The Bootstrapped Founder

Arvid Kahl 0:00
Today, I'm talking to an indie hacker who really gets to build a business in a field you know a lot about paradigm. I'm chatting with Andrew Hodson who is building software businesses in the automotive and logistics industries. He's the founder behind Hauling Buddies and Wrench Radar, both of which are marketplaces. And that is the hardest kind of software business to build. But Andrew is doing pretty well with values. We'll dive into dealing with incumbents and competitors and getting your customers' trust when handling livestock or their cars. We'll dig into Facebook community building and what Andrew's larger vision for his indie founder life might be. This episode is sponsored by acquire.com. More on that later. Now, let's jump into a conversation between two self taught software founders. Here is Andrew.

Andrew, thanks so much for being on the show. Your journey is quite an interesting one. And you went all the way from auto mechanic to software as a service entrepreneur. That's pretty awesome. I've been watching that happen on Twitter, where you've been building your businesses, I guess, at this point in public and have loved every minute of this. So let's start in the beginning here. What makes an auto mechanic or I think you call yourself an audio tech, right? In your Twitter bio, that's what you say. What makes a person like that look into learning how to code? How did that start?

Andrew Hodson 1:19
Right. So well, some automotive background comes from like my family, my father's ASE master, my brother, Raul. Everybody seems to work on cars in my family. But since that kind of path just came through osmosis really, be on my dad and that kind of stuff is kind of like the natural step. The coding and the computer side of stuff was more along the lines of in high school, they gave us a computer. Right? And that pull on the thread mentality I have leads me to where I'm at. I mean, it's a long journey, right? But basically that would be the, I just I never fell out of love with the ability to been computers electronics here will, right? Throughout life, I thought a mechanic was the natural progression just because that was my environment. But yeah, so there's two distinct paths, definitely a lot of intersection, definitely a lot of cool things I can bring from automotive way of thinking about their things and vice versa. But, yeah

Arvid Kahl 1:19
That is interesting. I would like to know more about this because it feels both are kind of engineering, but definitely in different realms. Like what kind of similarities have you found there between these two?

Andrew Hodson 2:33
Yeah, so especially like the diagnostics type of work

Arvid Kahl 2:37
Right

Andrew Hodson 2:38
Yeah. Well, even like what I called vaultering work, which is just like, you know, remove or replace. You have a set of guidelines generally or even specs or something that you're going to buy or some some kind of, so it's like reading documentation, right? Like as long as you spend the time understanding what the documentation says, generally, you can come to the right answer of figuring it out. Right. And then the diagnostics that comes down to you're breaking things down into smaller problems, making sure you know, what system is involved in this, what's tied into where yeah, a lot of there's especially when you go into like older apps, where you're just trying to find all the webs and stuff. That kind of I wouldn't call it a chain but the thought process of just working down the chain, definitely crosses over. And a little bit even on the service writing side where, how to interact with customers, I tell you where it deviates horribly, which is and one thing I really have, it's hard to deal with is I feel like labor offs, right? So like, I can go into a book and it tells me it's, you know, two hours put passwords on a car. And now I dictate what that labor rate is. But I still know I'm billing two hours. Right? And that's the way they should do it. If it was not, don't go to them. And check that's almost out the window, right? I mean, a button could take 20 minutes on one website and it could take three hours on another website. So just some back and forth there. But yeah, a lot of quality errors, again, when you're actually working on cars, but then there are some differences that will fill it, they'll bite you.

Arvid Kahl 4:10
Yeah. So it's interesting to see that like debugging, like this analysis part is very similar. But when it comes to actually implementation is not a standardized, right? Because you're effectively making things up in coding. And then the other thing is just and I mean this in the best sense of the word and implementation of an existing process. That's what

Andrew Hodson 4:27
Exactly, yeah. You're exactly right!

Arvid Kahl 4:29
Have you try to carry some of this kind of process oriented thinking into running your own software service business?

Andrew Hodson 4:36
Oh, I mean, so I take a lot of the customer service side of it, which is, you know, especially in that type of work and in the competition and stuff. Yeah, I don't like saying the customer's always right. But in the sense of you go out of your way and then as far as like, I've always been a logical person is probably what makes me halfway decent with computers is you know, figuring out what the business model is? And how do you craft you know, a code setup that models that, you know and then, I'm killing all these terminologies. But regardless, yeah, I mean, it's just the comparmentalization of stuff, how can you put each step in? And then you just make each set pitch in? And then yeah, how does that work as a whole? I think that goes across any industry really. But yeah, for sure.

Arvid Kahl 5:26
So it's just professional approach to doing stuff.

Andrew Hodson 5:29
Yeah, I think it's more it's just, I like, I have a system of where I have to kind of throw all my, we'll call them issues, priorities, you know, whatever is currently on my mind spiraled horrible way. And then you had a wall and then those different have priority statuses, right? So the ROI and all those good funny words, but how did the systems interact with each other, right? So if I knock this one off, how do I do that? And if I do this and that, it is so again, I don't know what you want to call it. But super logical, super, you know, I liked it. Someone else could step in, take a look at what I'm doing and understand it and not have to go through like this whole onboarding process, right? So that's kind of how I'd like to simplify everything. So with Hauling Buddies, for example, yeah, Brandi helped me out. And I've set everything up in a way where like, she can just, I can step away from anything I'm working on and she can just step in, right? Like, I don't have to do this whole download and upload of information because it's just inefficient, right? And then, so yeah, I mean, I guess so that kind of stuff definitely back and forth like I said.

Arvid Kahl 6:33
That sounds like you're really equipping yourself and everybody else around you well to deal with the operations and the business that removes you from being necessitated in the business. Right?

Andrew Hodson 6:45
Absolutely

Arvid Kahl 6:46
When we talk about making things sellable, that's the part that's interesting, right? Removing yourself, is that something and I know this is a pretty hard jump from you just starting to code to no thinking about selling your business. But you know, that's the zero and to sold, like those two things, but is that something that you're actively contemplating as you're building businesses to eventually sell them?

Andrew Hodson 7:07
Well, yeah, yeah, right. So let's back up so when I jump into different ideas and projects, I could probably tell you the initial spark is never about money, right? Whether it's learning any technology, whether it's a passion project, whether it's whatever, the nexus or the spark or whatever you want to call it, that starts is generally is not monetary. What kicks in second is oh, man, I gotta pay my bills this month. How can I monetize this, right? That's probably not the best way to go about it. I'm not saying it is. But I tend to do better in an environment where I need to do better. I have to do better, right? So yeah, so eventually, so no, I will say it depends, right? So generally, it is just a spark. But yeah, normally my next thought is, you know, how would I market those, right? And I have to answer that question myself anyway, right? Because it's even something that is marketable or doesn't have a lot of competition you go through that whole checklist but then like or what's unique about it, right? We've had this talks in the past and if I can pass that step and I've learned what I want to learn or I've done whatever I checked it off my personal box, yeah, even my next step certainly at this point is what's the plan, exit. You're thinking oh, yeah, invest whatever the case may be, whatever but in the beginning, no, but lately, yes. Yeah.

Arvid Kahl 8:38
It makes perfect sense. Like you have you have shifting priorities in your life. Like obviously that's going to impact how you think about your business and why the business and to what end the business exists. Let's backtrack a little bit. I think Hauling Buddies is a great example because from what I see, that's your first big thing. That's how it is feels to me and I've been loving the journey of this like looking into it from both behind the scenes and from on Twitter and the public sphere. So you just described that you go through all these steps looking at a market, looking at a potential product potential business. Can you just indulge me in what you did for Hauling Buddies like how that came about? And maybe also explained a little bit what it actually is?

Andrew Hodson 9:19
Yeah, for sure.

Arvid Kahl 9:20
That would be good.

Andrew Hodson 9:21
For the audience that don't know. Yeah, so Hauling Buddies is an online we'll call it I don't like this word marketplace so much anymore. We'll call it a directory of verified animal transport companies. There's a big deal with I guess anything nowadays though scams and just bad actor to align taking advantage of a good situation. In this case, it was social media, you know, communities whether it be Facebook or majority Facebook, but anyone really. So we'll backtrack a little bit when COVID happened, I just I was working on cars. I wanted to do something different. You know you when you sit down and your initial thought is like what do I want to work or what I want to do? The natural thing was like a shop, right? Management system and then my mom had some Facebook groups for horse transports. She owned a medical transport company. And when she was getting that company started, she would do horse transports on the weekends and help people out to get to different trails, it's also worth and she started a group not knowing it was going to be anything. It was just a thing. And years later, it kind of blew up. Yeah, we're looking, she asked me for some help because it got pretty big. And yeah, she's not really a tech person. So again, I always thought there were always playing with it nurture, it is great. I mean, always insight and ability to reach out and talk to people that are doing this kind of thing. And so again, I'm looking at these two different projects, what's going on, you know, automotive, I mean, automotive we're trying to walk into a brick and mortar automotive. So I'm like, hey, let's up in your entire way of doing everything you've done for the last 40 years or a whim was an art sale was one of those how to get past the marketing side of this, right? And with Hauling Buddies, I looked at it, here's this untapped resource and not even at the monetary level, but like the information level, right? And how do you monetize that? Right? And that led into basically, Hauling Buddies started off as just a mirror of what happened in the groups. I just had more control over. And I can say it was what I want it and not what I want it. Since then, again, it's at last little wild kind of fell off a little bit now. I mean, it's still running, we just verified our 300. These are fully verified companies, they send in their ID proof and insurance and all their contact information. So they have beta, so I know exactly who they are. And then we also have a review system. So you know, as people come in, you know, we make sure we try to weed out the bad actors. It's just so devastating. I have big plans. I kind of went off the AI rail a little bit. I think everybody did, kinda and I have some really cool ideas around payments, like vector databases and AI completions and a bunch of cool embedded stuff. And I think I've come up with a way that allows me to use a Hauling Buddies information I already have and build almost like a vertical system based off of, like, I already have all your company to train these models off what your company does, right? And pricing and all this kind of stuff. So ironhauling.io, so I think that'd be a cool place for that. So there's some plans there. I need to it's one of those things it's working. It's, you know and it's cool because it's working without me in the groups as much as late. And ah, it's, well, it's like, you ever get one of the spots where it's like, man, I don't know if I want to do this anymore. Not so much like because you don't like it or you don't love it, but it's just like, is this the right one? Right? Is this the one that's going to take me to the finish line? Do I need to put more attention over here? And then Hauling Buddies is just that one project that no matter what I just can't seem to just put it down and go away. There's always that you know, email that reaches out. So you're like, hey, man, this is great. I'm happy you're doing this, you know, this is what is needed and so on and so forth. So long winded answer, but yeah, for sure.

Arvid Kahl 13:30
I like any length of answer because it just shows like how much you think about it, right? Like how much it's present in your brain and I love that you already have more ideas and I know you have a couple more things on the table that you're already doing and we'll get to that but I want to stick with Hauling Buddies for a bit because I think there's a lot to learn from this whole Facebook group thing that you've been doing. I think you're the first founder that I've ever talked to that had such a grasp on understanding Facebook groups and the kind of dynamics in them, how to leverage them and how to get people to help you with that. I think that is that is something that I would really like to drill into a little bit more because it didn't stop with just one Facebook group right, right?

Andrew Hodson 14:08
Right. No, yeah so right so Hauling Buddies originally started as just equine and we add the horse hauling group and then one of those splintered off was like east coast because everybody, Joe and he was on the East Coast and they grew and like said I think the horse hauling when it was like 30,000. It's a decent sized groups and then as I'm building this out right now, we're going from hey, this is a cool thing to like okay, this needs to be like what is this, right? And equine to me I've already as an animal marketplace or directory, you already niched it barely down so like I felt doing like just equine was just too much, not enough. TM. So I was like yeah and we did there were already livestock groups, small animal groups that's already existed seem like a natural progression so I went in there started joining those groups. And again I think a lot of people do wrong as the other join all these groups or these different communities and they just start. And I understand as a founder they feel like they're providing value, right? And that their product is going to save your company and all that and I stand behind it. I understand it 100% from marketing right especially I've been that guy. I totally got it and but the other side of that shoe is you seem pushy, right? You're new to this community. You haven't built any value like and I get the whole saying like work for free like I'm not first time on that but like there is some value to be gained out of being that natural support person, that person then comes through not expecting strings attached and after I build those relationships, it's a simple progression. You're like oh, by the way, I also have this cool thing over here when you got some time and take care of it or take a look at it and it just you get a lot more ROI out of the community do it like that than you do you know paying 600 to 1000, $2,000 to join a group or start posting an ad or your thing. And then they have their place but again yeah, it's dead and cheated other groups get involved with them. A couple of them actually took over the people just retired or didn't want to deal with it because it is a process. I mean, you know if you've run into communities is not an easy thing especially because it seems like when I guess this is true with anything but like the good things go unnoticed. It's only the bad things that get magnified, right? So like especially like community sense right so like but it's taken us over. Again once I had I think we have, I unified them, right? Like they all were saying that in color, they all got the same set of rules, they all got on the website, Hauling Buddies you can go to the communities link. It'll show you all the Facebook groups. I'm trying to build that into like an identity. But yeah, yeah, I think it's a great just like anything, right? Like there's a negative to it. But I personally believe if you can harnest and understand and it's going to be different with what the horse hauling thing or the animal hauling thing, you know, it's simple enough. Craig's like this could have been done on Craigslist, right? This could have been done on any posting service type deal. And what I was benefiting on is the fact that Facebook can't police their own communities good enough, right? And this is why like everybody's doing verified now, right? Facebook verified through your verified all and it's all everybody's verified now. But I definitely think if you have a product like that, especially in the sense of like community building, so there's so many people you're looking for an environment that's just more, I don't want to say pleased because that gives you like a bad. So I'm talking about like more of a holistic platform, I think you'll do well.

Arvid Kahl 15:38
Yeah, it sounds like people are looking for trust, right? For like a baseline of trust. And I think you give that to them by policing. And I think policing, of course, like recent events and the political, you know, just saturation of the word. But in a way, a policy is just like a rulebook, right? Like, communities with rules. And what I really enjoy is the fact that you manually went in there and you kind of you just gave people the opportunity that people that were retiring or people who wanted to not do this anymore, to keep the community going. That is an important part too. Right? Because there is value in the community. Do you still actively manage those communities?

Andrew Hodson 18:54
Yeah, so not as much as I do. But the cool thing about this is is within an industry you have your top level players and they have a reputation they want to keep and everybody's looking for the next shortcut we'll call it and so you can use that one to get free work. That's so random. But these companies, they want the same thing you want right? Like so they want a nice clean save community, right? With real people do a real business, they're probably competing with the same people as paying the same taxes and the same insurance and the same. What they don't want to compete with is the other guy doing on the weekend, right? And I totally get that. So when I stepped in and I was the bad guy because I was for a while saying that we're knocking this off. The real people doing this do too many people are getting scammed. I was getting messages daily about people, oh I lost $300, I lost $12,000 that after the dust settled, that's when you start getting emails that are like, hey that was a good idea or I'm glad you cleaned it off. But those same people are also they're the ones that are now enforcing the rules. But the reality all it took was someone standing up with a big enough shoulders. They'd be like, no, this is what we're going to do. And if somewhere you're not gonna like it. And I understand that. And there's also a side of this, which is when I decided I was gonna be verified in the groups, I made the verification process free, right? And I don't remove people from the groups because they badmouth Hauling Buddies. There's a respect level for admins and moderators. But I have always kept the community free and open to anybody that wants to follow the rules, period, right? There's like, even people that don't want to be on Hauling Buddies, that's fine. When you get verified through this, you can check a little box that says, you don't want to be listed and all that kind of stuff. I'm totally for that and I'm totally with it. But there's rules in place, we're going to all these rules. And then again, a lot of people and the people that helped me today are those companies that wanted that, but they didn't have the ability or the time, right? Because they're working too, right? Like they'll have the time to sit down and do this are grateful today that Hauling Buddies is set up and taking that role. And you're always gonna have your people that yeah, just started with it and you're always gonna have the ones that I can't even begin to tell you the stuff. I've gotten more message from people and I got it. It's fine. That kind of stuff just rolls off my shoulders. But yeah, now not so much. We have companies that are in the industry that they pretty much moderate during thing. We have a I guess you'd call it internal policy guideline that you know how we can escalate stuff to me if needed be, if it's within a certain leg. Basically, if you don't feel 100% confident with your decision, wherever that may be, someone will back you up. I'm a full believer and I'll back my employee up up until I can't, you know and then bring it to me, right? Not that it's too small. If the gut and sink doesn't match, we'll talk about it. I'm probably gonna say cool. But so yeah, I tried to delegate that the social media manager type stuff away. But I still go in there. So I got the AI stuff with DALL-E. I just generated a bunch of Halloween, which was awesome type stuff. And while I was there, I did New Year's and December and all that stuff, too. But yeah, and so watching more. I would like to stick to the more business and technical side of things nowadays only because I'm spreading myself thin prioritizing, I guess.

Arvid Kahl 22:57
That sounds like a very typical founder problem, right? You want to be everywhere. But there are certain places where you with your overlap of skills and areas and in your case, very technical and very in the industry, yourself being in both places at once. It's better, I guess, for you to you know, build stuff, right? Than to just hang out and post fun dolly pictures all the time, which is probably also a lot of fun. But, I was wondering about this because there's, I think like Hauling Buddies is an example of a complicated business to me. It's a two sided if not even like three sided marketplace. It's a probably a lot of technical challenges in there. And there's the emotional challenge too. We talked about this in the past just you and me behind the scenes, I guess. But I would like to bring this out too, like people who have their prized animal companions transported, like over long distances, they are quite attached right to the animal. How do you deal with this in a SaaS business? Because, you know, SaaS business to me, it's like, oh, yeah, somebody signs up, they integrate like a widget somewhere or whatever. And then, you know, the problem is, oh, the server is down, whatever, but here like actual live beings are being hauled hopefully buddies are being hauled by other buddies. So how do you deal with the emotional, you know, the levels there that people might express?

Andrew Hodson 24:17
So right 100%, right? Especially when you start getting into some of the dollar figures of these animals. It's insane. Even, you know, dogs go give 1000s of dollars. So, cats as well, any animal really, right. So first, obviously, copy marketing, what is you know, brand identity was a big thing for me in the beginning. Association, who we're trying to associate with those kind of things was, you have to be, I'm always on my toes when reviews come in or so brand identity is the big thing, right? And I'm always that's constantly a juggle between efficiency and loyalty. And your growth metrics is also fourth. So the other side of that is proper messaging. And then also so a lot of the work has been done for me in the sense of the marketplace has become so saturated with scams and things that people are just looking, they don't want to spend, first of all right time is money, right? They don't want to spend, you know, all this time going through all these Facebook groups, different posts, images and messaging people back and forth like that. That's just the friction there is enormous right and itself. So there's, I saw that. Yeah. And then the other side of that is so that's the problem solution. The marketing part of that is the verified trust and right, so I combat the how do I trust this person with company profiles, company reviews, a lot of messaging about how we verify companies what that means. We do a lot of blog articles with like, how to read like, not just like, hey, trust us, but here's how you read industry standards.

Arvid Kahl 24:17
Yeah

Andrew Hodson 24:21
And here's what I do T number four and why they should have it. And here's what you know, an MC is for assurance and what it means liability and then like, you know, with small animals, you got the USDA class T, which is, you know, again, a certificate that says they passed some tests. So it's not really like, mandated by the federal government, but it's one of the things like hey, industry says this is what you should ask. It's usually a good sign. And so a lot of education with the user making sure they understand what entails a good company and answering every question they may have to the fullest extent. And the other side of that when I don't have the answer. I don't have the answer, right? Like I'm a no pressure sales kind of guy right? Like I believe good work will sell itself. Maybe that comes from cars with his you know, growing up with my dad, it's always been there is more than enough work out here that everybody can do enough and get their fair share that you don't have to rip people off, right?

Arvid Kahl 27:22
Yeah

Andrew Hodson 27:23
Especially with that your automotive kind of gets sometimes that like banker type mentality, which is like oh, they're always trying to upsell you or they're always just you're patting the books and I totally get where that comes from. But like you ought to do that. Like there's, the amount of what you get $1 to fix cars down days is insane. And the talent to do it is that it's the lowest that it, yeah, no one knows. Even 20 years ago, most people can do changing their car, 30 years ago, 40 years ago, right? That's not today. Right? And that's it, which is a good day for society, right? Like why would you want to go change oil but from a business perspective, I just see there's no reason why I had to do that, right? There's money to be made. Everybody can get a share.

Arvid Kahl 28:15
But let's stick with this topic. I think that's an interesting follow up because Hauling Buddies is not the only thing you've built. You started Wrench Radar, which is a very, very interesting thing as well because yet again, you build something marketplace like which is you know. It feels to me like you're playing SaaS Entrepreneur on hardmode all the time because you're picking these marketplace things but I find this the most interesting project as of late although we'll get into the more creative project later because it kind of combines your old self like the auto tech, right? With your experience as a SaaS entrepreneur, which is great. I love this like that things kind of split up and then they come back together. I really like that. So how did that happen? Because I feel that the similarity between Hauling Buddies and this is that there's a lot of certification and a lot of guaranteeing trust there. Right. So how did Wrench Radar come up as an option to build a business?

Andrew Hodson 29:12
So we'll full circle it even more so when there are moments of Hauling Buddies where it's like oh, I just don't know, right? Not that and again, we're not talking about like crisises or laying at night waking up. We're not talking about that. We're talking about this feeling. People will know what I'm talking about. And immediately my mind starts going okay, what's next? If this is not where it is anymore, which is not necessarily a bad thing. What's next right? Because it's so what do you know? Well, you know, automotive and you know automotive well and you have a support family that knew automotive. So it just seemed like a natural progression. And again, if you watch all the talks about how to start a company and read the books and stuff, one thing they tell you is you make a product to use yourself or something that's a past. It's that kind of stuff. So it's going down those mental checks, right? It works out and then so again, started playing right building, what would this look like? Of course you have your first iterations over before you even want to call it a proof of concept, right? Have a review of stuff and playing with it. The original thing was an AI type of response and doing some digging through API stuff. Again, the biggest problem, AI is great. First of all, I love it. It's a fan. I understand it's not a zero sum fix all like, it has a long way to go. But as far as like, like an assistant or even like having been talking like this with it, is great. For someone like me, where my mind does run, it organizes all that so beautifully. Like I can just talk or write or type. And it doesn't care about how I mess it up or if it's the right word or not. It doesn't care about any of that. It knows what I'm doing. So I love that anyway, going through that. So then how do I get the data from the OEMs? Right? That's, you know and of course, you have like a chat PDF thing. So if I download all the OEM manuals, I can convert that and I can go through all that. And I actually reached out to Car and D. They have an API. We talk back and forth about doing stuff. And the problem with their API is it's not really repair data. It's more just like maintenance and oil changes, which is cool for like a basic level app for what I'm talking about. Actually, because you have your B2C side of this, right? Which is like your DIY wires and stuff. And then you also have your B2B, which is like your other texts that need help, right? And especially harping back to that not enough talent in the industry solution. So I'm moving forward with that, it wasn't gonna work. So I have been in talks with Motor which is like industry, the inner guide when it comes to like but they don't have any kind of indie hacker beta type give me some free credit. So I can do some stuff. So that's kind of where we're like, okay, so now we're into, you hit the wall, right? And we've talked about this before, so how do we get around the wall? And that's when it comes to like the marketing, we're like, we'll just talk to attack. Yeah, we'll throw it on here. It's gonna cost this you're gonna get this cut and then we'll go from there. We'll have AI involved so like, you can just talk how you're going to talk and have a nice and formatted by some customers stuff, pulling in some new check engine light codes and stuff like that. But we came to that idea as again just what's next? I was playing with AI. What can I do with that? What looks fun? That's the project that taught me how to use function and how to like, feed it back into itself for like a chain and chat stuff like that and then also how to do some embedding. So you can do because you don't want to pull all your all missing history in, right? So like, you only want to pull out relevant information sitting near as you retire yourself. So I learned all that on that project. And I'm at the point of, I need access to OEM data. And of course, that's behind a very expensive paywall. But anyway, I digress. That's kind of how we got there.

Arvid Kahl 33:34
Well, how are you going to deal with that? I would like to know.

Andrew Hodson 33:43
So open AI history is getting better. It's getting more up to date. I'm actually emailing a contact I have at Motor back and forth trying to do the whole, listen man, it's just me. But I have a really cool idea. Yeah, just Car and D by the way, just give them a shout out. Totally cool with it. Send me a bunch of free credits. Like they emailed me three or four times after the fact like hey, what's going on? We haven't heard from you trying to use AI with this. Yeah, we're really interested and it's just they're just their data says is not what I needed. But kudos for trying to help a guy

Arvid Kahl 34:22
Yeah, that was really cool.

Andrew Hodson 34:26
And again, no hate on Motor either. I totally get the business behind it, right? That was money. And I'll say I'm working on it. It's not over. I'm working on it.

Arvid Kahl 34:39
Yeah, that's just work in progress, right. That's like you have a challenge and you're experimenting with how you can get through it. I really liked the idea and I liked the idea of techs helping techs, that's just really nice in a world where there's fewer and fewer of qualified people, the ones that are qualified certified. Of course, they can help other people, right. That's just teaching, teaching and instructing. And those other people will get better in the process and if AI can help facilitate that, awesome.

Andrew Hodson 35:07
So, I'll give you a little more background on this on why I think that is. So there's a couple of different ways you model shops and it depends on what kind of shop you are, whether you like a Midas or like a Jiffy Lube or something or independent, like a gas station or a dealership. So let's stick with the dealership model in this case and in that sense, generally you have a bunch of like, yeah, we'll say lower level C level technicians, one or two B's and then you have one, you know, A level that oversees the whole team. And it used to be smaller teams. But because it costs a lot of money to hire an tech anymore, we've grown the teams and we reduce the workload of our mastertech. So now our master techs reduced to the simple go help these guys out when they have a problem, you know. Here's a headache car deal with this, which is an A level tech is making, stupid amount of money. So I'm sure they're not complaining whatsoever. But I don't want to say my kudos for them, go get it, like I'm all for it. So, but it also means technology will fill that gap you mentioned. It fills us back up there. So and their model, so there's also outside of this where like a lot of cars require flash programming, reprogramming even like in BMW and Mercedes, the dome light if you want to replace not the light bulb, but like you have to replace the whole thing that has to be reprogrammed to the car or it won't work. I get it, but the software to do that you can only get from Mercedes and it's you know, $12,000 for the system. So what's popping up a lot now is these I think Scanner Dan was one of them here locally. And it's basically just a team of guys that are charged to the scanners all the you know, OEM factor scanners, scanner stuff and just shop to shop to shop, reprogram reflashing whatever. Because it's only gonna get word well not worse, I guess better, but a good 40, 45% of car repairs today are software updates like, which is funny because from us, right? Like we saw, I'm always updated, right? Like you're good. And when you think of a car, even for me, it's still hard to like, oh, really man, I just updated software that if I'm making that noise anymore like it's a physical to software, it's at that integration level where it's still like it's hard to wrap your mind around sometimes. But again, that B2B is a big gap that can be filled, for sure.

Arvid Kahl 37:56
That sounds like like little car up the mercenaries just roaming from shop to shop. I had some trouble with our car recently. It's a BMW with trouble, like it's one of those really stupid non even functional problems. Like I was listening to this podcast on the car system. And it didn't show like the actual title or not the title. But my name in the episode, there was just an undefined artist. And I was talking to the people at Transistor who I'm hosting this podcast and they were looking into it. And they told me yeah, I need to update the operating system or the system of my car for that bug to be fixed. And I was like, I wish I could. That was my feeling at that point. And now knowing that not even each dealership or each each shop can do this. You have to have specific people with specific tools or software for this. Of course you need people that help other people to get this stuff done. So that's a very interesting development. Do you think in the future there's going to be more available or is it going to be less available? Or is Mercedes going to get fewer people that option or more?

Andrew Hodson 38:58
So okay, so this is kind of like the argument of right to repair. Right? So it kind of touches on that. So

Arvid Kahl 39:06
Yeah, for sure.

Andrew Hodson 39:06
Most dealerships will be able to reprogram a flash like that. This is for like your independent shops. You had 5, 6, 7, 8 base where so every brand has its own scanner, right? And each one is we'll say anywhere from six to $12,000 depending on and that's just to buy it. And then you have a yearly subscription of anywhere from like 12 to $3,000 just to be able to download updates from four to use their scanner. And there are aftermarket like JMAC and Snap walk can do some. But it's very limited because the federal government doesn't require manufacturers to release that only misses data. So engines and trains emissions related data so today had released by law but your headlight, your radio, none of that has been released. So the company so Snapple and or Alltel or any of these companies, they either have to reverse engineer it or they had to buy licensing for it. And now that you have this is why the scanners are $70,000. And so there's two sides, one in the automotive world, right? This might be like a controversial state. I feel as an, mostly independent and my whole career has been an independent automotive shops. I feel every time the dealership for that make accident, excuse me. Change tooling is almost just to keep the independent shops out of the car. Right? We've already done it to consumers. We've already done it toconsumers. There's no person that's gonna go spend yeah, $12,000 on a zoo snap on scanner to get a scoop of their car for a new T sensor like no one's going to do that. Right? So we've already priced out and technology now the consumer like it's just it's not going to happen. To put an alternator or a battery in your BMW, you have to plug it in the car until you did it. Because if you didn't, it's going to overcharge a new battery and destroy it. So it's not acceptable. Soon what the struggle now is your independent shops are getting priced out of it. And then you know, your GM just came out with a new scanner that's not compatible with old scanner. It's like what? So you had to buy both of them. Or you could trade your another one. But now you just paid $8,000.

Arvid Kahl 41:31
I kinda like it, the whole right to repair thing that exists in so many places, right? Yeah, that seems like a tough problem. Do you think this is going to be resolved?

Andrew Hodson 41:40
There's no incentive for it to be solved. And the idea of the dealerships have the technology anyway, they want to keep the work. The consumer is already paying $200 because the independent shops. So in Northern Virginia will take where I live, for example, every bridge, you go north because I live on the 95 Corridor, so you're going towards DC. Your labor rate jumps by like 50 to $60. Right? So like in my area, it's $120 an hour labor rate, Northern Virginia like 210. And that's we're talking about like independent shops, right? So you're paying the same thing where the dealership or you go into the independent shop, so the customer don't care anymore. They just want the job done, right? Now you have the whole, how long did it take, you know, professional quality, take that out of that equation. So now as an independent shop, I'm going to be eaten my profit margin to buy this gain tools to be able to do that. And unless you're doing a good amount of them, it's not worth to invest in the equipment. So that's why these companies are popping up that do just scans. They just run around from one place one place one place because unless you're doing 10, 20 scans a week, you're not making your money back on it. And so I think there's gonna be more opportunity for advanced diagnostics and flash reprogramming, which is a lot of guides are getting good enough to where it's like hey, this is your symptoms, do this, do this, do this, do this and you'll come up with your answer. We've engineered a car so well that we can pretty much pinpoint where problems are by sensors nowadays. I mean, they're your crazy ones, right? But that's where I'm getting to, which is like you know, this car is seen or this model of car, you know, times 100,000 driven over 10 million miles they have a good data set of failures, right? So what really gets people caught nowadays is so for example I've a 2013 Dodge Charger pursuits, old cop car in my driveway right now, do my checks, go through it. I can almost guarantee you I have a wire cut in my desk because when they rip all the lights and sirens and stuff out you can see where they cut the wires but yeah the process of do a pile a grad here, pile a grad here. You just follow the daisy chained down but now once you've got through all data's check all these points most texture like I don't know. This is where I'm because I can do what I do. I'll be able to go wire by wire, find the harnest, trace it back, you know and I'll get it but no one wants to do that. That's an advanced, you gotta it's almost like coding, right? You got to have that drive and that passion to be able to sit underneath the hood of the car for hours at a time looking at little color wires and problem solving. What makes my dad so good at this and I told him a million times is and he'd probably really good at computers if he learn it. But seeing he does it, he finds joy in solving the problems that no one else can solve. Right? So like when the dealerships bring because I've seen this bring him a car to an independent shop because they're out at options. The grin on his face when he figures it out is insane. And he loves learning new technology. He went to a couple of schools in New Hampshire for EVs like Tesla's and Honda's and stuff. He's always up on the latest stuff. So let me back up a little bit. Yeah, I think there's going to be a bigger market on because the shops are going to realize they can't afford to stay with technology the cars are coming out with even more so as it becomes more. It's not affordable as independent shop, you know, it's not. Back in the day, it was just who's going to do the work for less, right? It's just work. Now you got to be halfway intelligent. You know, you got it, you got it. There's so many things wrapped up the thermodynamics, electricity, your programming, wrapped up into this package that if you study it, you're gonna be out of it.

Arvid Kahl 46:01
Well, I guess there was a saying once where it's not rocket science, but it's turning into rocket science.

Andrew Hodson 46:07
Absolutely. Yes, it absolutely is.

Arvid Kahl 46:09
Okay and then well, let's do the best possible pivot at this point because we're already talking about rockets. Right?

Andrew Hodson 46:16
Yeah, yeah

Arvid Kahl 46:16
I really want to talk to you about this in this conversation still because you've done something that is completely outside of the field of automotive or you know, animal transportation. And it has to do with rockets. At least, it has to do with, you know, astro physics, I guess, in a certain way. Tell me about your book that you wrote because that is so weirdly not what you've just talked about for almost an hour here.

Andrew Hodson 46:44
So this is one of those scenarios where it's like you kind of just fell together okay, so this would be a good learning point. A few months ago, a few weeks ago, a friend of mine that owns a printing company. What's update is tech, right? That'd be a whole podcast on soon. But so one thing I like doing, especially goes back to like, learning, understanding and like, optimizing is let's go through so let's build something. How does this process work? But also, let's not waste the opportunity kind of deal. So I've had Max and Spark's galactic journey on a back burner for a little while. And I was like, hey, man, I got this book, right? And use AI to do some help and do some images and all this. And then the graphics designer there like, how do I set up this book in a PDF? Like, how do we do our margins and guys, so is a really cool experience. I got to learn how his process works by building something for me. At the same time, it wasn't a project where I was, you're trying to make money, you know, like that is so you know, how can I, you know, turn this into something that's useful. And my son, Noah, is a very smart, young boy. He loves astronauts, he loves space, he has been telling me all the planets since he's three years old. He's just all about space. He is going to go play football for college and go to college for free. And then while he's there, he wants to be a marine biologist. And then so he said, he's gonna play football to go to school for free. He said we'll make money. So after school, we can go travel the world and so efficient stuff. But in between there somewhere, he's gonna be an asset too.

Arvid Kahl 48:35
Sure

Andrew Hodson 48:35
As I said, hey buddy, I don't think there's a lot of water in space. So I know we're looking for it. But anyway, so kind of morphed into this thing, like, hey, you know, he's old enough to space camp this year. I told him we're going to go to space camp on spoiler alert, whether we sell 100 books of that, he is going to space camp. But again, there's one of the things what can I do to learn something so I can learn this business and you know, two birds one stone kind of deal? And it's just a simple Ruby book. It's not, I'm not out here. Like I said, I'm not some great professor or teacher. I'm not here to proclaim anything like that. It's just a cool little story about traveling through space and a journey and how to use Ruby throughout that journey and teach about variables and classes and modules and you know, all that kind of stuff. It's cool little book. It's fun putting together. Like I said, it wasn't some grand plan. I'm gonna yeah, I'm an author now. That's all in play or something I could use to learn how this guy runs business so I can build something for him. But I really liked the passion that gone behind it. Actually Noad had some pitches on them. And I was going through with it. And the cool part about that also not to go to waste is to learnrubyinorbit.com, which is the website for the book. There was a planet, blue clock builder, which in chapter eight of the book which teaches about classes. And basically the way you're in class in Ruby and you describe your planet in Ruby code and then we use AI or dolly, in this case to generate what that planet would look like.

Arvid Kahl 50:11
Oh, that's cool.

Andrew Hodson 50:12
Yeah, it does. It's really fun. I had to so here's a surprise to know on this book, I wanted to wait till I actually had one in my hand. And so my other kids, though, I got to sit down with them and play. They were going through it, I mean, I guess good. Four or five hours one day of all of us to sit down generated different planets. And then, of course, the learning part about is like, well, what kind of different planets are they? Because you're all red and green and blue, it's like, well, you know what atmosphere is. So we got to walk through what atmosphere rings are. And if you go to the website, there's a bunch of public ones on there we did as a family, you'll see them, they're pretty cool. Cool part about it is allowed from the tech side of it is, like, we're not compiling any code, you're not running, you have to worry about anybody running anything crazy. Basically, we use AI to generate a summary of the Ruby code of what that would look like. And then we take that and we prop that to DALL-E and then it generates and it's just fun little experiment to go along with the book. And then the book was project to learn someone else's business. The story behind it all is, yeah, and then even that, say that the book sells or whatever, I think we've sold 30 copies of 100. So like, listen, that's a win in my book. I figured out how to do the ISBN number and the copyright and all that, that was a process. That was cool. And learning the difference between like print and ebook and then like, yeah, having to send it in and all that. So it was all a learning experience. But again, I don't like I wasn't trying to make a business out of it. So the money goes to notice basecamp. Anything above and beyond that will do to some other little project or some of them get a trace camp or something but yeah, that's one of those still good things that's like, this is pretty cool. Yeah.

Arvid Kahl 51:56
I really love it. I think I did not expect it. But once I saw it, I was like, yeah, that's so you like the fact that you would just even to try and figure out somebody else's business you would do a project like that is both it's both for them and for your son. Like, it's so much for other people. I love this about you, like you're, sharing the building in public you do and the projects that you're building, that connecting people, the sharing knowledge, all of this is really evident in everything you do. And I just like just from the bottom of my heart, as somebody who likes doing this and likes watching this, thanks so much for this

Andrew Hodson 52:31
Thank you

Arvid Kahl 52:31
For sharing it, for doing it and for teaching people along the way. And I bet you'll sell a couple more than just 30 books. Because the idea is adorable, like the execution is great. And the thoughts that you put into this the reason why it exists, man, I'm gonna buy one. I tell you that.

Andrew Hodson 52:48
So the next part of this is, so I want to hit all circle year. So I started playing with the idea of how to use how to embed a repo so you can ask questions with AI, right? And it works out great. It's awesome. But that led me to another idea, which is if I put the book as a repo, right? And one, allow other open sources, so other people can update the book in and build this really cool open source kids book, right? Like, yeah, but then we can train AI on that repo. And then kids can have a little chat buddy. They can actually ask questions about Ruby, right? So the mind, never stops schooling. But yeah, I appreciate. Thank you for that. This is cool. It's always fun, I enjoy it. I enjoy this, right? Like if there's a way to monetize this, that's cool, but not at a cost to you. Right? In the sense of like, I just like hanging out and talking and being nerdy and doing geek stuff. And whatever it is. And if you can benefit out of that, by all means and I'm here for it.

Arvid Kahl 53:52
I love to hear this. And it's so cool to see you just jumping around from idea to idea implementing that the threat of AI is like all through your projects and you and every single one you make use of it in a different interesting way. Super cool. So I'm already excited to see what's happening in the future. And I bet other people are too. If people want to follow you and want to see what you have to offer, what you work on, where should they go?

Andrew Hodson 54:15
Yeah, so on Twitter is probably the easiest. That's like what you said, I do build in public. It's my buddy Andrew @MyBuddyAndrew. I, again, full disclaimer, I don't use Twitter in the normal sense of everybody else. Just you said, I just I'm all over the place. I'm personal. Sometimes it's good. Sometimes it's bad. But yeah, it's whatever the easiest place, learnrubyinorbit.com is for the book and stuff like that. And then of course, Hauling Buddies is not going anywhere. I don't think that's ever going to go anywhere. I need to do that. Again, Twitter's the easiest place. That's a fun place.

Arvid Kahl 54:52
I really enjoy what you're doing there and I bet other people do as well. So thank you so much for sharing the journey and all your dreams and all your cool projects with me today. It was really, really insightful. Thank you so much.

Andrew Hodson 55:03
Thank you, Arvid. Thank you!

Arvid Kahl 55:04
Of course.

And that's it for today. I will know briefly thank my sponsor, acquire.com. Imagine this, you're a founder who's built a solid SaaS product, you acquired customers, and everything is generating really consistent monthly recurring revenue. You're leaving the SaaS dream, right? The problem is, you're not growing, for whatever reason, maybe it's lack of skill, lack of focus, or just plain lack of interest and you feel stuck in your business with your business. What should you do? Well, the story that the community would really like to hear at this point is you buckled down, reignited the fire, you started working on the business not just in the business, and all those things like audience building and marketing and sales and outreach is something that you do and six months down the road, you've made all the money. You've tripled your revenue. You have this hyper successful business. But reality is unfortunately not as simple as this. And the situation that you might be in is different for every founder facing this crossroad. Too many times, the story here ends up being one of inaction and stagnation until the business itself becomes less and less valuable over time, right? Or, at worst, completely worthless. So if you find yourself here already or you think that your story is likely headed down a similar road, I would consider a third option at this point. And that is selling your business on acquire.com. Capitalizing on the value of your time today is a pretty smart move, right? Your days are valuable and you can sell the products that you built. acquire.com is free to list. They've helped hundreds of founders already. So just to check it out, go to try.acquire.com/arvid and see for yourself if this is the right option for you at this point for your business.

Thank you so much for listening to The Bootstrapped Founder today. You can find me on Twitter @arvidkahl, I think and you'll find my books there and my Twitter course there too. If you want to support me and this show, please subscribe to my YouTube channel, get this podcast in your podcast player of choice and leave a rating and a review by going to (http://ratethispodcast.com/founder). It makes a massive difference if you show up there because then this will show up in other people's feeds. And that's where I would love it to be. Any of this will help the show. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for listening. Have a wonderful day. Bye bye.