I Don't Care About My Product Anymore

Every founder hits this point eventually, and almost nobody says it out loud. A listener wrote in with a question a lot of Series A founders are quietly asking themselves: what do you do when you've built something that works and you just stop caring.

James Johnson and Freddie Birley get into recommitting versus changing, why the servant-leadership instinct quietly burns founders out, and why the business you're in right now might not be where your success actually lives. This isn't about motivation. It's about figuring out which problem you're actually solving.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Peer Effect Postbag. I'm James Johnson joined by Freddie Burley. We ask for your questions and Freddie and I are going to tackle them together. These aren't theoretical case studies, it's the stuff keeping you up at 2 a.m. Let's get answering. Welcome to the Peer Effect Postbag. I'm James Johnson. I'm Freddie Burley. So how's your week been? It's been really interesting. Like I uh client of mine asked me to go to an event in London for UKX, which is a sort of community based on people who are founders who work both in the UK and are folks on the Bay Area. Oh, cool. So it's to bring sort of US and UK founders together. He ended up ditching me because he closed fundraising that day and had to send me a message going, uh, I'm bailing, but I am going to be closing fundraising. So I'm in my lawyer's office all evening. I was like, fair play. Like ditch me. Yeah. Dame Martha Lane Fox was speaking. I've obviously I mean, I've been aware of her since. I mean, I was pretty honest, so I was sort of around for sort of lastminute.com when it first started and her whole journey. But she she was so impressive.

SPEAKER_02 1:05

Yeah, apparently she's a very inspiring speaker.

SPEAKER_00 1:07

Very inspiring, very human, like and also and also someone who's willing to share access to some of the things that are going on. You just realise that she is in all the rooms that you would love to be in just to know what's going on. Like, well, if she didn't share stuff she couldn't share, but just you just realize that when you see on the news or you read articles, it's kind of like the big events, she is more or less around in those in those things. And that was just it was fascinating. Like just really interesting people, really interesting people.

SPEAKER_02 1:38

Ah, so cool. And I feel often those kinds of experiences and those and and even being in those communities, it just re-inspires you and you meet interesting people and hear one or two insights that then you take away with you, and it does open up. It just reminds you of the importance of your community and surrounding yourself with people that are also working on inspiring things and having those conversations and being in those rooms.

SPEAKER_00 1:57

Yeah, I met the guy who launched Amazon Prime in the UK and like just having just like a very different level of conversation around and I just love being around people who are really good at stuff. It doesn't matter what it is.

SPEAKER_02 2:11

Yeah. And creating things in the world and like launching things and moving the world forwards and even just hearing the human story behind the thing that you've read about or used, it's it's always really fun.

SPEAKER_00 2:21

So, question from Alex this week. I don't care about our product and feel unmotivated to keep building. What do I do?

SPEAKER_02 2:33

I'm really glad that this question's come up, to be honest, because I think a lot of founders go through this, especially first-time founders. I've noticed maybe even just people I've worked with over the years, where they they built a business so focused on what's like in their head, like what would make sense to build. And in that at no point in that process did they feel like they could be like, Do I actually want to build it? And there's this real kind of obsession with creating something impactful. And I often find that once they achieve a certain level of success, they can feel this kind of crash and this feeling of, okay, we got, I was so focused on the milestones. And once I hit the milestones that felt like successful enough, I then had the headspace to take a step back and be like, is this even the life I want? Is this even the company I want to build? Is this even the person I want to be building it with? Is this even the product that I that I would want to use myself or think is valuable? And it could be that moment, there's a bit of like an existential crisis where people take a step back and the answer could be no. And so, yeah, like Alex is sharing, I don't care about a product, I feel unmotivated to keep building. What do I do? In this context, I think about it like you can either recommit to the situation. So the story you're telling yourself about the product is no longer serving you because you don't feel like you want to do it anymore. And so creating a new story around whether it's the product or the team you're building or the impact you're having so that you feel reconnected to it. So linking it back to the value you gain from being part of this journey so that people, it's it's a reframing exercise. I always start with the choose part. So, how can you re-engage and re-energize yourself and see new value in places that maybe you overlooked before? And even if how is this a vehicle for your leadership? How is this a vehicle for your like entrepreneurial muscle? How is this a vehicle for your network? How is this a vehicle for your um like intellectually what you're learning, um, customer relationships you're building or technical problems you're solving, just like really reconnecting with the value. And if you've done that exercise extensively and you still just feel immobile, some people get to the point where their body's just like absolute hard no and they want to stay in bed, it can feel like burnout, it can feel like a form of burnout. Then the option is to change. So either realigning your role, so reorganizing your time and the things you spend time on so that you you're doing things you find more energizing. And or it could be a process of finding out someone, someone else who's excited to own the challenge. And so if you're depends on what your role is as a co-founder, but that can be the point in which people step back as CEO or CTO and they bring someone else in, or they help um elevate someone who's already in the team and train them into their position. So I think about it really like if you're at a point where you're like, I don't care about the product, I feel I'm motivated to keep building it, like you either re-choose, recommit, or you change. And often it's a combination of the two.

SPEAKER_00 5:21

I think people often do jump in to it for the intellectual part of that thing, but the emotional. Yeah. And it's like, oh, they think that you start and go, oh, I'm gonna be successful in two to three years. I can I can grit this out for two to three years. And actually, it's not two to three years, it's kind of like five to ten. And I think that is a long time to grit something out. And if you're not enjoying it, you are not gonna be operating. I mean, we we've talked before, it's one of your things right enjoyment and play play. If you're not in that state, if you're gritting it out and like don't believe in it, you're not gonna be coming up with sort of those better solutions, those you're not gonna be thinking about it positively when you're going for a run or in the shower or something, coming up with those like fizzy ideas, it's gonna be like it's gonna be survival mindset.

SPEAKER_02 6:05

So true. And sometimes with the, it means that often I find if you're in full grit, you can push through if there are lots of green flags. But it's often when things that are out of your control happen, like unprecedented competition or real challenges in your co-founder dynamic, things that start to feel heavy, you have less creativity to approach them because you're not enjoying the journey. So you're you're waiting for the payout or you're waiting for the financial piece to pay out, which is often the kind of value exchange that people who start businesses that they they don't really care about the product. They're waiting to, they're waiting to make money or they're waiting for an outcome. And the further away that outcome becomes, the less and less motivated they become, um, which means it can be hard to stay in the journey.

SPEAKER_00 6:47

Yeah, because it's it's it's it's all about that exit point. Exactly. Which is why I think separate point, it's why building to exit, purely to exit, can also be quite dangerous because you're kind of like it's it's very zero, like you win or you don't, and you have you have less control and you'd like to think about whether you're exiting or not, even if you build a good business.

SPEAKER_02 7:06

Totally. And and and it's also true that you can, even if you started in that headspace of building to exit, you can find a lot of joy and energy and excitement in the process by starting to see the process differently and starting to like notice where am I energized, where am I not energized, how do I align my role to be in the areas that I'm creating the most impact and getting the most energy from. And so I think it's not what we're saying isn't that if you started with that intention, you can't actually evolve in your mindset and your stories, you can completely change. And I've I've seen people re-engage with companies that they were completely burnt out from or they said, I don't care about the product, and then they and then um and then they really became like two feet in and and reconnected it with it in a in a completely different way.

SPEAKER_00 7:44

I think that reframing point's really powerful because I totally with you. I've seen people just like a week away from walking away from their business. Yeah. And it's the question was like that, what would excite you about your business again? Like if you treat us like a startup and you if you go back to when you started your business and said, if when you started you had cash flow, clients, case studies, use case, et cetera, you would have killed for that stuff when you started and maybe been doing this for three years, four years, five years. And it's kind of like a bit of the excitement's gone, a bit of the you kind of like a bit of less like give yourself the gift of taking time to step back and go, okay, if I was treated like a startup and it was to be really excited again, what would that version of the business look like?

SPEAKER_02 8:27

And that's such an amazing point around switching the orientation from between like from outcome to feeling. And so often so often we're like, am I outcomes? Am I creating something that's beneficial or valuable and and all of the worth or the kind of goals are orientated towards what they want to have or what they want to do? And they forget who do I want to be in this journey and how do I want to feel in this journey? And as soon as you start thinking about, okay, I want to be excited and then attaching goals, okay, then what would be going on if you felt excited? They can then start to get the feeling that they're actually craving in in the process too.

SPEAKER_00 8:59

Yeah, so kind of not the tyranny of that endpoint. It's kind of like just leaning into sort of, does it feel right? Does it feel good?

SPEAKER_02 9:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:07

Am I enjoying it?

SPEAKER_02 9:09

Yeah. Which is a hundred percent possible. People often think about it as no, I'll enjoy it once I've once I've achieved X, Y, and Z. And it can be both. And what I found to be true is the more you're enjoying the journey, typically the outcomes you desire accelerate. That kind of logic feels a bit woo-woo. And it feels a bit like, no, that again, it's too good to be true. That's not how it works. But time and time and time again, I've seen it work exactly like that. And I genuinely find the more fun founders are having, the more magnetic they are, the more like they motivate their team, the more engaged they are, the more creative they become. And it's it's it's an amazing flywheel.

SPEAKER_00 9:39

So I think if if you're not enjoying it, there's that temptation to keep on course correcting. It's like, oh, if I change direction, I'm gonna enjoy it. Oh, I'm gonna like you're constantly looking for that magic bullet to get you out of this morass. Yes. And there is no magic bullet. You've got to do the yards. Yeah. But you've kind of got to stick to something for long enough that you're not constantly in the swamp going zigzagging.

SPEAKER_02 9:57

Totally. It's something that anchors you.

SPEAKER_00 9:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:00

It can sound too good to be true.

SPEAKER_02 10:01

Oh, totally. And you the only way you believe it is if you start trying it and you see the impact of the results. And so, even for like people listening, if they are, if they are genuinely feeling like I don't like my product and I'm feeling unmotivated, just asking yourself like, how do you want to feel? And if the response is, I want to feel like I care, or I want to feel excited when I wake up, or I want to feel motivated again, then asking yourself again the question of, okay, what would what would need to be going on for you to feel motivated? Like, what would you need to be focusing your time and energy on that would excite you? And then even just like a few shifts in I'd need to do this each day, or even if it's the architecture around the business, I've seen some founders do it like that, where they're like, okay, well, if I can really be great at um my fitness routine and eat healthily and um have a great relationship with my partner, that actually architecture makes the equation make sense. And and then it all adds up. So I don't I sometimes it can be tangential or it can be like a real reframing of the business itself. So it doesn't, it's not just like one track.

SPEAKER_00 11:02

It can also be, I think, if you can identify the one or two levers that you really want to pull yourself as the founder. 100%. I mean, I know some founders are like, okay, well, I'm just gonna hire really great people. That is gonna be my thing. I'm just gonna be really, really good at hiring great people. So I'm gonna go out and network, I'm gonna Haruga process, like, and that's great. It could be I'm gonna be really good at sales. That's something like as lever I can own, it's leveraged control, I'm gonna win like the biggest client, like make it more tangible.

SPEAKER_01 11:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:27

Or I want to it could be product. It could be like, actually, I want to get much closer to the product and I want to make it a product that I'm so happy with that so it could be anything, yeah, but I think owning something and not everything gives you that sense of control that I think you can also have lost at this stage. If you're if you're feeling like I don't, I'm not excited about the product, I don't care about it, or I don't want to keep building, it may be a sense of I I don't feel the stuff what I'm doing has impact.

SPEAKER_02 11:54

Or energizes me anymore and I don't feel like I'm growing. And exactly this like the things that used to motivate us often we evolve out of. And so we have to re figure out okay, what's motivating to me now?

SPEAKER_00 12:04

And and I think they come in this with a servant, like servant leadership. So like, oh, I'll do all the stuff other people don't want to do. Yeah. I think that is can be so dangerous as a mindset. Like actually, then as a founder, you get dragged out of your position as kind of like the sort of forerunner into all the sort of crap that other people don't want to do. That's not where you should be.

SPEAKER_02 12:25

And you burn out, and then you're not as impactful as you could be, and you're definitely not as energized as you could be.

SPEAKER_01 12:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:30

And I think also you're not growing, you're not demonstrating or modeling we all need to be doing on hard things where we create the most value, where we create the most impact. And so your team don't see that modeled. And so then they might not embody that themselves either.

SPEAKER_00 12:44

Yeah. And maybe maybe the final point I thought I've got this is it's okay if this is not the product or not the business. Like I think as founders, I mean, we weren't founders for like a long time, and you kind of go, success is not necessarily with your current business. Success is getting to the point which fulfills you professionally and personally, and your current business, your current product might not be it. It might be your current business with a different product, it might be not the current business, not the current team, not the current whatever. But all the stuff that you're learning now is going to pay dividends in the next one, or maybe even the next one. Yeah. But if you can hold true, I think if you can feel disconnected from what success truly is, it can make it then very hard to feel like, is what I'm doing now the right thing.

SPEAKER_02 13:27

Yeah, so true. And even just a simple question of like what it, even if it's not the right thing forever, what is it a vehicle for me now? And and connecting with what it's a vehicle for, how it's supporting you, how it's helping you grow, what it's creating for you, just makes it slightly more meaningful. Um, so what are you taking away from this conversation?

SPEAKER_00 13:45

Well, I first you'd say that it's it's not an unusual feeling. I think that if you are feeling this, you're not alone as a founder. It's probably a bit a bit like a dirty secret. That's so important. It is not unusual for founders to have that feeling at some stage. I think if it if it but if it lingers, that's bad and unhelpful. And the first step is just to take a step back and go, can I get excited about this again? What would excite me about it? And if you can't find that answer to that question, then maybe it maybe it's not the product and it's not the business. And that's okay. Yeah. Well, that's it for another week. Remember, hit subscribe, and we will see you next week for another episode. Happy scaling.