E012 Christian Peverelli: Co-Founder @ WeAreNoCode

Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 0:07
Once upon a time, there were millions of businesses struggling. Every day they wasted time, effort and money on repetitive tasks that added no value one day, the better automation podcast by process CEO came to help them find a way. Because of this, these businesses save time, reduce costs, innovate and make better decisions. Because of that these businesses grow, scale and use human creativity to change this world. Hello, my name is Aziz and I'm your host that better automation podcast by process to where I interview the world's top experts and share their very best ideas on how to improve automation in your business, processes and life. My guest today is Christian Beverly. Christian is a serial entrepreneur and digital strategist with over 12 years of experience building startups, running accelerators and consulting for Fortune 500 companies and celebrities. As a trainer, he served as the co director of a startup program that has helped over 100 startups go on to raise over 40 million in funding and get into accelerators like TechStars, Y Combinator, and 500. Startups, fluent in English, French, Spanish and Portuguese. He is a lover of tacos, travel, and the great outdoors. Christian, how are you today?

Christian Peverelli 1:52
I'm good. Thanks for asking. Yeah, I haven't had my tacos yet. But I'll be waiting. I'll be waiting for the afternoon for this. It's morning here in California at the moment. How you doing? Aziz?

Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 2:01
I am feeling privileged, honored and really lucky to have you today. And let's explore your mind and really give value to the no code community, to the viewers to the listeners. And, you know, everybody is afraid of mistakes. So let's begin with that. What do you see as the common mistakes that startups are no code founders or makers? Or anybody who's approaching their business through our lens? Makes often?

Christian Peverelli 2:33
Yeah, that's a really good question. I think this was something that I experienced first handedly building my own startups and, you know, making mistakes. But then I had a lot more clarity on it once I was running an accelerator and seeing a lot of deal flow. So a lot of startup applications come through. And it just kind of showed me some of these trends. And I think there's a lot of different issues happening. When it comes to specifically to people who are builders, I think the number one, you know, reason why startups fail in 43% of cases is that they don't address an actual need in the market. So I think that probably qualify as my number one answer. It's, you know, people are built with code or without code, a big issue is that people are building things that other people don't want, or that they're not willing to pay for, which makes it difficult to transform them into businesses. The other thing I think is a big mistake is in the lack of experience, is to just think that you can figure it out on your own, and that that's a good approach. Oftentimes, I've seen people this ends up kind of looking like someone watching a bunch of YouTube videos, listening to lots of podcasts about, about, you know, building startups and feeling like they they're, you know, learning the skills because they're listening to a bunch of great content. And the reality is that it's kind of to piece all those things together. And knowing that there's so many places where you can go wrong and end up spending 1000s of dollars, that end up kind of going down the drain, whether that be on, you know, hiring lawyers too early, hiring a marketing company, because you don't have product market fit. You know, hiring developers early on, I now say that that's a mistake. Now, back in the day, when I started 15 years ago, there was no way that you could start a tech company without having, you know, a tech team behind you. But that's changed dramatically with no code. And yeah, so there's a lot of mistakes that can happen. But I'd say that some of the biggest ones are literally just due to the fact that people believe I think that entrepreneurship is kind of a job that they can just figure out. But I often say, you know, like someone who wanted to be a doctor would not just walk into the operating room, right? And I think it's obviously an exaggeration when comparing it to entrepreneurship, but I do think there are some lessons to be learned in terms of like, you do need to train yourself you do need to be a master of several things. Or or at least good at several things, maybe a Master of None, at first to be able to get things off the ground as an early stage entrepreneur. And I've seen a lot of people come from the corporate world with, you know, 15 years management experience managing large teams internally, and not realizing that's very different than having very few resources at the early stages of a startup. So, there's a lot of places, oftentimes, the place where a lot of money is spent is in the product side of things. Because there's this great quote, that's, you know, first time entrepreneurs are really focused around product. Second times, entrepreneurs are obsessed about distribution. And I think that's something that like, early stage entrepreneurs, they just think, hey, if I'm, you know, I build that app, like Mark Zuckerberg, or like Instagram, you know, I'm gonna be able to, it's just gonna take off. And I think that's a big misconception. So I could go on and on here about mistakes. But basically, I saw a lot of them myself, and was only really aware of them acutely. After seeing 1000s of applications and realizing, wow, there's just a huge number of people who have spent, you know, up to 100, several $100,000, and sometimes years of their life with very little progress to show and so, you know, it's not, I think that's what's killing entrepreneurship at the end of the day, because what happens when someone fails, and they've put so much into it in terms of time and money, they then think, you know, this was just not for me. And then they don't give another shot to the things that they're trying to build, or their, you know, their ambitions, their, their dreams. And, and that's, I think, where, you know, society and individuals lose out the most to be honest, that was a long winded answer. I'll try to be more concise on the next ones.

Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 6:39
No, thank you very much. So if I heard you correctly, there are two things, either, you know, they're building something that there is no need in the marketplace for or there is a need, but it's too low. So people are not willing to pay for it, it doesn't make the cut within their budget, or, you know, they don't bootstrap their, their venture, and therefore, they spend too much money and run out of money, or they try to, like piecemeal, or collect the pieces of the puzzle from YouTube videos or something like that, rather than getting real training, and therefore they will fail. And when they fail, society is hurt. Because, you know, there isn't really innovation, that energy was wasted, it could have gone into something useful, that makes a difference. And they get disheartened and maybe their friends and family. Think of them as like, a cautionary tale of that you shouldn't be an entrepreneur and should become an employee. And that makes me think of you, since you one of your labels is a strategist. And a lot of this is strategy, but people don't really know what that means. So what is strategy, and what is a strategist and how to think strategically as an entrepreneur.

Christian Peverelli 8:02
So this was actually a word that I started employing, because it was complicated for me to explain to people that I went to a really nice University, and didn't want to take the classic highway and had learned along the way of building startups, lots of different skills. And so it was I could have called myself other things, you know, product manager, project manager, technical project manager, I could have called myself a low key marketer, I could have called myself a lot of different things, I think, strategist, what was important about strategists was more about this idea of bringing things to market. So finding out smart and innovative ways to bring ideas to market. And that covers both the actual building of that thing or the creation of that thing. And the, the bring it to market side of things. And, you know, strategist for me is is looking at a problem holistically and coming up with a multifaceted solution or assumption, really, when we're strategist, we only come up with great assumptions that then the market proves correct or incorrect. So the way I like thinking of it is that a strategist for me who's a digital strategist understands the entire realm of, you know, digital creation, from, you know, coding, a little bit of coding, a little bit of no coding, a little bit of automation, a little bit of marketing, enough to be able to go from, hey, I have this cool idea, like, let me like just test the market with it. And then and then if this thing has feet, or as soon as I discover the real product behind my idea that that really stands up in the market and has demand then we're going to start using mechanisms to be able to scale that to more people. And so when I think of technology Yeah, I, whether it's, you know, the core product or automation, there's no point in doing UNbuilding too many things out until we figured out the human dynamics and the end to end like, from like discovery all the way to usage purchase happy customer afterwards. And so early on, you know, and this is a big mistake that founders often make is to think that they can just automate a bunch of things, build a product to deliver to 1000s. Like, you want to go out there and test what product you're building. Because over the the time that you're, you know, you're bringing it to market, you're getting feedback, and you're fine tuning is sometimes completely changing the product or, or who that product services, and automations are only useful. Once we realize, Hey, I just did this thing 20 times, why wouldn't I try to find a way to make that, you know, automated and, you know, in many cases, there are ways to automate things, there's sometimes are ways, new times where you just simply can't automate certain things, right. So that's the way I think about it.

Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 11:00
Thank you. And again, if I understood you correctly, it's about understanding and manually taking care of the user experience all of it in order to find something that people actually want, before you think about scaling it or distribution, as you mentioned, that quote, from before, and that distribution, or scaling, or anything like that only comes when you have something that has been verified and is viable, or as Dan Sullivan, which is why who is one of my favorite entrepreneurship. Thinkers will say, ideas are only valuable if there is someone willing to write a check for them. Otherwise, they're not good ideas, you know, the only measure of your idea is really if it's viable in the marketplace. And why do you think a lot of people struggle with that, because I find two things. One, within the no code community, maybe there is this assumption that it's living your passion, if something you love, or you find interesting, then everybody else will find it interesting. It's not about chasing the money, the money will come if there is that emotion and energy behind it. So they don't really look at the market. But look at what do I like and build something related to that? Or what do I think is interesting? That's, you know, a big part of it. And another thing is, I don't know, why is it psychologically that people don't really think first of putting themselves in the shoes of the people who will pay them for their work here now? Like there is some either resistance, or maybe I don't know, a human psychological tendency to not do it to find it difficult to think, oh, I will be wrong. If I just imagined, what would be the experience, if I'm sitting down as my customer going through this or something like that? What are your thoughts on this? Yeah,

Christian Peverelli 12:55
this is the reason why I say that it's very difficult to separate psychology, from entrepreneurship, because you're going through a truly human like a human transformation. But I think a lot of the limitations that we all have personally reflect in our businesses. So for example, most people have a fear of failure. Why, specifically, specifically, professionally, because we're taught from a very young age that what we do is a central part of identity. What's the first question you're asked when you go to a dinner party? What do you do for a living, that means that people are trying to define you by the thing that you do professionally, which means that for someone to fail professionally, is frowned upon in our society, and creates a blockage, I think in people once they approach the market, because they're trying to not fail. And and so I think that that essentially creates a dynamic where it's much more difficult for entrepreneurship to work out because entrepreneurship is about testing things, and oftentimes being wrong about our assumptions. But having the clear mindedness to be able to redirect our direct are sort of the path that we're paving based on the results that we look at. And so there's clearly some deep psychological reasons why this happens. You know, it's the same thing with over perfectionism. This is a huge thing that cost early stage entrepreneurs, a lot of money and time. Since we think that everything that we do reflects back on us as people, we want to do them perfectly. Except when you're walking out into a market where you just have assumptions about the market. You're there's going to be a lot of reality checks along the way. And you're coming in with a lens of sometimes you've spent years thinking about this idea. This is what happens oftentimes, yours thinking about it, you've completely fallen in love with your idea already. And so you enter the market trying to prove yourself right instead of trying to figure this thing out. And so it's very difficult, I think, unless you take the pressure off yourself of like, Hey, I'm a beginner, like, I need to just start with a beginner's mindset, I can only compare myself to me yesterday, not Elon Musk, who's 30 steps ahead of me. And it's much better for me to find out the market realities than for me to be right. And so I think it's partly an ego thing, which is why the psychology like comes in, quite importantly. But also, it's this fear of failure, it's this. And so they end up overthinking overworking a product that absolutely needs to get to market, because you're probably way off at first. And you need, you know, like, and perfecting a little design element on your landing page is way less important than seeing like, hey, is this the general thing that people are interested in? Am I talking about this in the right way with the right words? You know, there are some really big elements of it that are going to totally change as you discover these market realities. And so, yes, I think that this is a psychologic thing in humans that that basically is rooted in our fight or flight mechanisms, that we've now taken to an extreme as we've extracted ourselves from, you know, actually being in front of a bear. Now, it just like the same things happen with entrepreneurship with like, our career with being right. And they oftentimes, they really blind us from taking making correct decisions, we get too emotionally attached. And then we want to do the double or nothing effect, that's what I call it. It's like, Oh, I've already spent so much money on this product. And on this thing, I just need to spend five or $10,000, more, you're much more likely to make big mistakes, because you start thinking in this aspect of double or nothing. So first and foremost, I would say that it's important for people to really get grounded. And some people argue like, hey, you need to have big failure in entrepreneurship, before you really know what you're doing. I can definitely sympathize with that. I mean, I would love for people to not have to go through that hardship. I've failed companies, I've sold companies. So I've kind of been on both sides of it. But I can say like you learned a lot once you once you have a family, because it also forces you to go to a deeper part in yourself, that is actually kind of scared and insecure. And it's locking you up from making some of these bold moves crazy decisions, that allows you to become a really skilled entrepreneur who can think on their feet and quickly pivot micro pivot, and find the direction that the market is looking for. And yeah, so it's, you know, it's definitely a long path. But I always say that, you know, if you're just like trying to figure it out, you're kind of, you know, walking into a minefield with a blindfold on it, like, and each one of those mines represents a big money hole, like, you're going to spend a lot of money. And so oftentimes I see founders after, you know, they've already spent a couple $100,000 In a couple of years of their life. And then you know, I train them and teach them how to actually go about building out the products themselves, bring that to market. But sometimes people just have to also fail and see it for themselves, and then come to their own realization. So I think, you know, people have different approaches here. But I don't know which one is the correct one, I just know, I figured out over time, which one actually worked for me. But I often say like, you know, no two paths are the same. So you're gonna have to pave your own as an entrepreneur. But there are definitely some skills. You know, it's been half a century that we've been building startups in Silicon Valley, there's a lot that you should and will have to learn over the process, so that you increase your chances of success, but also you look serious in front of other people who are maybe institutional investors, and, and people who are interested in backing you, you know, with money or even with their own talent, like employees,

Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 18:56
thank you. So what I'm hearing from you is something that in athletic performance, they say about the best athletes that they play to win, they don't play not to lose. And therefore, to be a great or good entrepreneur, you have to play to win, which means you're thinking about the win and how to do it correctly, rather than hedging your bets. And all that as well as pivoting based on the market feedback, because, in many ways, you know, what I think about it is like a plant when it's growing, it keeps on growing and finding where is the sun for photosynthesis, and it will like pivot and direct its branches to go to where the nutrition or for entrepreneurs where the money is, and therefore you begin with your roots and with your branches, moving slowly, knowing like okay, if I'm going in this direction, am I getting more nutrition? That's good. If I go here, I get less nutrition or non trician. So I should stop going there as well as you know, adapting and being a child. But I will play the devil's advocate a little bit because, you know, Seth Godin would say, if you're giving the market what it wants, you're a hack. And there is nothing wrong with being a hack, as he says, although it's already a pejorative word. And he says, Look, if you'll do something you'll love for the rest of your life. Part of it comes is that your success will be limited. So your choices are either doing something you love, but have very little success, or being a hack, who is like giving the market what it wants, and getting money and success and praise and all that. So he's presenting this dichotomy and saying, YouTube, you want to be happy and fulfilled? Well, your money will be, like limited, or you'll be just like, doing acrobatics to satisfy the market without beating yourself, and you'll get money in return. Do you believe this is correct? A lot of people might even have a psychological resistance to being responsive to the market because of such thoughts or limiting beliefs? Or is this reality?

Christian Peverelli 21:09
Yeah, I think well, first of all, I love Seth Godin. So I love that you're bringing him into this, I think that he's, I think it really completely depends on the situation, I would say that one thing I learned early on, when I was in the same mentality of like, do what you love, and then you know, you'll, you'll do it forever, I think it kind of comes down to like, yes, if you are an amazing painter, for example, and you really put in so much effort into painting all the time and you're talented at it, over time, you're going to learn how to make career and you know, you're going to be able to make money from that. And I truly believe that that is absolutely a thing. The other thing is that you're gonna have so much energy to be able to put into that craft or that art that you're gonna get a lot better a lot quicker, if you're really into it. Now, one thing that I learned from building an early business in the music industry in the music tech industry, was that sometimes you walk in with a passion, so I was really passionate about music, I play instruments, I, you know, and I was running a music company for a while. And I realized, like, hey, a lot of the things I love about music, are not the things that I'm doing on a daily basis, running a business company. So sometimes I think, you know, the side of like, hey, like, you don't have to, you know, work in the industry of your passion, always. But I do think you should be passionate about what you work on. Because if not, you won't be able to put in the hours required to become excellent at whatever it is that you're doing. So I'm kind of I think it just depends on the context of what we're talking about. You know, generally, I would say that, when you come in as an entrepreneur, you're passionate, be very passionate about your vision about your mission, but don't be super closed about the product or the service that's going to get you there. And then, you know, I do believe that there, you know, the obstacle is the path as well. Like, I believe you should be doing things that you so I don't think those things have to be, you know, black or white, I think that some of these concepts can live healthily together. You know, you also don't want to be working 30 years on something that you hate, just because it brings good money, we see people just end up kind of miserable sometimes from that. Other people are very happy with it. But most people who work on stuff that they really hate really consistently they get burnt out, you know? So, yeah, I would say that there's really context for both of them. And I know that in entrepreneurship, you, you'll you can sway even between both of those, even sometimes in the same day. You know, like, Oh, I'm doing what I'm passionate about, but I'm not making money right now. It's so frustrating. Or, Oh, I'm making so much money. Yeah, but I'm not doing something that I'm passionate on. So I would say like, you want to have a healthy amount of passion for what you do. And if you're not looking to generate revenue, if you're not looking to create a business, then, you know, that's also totally fine. You know, there's lots of ways also to make money where you're not a for profit, you know, so there's, there's lots of nuances. Of course, those arguments, those arguments are kind of like, you know, they're made to be provocative because of two sided, but I think that there's something that everyone can take for from each one each side of that, you know, and then it's your decision, you have to understand what you're making a decision. For example, if you love building companies over time, or you love tinkering around with ideas or talking to customers. Yeah, you're going to you're going to enjoy entrepreneurship, for example. However, there are going to be things in entrepreneurship that you hate as well. And that's where the obstacle is, the path becomes an important thing because you're not going to be doing things that you'd love all the time. Even if you're playing guitar every day, and that's all you do, yeah, when you have to sit down and do the six hours a day of repetition with your metronome to like, have a perfect, you know, like, that's going to be tiring some days, you're not going to be excited about that. So it's like, you have to also learn how to overcome obstacles. And that's actually, I think it's just so funny, because this world is really like, it's like, it's like work life balance, it's like, everything has to be. But I don't think that in reality, everything is like black or white like that, I think that we like go through times, where we're really like, trying to, like focus more on things that we love, and other times where we're working on things we don't love, but we have to do them because they are going to advance the business. And eventually, we'll be able to pass over those things, right? As an entrepreneur, your your skill is to basically realize where you're good, whether you're a genius, or you know, my, you're probably in the 1% of the world for something. Or you could become and sort of figure out what things you're excited about focusing most of your energy on that and then building a team where people suddenly start replacing you. So, you know, for example, I had to learn pretty much everything when I first started off, but then I started to learn how to focus on some of the areas as my company's builds. And as I found people to replace me in some of the tasks that I was less interested in, or that I was really interested in, but was simply knew I was not in the top for doing and that's okay, too, I always say get dangerous enough to be able to hire someone who's way more dangerous than you. And you know, at the end of the day, it's like, you can go fast alone, you can go further together, though. And so that's why there's, at some point there, it becomes important to build a team. Now early on, it's just literally a co founder is great, just so you can bounce things off, I'd say if you don't have a co founder, though, started off on your own. So you lead by example. And you can find a co founder in the meantime. But basically, you just have to learn a larger set of skills as an entrepreneur, and then you know, there are going to be some skills that you're going to want to focus on as the company grows and builds probably the most valuable thing that I learned in entrepreneurship. Now, this is probably a very bold statement, because I've been in this for 15 years and trade hundreds of startups but but I think is is the ability to be self aware. And, and then, because when you know your own limitations, that's a very powerful thing. Because you can now know, the smart directions to go. And, and also, it's like, you shouldn't think of this if your ambition is to become an entrepreneur, you shouldn't think of this like a short term job that you're doing, like, you know, doing lawn mowing or something, should think of it like a long term career. And so you know, don't put all your eggs in that basket, and then like put yourself in an uncomfortable position. Like I always say it's transition, you know, transition yourself into enterpreneurship, learn the skills, like equip yourself with the skills that allow you to take action, and then action is the things that are going to teach you the most. So, you know, the one thing I don't like about the word strategist is mainly the fact that it, it kind of has a connotation of overthinking. And that's the biggest problem in industry, people who are, you know, scholars and the smartest people in the world and people who come from the corporate world, just overthinking. Like, you're you're just like doing bunch of research, you know, strategizing thinking about the market. And the only important thing about strategies, implementing getting feedback, and fine tuning your strategy. You know, it's good to approach the market with your best assumptions as a strategy, but you have to know how to be flexible, that's what's going to lead you to the gold. And so just to wrap it back to what Seth Godin says, I believe that you, you know, it's okay. If you either if you want to pursue your passions, or if you want to be a hack, as he says, I just think that you have to be conscious that it's taking place, and then also have some, you know, don't go too far down one direction, because I think that like, you know, or at least be conscious of it. So you know that you know where you're at, and you're not lying to yourself, because founders are really good at lying to themselves.

Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 29:21
Thank you. There is a wonderful book called execution, the discipline of getting things done, I think the last name of the author is bossy D, where it's a strategy book, but the argument is execution, like in the stock market, or in the valuation of companies, there is a premium for execution and therefore, you know, it's like that saying from the army, or whatever, that a good strategy implemented today, or a good plan today is better than a perfect plan next week, and therefore to execute to make things happen to create those projects that do add value and make a difference. will really add a lot of value to your company, stakeholders, shareholders, your own bank account, or whatever. And you spoke about look, as founders today, they need to have a diverse set of skills until they hire someone who is more dangerous. And then in each one of them, and they need to maybe find a co founder to bounce ideas with to help each other or infringe on TED, you know, and so for you, how does we or no code help people with that? What is we are no code? And how can people learn more? Where should they go to be involved and to participate?

Christian Peverelli 30:43
Great question. Thanks, thanks for asking it, giving me a plug here, I appreciate that. So basically, I'm not going to try to market we are no code too hard here. One thing that I discovered along my journey was that if I had gotten the proper training 15 years ago, as a non technical entrepreneur, which is by the way, 99.7% of the world is non technical, they don't know how to code. And when you're building an online business, these days, everything requires digital skills. So I'd say the digital skills are really important. That's something that we teach through no code tools, like how to be able to build a product, how to be able to automate some systems. And so product is a really important thing that you want to focus on at first, because you you know, and, of course, that's only after the phase of understanding your market, both from a distance, like having the numbers, the facts, but also having some deep psychological conversations with customers where you're unraveling what it is that their life looks like, without talking about your product at all. So what we created we are no good is essentially teaching people the hard skills, like actionable skills to be able to, um, you know, unpackage, that insight from people to discover the opportunity, then go out and learn some new code tools to build your product, and then bring it to market and start essentially getting first sales. And so we teach them a combination of no code tools, a curated list, because there are so many out there. And we teach them how to bring those to market guest first customers, and essentially the entire startup methodology, but as an actionable program, instead of really just talking about, oh, you know, business plans, entrepreneurship, you know, like it, you lack a lot of hard skills to take action in the market. Therefore, you end up in analysis paralysis when it comes to actually building your business. So for us, it's more about, hey, it came because I was trying to find a way, instead of training eight startups, every six months that we put on stage at Google, and would then have pitch in front of 100 investors. Here in California, I was like, Okay, what's a way where I could get what I've learned over the past, and at the time, it was 12 years of experience building companies, to a larger number of people who are really just kind of kicking it off, so that I don't have to see more of my selves, you know, like, who are starting off now. And there could be a quicker route to learning all of these things, and, and also to have sort of coaching and support to understand what the actual priorities were, compared to what I thought the priorities were at the time most founders end up focusing on, feel good tasks, you know, that feeling when you start the company, and you receive the manual that says, here you have, as is, you know, as his LLC has been set up. And it's amazing, you look at this patent, this big book, and you feel like why I started a company or, or the first time that you're discussing the name and the logo, and you found the perfect logo and name and it's just like, You're so happy about it, or like a designer came back with a design that you absolutely love, and you're fine tune all those things. Don't make your business progress at all. Like at all, it doesn't matter if your company's name is Bem BAM boom.com or pet boop.com. At first, no one cares, no one's buying from you. Because of that, we need to get to the, to the to the nerves very quickly. Because all this other stuff you're doing around it, you're just working on on feel good tasks that are not advancing your business and not making you realize things about the important high risk assumptions that you have. And one of the quotes that I love using that's actually I'm not I invented this or what, but it's like, you are the sole investor in your company at first, which means that you should be looking at this opportunity in the same way that any investor invests money into an opportunity. You have to mitigate risk. That's your job as an early stage entrepreneur. And mitigating risk means to be able, like, why would you spend trust me if you go out on your own It's gonna take six months, 12 months, a year and a half, to start understanding all the basics. And that 12 months, like, you have living expenses, just the living expenses alone, forget, you know, hiring people and all that. So like taking the quicker route is way cheaper. In the long term, these are expenses that people don't even consider. They're just like, Oh, it's too expensive for this or that or like, oh, I don't want to get training, I kind of know, I'll just like test it, test it out. And I think that's where people go wrong. So we created the program, essentially, where we teach people the right skills. And we also provide one year of video support, and have weekly coaching, because we understand that like, hey, also, it's about being accountable for what you do, it's about every week showing up and doing things that will bring your company 1% Closer. And to do that in a group of people who are also going through it is a powerful experience that I maybe didn't have when I first started off and, and to be frank, it was also just a way to figure out a way to not have to charge people a lot of money to train, you know, founders personally, it was a way to be able to scale some of my knowledge and the knowledge of some of my co founders to the masses without having to charge you know, what a entrepreneurship MBA costs, which is, you know, between $20,000 a year, 25,000 30,000 a year, for two years. So that's like, we're also very, we understand that what's happening in the market right now is quite interesting. There's also a lot of people that are saying, you know, like, there's boot camps, right, and boot camps are useful for very specific things. But the reality is, like, no one's building a company in eight weeks, like, that's just not realistic to think that you're gonna be able to do that. So some programs are just not well set up to be able to provide you with the proper support that you need. That being said, I think that like, boot camps are really powerful. So we've just structured in a way where it's like, kind of having 10 action oriented courses together, blended with coaching and video support over a year. And we've been able to package all of that also with, you know, 300k, and discounts for no code tools, and plenty of other tools. And, and, and that's our program that's called de novo started. But my mission is really just to empower the next generation of entrepreneurs. It's about like, hey, you know, in this new era, where everyone is non technical, or where every single opportunity requires technical skills, and when I say everyone, I'm talking about 99.7%, who do not know how to program, it's like, these people need a way to do it. And right now, there aren't really solid ways to go about it. People who are just learning the product side of things are building products, no one cares about whether you're the best coder or best no coder, 90% of the apps in the App Store are never being used. And that's a problem for you. You know, you don't want to fall in that category. And, and learning the entrepreneurship steps like how to build companies is useful, but only if you actually know how to build products, how to launch products in the market. So these things can't live separately. And we should focus on the end goal, you know, if your end goal is to build a business, then you know, the no code startup is probably going to be a great program for you. If you're, if your main concern is to, you know, become a freelancer, then great, you know, that might be something that in the future, we'll be looking to create a program around, but we look more at the human aspect of it. The only reason we teach no code, the only reason we teach anything about like, you know, automation, or we teach entrepreneurship is because people have an end goal. And right now, they're taking a really long route to be able to, to figure that path out, right. And right now, when I was looking at these applications, it was like basically, like 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of people, what are they doing? They're spending hundreds of 1000s of dollars, 123 years of their life, very little progress to show so how can we get people to get more progress in three months, and for you know, $1,000 that it would cost to essentially, you know, go through all this, this, this trial and error. And, you know, that's that's where we've positioned ourselves for the past two and a half years and, and we've seen some good success in this in this area. We've got some people into Tech Stars, we got people raising capital, we also got to have people who literally join, test out their idea, it doesn't work out, but at least they didn't three months and for like, you know, a couple $1,000 instead of spending all of their savings and have you know, like and to yours. So, for us we have different levels of success stories. And it's a really interesting time to be alive too. Because right now there's a lot of shifts happening we see also this huge rise of like these like weird online gurus and like, it's just a really interesting time. And I'd say like both be very careful, but also take advantage of the huge number of opportunities that are out there.

Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 39:54
I agree with you that sometimes people might think money Oh, it's too expensive and think in monetary terms, but time is the only thing that you can never ever replace, and the frustration and the pain and the bad mood you will be in. And maybe you'll lash out at your loved ones or your cat or your dog, or whatever, it's not really worth it. And therefore, it's not thinking in terms of, oh, this is costing me X right now. But think in terms of the ROI of, well, it's saving me all these months, or it's bringing me revenue quicker, or it's testing, as you said, the idea and learning and finding out, oh, wow, I saved myself, all this time, I would have been chasing a dead end. But of course, I hope for everyone to be successful on their journey and dwell if they want also, to make the journey easier I do I have to speak about PROCESIO, which is the modern low code, no code platform for advanced automation and creating an enterprise grade back end for your software, especially no code, low code, or whatever you're using. So all the listeners and viewers have this possibility to request access for a totally free account at PROCESIO.app where they can get a one hour execution time, which is equivalent to 100 Human hours, it's a lot. And for those who have higher needs want to upgrade, there is this very generous offer or 50% discount on all their upgrades if they use the code, better 50 off one word, capital letter in when they're upgrading more information in the description. And I want to say look, Christian, this was enriching. This was such a valuable conversation, I've learned a lot. And I really see and understand the value of you having gone through the frustrations, and then coming back, like the hero's journey with the elixir of the knowledge and the wisdom to share with the people and say, Look, I have been off the beaten path I needed to fight with the saber toothed tigers, and risk being killed by the Mammoth is and all the wild animals out there. And I'm paving this highway for you to arrive at your destination or at least to arrive fast to the place to check out do I like it or not? If you don't like it, you can go somewhere else. And so it's what you're doing. It's highly valuable. And I recommend to everyone, we are no code. Thank you so much. This was my pleasure. Até logo!

Christian Peverelli 42:38
Até logo! Yeah, it's, it was really a pleasure to be a part of this. One of the topics that we talked a little bit less about is this idea of automation. And yes, as soon as you have some things that you're doing constantly, frankly, there are tools out there like process IO that will allow you to automate systems, and will allow you to save a lot of time. Because you know how I always said just earlier that I like to come back to like, what are we trying to solve for what is the goal. And a great example of one of our students was that they were spending one hour on the phone with each incoming client. And as soon as we had set up a simple automation, they were now spending 10 to 15 minutes with each client. And what did that mean, they had four times the capacity to be able to talk to and give good service to their customers. And so people oftentimes look at this, like a big mountain and think, Oh, my God, and maybe a good piece of advice is you're not thinking small enough. Like, and I always recommend, like go in and find out the one thing that you could solve with half a day of energy, half a day of learning, like the one thing that could solve a big problem for you. And focus first on automating the things that are taking you the most time, because automation is such a great tool for things where that are just taking a lot of time. So bring it back to your problems, identify the biggest time consumer, and then, you know, go go ahead and figure out can I solve this with a tool like PROCESIO with an automation tool in general, because I think that that's the place where these tools start becoming valuable. So I'd probably leave people just saying like, when we talk about no code, when we talk about automation, when we talk about entrepreneurship, it's literally just about you figuring out what you're trying to accomplish. And then approaching these tools and figuring out how you can solve them with these tools. And they can solve all types of things. So the problem is if you don't come in and you have a specific thing you're trying to accomplish, then it will be a lot of tinkering around and a lot of doing nothing. So instead of that, figure out where you're spending the most time. spend half a day think about how you can automate that. And, and it's going to be a really powerful journey because that will give you your first aha moment, that then psychologically locks you into Oh my God, even I who have no idea how to do anything, but let's say go on Facebook, and just like, you know, interact with my family, or go on Instagram or Tiktok, and Instagram, like and, and now I can do these things that I always thought of myself as a non technical person. But this now gives access to myself. And this is the biggest message that I have, like, you can as well, like 20 years ago, my brother created my first email account, I didn't know how to use a computer at all. I was never into computers growing up, I was totally non technical, never programmed in my life. And these things are absolutely possible. That's what's so exciting about these tools is it really gives the power to people who are haven't had higher level education don't have, you know, the same resources as other people like these tools are often relatively cheap. And they can do really powerful things. And this is where I think the industry is shifting. You know, we're moving towards a skill based economy, Google, Apple, YouTube, Microsoft hiring only based on skills, you learn those skills, you win, and automation and no code are some two of the most powerful skills that you can learn in the modern digital era. So with that, thank you so much for having me as always, I appreciate it. And I hope everyone has an awesome rest of their day.

Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 46:33
I agree. 100% and thank you again, and good bye. Take care.