-- 400 to 1,000 bucks a month for this type of software, where for me, it looked like a commodity.
Um, so what we do is, you know, we, me and one other person sometimes, w- we made the software, we wrote it, and, uh, we're charging $39 a month for it, for everything, you know, just... And it's, it's comparable, you know, to, to a lot of these big dogs. But we're targeting, like, the independent operator, and we're giving it away for free for clubs that are, like, uh, under 10 members.
So, you know, if, hey, I'm a guy and-- or, or girl, whoever wants to start a, uh, a martial arts academy, and, um, you know, I want with my friends or [00:12:00] whatever, and I wanna check them in and, you know, s- maybe someday have something going, you know, start a business, you can use us unlimited for free. You get all the features, and when you get on your 10th member, then, then we're like, "Hey, you know, let's, uh, let's party.
Let's grow together," you know?
Riley: Yeah. talk about this, 'cause, uh, you, you, you start this Matt Admin and it... What, how was it done before? So talk about, like, the old days, how student attendance was, was kept track of and, and billing and, you know, and again, sales CRM, right? You're, you're in this whole of there's, there's more moving parts to a martial arts school than most people give credit for.
Adolfo: Yeah. And a lot of these people, you know, that, that decide they want to start, um, a jujitsu academy, let's just say for this example, uh, they're not really business people. They're just, they're, you know, these young people that have-- they got their black belt and they're, uh, they love this jujitsu thing, and, "I, hey, I want to open a jujitsu gym.
It seems like the next logical step." Um, so [00:13:00] they get approached typically by a sales team, you know, and then they're sort of converted like, "Hey, you need all this, all this stuff. You know, we're gonna give you a website builder, we're gonna give you a CRM, and we're gonna give you this whole check-in process.
We're gonna take care of billing and all this stuff for you. And, uh, and then here's the, you know, here's the price ticket," you know, which is really big, you know, initially. Or maybe they'll give you the little teaser and really gr- upsell you pretty hard real quickly. And not only that, a lot of these applications that I've seen too, they're, they're kind of Frankensteined in that, like, whenever someone asks for a feature, it's just kind of bolted on without a lot of thought.
And, uh, so what I observed, it-- The analogy I give it, it looks like a cockpit of a 747, right? When you walk into your, your big plane, you see all these switches and dials and, and all this stuff, and you're like, "What the heck?" You know? When in reality, it should probably be like a Cessna, a very simple type of, you know, dashboard that someone can, you know, figure out, "Oh, this is, this is the gas," you know, "This is the steering wheel," you know, and, and that type of thing.
Uh, that type of, [00:14:00] you know, design thinking, that systems thinking, that product design, as you, as you mentioned.
Riley: This, um, idea of what you're talking about here of developing w- what's called a user interface, right? It's, it's how do you, how do you put... How do you program something or, or make it look in such a way where you can kinda tell where the flow is? And I, I think about, like, my, my, uh, financial software for my, my businesses. Has a little map almost,
Adolfo: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Riley: r- it still has room to be desired there as far as perfecting that, but it's at least some kind of a thing for you to put it in your head, like, okay, this is kinda the next step that I need to do with this individual customer or this invoice or this, thing.
And this, this idea you're talking about, man, I, I don't own a school, but I train at one, and I'm an instructor there, and so being kinda part of that leadership team, I, I see that with the, the gym administration software that we have is... It's, [00:15:00] it's a joke sometimes. I just... I'm, I'm like, how can it be this unorganized
Adolfo: Mm-hmm.
Riley: this disconnected and still be such a big name in the business, right?
It's terrible
Adolfo: Yeah, it's, and, you know, l- these, these people aren't techies, you know, too. A lot of them, sometimes they're just doing things off of paper. They're check- you know, writing in, and sometimes they'll do it off an Excel spree- uh, Excel sheet, you know, too. And then when they're approached with, with like a piece of software like you mentioned too, it's just, it's, it's so complicated for them.
You know, they don't, they don't use 90% of it. You know, a lot of these companies like Walmart, Target, excuse me, when I was learning, like, my customer experience, and even online, there's this fantastic author, researcher named Luke Wroblewski, and, um, what they do is, like, these heat maps in terms of, like, they would view, like, a, a form on a webpage and see where a user's eyes go on that form, right?
And th- so there's this, this notion of form design, you know, first name, last name, credit card, here, there. [00:16:00] And they notice that people are just putting these fields all over the place, like on this webpage. "Oh, we need this, we need that. Oh, we need to capture this, and we need to capture that." And then you have this rapid drop-off right early on because people have to scan, you know, all the stuff.
In reality, people's eyes wanna go straight down linearly, right? And they don't... And there's also the threshold of how much information that someone wants to put in. Hello, resumes and all that stuff. But also, when you bring that into the physical world, when you look at, like, a Target and Walmart, what they would study is customer paths.
As soon as they walk into the store, how they're walking, how they're being obstructed from purchasing certain things and finding certain things, right? So there's a, there's a whole science to all of this, both online and in the physical world. So th- these are things to, to consider, and a lot of people don't when they're creating these, you know, applications as a developer.
I know developers, alls we wanna do is just code and add stuff on, right? With a lot of... Without the thought of the other perspective, what I mentioned there, right? That, that user experience, that customer experience, too. And when you can get the d- the two synergized, then you have things like [00:17:00] Apple and, and these like, uh, you know, delightful, if you will, um, experiences.
Riley: It's really interesting, man, when, when you do get ahold of a, a really well-done, um, app of any kind, computer program, whatever you call it. But, um, and you go on there and you just kind of instantly know what to do because it was so well put together that it's like, I don't even have to... I know this feature should probably exist, so just where is it?
No, there it is, right there. You know,
Adolfo: Mm-hmm.
Riley: it's got a logical flow to it. And I, I know that takes a lot of work, man,
Adolfo: Yeah. Yeah.
Riley: you're talking about these late nights, um, putting this kind of thing together.
Adolfo: Hmm
Riley: When you're going about this, talk about your process, 'cause I, I don't know, you know, th- there's areas of my expertise where I kind of know where to start and I know how to do it, but do you roadmap that first?
Do you create some type of an outline? Do you create some type of a, of a on-paper sort of vision at the beginning? How do you go about that?
Adolfo: Yeah, I did. So, you know, I did a [00:18:00] competitive analysis of what's out there, and I-- where can I begin, right? Where can I begin? Was like, what are the fundamental needs then, you know, and talking to gym owners too, you know, initially too. And then I wanna put out that minimum viable product, right? That MVP. And so I put out, knowing it's gonna be an ugly, an ugly monster, and it's gonna need work.
And it was, you know, initially. And getting that feedback, I iterated. But then it becomes a challenge when people... You start onboarding, you know, some pilots and things like that because you're, you're making changes, you're adding features also. So then you know it's gonna be increasingly challenging to make changes and, and add things too, um, without, you know, uh, affecting the foundation or the, you know, of what you're building upon.
So y- yeah, there is a, there is a scaling challenge sometimes. Approaching it with an initial sort of concept is important, um, but know that you're, you know, there's no way around, uh, rebuilding and changing [00:19:00] if you want the experience to be y- good and retention to be good and, you know, the onboarding experience to be excellent as well.
And, and my argument is that, you know, it should be, you know, you should demand as much as you can out of all of that. Uh, we want like zero, little friction, uh, with this type of, of system that I'm building. There's no way around all this little stuff when we're talking about billing and attendance and stuff like that too.
Um, yeah, and, and, and deals. You know how it is with, with your business as well, that kind of thing. So yeah, you get a general idea, um, but the thing is to, like I, like I mentioned, to study what and where people are going and to optimize for that and to think of that and to take away as much as you can.
You know, it's that whole art-artist aspect of just removal is, is, you know, the sculpting aspect. You know, get rid of as much of that rock as you can so that you can end up with a beautiful final product.
Riley: You know, I, I heard a phrase one time along those lines where a guy said, [00:20:00] said... He was a machinist, and he says, "We start out with a hunk of metal, if we're making a brake pedal for a, for a dirt bike, we just carve away everything that doesn't look like a brake pedal."
Adolfo: There you go. Yeah, exactly. I like, I like that, that, uh, example better. Yeah.
Riley: Yeah, it's so, it's so great. Uh, it's, I, I'm, I'm super intrigued by this, man, so forgive me if I'm nerding out. But I know what that product development, when you first start something, it's like you sort of kind of have this vague cloud of something going on in your head, but you, it's like, "Now how do I, how do I narrow it down to a thing that is workable?
You know, how do I even get started?" And sometimes, and I know when we started our electrolyte company it was that way. It was just like, "I don't, I don't even know where to start. I have no idea. I don't know how to have it manufactured. I don't know how to have it packaged. I don't know, you know,
Adolfo: Yeah. Unbelievable. Yeah.
Riley: to develop a formula, how to, how to make it taste good.
I, I don't know anything." And so it was a clean slate, and I,[00:21:00]
Adolfo: Amazing.
Riley: I think you, you probably came into this a little less, um, naive than I did, but there was still some, some of that there I imagine, huh?
Adolfo: Yeah, yeah. Um, yeah, for sure because I'm not a gym owner, right? So I've worked very closely with one and I talk to him constantly and I ask him details about their business. Excuse me But, um, but yeah. Yeah, so a lot of it is that, that, uh, you know, removal process of did I add too much? Did I not add enough kind of thing.
Um, with you and your business, man, I couldn't-- I can't imagine, you know, uh, when people are ingesting something, you know, the consideration that you have to have as well. And your, your marketing and your packaging and, and your, you know, uh, just awareness, brand awareness and that kind of thing when the challenge is there.
You know, distribution now is, like, the, the important thing 'cause there's just a flood of applications. And I know what I'm up against. I know there's a ton of, you know, [00:22:00] gym administration software out there. Um, and so I'm trying to be as niche, niche, niche, niche as possible. I talk about, you know, my demographic and my target, as I mentioned before.
You know, it's the solo person that's just starting a thing right now, small, medium size. So that's really important, you know, also is knowing, targeting your audience and, and whittling it down as much as possible, I feel. And then, uh, you go from there, you know, and then you try to optimize, and then you start looking at perhaps, you know, growth and other opportunities and, you know, stumbling through the process again.
Riley: You, you just said the word niche like three times in a row
Adolfo: Hmm.
Riley: to bring some focus on that word, man. So when you're talking about niching down your customer to this, who exactly you service, uh, can you expand on that a little bit more? 'Cause I, I am, I'm a huge fan. I think companies make big mistakes when they go into some venture and they wanna reach everyone, and so then their message gets so [00:23:00] diluted that it never seems to apply to a specific person, and so it, they just fade out into nowhere, right?
Adolfo: I was just... Yeah, I was talking to another... Because I'm also now, like, a new, uh, new-ish official sort of, uh, uh, jujitsu instructor, right? And what I've realized in speaking with all these dif- different instructors is that they're all sort of, the way I look at it, is different products themselves.
And so, like, I'm just gonna use just rando names. You know, Joe is sort of the funny, humorous instructor that I like, right? And Jane is the more authoritarian, I want that experience, that military experience, and that yes sensei, no sensei experience. And, uh, you know, the, the whole gamut, right? The whole spectrum between that as well.
And what you don't want to be, I feel, is the person that, that is trying to appeal to all of those. 'Cause as you mentioned, then you're not gonna appeal to, to anyone, or you're gonna be sort of a, a vanilla type [00:24:00] of product, right? Um, so, so that's why I'm, you know, I'm so, uh, a- at this, you know, current juncture in my philosophy of it, is, uh, I feel that it's really, really important to drill down into, you know, what, what is your, you know, what is your why and who is your, who is your tribe, so to speak, you know?
Riley: Yeah. What's, Tell me, has, has this happened yet? 'Cause it will happen, where somebody in their good intention comes up to you and says, "Hey, man, this same software would work with a dance school or with a
Adolfo: Oh, yeah.
Riley: club,"
Adolfo: Yeah. Yeah.
Riley: Like, 'cause technically you could, you could modify it
Adolfo: Oh, totally.
Riley: right?
Adolfo: yeah.
Riley: But-
Adolfo: and I may or may not be looking at that, but it's... That's... Yeah, I, I know better than to tackle that type of thing immediately, yeah. And yes, you're correct, there are those voices in your ear that says, "Hey, man, you should, you should go left and right and, you know, up and down, and..."[00:25:00]
And, and as I mentioned before with my ADD and my, my lack of focus and thing and, and my s- final self-awareness, uh, that I need to stay focused and drill down on certain things very deeply, that, that I know better now, right? So I- hopefully some of you will know better now too not to, uh, to divert too much.
You know, sometimes it's fun to indulge those type of, you know, interests and that type of thing. But, uh, y- remember how important the, the, you know... W- in design, in tech, we have something called the happy path is. And so remember your happy path, right? The... And you gave this, uh, example earlier where you said people like to go a certain way, you know, to, to purchase a certain thing or something like that, whether it's online or, or in-person life.
And we, we often talk about that in software development. Like, we see people, what gets them from point A to conversion, right? Point B, to actually buying the thing. And the easiest way is what we call the happy path, right? The optimal way. And that's through a lot of experimentation. So what you don't want is to go over here, [00:26:00] oh, wait, is this a yoga thing or, oh, wait, is this a, you know, a judo thing or, you know, or, or what, you know?
So, you know, start, start with your focus. If you're gonna do that type of thing, then, you know, good luck to you. And, uh, it's gonna take a lot of that and that kind of thing. But, uh, yeah, you're right. Um, distraction happens and, and you will hear lots of ears, I mean, lots of voices in your ear. And, uh, try to stay focused essentially is what I, what I would advise.
Riley: Yeah. Do you... 'Cause I, I'll tell you, I, I have a literal place that I record some of those ideas, right?
Adolfo: Hmm.
Riley: may be a time at another point in the future
Adolfo: Yeah.
Riley: of that starts to make sense, right?
Adolfo: Yeah
Riley: But folks don't see the, the amount of time and the energy and the effort and the money that can go into developing a new product, or even the same product, just to modify it to be, to fit another customer, so. I'll give you an example, Adolfo. I've got a... My other company is a mobile oil change company. I have trucks that [00:27:00] drive out and change oil and do maintenance work
Adolfo: Awesome.
Riley: vehicles,
Adolfo: Yeah
Riley: But we, we narrowed down who our customer was, and when we first started, I thought I'll just, you know, any car, any car or truck, I'll change the oil on.
Adolfo: Mm-hmm.
Riley: pretty apparent to me after a couple years in business, that there were certain ones that, man, we were really geared to fit, and that
Adolfo: Hmm.
Riley: commercial light-duty cars and trucks,
Adolfo: Hmm.
Riley: right? Box vans, that sort of a thing. But it wasn't semi-trucks, it wasn't, you know, bulldozers and off-road equipment, it wasn't personal vehicles. You know, they, they all have kind of a different, need, and we were really set up nicely the way we designed the company for these, commercial
Adolfo: Hmm. Mm-hmm.
Riley: finally at one point just started telling anyone else no. And it was hard to do, man.
It was hard to, you know, to have this person call my company, which meant they found my, me through my marketing dollars,
Adolfo: Hmm.
Riley: tell, tell them no. You know, it's like, "Yeah, I paid for [00:28:00] you to call me, but, uh, we're switching here, man. We're gonna, we're gonna niche down."
Adolfo: Yeah, that's, it's so interesting when I hear about these people sort of, you know, uh, firing their customers, so to speak. And I think that's a classic example of that where you found your 80/20, right? You, you found that, uh, that, that pr- that sweet spot there. And, and yeah, I, I think I'm like doing the, trying to do the same thing with the, like targeting these, you know, solo gym owners and, you know, these, these people that are struggling to, you know, just be their, their own plumber, their own PR people, their own marketing people, and to, you know, try to keep that, this whole business sort of running.
Riley: Do you, so you, you mentioned that you're an instructor at the gym you train at, and so you've been adjacent to, to things that happen within the running of the business part,
Adolfo: Mm-hmm.
Riley: So sure, you're a technician, um, just 'cause I don't know, how long you been a black belt?
Adolfo: Uh, I'm brown belt actually still. Yeah, th- so this is why for, this is why my m- my podcast is called Forever White Belt, [00:29:00] um, because I was a white belt for, geez, man, maybe five, five years, six years. Yeah, it was insane because I went from one gym to the other. For those of you people in, in, in jujitsu or that know, s- uh, usually it's like a maybe one to two-year type of path.
Uh, but there was some loss in, in, uh, in terms of like, uh, the records, if you will, of it. Yeah, so I've been, I've been a brown belt for a couple years now
Riley: Okay. That's, um, so by the time you get to brown belt, for the audience who doesn't know, that's, you're eight, eight years, 10 years into this thing, right?
Adolfo: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, 2012 was when I started.
Riley: time at white belt, so yeah, you've been in there. So that, that being said, you've experienced a lot of this, um, one, like student turnover, right?
You've, you've just
Adolfo: Mm-hmm.
Riley: come and go for, for years and years and years.
Adolfo: Yeah
Riley: I heard the greatest term the other day. I'd never heard it, but a guy said he had the blue flu, and we always talk about blue belts who
Adolfo: Mm-hmm.
Riley: and never come back, right? And so, culturally within this, within [00:30:00] this world, you've seen that. You've seen, um, you've seen injuries. You've seen those kind of things. You've seen people who, you know, you probably heard your coach at times or the, the owner of the school say, "Man, so-and-so hasn't paid their bill yet. They're
Adolfo: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Riley: and then you see new people come in, do a trial class maybe, and then just never show back up again.
And so
Adolfo: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm
Riley: whole, aspect of it. And then I imagine, again, that the amount of time you've been involved, you've seen those other things like, "Hey, man, rent's due again." You know, it's that time of month again, or it's the heat, the heating. You know, it's, it's
Adolfo: Right, right
Riley: the AC too much, and now it's... So these are all parts of what you have to do with your software, right? They're all... So you've observed this up close, so I'm saying you do have a very good idea of what it takes to solve those problems.
We designed SALT Electrolytes with a very important concept in mind, something we call counterparts. Minerals have very specific [00:31:00] functions in your body, but those functions are one-sided. For example, sodium allows water into your cells where it stays until potassium comes along and lets it out. You know this as the sodium-potassium pump.
Calcium and magnesium work in a similar way, so we put both in our drinks. In our research, we came across data that showed us that nearly ninety-eight percent of athletes are deficient on iodine. This fact prompted us to use iodine in our formula, but it turns out you cannot absorb iodine properly without zinc present.
So what did we do? You guessed it. We added zinc. Every ingredient in our formula is paired with its counterpart. Authentic SALT Electrolytes is the only electrolyte drink that prioritizes counterparts. Get some for yourself today at saltelectrolytes.com and feel what proper counterparts can do for you.
Go earn your [00:32:00] salt
Adolfo: Y- yes, yes. And, and you nailed it, you know, on the head. These are the observations that I make. I, I see these people struggling for things like, as you mentioned, to pay their garbage bill or to remember to renew their business license and their insurance and, and all these things, let alone just, you know, doing jujitsu or teaching someone martial arts or whatever it may be.
So I want to make their life easier, and I want their pocketbook- books to be optimized too, because they are putting so much money. And you know, as an entrepreneur, all that money is critical to go to the key places, whether it's your, your advertising, your logistics, legal, whatever it may be. And, um, and so I see a big opportunity in terms of what I'm proposing for, you know, the, the gyms that I'm targeting or the demographic I'm-- the segment I'm, I'm targeting, saying, "Hey, you know, there's a huge chasm here [00:33:00] of what you're paying here versus what I think you should be paying, you know, or just even need that, near that realm."
So given all the concerns that you just mentioned yourself, you know, logistically, legally, financially, otherwise too. So yeah, yeah, it's just, that's why if you can see a gap like that, you jump all over it, man. It's so pro- you know, solve that problem if you're so inclined
Riley: Yeah. There was a, there was a guest I had on here. Funny, 'cause I was just re-listening to the episode. Uh, you know this from running a podcast, sometimes you're, you're so in recording and the questions, like you don't, you don't always hear the answers,
Adolfo: Yeah.
Riley: it's cool to
Adolfo: Yeah.
Riley: to it.
And this guy, Josh Sprague, he, uh, he owns a, um, hydration pack company, so they're like, uh,
Adolfo: Wow.
Riley: with bladders in them and stuff. And,
Adolfo: Yeah
Riley: and, uh, yeah, he said something on there that was so cool, and it was, it was... How did he put it? Basically, it was frustration that caused him to develop these products, [00:34:00] right?
Adolfo: Hmm.
Riley: his ingenuity came from frustration, or there was a way he phrased it. It was such a cool, such a cool way he said it, and I'm butchering it here, but
Adolfo: Yeah
Riley: it's that, again, you, you've sat and witnessed it for years, you know, and then you see this gap and you're like, "Man, I think it could just be done better,"
Adolfo: Yeah. That's so, that's so great because that's exactly it. Like you said, yeah, you nailed it right there, the frustration thing. When I, when I observed that issue, you know, I was like, "Hey, there's opportunity here." You know?
Riley: I wanted to ask you though, 'cause there, there's... You've taken this thing where you're, you've educated in code and how to, how to build software, and then you start to like, again, go into your own venture here. And so back to this kind of concept of forever white belt, right? And these new lessons that you're learning as you go into there. I'd be really curious to know, was it difficult for you to start this new thing knowing that there's gonna be [00:35:00] some pretty major obstacles in the way, but not knowing what those are, right? You know, sometimes you go into something and you're like, you are naive a bit about it. And was it... Did you have any hesitations to get started?
Adolfo: Yes. Yeah, absolutely I did. I was, it was, I gave earlier that analogy of when, uh, it feels like jumping out of a plane. It, it was sorta like that. And, and initially it was, for me, it was an exploration of like... I, I'd walked away from tech for a while because I was just burnt out on it. Uh, but then like a lot of people, I've been excited about this new AI, you know, or not, I shouldn't say new, but like this pervasive AI usage now, and I want to dive deep into it because it struck my fancy.
Being, uh, someone with a, always had a tech proclivity, I was like, this, uh... It, it piqued my interest, right? And so I'm like, "I'm gonna tiptoe into this and just build some MVPs, a little thing, and, and goof around with stuff." And Matt Admin was, was one of those things I initially was like, "Huh, let's see how far I can kinda take this."
Um, and then, uh, [00:36:00] it, it kinda just went from there and I'm like, "Wow, I can, I can really do this. Oh, wow, this is becoming a little more of a thing. Oh, wow, this is a thing. Oh, wow, this is becoming much bet- Oh, this is a good thing. Oh, wow, this is, you know, a really good thing." So it sort of evolved like that, kinda, kinda naturally through exploration, you know, in the garage so to speak, you know, when you're tinkering and then, uh, you come out with something.
So that's kinda how it was. And then once it, um, I... Once it did become like a viable, like, oh, this is a viable potential thing, then yes, that's when it was like, uh, my heart started going, "Oh, God." You know? "This is kind of weird, kind of freaky." Yeah, that's when I got a little freaked out, you know?
Riley: Was that kind of imposter syndrome, right? Where you're just like, "Man, am I..." 'Cause, 'cause now, dude, you gotta take this idea that's been fun in your garage, right? And now you gotta take it out and sell it to someone you don't know.
Adolfo: Yeah, right? Uh, you, yeah, you think about Apple and those guys in the garage, right? So they're out, you know, pitching their little goofy computer at the, the different commuter- computer shows and stuff like that. Yeah.[00:37:00]
Riley: Yeah, I think that, uh, that nervousness, I remember the first time. W- We had let... Mostly it was my gym buddies that the guinea pigs for SALT when we first, first brought it out,
Adolfo: Bye
Riley: I got such a kick out of it, 'cause I remember I'm looking at, you know, putting 80, $90,000 into getting this thing started,
Adolfo: Yeah.
Riley: of money for
Adolfo: Yeah. Yeah.
Riley: "Dude, I'm gonna do this," and all I've fed it to is my friends so far, so I hope those suckers were being honest with me and telling me the truth. 'Cause if this product sucks and I invest that much money into it, I'm gonna be one sad
Adolfo: Yeah.
Riley: And so uh, I remember that first time when we g- we got our new product in and we started sending orders out and, well, most of the orders for the first week, week and a half were people we knew, right?
Adolfo: Yeah, sure.
Riley: "Oh, they, they already know this product. They already like it."
Adolfo: You're right.
Riley: We, we, we termed that bro sales. That's what we called it.
Adolfo: Yeah.[00:38:00]
Riley: are, these are bro sales.
Adolfo: You're right
Riley: when it goes to someone who doesn't know us? And I remember the first one of those. I still remember that, when that came through, and I
Adolfo: Yeah.
Riley: box of SALT out to someone. I have no idea who they are. They're
Adolfo: Yeah.
Riley: And I'm, "Man," like, "oh crap, I hope this is good." And
Adolfo: Wow.
Riley: feeling of all this time and all this money I just put into this, this is, this is, this is the moment of truth right here. Um, and I
Adolfo: amazing.
Riley: of right in that phase right now,
Adolfo: Yeah, yeah. And I've got a m-
Riley: releasing this
Adolfo: man, I've got a million questions for you regarding that kind of thing, but we'll save that for my podcast when I interview you. But, um, yes, yeah. So, uh, we recently got our first real paying customers. Now I'm not talking like a, a pilot customer. And yeah, I'm, I wanted to just be the weirdo who emails at Jim every day and says, "Hey, how's it going?
What are you doing?" You know? "How's it looking?" You know, I'm s- And, uh, I remember going out for like a little celebratory dinner, you know, that, you know, "Hey, I got a one paying customer." And how great that feels to, to make that, [00:39:00] that first buck, that feeling, you know? That's, uh... And that validation, right, to...
Regardless if they stay or not, because, you know, we have, our policy is like, "Hey, you can, you know, you can leave whenever you want. We're not gonna trap you." Oddly enough, uh, side story here, a lot of this type of gym administration, they trap your data. So your, your, uh, your members and students, they'll charge you like 1,000, 2,000 buck fee for just getting your data out of their systems to get like an Excel file of like their names and informations if you wanna import it into a different system, 'cause that's an, uh, a service that we provide for free, is like, "Hey, if you're coming from somewhere else, we'll import all your stuff from that particular service and, um, and, and we won't charge you for that," versus, you know, just your monthly fees, what we're, you know, what it is.
Uh, and yeah, and those guys, that's how they get you too. And, and a lot of it too is it's that kind of practice, you know? And it's, you know, and these, and a lot of these ca- academy owners are, you know, already sort of up to here with that kind of thing. But I, but I digress. Yes, I was happy when I, when I made that first conversion, [00:40:00] so yeah.
And I hope there's more to come. Yeah.
Riley: sale?
Adolfo: yeah.
Riley: Do you, uh, or not, not bro sale, I guess
Adolfo: Yeah, at that point, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Riley: sale, right? Yeah. it's, it's a, it's a big thing. When you were, when you were having... You, you mentioned people kinda testing this thing for you, right? And I imagine the school you train at was probably one of those that was sorta messing with it.
I don't know. Maybe it's an... I mean, in the jujitsu
Adolfo: Yeah.
Riley: we get fairly well-connected, but
Adolfo: Yeah, I think, yeah. Yeah
Riley: the, um Having, having them test it, I re- like I, I told you with SALT, we had people testing it, and I, I had to pound them. I'm like, "If this does not taste good, you have to tell
Adolfo: Mm-hmm.
Riley: I have to get this right.
Adolfo: Right
Riley: I, I, I did have, I did have a few people who I quit trusting because I didn't feel like they were telling me the truth,
Adolfo: Hmm
Riley: and I needed those people.
It was too, too big of an investment to not truth back, you know? And so I, I remember kind of like, "Oh, the next test batch, I'm not gonna have [00:41:00] you, I'm not gonna have you on the panel 'cause I don't f- I feel like you're just being nice to me."
Adolfo: Yeah
Riley: you know, it was, it was those people who would hurt my feelings that I learned to value the most.
And so
Adolfo: Yeah.
Riley: principle of having people around you who will tell you what you need to hear,
Adolfo: Yeah
Riley: uh, even though it hurts,
Adolfo: Right, right.
Riley: Did you have that
Adolfo: Yeah, yeah. But w- you know, that and what I really love to hear are like, "Well, where is the X? Where is the Y?" And then you- that's where you identify the gap, you know, too. I'm like, "Oh, this is, this is gold." And, uh, when you have multiple people saying... 'Cause y- you know, um, you have to take the, the information that's coming to you with a grain of salt, so to speak.
Um, and for me, it's like a Venn diagram. And once I get that feedback and they start overlapping with each other, that, that stuff in the middle is gold, right? And you're saying, "Oh, okay, this is a, this is a, an item that multiple people have confirmed on just happenstance by chance, [00:42:00] and I can grow on that."
So yeah, it's, it's that type of thing when they can experiment with your product and give you feedback and ask questions. Their, their genuine curiosity. I try not to tell people or guide people at all when I'm asking for feedback. I'm like, "Hey, can you... You know, this is sort of the goal, right? Can you,
Riley: Yeah
Adolfo: go about it and try to, you know, get to that?"
And then, then when I- the questions I get back and that kind of thing. But it takes a certain kind of person and, like you said, a bro or something like that in order to, uh, do that. 'Cause that, that can be high effort, and there's friction involved too, right? Um, but if you can get that, man, that is gold.
That, that information is so, so important, and I'm still getting it now, so it's, it's really wonderful.
Riley: Do you, um, you know, I'm talking about this idea of people who will kinda willingly hurt your feelings for your own good. Is that just principally in life, man? I mean, we're in the jujitsu world,
Adolfo: Mm-hmm.
Riley: do you have that in [00:43:00] a, in a coach also?
Adolfo: Uh, what do you mean by that? What do you mean? Can you clarify,
Riley: who
Adolfo: for example?
Riley: you're screwing something up, he's,
Adolfo: Oh.
Riley: you straight, right?
Adolfo: Yeah. Yes, absolutely I do. I think after years and years, uh, depending how long you're in it, you get a, a degree of comfort. Um, but I do believe when you're beginning that, that, uh, I like to use the, uh, you know, the white gloves or the soft gloves, so to speak, you know?
Um, the people that I favor are the people like myself that came into the thing not in shape, really intimidated, not particularly super athletic, is not gonna win a majority of the time, right? And so I like the sort of the outsiders, the outcasts, the people standing in the back, the shy people, the people that aren't so great at making eye contact and that kind of thing.
I just gravitate to those people, you know, us, we're the weirdos, right? And, um, those are the people I wanna help the most. Um, so there's a certain approach you take to those people. I, I [00:44:00] interviewed this wonderful, wonderful coach in the East Coast, uh, his name is Jay Jack, and he told me... And he's a beast.
He was a monster in his day. And he told me, you know, "Yeah, Adolfo, I can get these D1 athletes coming in, these wrestlers." That's a incredible athlete, right? And they can learn jujitsu, and they don't need a whole lot. He's like, "The... But they don't, they don't need jujitsu as much as the person that I was describing," right?
Who comes through the door, and then you can make them into, you know, what we call a monster, right? Versus the athlete who comes in as a monster, right? So, so yeah. Yeah. Um, there's a way to, to communicate, uh, uh, improvement, you know, if you will, or, or criticism, you know, constructive criticism
Riley: Do you... So, so bring us into the business now, right? Where
Adolfo: Huh.
Riley: maybe it's, maybe it's the people testing your product for you. Maybe it's someone who's guiding [00:45:00] you through kind of the, uh, in a, as a business coach too, right? Where they're telling you some things about your personality. And I'll give you an example of what I'm asking here, because I, I had, I had one years back where there was this...
He was a material supplier for a construction company I
Adolfo: Hmm
Riley: And dude, I was in there one day, and I was having a conversation with another person, and this guy was in the room, and he was just kind of overhearing what we were saying. And he cornered me afterwards. He says, "Hey, dude, come here for a minute."
He goes, "Do you realize how you sound when you talk to people?"
Adolfo: Mm-hmm.
Riley: And I'm, I'm s- I was just, like, totally blindsided. I had no idea what he was even talking about. But he began to tell me how harsh I sounded to this guy and how I was to this dude that I was talking to. And man, that was like, that was a bitter pill for me to swallow. But I started over time then, um, in the next coming years, I, I started to see common thread. I was like, "Oh man, I'm turning people [00:46:00] away that I really wouldn't... would like to keep close to me,
Adolfo: Hmm. Hmm.
Riley: of the way I talk." And I... It, again, it was a bitter pill, but it was like, it was a life lesson in that. And, uh, fortunately, I had two or three other people in kind of that same
Adolfo: Mm-hmm.
Riley: year period that basically said the same thing in different words to me, and I went, "Okay, I need to start listening to what these guys are saying." So that example, I guess, brings the question, have you had that yet? Have you had somebody call out something in you and says, "Hey man, you're getting ready to do this new venture.
Adolfo: Mm-hmm.
Riley: Here's, here's something to keep in mind"?
Adolfo: yeah, I'll, I'll take it just in a little bit of other path 'cause you're triggering a, a memory that I, that I had. Um, so a lot of my beginning of my, my tech experience were in startups, right? And in startups we were very, we would share experiences. W- we would go to these, you know, these conversations that we would have and these meetups in terms of new technologies and things like that, and we would come back to the [00:47:00] startup and share it with each other.
"Hey, Riley, look what I learned, you know, this, this thing, we need to implement it into our business system," or something like that. "Oh, that's awesome." And we were very collaborative 'cause we were a small sort of unit and everyone was sort of on the same level. And then I moved to this large financial enterprise, right, with that same sort of mindset, thinking that's the reality of the world.
I go, they send me off to, like, a, some convention to learn this great new technology. I come back, I hold a meeting with my team. I'm giving this presentation, like, "Look how awesome this stuff is," and, you know, and everyone's like, "Oh, wow," you know, "This is great." And then later I get sent to my manager's office and, uh, she's like, "Hey, you know, that was very self-righteous of you to, to do," right?
And, and this type of thing. And it really bothered me, right, for, for a while, and I was like, "What? What?" You know, I was so confused. But the thing is, like, it's the context, right? It's like this is a, [00:48:00] you know... There, there's a hierarchy in this type of thing. And later I realized, I read this book called 48 Law- "The 48 Laws of Power," and if you work in a large enterprise like that, I'm sorry, but you should read this book.
It'll, uh, it'll save you. And one of them is do- never outshine the master. And, uh, to, to that respect, I, I learned how to swim with the sharks, so to speak, right? And, but it's the, it's the ocean, right? That is their ocean, you know? It- whereas in the startup world, we're much more collaborative and freestyling, and we're doing jazz and all this, and we're sharing all this stuff, and it's just a different world, right?
So it's a different sort of context. So that's where this sort of notion of, of, uh, self-awareness within business sort of arose for me and developed a little bit more of, like, where am I? What is the culture of this place, right? And, uh, yeah. So that's, that's what came to mind when you were talking about your experience
Riley: That's interesting, man, 'cause yeah, I imagine you Like, I used the term blindsided earlier, right? It's like imagine that that was a blindside. Like, "What
Adolfo: Oh, totally.
Riley: of me, man? Like,
Adolfo: Yeah. Wow
Riley: I [00:49:00] was just telling you what I thought you sent me there to do."
Adolfo: Yeah
Riley: um, so talk about this, man. What-- You know, I had mentioned some kind of pain points that I've observed in a, in a martial arts school, right?
Adolfo: Hmm. Mm-hmm.
Riley: were, were there other pain points that you had, uh, uh, observed, you know, other things that you maybe have put into the software that, that I didn't mention?
Adolfo: Uh, well, something that we're working on and one big gap that I'm seeing in a lot of these schools and themes, and it's a difficult thing to trans- translate into a product is, um, instructor development, coach development. Because it's a very human thing, and it's one... It's something I don't, I almost never see in, uh, in these martial arts schools.
And even in business sometimes, in small businesses, [00:50:00] you know, your leader development, your executive development, your manager development. I've seen people just been promoted to management just because they've been at a place, you know, for X amount of years. I've seen this with developers where they don't have the social skills and they've been thrown into this management position, not by choice, just 'cause they've been there for a duration of time.
They have a level of expertise in, in coding or something, right? It's this, this crazy stuff. Um, so that's, that is, uh, a gap I think industry-wide. I don't, I don't know if it's, uh, isolated to, you know, a martial arts academy, but it,
Riley: It's not
Adolfo: it seems like, yeah, it's, it's something that I'm trying to wrap my head around right now in terms of, uh, how to, how a tool can kind of hel- uh, help with that in some way.
Um, a lot, a lot of this is psychological, right? And psychology. Um, so that's... I think that's a, a huge one, a, a large opportunity if someone can figure that, and, and I'm trying to tackle that right now.[00:51:00]
Riley: You know, I took I took a class in... So I'm in the Pedro Sauer Association,
Adolfo: Yeah. Fantastic.
Riley: is, right?
Adolfo: Mm-hmm
Riley: Pedro at his spring camps has instructor training available, and you
Adolfo: Hmm?
Riley: So I'm a certified instructor, level one certification, and I
Adolfo: Hmm.
Riley: haven't had the opportunity to take the level two yet, but I, I, I wanna say there's three, three levels of instructor certification.
Adolfo: Mm-hmm.
Riley: talk a lot in there about, you know, the different ways different students think and different things you can do to convey an idea, uh, an idea as complicated as jujitsu is, right?
Adolfo: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Riley: but that, man, that exists in any business,
Adolfo: Yeah
Riley: any business, right? If you're a manager or you're a sales manager, and you wanna teach someone how to sell a widget, man, you there's a lot of stuff going on there.
Adolfo: Yeah
Riley: you had mentioned, like, reading the room, right? Reading, you know, read your customer. What, what's their, what's their need? Are you giving them the same pitch as you did the last guy who had a totally different [00:52:00] need?
Adolfo: Mm-hmm.
Riley: Uh, if you are, y- y- well, you have some, some honing of your craft to do,
Adolfo: Y-y-yeah.
Riley: different. So
Adolfo: Yeah
Riley: go into this thing selling, right, with, uh, with this new, this, this new company of yours, and gonna run into school owners who are the happy-go-lucky, real easygoing type. You're gonna run into some of them that have, that aren't. 'Cause I've been selling SALT to jujitsu owners, uh, school owners for a coup- few years now
Adolfo: Wow.
Riley: yeah, I've gotten to see the gamut, right?
Adolfo: Yeah. Yeah
Riley: super easy to... So are you- H- how are you systemizing that, I guess? What, what is your Your ideas right now of taking it to the market, right?
Adolfo: Mm-hmm.
Riley: do you, do you have a plan for that or is that something you've, you really sat down and mapped out?
Adolfo: It's in its infancy right now, but yeah, yeah, we, [00:53:00] the, I am roadmapping that right now for sure. Um, but what I do wanna come back to real quick is the notion of these different types of people that you run into. You r- you mentioned the Pedro Sauer instructor training too and how important that is in any management training.
Uh, I did a lot of agile training, certified agile leadership type of training in terms of business, um, and, uh, how you bring, you know, uh, some context to another, whatever, manager if you will, or another executive, um I, I met this gentleman named Simon Sinek a while back. He's,
Riley: you mayhem?
Adolfo: Yeah, yeah, in New York, like years and years ago.
I went to this little conference that a tech company sent me to, uh, called the 99Percent. It was right before he wrote his first book, Start With Why. And, um, I asked him, "Hey," you know, and it's talking about this particular manager that I was using the analogy of before, the story before of [00:54:00] when she said, "Hey, you're so self-righteous" because I, I did a meeting with someone.
I'm like, "Hey, how can I, you know, me as an employee, you know, how can I change the culture of this, uh, of the industry or, or these people's minds?" essentially is what I was asking, right? And, um, he, he's, real quickly, you know, he's like, he, you know, "The, the tail can't wag the dog. It just can't, you know? It comes, it comes from the leadership, right?
So the co- It comes down from the leaders. It always does. It really, it really does. It..." And that was a hard pill to swallow, right? And I, and I think to your sort of question in terms of who you're gonna run into, the gym owners out there too, you're gonna have to meet them where they're at. You know, they're gonna be, as you mentioned, they're gonna be difficult, they're gonna be welcoming, they're gonna be, you know, unorganized, they're gonna be organized, you know.
They're gonna be cheap. They're gonna maybe not be cheap. They can maybe overspend or, or whatever it may be. Um, so yeah, that's, that's an art into itself. And, uh, I think one of the things that helps with, with my sort of approach is I [00:55:00] do have sort of a, a voice with this Forever White Belt podcast. I didn't realize it, but now the big thing is that there's so many products and solutions out there now, is how do you get to be known?
And oddly enough, you've got a podcast right now too, right? Fantastic. Go on your SALT podcast and, and people can become aware of, of SALT as they should. And we speak about SALT on Forever White Belt all the time 'cause we're fiercely loyal to people who have an interest in us too, like you, like you did.
And so I think that awareness and that distribution is the new, it's the new... I don't know if it's the new, but it is key to get awareness out there and your name out there. I think that, that, that beats even conversions from someone talk about it, is just the aware- If they got a large audience and getting the awareness.
I hear people at a gym s- here in Northern California talking about SALT now because, you know, I, I'll bring SALT to my particular gym or other places, and now the awareness is spreading, right? So just from people talking to it, it's like, good luck, [00:56:00] good luck getting that if you don't have it. You know?
Good l- good luck converting your sales and your marketing plan and whatever. You're gonna have to spend a lot on marketing and advertising. You probably will anyways, but boy, is it nice to have that, that, uh, that channel as well.
Riley: That kind of, that, that street cred, right? 'Cause you, you, you talked about earlier about being... I can't remember how you phrased it, but it's kind of like you're part of the conversation in that world, right? You understand the, the jargon and
Adolfo: Mm-hmm.
Riley: little... You understand when a jujitsu meme comes across Instagram.
It's like, ah, I know exactly what that
Adolfo: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sure
Riley: I know the guy with the stinky gi, and I know the guy with the, you know, that
Adolfo: Yeah. The sweaty guy, you're looking at him right here. Uh-huh.
Riley: uh, hey, I, there's two of us here then, 'cause I- that's what's so bad at creating an electrolyte company, right? So uh, yeah, we get, I get a kick out of that,
Adolfo: Yeah. Oof. Thanks to you, man.
Riley: up I was up at a Park City, [00:57:00] um, Utah camp this last weekend and, I thought that was a pretty cool thing, man, because I, I think when you show up as a vendor at certain events,
Adolfo: Hmm.
Riley: as tight-knit as the jujitsu community,
Adolfo: Hmm.
Riley: a lot of times it's tempting because I'm, I've got a booth to work, man.
I've
Adolfo: Mm-hmm.
Riley: serve the customer there. But I took my son with me and then I participated in some of the, seminars, in
Adolfo: Oh, good for you.
Riley: while he manned the booth. And one of the things that that did, I, I don't know that I realized it as much as I really got a glimpse of it this weekend, was fact that those guys see me as one of them because I'm on the mats with them, right?
Adolfo: Hmm.
Riley: Um, that was kind of a cool realization that it's... I think, and I think it's different now that I've got my black belt, right?
Adolfo: Hmm.
Riley: they, 'cause I think everybody in the jujitsu world, there is a bit of a, a stigma with that. I think almost more though, more, more than there should be of the respect for the [00:58:00] black belt, right?
Adolfo: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Riley: sell us some stuff, but you're one of us, man. We'd rather support one of us than
Adolfo: Mm-hmm.
Riley: some other company just dishing out a product," think that's cool. And I, I think what you're doing is coming from the same place, right? Where you're experiencing... Again, how did, how did, uh, I'm trying to think of how Josh Sprig said that, man. It was the f- the frustration
Adolfo: Mm-hmm.
Riley: And yeah, you've seen that frustration, so you're, you're walking right up that same path of like, there's a need here and, and the options aren't great,
Adolfo: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Riley: something that is, you know,
Adolfo: And that's why you do get that, the willingness of the, I think, the open feedback when you reach out to those people too, 'cause they know, hey, you have a vested interest in this thing too, and you, you've ex- you've expressed it, you know, and we've witnessed it, and, uh, we know that you're, you know, you're legitimate and that you're not gonna, you know, just, I don't know.
I mean, [00:59:00] you're doing it for a buck, but not just a buck, you know, in a way too. You're trying to genuinely solve a, a, a need, you know.
Riley: pain point, right?
Adolfo: Yeah
Riley: And y- this th- this thing you're doing, Mal, I'm so excited about it just genuinely, um, because I, um, in a school, and like I said, I get to see those pain points, and I get to see... I get those inside conversations with the owner, and I'm just like, "Man, a good solution to this crap would be really, really warranted."
And they have software, and they have some stuff, but it's, like I said before, it's lacking
Adolfo: Yeah.
Riley: of areas. It's...
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Adolfo: And this is like, my thing is like, I wanna be invisible. I want this to be invisible. I don't want this to be, you know, a thing that anyone talks about or, or thinks about in terms of like their gym or whatever. I want this to just run their business with, with the respect that it does, you know, in, in a way that they don't have to worry about it a whole lot, or think about it a whole lot, or train on it a whole bunch, or become an expert in this thing
Riley: Dude, I, what you just said there, you want it to be invisible. [01:01:00] I don't know. I mean, you, I, I, maybe you do know how profound that just was, but this, this idea that, um... Somebody called me here recently. It was a sales call and somebody just cold-called me, and they, they asked me, "Hey, you know, this is our product.
This is what we do. How could it help your business?" And
Adolfo: Hmm. Mm-hmm.
Riley: are so dialed in in that area that we have no pain points in this thing you're talking about.
Adolfo: Mm-hmm.
Riley: solved that problem. It's like, I don't need another solution for it. I... It's, it's so solved that it's invisible.
I... That term is awesome
Adolfo: Right on.
Riley: and so I was just like, "Sorry, I, I can't. I... There's no need for us to continue this conversation,
Adolfo: Well, good for you
Riley: yeah, in this area you're talking, we have that nailed, and no pain points." And so that term invisible,
Adolfo: problem with that? Like saying no to these people or whatever? 'Cause I, I seem to always feel kinda guilty when people approach, you [01:02:00] know, and like, "Hey, let's partner in this and that or this and that or
Riley: No, so I, I always take it because, dude, I, I do a lot of sales and cold calling. That's, that's my world, right? Um, I'm a-- I own two different companies, and I do it for both of them and so I'm the cold caller most of
Adolfo: Mm-hmm. Bah.
Riley: calls me, I always have compassion for that. If they come to my door,
Adolfo: Mm-hmm.
Riley: um, knocking on the door in the evening, I'm like, "Man, I've been in those shoes,
Adolfo: Mm-hmm.
Riley: I appreciate what you're doing.
Adolfo: Wow
Riley: but here's how I have it solved, and man, I, I don't, I don't have a need for what you have." But that being said, recently I just changed my merchant service with my oil change business, right?
Adolfo: Hmm.
Riley: the n- this, this guy cold called me, and I, I gave him a little bit of time to talk because again, I do it all the time. But he said in there was like, "Oh, that actually is a pain point for me,
Adolfo: Hmm. Hmm.
Riley: and now I need, now I need to explore deeper." and that's I guess our job, you know, when we're out there selling these [01:03:00] new things is bring up those pain, pain points, and maybe that person's not your customer. And if they're not, great, just move on, right?
And
Adolfo: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Riley: But dude, if they do,
Adolfo: Yeah. Yeah
Riley: solution to it 'cause y-you had said earlier it's not just for a buck.
Adolfo: Yeah.
Riley: But it
Adolfo: Yeah
Riley: but it's not just for a buck. You're solving a pr-problem legitimately, and, and I guess maybe that's an, an encouragement to you is like I've seen the problems you're talking about
Adolfo: Yeah. Yeah
Riley: I go, I'm glad they're not an... it's not my business that I'm struggling with it. But, man, the school I-- school I'm loyal to and trained at is, is experiencing all those things. And so, um, yeah, I can think of a few people, man, that I'll have referrals for you to talk to
Adolfo: That's awesome. Yeah, you know, it's funny 'cause, like, one of the things that we do mention is that, hey, if you're a student, 'cause students witness this 'cause you're really close to the business in this martial arts world for whatever reason, so you'll witness this gym owner, you know, struggling, or you have to check into [01:04:00] this awkward system and then you're running into these issues or whatever, is that, hey, if you see your, your inst- you know, your academy owner writing your name on a piece of paper or, you know, trying to type you into an Excel file or something, just, just point them this way.
It's not even like our... They're, they're not the customer, right? It's, like, it's their gym owner that's the customer. So we're saying, "Hey, you know, just point them this dir- have them just have a look, you know, just consider this thing."
Riley: Here's the things to look for. I can't tell you how many times I've, I've gotten that phone call. You know, I teach our, our morning classes, right? And, and some evenings too, but I'll get this phone call at, or a text at 5:00 in the morning saying, "Hey, the software's down again. Will you write down whoever came on-- and leave it on the front counter so I
Adolfo: Yeah.
Riley: and input them manually?" I'm like, "Man," and that's... It's not, it's not every day, but it's not uncommon for that to happen.
Adolfo: Sure.
Riley: Um, my son, uh, just last week he comes up and says like, "Dad, I can't check into the, the system," you know, the little kiosk there. And
Adolfo: Mm-hmm.
Riley: go over [01:05:00] there and sure enough, his name's not even on it. So then we go to the office and say, "Hey, Simon's not on this... know, he's not able to check in." And they look at it, and somehow the software just recategorized him as a student that was, they call them alumni. People who used to be here that aren't anymore. And it just... Yeah, so we had to go back in there and change that all, but it somehow auto, auto
Adolfo: Well
Riley: and it was a flaw in the software.
But man, it affected, you know, my kids. Like, "I, I can't even check in."
Adolfo: Well, yeah.
Riley: those are pain points, right?
Adolfo: Yeah, totally, man
Riley: I think that c- I think that comes from, you tell me this, um, from patchwork, right? They start patching all these different
Adolfo: Yeah
Riley: add-ons to the software that, and then all of a sudden they start to conflict with each other, right?
Adolfo: Yeah. In fact, when you, when you mentioned alumni, I, I wrote it down. I have this notepad next to me here because I just like to make note of these type of, you know, things too, where people ask for these things, and next thing you know, it's another option, it's another dropdown in, in a dropdown selection or another checkbox, and, you know, that some [01:06:00] poor, you know, front desk person at a, at a gym needs to, you know, click another thing or select yet another thing in along with, you know, entering the name, making sure the credit card number is updated, you know, all the usual stuff.
Um, so yeah, that's where the spiderweb grows too much and the, you know, y- you get the beast, yeah, of just adding on this patchwork of craziness.
Riley: like too many ideas. Slow it
Adolfo: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But-- And you'll see that too. So you'll see, uh, often these websites say, "I don't care. Name your, name your product," you know, or your business, and you'll see a list of features, and they do it proudly too.
They'll say, "Oh, look at this list of features compared to my competitors who only have X." Y- yeah, that, that can be a good thing, but it can also be a nightmare too, you know? It's like, do you... Yeah, do you really need all that? Do you really use all that? Um, sure, a full-blown CRM system sounds great to add on to this one all-in-one thing, or sure, a website builder seems really cool to have an all-in-one [01:07:00] thing, but there's a reason we have, um, you know, like a Wix or a Squarespace or some other thing, and these are companies that make websites.
There's a reason we have these standalone products that are best in breed for whatever they may do, you know, or a Salesforce, whatever it may be, right? For CRM instead of an all-in-one sort of thing, 'cause back to our conversation about not being something for everyone, 'cause then you dilute yourself and you become this vanilla nothingness.
That's, you know, it can-- That's where it goes, and I've seen that over and over again in this, in this type of space, and you g- you should think about it about your particular business and your particular product as well.
Riley: Yeah, I th- I think so. Like, and, and that's any sector,
Adolfo: Yeah. Yeah.
Riley: sector needs to
Adolfo: Right
Riley: customer. They have that, have to have the guardrails, uh, of where they start to say no to things. Um, and if you don't, it's a mistake.
Adolfo: Yeah. When too much is indeed too much. Yeah.
Riley: Yeah. Yeah. [01:08:00] That's it. So, um, so tell me this, dude, to market, right?
There's a question I had for you because I, I know For SALT, the major thing, I thought the major thing was gonna be product development.
Adolfo: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Riley: That being said, that was only the beginning, man, and there was, there was a lot more time overlapped in there of figuring out supply, figuring out printing, figuring out, you know, packaging, all that kind of stuff,
Adolfo: Mm-hmm.
Riley: answering all these questions I didn't even know were questions I would have to ask.
I just... I don't know what I thought. It was just gonna magically appear or what. But, you know, when, when you went into this with Matt Admin, what was the time, the time it took you to develop this thing, and how many years have you spent on it?
Adolfo: This one was quick, man. Thanks to the advent of artificial intelligence, man, I can turn around solutions [01:09:00] in days now. It's, uh... That would take us, man, months, if quarters to do. It's, uh, it's incredible. It's... And there's a reason I don't have a full, you know, support staff or anything like that, because I have agents now doing a lot of stuff, you know, right now, even as we speak.
It's, uh, you know, it's debugging, it's troubleshooting, it's testing, it's releasing type of things. And so that's why I've reached pretty much parity with, with what I want in terms of with the competition at the cost that I can do. Now, you can apply that also to sales as well, in terms of outreach and things like that, and then things get even more interesting, right?
So, um, it's rapidly shrunk that to, like, I'm talking weeks, maybe a month or something like that now that you can do. Now, keep in mind, I have [01:10:00] a tech background, right? So I happen to have that luxury of understanding a scaffolding, if you will, right? How to build the building from foundation to, you know, painting the exterior, so to speak.
So it makes that process way easier. There's less fumbling for me to this learning process. Um, where I'm weaker is, I think, in the marketing and sales aspect that your strength, you know, relies too. So that's, that's, I think, a, a more time-consuming thing. But in terms of, like, building out and rollout, man, I can do...
I can roll out thing in a couple... A feature in a couple days, right? In- or in a day if someone asks me.
Riley: man
Adolfo: Yeah, it's insane. It's insane. And I've had s- a couple other gym owners say, "Hey, what about this? What about Y?" And I'm like, "Oh, okay. I'll have that in two days, maybe a day." And, uh, it happens, and it's, it's, it's insane what I've witnessed
Riley: That's impressive, man, 'cause I, I'll tell you, in my, in my lube [01:11:00] business, years ago we started it, right? And it became very apparent to me that I, I had to have some type of a software to track these vehicles we were working on.
Adolfo: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Riley: about.
Adolfo: Mm-hmm.
Riley: I had to sit and learn the language and learn how to, how to make the program basically code in alg- algorithms into an existing program, right?
Adolfo: Mm-hmm.
Riley: then I s- I did it in one, and then we ended up later needing to have some more capability with other people being able to use, you know, get into the account and use it.
And the software I started with couldn't do that.
Adolfo: Mm-hmm.
Riley: just wasn't even capable. And so then I had to switch softwares, and the language it used was different, right?
Adolfo: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Riley: I'm like, "Crap, man." So it was like starting over and learning it all over again. But
Adolfo: Yeah
Riley: months and m- months and months I spent
Adolfo: Yeah.[01:12:00]
Riley: up till 1:00 in the morning working on making this stuff work was crazy.
Adolfo: Yeah, that was ridiculous
Riley: talking about right now, I realize, like with AI, I could go in there in five minutes, probably have that done.
Adolfo: Yeah, totally. It's mind-blowing.
Riley: 'cause it was learning from scratch, right?
Adolfo: Yeah, back in the day, you know, I, even setting up a piece of software itself was a whole process, you know? Ugh, I have to configure my computer or something in order to just run this particular application. I mean, even that, not even writing any code, you know, was like a, it was a slog, man, and it sucked.
And now it's, it's like instantaneous, and that's the joy. So the joy in actually producing and creating now, and I'm doing less and less coding now actually, you know? If anything, I'm just sort of orchestrating now and of all these things, uh, and I'm allowing it to go into deep testing, deep security scans, and that type of thing, you know?
And debugging really fast, you know, all these things. So I mean, it's, it's remarkable. And I, and this isn't a [01:13:00] unique story now, it's, but it's, it's, it's the new day. It's the day now, not even new days. It's how business is done now, and if, I feel like if you haven't been on it or you're not on that type of thing, if it applies to your particular business, then you're gonna get, you're for sure gonna get left behind, for sure
Riley: This, um You, you used the term orchestrating, right?
Adolfo: Hmm.
Riley: I think that's something that I'm really feeling that pull with, with AI especially, is like I don't have the time to know the questions even to ask.
Adolfo: Mm-hmm.
Riley: you can go on there and you can say, "Hey, make me a, a string of code for this feature."
Adolfo: Mm-hmm.
Riley: But man, you don't ask that question right, answer you're gonna get some, some kinda, it's not what you really thought you were gonna get, right?
Adolfo: Right.
Riley: how did, how did you... I imagine it just helped being, having a tech background, but what's the learning curve been like for you as the, like in that, that term you used, orchestrating, is pretty rad, [01:14:00] but
Adolfo: It's, uh, initially-- So again, going back to the ADD thing and back to when my early tech days, I used to struggle 'cause I would get sidetracked by really cool tools, right? That was my thing is like a, "Oh, wow, there's this new thing called Photoshop. Oh, there's this thing called Dreamweaver that would make websites.
Oh, there's this and that. Oh, these filters, you know, that I can make my pictures really crazy with." And so I would get sidetracked by these really cool new, like, tools, right? The tooling itself. And that's, that's here now with AI as well. There are all these different skills and things like that, that you can get sidetracked on really quickly because they're fun, exciting, and you hear all these different voices saying to do it this way and that way.
And so you can go all over the place like a pinball machine. So again, if you have that ability to focus and decide on one thing, I highly recommend sticking with it and, you know, going through that process until it may or may not work for you. Now, i-in terms of prompting what you're asking when you talk about in terms of asking the questions, I'm not just using one service.
I'm using [01:15:00] two different services, and I'm having them sort of battle it out with each other in terms of my, when I ask a question or something like that. "Hey, is this the right question? How to help me flesh out this idea." "Okay, well, here's a, here's a plan." "Okay, let's chalk, let's check it with this particular service.
Th-this service reviews that." "Oh, okay, let's feed it back to this guy." And so I have a sort of a rotation where they go back and forth, and the- we're talking about expert level, you know, review of whatever it may be, planning, whatever it may be, your marketing plan, uh, a tech deployment or something like that.
And it refines itself down, and I have it do it a number of times. I have itself give it, you know, a number on a scale to zero to five or something like that. And we don't release until we hit a five, right? So it could iterate, iterate, iterate. So I'm just giving you a really quick high-level sort of example here.
But, um, that's effectively what I'm sort of doing. That's per item and infinitum, right? So we can have multiple different of these things happening. And so your imagination can just [01:16:00] go wild, right, in terms of what it can do and how you can apply this to your business.
Riley: So I had this experience and maybe when you, when you just said you don't release it until it's a five, right?
Adolfo: Hmm. Mm-hmm.
Riley: is this what you're referring to?
Adolfo: Yeah, that could be. Mm-hmm
Riley: When I, when I first, my first... Well, I'd call it my first, but it was the, a report that I would pull, right? And it was, it was this thing that would... I created a, a report that would track these, these commercial vehicles, and it would tell me when all their services were due.
Adolfo: Mm-hmm.
Riley: But in the, in the algorithm that pulled all the information that I needed and made, you know, made this report for me, it had this, like, little circular reason in it, and it would eventually dial down, but I remember I got to a point where I would click go on that report, and it would take an hour to generate that report.
Adolfo: Mm-hmm.
Riley: And it wasn't until, gosh, I was probably a year or [01:17:00] two, maybe even three years into that when I realized that little circular reason was happening. It was giving me back accurate information. It just took forever.
Adolfo: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Riley: fixed that one point,
Adolfo: Mm-hmm.
Riley: and it was three seconds that r-
Adolfo: Oh, wow.
Riley: would take to go. So it went from an hour to, like, literally seconds.
Adolfo: Amazing.
Riley: and whoop, it was up, and I'm
Adolfo: Yeah
Riley: "Crap, man." And so I, I, I guess when you say that, that's what I'm picturing. Is that what you're talking about?
Adolfo: Uh, es- yeah, essentially, so think of a plan. Let's think of a marketing plan, for instance. You know, "Hey, I have an idea for X. You know, I- k- let's, let's put together a marketing plan for this." And so you get your first draft, right, of this thing, and you're like, "Huh. Uh, let's have another set of eyes look at it and give its review.
Huh. Oh, okay, this is getting a little more refined." And then back over here, "Oh, this has become an actual plan. Oh, this, this could be phase one. Oh, that could be phase two, you know, phase three." And then you have an actual plan at the end of it, and for that, for [01:18:00] instance, and then you have something to deploy from there.
"Well, okay, let's start building off of this." And then you repeat the process for the building process
Riley: That's awesome, man. So you're... Yeah, 'cause that'll help you, again, narrow down who your client is. It took me three years to figure out who my client was in my oil change business. it's, it's taken some time to figure out who my ideal client is in, in, with SALT, right?
Adolfo: Yeah, the physical busine- business is... Yeah, that's wild.
Riley: Yeah. Geez, man. Well, you got my wheels turning here, so I may start playing with AI a little differently than I have been so far, so,
Adolfo: Yeah, and it's, it's getting better. I gotta, I gotta be honest though, in the early day, you know, in the beginning of this thing, it wasn't as good. Um, and it would, it would, you know, people talk about hallucination is what they call it, but, uh, it would go off on different paths too. I would say, "Hey, let's stick to this."
I'm using-- I keep using this marketing example. Let's stick to this marketing example of, you know, whatever, going to, you know, single gym owners, whatever. Oh, that's good, and then it would sort of whittle off into like whatever multi, you know, multi-gym ownership or, [01:19:00] or you know, something else. It, it would do that.
It would... They ca- it-- They call it drift. It would, it would drift. But the thing is, like, it's self-improving so fast, you know, this, this, uh, uh, AI, that it just, it's getting better and better and better. So like the memes are just not... Of the joke of AI, they're not aging particularly well because of the improvement it's making so rapidly that, uh, I only see it getting better increasingly fast.
Similar to my example of where I can roll out a feature now in a day or two, it's, it- it's directly as a result of its improvement over time. And what I've witnessed, as I mentioned before, is like, um, you know, some rather... You know, you gotta, you know, manage it, whereas I'm less and less having to manage it and more and more give it interesting things to do.
It's... So that's becoming my challenge now, is coming up with great ideas
Riley: Sounds so cool to me, man, 'cause I, I think, I think I [01:20:00] underutilize that tool
Adolfo: Yeah, I think we all do. We're limited by our humanness, right? In that respect, I guess.
Riley: Yeah, it's, uh, like I was saying before, it's hard to know 'cause you're... It's like, what questions do I even ask this
Adolfo: Yeah, yeah. In the con...
Riley: it? How do I-- where do I begin on this, this thing?
Adolfo: Yeah, I mean
Riley: we, yeah, develop that skill, I think then we can, we can move on.
Sounds like you've really, really developed that over the years.
Adolfo: Trying to, trying to. It's, it's hard when, uh, you know, we have all this context, like, like you mentioned, you know, all this history of how we did business and how it's supposed to be done, and then all of a sudden it's, y- you know, it's kind of up in the air in a way, but not. It is and it's not, and you have to apply it to this different, you know, to this different paradigm
Riley: Yeah. Tell me about, um, obstacles that have gotten in your way
Adolfo: Obstacles that got in my way. Uh[01:21:00]
Uh, you know, there's just logistics. You know, I need more computers I'm realizing, rather than just this one laptop that I'm working on or something too. Um, so things I just didn't really consider. You know, I thought I'd be able to, you know, as an old d- developer, I w- used to be able to just sit here and code and things go to the cloud.
When so much work is happening on one particular vice, device, uh, you, you quickly learn, hey, I need something else to work autonomously. I need a different device, that kind of thing. Um, uh Sales, I think in outreach, uh, finding people to just do the initial testing, you know, and, uh, who are willing to do that kind of-- It's like people who wants to answer a survey, right?
That kind of thing. Uh, that's been a, a real challenge is to get honest feedback, as you mentioned. That's-- It's just so important to like a, a budding product, you know, to get, to get [01:22:00] that feedback, and so difficult, I think, at times too. Okay, yeah, the family is good, but as you mentioned, you want that sort of, you know, unfiltered feedback as well.
And to have someone do that on their maybe free time or maybe for a few bucks, depending on what kind of budget you have, and to answer X amount of questions. Is it the right questions? You know, then I have to put that together. Do I have a feedback mechanism for them to do that? Are we gonna do it live?
If I'm gonna do it live, then I have to be with them, you know. Do I have the time to do that? So yeah, I think it's a, a lot of that type of stuff that, um, the shaping and, uh, the logistics of, uh, that thing that has been sort of like, oh, this is a thing, you know. And the outreach, as you mentioned too, uh, the cold calling, you know.
Is that really your strength that's needs to be developed? Uh, sales and that type of thing.
Riley: Uh, I'm really excited for you, man, 'cause, you know, again, you've, you've witnessed these pain points personally. part of the tribe. You're, you're out there in the, [01:23:00] just the meta of ju- the jujitsu world, and so I c- I can't help but think it's gonna be successful. It's just, I know there's,
Adolfo: Thank you.
Riley: still a learning curve, right?
There's,
Adolfo: Yeah
Riley: those... You gotta be a go-getter, huh?
Adolfo: Yeah, yeah. I'm just driving towards it, man. Yeah.
Riley: love it.
Adolfo: go, let's go
Riley: what i- what is your vision right now? So you're in this beginning stages, right? And so you're... I think sometimes we, we start out with this maybe grandiose vision, like, "I'm just gonna take over the whole world with this, this software."
But, but what's your, what's your kind of, uh, let's say one-year vision versus maybe a five-year?
Adolfo: Yeah, no, the way I look at, at, uh, what I'm doing and what we're doing is, uh, we're the, we're the little rebel group right now, right? We're the insurgents kind of, you know, uh, quietly. And, and as I mentioned, I wanna be kind of invisible and sort of... You know, I was in stealth for a while doing this too. And so I, I wanna come from underneath.
I wanna surprise, you know, and slowly, like, grow from there rather than to make a big sort of, you know, rain [01:24:00] on everyone type of thing. Uh, so, so that's m- a guerrilla type of approach and, and, yeah, to, to, to, you know, to eat the roots, so to speak, you know, to, to, to take the space is, uh, is the goal. You know, we're...
As I mentioned, you know, the targets that we're identifying, you know, like I said, the solo entrepreneur, the struggling individual who wants to just start a business that I have tremendous empathy for, um, and their, their pocketbooks, that's, that's it, and I want to attack that space pretty aggressively.
Um, and, you know, in a kind of quiet kind of way, but, uh, also not because, you know, we're just getting better and better and better. As I mentioned before, we're iterating fast and, uh, yeah, that's it. I, I'm excited, man. Yeah. Yeah, it's fun
Riley: It's such a cool thing, dude. I'm, yeah. I, genuinely I'm excited for you, 'cause I, I've got this, uh, you know, entrepreneur part of my brain just sitting there going, "Well, this is so freaking cool that
Adolfo: Yeah. Yeah.
Riley: this thing." And again, I've [01:25:00] seen those, I've seen the problems, so I, I know exactly what you're, what you're trying to put together here, and I, I think it was just last week and I was listening to something you'd put out, and I was like, "Holy crap, this is a new thing."
Like, I can't wait to talk about this now. And
Adolfo: Yeah.
Riley: I was gonna have a whole different conversation with you, uh, but yeah. This is, this is exciting.
Adolfo: Well, hopefully we can have more conversations. Yeah
Riley: Yeah. No, we should. Um, listen, tell me this, man. This, this, uh, this is called the Go Earn Your Salt podcast,
Adolfo: Mm-hmm.
Riley: and if you've ever listened to one of these episodes, you know this, this question comes up to everybody.
But when you hear the term go earn your salt, what does it mean to you?
Adolfo: Well, for me it's, um, as I keep, like, focusing on in terms of like, you know, especially if you're someone who with, uh, attention, you know, issues and you're easily diverted, that type of thing, is to, you know, identify your passion if you can, or passions, and just gnaw on that sucker like a, you know, a dog on a bone.
And focus and go and drill down [01:26:00] until you're beyond happy and you're beyond uncomfortable, and you just keep pushing through 'cause, you know, what's on the other side of that, that door is usually really, uh, amazing, you know, and, and a learning experience and something you can take in life. So yeah, it's to push forward, continue on, focus, don't lose that focus, keep driving, take one step forward all the time, keep going.
And that's it for me. Yeah, drive forward and kick ass.
Riley: I love it. I love it, man. Adolfo, outside of, we've, we've talked jujitsu, but, you know, outside of jujitsu, what's your, what's your favorite pastime?
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Adolfo: Oh man, I'm, uh, I really love music a lot too. You know, I was a musician when I was younger and, uh, always liked the supporting band, that type of thing. So, um, yeah, I love that. And tech, as I've mentioned before too, I'm very interested in, in that space as well now. And, uh, leadership too. You know, I'm very interested in, you know, these type of practices in terms of how to run a business, how to manage people, how to manage yourself, and just how to be a better human and, uh, and to be empathetic and help others.
Yeah, that's... So that stuff is what really piques my interest.
Riley: That's [01:28:00] super cool. That's super cool. Um, tell us this, is there, uh, is there something quirky about you that people don't know?
Adolfo: Ooh, quirky about me Oh.
What is about me? Quirky about me. I'm sure everyone has something that I don't. You know, my language is humor, so even though I may come very straight, straight sort of laced here or, or not, uh, man, I am always, you know, I'm... I drive my coach crazy because I am not that, you know, formal type of guy. I'm always-- It's the one place where I could cut loose, right?
In the corporate industry, we have to be a certain way, or I was in a Fortune 500 type of company, and even startups to a degree, right? It was a lot more looser. But man, you know, um, yeah, I like, uh, cracking a lot of, uh, jokes and, and humor and sometimes not, not so, you know, polite kind of stuff. Yeah, if you will, you
Riley: Little less than poli- politically correct
Adolfo: know.
Yeah, better you [01:29:00] said it than me. Uh-huh.
Riley: Do you, uh, do, do you talk trash when you grapple?
Adolfo: Yeah, I do. I do. Especially with my coach who can destroy me. Yeah, it's always that type of thing. You know, I always, uh, I don't know if you saw, like, uh, during like, uh, April Fools, I, I released a, a bunch of, like, these funny type of q- uh, spoof meme, uh, instructionals, one of which was, um, winning, winning, winning competitions by DQ, right?
D- so the objective was to get your opponent disqualified, that type of thing. So, like, whenever I roll with, like, my instructor, I'm always, like, trying to get him disqualified. You know, I like doing these IBJJF not legal moves, and so I could win, and yeah, that kind of thing. So yeah, yeah, I do that. I, I do tr- talk trash with, with people that I'm really, really close with.
If I... The more I talk trash with you, the closer we are. So there you go.
Riley: No, that's, that's for real. So one of my, one of my SALT clients, they, they sell salt out of their gym, and we were training this last weekend, and this guy's like a ... He's, he's a way [01:30:00] better grappler than I am. Like, uh, by a lot. It's not even close, right? He's more athletic, he's younger, he's, he's fast.
He's just a- all the attributes plus he's just been grappling longer, right? He's just, he's super good.
Adolfo: Yeah.
Riley: we were grappling, and I, I kept telling him that my arms were not available. You know, you just ... You ca- I should get a tattoo that says not available. You can't have this arm. And he'd keep going for the arm, and I'd shut the arm down.
I'd end up in a triangle and get choked, but he didn't get the arm. That was the point, I harassed him all weekend about it. And then once we were done with our first round, I wouldn't grapple with him again, so I was like, "It's, it's impossible. You're not getting this arm." You know? It's like ... It was a, it was a great time.
Adolfo: That's awesome, man. I love it. I love it. Try to buy Ali
Riley: Yeah, yeah. That, that kind of stuff's fun, but like you said, that you can only do that with people you're, you're kinda close with, you know? You get some dude you don't know, that, that's not happening.
Adolfo: Yeah.
Riley: That's, uh, awesome. Adolfo, what's your, uh, your favorite naughty food?
Adolfo: Naughty food, pizza. Yeah, 100%. Yeah, I think that would be my last meal.
Riley: a [01:31:00] specific kind?
Adolfo: You know, I'm good with both. You know, uh, this will be heresy to a lot of people, but man, I like those thick, you know, thick pizzas as well. Uh, but I love that New York style flat pizza too that, you know, that, that, that you, that you see in New York and, and otherwise.
That nice crusty thin one. But man, a nice thick, you know, cheesy pizza, that's really... From your favorite pizza place, and I'm sure you all have. You know how good that is. Come on. What are we talking about here?
Riley: know it. I, I'm so with you.
Adolfo: It's my weakness.
Riley: pizza.
Adolfo: Yeah.
Riley: Uh, there's some of them I can
Adolfo: And cookies. I love cookies. Yeah
Riley: Cookies are pretty good. Do you have a nickname?
Adolfo: You know, I have so many because my name is so different. Uh, Adolfo, you know, it's a three-syllable name. There's not a whole lot of those around. And as a kid, uh, my mom would take me to Disneyland, and I would look through the, through the license plates with the names of, like, John and Mike, and thinking that someday I'll see Adolfo.
Riley: one?
Adolfo: Come on. What are we doing here? Yeah. [01:32:00] Um, so my, my spam e-mail, actual mail that comes here, it's, it's always crazy stuff. Like, it's Fernando, Alfonso. It's a- it's anything but Adolfo. Uh, you can go on and on. So, uh, yeah, people would call me Fons. They would ca- you know, all kinds of just crazy stuff. So yeah, my, my name in itself is, is a, is a nickname pretty much.
Yeah.
Riley: So you're, you're talking about those license plates. I remember getting f- 'cause my name when I was a kid was super uncommon.
Adolfo: Yeah. Yeah, that's right.
Riley: other
Adolfo: Riley?
Riley: growing
Adolfo: no way. That wasn't a name back... Yeah
Riley: Yeah, so I could never find those license plate either, and I was always a little bitter about it.
Adolfo: Yeah, exactly. Exactly Good on us.
Riley: gosh. she could get them every time.
Adolfo: day. Yeah. My wife too, Jessica. Yeah
Riley: Oh, yeah. Yeah, Jessica, that's, that's... Yeah, I love it, man. what, um, in your life, what do you think has been the most valuable learning experience?
Adolfo: Oof, man. [01:33:00] Gosh I think it's, uh, empathy has been the thing, like, l- l- lately. I think, you know, what, what I see is, like, the my 20s and coming up as a teen and 20s, it's all about you, right? And, and your, your spectrum and your view, as it should be, is really the tunnel of view is, is much smaller because you're focused on your own growth, right?
So your personal growth, you know, financial, I need to get my own place. I need to move out of my house. I need to get my car. It's me, me, me, me, me. And then later in life, you have a kid and things-- that, that viewpoint starts expanding. You know, I need to worry about my kid. I need to worry about my mom and dad, you know, and, or everything else, my, you know, the whatever, the r- the other things in life, the people around me, my neighbors, my, you know.
And then all of a sudden you're looking at everyone else ex- almost except yourself. And so that's, that's been a, a, a really big one for me is, uh, just having a lot of empathy for others and [01:34:00] just sort of meeting them where they're at. I know it's cliche as that sounds. Just trying to put in perspective of like, uh, where's this person coming from, you know?
And, and maybe they're having a bad day, maybe they're having a great day, and just to keep those things in mind. Um, whereas I maybe would take lesser consideration in the past and in my youth for the, for those type of things. Yeah, I think that's been a, it's been a huge
Riley: stuff, man. he said it's finding people where they're at, you know? 'Cause sometimes we And we get to see that up close and personal in jujitsu, right? We, we see that guy who comes in from a rough day at work. You can just
Adolfo: Hmm. Mm-hmm
Riley: and it's, it's easier sometimes to go, "You know what?
I'm not gonna push that dude too hard tonight 'cause,
Adolfo: Yeah.
Riley: having a rough one."
Adolfo: Yeah, yeah, totally, man.
Riley: But, you know, I've, I've had ... Yeah, that's, that's pretty cool. Um,
Adolfo: Or like I mentioned before, like the kid who's, you know, doesn't, uh, you know, he doesn't make eye can- contact a whole lot. You know, he kind of keeps to himself. He's, [01:35:00] you know, maybe not the, the most in shape and, and can't do, like, as much as others, you know, and thing. I, I think that's where, like, uh, you know, the opacity of life sort of clears up, right?
The window becomes much clearer and you're like, "Oh, wow, I need to, I need to take everyone into consideration in this one as well especially."
Riley: I had that experience just the other night, right? We have this, this young man in our class, and he's one of those that he's a little on the autistic spec- spectrum.
Adolfo: Hmm.
Riley: of my favorite students because he, man, he learns fast
Adolfo: Yeah.
Riley: in
Adolfo: Yeah.
Riley: the jujitsu world. It just blows my mind. But
Adolfo: Yeah
Riley: he's also one of the most unassuming guys.
If you
Adolfo: Hmm. Mm-hmm.
Riley: walking around, he's not making eye contact. He's super gem-spirited, just, he's got this... I don't know, I just, I have a soft spot for him, right?
Adolfo: Mm-hmm. Totally.
Riley: But I also am his coach, and so I need to challenge him. And
Adolfo: Mm-hmm
Riley: of the things that happened, you just talked about s- finding people where they are, is we were going around, around the, the class [01:36:00] after, after the teaching session, right?
And I was saying, "Hey, guys, what's something you're taking away from the day that you didn't, didn't know when you walked in the room today?"
Adolfo: Hmm.
Riley: And when I got to him, I realized, like, this is gonna be really outside of his comfort zone to answer this question in front of everyone,
Adolfo: Hmm.
Riley: right? And so where I had just put a bunch of pressure on one guy, it's like, "Hey, I want you to pick something, man.
There's something in there that you pulled out of here that was new." When I got to, when I got to Jimmy, I, I, I'm, I'm thinking, "I probably should not put the pressure on this kid.
Adolfo: Mm-hmm.
Riley: put some, though." So, so I changed it up, and it was, uh, one of those things where I said, "Hey, Jimmy, I'm gonna ask you this question in a minute, so start thinking now. I'm gonna move on and get a couple more people first, but I'm coming back to you."
Adolfo: Hmm.
Riley: And by the time I got back, man, he had an answer,
Adolfo: Wow.
Riley: was a good answer. It
Adolfo: Wow.
Riley: I could tell he had really thought it through,
Adolfo: Hmm.
Riley: Man, yeah, you just talk about if it was another person, I probably would put pressure on him to answer right there.
Adolfo: [01:37:00] Hmm.
Riley: But it wasn't the appropriate time with him, so that's, that's good stuff that you
Adolfo: Is, isn't that amazing though, when you give someone a goal? You know what I mean? Like, a, a target. I, I, one, one gym was like, I remember when I was early on building this thing and like, "Hey, I'm opening my gym at X date. Do you think you're gonna be ready then?" And boy, did that light a fire under my butt, right?
To... And I got so much done. So yeah, that's, that's wonderful to apply like a, a goal and objective to, to someone. So good on you, man.
Riley: Oh, that's cool. Dang. Adolfo, what is the, the best advice you've ever received in your life?
Adolfo: Wow. Best advice I've ever received
Man, that's a, that's a m- that's a, that's a mind-blowing one. Please
Riley: yeah, [01:38:00] remember, um, and I think I've even told it on this podcast, but there's, there's... The thing that stands out to me the most, and I was so pissed at my dad when he first said it to me.
Adolfo: Hmm.
Riley: But I got in a car accident. I wrecked my sister's car. I was out driving her car, and I smashed into the back of ano- a pickup truck.
Adolfo: we all?
Riley: the police, m- of the situation, the, the report on the accident was that it was the car in front of the truck's fault,
Adolfo: Hmm.
Riley: So me as a 15-year-old kid at the time was just like, "Well, it was his fault." But my dad kind of cornered me one day and he says, "It's always your fault."
Adolfo: Hmm.
Riley: I took that kind of harsh, you know, and just like, "Uh, it's...
No, that's not what the police said. They said it was his fault." I was, I was pretty upset with that. But as time went on, I started to get what he meant, and he didn't mean it's always your fault, like everything's your
Adolfo: Mm-hmm.
Riley: you're the... He meant there was always some, some f- contribution you made to that situation that had you not, [01:39:00] could have potentially avoided it.
Adolfo: Hmm.
Riley: what he was saying,
Adolfo: Hmm.
Riley: that realization as that 15 year old. I was like, "Yeah, I was kind of following that truck kind of close, and I was kind of drowsy." I was... I'd been driving a long time, and it's a hot day, and I didn't have AC. And, you know, all this, this stuff starts to come to mind, and I start putting together three or four things.
I was like, "Man, I did have a contribution there." yes, the police report said it was that other guy's fault, but I had a part to play in it, so it's always my fault. That was, in life, has been some of the best advice I ever received, but it was some of the hardest to ever, you know, to receive
Adolfo: Yeah. So thank you for that, 'cause that, that gave me a moment to think about it and process this. Um, so, so one really great, uh, piece of advice that I received was, you know, I used to measure myself a lot by, like, what the negative things that people used to say, like, "You're never gonna be X," or, "You're, you're only gonna amount to Y."
And, and then that's what drove me, right? Is this [01:40:00] I'm gonna show them kind of thing. And that, that serves people for a long time, and that could be part of your arsenal, I don't know, that, that drives you. But what I found that it gets to a point where that's, it's sort of like driving an engine really hard for a, a long, a long, long time, right?
And that there becomes a point where you need to move past that and sort of just improve for the sake of improving yourself. Um, again, I think of a conversation that S- um, again, I'm gonna bring up with Simon Sinek, where he mentioned, um, talking... He'd just left a Microsoft conference, and they gave him this little phone device that they were releasing at the time, and they were, um...
And then he happened to be in a, a, a car with, like, an Apple executive or whatever, and he says, "Man, look at how great this thing, all these features and stuff too." And then, uh, the Apple executive looks at the phone and like, "Yeah, this is really wonderful. Great." And then he just kinda, "This is, this is much better.
It has way [01:41:00] more features than us. Yeah, you're right. You're right, it does," and he hand it back to Simon. And then what he, what Simon realized is that, you know, um, where Microsoft's worried about the competition and all their metrics and everything was on Apple and all the things that they're doing, and we're gonna beat them for features and this and that, Apple was playing a longer game where they're like, "We're, our target demographic is the educational space and these teachers and whatever," and they were playing the long game, right?
They were playing the infinite game, is what he calls, right? And so it w- it's sort of in a similar aspect when I realized the don't be driven by the... Well, if, if it's m- it serves you to a point to be like, "I'm gonna show them," but then, uh, that, that really opened up the world to me when I realized, oh, I can just im- improve for the sake of improving, and then magical things happen, right?
And I meet incredible people like yourself or, or whatever and have these great conversations.
Riley: That's cool In your, in your world, who, who has influenced you the most?[01:42:00]
Adolfo: Uh, my mom, 100%. Yeah, she was a, a single mom, I mentioned before. She barely spoke English. She didn't speak any English when she came to this country, um, from Bolivia, South America. And, um, she didn't drive, and she moved me out of a really rough, us out of a really rough neighborhood in San Francisco at that time, really terrible, terrible neighborhood, and moved us like an hour north to this little safe suburb into this tiny little apartment where she would then take the bus, the public bus, all the way to San Francisco and back every day, which was like a two-hour commute each way, right?
Basically because your
Riley: That sounds
Adolfo: public bus... And she would have to walk. And back in the day, the women had to wear heels and nylons and skirts, you know, and so it was double miserable, and she did that for 25 years or something like that, you know, 20 years or whatever, um, every day. And then she would still come back and she was just relentless, right?
She was consistent, and I'd never seen a work [01:43:00] ethic like that before, and I think that really spoke volumes to, uh, yeah, to what I, to what I aspire to be
Riley: That's so cool. so cool. I, I think, I think as we, as we age, right, you start to realize what your parents did for you,
Adolfo: Right? Right
Riley: there's that thing and it's just like, man, I was so critical of them. You
Adolfo: Yeah.
Riley: your 20s it's
Adolfo: Right?
Riley: me.
Adolfo: It's the last thing you wanna be around, right, is your parents
Riley: Yeah.
Adolfo: that age
Riley: And then I see the big picture later in life, I'm like, "Holy crap, man, Dad was way cooler than I gave him credit
Adolfo: Totally. Totally.
Riley: Oh my gosh. Oh. Adolfo, what's a, what's an item on your bucket list?
Adolfo: Oh, geez. Item on the bucket list. Uh, more travel. Yeah, for sure. There are places I want, I want to see. Uh, I've done... Yeah, I've been to a lot of places, but, um, yeah, that's one of them. Yeah. Um[01:44:00]
Riley: Is there somewhere in particular you're thinking of?
Adolfo: Man, you know, I loved Japan. That was, that was the recent one, and I couldn't believe it. It was- felt like I was in a movie when I was there. Like, you know, all these, these, you know, things and man, I'd like to go back to there a lot. It's almost like a bucket list is to go back and to take it in more because it's just a, a whole other thing.
Um, and this, uh, you know, to get better at this AI thing that I've been playing with now, you know, it's, uh... In, in business to... Being an entrepreneur has always been on my, my bucket list and, and you have so much experience with this, and you realize myself later on oftentimes it's like, um, I, I heard someone once say like, "I'm, I'm not a team-- I'm a team player as long as I lead the team."
And I feel sometimes like that's kind of where I'm at. Uh, but, uh, I've been a pretty good team player, but, uh, not the best at times too, you know what I mean? You realize what, uh, where your, your path drives. So yeah, I think bucket list with, you know, with this particular, [01:45:00] um, uh, business and, and who knows, maybe others, it would be, uh, a nice, uh, objective I think and, uh, it may or may not be on my bucket list, yeah
Riley: I love it, man. Um, what's your, what's your favorite book of all time?
Adolfo: Oof, favorite book. So many. Um, I mentioned "The
48 Laws of Power," which was fantastic. You know, again, if you work in the enterprise, AI think it's, uh, or a large corporation, or even maybe not, depending on how your business, uh, uh, operates, 'cause I worked at a small, medium-sized company that acted like they were... They had just ungodly amounts of red tape, and I, I highly recommend, uh, you read that.
It can feel a little negative and bitter at times, uh, but I think there are a lot of life lessons in there in terms of how to deal with, uh, a lot of different types of, uh, psycholo- psychological aspects of different types of individuals that, um, I think would really help, uh, maybe the college kid [01:46:00] going into, uh, a business.
Or, or otherwise, if you're going into a business, I think "The 48 Laws of Power," I don't know if it's the greatest book, but it's, I think, an essential book for someone, uh, going into a dynamic business environment
Riley: Well, it sounds like to me just by the title of it, you know, and the little bit you described of it, that there's this phrase I heard recently, and it said, "Make, make the customer the hero," right?
Adolfo: Hmm.
Riley: my wife and I were talking about that. I was like, "Well, in our, in our marketing messages, you know, how do we make the customer the hero?"
Adolfo: Hmm.
Riley: that seems to have some overlap with, with what you're talking about. I wanna read this book,
Adolfo: Hmm.
Riley: completely off base with this, but
Adolfo: And again, as I'm, uh
Riley: that when you're dealing with somebody, especially if they're power tripping a little bit,
Adolfo: Yeah.
Riley: if you can make them the hero, then they don't
Adolfo: Hmm
Riley: they have to assert their authority, right?
Adolfo: Right, right. And, uh, yeah, and who knows? It may not be the place for you. And, uh, as I mentioned before, um, Luke Wroblewski, anything by him in terms of, uh, you know, user experience [01:47:00] and, and, um, and, uh, business design, that type of th- uh, thing. He's just a, a wonderful read in, in terms of,
Riley: name again? Luke what?
Adolfo: Wroblewski. It's, it's really crazy. Uh, I'll say it, I can't even spell this. I say it's like W-R- I think it's one of those Polish type of spellings, you know? It's Wroblewski, W-R-O-B-L-U-S-K-Y, or something like that, right? I'm, I'm sure that's not right, but I'm close. Um, definitely something by him. Uh, Bill Buxton is another one, um, who does, uh, yeah, interface design and, uh, and product design.
He's a genius. He's a legacy. He was an ex, uh, Microsoft, uh, research labs guy. Uh, very interesting, uh, work he's done. Beautiful work he's done
Riley: Um, well, what's next for you, dude? I mean, you're, you're going headlong, I guess, right now into this, in this new software, so,
Adolfo: Yeah. Yeah
Riley: yeah, I guess that's maybe not even a fair question 'cause we spent the whole podcast talking about what's next for you. But[01:48:00]
Adolfo: Yeah, yeah.
Riley: this
Adolfo: So keep it on, man. You know, Forever White Belt, I'm still doing that with the, with the podcast and, and continuing with that. It's a lot of fun. I really love doing that and having these conversations like you do. Uh, yeah, and with Matt Admin, I've been, uh, uh, super busy with that. That's the thing, you know, I gave you a teaser onto one of the next sort of things that we're working on, as well as, uh, other things that are coming on to mature the product a bit more.
Um, marketing, advertising, sales, you know, uh, boning up on that type of stuff and a- attacking that, um, will be the next, uh, deep dive, I feel
Riley: I'm really excited to watch you go with that, you know? 'Cause again, I, I c- I just caught on last week and you had a post up and man, I got so excited when I saw that. I was like, "Oh, this is gonna be an easy podcast now, man. We got
Adolfo: Yeah.
Riley: to talk about." So, love it.
Adolfo: Yeah. Awesome
Riley: where, uh, where can you be found on the interwebs?
Adolfo: Yeah. So Forever White Belt Show on Instagram, you know, [01:49:00] can show us. We're on all the p- on the platforms, the, the podcast Forever White Belt, YouTube, everywhere else. Uh, mattadmin.app is the URL for Matt Admin. It's, uh, you know, a relatively new social, uh, get Matt Admin. You can get ahold of me by email, hello@mattadmin.com and yeah, that's it.
Would love to get your feedback and, uh, have conversations with all of you
Riley: Dude, I sure appreciate the interview today. This has been ... You just, we're This whole entrepreneur time you're, you're in right now has got me geeking out. So I, i- if, that's probably coming across, but it's genuine, man. I'm, I'm
Adolfo: Awesome
Riley: for you. I think this is a, it's a cool, cool venture you've gone on. I, the problems you're about to solve are, are vast. So
Adolfo: I will reach out to you. I know you're the, you know, you've been through this many a time as an entrepreneur, so yeah, you're the man
Riley: man. Yeah, let's, let's talk. But yeah, I, I think you're on the right [01:50:00] track and you've, you've identified a major problem in the, in the world, and you're creating a good solution for it, so congrats on that.
Adolfo: Thank you, Riley.
Riley: Adolfo, I appreciate you being on the show, man, and go into your SALT, my friend
Adolfo: Thank you
Riley: All right.
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