Daniel Roberts, VidLoft

[00:00:55] Sanjay Parekh: Today I'm sitting down with Daniel Roberts, who is the founder of VidLoft and, previously, founder of Friendly Human. We've known each other for a lot of years now at this point. But I'd love for you to start by giving a couple of minutes about your background and what got you to where you are now.

[00:01:10] Daniel Roberts: Yeah, absolutely. I grew up in, my undergrad is in computer science, but I paid my way through school doing lighting and then directing for TV and got to the end of it and, oh this video stuff's kind of more fun than spending the rest of my life in a network closet somewhere. So, I was doing that. I was working at a church, actually, at the time and doing all their media kind of stuff. It was a pretty big church, and we just installed a 50-foot screen. And so, projecting the words and stuff on, and there was this moment where we were trying to find like HD footage back then and there wasn't any. So as a side hustle, I started recording it myself and I'd just go out on the weekends and shoot it. And eventually, kind of decided that was going to be my full-time job. Got laid off in 2008, like the whole creative team at the church got wiped out one weekend. So, I was like, okay, I got to build this company. And I started accepting video projects on the side and that's where Friendly Human came from. I was trying to build something that I definitely didn't have the capital for, to actually do the video backgrounds. But yeah, I was able to start a pretty good video services business.

[00:02:22] Sanjay Parekh: So, four years learning computer science, never did that a day in your life, is that what I'm understanding? 

[00:02:28] Daniel Roberts: Not until VidLoft. It's been good to get to reuse that and there was definitely, there's so much I see the whole world as an optimization problem, and I love that kind of quality. And we definitely, at Friendly Human, we're able to build really robust technology on the backend that made our lives easier, but nothing — I'm a terrible developer. I'm like the world's worst developer. I might have exchanged some Linux admin classes for some development classes in college. “Hey, I'll keep your server running if you keep my code looking good for the professor.” But yeah, never really got to use that until now. 

[00:03:08] Sanjay Parekh: And what about the video side, photography side? Self-taught? Or did you take classes or how did you get it?

[00:03:15] Daniel Roberts: My uncle had been a newspaper photographer and so one of my very first memories was him teaching me how to use a manual SLR camera. Focusing on the edge of the TV, I remember the split glass. By the time I was nine I could process black and white and color film and then started working in that at 14. It was a guy we knew that ran a studio and he didn't know the going rate for a high school student, and I didn't know the going rate for a camera op, so we were both pretty happy.

[00:03:42] Sanjay Parekh: I got it. Okay, so you figured this out, figured out that video was going to be your thing. You worked for a while. In 2008, you start your own thing, because of being laid off. What was that like? First of all, by the way, I love the name Friendly Human. I've always loved the name. How did you come up with the name, by the way? Friendly Human. 

[00:04:05] Daniel Roberts: So, I was getting married in October 2008. And my wife was moving here from out of town, so she'd given notice on her job and then I got laid off two weeks before the wedding. And so, I needed a job, and I went to work with this small video startup that I'd been warned about. I'd worked with the director some and but I'm like, “I can get along with anybody. Like how hard can this be?” It turns out, really hard. And I can't get along with everybody. So, after six months there trying to make that work, I just realized I was shooting and doing sales and maintaining the website and like all these things and I was like, I'll do this for myself. And that department was anything but friendly or human. So, I said I've always loved the book “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” And I think I just reread that and stuff. And so, somewhere within that, or I was on 75 driving through the connector and in stop-and-go traffic and at one of the stops, I was like, “oh, domain's available.” I'll do that. That's where it came from. 

[00:05:04] Sanjay Parekh: So, buying domains while you're driving in traffic that's not recommended. But worked for you there. 

[00:05:10] Daniel Roberts: It was a different time.

[00:05:11] Sanjay Parekh: Was Friendly Human the first time you'd ever started a side hustle or small business, or did you do entrepreneurial things when you were younger?

[00:05:18] Daniel Roberts: Oh, goodness, no. You know, snow cone stands and, I think the first thing, my dad was somewhat self-employed, and so I did a lemonade stand at his office when I was like six. That was probably my first real venture, but yeah, I've never had a real job. Even though church thing was part-time. I think there's just so many ways to make money, especially now, that you don't have to go that route if you don't want to.

[00:05:49] Sanjay Parekh: So, when you were doing the church thing, were you doing, since it was part-time, were you side hustling as well at that time?

[00:05:55] Daniel Roberts: I was in grad school at the time as well. I thought I was going to be a minister and so I have about 80 hours of a MDiv degree, but realized through that, that was more my parents' visions for me than my own was my way to change the world. Yeah, it was hard to drop out of that. But glad I did. 

[00:06:13] Sanjay Parekh: Okay, let's focus in on Friendly Human. So, you got started, it's just you in the beginning. What were your challenges? What made you nervous about doing this? 

[00:06:23] Daniel Roberts: Oh, man. So, when we lost our jobs and all that after we got married, we ended up moving in, my parents had like an apartment in the basement, so moved back home. That was terrible. I was grateful for it, but not an ideal situation where you just get married. I remember we had $3,700 in our bank account and the Canon 5D Mark II had just come out and it was $3,400. And I was like, I think this camera's going to change the world. And it has, the things we're recording this on today are, the grandchildren of that camera. And my wife was like, go for it. And so, spent almost everything we had and a friend had given me a microphone and I had lenses from still photography and stuff. That I was able to use with it, and we just made a go for it. That first year we made $18,000. I did not know what I was doing. I didn't have any contacts or anything. It was terrible. Next year we made 30, and then just kept doubling from there.

[00:07:25] Sanjay Parekh: Okay. So, that first year the expenses were like $3,000 to $4,000 for the equipment. But you made 18 on that. 

[00:07:32] Daniel Roberts: It was just the first, like those first few years, it was probably a third of it was going back into equipment and all that kind of stuff. When we moved to the city, then things got a lot easier, a year later.

[00:07:46] Sanjay Parekh: And so, at what point did you start hiring people and start growing the team? Beyond just you being the sole person. 

[00:07:53] Daniel Roberts: Yeah. So, in 2012 I was getting too much work that I couldn't edit at all and that kind of stuff, and I don't really enjoy editing as much. And so, I hired an assistant then, and then really in January 2013, we moved into Atlanta Tech Village the first week it opened and through, it was a friend of a friend was starting it and my friend came to me and he is like, “Hey, you need to be in this place.” And so, we did that, and I think just being around that environment, one, where you are in the market really matters. Like, if you're selling hot dogs, the best place you can be is outside of a stadium when it lets out and everyone's hungry, people are hungry for what you want. And so, I think like being in the Tech Village, there was this demand to grow, but then also you just kind of get more influenced by, oh, all these people are growing their business, they're not like solopreneur, one-off, side hustle, freelance kind of things. And so, I was like, oh, I can actually build this into a real business. And so, we moved in in January hired our first person or first extra person in February/March. Then, Nick, who still works with me today, came on full-time in May. 

[00:09:09] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. So, do you feel like that move into a new space, being around that energy was really the thing that drove the business then at that point? Or would've that have naturally happened if you'd been somewhere else? 

[00:09:22] Daniel Roberts: I think it accelerated it for sure. I was always exposed to that sort of, I joke that I’m like first generation immigrant from South Georgia. Like my dad was born in the Great Depression on a tobacco farm in South Georgia. And so, I was definitely always given that hustle and education's important and working hard is important and that kind of stuff but was never exposed to how to actually start your own business and grow it and think about it and stuff.

[00:09:53] Sanjay Parekh: And so how is it that you figured that out for yourself? 

[00:09:56] Daniel Roberts: Books. Audible.com. 

[00:09:59] Sanjay Parekh: Audible.com. Okay. 

[00:10:00] Daniel Roberts: So, I'm off the chart dyslexic, super slow reader. But being able to, I can listen to a book at two or three times speed. And right after I quit grad school, my mom gave me a subscription to Audible for Christmas that year. And so, I've got about 700 business books in there over the years. Back then I was doing one a week. That was kind of my, it was like going to the gym. And a lot of duds, but some that are actually valuable and you can learn so much about whatever topic you need to. 

[00:10:31] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. So, along that path of building up Friendly Human. And so, you started in 2008. When did you exit from Friendly Human? 

[00:10:40] Daniel Roberts: The end of 2021. 

[00:10:42] Sanjay Parekh: 2021. Yeah. So, a 13-year run.

[00:10:45] Daniel Roberts: Yeah. So, Covid just, we were around, we were obviously working with a lot of like tech startups in that, in the Tech Village days, but we've soon scaled into enterprise because it's great, like your average startups like super fun to work with, but they may need a video once or twice a year. Home Depot needs like five a week. And we were traveling all over the place. We're about 15 people doing about a million and a half in revenue. And then Covid hits and we didn't do a shoot. Thankfully, we diversified some into digital, but we didn't do a shoot for 11 months. And just all of our big clients had restrictions on people being in the same room together and travel and contractors couldn't travel and all this. That was an interesting time. Spent 2021 building that back up enough where I could sell it off. 

[00:11:35] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. So, during that time, 13 years, what was it that, I'm sure you had many challenges, can you remember, like what was the top thing that made you nervous or concerned during those 13 years?

[00:11:50] Daniel Roberts: I think cashflow and not understanding how to manage it back then, led to several very tense situations. I remember one time, we had $200,000 in accounts receivable, and I'm sitting outside Ponce City Market trying to figure out what to do because we've got $583 in the bank account and payroll is like 30 grand. And I have nine days or something to come up with it. And I think it created one of my biggest regrets from that time, is not taking better care of my health during it because I think like all that stress just led to so many effects over the years that I've spent the last few years straightening out with some really good doctors. But yeah, I think it's easy to not know something that you don't know, you don't know, like cashflow in this case and how to manage it. And then that leads to stress, which leads to poor health, and this is compounding thing and you're like, “How did I get here?” And it's because like this one little simple thing, if you've only known. 

[00:12:56] Sanjay Parekh: That you didn't manage well that then created this boulder going down the hill. So, the cashflow issue there I think, we hear about that. We see that a lot of times. What was your issue? That your clients were paying net 30, net 60, whatever, and you had bills that were due. What was the issue that caused that situation? 

[00:13:16] Daniel Roberts: So, in that moment, what I saw as being the issue was that people were two months late giving us money that they owed us, and we thought was coming in. 

[00:13:26] Sanjay Parekh: For work that you'd already done, I imagine.

[00:13:28] Daniel Roberts: Yeah. Names will be anonymous to protect the guilty, but yeah, it was like these are large organizations, like they should, the money should come in. And then when it doesn't, that's what you see as the problem. Looking back, our cost structure was unhealthy. And so yeah, it sucks when you're expecting 200 grand and you don't have it, anytime. But at the same time, like if you're running a healthy business, you have the resources in place to weather those storms way easier. And it was actually after I had sold Friendly Human, I saw someone draw a graph one time of its peaks and valleys and really you should be staffing just at the valley level, right? And I was staffing like two thirds of the way up the peak and we hardly ever use contractors. And then you end up with a lot of people sitting around doing nothing for a lot of the time that you're paying. And when you do get more work, you don't have the money to buy the contractors necessarily. So, people are working overtime and it's like feast or famine. And if you just staff at that bottom level and contract the rest of it, your life is wonderful. You're making more money. Your employees aren't stressed, they're just working a consistent amount. They always have work. That kind of stuff. 

[00:14:50] Sanjay Parekh: So, let's skip forward then. You exit out of Friendly Human and then you started VidLoft. Explain what VidLoft is exactly. 

[00:14:59] Daniel Roberts: At VidLoft, we provide the gear, the training and the strategy, and so our customers can shoot video wherever and whenever they want to. Really easy little cameras to use and then they upload it to our app and our professional editors turn around in 24 hours, for about a tenth of the cost. And so that's been just fun to have this technology, really a technology-enabled way to make video. 

[00:15:21] Sanjay Parekh: So, the innovation here for you on the business side then, is getting rid of the people that are actually shooting the video. So, you've got that labor cost out of the equation. And then you're still just doing the editing on the backend? Is that the idea? 

[00:15:36] Daniel Roberts: Somewhat. So, we offer, VidLoft professional services where you can have a shooter come out and like actually shoot it and stuff. But the real kind of secret sauce of VidLoft is basically, I don't know if you remember, like when we were kids you go to Wolf Camera somewhere and there's this big like copy machine looking thing. That film goes in one end and prints come out the other, and automatic film processor, right? Basically, I invented that for video in the cloud. So, things that used to take a day for an editor to come back and ingest and transcode footage and all that, is now happening in about five minutes in AWS. And an editor from anywhere in the world can download it and start working on it. 

[00:16:10] Sanjay Parekh: Okay. So, you built a whole backend for VidLoft that automates a lot of the things that used to be manual, is that what you’re saying? 

[00:16:18] Daniel Roberts: Exactly. So, you're able to the nice thing is you're able to attract better editing talent because they're not doing all the manual kind of minutiae work. They're just able to jump in, start being creative and you're getting your best bang for your buck with really high-quality editors.

[00:16:33] Sanjay Parekh: Got it. So, what is it, I mean besides the main business model, what were the lessons from Friendly Human that you took forward to VidLoft to make it a better business than what you had before?

[00:16:46] Daniel Roberts: Oh, I love that. One of the cool things with VidLoft, I still haven't figured out how to talk about this because I feel embarrassed, but I got to do a course at Harvard Business School, which, having dropped out before and the shame that came with that in my family, was really validating. But one of the things one of the professors said there is so often like people start their first business with passion and your second business with intention. And with Friendly Human, I learned, we produced over 10,000 pieces of content and it took that time to learn how to make video. And like now I just know how. And so, I was able to look at it and say “What are those constraints? What are those things that I don't like about the process?” 

I hate when a video is done, but it just hasn't been delivered to the client. And somebody dropped the ball on project management or delivery or something like that. And it's okay, let's create an app that just manages this stuff and editor puts it in, hits the button, I'm done, and it automatically gets delivered. We can automate that, right? I'd automate brushing my teeth if I could. I just, I love that kind of automation, just optimizing those things. On the personal side, one of the things I wanted to automate or optimize was my ability to do it from wherever. So, since starting VidLoft, after I sold Friendly Human’s accounts, then my wife and I went to Minnesota for a month. In the wintertime because she hadn't really experienced winter. And I grew up skating and skiing and all that. And then last fall we went to Seattle for six weeks and kind worked from there and stuff. Just being able to do it from wherever was fun.

[00:18:30] Sanjay Parekh: So, this whole kind of shift has unchained you from being in one location as well, then. 

[00:18:35] Daniel Roberts: Exactly. And, I love being here. I love coming into the office and I like the routine and that kind of stuff, but also, it's nice to be able to work from wherever. 

[00:18:45] Adam Walker: Support for this podcast comes from Hiscox, committed to helping small businesses protect their dreams since 1901. Quotes and information on customized insurance for specific risks are available at Hiscox.com. Hiscox, the business insurance experts.

[00:19:03] Sanjay Parekh: Okay, let's talk about VidLoft now. Got a new company, it's been a few years. What are the challenges that now you're dealing with VidLoft, which obviously are probably higher-class problems than what you dealt with Friendly Human? 

[00:19:23] Daniel Roberts: Oh, that's a great question. Definitely still trying to figure out, I guess product market fit. And the most optimized area for that. When I started it, we’re like hey, we've got this low-cost video. Now everything that I've been doing for the enterprise companies of the world and Fortune 500s, I can do for smaller businesses. And we do have a lot of small businesses that use VidLoft, but what I'm learning is, where our niche lies is in multi-location companies. One of our customers has 155 offices around the country, in the fire suppression space and we're able to mail out kits to different places, so no travel costs, any of that, and just have them self-shoot. But all that footage still comes through the home office and we’re able to manage quality and all that kind of stuff.

[00:20:15] Sanjay Parekh: And were these, so these clients that you're dealing with VidLoft, is there any crossover from the ones that you dealt with Friendly Human or is this a different set of clients? 

[00:20:24] Daniel Roberts: I kept a couple, so I sold off the way — I wanted to retain the name for Friendly Human because I've got some ideas down the road with that. And really, I didn't want to be acqui-hired was the other thing, I wanted my freedom. With that, what I ended up doing is selling off our accounts with that, but I retained a couple that are really, either have been super loyal over the years or I just find it interesting. And so, we've successfully transitioned those over the last couple years. 

[00:20:53] Sanjay Parekh: So, they were receptive to this kind of change and model. They were used to you showing up before in person and now... less now.

[00:21:01] Daniel Roberts: It's easy when you go, here's what you've spent for the last four years on 24 videos with us. Here's this, it's an 82% savings and you still have 2/3 of your credits remaining. And you're not polluting the planet as much with all the travel and stuff. We figured out for one of our clients. Nick did the math on the amount of CO2 we'd go through in a year, flying around, shooting all this stuff. You could leave our camera, our lighting kit on, since the time Abraham Lincoln was alive, it was like less than that. So, I think like just being able to like mail a kit is so much more efficient. 

[00:21:45] Sanjay Parekh: Right, it seems like a good trade off. Okay. Let's change gears a little bit. You touched on health and kind of the effects of that. How do you now think about those things, think about stress and managing those in terms of the business and yourself? 

[00:21:59] Daniel Roberts: I think that is always going to be a work in progress. So, the first thing that happened was I found a functional medicine doctor that's like more about the wellness side than the illness side and really knew their stuff. And it was like, oh, from the blood work, it was like she read my mail, she's like “I bet you get really tired by 11:00 AM every day.” It's like, “Yeah, no matter how much sleep I get, like I just got to go lay down and crash.” And she's oh, you've had so much stress and stuff. So, anyway like within a couple of weeks, it was just like I was a new person. And then since then there's been several steps along the way of different therapies we've tried and stuff that have improved it and just getting in a better place with stress. But I'm not immune to it. One thing, everyone talks about recurring revenue, but it's kind of like being on a fixed income. And so, like when you, cashflow, it's the same struggles until you get well into the profit margin or well into the profitable stage. And we're trying to grow really aggressively and stuff. There's definitely those times where you still get a little bit stressed. But, one thing I love is nobody like actually like starves to death in this country, right? I've got to travel to a lot of places in the world where people aren't so lucky and no, like everything's going to be okay at the end. It gets tense, but you don't actually know what's going to happen. 

[00:23:25] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. Okay. So, let's talk about then, setting boundaries. How do you think about boundaries? It's really easy for us as founders and entrepreneurs for work to bleed into everything. And you could think about this stuff all the time. How do you think about boundaries for yourself in terms of work and personal life and spending time with friends and family and all of those things? 

[00:23:47] Daniel Roberts: I'm terrible at it. I don't know that I'm the right person to ask about setting boundaries, but what I have done is create frameworks that account for my inability to set boundaries. Because was raised like, you work whenever it's time to work. And like on a farm, if it's a tobacco farm in the Great Depression, you just work all the time. 

[00:24:11] Sanjay Parekh: When the sun's up, that's when you work. When the sun's down, you don't. 

[00:24:14] Daniel Roberts: Exactly. And I think that's another kind of intentional piece with VidLoft. We have this timer that runs on each project and stuff, but it just pauses from Friday night to Sunday night. And that's part of our sales pitch, you know that's coming. And so, I think you can kind of build some of that in intentionally into the system. But still, Adam Grant says, “there's work-life balance kind of folks are work-life separatists and work life integrators.” There's people that want to work nine to five and go home and be done. I'm very much an integrator. So, I came in at, 9:30 this morning because I went for a little bit longer run and stuff this morning. And I like that flexibility. But I may work later, or I’ll work over the weekend.

[00:25:06] Sanjay Parekh: Okay. So, you're not like Friday at five, I'm done. I'm not thinking about it again until Monday morning at eight.

[00:25:13] Daniel Roberts: No. And it's a little bit like the environment that I was raised in. Like I grew up at my dad's office a lot of times. And I kind of want to, I've got a three-year-old and I kind of want to raise him in that same environment of, yeah this is just part of life. I spend more hours with my team here, waking hours than I do my wife and family, so I might as well like really enjoy the people that I'm working with and be friends with them and that kind of stuff too. 

[00:25:44] Sanjay Parekh: Okay. Let's talk about the things that you mentioned, frameworks that you use to do these boundaries. Are there any other systems or apps or technologies that you use to make work better? For yourself or for the company in general? 

[00:26:01] Daniel Roberts: That's a great question. Yeah, nothing unique. I think everything goes into Evernote for me. That's been my brain for 15 years. Yeah. I think GSuite, and I'm always looking for new apps and new technology. But it really is how you use it. Yeah, you can do everything in a spreadsheet at the end of the day. 

[00:26:25] Sanjay Parekh: So, there's nothing that jumps out to you like, oh, if I didn't have this one thing, it would be a lot harder. 

[00:26:31] Daniel Roberts: When you phrase it like that, one thing we've done is have all of our customers, ideally in Slack or Teams if they use that. And that's how we do support. And so from day one, I wanted support to just be a conversation. And it doesn't have to be a filing a ticket and all that kind of stuff and I'll get back to you three days later. It's, “hey, if you're just even thinking about doing a video, just ask us. We've done 10,000. We know, we've got some comps. We can send you some inspiration and stuff.”

[00:26:58] Sanjay Parekh: So, you have your customers in with you in your Slack? 

[00:27:02] Daniel Roberts: We have a Slack workspace. Not in with us, we have our own internal one. And then, it's honestly a free account. And so, we've just got a private channel for each customer or each organization. 

[00:27:13] Sanjay Parekh: Do you have anything where they talk to each other? The clients, since they're all in one Slack.

[00:27:20] Daniel Roberts: It's in the plan. We had it initially, but just not enough volume yet, I think. There are so many things, running a product company, I didn't anticipate. And especially a high-ticket price product company, you don't have as many customers. There's so many community things that I want to do eventually. But I think we have to get to the point where there's that tipping point where it's a critical mass to not seem like an empty room.

[00:27:45] Sanjay Parekh: Okay. I've been meaning to ask you this whole time because it's on my mind. We're filming this, you've seen 10,000. 

[00:27:54] Daniel Roberts: That's a good idea. We should start interviewing some of our customers around the types of products that they're doing and sharing that with other customers. So, it doesn't have to be like a conversation, but it could just be one way. That's a great way to do it when you're smaller. Okay. Thank you. That was helpful. 

[00:28:09] Sanjay Parekh: There you go. Give your ideas during the conversation itself. Okay, so you've done over 10,000 videos. You've probably seen people that have done really bad videos. What's the worst thing that somebody can do and an easy way to fix it? Easy advice to do better videos.

[00:28:28] Daniel Roberts: Bad audio and shaky footage were just like a no-go. So, just make sure you have an actual microphone and not just the on-camera thing. But I think at the same time TikTok has certainly taught us that you can get plenty of views on your iPhone. And so, if your content's good, we did a competition between me and a friend last year of doing YouTube shorts. And so, I gave him some credits for free and was like, “hey, you do shorts, I'll do shorts. We'll see who can get the most.” That was a real learning experience for me because I'm used to like big corporate kind of, highly produce things.

But just doing like daily videos and, how do you think about that? So, I think things like having a great hook. Making sure, like just if you stop for a second and stop thinking about what do I want to say in this video? And think about what would I want to watch in this video? Totally different way to look at it.

[00:29:23] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned shaky video. Is there an easy fix for that? Shaky video?

[00:29:28] Daniel Roberts: Yeah. Don’t touch the camera. Get a tripod. Get a cell phone holder or just prop it against something or whatever. Or just if you're handholding, it just handhold it steady. Just think about that while you're doing it. I think lighting's another thing, but it doesn't have to, we've just got the big window behind us here, and so I think it doesn't, you don't have to spend a lot on these things. So, one of the biggest issues with video is people will make a video and that's like, I hate sports metaphors, but that's like trying to hit a grand slam home run every time. That's not a strategy. That's nice when it happens. But if you start and can think about video as I have this business goal I want to achieve and I'm going to like incrementally get there and optimize these videos along the way to get to that goal. Whether it's marketing, whether it's internal comms, like whatever it is. Like one safety training video that everybody watches. Nobody's going to remember what was said in it, but if you can like just to integrate it, little bits of content. For our own training videos for our customers, Nick does two-minute tips and they're like one- to two-minute videos. But they're consistent. You can like little bit along the way, learn and get better and improve. And the nice thing about modularizing your content like that is when someone does have a question, you're able to just go grab three from the library and say, here's everything you need to know. And you can build a course instantly. 

[00:30:53] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. Yeah. So, consistency is a key, obviously when you're doing that's, I think true in almost anything that you're doing entrepreneurial, but video as well, just being consistent. 

[00:31:02] Daniel Roberts: Absolutely. And it's a lot like running or something where if you just show up a few times a week, then over time, all of a sudden, like it's painful and miserable at the beginning and then all the time or over time, it just becomes second nature and easy. It's just part of what you do. 

[00:31:16] Sanjay Parekh: So, last question for you. If you were talking to somebody who's thinking about starting a side hustle or a small business like you have, what advice would you give to them? 

[00:31:30] Daniel Roberts: I would try to see if you could skip the, I said the first one started with passion, the second one with intention; try and bring some of that intention into the first one. But give yourself the space and the grace to know that if this is your first endeavor, like you're not going to get that intention from day one. And that if you ever feel stuck, I think so many entrepreneurs I talk to are really smart people. So, if they don't have the answer to something, that means they need more input from the outside. I think so often as entrepreneurs we’ll sit there and just beat ourselves up in doom loop about trying to solve a problem or whatever. It's not that like we're not smart enough to solve it, it's that we just need more input. So go talk to someone. 

[00:32:14] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. Fantastic advice, Daniel. If our listeners want to find and connect with you online, where can they find you? 

[00:32:22] Daniel Roberts: Oh, Vidloft.com. Yeah. [email protected] or LinkedIn's another great place. 

[00:32:28] Sanjay Parekh: Awesome. Thanks for being on today.

[00:32:30] Daniel Roberts: Oh, thank you.

[00:32:35] Sanjay Parekh: Thank you for listening to this week's episode of the Side Hustle to Small Business Podcast, powered by Hiscox. To learn more about how Hiscox can help protect your small business through intelligent insurance solutions, visit hiscox.com. And if you have a story you want to hear on this podcast, please visit www.hiscox.com/shareyourstory. I'm your host Sanjay Parekh. You can find out more about me at my website, www.sanjayparekh.com.