Full Transcript – Aytekin Tank – Wild Business Growth Podcast #278

This is the full transcript for Episode #278 of the Wild Business Growth Podcast featuring Aytekin Tank – Automate Your Busywork, Founder of Jotform. You can listen to the interview and learn more here. Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.

Aytekin Tank 0:00
Work on what’s important for you.

Max Branstetter 0:16
Hi, that was the highest My voice has ever gone. Welcome back to the Wild Business Growth Podcast. This is your place to hear from a new entrepreneur every single Wednesday morning who’s turning Wild ideas into Wild growth. I’m your host, Max Branstetter, Founder and Podcast Producer at MaxPodcasting, and you can email me at to save time with your high-quality podcast. This is episode 278 and today’s guest is Aytekin Tank. Aytekin is the Founder and CEO of Jotform, the super popular online form builder that you’ve probably used, even if you didn’t know you were using it. He has grown Jotform from a small company with a product that he was giving away for free to 20 million users, several hundred employees around the world. And in this episode, we talk how he did that his rule, he’s like the king of rules, awesome rules on productivity, hiring, and the in and on the business type thing, tips from his Wall Street Journal bestseller, Automate Your Busywork, and lessons for motivation from Michael Jordan. He’s like a basketball player or something. It is Aytekin. Enjoyyyyyy the showwwwww!

Aaaaaalrightyyyyyyyy we’re here with Aytekin Tank, a name that I’ve been practicing since birth. But now I’m really really excited, Aytekin, Founder and CEO of Jotform. Really, really cool company with I would say just a couple customers and couple employees that you’ve built up over the years. But so excited to dig into it today. Aytekin, how you doing?

Aytekin Tank 2:15
I’m doing great. Thank you for having me on your show, Max.

Max Branstetter 2:19
Of course, of course. And you pronounced Max correctly as well. So we’re, I mean, we’re just on fire to start. But before we get to the Jotform story was really, really cool. You know, this whole interview could just be me saying your your company is cool. And you’d be like, Yeah, that’s cool. No, but in college, you studied computer science or comp sci as the cool kid say, I’m somebody who has a basic understanding of what computer science is. But like very basic, I have no idea what those classes are like what you studied what it actually is involved back then. What do you think is the most common misconception that people have about computer science just when they hear that term?

Aytekin Tank 3:02
I think one of the one of the things that is different in computer science compared to other engineering departments. Usually when you become an engineer, you always have this creativity, but you are usually like building similar things, right? That’s why you have all these certifications. And like, you know, you’re building a bridge, right? You might be building a different kind of bridge, but it’s, it’s well established. But in computer science, like every time you do something, it’s new, and every year you have new technologies, it’s all changing. But when you study in the school, you you learn the algorithms, you learn the basics, that background actually helps you a lot. But you know, when you when you study computer science, when you actually get out of the door, you know, nothing like when you start your job, you start from zero, I actually had my own products while I was studying in school, I had my open source products. So I learned before I graduated, so it was kind of easier for me to find a job. And you know, the first time I started a job, I already knew the technologies. But in most cases, people who graduate, they have to start from scratch to learn new stuff. Because the you know, the technology is changing so much every year. And the schools are actually kind of falling behind. I mean, they’re teaching the basics. They’re teaching the general stuff that doesn’t change much as opposed to latest technologies. So it also makes sense to keep it that way.

Max Branstetter 4:33
It’s fascinating when you look at it across different industries, like I was studying somebody who studied business, I studied Marketing and Entrepreneurship, and especially in the marketing space, like, you know, like I was studying these things in the early 2000 10s, we’ll call it and just think how much marketing has changed in the past 10 or 15 years. And so I can only imagine like, how much you know, computers and technology and coding and like everything in that space. This has changed as well. It’s like as a as a university, you really have to stay up nimble and agile in order to, you know, stay at the leading edge of that. But for you, how did you become interested in just something involving computers or computer science in the first place?

Aytekin Tank 5:20
Actually, that’s that’s an interesting story. Growing up in Turkey, this is like the end of 80s. So I’m getting old, you take that back, middle schools, it’s like, I don’t know, 89, or 9090 93. I’m in the middle school, I don’t have a computer at home, like, but there was like a computer room in the high school, I went the middle school around. And there was actually like, these VCAT classes, right? If you remember those times, like, you wouldn’t want to go back to school right? Over the weekend. But I would actually dream about going to that taking that class, over the weekend class, during the weekdays, I will dream about like, the weekend comes and I actually got to go back to school. And actually, like, we had these like these basic PCs, Amiga computers. And like, we were like, you know, programming basic and simple programming. But it excited me so much that every week I was thinking about the weekend, I wasn’t thinking about going outside, but I was thinking about going back to the school. And that passion stayed with me. And I didn’t have a computer while I was in high school, when I actually went to college. Now, you know, I could actually start doing that. And I was so excited about that, like, you know, I was building my own open source products and you know, releasing them by the time I was studying in the university, can

Max Branstetter 6:52
you explain the feeling you have when you got to use and tinker with a computer for the first time, like

Aytekin Tank 7:01
I could, I could do anything. I also discovered something about myself, I discovered that I’m a product person. And still today, I feel like I’m a product person. What I mean by a product person is like creating a product from scratch, like four out of nothing, seen other people use that product. It just gave me like so much tremendous enjoyment, even when, when I was like creating a game when I was in middle school and sharing with others with like a single person. And today Jotform is being used by millions of people, of course, like I created the first version. Now, like, I haven’t been writing code for the last five to 10 years, probably. But I’m still the product person. So I don’t have to actually be writing the code. I enjoy being part of the creation of that product, and see people use the product. And that just stayed with me since that time, since I don’t know how many years like 30 plus years.

Max Branstetter 8:04
You didn’t know how much math you’re gonna have to do on this podcast, I think they could do the years, I should have told you to, to bring a microphone, headphones and a calculator. Let’s get to that Jotform story. So as we hinted that just incredible company, you know, working with some of the biggest, you know, brands and so many millions of customers. First of all, on that note like, to this day, do you have to pinch yourself when people say that you have 20 million customers?

Aytekin Tank 8:36
Yeah, it’s always exciting to say that, but you know, no matter. Like if we have 20 million users or 20 users, I think it’s important to, you know, create value for our users. And that really excites me. This story of JotForm actually starts right out of college, I started working for this media company in New York. And I was a developer for five years there. As a media company, I was actually helping all these editors, like we had over 100 websites. And I was helping all these editors with a form needs like they needed, you know, questionnaires, they were running contests, they needed contact forms, like payment forms, polls, surveys, all kinds of forms. And I was kind of like looking for a solution. Because I was kind of like do the same thing all over all the time. Like I searched for a solution. Like maybe someone actually made the product that can actually create the forms, but I couldn’t find one. And that’s when I knew that like this could be a good idea if I when I when I quit my job to start my business. And that’s what I did in 2005 somewhere. I quit my job I started working on Jotform and 2006 February, I released the first version of Jotform. And I think all that experience gains, because I was helping so many editors with so many forms. Game is so much experience about like what kind of needs people have. out of the gate, people actually started using it people, you know, start loving it. Of course, the numbers were in this big, but in from the day one like I had, I started to receive missing registrations, I remember I was receiving like 20 to 50 signups per day even like 2006. And one of the reasons was that I really wanted to see people use this product, I actually gave it away for free, like, it was all free. During the first year, like there was no like paid version. And I wanted to get feedback, I wanted to make sure that everything is good. And that actually helped me, like fixed all the missing features, make sure the product is ready for when when people need to use it for real, and people were actually using for real. But a year after that, in 2007, I released the paid version. And right away, I released the paid version at the time I had like 15,000 free users, and 500 of them sign up for the paid version. That proved to me that this is a real business. And this is going to be a successful business, even though it was like $9 a month. So at that time, like you know, 500 customers $9 amount, it was only 4500 a month that I was earning. But that was a proof for me that this is going to be a successful business. And then the rest is history. It’s been 18 years, it’s been a long time that but you know, I still enjoy working on JotForm. One thing that’s different about JotForm is it’s completely bootstrapped. I never received any funding, and I never received any investments. Know that I had been going just by the fonts from customers, and I’ve been growing, growing slowly. So the first year it was me alone 2006 September, I hired my first employee 2007, I had my second employee, and I had this rule that I will only hire an employee, if I have like one year salary for all my employees in the bank that’s actually defined my growth, some years, I will just hire an additional employee and some years, I could hire five or 10 employees. So this actually allow me to not take any risks, because I know that, you know, if the people stopped using JotForm, I would still have the funds to you know, pay my employees for a year, that gave me the confidence to you know, continue growing without without going too fast. Or I also didn’t want to go too slow, because going too slow is also bad because I wanted to invest in my business. I remember like, you know, I didn’t even have a car, like my employees would actually had a car. And I would actually walk to a bus station. And I remember like, there is a blizzard, and I’m walking to the bus station. And I actually had this great feeling that, you know, this is actually good, because I’m investing everything in the business. I’m not actually panning in any funds on something else. And that actually, you know, made me feel better about myself made me feel good about myself. That was before I had a family of course, like, you know, once I had a family, I actually taking it more, you know, like started having comfortable TVs having a comfortable, you know, car and house until I had that, like I kept it very, very tight, and I invest everything in my business.

Max Branstetter 13:50
Yeah, it’s a beautiful philosophy. I remember back in the Desi and you wait outside in line for the bus stop. I really should have picked you up now. But I love many aspects about you. Just one of them that sticks out to me is your philosophy, your philosophy, if I could pronounce it, your philosophy on not hiring that next employee until you like are sure you have you know enough money in the bank for everybody’s salary for a year? Because I think that’s something so many business owners struggle with is well first of all, when you take that first jump to hire your first employee, and then beyond that, when do you know when’s the right time to grow your team? And I think like there’s a great debate about like, Should you wait, do you have X amount in the bank? Or should you hire and kind of like bet on yourself and your team to make that revenue? You know, X fold times? And it’s a bit of a gamble there. How did that idea crystallized for you that? Let’s make sure like we have this amount in the bank before we truly expand this to more and more teams. vers

Aytekin Tank 15:00
people believe that intrapreneurs are these like big risk takers. They play poker. I’m terrible at puck poker. Terrible bluffer. I’m a terrible risk taker. Because of that, because I’m a, I’m really bad at risk taking, I need to make sure that I’m not over extending myself, I’m not over hiring. And the rule I have is, I will always have 25% margin on my business. Even today, I look at that, like, I look at the cash earnings now that we are actually switched to accrual accounting, it’s harder, but I look at the cash revenues. And then I look at our expenses. And I want to make sure that at the end of the year, I have that 25%, I’m spending 25%, less than I earned. As long as I follow that, I follow the rule that, you know, I should have a one year salary for all my employees, I think those tools, make sure that you don’t take any risks. 18 years in business, and we never did. layoff, we did hiring freezes, usually short term, like three months, six months, usually happened because, like, you know, we really had a good recruiting team, and then you know, we were growing fast. And then okay, we said, Okay, we grow too fast, like, let’s hire less little bit, but we never did a layoff. And I’m very proud of that. And when I see our competitors, like, you know, they are laying off like making one of our competitors actually laid off like 60% of their employees, seen all those things, of course, I don’t want to, you know, have bad wishes about the all those people who lost their jobs. But I feel like, you know, this not being a risk taker is a good thing. Because that says, I think that I care about like people, employees stay in for a long time, create a broker environment that allows people to actually stay a long time, stay for five or 10 years, as opposed to like, you know, coming for a year or two and leaving, make sure that we have like good benefits, good work environment, we care so much about the office spaces and make sure that we have good office space, like we have seven offices around the world. And the biggest office in is in in Turkey. And we also have headquarters in San Francisco. But like we work with, like the intern, good interior designers and make sure that like when people come to the office, like they feel they’re proud of the company they work for, that helps people feel like, you know, being part of a successful good company.

Max Branstetter 17:35
You’re saying people don’t want to work in a an ugly, dirty environment, that that’s very controversial. Now, but I think that’s another aspect that is pretty remarkable is how you’ve gone from, you know, one employee at one location to seven locations around the world. And I mean, we’re talking like very different time zones. How has your approach as CEO and and business owner changed since you’ve started to branch into more and more offices? And might I say beautifully interior design offices? Yeah.

Aytekin Tank 18:16
So this is actually a big, big question now. Like, should you work from the office? Or should you work remotely? Right, we moved to working from home, when the pandemic hit, we were actually very productive. I think we stayed at home until like September 21, I think. But the problem was the people we hired like the people who joined the team, the knee or people who are just new graduate, it was very hard for them, like it was very hard for for us to get be part of our culture. I think one day, maybe remote is going to be as good as working from the office. But I think we are far away from that. But this is also about the way we work in the office. Like we don’t have an office of an office like, definitely against open offices, like what we have is like, we have small teams, every team actually have their own offices. And in their offices, like they have this, you know, whiteboard, and they adore close and, and they’re working on a single project together whole day. And they have independence. So because we have that structure, it actually works for us. But I also understand that people who work in the open offices they would prefer working from from home. And this approach actually worked worked for us. And I think the main reason we went back to the offices was like not being able to really engage, you know, all these new people for joining the company engage all the junior employees, because people who are working really well before when they moved to the motor home, they were actually performing as well. And they did a good job, but your original Question was like, how did I decide to have beautiful offices, I mean, in the beginning, our offices weren’t that good. I have to admit, they were. as we as we have grown more, I saw the importance of like, we are spending so much time in the office, having all these conversations about the product. For example, one of the things is like Make, make sure that making sure that you know, you have food in the office free food free drinks, that’s good, because now we can actually eat together if you want to, and then we can continue discussions about our product. I think that also has to do with being a single product company, everybody’s thinking about the same things, everybody is thinking about how to make JotForm great. And that allows us to like when we talk to each other, talking about job form, and having a good office environment that actually, people want to stay there, like people don’t want to go, you know, comfortable chairs, sit in areas, you know, the food and drinks, free foods and drinks and all those things actually, kind of make the office environment are better. And in the early years, I guess, like I was also single, and I was spending so much time in the office more time in the office that you know, I cared about having a having good office spaces,

Max Branstetter 21:16
or you had me at food, I’m all for anything food, I think I’m coming to visit right after this. Now, it’s really nice that you provide those things. And when you think about job form, there’s I mean, that’s one huge change is the offices in addition to working from home, but the amount of users that’s changed is huge, as you mentioned, the company and actually what your what your what you deliver, I’m sure has changed. How has that changed since like that first year, when you had only free users? I want to make sure that came through clear. I’m saying free users, not three users, you had a lot more than three years. But when you had users that weren’t paying for JotForm yet, what sort of offering did you have like was that in any way similar to what you provide as a company today?

Aytekin Tank 22:09
None at all. Like, you know, I’m a product person, I see myself as a product person, because I care so much about our product. In the beginning, like we were learning so much from our users. But our product was much smaller. And my focus was always making sure that we onboard our users. Well, I think that’s really important. Of course, this is a form builder, people create forms with jot form. So making sure that our form builder is well was like, has always been my top priority. And we have accomplished that. By like rewriting our formula like four times over the years. In software, it takes 10 years to create a great product. Joel Spolsky actually has a blog post about that. That’s like one of my favorite articles. And it takes 10 years to create a good product. Because just like figuring out what users need figuring out where you need to expand your product, where you need to simplify like, where they are failing, like, all those things, take time, and you have to you know, rewrite your product, add some new features to it. You can’t just have 100 people and then reduce that amount to like from like 10 years to one because it’s about learning. It’s about learning from your users. For example, in the early days, I didn’t know about like doing things like user testing, getting people to use your product and watching them how they use your product. And learning from that. I didn’t know about like user interesting user research, like interesting people finding out how they use your product, and what kind of missing things they see. But I had some ideas like I actually had like this open forum, I provided support, publicly open forum. So people could see that when someone wrote something like, Okay, this is broken, and I will answer Okay, fair enough. Like the next day, I will say it’s fixed enough or the same day, I will say if FISA, or if someone had an idea, others would come in, and then they will add their opinions, this kind of open environment, people actually, even though this is a new product, people trusted it because they knew that I was there all the time, like I was actually taking care of business and product was improving every day. They could see that from my forum posts. And we checked that we still have like, you can actually go to Job form and you can see, by default is private because we don’t know sometimes people will accidentally put like private stuff in there support cases, but you can actually make it public and many people are sure and you can see like what kind of problems people have and that actually builds confidence as well as a growth that also has a few as well because you know, people who are writing those things also, other people are searching for them and they will find our forum threads And one of the things we did was, in addition to the Form Builder, like rewriting it four times, or the time first time use, one of the things we did was, we discovered that people actually had a journey. And the first step of the journey started with a form. So you fill it, you fill out the form, not because you want to just like you know, fill out the form, you have a purpose, right, you want to apply for something, you want to register for something, you want to request something you want to contact someone. But that’s just the first step. And we were just helping people with the first step just with the forms. And then they will handle the rest, like using like, eggs, or email or whatever they were using. So we decide, okay, this is a journey. And the forms are the first step, what if we start helping them rest of the journey, we actually built our own special product that’s called JotForm tables. We created this inbox product. We created features like Jetson approvals JotForm PDF editor, which is like a document generation product, just from sign and a signature product, just from apps where you can actually build apps where you can install this, you know, you can put your forms in an app, and then you can install them on your, on your mobile phone. And then when you need when you need to access a form, you can access it from there. So we actually started taking care of all those different kinds of needs people have. This actually also helped me as a product guy, because it kind of gets boring, just working on same same product for a long time. But once we actually started discovering all these other product needs, people have started building these additional products that also help me with these craving for building new products. This is so much fun for me. And even though it’s been 18 years, I still enjoy working our product every day,

Max Branstetter 26:52
I saw you getting out that calculator there with 18 years, but you stumbled on something that we actually spoke about with a previous guest episode 276 Liz Georgie, from sunnah, she spoke about that same thing where some of the best brands today. And most of the best brands that are providing something, well, everybody’s providing something but that have do their value prop the best. They have, like their core product that they start with, and then over time are able to add on more and more layers to that product or separate products that complement it. And, of course, it’s all revenue streams as well. But also it as a customer that totally strengthens your connection with the brand. It’s really cool to hear about and see how you’ve innovated with jot form. And I’m glad to hear that you’re having fun with the new things as well, because 18 years without having fun would not be good for, for any founder. On that note of, you know, I keep going back to being astounded by how many users you’ve you have and how big your team has grown over the years. Just high level like for any business, what is the one thing that you need to get right? In order to scale to the point of having potentially millions of users or customers one day,

Aytekin Tank 28:16
I will say it’s the business model. Because if you have the wrong business model, even if you have the greatest product in the world, that you’re not going to be able to grow off, it’s just you’re just gonna be stuck. I mean, every company kind of have the different kinds of bottlenecks. I think it’s all about discovering these bottlenecks, solving these bottlenecks and improving your growth. So I have this rules that are called 5050 rules, usually like when I when I advise founders, I will talk about that. And the 5050 rule is like as a founder, especially in the first days, but this also applies even 10 years after you started your company. As a founder, you should be you should make sure that you spend in half of your time with your product or service, and half of your time with your growth and marketing. And they also depend on each other. But if you’re weak in one area, the other area will also stumble, because let’s say you’re making a great product, but you don’t know marketing, you have no traffic on your website. You have no users, you have no customers. And because of that you’re not getting any feedback on your product. People are not telling you like what you need to do next, like how they use your product. You have no idea what’s going on. You could build this way for years and years. And you’re just gonna overbuilt, it’s a terrible path. Many founders will will teach today even today like when we actually need to like release a new product or a new MVP of a new product or new feature. What we are going to do is Like, we are going to just quickly create an MVP. And then we are going to release it to like 100 users, or 1000 users or small number of users. And then we see if people use it, if they get value if they get confused what kind of feedback they have. So we learn from those information. And then we gradually increase the number of people use that part. The same way, in the early days, you have to have all these people who are using your product, if you have a good product, but no one is using it, you have to work on the growth. So you focus on your growth, you focus on your marketing, you bring more traffic to your website, or whatever. Like if you’re a mobile app, you bring more traffic to your app store this thing, whatever you do, you bring more traffic. And then once you once you have more traffic. Now you look at all those people who are using your product, if they are staying, if they’re activating, can you onboard them? Do you have any problems with onboarding them? Or are you losing them the first step, or you’re onboarding them? Well, but they don’t stay a long time, like they just stay two months, you have a big churn problem. So next, you focus on that part, right? If your product is confusing, if your product is not really answering the problems your customers have, even if you have a good growth and marketing, those people you bring are just going to churn out or they’re not going to get on board because you have a confusing product. And that’s actually one of the reasons we actually rewrite rewrote our Form Builder four times. And because every time we rolled, we believe that okay, this is perfect, like, everyone can figure that. And we figured out that, no, it’s actually you know, still, there are also people who cannot figure it out, because every time we actually increase the number of people who can use it, but people are busy, they’re seeing so much stuff at the same time, you know, they will start using JotForm, on ramped up and someone will call them, and that they will open a new tab and that’s it, they will forget about it, there is just so many things that can happen, you want to make sure that you engage them, you don’t get them confused, you don’t get them up. So one of the things we see when we watch that usability testing is okay, here is a user, you give them a task, okay? Build a survey for this and something like that, right. And users coming to Job form, building the things and everything is going perfect, like they do like 20 things correctly. But then they are trying to do one, one additional task, but they couldn’t figure it out, they get confused. And what we see is that even a single roadblock changes make people are impatient. And they will just say, I cannot figure this out, this is very confusing, and they will just quit, it’s very important to really figure out where you have those bottlenecks and fix them, either product or marketing. This is like a constant cycle, you work on one part, and then you get really good at one part. And then the other part is kind of weak. Now you go back and work on the other parts. And this is a cycle that works. But the business model is important because even if you’re building a good product, if you cannot actually snowball your revenues, if you cannot increase your revenues, you will not be able to grow your team. And the fourth version of the formula we wrote, we wrote, we were able to do a good job. Because I was able to hire all these amazing designers, I was able to hire all these great developers, and I was able to build this great team that was able to, you know they were able to accomplish that and the technology change a lot of the, the you know, more flexible as well. So you need resources to be to be able to hire good people. And that depends on your business model.

Max Branstetter 33:55
Speaking of models, Michael Scott often called Ryan Howard a model in the office, and that very Ryan Howard aka BJ Novak is the closing keynote speaker at CEX it’s it did again, I messed up the name again at CEX Content Entrepreneur Expo, which takes place May 5-7, 2024 in my hometown and favorite city of Cleveland, Ohio. If you’re interested in attending and seeing BJ as well as the top speakers in the content entrepreneur space that will teach you a ton about launching and growing a content entrepreneur business career whatever you want to call it. Use the coupon code MAX100 to save $100 off the in-person ticket price. And that is because MaxPodcasting is a Media Partner for CEX that’s promo code MAX100. That is at CEX.Events Now, let’s elaborate. So you see segwayed swimmingly, because one of the other areas that I know you’re you’re very profound on and that I want to hit on is productivity. And I think the whole in the business on the business thing that everybody struggles with ties closely to productivity. And you know, I’m not calling you a productivity expert or anything, but you did write a whole book that kind of dives into that automate your busy work. So really, really cool stuff all around. What in addition to that 5050 rule that you spoke of, what’s another, I guess, philosophy on productivity that you have that could greatly benefit other entrepreneurs out there. The

Aytekin Tank 35:40
original story for the book is like many years before I wrote the book, it was early days of JotForm, like maybe like four or five years into Jotform. We are still a small team, like five to 10 people. But like, I was so busy, I was like doing everything I was doing support. I was in accounting, legal HR, ordering supplies for the kitchen in the office. On top of all that stuff, I was spending half of my day on email and other half, you know, customer support. I was like, versus working like to person. The problem is, I wasn’t actually working on the important things. I wasn’t spending so much time on my product, improving my product. I wasn’t working on things that I enjoy. I had just so much busy work. And right at this moment, something else happens. Google came out with a competing product, Google Forms came out. So now, on top of all that, now I had to compete with Google. David and Goliath story, right?

Max Branstetter 36:41
Well, it’s it’s got to be really easy to compete with Google, right? Like, they’re not well known. They’re not anybody’s homepage or anything. So yeah.

Aytekin Tank 36:50
You know, I started thinking about, like, how can I solve this? And I decided, okay, this is not going well, I need to start changing something. I decided, okay, I was a developer. And I’m, you know, I studied computer science, right. So I should be able to write code, I should be able to automate things. And I started looking into automation. And I figured that like, I didn’t even have to like write code, like, there are many automation tools that you could use. And there are many things you can do to automate things, you just have to take the time, you just have to, you know, take the time, if you spend a day for automation, you can gain like a year of work that way. Like there’s just like so many opportunities. So I started with that. And I automated many things, I delegated many things like the amount of time I was spending with emails, I was able to reduce that from like six hours to like two hours, because of the way I was, I was using my inbox like I was, you know, I didn’t do like Inbox Zero, I didn’t do like really prioritize things, or build my own automation systems around emails. And I did all that. I also started delegating more, I heard people from Africa to help me with the support, because at this point, I was I was still the only support person as well, like I was answering customer support questions, which was really nice. I was learning so much, but it was too much. And this these learnings, kind of shaped the way we did things using automation as much as possible, became like having an automation first mindset became a default for me. And I started even using the ideas within the product. How can I help people automate things like when people receive a form maybe they need to create like a PDF document right from the data they receive on the form? How can we automate that have Kevin automated approval system? All those ideas also helped me with the with the product, and also with the way our team work? Like how can we like streamline our product development or like, how we launch our product, how we make our product live to our users, things like that. That automation first mindset helped me become successful. Last year, I released that book, The automate your busy work, and it became a Wall Street Journal bestseller.

Max Branstetter 39:19
Congrats, congrats. I gave you a congrats and a voice crack at the same time. So that’s an extra congrats.

Aytekin Tank 39:25
All these things that I learned, I shared in the book, automate your busy work. So one of the things is having this automation first mindset I think the first first principle is clarify your priorities. And I recommend doing this basically time audit. So you basically you create the spreadsheet every Are you make a note of how you spend that are and at the end of the week, you total them up and then you know what you what you did during that week for me, I was like, you know, I don’t know. 2030 hours doing customer support It’s 40 hours, maybe you know, the emails, things like that. Once you actually have that total, you ask yourself two questions. What should I spend my time on? And what should I spend my time on? Because the goal of automation or delegation or like saving time is not to actually work less. I think the goal is prioritization, the goal is to be able to work on important things, as opposed to things that feel like they are urgent or time sensitive. When you ask those questions, like, what should I spend my time on, and what should I spend my time on, you kind of see where you’re spending your time on currently, and things that are actual taking your time, they’re not just take your time, if you don’t enjoy them, they’re also second, your energy, there’s their second your motivation, like you start burning out. And like all those creative ideas you could have, because you’re busy with busy work, like you use that energy, you use your best time of the day, like whatever time is best for you. If you’re spending the time, it’s you know, checking emails, like doing busy work, ordering supplies, you just lost that art, and you cannot replace that, like, you know, if that’s the morning time for you, you can, you know, go in the afternoon and become creative because you you already use up those important hours of your day, clarifying your priorities, and that automating those things are the first principle. The second principle is harness, impatience and lazes. If you keep doing all these Bizible, if you keep doing the same things again, and again, you kind of need to be feel like you enough is enough, like, Okay, I’m not gonna do this like anymore, like, I’m gonna find a solution. So I can automate this thing. And Bill Gates actually has a great quote, he says that I was, I would always hire a lazy person to do a hardship, because that person will find an easier way to do it. It’s about harnessing impatient and laziness. And the third principle is, you need to make time to save time, you need to spend the time researching all the available products, understand how you spend your time, like what kind of things take your time, what kind of things are constantly, constantly notify sending you notifications, or, like, if you have to content context switch all the time, if you have to change what you’re doing all the time, that’s like you’re just losing so much time because of the context switch. You know, you need to find those things that and then you need to find solutions that can actually help you with automate in the sector. That requires spending time during research, it’s just easy to do something that right, I can just do this, I’ve been always doing this, right, you can just say that. But the problem is, if you do that, you’re just spending that time on that thing. But you will also spend that time on that thing tomorrow, the next day, the next week. So you know, if you spend that time really like sharp sharpening the sword of finding out automation, that’s going to help you in the long term. So you will say like so much time in the long term. In this book, I also talked about this automation flywheels. It’s about dividing and conquering your verbs, you’re busy work, designing and implementing your automations. And then building your system. So the goal is to become instead of being an individual contributor of your work, becoming a manager of your systems and your automations. And this requires that instead of doing things, your actual managing them, this requires actually designing understanding your workflows the way you work. And you because usually, like the the work we do are not just like one task, like one step. They are workflows. So I need to send an email to someone, I need to schedule something, I need to get an answer from a customer. So you have to do all these things. But you know, there’s also products like Calendly, that can actually save you like, so much time doing all that busy work, and then like it’s just, it’s stressful, it’s busy work, it’s unnecessary. You know, I just shared with you my calendar, right, and you find the best best time for you. And then that’s it. We were able to meet up and just there’s no like 10 emails, just to schedule time, find a good time for us. So it’s about like finding automations for your workflows. And then once you do that, you have your systems, you start thinking like a manager, instead of thinking like an individual contributor, you start thinking like, you’re you’re the manager of your systems, you’re the manager of your automations. What does a good manager do a good manager actually, maybe delegates but checks on them as the like, you need to check what’s going on. You need to be aware of your automations if they’re working well Be error aware of your KPIs key performance indicators of your automation. So it’s, it feels like more, right but but the thing is like you are now much more productive. Now you’re able to accomplish more, and you are able to spend your time on things that you care about the things that are important for you. And I leave all the that deserves to your systems to your automations

Max Branstetter 45:23
there are so many vampires out there sucking energy and time and, and who knows one of the things but I really appreciate you you’re curating those productivity and automation and prioritization tips because it’s just a beautiful thought for for anybody to think of like, Hmm, like, what, what would I do if I freed up, you know, a few more hours each day, or like if I didn’t have to do this task that I hate anymore. I really, really appreciate you putting that together and putting that book out into the world. let’s prioritize our ending here and ask you the most important questions you’ve ever been at now. I’m just getting set differently. Let’s wrap up with some rapid fire q&a. You ready for it?

Aytekin Tank 46:09
Yeah, okay.

Max Branstetter 46:10
All right. Let’s get wild. We have something pretty cool in common we’ve both spent some time in Connecticut so we’re connect to kittens have sort of that’s it sounds weird that it kittens. I don’t know what that is. That could be a pet shop. I don’t know. But I lived in Stanford, as they say stamp Vegas for a few years when I was when I was starting my career in the corporate world. So fond memories of Connecticut, but I know you went to school at Bridgeport. It could be about Bridgeport, or just Connecticut overall. But just first things that popped to your head. What is your favorite part of living in Connecticut and your least favorite part of your time there?

Aytekin Tank 46:50
I will say the fall I will say like the leaves. The New England in general, if full time is incredibly beautiful. Like I also lived in Stanford for a while.

Max Branstetter 47:03
Stan Vegas is very strong.

Aytekin Tank 47:07
War is kind of inside New York State I believe. But still, I would consider it in Stafford. Like, it’s so beautiful. I don’t if you went hiking there. It’s such a beautiful place. And there are other beautiful hiking places with beautiful foliage. Yeah, that’s the best part about it. The worst part is not New York City, right. So you are kind of even if you live in Connecticut, all your weekday weekends are actually in New York City. So you go to New York City over the weekend. So it’s not New York. Yeah. But it’s, you know, yeah,

Max Branstetter 47:46
I’m with you. Yeah, I totally echo those. Yeah, it’s beautiful. I mean, when I came out for my for my interview for that job, the driver took us from the airport was like, because, you know, me shout out my friend Spencer, who got the job as well. But neither of us had been in Connecticut before. And so we’re asking the driver about Connecticut. He’s like, Connecticut is a state within a forest. Like it’s just trees everywhere. It’s beautiful. And yeah, all of you know, upstate New York and New England is beautiful there. But yeah, I’m with you. And as more and more time went on, I spent more and more weekends in the city, visiting my friends and doing stuff in the city. And definitely those costs and the commuting time. Although, on the Metro North, you can drink you can charge your phone like it’s not it’s not bad, but it’s definitely not as easy as you know, stepping out your apartment on 36th Street and you’re in the city, you know, so that was really cool. Shout out. Shout out Stanford’s damn Vegas. How about somewhere a little bit of a plane ride away. So now you’re from Turkey originally? What is the most beautiful area of Turkey?

Aytekin Tank 48:45
Obviously, stumbles is like the the the the historical heritage, the all these like the Roman Empire and then the Ottoman Empire. Just like all these amazing architecture. And the Bosporus. It’s incredible. But this is kind of if you’re coming to Turkey from outside, right. But as a personal who lives in Turkey right now. It’s definitely the agency. It’s so beautiful, like these turquoise waters like this blue waters, beautiful, like, you know, flat sea and just amazing. Yeah.

Max Branstetter 49:28
Yeah. Sounds beautiful. And for my friends that have visited there, of course, a lot of them have gone for the what is it the balloon? What’s it called again? Where they do the hot air balloon? Cappadocia. Yeah, yes, exactly. I will not try to pronounce it. You got it. So, but everybody just seems to have the best time there. So that’s really cool. And then you mentioned earlier that you’ve never been a risk taker. You’re bad at poker. What is something that you’re good at like a game or you know, just like something? Just a hobby. something from your personal life that you’re actually pretty good at.

Aytekin Tank 50:02
I still play basketball a lot. Now I’m for the sixth. And I’m still playing. But right after this call, I’m actually going to basketball playing basketball. Kudos

Max Branstetter 50:15
to you for not jumping off half an hour ago. I appreciate.

Aytekin Tank 50:20
Yeah, I mean, just, we play basketball, we join leagues, we join all these tournaments. You know, last time, we were in a three by three tournament, and we, we were actually in the semifinals, I still enjoy it. I’m all time slough. Like these young guys, I just, I cannot move as fast as them. But I still enjoy it. And, you know, hopefully, I will be able to continue to read it for a long time.

Max Branstetter 50:48
I’ll take your old and slow and say, No, you’re young and fast. So next time I’m in the area, we’ll have to have a pickup game. I know I miss playing basketball. I’ve been playing it too long. If you had a an NBA current, or classic NBA player that you modeled your game after, who would that be? Well, I’m not saying you’re comparing yourself to this person, but who inspires you?

Aytekin Tank 51:11
I cannot be as good as of course. Maybe I can try to be like Michael Jordan, of course. But here’s, here’s the here’s the itis is different than either of after I watched the documentary, I became a bigger fan of Michael Jordan. I didn’t know so much about him until I was like, he was my favorite. But I didn’t know so much about him. I especially I especially liked how he actually motivates himself by trying to find ways to get himself angry, like about other person, like, you know, even even though like the other person like the competitor didn’t say something to him, a he, he imagines that that person actually told him like, you know, you cycle your all or something like that. And then he actually motivates himself to be become more explosive. And I think that’s a that’s a great lesson for for all of us, even for intrapreneurs to just it’s very important to motivate ourselves. Just find ways to motivate ourselves. Yeah,

Max Branstetter 52:10
absolutely legendary. I think you could take them one on one you might be able to be you never know. But clearly like the best if not one of the best, like killer instinct of all time, and just best at like motivating themselves in the clutch game winning gene. You know, we could speak forever about Michael Jordan. Never heard of it, actually now. But last one. You mentioned throughout this interview some of the rules that you abide by and kind of set for yourself and your team as a business owner, like you talked about the 50-50 rule. You talked about your rule for hiring new employees. I’m curious, outside of work, like is there a rule that you have for like you and your family around the house that you’re pretty loyal to? Now

Aytekin Tank 52:52
that I have three kids, I have a nine year old, seven year old and now a one year old.

Max Branstetter 53:00
Wow, congrats, you got your hands full as if the business wasn’t enough. There

Aytekin Tank 53:05
is no outside world, this is like this work. And there is also there’s kids, for me kind of actually enjoy it enjoy so much like I don’t like I don’t miss anything else. Like it’s just so much fun. Like the kids are so much fun. They take care of my they take all my time. And I enjoy it so much. So it’s it’s about them enough.

Max Branstetter 53:29
That’s beautiful, beautiful note to end on. It can, which I did pronounce, I did check the phonetic my writing of your name again. But it can thank you so much for coming on for sharing your stories, your tips, your rules, your basketball skills that are definitely better than Michael Jordan, I’ll give it to you. Where is the best place for people, there’s three parts here for people to connect with you online, to try out jot form and to grab a copy of your book.

Aytekin Tank 53:57
So my first name last name.com, AytekinTank.com I have a website where you can actually you know, find my articles. You know, contact me you can find my book and everything about me there. You know the book is available on bookstores, like Amazon and all the bookstores Barnes & Noble. And I also write at Entrepreneur Magazine, Fast Company so you can you can read more about the stuff I’ve been talking about talking during this podcast and I also really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you.

Max Branstetter 54:37
Yes, of course. Of course. Thank you so much. Likewise, back at you. And last thing, final thoughts. It could be just a quote like one one, not one word, one sentence, you know, words to live by, or advice for entrepreneurs send us home here.

Aytekin Tank 54:53
One of the things that I caught that I have in the book is is from Eisenhower. It’s about prioritization. He says that I have two kinds of problems. The important and urgent and the urgent ones are never important. So make sure that you spend your time on the important things and leave the urgent ones to automation delegation, find, you know, get rid of them. Work on what’s important for you.

Max Branstetter 55:25
In this interview had so many important important takeaways. Again, I cannot talk in so many ways. Thank you again so much for coming on the podcast, sharing your incredible rules, and stories and lessons, and thank you, Wild Listeners, for tuning in to another episode. If you want to hear more Wild stories like this one, make sure to follow the podcast on your favorite podcast platform. And check us out on Goodpods. And if you’re interested in the video version, check out YouTube @MaxBranstetter. There is some more and more and more and more video versions coming in. That’s the second highest pitch my voice has gotten. For any help with podcast production, you can learn more at MaxPodcasting.com, where I’m currently spending extra time editing out the extremely loud pile driver next door that is causing a ruckus. Thank you very much. I hope it’s a beautiful building. And to sign up for the Podcasting to the Max newsletter, it is where podcasting meets entrepreneurship and awful puns, you can sign up at MaxPodcasting.com/Newsletter. That’s short and sweet to your inbox every Thursday from moi. Until next time, let your business Run Wild…Bring on the Bongos!!