We can’t deny the fact that digital devices are everywhere. Now that we’ve entered the technological age, we spend more time tapping on our screens and less time doing things in the real world. As we go on with our days, nonchalantly using our phones, we often receive a notification that updates us with our screen time. Admit it; this part can be quite alarming. You’ll be shocked at how much time you spend with these highly addictive devices. But you’ll even be more surprised when I tell you that there’s an app that turns your screen time into stock market investments!
Taban Yolo, is the co-founder and CEO of Shilling. He spearheaded the idea to make an app that turns your screen time into profitable investments. Let’s listen to the story of this savvy industry expert in today’s show and learn a thing or two about his useful app.
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A Productive Escape: Converting Screen Time to a Stock Market Investment with Taban Yolo
Welcome to Actions-Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. One of the most interesting and curious observations we have in our time, 2022, the year recording, is the relationship that we all seem to have with our phones, our devices, our screens of all kinds. I cannot even begin to tell you how many times people have expressed, just like me, the desire to spend less time on our devices, desire to spend less time in front of our screens, less time on our phone. It’s even been enough that Apple, a few years ago, developed that screen time tracking that you can see. We can actually measure how much time you’re spending in front of the screen. Yet, a lot of these people, just like me, continue to basically spend just as much time in front of our phones as we have for years, and years, and years. There’s a lot of talk about wanting to do less, less screen time, less phones, but still doing mostly the same thing.
My guest today, Taban Yolo, started a company called Shilling. His idea is to take the time we spend in front of our screens and convert them into financial investments. That’s an interesting concept to wrap your head around. I’m going to let Taban tell you what it’s all about for himself.
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Taban, welcome to the program.
Thanks for having me, Stephen. The concept of Shilling is pretty simple. We get the time someone’s spending on their phone and let them just convert that by setting parameters by how much they’ll spend on their phone, how much time they think they’ll spend on their phone, and then just connect that to a Shilling account that’s built through a financial portfolio that they could start investing in. What that means is, if you sign up for the Shilling app, you set up your profile, you’ll set your time interval. If you set it at eight hours, every eight hours of screen time that you hit, you’ll be able to make automatic investment into a Shilling portfolio based off your risk tolerance.
Is this designed to discourage people from excessive phone use or not thinking about how much time they’re spending in front of the screen?
Yes and no. Initially, when we came up with the idea and started building the company, it’s solely intended to help people spend less time on their phone. We do this while, obviously, trying to create value for your screen time. As the months have gone along, and we started talking to more customers, we realized that there’s this demographic that really don’t care how much time they spend on their phone. They just want to get that value of the time they spend on their phone. I would say yes and no to that question.
It could have a couple of different purposes. When you talk about your demographics, are there certain groups of people that you’re targeting with this application, or is this something that’s for everybody?
Initially, when we came up with the idea, it was solely based off — I was trying to get my girlfriend to start investing. I was thinking about a nice, curious way that would keep her an active participant in the investment process. I came up with the idea. I asked her if she’d be able to invest using her screen time. She thought it was a really nice concept. We saw the product as maybe something that a lot of Gen Z would be geared more towards. The more people we speak to of different age ranges, different demographics, there clearly seems to be a vacuum for service or product like this.
It's not only Gen Z that spends a lot of time on their phone, on Facebook or Instagram. It's people of all ranges. Share on XI watch most of my news off of YouTube. I consider myself somewhat a millennial. I think that this product will serve across a lot of age ranges.
Yeah. With different age ranges, there might be the two different motivations that you mentioned, that some people are attracted to the initial motivation of trying to find a way to de-incentivize their screen time, incentivize spending less time on their screen with other people just more looking to automate some aspects of their investing.
Obviously, right now, we’re about to roll out our beta test. Once we roll out the beta, we will have more solid information, more solid data points on how people are actually using the product. Yes, I do agree. That is a really interesting point of view.
One of the questions I have, a little bit about the specifics of the product, you talked about something along the lines of every eight hours, it throws a certain amount of money into an investment portfolio. Do you have any version of it that has a threshold? Let’s say someone says, “I’m okay with spending two hours a day on my phone, but I wanted to start dumping money in once I go beyond that 120 minutes, once I do 2.5, three hours, four hours in a day.”
We haven’t gone to that point yet. We want to make it a service that will help you invest, obviously. Also, we haven’t got to a point where we’ve gotten feedback to a question, what you just brought up. We feel like there’s a threshold. If we get to a point where someone actually feels like the service is becoming a burden in the sense that a lot of money is being withdrawn from the account — obviously, once you start talking about investments, people will start looking at returns and all this other stuff. We don’t want people to feel that it’s something that they have to constantly check their Schilling account. We want to make them aware. Every third day, you get a notification, “Hey, you hit your threshold. We’re going to invest the X amount that you told us,” and maybe that’s when they could go check their accounts.
That might be possibly down the road. Obviously, we haven’t spoken to a huge spectrum of users. Maybe we will find users that actually really want to punish themselves and have a strict threshold and be like, “Hey, once I hit this amount, just keep pulling it out. I don’t care how long it goes.” If we do run into a scenario like that, and there’s actually demand for that, then I don’t see why we can’t get a product and build a feature like that.
A couple other specifics about the product, just so all the listeners who are interested in signing on can get some of these details. Let’s say someone has a Chase bank account and the Chase app, and they have a direct deposit into that. Does the Shilling then pull from whatever account, or is it its own separate thing?
Yeah. It will pull from a Chase account. It’s no mystery, most of the bank transactions run with a company called Plaid. Plaid, they have their API software that you could connect these different bank accounts in the US. It’s somewhat of an ACH transfer. Obviously, there’s more in the backend to that, but you just log in, you log into the Shilling account, and we’ll have an option for you to connect your bank account. You’ll sign up to Plaid and then you’ll connect your bank account to Shilling. That’s pretty much how it works.
Pretty much anyone that has a bank account of any kind. Some people use the big banks, some people use their local credit unions, things like that. Pretty much anyone in those areas will be able to use the Shilling application.
Yes, absolutely.
What about the investments that are open? I know people have different investments. Vanguard has the index fund investments. Some people prefer those target retirement things. Some people prefer individual stocks. What are the general options that people have available when you talk about this risk tolerance?
That’s actually a good question. We had our early adopters reach out to us. We have some people wanting to be able to have full autonomy, just full independence, and be able to invest in all these different assets, talking about stocks. Some people have brought up crypto. They want to have the ability to invest in crypto but still use the whole Shilling. These are the people that are first-time investors, or people that’s not too savvy, people that really don’t want to think about it that much. All they want to do is just auto invest, and come back every three or four weeks, and see how their portfolio is doing.
If you’re looking at a conservative portfolio, obviously, you have less equity, less stocks, and more bonds — more safe assets — in the market and vice versa. Right now, we’re looking at that. We’re working with really talented people to come up with these portfolios and just make them available for use.
I have a question from a product design standpoint. One of the things that’s always on my mind about developing any product like this is the pull and tug between wanting to create a customization for every single use case but also not wanting to make it so complicated, because you created so many options that people that just want something simple can’t get that. I’m wondering how you thread the needle between every use case, everyone that has their own desire, whether it be crypto, whether it be index funds, or whether it be that full autonomy, “I’m going to put money in stocks,” versus the people who just want it to be a really easy experience, “Just put it into the Target Retirement 2050. I don’t want to think about it. I just want to get that notification and have it just build wealth over time.”
Yeah. From product design, I feel like when you’re building products like this, especially products that’s in the fintech space, you definitely get a variety of people that come to use your service, obviously, from experts to intermediate people to beginners that have no experience. From a design standpoint, I feel like it’s using the rule of thumb to create a product that someone that has no prior knowledge could come on, and use the service, and actually understand what’s really going on. At least in my case, what pretty much helps me out — I have my girlfriend; I have a bunch of other friends that are really not savvy in the stock market. They have zero clue what’s going on. Usually, at least right now, in the design standpoint, whatever we’re building, we usually run it by someone that we know would use the product that pretty much has no experience in the stock market. If they could understand what they’re reading or understand the product itself, then we know that the rest will pretty much fall in line. It wouldn’t be so difficult for them to use. Yeah, we [use] that approach.
Definitely. For any listeners out there who are thinking about their own products, their own business’ services, that’s a great thing to think about — to look for the person that has no subject area knowledge in whatever you’re building, but also would theoretically or potentially be interested in using your tool. Those are the people you need to know. Usually, when we design our products, when we think about things, we’re so interested and so in the weeds on the specifics of what we’re building. We’re forgetting that there are a lot of people who just want a way simpler experience.
Definitely, that’s true. I feel like usually — everyone knows this — less is more. The less you clutter the screen, the less you have all this jargon on the screen that someone might not really understand. Give people what they want to see. The rest, you could put it somewhere else, maybe in the settings menu, whatever, and someone could go and research.
Just for functionality and first time using the app, you want to strip it down as bare as possible with the most important information. Share on XIt’s interesting having that bare stripped-down experience for what I would say most users, but then having the settings or the detailed stuff for the power users, as some people would say — the people that are going to be in it. They can go in. They can dig into all these settings and stuff that most people using it would be unaware and blissfully unaware of it, because they don’t want to think about it. The average person has dozens to hundreds of different things in their lives going on that they have to think about. Maybe they’re building their own business, and they want just a little leg up on their financial stuff. I’m also wondering, what inspired you to start Shilling? What was the experience or the idea that brought this to life?
It’s a multitude of things that actually brought me to start Shilling. I previously tried to start a photo sharing app, which everyone was trying to do at that time. I watched The Social Network when I was a kid, and I said, “Hey, you know what? Let me give this thing a shot.” It didn’t go as planned, obviously, and I learned a lot from that experience. Once I graduated, I came into contact with one alumni from the college I went to. He was working on an app as well. It was more of a proximity-based location app. I joined as somewhat of an intern, and I was just learning and seeing the whole process of getting to an alpha test, beta test, rolling out features, what actually works. Are you spending too much time on building something that no one cares about? I get all this experience.
Yeah.
During the pandemic, 2020, around December, I quit my job, because unfortunately, I didn’t feel satisfied in what I was doing. I was staying at home for about three, four months. During that time, I was experimenting, doing a bunch of projects. I got into doing stuff that actually fulfills me. I was an active day trader for two years prior to that. I used to day trade. I used to understand what’s going on. The whole GameStop frenzy happens, and stock trading becomes front page news. Everyone becomes an investor at that point. Everyone has something to say. At that particular time, my girlfriend also picked up [into it]. She has never invested one bit; she has no interest. She just kept asking me all these random questions, “Hey, how do I buy a stock?” Just random questions.
Yeah. Those are beginner questions. Most people don’t know how to just buy a stock. Before last year, most people didn’t know.
Exactly. She keeps asking me these random questions. I’m obviously answering the questions, but she just felt like it was too much. She didn’t want to think about it. I actually offered her, and I told her, “Hey, you could actually use services. They could do this for you automatically.” For some reason, she’s just like, “Ugh, I really don’t care about that.” I sat there one night. Obviously, at that point, I’m going to bed super late. I’m spending a lot of time on my phone. I was programming on the side as well. I’m doing all this stuff. I asked her one day. I was like, “Hey, for every hour you spend scrolling through Instagram, if someone gave you the ability to actually buy one Facebook share, would you do that?” For some reason, it lit a light bulb in her head and said, “Yeah, obviously, I’d use something like [that].”
I guess what captivated her was the fact that she was going to invest in at least something that she was already using. I started looking at it from a whole macro perspective, that it could be more than that. This could actually tackle the problems of screen time. We looked at the whole screen time. We looked at the market. I looked at several articles. I talked to so many people.
We read all these articles — screen time went up three hours this year for teenagers.
Yeah. Those numbers are above 11 hours a day for some.
You look at that, but okay, what is the solution? Zero. There doesn’t seem to be a solution. All the solutions that we came to find out were just temporary to a certain extent where it’s, “Hey, maybe delete that app,” or “Put down your phone.” You have extreme people that’s not using their phones one bit, maybe studies and flip phones. We came to a realization that it’s 2022, the world has changed. A lot of people use their phones for different things. Obviously, screen time goes up, but then they provide some value. You go on TikTok. You look at some of the stuff people are doing. It’s really innovative stuff. It’s the stuff that makes you feel human. Looking at someone creating a new dance is the new [crypto]. You know what I’m saying? Personally, I watch a lot of news now on YouTube. There’s a lot of value still in screen time, but it’s actually how to use that screen time. We started looking at this and are like, “Wait a minute. We could actually create value for people by investing their screen time.”
There’s a few things I want to point out to my audience about that story. First, the beginning of your story way back when your first endeavor, the photo sharing app, didn’t work. I want to point out to some listeners that it is quite common for the first thing you try, when you start trying and actually doing things on your own beyond the standard scripted life, the first thing you try probably is not going to work, but you’re going to get a lot of learning experience out of that. My question on that part of the story is, did you have that mindset? When you tried the photo sharing thing, and it didn’t really work out, was this something that devastated you like it would some people? Did you understand — all right, this is my first try, and what I’m getting out of it is education, learning more stuff about how to put together a successful application?
Yes. That’s a good question. In my mind, I didn’t see that as a failure, because my whole entire family is self-employed. Growing up, I’ve never seen any of my family members go to work for somebody else. In my mind, it just felt normal, because I’ve seen family members, my aunties, my uncles, my parents, go through setbacks business-wise. To me, it just felt like something that is bound to happen. It’s a very, very rare occasion that the first time you try something out, it actually works out. It was a tough experience, because I spent a lot of money.
Yeah. You spent either time, or money, or both.
I spent money, and I thought that’s what actually makes a product successful. Obviously, I was wrong. I learned a lot of good lessons from that. It did hurt. Obviously, no one wants to fail.
Of course.
That hurt, but my mindset didn’t change. I still want to go and create a product. I still want to be an entrepreneur later on in life.
I think it helps to have those examples, because a lot of it is the people that you’re around. You had all your family doing it. The next part of the story I want to ask a follow-up question about is December of 2020 when you decided to quit your job because it wasn’t fulfilling. Did this frighten you at all, either the whole, “Okay, where’s my income going to come from? What’s going to be next?” that jumping into the unknown?
Yes. To be honest, it did frighten me. At that point, I was talking to my girlfriend a lot. It had been a tough year for a lot of people — COVID. I got to a point where I realized that life is really short. There’s more to life than going to work, cashing in the check, and being comfortable. Not everyone is meant to be an entrepreneur, but the ones that do, you somewhat know it, and you somewhat feel it. No one will pay you to do something. You will have that motivation, regardless of how bad, whatever endeavor you’re going after. Even if you have zero customers, no one is actually paying attention, you will have that inner motivation to just keep going. I did feel frightened. Honestly, I don’t know what’s going to happen next year. The one thing I was certain of was that I was not going to stay at my current job. I had to put my two weeks and leave.
It’s interesting because you quit in December knowing this is not what you want, and I can’t keep doing this. Interestingly enough, the idea came roughly a month or so later, when the GameStop, the Wall Street bets thing came about, and you were having that discussion. The question I have about the mindset there is, a lot of people will have an idea much similar to your idea, but then never go through with it. They’re like, “Oh naaa, I could never really do that.” Did any of those doubtful thoughts ever cross your mind? Were you always — because of your upbringing, because of what you’ve observed — in that mode where you’re saying, “Okay, once I think of an idea, once I realize there’s a market for it, I’m just going to do it instead of doing all this doubting. That’s only for those few people. I shouldn’t actually — how is it going to work, all those questions that make people pause and eventually not go for it.”?
To be honest with you, I started doubting myself. The genesis of every idea, every company, is really great, because there’s a lot of enthusiasm. Everyone thinks that we start the idea, build an MVP — three months, boom, we get full funding. That’s what you have in your mind, but technically, it’s not like that one bit.
I actually started pitching this idea to a bunch of friends, close friends of mine, that I worked with prior, that I knew would help me build a product. I believe the first three or four people I reached out to, and these are close friends of mine, they all said, “No, it can’t work out. This can’t work out.” That took me about 1.5 months just pitching, and seeing their interest, and whatnot. They said it couldn’t work out.
I was devastated. At that point, I’m like, “Wow, if my own close friends can’t believe this idea, then there’s probably not a lot going on.” It sounded good, but that’s pretty much it. I remember this one day, one of my friends told me to pivot and do something else like, “The idea was great, but just pivot, and do something else.” I remember I came back home. I just felt down that day. I talked to my girlfriend. I said, “Hey, I don’t think I’ll follow through with this. It’s just too much stress. There’s a lot of hurdles that I’m already encountering right now before even actually building the product.” She just motivated me and said, “Hey, it’s a good product. I would definitely use it as a first-time user.”
I had to self-motivate myself, search more into my circle and actually reach out to more people. Share on XI met my co-founder right now, Doye. We met over coffee. I just pitched him the idea, and he was like, “Let’s get to work.” He was an active investor as well. [He] said, “You know what? Why didn’t you reach out to me earlier?” and then we went to work. Small [riches] like that just start giving you hope. It’s all about momentum. You have to keep the momentum going in the company.
Yeah. It’s interesting because a lot of people have certain feelings about ideas that are new. What I like to say is, even with the smartphones we have now, imagine it’s the year 1997, and you go up to the random person, and you say, “Hey, this internet thing really caught on. What do you think of a little mini computer that everyone carries around in their pocket all day?” A lot of people probably would have said, “That’s a stupid idea,” even though now, we all do it. Also, throughout your story, it seems to be a theme about surrounding yourself with the right people. Your girlfriend is very encouraging. Your family members gave you some examples as well as your co-founder. What would you say is the importance of finding the right people? What should someone be thinking about when they’re thinking about who do you want to work with, who do you want to surround yourself with, what kind of energy you want to be around, and all the things that seem to really make your business successful?
Yes. I think it’s really important to surround yourself with the right people, especially your co-founders, your founding team. These have to be people that you could be open with. There has to be a relationship where you feel like I’m talking to a brother of mine or a best friend. You don’t want it to get to a point where it’s like, “I brought up the idea, so I have more say in what goes on.” Once that comes in, then I don’t think you’ll be transparent with your co-founders.
I think what’s really important with the co-founders is that everything’s so transparent. There’s nothing that goes on that I can’t tell him. A bunch of times, I have come up with different ideas. I’ll be, “Hey, can we do this?” They’re like, “Oh, no.” Ultimately, I have to respect what they say, because I know that it’s a long-term relationship. It’s not that, “Hey, we’re building this one, two years down the road,” and then maybe someone leaves the company, or something like that. It’s a long-term relationship, and it’s a relationship that has to be natural.
You would rather not bring someone on board that you know you won’t get along with just because you want them to help you build a product. I’d say you’d actually keep searching till you get that one person that you could call anytime of the day, even outside of what you’re doing. Can you call this person anytime of the day and talk about other things? We have a network. We’ve done so many other things prior to actually starting. There was already a level of trust. I understand what type of person you are, and that makes working a lot easier.
As someone who goes around looking for business partners, co-founders, if we’re looking at red flags, one red flag is someone that you don’t feel you can be open and honest with. There could be so many sociological reasons for that — whatever vibe, whatever energy people gave, if you feel like someone’s constantly judging you, as opposed to giving you honest critique. Also, if you just don’t like the person, because it is a long-term relationship. Are there other red flags you’d say to watch out for when talking to people and thinking about, “Okay, is this the kind of person, or is this the person I want to be a business partner, co-founder with?”
You want someone to help you out for the right reasons. Everyone’s watched The Social Network; everyone knows how that story ends up. In today’s climate, so many people just want to hop on some real quick hot wave. If you’re building a company that seems to be getting traction, someone just wants to hop on, maybe help out. They want that quick payday. It has to be more than that — maybe getting a great valuation or generating a lot of revenue — to have a successful company. I tell my co-founders that, starting this company, at the end of the day, I really want to be of service to others. That’s just my mantra. I want to help people out. I really want to help people out. I want people to get value from this.
It’s interesting, because some of these conscious-business/conscious-capitalism communities talk a lot about being conscious, therefore being purpose-driven and having that drive there, but that also has to be balanced with the need to turn a profit. Do you feel like there is a way to take it too far? I know the old, more traditional work environment, there’s been a lot of people that say, “Okay, profit is all that counts. Making money is all that counts. I’m just trying to maximize money.” Do you feel like you can go too far in the other direction and get so concerned with purpose and ignore the fact that “Yeah, okay. You do have to start turning profits. You do have to be able to pay your employees,” and things like that?
Yeah. Obviously, too much of anything is bad. Too much being business-centered and bottom line, you end up making bad decisions that will have maybe negative sentiment on customers. Also, too much on being on the other side is, you may forget about the business, and that could cost you the business in the long run. There has to be a nice balance, an in between of, are you actually solving a customer’s problem? If customers have feedback, are you listening to them, and actually implementing the feedback that you’re getting from the customer? I feel like there has to be that good balance.
It sounds like you’re connecting with a lot of customers, potential customers, different types of customers. What is the feedback you say you’re genuinely getting around the application, the idea behind it, and some of the features that you already talked about?
The general feedback is, it’s an amazing product, they can’t wait to test it out. The other feedback is, they have the problem of screen time. They haven’t figured out a way that actually helps. They feel like there’s a need for a product like this. Screen time is a problem that they generally face every single day and would love to have a product that fills that void. The third feedback we get is, obviously, people also want cryptocurrency features on the app. We’ve got a lot of feedback about that. Crypto, crypto — “Hey, man. Yes, we have [one] stock, but we want the ability to crypto.” Obviously, we’re thinking about that.
We want to be really cautious on how we roll out the crypto feature.
Yeah. I think at the time we’re talking, we’re only a week or two out from what people would consider a significant correction in the prices of a lot of the leading cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin.
Right.
That’s actually an interesting thought too. A lot of new ideas will come in, and you’re familiar with the investing world. Crypto was a new idea, and sometime down the road, there’s probably another new idea, another new idea. What do you think is the right level of vetting? We have our [time, tested] tried and true. The index funds have been shown are consistent. You know what you’re getting, but then there’s always going to be someone with a whole new idea, whether it’s crypto or whatever could be next. NFTs are even more recent. There’s been a lot of different thoughts and ideas around that. What do you say is your general philosophy on that? How much do you want things to be tested, tried and true before you invest in it and recommend to other people who ask you for advice to invest in something?
I think it’s less about the timing. I think it’s more about the use cases. Is it actually valuable to you? Let’s give an example of NFTs now, not really dip into NFTs. You go online, and a lot of people use all these forums. There’s Discord channels, subreddits, people talking about NFTs. On one hand, you have people that actually value that, actually see real value from this, and actually create art, or whatever it is. There’s people on the other side that’s like, “Okay, I can just screenshot this same thing at the same time.” It gets to a point of, actually, what value is being created from an acid or a new new technology. Sometimes, new technologies could be great, but sometimes, they could just be a fad. They could just be here to go.
I feel like it comes down to what value is actually being created. Share on XWe’re seeing this with crypto. All these people that’s creating all these weird cryptos — they skyrocket up and then boom, [rug] fall. We can’t really say that all crypto is bad, obviously, because a lot of people are finding value in Bitcoin, Ethereum. There’s, obviously, all these other guys that’s trying to take advantage of the crypto space as well.
Yeah. It’s interesting when I think about that, because Bitcoin had an original concept. People wanted a digital currency that was not subject to the central bank and had that clear limit on it. Ethereum was built on the blockchain. They’re easier to coordinate with other accounts. It feels like almost everyone, or almost any organization, or whatever, can just quickly issue another coin. I don’t know how many 1,000s crypto currencies out there. Even if we want, in the future, a crypto world to have a couple of dozen, even a couple of 100, options for what currency system you want to be under, there’s still way more than I can probably vision people needing. That compares to something I think about, Teslas or any kind of electric vehicle, there’s this clear value. This car drives you from place to place without using fossil fuels.
The other thing you touched a little bit on is how we’re thinking about our screen time. I think there’s a group of people out there who are saying screen time is bad. For example, you say you do a lot of getting your news from YouTube. One of the questions is, thinking about it, getting the news on YouTube, how is that different from getting news on CNN or getting news from a newspaper? It’s just a different way of doing it. Do you have a good idea or recommendation as to how someone should go about thinking about their screen time? Do you want to limit the nonsense screen time but not necessarily shade yourself for some of the stuff that you’re saying is really useful?
Yeah. I think people would look at it in terms of what apps are you using — you start with that — and what do you actually do on those apps. It’s a lot of people. I’d say content creators — they’re stuck in this world where their job is actually to be on the phone 24/7, see the latest trend, and actually hop on that trend, and create more content. Someone like that would be a totally different person, because they look at screen time as “Hey, man. I actually need this to actually create content for a lot of people.” You have people that have other things to do. You have your day job. You have all these other commitments that you have and maybe use your screen time to just get away for a little bit.
Yeah. Escapes are not all bad; you just can’t always be escaping. If you think about the realm of everything, that’s an escape, whether it be your favorite movie, your favorite TV show, sporting events, anything like that. It’s an escape. Even drinking is an escape in another way. I’ve always thought of it as, it’s okay to escape sometimes as long as you’re not always escaping, as long as you spend the majority of your time in the real world doing what you need to be doing and dealing with what’s actually happening.
Exactly. I think that will segue to what I was going to say. As long as your phone does not become your reality, as long as you can consciously understand that what I see online is technically not real life — I’m talking about in the sense of social media. Other things, yes, but you have to still have this conscious effort that, “I still live in the real world and everything around me, I have to still cater to it.” I personally got affected by just a lot of screen time — my relationship with my girlfriend. I stopped catering to her [rather] than taking time to actually do the small simple things that she used to like, because I got so consumed in screen time, doing all this other stuff. I had to realize that, “Hey, you know what? This is great. It does create value for me, but I need to understand that it’s not my reality. My reality is everything I could touch around me.“
I see, and I love that distinction. The last thing I want to finish up on is, if anyone listening out there wants to get Shilling installed on their phone, do the beta test, or start the program, how would someone go about finding some information? Is there a website or a good way to get a hold of that?
We have a waitlist open at shillingapp.com. We have the waitlist open, and we are hoping to roll out the beta test in April for iOS and Android. We’re hoping around April, which is two months from now, to roll out the beta test for both Android and iOS. We’ll pioneer the first users that signed up, and then load them on, and then run the beta test.
Is there a web address to get onto this waitlist?
Yes, shillingapp.com. You need to go to shillingapp.com. It’s the first thing you’ll see.
Okay, shillingapp like A-P-P? I just want to make sure that everything is clear, that anyone that wants to go on can clearly have that information. For everyone listening out there that has some of the same struggles you’re talking about, like the self doubt that we’re talking about before, or that worry before jumping, taking that leap of faith, leaving that situation that they don’t really like, do you have any last words of advice for them
Yeah. I’d say if you’re passionate about something, don’t let anyone tell you, you can’t do it. Just keep building. Obviously, not every endeavor you’ll try to go on will be successful, but if you’re passionate about it, just go ahead and build it out. You’ll have a lot of obstacles, but just find a way to block out the naysayers and the noise, and just focus on your passion and what you actually want to build.
Block out the naysayers and the noise. Actually, I’ve been trying to think of a good, quick way to think about all that stuff, and that’s quite amazing — naysayers and noise. Taban, thank you so much for joining us today on Actions-Antidotes, telling us your amazing story, and the importance of being around people that are going to be naysayers and noise, but also the people that you surround yourself that are going to encourage you, like your family, your girlfriend, everyone else.
I’d like to thank all the listeners out there for tuning into Actions-Antidotes, hopefully getting inspired, hopefully getting some ideas about how to block out the naysayers and noise, and really continuously reconnect with that passion, whatever it was, whatever observation, experience, made you decide that you wanted to pursue whatever that pursuit is out there, because the world is going to be a better place when each and every one of you out there, listening right now, really goes out and pursues what you really want. I’d like to encourage you to tune back in to Actions-Antidotes. We’re going to have more guests with amazing stories like this one and more ideas for you as you continue your journey in life.
Yes. Thanks for having me, Stephen. I really enjoyed coming on the podcast. If anyone has any questions about Shilling, you can reach us out at shillingapp.com. We have our email address at the bottom of the website. Feel free to ask any questions that you might have.
Fantastic. I hope you all do, and I hope you all take care of your investments no matter what you decide. Have a good one.
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About Taban Yolo
Taban Yolo is the co-founder and CEO of Shilling. He has a background in Accounting and Finance and hasa passion to be of service to others.
He spearheaded the idea to make an app that turns your screen time into profitable investments.