Automating Success with JotForm

Are you struggling to automate your business processes effectively? Discover how Aytekin Tank, founder of JotForm, built a 25-million-customer empire through automation and strategic thinking. In this episode, Aytekin reveals his four key principles for successful automation, including the importance of clarifying priorities and embracing 'lazy' thinking to find efficient solutions. Learn why reducing free features can sometimes hinder growth, and how the '50-50 rule' balances product development with marketing efforts. Aytekin shares invaluable insights on scaling a global brand from Turkey, competing with tech giants like Google, and the power of free products in driving viral growth. Whether you're a tech-savvy entrepreneur or just starting to explore automation, this episode offers practical advice to streamline your business operations and focus on what truly matters.

Recommended book: "Creative Selection" by Ken Kocienda

Everyday AI: Your daily guide to grown with Generative AI
Can't keep up with AI? We've got you. Everyday AI helps you keep up and get ahead.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

Peppertype - Virtual Content Assistant
Generate better content copies in seconds with the power of Artificial Intelligence.

Riverside - Your online recording studio
The easiest way to record podcasts and videos in studio quality from anywhere. All from the browser.

AWeber - free email marketing
Grow, sell, and engage with your audience—simple email marketing in one place. Free trial.

Podcastpage.io -
Launch your podcast website in minutes

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Chapters

• 19:37 [Ad] Everyday AI: Your daily guide to grown with Generative AI
• 20:24 (Cont.) Automating Success with JotForm

Transcript

Jim James (00:00)
Automation does not save you time. What it does is it saves you the work that you don't want to do. So you can focus on the work that you love. This is just one of the pieces of wisdom that my guest today is going to share with us. And he should know because he has over 25 million, that's right, 25 million customers for the automation products that he has invented, built, he's fended off Google. And he is on the show to talk to us about how he's built,

JotForm. We're joined by Aytekin Tank from Ankara, Turkey. Aytekin, welcome to the show.

Aytekin Tank (00:38)
Thank you, Jim, for having me on your show.

Jim James (00:41)
It's my pleasure because we all know JotForm. It's an amazing platform for automation, but you're going to kindly share with us some thoughts about automation as a pioneer in the industry. building your first websites back in 2000. So you've had over 25 years really of building platforms and tools for us. But also we're going to look at how you fended off Google when they tried to enter this space and also about your golden rule of the 50-50

when it comes to building your business. So, Aytekin why don't you tell us first of all about automation and then we'll talk about JotForm , automation, why should an entrepreneur care about automation for their business?

Aytekin Tank (01:25)
Yeah, let me tell you my story, how I started really focusing on automation. In the early days of JotForm, would actually like when we were like this small team, like I think we had like three, four employees at that time. And I actually made the mistake that's described on the E-MIT mystery book, which is like working in your business as opposed to on your business.

So I was actually buried under busy work. I was doing everything, accounting, legal, HR, ordering supplies for the office. I would do customer support from morning to night. And I would deal with emails. I would do everything. And right at this moment, something happened. And Google actually came into the ring. Google came out with the product Google Forms. So here I am,

I built this innovative product to make creating forms easily. And now I have to compete with Google. And the problem was I wasn't actually improving my product as much as I should have been. And I needed to find a solution. And when I looked into like deep inside, looked into like, can I solve this problem? You know, I remembered that I'm actually

know, programmer, I worked as a developer for another company and before that I studied computer science. So, you know I'm a programmer, I know how to automate things. So why am I spending so much time like doing all these things, all these busy work by myself, right? So I decided, okay, I'm gonna automate and delegate everything so that can just focus on the product, like really improving my product so I can compete with Google. And so,

like one of the early things that I did was I delegated the support. Like I just went to Upwork and hired like five remote employees around the world. And then I said, OK, you take care of the support. You know, I got out of that. And like I was dealing with emails like so much like just so much email stuff like just I was just looking at the same emails again and again because there was no priority in my emails like just my inbox was

mess. And then I actually thought about like, can I automate this? How can I automate the way I process my emails? And I actually discovered that like, I actually look for all these different products, nothing really worked for me. But then I actually looked at Google Gmail, and I discovered that Gmail has so many powerful features. I first thought like writing these scripts, but you know, I could actually accomplish the priority stuff, it just

using the filters and labels and using Gmail's features to build this priority inbox for myself. And that also saved me probably like three hours every day. So I started building all these automations for myself, and that saved me so much. And the way we developed our product, the way we tried to get more customers for our users, all those things I actually started automating more and more. And then I applied the same principles

I started teaching the same principles to our employees. I started applying the same principles to our product because our product is also an automation product. People use forms. People don't fill out forms just to fill out forms. People fill out forms so that they actually need to accomplish something. They need to apply for something, register for something, or pay for something.

There is a workflow and if it could help people on the next steps, then we can actually, if we can automate more and more stuff, like our users who, you know, the owners of the forms can actually save more time. So we, I started applying the same principles to my product as well. And this actually resulted in me, you know, my efficiency and productivity improves and our product improved, our team improved.

And the result was like our growth actually improved and our product improved. And as a result of that, JotForm became much more successful. I actually shared all the things that I learned during this journey in a book. I released that book last year, Automate Your Busy Work, and it became a Wall Street Journal bestseller.

Jim James (06:06)
Well, that's amazing to have been, you know, both an entrepreneur and then also an author. And for those people, obviously, I will include Aytekin's book in the show notes. It's called Automate Your Busy Work. And of course, as always, I put a link in the show notes.

Just back up just a little bit. How did you go from building web forms as a programmer to getting your first tranche of customers? If you can maybe go back before Google entered the market, how did you get your first tranche of clients?

Aytekin Tank (06:45)
Yeah. So before I started JotForm, I was actually working for a media company in New York. so we had these like over 100 websites and we had these editors and I was this programmer and I was a developer and our editors would come to me and they would always ask me like, can you build this form for me? Just, and like just,

building so many forms during that time. I kind of hated it because it wasn't very challenging, just building these HTML forms, connecting them to these emails and databases. It wasn't that exciting. I could be doing more exciting stuff, but I discovered that there is a big need for this. And I actually wanted to just give this work to something else. I tried to find the tools that could take away this work from me, but I couldn't find a good product.

And that's when I knew that I should be starting JotForm , like I should be starting this business. And that's how I came up with the idea because like I saw the need in my previous JotForm. So when I first like released JotForm , so I quit my JotForm in 2005 summer and then I worked on the first version until like 2006 February. And then I released the first version. Because

I built these side projects in the past. I knew that like biggest challenge was actually marketing, like getting PR, getting like people to like discover my product. Like that's the hard part, right? Because you can build a great product, but nobody hears about it. It dies because it means people to use it. So I thought about it and at that time, the,

I used the technology and angles when I released the product as my PR strategy. What I did was, Gmail just came out a year before JavaScript. So people were talking about this new type of product that could actually work on browser. Today, it feels weird. At that time, you actually install software in your computer. We also use something called CD-ROMs.

Like, TV, like, he listens to music on CDs. Right? yeah, people, like, young listeners probably never heard of that, So my kids definitely don't know about them. So I actually just, you know, I started blogging, talking about how the web applications are the feature. Like, that was my blog, like, web apps are feature. And people were saying, hey, you can never do Photoshop on the browser.

Jim James (09:06)
You're taking us back. Yeah. Yeah, I go back to floppy disks. Yeah.

Aytekin Tank (09:36)
And today we know that Figma is a browser product and beats Photoshop. There's just so many examples like that. And everything became browser cloud-based during this time. But at that time, it was something interesting. So to showcase my product, what I did was I actually created this form builder.

That could work on a single page because at that time, you would actually, when you use like browser products, you would actually click on a link or button. You would go to another page, right? I built a single page app where you could actually drag and drop stuff that people never saw before. It was very new, like just being discovered recently. just like, you know, instant edit, like you could just click on something, it. Like that was also, you know, not seen much. So.

all these ideas Gmail introduced and the new products that were coming out, new JavaScript libraries were coming out. So that was like the tech news was about this, like building these single page apps on the web. So I used this kind of technology angle as my PR strategy. And that worked. So all these

text size, like I started posting on forums, like I actually launched on business of software forums. So I talked about the technology angle. So as a result, like I received a lot of links, lot of mentions on the tech news sites. And that kind of created my initial traffic. And that was useful because I really also had a useful product. So people came in and they became users and they started mentioning to others.

And the snowball started. But I needed that initial traffic, initial users, initial maybe 1,000 users. That I was able to build that using technology angle. And if you are doing a startup today, it's an AI angle, right? If you just have an AI product, people will talk about it and just people will feature it. So I think that's a lesson that's like,

That's an evergreen lesson that any entrepreneur can use anytime.

Jim James (11:59)
Yeah, and this idea that you get to your first, if you 1000 trial customers through building something useful, demonstrating it in real time and giving it away for free. And we're to talk a bit later on about pricing strategy, we, Isaac Kimber? Let's just talk about automation because you are an automation guru. It'd be wrong of me to miss out the opportunity to get you just explain for those of us that are not very good at it.

Maybe one or two reasons that we would use automation. What sort of rules or guidance would you give to someone thinking about automation?

Aytekin Tank (12:40)
Yeah, so I mean, when I started the, when I was writing the book, actually, the AI craze wasn't that big. it's kind of, my book kind of in a year kind of became old, but I think the ideas, the principles that I talk about in the book still applies today, even a year later, even though the examples like just.

Just every week, if I write the book, the Automate Your Busy Workbook this week, the examples I include would be old next month. It's just the amount of changes happening every month is just incredible. Just so many things coming out, just announcing new products have been announced. At JotForm, we are also working on AI products.

Jim James (13:17)
Yeah.

Aytekin Tank (13:31)
But the automation principles, the automation ideas stay the same. So I can talk about those things. In the book, I talk about the automation principles. And the first principle is clarify your priorities because automation is still a tool. It's not gonna decide what you should be doing for yourself. So,

and in the book, I talk about the time audit, which you create this spreadsheet, you make a note of how you spend your time. Maybe every hour, you just make a note. I wrote emails, I created this report, I asked for it, this customer. And you create this audit for a week. And at the end of the week, you total them up. And then you come up with this total that says, OK,

You spent this much of time doing this. You spent this much of time doing that, And then I want you to ask like two questions. What should I spend my time on and what shouldn't I spend my time on? And when you look at those totals with those questions, like, what are the tasks that you spend your time on that you shouldn't be spending your time on? And the most important question is the second one

the time you spend on things that you shouldn't be spending time on. So that's why I want you to focus on automating those things first, like automate or delegate them, like just get rid of them because it's not just about the time you lose. It's also about your focus, your energy, your motivation. Let's say in the morning you wake up and you look at your computer and then you start going into that like

you know, answering emails, like just doing all those tasks, right? But this was your most like, your best time, right? You are like, you are most creative time for you. Maybe it's different for everyone. Some people are like, you know, they prefer to work at night, but whatever is the best time for you, you shouldn't be spending that time in things that doesn't matter. Like that really doesn't matter. Like a year from now, they're not gonna matter, right? But if you spend your time on things that really matter, that's

really what you should be spending time on. So the automation, you first clarify your priorities, you automate those things that you shouldn't be spending your time on. And the second one is harness your laziness and impatience. Because there's a Bill Gates quote, and he says that, will always hire a lazy person to do a hard JotForm because that person will find an easy way to do it. And if you,

If you're too patient, if you are too hardworking, that's not helping you. That's actually, you gotta say, enough is enough. I'm just not gonna spend any more time on this. And that brings me the third principle, you need to make time to save time. You need to spend time to do research, to kind of understand how you do stuff, how you spend your time.

Like what kind of tools can help you so that you can actually save the time in the end. So yeah, if you become impatient, if you become lazy and impatient, and if you take the time to learn the tools, just use automation as much as, and today it's even more possible. Like there are all these task tools that can actually take away many tasks from you. And now there are like with the AI,

they are becoming even more explosive. Because AI, I'm also building an AI product for JotForm. And just, it's incredible. Because AI is so fuzzy. In the past, would build products by just building like this, buttons and text boxes and just UI, right? Today, we can build products just by really understanding the kind of understanding the

intentions of the users, goals or objectives of the users. And if we can understand them without even clicking a button, then we can actually create something for them, a result for them. Just AI makes it much easier for product builders to create products that can actually do much more. So it's going to get even better and better over time. And the automations will get it. That's why I think the automation principles matter even

even more now. And the fourth principle is the embrace systems thinking. You have to have this mindset. And I talk about the automation flywheel in the book. I don't need to get into that right now. But it's about building your system. Automations are just single parts of these systems. But you're building a system, overall system. And you need to be able to kind of

Jim James (18:21)
Yeah.

Aytekin Tank (18:47)
build and iterate on your systems. So basically you are, instead of being this individual contributor who is doing everything, you are becoming this manager who is actually managing all these systems, all these automations who are working for you. So as a manager, what the good managers does is they look at, they kind of first train their people, right? So you train your automations, you build your automations, and then they give them feedback,

and they kind of watch their effectiveness, look at the numbers, be aware when there's something failing. So you have to have the systems thinking idea to be able to build your automations and be the manager and be much more productive and effective.

Jim James (19:38)
That's why you're the expert, Aytekin. I'm talking to Aytekin Tank, who's the founder and CEO of company called JotForm.

What I will ask you though is about overwhelm, Aytekin, because you've just explained your four principles, which include the automation and if you like delegation and perhaps the assassination of tasks and the need to think of having a systems approach to your business. For those of us that are not tech oriented, but don't come from a tech background.

Where do we start because automation and now using, for example, bots. And I was looking yesterday at creating a, you know, a bot for creating a storytelling to, if you like, be the handler for chat GPT, because otherwise you're dealing directly with chat GPT, aren't you? can use these bots now to kind of manage the GPT. But where does a, where does a person start? Because you're already at the sort of 20,000 foot level, but if someone hasn't got any automation

and any processes. Can you give us advice of what would be, if you like, the first step? Is it a spreadsheet where we write this does this and this does this, or is it a piece of paper? Where would we start? Because I think for many of us, it's getting quite overwhelming.

Aytekin Tank (21:03)
I mean, we start with the biggest pain, right? Where are we? Where are we are wasting most of our time? And sometimes the automation is not easy because it's not like a single task. Like there is a is a workflow. So there is like multiple steps going on. Like you need to send an email, someone needs to reply back to you, then you need to do something else, right? So I would actually start with the biggest pain.

And that's actually about the priorities, right? Like the time you are wasting on those things that are not really high priority for you, they are actually taking your time, right? So you start with your biggest pain and then the next step is to kind of do your research. Like what tools people use to accomplish this thing, right? Before Calendly, like we were wasting like so much time just

back and forth, like just it's crazy. Just Calendly saves us so much time because it's a product that allows us to kind of just put our free available time out there so people can actually go and just pick the time for us. So just what's the biggest pain? What makes us really, gets us angry like just, and just try to find the products that can help us.

Jim James (22:16)
Yeah.

Aytekin Tank (22:31)
Just do the research, make time to save time. And just try something. Just start with something small. Automate something small, and then you can build on it. But you kind of need to time box it. If you don't time box it, are going to be, are going to, you are because the reason that you are actually doing automation is because you are so busy. But if you are so busy to even not automate things, then you are going to get more busy.

Jim James (22:34)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Aytekin Tank (23:00)
And so you want to kind of timebox it, like just one block of time every week that you say, OK, this is my OPEX time, right? This is my operational excellence time. This is my automation time, right? Just I'm going to focus on automation. I'm going to learn something. I'm just going to go to g2.com. I'm going to search for one of the tasks, like one of the workflows I have, and then just find a product that can actually help me.

And I'm going to read the reviews because they tell me how other people are actually solving the same problem. Or I'm going to go to YouTube, just search about it, and just watch someone actually solving the same problem, automating the same problem. And today is a great age to do that because 10 years ago, this wasn't possible because just the number of tools we have, the number of automation tools, the number of fast tools we have is incredible.

Jim James (23:55)
Yeah, it's becoming.

Aytekin Tank (23:57)
It's a great time to actually automate.

Jim James (23:59)
But I think what you've also said there for those of us that are not tech savvy is the need to set some time apart to think about automation. Because we often thought, know, sales, marketing, HR, manufacturing, distribution. And now it's really a discrete JotForm function, isn't it? To think about automation as a management function in the same way we might think about

spending time on finance. So that's really, really useful. Now you've managed to scale the business. You've got 650 people, 25 million customers. Let's just look at how you've managed to grow from a branding point of view, JotForm , because you've obviously navigated the issue with Google came in, but I can have you then grown to be this really global player from Turkey, which

isn't necessarily known for being a tech center. It's not coming out of Silicon Valley, for example, or maybe out of parts of Germany or the UK. So how have you managed to build that brand globally?

Aytekin Tank (25:07)
Yeah. I mean, one thing that helped me was I was in the US before before I started JotForm So I worked. I lived in the US for nine years. So that kind of helped me study in the US and worked in the US and just kind of and worked in a like a media company and got that experience to kind of understand like, you know, what's needed. Just I think that that was an important background

to have. And the reason I went back to Turkey was I'm a bootstrapper. I'm still a bootstrapper. JotForm never received an investment. 18 years later, I'm still a bootstrapper. when I decided to grow my business and decided to hire developers, I'm going go back. I'm going to move back with my family, with my parents, and just reduce my like

runway to infinity because I had no expense. Of course, I started by office space and hired employees, hired developers, programmers. But I always kept that balance, just always spend less than I earn. And after some years, I was able to go back to US and start our San Francisco office and just

Jim James (26:08)
Heh.

Aytekin Tank (26:34)
we still have an important office in San Francisco as well our marketing and sales teams are actually in the US. But in terms of scale, how did we get the scale? I think there are two things that are really important. So one of the things is JotForm is free. And the other one is JotForm has some virality. It's not like viral as like a social media product.

But it has some virality because people actually share forms with each other. If I want you to fill out a form for me, I send you the form and then you siege out from there. So that kind of increases the exposure to the brand and people go and create their own free. And this actually became more explosive because we had a free product. So free product.

used by other people also has some viral tip meant that like people were kind of using this freely and sharing with each other. And then more people were coming because it has some virality and they were also using this product. And then they were like kind of expanding exponentially. So that I think those two things are the reason for our growth. And we also cared about SEO

always like even when I was starting out, I had a blog. I continue to blog even today like I continue to blog. I write for Forbes and, you know, entrepreneur magazine and just wrote a book and you know, still writing guest posts on many places, doing podcasts like we do today. So I believe in like just going out there and you know, sharing my experiences share my what I learned

with others that also helps. Yeah, but it's 18 years, so it's taken a while. But I enjoyed the journey. I think the journey is important. I enjoyed it as much when we were like five-person team or 50-person team. And today, we are like 600 employees. And I still enjoy it because I

Jim James (28:30)
Yeah.

Aytekin Tank (28:54)
I kind of deal with different things on different times. yeah, that organic growth. Yeah.

Jim James (29:01)
So we've got some, yeah, and so the free gives people a chance to try five forms, for example, and a hundred monthly submissions and they can upgrade once they've seen it working. Aytekin, I applaud you for the dedication and perseverance and also as you say, you've contributed as a thought leader as well. What would be one mistake that you'd share without trying to embarrass you, something that you've learned on the way that you would?

suggest people don't try themselves.

Aytekin Tank (29:33)
Yeah, a mistake I made was kind of, I don't really understand that free was so important. Just at some point, like, you know, our team is actually coming up with ideas and they say, okay, let's reduce these limits, right? And our team actually, and in some cases we reduce our limits, like for example,

payment forms are really important. At JotForm, have every year billions of dollars are processed. Over JotForm, we have integrations with our 50 payment gateways like PayPal, Stripe, Square. so we had this free version that was like 10, you could get like 10 payments per month. And then we decided, okay, hey, people are getting paid, right? They can pay for the paid version.

let's reduce the limit for the free version. We reduced that to three and it was actually very successful in the beginning. We saw that people were upgrading more, we got more upgrades and it was going well. But a year later, when we were actually checking out our dashboards, one of the things we discussed was our payment forms, the growth of our payment forms actually stopped. Instead of going up and up and up, it was actually going straight, it wasn't growing anymore.

So the number of new payment users were actually the same as the number of people who were turning out. And then that resulted in a straight line. And then when we looked at when that started, it was exactly the time that we actually reduced the limits. So if you, you know, I always believe in the free because free is a great marketing strategy and it gets people to try your product

Jim James (31:12)
Mm.

Aytekin Tank (31:27)
and get people to trust your product because once they try your product and if your product is good, they're gonna keep using your product. And then they're gonna upgrade at some point, right? But when we actually kind of lost our way, when we forgot about that, when we reduced the limits there, we discovered that, hey, we actually reduced the growth. Yeah, that was a great lesson to learn.

Jim James (31:49)
Yeah, really interesting. So yeah, thank you for that. So Free created an on-ramp, didn't it really, as the funnel? And then it sounds like when you reduce that, you actually sort of constricted the width of the funnel there. Aytekin Tank over there in Ankara, Turkey. You're also someone who has built an amazing business over 25 years. What would be your, if like, your one piece of advice for

fellow entrepreneurs.

Aytekin Tank (32:21)
I have a rule that I called 50-50 rule. So you should be spending half of your time with your product and half of your time with growth. And I always believe in this because if you have a product that's not good, you can spend your time. You can be really good at marketing. You can be really good at sales. You're gonna bring lots of people to try your product,

but they're gonna try your product and they're gonna just leave it, leave away. They're gonna leave bad reviews about your product. They're not gonna refer it to other people. They're not gonna talk about it. And you will not have, like you just constantly, it's a leak bucket. You constantly bringing more traffic, but then they are just leaking out, right? So if your product is lacking, it doesn't matter how much, how good you are at marketing. On the reverse side,

if you have a great product, but if you don't spend your time growing your product, if you don't spend your time marketing, what's happening is that nobody is discouraged. So you're going to run out of money, you're going to run out of business. And the other thing is you cannot have a great product without users because it's a feedback cycle. You have a product and you can believe that you have the best product in the world.

But unless also people are using it, you don't know if it's real. And when people start using it, you're going to discover that it's failing everywhere. It just has so many problems. And then you get that feedback. You fix it. And you get additional feedback. You fix it. Every time a user encounters your product, they're going to discover new problems. And the problems you fix may go away, but they're going to discover new problems. And they're going to suggest new features.

Right? So it's a feedback cycle. And if you can do them both at the same time, then you can actually go much faster. But it doesn't mean that you always have to have 50-50. Like you don't have to do this every day or every week or every month. Sometimes you will discover that, okay, I have a good product. People are coming to my website, they are signing up and they are using my product. And then they stick.

So I have a good product, but I'm only getting like 10 signups a month. So nobody is actually coming, right? So in those cases, you kind of have to say, okay, this year, I'm gonna focus, this six months, maybe I'm gonna focus on growth. I'm gonna focus on marketing. So, then you have to, once you reach a balance where you know, okay, this is good. I'm getting growth. I'm getting people to use my product and my product is good

Jim James (35:05)
Thank

Aytekin Tank (35:15)
then you can actually keep that balance. And even today, I follow that advice myself. just, I'm focused on like, half of my time is focused on JotForm from AI, our new AI product. And half of my time is focused on like our enterprise growth. So because we have been disaster is product, but people are coming, like these big companies were coming to us, telling us like, hey, sell your product. And then maybe I was saying,

Jim James (35:17)
Right.

Aytekin Tank (35:43)
we don't have a salesperson. And then they were going to a competitor. So we built this enterprise product, we started the sales team, but we need to work on the growth of that product. So I'm focused on that half of my time. And I'm still seeing myself as a startup founder. That's why I'm just leaving everything else to my executives. I have a good executive team.

Jim James (35:45)
Yeah.

Okay.

Aytekin Tank (36:12)
I have a good COO, Chief Operating Officer, who is just taking care of all this stuff, that I'm able to focus on these important things even today.

Jim James (36:23)
Arita Kinteng, thank you for that description of really how you managed to deal with both product development and customer engagement as if you like what we might say the yin and the yang, but continuous cycle of time and energy as the CEO. Could you share a book or a podcast that you have found useful as well, because then we'll ask you how people get hold of you.

Aytekin Tank (36:47)
My favorite book is Creative Selection. It's Ken Kocienda. Hopefully I'm not saying the name incorrectly. Creative Selection is a book about Apple. he was actually working as an engineer for Apple for a long time. He worked closely with Steve Jobs. And I learned so much from that book. And I applied them to my company, to my business, to my product

and all those lessons. And it's a great book. It's a very like tactical book that teaches you kind of how Apple does these things. And if you see yourself as like, I see Apple and Steve just as my idols because because of the great products they have created and they are still creating. And that's why I'm kind of trying to learn from them. So that's a great book. And the reason they my first podcast is marketing against the green. This is actually made by,

and you know, I'm a CEO, right? I'm a founder and CEO. I'm not a marketing person. But this book is not just marketing. They talk about AI a lot. So that's why one of the reasons I love and they are not just looking at marketing. They're just looking at whole growth marketing, like just, you know, great products. And this podcast is made by the CEO of HubSpot and the CMO of Zapier. He actually moved to

HubSpot as well, but yeah, it's a great podcast about marketing.

Jim James (38:21)
Brilliant, they're against the grain. Let's look at that one. If people want to get hold of you, where can they go?

Aytekin Tank (38:29)
I have a website, aytekintank.com My first name, last name.com. in this website, I feature all my writings, because I write in so many places, Forbes, Entrepreneur, you can just find them in a single place. But most importantly, the first chapter of my book is available for free in my website. So you can just go there and read the first chapter if you like it, you can get it

or Amazon or on a bookstore. Yeah, aytekintank.com.

Jim James (39:01)
And that's A-Y-T-E-K-I-N and then tank T-A-N-K with some very, very nice fonts selected there. I can thank, when I got the email through from your team about coming on the show, I couldn't believe it because JotForm is so famous. You know, you are part of the landscape and hearing your story to have here really how you've helped to grow the landscape as well for automation. So thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing

your vision, your story, your perseverance, been amazing. Thank you so much.

Aytekin Tank (39:35)
Thank you,

Jim James (39:37)
So we've been listening to Aytekin Tank and I will of course share his details in the show notes. And I think many, takeaways, because it's been a very sort of rich conversation, but this idea that we need to spend time on automation, I think for me, is the big takeaway because I've thought of automation almost like a side thought that I do on the weekends and on the evenings. But the conversation with Aytekin really

demonstrates that automation is fundamental to this growth of the business and JotForm provides a number of tools that we can use to help us to do that. If you've enjoyed this show, do please leave a review and share it with a fellow unnoticed entrepreneur because I don't want anyone to be left behind. And until we meet again, my name's Jim James. Thank you so much for joining me on the UnNoticed Entrepreneur.