506 | ProjectionLab | Kyle Nolan

27:12But like, even just hearing something like that, I was like, oh, I love the granularity of that. That's really neat. So I guess just like from a really high level, let's talk about Projection Lab. And then, you know, we'll kind of let my curiosity go from there. And I'll probably pepper you with some questions. But obviously, with Olivia losing her job, you were able to immediately go in and just kind of change the model up. Talk us through that and then the overview, if you will. Yeah, sure thing, Brent. So I would say that at its core, the planning experience and projection lab really ties together all of the future income streams that you envision, the expenses that you think you might have and how those could change over time, the patterns of buying and selling real assets, your projected future taxes, and critically, all the different kinds of milestones and stages of life that you foresee.

28:02And overall, what you want to do with your money in one visual and interactive interface that allows you to plan for a much more dynamic life than all those basic retirement calculators that you'll see out there on the web. And hopefully not just a dynamic life, but a life that's full of intention and the things that really matter to you. I think as has been talked about a lot on this podcast, financial independence can look like a lot of different things to different people. And I think one of the common undercurrents there is that you really don't have to live one of those cookie cutter lives that follows the social conventions and norms and what you see other people doing around you.

28:46Instead, you have this opportunity to choose to identify the things that really matter to you in life and put together a plan to try to optimize for that stuff. And so that was really front and center in my mind when I built Projection Lab. And it's a tool that can hopefully meet you wherever you are on your journey towards financial independence. And I think also that for a lot of folks who are just starting out, some of the simple guidelines like the 4 % rule can be a really great place to start, to begin to grapple with the numbers and what your journey might look like. And personally, I found myself pretty quickly wanting to push beyond some of that general research and things like the Trinity study and create something where you can plan out exactly what you think your future income streams and expenses and stages of life are going to look like over time.

29:37And essentially, empower you to conduct your own study where you can gauge what the spectrum of outcomes might look like for a plan that's actually personalized to you and what you care about. And so that could include things like planning for traditional fire or lean fire or fat fire or coast fire, barista fire, any of the other flavors that you and Chris Hutchins talked about on that spectrum of five podcasts. And of course, you can also run scenarios like if it could be better to rent versus own in the area that you're in, or if maybe you should first prioritize investing more versus paying down existing debt that you might have?

30:15Or things like, hey, when could I drop to part-time in the future? What impact would that have? What would happen if we moved to a state with lower taxes potentially? Or maybe you want to explore what it would be like to take a sabbatical or some time off from work to travel the world. Whatever that path through life is that you dream of, I wanted to build a platform that was flexible enough to really capture that where you could explore the different possibilities and the trade-offs and ultimately help people like me build up the confidence to do what they really want to do in life. Yeah, that is really, really cool.

30:55I love it. It's funny because I'm jotting down questions and you're literally answering them before I get a chance to ask them, which is great. Maybe that's a function of me having listened to too many of these episodes. That's you can read my mind after 650 episodes. So right, like even something like moving abroad, if you wanted to do that for X number of years, you can model that out, right? Like you said something about travel. Yeah, you could create a milestone, add some tax consequences to it. There's a whole bunch of different options. It's pretty flexible and customizable. Yeah, that's cool.

31:26So milestone in some of the videos that I watch, that seems to be a term that comes up. How do you define milestone in the software? Well, what a milestone is, is pretty flexible itself. I mean, it could be like a key event or a stage of life or really anything that you want to model. And the most important part about them is that you can bind them to other things in your plan. So you could create like a milestone for financial independence as like a multiple of expenses, or maybe if you hit like some target number that you've created or whatever you want, and then you could bind stuff in your plan.

31:59So you're like, okay, when this happens, this is when this income stream is going to stop and this other one might start, or this is when this different expense could stop and start. And so the idea is to try to build in some of the like nice flexibility that you have from a traditional spreadsheet, you know, when you can reference other things and build formulas, but in a UI that's intuitive and clean that doesn't overwhelm you with too much information up front, or at least I hope people will think that. Yeah, hell, I agree. But also while providing enough flexibility and configurability where you can dig deep into the details if you want to and build some pretty robust and dynamic plans.

32:35Yeah. So where you just went with that is, I think, going to be of great interest to a lot of people. So I think most people listening, I'll certainly include myself in this, find these pieces of software sometimes very daunting, or we feel like we're going to miss something or we're not sophisticated enough to figure it out. So it sounds like you have a way that most people can fairly readily enter their information and get like a nice baseline. Like maybe this would take the place of their Excel spreadsheet. And it's just kind of like, okay, look, here's the data that I can enter. But then if I really want to dive deep, there's so much more it can do.

33:13But can you speak to those people who might be daunted and say like, oh, this sounds good, but am I really going to be able to figure this out? How much time investment do you think it would take for someone who's listening to this right now? Maybe we have whatever X number of minutes left in the podcast. They're going to stop. They're going to go to Projection Lab. How quickly do you think realistically they could get up and running? Well, it depends on which path you want to take. So if you want to get up and running as fast as humanly possible, there is a sandbox that you can jump into just to kind of like see what the interface looks like, pick a canned example to just launch into and play around with.

33:49But what we usually recommend is the normal walkthrough, which starts out with capturing some of your initial conditions, like accounts and balances and things, and then moves into creating a plan. And I mean, from the very beginning, I've just put a lot of time and energy into trying to craft a modern and responsive UI that's not overwhelming, that's fast and fluid and detailed when it needs to be, like if you want to dig for it, but that isn't overwhelming to hop into and get started with. So in the sandbox route, I mean, you can get into something in about 30 seconds, if you want, and see the full interface like populated with an example, or the normal walk through maybe like 10 minutes.

34:30Okay, well, certainly 10 minutes is nothing. So that's really cool. And then, right, obviously you can dive extremely deep and model out all these other things. But I'm curious. So I just spoke with Mike Piper about a follow-up episode on social security. And I think that's going to be of great interest to the community. And I'm curious how Projection Lab thinks about social security, because I think frankly, like a lot of us in the FI community put in a big fat$0 for when we think about Social Security, which I mean, is really pretty silly. I think most people think the worst case scenario, obviously we can never know the future, but the worst case scenario is about 70 % of current benefits.

35:15Is Social Security modeled in the software? Do you have to put it in? Can you put like a discount of, you know, hey, I think even worst case, I'm going to be paid out 70%. Like, how does one enter Social security or how do you think about it in terms of projection map? Yeah. So that's just one of the income streams that you can enter and it's totally up to you really. We try not to have a prescriptive approach when it comes to modeling things like that. Because as you point out, different people have different assumptions that they want to work with. Plus, sometimes it can be fun to just toggle things on and off and see what level of impact it really has at the end of the day.

35:46Gotcha. And maybe like another angle, sorry, this is going to drift a little bit from the social security topic. But another angle that might be interesting to touch on is that from the very beginning, the community around the tool has had a huge stake in my development process. I really try to listen super closely to what people are asking for and do my best to evolve the tool based on what seems like it would help the most people and align with that long-term vision of making complex financial planning a lot more accessible and intuitive to more people. So there's a Discord community that I built up to accompany the tool.

36:27There's also a whole bunch of training resources and other things that we're continuously adding to over time. I mean, the interface itself is sort of self-documenting. There's a lot of pop-ups and pieces of information and educational scaffolding that can kind of help guide you through if you need that bit of handholding. But there's also like a YouTube channel that we've started with some videos and tutorials. There's a glossary of financial terms. And really, the Discord community is, I think, one of the coolest things because so much of the stuff that I build comes directly from the things that people propose and suggest and discuss on there.

37:02Throughout my whole life of creating projects and sharing them with people, it's like talking with users and customers. That's one of my favorite things. So it's something that I do every day. And maybe it stems from that passion we talked about. However, since I was a kid, I really like taking stuff from the realm of ideas and figuring out how to manifest that in the world and share it with people. So yeah, I just I always listen really closely to what the community is saying and appreciate everyone who's contributed votes and discussion to that community and also the public roadmap. happen. Yeah, that is super cool.

37:39So right. If you are listening to this and you sign up for Projection Lab, you can join the Discord community. Kyle, that's what you're saying, right? And literally interact with you and ask questions and put in, hey, I would love to see this. And I just don't see it in there yet. Yeah, there probably aren't too many products out there where you can hop into the community and like at the founder and they'll actually respond. But yeah, that's one of the things I love to do. And I think maybe another thing that's interesting to touch on there is that one of the cool things about being a small but growing bootstrapped company rather than a big venture-funded company is that there's nobody that's applying that pressure to achieve hyper growth.

38:22There's nobody coming in with that growth at all costs kind of mindset and telling us that we need to become the next big tech unicorn or die trying. Instead, I really love being able to focus on building a sustainable business and a community around it that grows at more of a natural pace, where I always have the bandwidth to treat customers like royalty and keep a real laser focus on ensuring that everything that I build is aligned with their interests. And I think if you look back through the release history and changelog and stuff, you'll see that the vast majority of the features that I build come directly from the community and the public roadmap.

39:03Yeah, I mean, treat customers like royalty. It's hard to go wrong with an ethos like that. It so ties into, I mean, Kyle, as you're describing this, like your financial independence journey, all of our financial independence journey, right? It's like, how can we build something sustainable? How can we not be beholden to someone else? Whether it's your boss said you're nine to five or like you're talking about, how many tech startups like yours that really have hit this point that they're just growing considerably, how many of them at that point take on venture capital? And like you said, then they're beholden to these overlords who need 10X, 100X, 1000X growth at the expense of the community, right?

39:50And it's just, it's really cool to see you build something in public, like you're saying, with the support of these people your community who you treat like royalty. And then those people are then going out and saying, look, there's something really special here. And it's pretty rare. I mean, Kyle, obviously, I've seen a lot of these tools over the years. And I very rarely heard people talk about something as highly. Down to my friend Adam, who lives around the corner from me, who's in the financial independence community. I think he's an early member of your Discord. And he's like, oh, Kyle is amazing.

40:25I always ask him all these questions. And it's just, it's so cool to see, I'm paraphrasing obviously very loosely, but like, it's so cool to see him build this with our suggestions. And when you get a community of especially early adopters of people who are really passionate about something, it's amazing what you can build. Yeah, absolutely. And maybe another interesting point to note along those lines is that as a totally bootstrapped product, I don't have one of those big marketing budgets where I can just run a ton of ads and get customers by force. It's like all the growth that Projection Lab has seen so far pretty much has been product-led, meaning that I basically have my head in the sand most of the time coding and talking to people and trying to figure out how to make this a really good tool that people like.

41:12And so the fact that it's grown while I've spent all my time doing that is pretty amazing. And it's thanks to all of those people that have gathered around it and shared it with friends and family. And so I guess for anybody listening, know that if you do decide to do that, that's literally what's made the difference between this just being another one of my side projects from the past and a real thing like it is now. And I feel super honored that thousands of households out there have chosen to use Projection Lab to help accompany them and chart their course towards financial independence. Kyla, I was actually just curious about how you enter the data.

41:52And I think a lot of people get hesitant about connecting all of their accounts to tools like this. I know I've heard that a bunch of times with personal capital in years past. And also, not for nothing, but people at the software company also being able to see, oh, I just put my entire financial life into how much money I'm making, what my net worth is. Not that you're sitting there looking at my Projection Lab login, but how do you think about data security? How should people think about... Do they connect accounts, or is it just simply a data input? So data entry, as far as current balances and stuff, is a manual thing right now in Projection Lab.

42:33And that's an interesting topic because I think when it comes to long-term planning, it's kind of critical to realize that stuff like current balances is just one small piece of the puzzle. I mean, in a lot of other tools that I've tried, and I tend to hear this from customers a lot too, there's often upstream like authentication and syncing issues and stuff. And when that happens, like a lot of the time it's faster just to get in there and update things yourself rather than deal with trying to figure out what's not syncing and why. And for some people like myself, and I think actually remember you talking about this maybe in the episode with Chris, it can sometimes be kind of fun to like get in there and get hands on with the numbers and like set a routine where you periodically kind of take stock of everything, like plug in your updates and see how those affect your long term projections.

43:21Now, if you go to the public roadmap, you will see that account linking is one of the most upvoted things on there. And it is something that I plan to add an option for like as time allows. But what's interesting is that for a lot of our customers, we've actually seen this kind of mindset shift where for a tool like this, you really spend the vast majority of your time building a plan for your long-term future and experimenting with that plan rather than like fixating on all the latest daily stock price fluctuations, which can sometimes be a source of noise and distraction when you're trying to get a sense of the long-term picture.

43:55I should mention that Projection Lab does already have a plugin system though. So you can use that to like sync balances from some other tools. And the community is starting to build more integrations. And that's something that will definitely expand over time and add more capabilities in general as far as integration. But I think the focus and the mission is on making long-term like full-life financial planning more accessible, more visual, more personalizable, and hopefully more fun too. But I've drifted a little from the original question here, which I think was on the topic of like data privacy and security and reliability and stuff.

44:29And I think that's like data privacy and security. For me, it's been such a huge focus ever since the beginning, like something maybe to zoom out for a second, like something that's kind of bothered me about some other platforms out there is when you have a product that's like technically free, but oftentimes maybe you're really the product because like behind the scenes, they're doing stuff with your data. And so I wanted to do things the old school way here and just focus on making good software with straightforward pricing that helps people and tries to make a positive impact in the world. And of course, follow the industry standard practices for security and encryption and automated testing and stuff like that along the way.

45:07Also on that topic, for a platform like this that people look to when they're making big life decisions, it's crucial to provide accurate and reliable results. And so from the beginning, I've taken a lot of time to build thorough testing and secure coding practices into the development process. And that's something that I do have a background in from my time doing R &D for various government organizations. For instance, like for any change or new code that gets added to the projection lab code base, there are thousands of automated tests, things like unit tests and integration tests, regression tests, tests that actually compare like the output for specific scenarios.

45:47to known output from other tools, tests for all of the cloud platform resources that are involved. And I think that from platform to platform, there are always gonna be these little minor deltas and differences and modeling assumptions and things like that. And that's one of the reasons that some folks like to run their numbers through multiple tools, which I think can sometimes be illuminating. And to that end, I try as much as I can to make the results as explainable and transparent as possible with traceability behind the numbers that are presented. And I mean, at the end of the day, quality and security and integrity are something that I care deeply about.

46:25And I think another one of the things that might be interesting about this is that from the beginning, I wanted to put users in direct control of their data. So you can choose whether or not you want anything synced to the cloud, because you don't have to. You can just use your browser's local storage or manually import and export things to flat files. And there's actually even an option where you can self-host your own totally private, independent deployment of the entire app if you want. Oh, wow. That's incredible. Okay. And that's fairly straightforward to do? You might need to know your way around the command line, but there's a repo with a lot of instructions.

47:00And I've actually had people who've never used the command line or Git before go with that version and get it stood up without any issues. Okay. Well, that is absolutely fantastic. Fantastic. One thing that a couple of people wrote in about and seems like one of the, maybe the centerpieces of the projection itself is like your chance of success or your success rate. And I'm curious, like if you could explain that a little bit, this might be a little too in depth to truly dive into on a podcast, but I think Kyle, what a lot of people just really want to know is like, am I on track? Is this going to happen for me?

47:35How do you think about that success rate? because I know this is something that is quite important in the software. Yeah, sure. So there's like your normal, like your standard planning mode where you can choose from a few different kinds of assumptions when it comes to things like growth rates and inflation. Like you can choose to use like fixed rates or you can use some particular historical sequence or you can even like add in your own custom sequence of returns if you want to explore something specific. So like when you're first building your plan and entering stuff in, that's the context that you'll see things in and you'll be able to make changes, see the results reflected right away in real time instantly.

48:11So when you have a plan that you kind of like, and you want to say like, okay, like, let's take a step back. We know that in the real world, fixed rates of return and inflation are not a thing. And so that's where chance of success mode comes in, where instead of just running one simulation that steps through each year with some set of returns and inflation data, we can run a whole bunch of simulations at once using whether you want to backtest on historical data with some sampling methodology, or if you want to use like custom probability distributions that you can define, whatever you prefer, you can gain an understanding of the broader potential spectrum of outcomes and make sure that you're building a plan that's robust.

48:56As for what exact success rate you should be happy about, that's kind of up to you. I think I've heard so many different perspectives on it. And I think that at the end of the day, it comes down to what your natural level of risk tolerance is and also how flexible you're willing to be when it comes to things like your expenses or your withdrawal rate in retirement, or if not retirement, whatever it is to you. So for some people, they might say, hey, I'm not willing to pull the trigger on my next move until I'm at a success rate of 90 % or 95 % or something. But for me, I think I'm usually more comfortable as long as it's like, I don't know, 80-ish or something like that.

49:35Sometimes I debate about renaming chance of success mode, actually, because in any of those individual trials that fail, and you can actually drill all the way into those. And for any given scenario that doesn't work out, you can be like, okay, what happened here? And go in there and take a look. I think that when you start to think about the sequence that's playing out in those years in front of you, you're like, okay, in real life, I would make some adjustments here. So instead of say 20 % representing failure, sometimes I like to reframe that and say, in those 20 % of cases, I probably had to make some adjustments.

50:08Yeah, I like that. So Kyle, the definition of failure in this regard, I think people are going to be curious. What does that mean precisely? Yeah. So the baseline for a chance of success mode is like, let's say that it spits out an 85 or a 90. That means that maybe in 10 % of scenarios, you ran out of money. You depleted your portfolio earlier than the plan was supposed to end. But of course, you can customize that stuff to some extent. You can define different categories of outcomes and then see those outcomes broken out in the results. Gotcha. Okay. And I like that you said that you look maybe for somewhere in the 80s in terms of chance of success rate, whereas I think and I fear that a lot of people in the community are working too long to try to get as close to 100 % certainty that they're going to be successful, however that boils down to.

51:02And I think what a lot of people that I've had on the show have intimated is that probably means they're going to die with their highest net worth. And I wonder, and there's no, Kyle, there's no answer to this because every single person is different, obviously, but would you counsel people to go against maybe their instincts? Because I suspect a lot of people's instincts would be, I want that to say one zero zero, right? Like without giving advice, obviously, but what would you counsel someone who maybe has that thought process and maybe what's a more realistic chance of success that you would advise shooting towards?

51:38I think principally what I would counsel people to do is read the words of a bunch of people who are probably smarter and wiser than me who've thought really deeply on these topics. Some of the resources that I found super influential were Simple Path to Wealth by J.L. Collins, Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin, The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel is good. I also like Die with Zero, Retire Before Mom and Dad. I could go on. I've devoured a lot of the financial independence content out there, the stuff that initially inspired me. And I think that if you spend enough time with the literature on this subject, then you start to realize that achieving that perfect 100 % success rate also comes at a cost.

52:21Everything is like a balancing act. And being able to use a tool to see what that spectrum of possibilities looks like and how things could play out is hopefully a helpful step on that journey of figuring out what are you really comfortable with and what do you want your life trajectory to look like? Hey, Kyle, I'm curious just to kind of go back to your entrepreneurship journey. So, I mean, you bootstrapped something that most people don't have the wherewithal or like don't bootstrap successful pieces of software. What's been the most challenging part of this whole journey for you? I think far and away for me, the most challenging thing is that there's only a certain number of hours in the day.

53:04from the beginning time management has just been so crucial especially starting this as a side project for a few years like my time has always been extremely constrained which means needing to get really good at identifying the things that are actually going to move the needle and executing on those efficiently but i think like another angle on it is that there's kind of no way to do something like this that doesn't involve at least some element of sacrifice at least for a while. For instance, and maybe to many, this won't sound like a particularly difficult sacrifice, but a kind of tough decision for me towards the beginning was giving up video games because I have a group of close friends that likes to play a few nights a week.

53:47And it really is a great way to stay in touch and stay a part of each other's lives across distances. But trying to build and grow a complex technical project like this meant that there just wasn't time. So maybe someday I'll come out of retirement, so to speak, and rejoin the squad. But I think to the disappointment of my friends who might listen to this, that's still a ways off. And then for a different spin on that, like during the first couple of years where I was really burning the candle at both ends, like every day, not taking weekends, and then not so shockingly discovering that I had high blood pressure for the first time in my life, like that was a bit of a wake up call for me that, yeah, you might need some element of sacrifice, but there are some things that you can't afford to sacrifice.

54:33So going forward, I've made sure to carve out time every single day for exercise and well-being because what's the point of any of this stuff if it comes at the cost of your health? And not to mention that if you do take the time to really prioritize exercise and make that a part of your routine in a rigid way that you're not willing to sacrifice, it's going to increase your overall productivity and your focus and your creativity. There's a whole bunch of different kinds of benefits and it's not something that you can afford to neglect for an extended period of time. Yeah. It's amazing how people still think like the old school, like I'm going to work 90 hours a week and sit at my desk for 14 hours a day.

55:14Like that's a path to success. That's just such antiquated thinking. I think it's just like deep work, focus, like actual focus time as opposed to just grazing time or when you're exhausted or when, like you said, you are walking a thousand steps a day instead of eight to 12 ,000 steps like you want to, or exercising or getting out in the sunlight, right? Like all of these things are critical and we don't do them at our own peril. And I mean, you were like, just looking at you, you're a young fit guy. And to see that you had high blood pressure, not all that long ago, like that's a wake up call, right?

55:49That's a wake up call for you. That's a wake up call for all of us. Stress is there for us, especially when you're not prioritizing your health and your fitness. And then you realize, okay, you have this exogenous shock of like, oh man, in your case, you're a young 30-year-old guy. I got to do something, or this is not going to trend well from here. Yeah. It's funny because I always thought that I was somebody who wouldn't run into those kinds of issues when it comes to balancing health and fitness with work because I never had in the past, like with my traditional career. But this one was sneaky because I really, really loved what I was doing.

56:24So all that time that I spent working and frantically like trying to get as much done as possible, as efficiently as possible, I kind of like didn't notice that I had put health and fitness in the backseat. So yeah, to your point, it was a wake up call. Yeah. Well, I'm glad you're on the right path now. And I guess to kind of close this out. I'm curious. The one thing that's been nagging for me is how the heck did one person make a piece of software like this? How did you do this? There's a reason why most of these pieces of software have tens of millions of dollars of VC money behind them because it's freaking difficult.

56:59Kyle, how did you do this? Well, it's definitely difficult. That's not a lie. I think in the end, it's kind of surprising what you can build if you stay focused on something over a long period of time. If you can find a problem to really lock onto that you care deeply about, where you go to bed thinking about it, you find yourself coming up with new algorithms in the shower and where you just show up every single day to make progress because you want to, over a long time, that can compound into something pretty meaningful. It's similar to the concept of the the aggregation of marginal gains, right?

57:36I think in our culture, we often fixate on the few outlier people who are exceptionally brilliant, like that one in a million singular intellect that can solve that unsolvable problem that advances a whole field or something. And I think what that type of fixation misses is that in the real world, in most areas of life, it's being able to bring real consistency and passion and perseverance to bear on a problem over a long period of time that ends up taking you further. And you really don't have to be like the most gifted person out there. I'm sure there are tons of people way smarter than me. But if you're willing to just relentlessly show up every day to work on something that you truly love where you naturally want to obsess over quality and commit to making that thing a little better every single day, you'd be surprised what all those little improvements can add up to over a long period of time.

58:37They can have a similar kind of compounding effect to the kind of compounding that we talk about in investing. Yeah, that is awesome. Relentlessly show up every day and do something you love. No truer words have been spoken than that. That's a really neat thing. And I'm curious, where do you go from here? So you've built Projection Lab. I don't know precisely how many paying members, but it's significant. And you're still doing this yourself. Are there future plans? At what point do you build a team? I imagine that has to come, but I don't know for sure. Where do you go from here with the business, the software?

59:15Yeah, that's a good question. So future plans. Let's unpack that a little bit. I guess long term, I mean, this is the tool that I use for all my own planning. And I'd love to continue building and evolving this as a sustainable, like bootstrapped business for hopefully decades to come. And I mean, even if I hit my FI number tomorrow, there's really nothing that I'd rather be doing. Now, if you check out the public roadmap, you'll see that there are a good like 350 things on there that I'd like to do all as soon as possible, ranging from like continuing to expand international support, making it possible to use multiple currencies in the same plan, improvements to tracking features and plugins, maybe a general purpose optimizer system.

59:56But without going into the weeds, there's tons of ideas for those things that I have that I know are going to work and they're going to be compelling and fun. But at the end of the day, right now, there is only one of me. And so I think one of the most impactful things that I might start to do this year is form more of a team. I've taken this pretty far as a solo developer, but there's always that old proverb that if you want to go fast, go alone. And if you want to go far, go together. And so right now, I'm just in the beginning stages of starting to bring some other people on board. I have a couple of business advisors, a couple of folks who are starting to help out on the support side, a growth and marketing partner that I've been working with for a bit.

1:00:35And what's kind of neat is that these are people that have come predominantly from the Projection Lab community itself. So they started out as customers and early adopters who really loved the platform and wanted to see it evolve in the right direction that stays true to its value and its mission. And I think they're in a great position to contribute and accelerate some of the work that I'm trying to do. And throughout all of that, it's crucial to keep Projection Lab a sustainable business with a growing community that I pay close attention to and make sure that the platform evolves in a way that's aligned with everyone's interests.

1:01:15And I'm excited about the idea of being able to do some more of that stuff in parallel. That is very cool. I'm excited for you. I'm excited to see this grow and I'm excited for our community to use it. So, I mean, this is really awesome. I know you were kind enough to extend a 10 % discount for anyone who uses the code CHOOSEFI. So one word, all caps, CHOOSEFI. Just go to projectionlab.com. And that's really an incredibly generous offer. I know there's a seven-day trial also for people who are interested in, hey, is this going to work for me? Am I going to be able to figure this out? Just go in and test it out.

1:01:53I mean, that's what's so cool about this. And Kyle, where else can people reach you? So it sounds like the Discord, once people become members, is that the best place? Yeah, I would definitely recommend checking out the discord community you can find most of my info on projectionlab.com too you know there's the tool of course the public roadmap the discord community i'm also underscore k nolan on twitter if you'd like to connect there and brad i can't thank you enough for bringing me on the show kind of on that note maybe like one closing thought for people who aspire to start their own projects is that throughout your journey sometimes it's important to be willing to go outside of your comfort zone a little bit i don't know if this is obvious or not.

1:02:32But like for me, going on podcasts is a pretty new and kind of scary thing. And that is definitely outside of my normal comfort zone. But if you never venture past that, how do you expect to like grow and expand that comfort zone? And for the record, Brad is a really great host. And it's been a real pleasure chatting today. That's very kind of you. And yeah, it's amazing that you found FI really essentially, like you said, on those walks, listening to our podcasts. And now you've created something really extraordinary for the community. So Kyle, on behalf of everyone, thank you. And I really appreciate you being here.

1:03:07Thanks, Brad. It's been really fun. Thank you for listening to today's show and for being part of the Chooseify community. If you haven't already, the best ways to get involved are first subscribe to the podcast. So you're listening to this on a podcast player and just hit subscribe and then subscribe to my weekly newsletter. I actually sit down every Monday and write this by hand and I send it out Tuesday morning. So just head over to choosefi.com slash subscribe. And it's really, really easy to get on the newsletter list right there. And I would greatly appreciate it. It's the best way to get in touch with me.

1:03:40You can actually just hit reply to any of those emails and it comes directly to my inbox. So that's the way that I keep a pulse of the community and how we keep this the ultimate crowdsource personal finance show. And finally, if you're looking to join an in real life community. We have choose a buy local groups in 300 plus cities all around the world. So head to choose a buy.com slash local, and you'll find a list of all of those cities in 20 plus countries all across the world. And if you're just getting started with or you have a family member or a friend who you think would be interested, two easy ways.

1:04:15Choose a buy episode 100 is kind of our welcome to the five community. And even though it's a couple years old at this point, it still stands up. And it's a really great just starting point to get an understanding of what is financial independence? What are we doing here? Why are we looking to live a more intentional life where we save money and use it as a springboard to live a better life? And then Choose a Vi created a financial independence 101 course that's entirely free. Just head to choosefi.com slash fi101. And again, thanks for listening.

1:04:51Thank you.