Jon: 00:10

Hey, everyone. Welcome to build your SaaS. This is the behind the scenes story of building a web app in 2020. I'm John Buddha, a software engineer.

Justin: 00:18

And I'm Justin Jackson. I do product and marketing. Follow along as we build trans sister dotfm. Hey. Wait.

Justin: 00:29

What what happened to my notes? Oh, I I wrote them in the wrong place. Oh, no. I because we were just right before we recorded, we were talking about all the things. We've got a lot of things.

Justin: 00:41

Listeners, this is episode

Jon: 00:45

100. 100.

Justin: 00:49

1 0. Big 100. And we wanna talk a little bit about that, how it feels to be here. But you were you were sharing this thing with me that I think is like, it everybody can identify with this with this. So what happened?

Jon: 01:06

I don't know. Yeah. I'll alright. I'll I was gonna anonymize it, but I it does there's no reason to. So a while back, I was on, I was on a podcast called Code Story, and Noah interviewed me for that.

Jon: 01:23

And that was a that was a fun show to be on. And so he emailed me, it's probably been a couple weeks now, and all he wanted was a simple testimonial for some marketing material that he gives to prospective speakers or prospective interviewer interviewees

Justin: 01:41

Yeah. Okay.

Jon: 01:41

For the show, which seems like it should not be a big deal. But, I didn't get back to him right away, and then it just kind of kept going longer and longer to the point where I was like, hey, man. I'll get back to you soon. I'm sorry for the delay. And I still haven't written it.

Jon: 02:00

And we were we were just talking about this. It it should I just don't know what to say. And and I have this I have this draft email open. I'm looking at it right now. And it and all that's in the email is sorry for the delay, Noah.

Jon: 02:15

I haven't sent it yet. And there's no other I was gonna write the actual testimonial, and I it's still not there.

Justin: 02:21

It's it's just hanging over your head. It's just it's like

Jon: 02:26

it really shouldn't be that hard. It just feels like a a chore or, like, a task that I have to do. There's no deadline.

Justin: 02:33

Mhmm.

Jon: 02:33

So I'm just gonna push it off forever.

Justin: 02:35

Yeah. The the what's funny about that is we could all identify with this. And now for sure, Noah should be asking for recommendations and for testimonials. People should do that. That is something you should do.

Justin: 02:50

But we've all had those kind of requests that is like, hey. Can you do this for me? And then it just feels like work. Yeah. It feels like feels like homework.

Justin: 03:01

And now I don't know if people have noticed this, but I am an expert tennis testimonial giver.

Jon: 03:08

You just have some ad some Mad Libs. You just fill in the blanks. You have, like, a a bunch of prewritten ones ready to go.

Justin: 03:14

I'm just I'm I'm so used to it. So, like, I'm writing all day. I I write tweets for a living now. That's my new job. And when people ask me, what I do now is I just go, okay.

Justin: 03:28

I'll just write some right now. And, part of it is practice. Part of it's my personality. But I like, Jack McDade just asked me if I could write a testimonial for his, new course called radical design course.com. And, you can go there and see the testimonial I gave him.

Justin: 03:47

But I I wrote him, like, 6 testimonials in about 6 minutes.

Jon: 03:54

I'd yeah. You showed me that. And they're all of his replies, like, oh, man. It's great. It's perfect.

Jon: 03:57

That's awesome.

Justin: 04:00

And people ask me, how come your ugly face shows up everywhere on all these websites? I'm I'm testimony on refactoring UI, I think. Oh yeah. The components. I have a testimonial on Fathom.

Justin: 04:16

And it's just because I've to me, it's just like, yeah. I can write it. I'll write it right now. So I might maybe I'll ghostwrite your testimonial for Noah. Okay.

Jon: 04:28

Noah, if you're listening, I'm sorry.

Justin: 04:33

The I think it does this there's a tension here because you do want to, every once in a while, reach out to somebody and ask them to do something for you. But there there's also the tension is your request could turn out to be to feel like work or homework for that person.

Jon: 05:00

Yeah.

Justin: 05:01

And, like, there's certain things like submitting to Product Hunt. A lot of people ask me to do that. It it started feeling like homework to me. And, like, I would just have this whole other job, which was just to submit things to Product Hunt. And so increasingly, like, unless I have some sort of relationship with people, I don't do those things, you know?

Justin: 05:23

And I'm I'm trying to get better at saying no to things right away that I just know I'm not gonna enjoy. Yeah. So

Jon: 05:30

Yeah. Yeah. This one this one feels different because it was, like, I was involved in it, obviously. If it was just out of the blue, like, I I probably would be easier for me to say no. But

Justin: 05:42

The another trick, and this is what Adam Wadden did. What did he say? He said, he basically just said, hey, can I get a testimonial from you? I'll write out something kind of initial that might fit you, and then you can modify it if you want, or you can just use that. And I was like Yeah.

Justin: 05:59

Yeah. So I had a starting point where I could, like, oh, okay. I I just tweak this, rewrite this part. Looks good.

Jon: 06:08

Yeah. That'd be cool. Yeah. I I suppose it'd be it'd be nice if would include something like, hey. This this is what a couple other people wrote.

Jon: 06:14

Yeah.

Justin: 06:14

Yeah. You should just write back and say, hey. What if some other people wrote?

Jon: 06:18

Yeah.

Justin: 06:19

Anyway, I I just thought it was perfect because it's like, it's such a common thing that that we all experience.

Jon: 06:27

It is. And I you know, a part of it too is, I think, related to just how much other stuff's going on and

Justin: 06:31

Yeah.

Jon: 06:32

Other things that are bouncing around my head, and it's just like there's no actual space

Justin: 06:37

in there for that. You do have to be careful about that stuff though because it can overwhelm you. You can have all of these things you've said yes to. And, it's like death by a 100 paper cuts. Right?

Jon: 06:51

Yeah. Right. Here we are at a 100 100 episodes.

Justin: 06:59

Here we are. And you had asked me earlier, you know, we're at a 100 episodes. Business is good. How are we supposed to be feeling right now? Yeah.

Justin: 07:11

Which has become a a a reoccurring

Jon: 07:14

It should. Theme of It it is. The show. It's

Justin: 07:18

We're we're we are in our midlife crisis of SaaS building.

Jon: 07:23

Yeah. I I mean, yeah. I think I feel like we're just in a spot where it's gonna feel uncomfortable.

Justin: 07:32

Uncomfortable in what way?

Jon: 07:33

I think for me, the the problem is not quite knowing what is next. Mhmm. Like, we I know we've discussed this. It's like you you have all this excitement and kind of, like, hard work and anticipation all wrapped up in it getting to this certain point Mhmm. Which is, you know, the business being successful and us being able to comfortably live off of this company we built, which we have done, which is awesome.

Jon: 08:04

And I'm you know, I think we're both incredibly proud of it. Mhmm. But then you get to that point, and it's sort of like, what what's next? Mhmm. Like,

Justin: 08:16

meaning, what do we shoot for next?

Jon: 08:19

What do we shoot for? I guess, what's the next challenge? Because I I don't know if you're like this, but for me, it's like the the fun part is the journey, not the destination, which I think a lot of people say, and I think it's true. It's like, the destination is, you know, you get there and whatever. Mhmm.

Jon: 08:39

But the actual journey to that point is the exciting part. Yeah. And this this might kind of dovetail into, like, other things we're wrestling with, but it just feels like we're we're at a place where we're now we're trying to, like, keep our customers around and prove that we're worth the money they're spending. Mhmm.

Justin: 09:00

Yep. And yeah. And yeah. There's so many ways to slice this. As I was quickly thinking about this because, yeah, we've been talking about it internally.

Justin: 09:15

Ward Sandler and I talked about it 2 episodes ago. I thought of 3 things that I think would be interesting to think about. And this is, like, this is the time where you hire a business coach. This is this is where you bring in, you know, some motivating person to go, hey. Alright.

Justin: 09:35

This is what you gotta do. You know, you've you've you're down here, and you gotta be looking to the next peak over there. You're you've hiked this peak. You gotta hike the next peak. Come on.

Justin: 09:44

Let's fire you up. And, you know, we could do that. That that could be something we invest in. To me, I think there's there's 3 things I think about. Purpose, routine, and then some personal stuff.

Justin: 10:01

And I gotta I gotta remember actually what each of these mean. I mean, in terms of purpose, the initial purpose has been fulfilled. We're thinking, how do we make this thing a business that can support 2 people full time?

Jon: 10:18

Right.

Justin: 10:19

And we've accomplished that. And so now we need some a new sense of purpose. Now some of that might come from depending on and some of this is gonna be individual, and some of this is going to be us as a company. Individually, I have to think every day. Okay.

Justin: 10:42

What's fires me up? And, you know, I just got off this call with this this gal who works in the government, the US government, and, at the EOC. So this is the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. This gal was so excited about podcasting. It's like she she talked about how much like, she danced around the room when it it was submitted to Apple Podcasts.

Justin: 11:14

And I love stories like that. It fires me up to be talking to somebody who is excited about podcasting. And she wants to you know, they're trying to figure out how they can get some microphones in and make it sound better. She's she's learning how to edit them in Audacity. To me, that fires me up personally.

Justin: 11:38

So I think, you know, we have to figure out individually. Okay. What are the things that are gonna fire us up?

Jon: 11:43

Yeah.

Justin: 11:44

Do you have a sense of that what that will be for you, by the way? Like, what what your personal purpose around work might be?

Jon: 11:52

Yeah. Normally, I mean, for me, when I'm when I'm actually, like, getting a groove, actually working on the site, which is mostly the dashboard. I think the things that fire me up are kind of like when I can get excited about something new that I'm working on or some new library that I'm using or some new technique that just makes things easier, both for me and for our customers. Right?

Justin: 12:18

So Yeah.

Jon: 12:19

Yeah. Some new new library that's like, oh, man. This is great. This makes my life way easier. Mhmm.

Jon: 12:24

Simplifies everything.

Justin: 12:25

Gotcha. Okay. So that's that's important for us to identify. Right?

Jon: 12:30

Yeah. Yeah.

Justin: 12:30

There's also company purpose and or maybe our purpose as owners. And, you know, wrapped up in that is gonna be, you know, what difference are we trying to make in the world? How are we trying to make the world a better place? How are we trying to serve other people? How can our work, meaningfully impact other people?

Justin: 12:55

And, you know, part of that, up until now, you and I have been really this is why it's hard. Like, you have to almost like like Derek Sivers says, you have to take off the old clothes and then set them aside and then go and find some new clothes. But while you're looking for new clothes, you're naked and it's awkward. Right? Like, all you wanna do is go back to the old clothes.

Justin: 13:17

And in some ways, it's like we've we've got here. We gotta take off the old clothes. And now we were searching around for some new clothes, but it's awkward. And it could be, for example, we say, you know what? Our new purpose as a company is we want to hire a 100 people.

Justin: 13:40

Now, already, I'm like, no. I don't wanna do that. But part of that is the old clothes speaking. It could be the new clothes still involves us being a 2 person company. You know, that that could be true.

Justin: 13:55

But that's it feels like that's the kind of work we're gonna have to do next is figuring out what do we wanna do. Maybe our new purpose is gonna be saying, you know what? We want to get a 1,000 new people podcasting that wouldn't normally be podcasting before. Or instead of donating 1% to environmental causes, we want to donate 2%. Or, our purpose is to to like, we're just gonna get really fired up about bootstrapping and helping other people bootstrap their companies.

Justin: 14:36

There's all sorts of purposes we could have that are, you know, bigger than ourselves. For example, if we were gonna hire a 100 people I mean, if if we were even gonna hire 1 person full time, like, we don't have enough money for that right now.

Jon: 14:51

Right.

Justin: 14:51

So Or or we would have to

Jon: 14:53

be okay with us being paid less. Mhmm. Right. There

Justin: 14:56

you go. Yeah. So this is this is the trade off. Right? And this is why.

Justin: 15:02

Also, I think sometimes you have to be naked for a while because I mean, full transparency. I don't wanna pay myself less for a little while. I I I'm trying to to build up some savings and stuff that that I haven't had basically since, my first business when I was 21 or whatever failed.

Jon: 15:25

Mhmm.

Justin: 15:25

But that doesn't mean just because I don't like that idea today, on March 4th, doesn't mean I might not like it later. Right? So there's a in the same way that you shape a product, I think that purpose is

Jon: 15:41

one of

Justin: 15:41

those things, both individually and as a company. Those are things that get shaped, and then kind of, you decide what you have the appetite for, and then you commit to it. Right? We decided we had the appetite for, the the 1 Percent for the Planet program. And, you know, that that was that was something that got shaped over time and then we committed to.

Justin: 16:09

And I think this this would be the same thing. Anything else on that that you thought of?

Jon: 16:15

No. I don't think so. It's just I mean, it yeah. It'll be I think it'll be an ongoing thing we think about for a while.

Justin: 16:21

So related to this, I think there's also this idea of organizational, I said routine, but what I mean is cadence. So Mhmm. Buffer every year, the company buffer, they have, 2 team retreats. They got you know, every year in the spring, we're gonna go somewhere warm and every year in you know, they do this every year. And I think for us to be a healthy company, we're gonna have to implement some of that.

Jon: 16:53

Yeah. We do. I yeah. We definitely don't have any of that. I don't I don't feel, yeah, I don't feel like we have much of a cadence as a company, you know, even though we're small.

Justin: 17:03

Mhmm.

Jon: 17:04

We don't have these, yeah, either retreats or just, like, certain things to look forward to or Mhmm. Plan on happening. Even day to day. I mean, I think our weeks are just sort of each week is totally different.

Justin: 17:20

Yeah. Yeah. Or in some some cases, each week is too much the same.

Jon: 17:26

Right.

Justin: 17:26

Right?

Jon: 17:28

Yeah.

Justin: 17:28

And so, I think there's something to this. And again, there's there's the individual level and then there's the company level. Individually, you and I both have to figure out routines, a cadence, a rhythm that works for us. But then overall, as a company, we need to figure out what is the routine, the cadence of the company. And we've dipped our toes in some of this.

Justin: 17:55

You know, over Christmas, we took a bunch of time off, and that's now become, I think, going to become part of our our company's cadence every year. But there's also even thinking deeper about it. Like, okay. But what is that time for? What's the what's the deeper purpose behind what we're doing?

Justin: 18:17

Right?

Jon: 18:19

Right.

Justin: 18:19

And, I mean, yeah, I think we're gonna have to shape some of this stuff too. If we know that, you know, you or I or both of us gets a little we get a little bit depressed in the winter, then what are we going to do as a company to to, like, implement in our regular cadence to make that better. And Yep. It is hard. Like, in some ways, it is this is why oh, man.

Justin: 18:50

This it's hard. Because if you're just thinking about this yourself and it's all on you, it's, like, it's exhausting. It's, like, easier to just keep wearing the same clothes you've been wearing, you know, and not worry about it.

Jon: 19:05

Yeah. Change is change is hard. I think that's being being, I guess, vulnerable and sort of not knowing just like yeah. There's this idea of not knowing and, yeah, it's it's challenging.

Justin: 19:24

Yeah. Not knowing and also I think inertia. Mhmm. So what's the rule of inertia? It's like things won't move unless you apply an external force or something.

Jon: 19:38

Alright.

Justin: 19:38

I'm terrible at this with my family. Like, I'm just the worst. My family is the same way. Like, they want things to look forward to. Like, where are we gonna go on summer vacation?

Justin: 19:48

What are we doing for spring break? I am terrible at thinking forward to those things and building up anticipation for here's something we're looking forward to. We're all gonna go, you know, over here, and we're gonna go camping, and we're gonna I I'm just so bad at that. I'm I I get so caught up in my regular routine that it's hard for me to kinda, like, stick my head up above the, you know, above the weeds and go, oh, wait a second. I gotta set a milestone way out there that we're going for.

Jon: 20:22

Yeah. It's yeah. It's easy to forget about that stuff. I'm I'm the same way. I don't I'm not great at kind of setting those, I don't know, not goals, but, like, yeah, things to look forward to in the future.

Jon: 20:35

And, like, anytime they anytime they happen or anytime I do something, I was feels good, and it's worth it. Mhmm. But

Justin: 20:42

Now we we do have something we've done regularly in April. We did our Portland Portland founders retreat, last April. And I think the year before were we at XOXO the year before?

Jon: 20:55

No. That would be that would have been September.

Justin: 20:57

Okay. So we do have some sort of cadence that around April, we do something. This year, we'll be at MicroConf. April Assuming it's still happening. Assuming it's still happening.

Justin: 21:11

That's true. There's things getting canceled. Yeah. I think that April probably makes sense, but I wonder if that's something we wanna shift in the future. It it does feel like we we almost need something February January or February to kinda kick start us again.

Justin: 21:37

Yeah. And I'm wondering as an idea for next year, yeah, Jan Feb retreat, question mark, is something I think we should think about. And then, yeah, maybe thinking about what other time of year makes sense for us to do something, as a company. And it might, I think this is it's in my mind, it's, you know, you and I getting away together or, you know, there's all sorts of things we could do. Like, some some companies, they'll have a retreat every year where they all the families come too, and it's like work and play.

Justin: 22:15

Some places will do, you know, just a team retreat, and then they'll do a big company retreat, and they're both for different things. Because each of like, an event like that also pushes you to think about, like, well, if we're gonna be, you know, in Portland together in January, we need to have some sort of like, what are the big questions we're gonna be wrestling with? Like, is that when we set our calendar or you know? Yeah. I I think that's something to think about.

Justin: 22:44

And there I know there's people listening right now. Brian Ray is one of those people that whenever I listen to him, he just seems very thoughtful about stuff like this. Like, process and, you know, regular, He's really into remote work right now. And like, you know, here's the cadence you need to have with remote employees for 1 on ones and here what do you how are you how are you folks thinking about annual retreats and things like that? So, yeah, if if folks have ideas, let us know.

Justin: 23:20

I I'm glad we're we've been wrestling with this though. I I'm glad you brought it up because I think it is something that

Jon: 23:28

Yeah. It's a it's a weird feeling. I think you you expect to feel some you expect to feel a certain way, I think, when you reach a certain point. And then you don't. You're like, I wonder why that is.

Justin: 23:44

How do we how do you beat inertia? Like, how does that work? Because there's this this feeling of so if it's purpose, routine, and then personal context, maybe. The personal context is a little bit trickier to figure out. But we we also need to be thinking purposeful Lee about our ourselves individually.

Justin: 24:17

And also, you know, our, our individual contexts, I guess, this is kind of unformed in my head. But, you know, the example I think of in my head is that when I was in an old the old town I was living in, I just didn't feel very connected to my neighbors, didn't feel connected to anybody. Like, it just wasn't a good place for me. And I didn't realize how much that impacted me until I moved here. And then I just met all these people who became a part of the fabric of my life.

Jon: 24:59

Mhmm.

Justin: 25:00

And that fabric has led to, like like, I I forget how lonely I was, you know, at in different places in my life. And I think and I mean, talk about inertia. Like, when I was feeling those things, like, feeling kind of like, you know, lonely and, oh, You know what? I'm the how am I ever gonna get out of this? It wasn't me that was pushing to get out of it.

Justin: 25:33

It was my spouse that was saying, let's get out of here. And I was like, no. Things are fine. Like, we don't need to move. We're fine here.

Justin: 25:43

And and also the the thought of, like, how could anywhere else be any better? Like, you know? So I've been thinking about that too. And also thinking, like, in the times, like, there's times of the year and situations where I don't feel good, and how can I preempt that? And part of it is, like, Justin, you're gonna have to set a regular time for you to get away for, like, a individual just retreat away.

Justin: 26:27

You're gonna have to set a time to for you and, Lorinda to go and

Jon: 26:34

Mhmm.

Justin: 26:35

You know, do something together every year. You're gonna need time for you to take the family. Like, right now, our family's been side all winter. Like, you can tell we're kinda crusty and, like, you know, like, we're we're our our our daily usage stats on our iPads have gone up, like, 600%. You know?

Justin: 26:55

Yeah. So how are we gonna how are we gonna shake off the the barnacles? You know? Yeah. Anyway, I I think it's good.

Justin: 27:03

Yeah. I think it's good to chat about it. And, again, folks out there, as you're listening, if you can identify with this, just let us know on Twitter. Our our Twitter handles are in the show notes. Why don't we take a quick, like, break and just share what we're working on right now?

Justin: 27:36

Alright. Less less, emotionally, taxing. So you've been playing around with Alpine JS.

Jon: 27:47

I have. Yeah. Yeah. So while I've I've been working on our our big dashboards update, kinda reworking the dashboard to make it a little more functional. And I you know, up until this point, we've been using semantic UI, which includes a bunch of jQuery JavaScript junk, and it's this massive library of stuff.

Jon: 28:12

Mhmm. So I wanted to move away from that. I didn't really necessarily wanna go full on, like, Vue JS, which also seems like overkill for what we need. And you had mentioned Alpine. I I had seen it before, and it looks a lot like Vue.

Jon: 28:30

You connected me to the, Caleb. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Caleb who who started it?

Justin: 28:35

Yep. So

Jon: 28:36

I've been I've been talking to him a little bit, just asking him some questions about how to do certain things, and is is this possible and giving him a little bit of feedback. It's not it's really nice. It's like I've had a couple a couple of times where I've done something that I didn't think would be possible, and it worked. And it was incredibly easy, and I barely wrote any JavaScript. Nice.

Jon: 28:57

I was like, that was great.

Justin: 28:59

Yeah. And then

Jon: 28:59

I asked I asked him something, and I'm like, man, it it would be I'm struggling with this, and I don't know if this is possible. He's like, oh, yeah. We can do it with this. And I was like, oh, sweet. Yeah.

Jon: 29:10

That's great. No. It was like, yeah, it was just super easy to implement this one thing that I wanted to do. And

Justin: 29:15

Yeah. I like this. This is, again, one of the advantages of the Laravel community, is that they're so excited. And that ex like, they're like, Caleb is an implementer. Like, he is building stuff.

Justin: 29:30

He loves the web. He gets excited about it. And if you listen to him, like, on their podcast, no plans to merge, they they're just get so excited about different elements of the web or different elements of their work. And they're thinking about all, you know, different edge cases and things. And it's because they're, like, in it.

Justin: 29:53

You know? They're they're and they're, you know, they're young. They still have that enthusiasm. And, basically, old people like us need to suck their blood so that we could feel Right.

Jon: 30:05

Just for a minute. Just for a minute.

Justin: 30:06

Their it's their metaphoric blood. We just wanna take your excitement and that unbridled, like, youthful enthusiasm, and we just wanna ride that train.

Jon: 30:21

Exactly. Yeah. So it's good. There's a lot there's, yeah, there's a number of things I still need to figure out how to do because I'm essentially replacing a bunch of prebuilt components and a and a spaghetti mess of jQuery from our previous dashboard into something that's a little more organized.

Justin: 30:38

Yeah.

Jon: 30:40

So there's just a lot of little components, you know, things like modals that pop up and interacting with those and drop down menus that are searchable and file uploading and, just to know more of the, you know, JavaScript kind of widgets that are already dependent on other libraries, but I just have to, like, kinda wrap them up a different way.

Justin: 31:01

Yeah. So In the future, I wonder if a better routine for us it feels like this kinda like, this is good. This is deep housecleaning. Like, you're I I'm not Yeah. Is that the right metaphor?

Jon: 31:16

Refactoring. I mean, it's it's, slightly more than that.

Justin: 31:19

Yeah. But you know what I mean? Like, it's this is the kind of work that it's refactoring, but you're, like, rebuilding something that's already been built and you're cleaning out the attic. Right? You're taking all this old JavaScript spaghetti stuff out.

Justin: 31:35

I wonder if there's a better of time of year to do it. Like, I wonder if if if the timing of the year, matters. Like, for example, is it is a better context for for us to be doing that while we're in Mexico sipping on, pina coladas, in the sunshine and going, you know what? I'm gonna clean out that attic, and this that's

Jon: 32:03

I don't know. I feel like winter's better because it's it it actually has been requiring a lot of deep focus, and I don't think I would do that on the beach in Mexico.

Justin: 32:12

Gotcha. Interesting. Okay.

Jon: 32:14

So But it's also been lately hard to achieve that deep focus. So

Justin: 32:19

Well, that's what I say. As winter grinds on, you know, everyone gets so excited about winter. Like, at least I do, because I'm like, yes. Like, this is the time where I'm gonna be inside. I'm gonna be focused.

Justin: 32:31

I'm gonna be working. But by the time that March rolls around, I'm kinda like, okay. Like Yeah. It's, like, dirty and dusty in town. The snow is all melting, but it's not green yet.

Justin: 32:47

You know, it just it it kinda feel you're you've been inside for months.

Jon: 32:52

Yeah. I

Justin: 32:55

yes. I guess it depends what phase of winter we're in.

Jon: 32:58

That's true.

Justin: 33:00

Cool. Well, I mean, that's I I think it's exciting to and Yeah.

Jon: 33:05

It's been it's it's been going well. It's I don't know if it's taking longer than I wanted to. It's it's a big it's a big project.

Justin: 33:15

Yeah. We've been trying to put it into cycles the base camp way, but it has been a little bit tricky.

Jon: 33:21

I just it doesn't really It's not I mean, the whole thing is not a 6 week cycle. Right? It's not I mean, maybe it could have been if I was, like, operating at a 100% efficiency for 6 weeks, but that's

Justin: 33:33

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Do you think this is the kind of thing where it'd be helpful to hire somebody? Maybe.

Justin: 33:41

Like, there's different types of hires. Like, you could work hire someone to work alongside you. You could hire someone to do it. You could hire somebody to be a coach or encourage or like there's I wonder if any of those would fit here. Maybe.

Jon: 34:00

I mean, this this is a tough one because, like, it's really it would be really hard to hire someone and just have them do it without them having any knowledge of the system. Yeah. It might be I don't know. Hiring someone to sort of work alongside you that is, you know, use Tailwind and Alpine or or is, like, excited about doing work like that? Because for me, it's like, you're right.

Jon: 34:25

I'm I'm basically rebuilding a thing I've already built, which is not the most exciting thing. There are exciting parts of it, and then I'm using something new, but I'm really just doing the same thing again.

Justin: 34:37

Yeah. So, I mean, like, here's what I'm thinking in my head. Like, what if we hired a young whippersnapper like Caleb to pair program with you. And he like, you're building it, but he's the whole time, he's like, oh, but you know, in the way that a young person who's, like, excited about stuff goes, have you thought about this or you could do it this way? Or, like, like, he he wakes up and eats, you know, JavaScript Cheerios for breakfast.

Justin: 35:05

Like, he's thinking about this. You know?

Jon: 35:07

Possibly. Yeah. I mean, that's the I feel like that's the that's the difficult part about getting older and doing this type of work that you've done before is that you you kinda get stuck in your own your old ways, and you're more resistant to change.

Justin: 35:23

Yeah.

Jon: 35:25

There's less points that you get excited about something new. Yeah. Maybe having some some young blood Yeah. The would be good.

Justin: 35:34

Yeah. The young bloods, man. That's the thing. You gotta the the eventually the old need to to survive. They need to drink the blood.

Justin: 35:48

Yeah. That's gonna come back and haunt me sometime. People, I'm joking. That's a joke. Few what I what I'm trying to become the presidential candidate in 2080, that that quote's gonna come back to me.

Jon: 36:01

I just Did you ever see the, the the vampire movie, Let the Right 1 in? No. Oh, I think it's Swedish. They did a they did a US remake, but, probably not worth it. Okay.

Jon: 36:14

Really good movie.

Justin: 36:15

Really? Yeah. I get pretty scared in movies. Is it scarier? Okay.

Justin: 36:24

The scariest movie that still I watched this movie, like, 6 years ago, and it still impacts me emotionally is, World War z, Zed.

Jon: 36:33

Okay.

Justin: 36:34

That I I still like, I have I still have shuttering memories of that movie.

Jon: 36:40

Okay.

Justin: 36:41

I should let my kids watch this movie, and then I'll see.

Jon: 36:44

I don't know how it compares. It's it is described as a a 2008 Swedish romantic horror film.

Justin: 36:49

Interesting. Okay. I'm gonna I I I'm gonna get my kids to watch this first.

Jon: 36:56

It's much different than any other, like, vampire movie you probably

Justin: 36:59

see. Okay. Alright. Yeah. I'll I'll, I'll report back if I watch it.

Jon: 37:06

Okay. Alright.

Justin: 37:08

For me, one thing I've been working on that I could share that might be interesting is I've been contacting the winners from our contest. So we use this tool called contest kit to run a giveaway. And part of this is me just experimenting, figuring out, okay. How can we what are some other things we can do to diversify the way we get trials and customers? And I thought, you know, I'm gonna try this contest thing.

Justin: 37:40

And so we had, yeah, transistor.fm/contest. People would enter with their email address, and then they would get a link that they could use to invite other people. And in my head, the idea was, you know, I'll contact these folks once after the contest is over. And, you know, I have, you know, basically list out all the winners and then say something about Transistor. And, you know, maybe that'll generate some business, maybe not.

Justin: 38:16

And then I thought it would also increase the number of people talking about us and linking to us on social and other places. Yeah.

Jon: 38:25

So Did it do that?

Justin: 38:26

I think so. It's definitely something I wanna keep trying because and and maybe kinda building on. Here's the stats. So we had 410 people register, which is pretty good, actually. I didn't promote it a ton, basically on the show.

Justin: 38:44

And then I tweeted about it a few times. And a bunch of people found that page. 64 people were already on our mailing list. And 55 of those 410 had been a customer at some point, either a trial or paid person.

Jon: 39:02

K.

Justin: 39:04

And, actually, even that's interesting. So let's say that one of these 55 people won the microphone. That's one of the things we gave away. That still benefits us because it creates all this goodwill, but, also, we have a podcaster using our platform who has better audio, which was kind of another goal for in my head is, like, how can we, in some ways, kinda uplift the community and have more people at least having a decent microphone. So, yeah, interesting.

Justin: 39:38

So a bunch of new, kinda email contacts that again, I I don't think I'm gonna contact them forever, but maybe just one email to say, hey. This is what's going on. Here's the winners, and here's something about Transistor. And the other surprising thing was just how many people, shared it on social media. Like, a lot of people saying, hey.

Justin: 40:02

I'm a customer of Transistor. Love the platform, and they're running a contest right now. So we we had people who are already kind of invested in us. It gave them a, like, a tool that they could use to share a translator with their friends, you know, which is interesting. And I think sometimes, like, people want to share.

Justin: 40:24

They want to, you know, talk about their favorite products. And they just don't have a a means of doing that. And so this gave them the means to talk about it. So, yeah, overall, it's been cool. I've been sending out prizes.

Justin: 40:43

I will say, so we gave away 4 microphones. Is that right? 4 or was it more than that? Now I can't remember.

Jon: 40:50

Maybe it

Justin: 40:50

was 5 microphones. The platform contest kit is cool because you can, like, define how many prizes you want. So, yeah, 5 microphones, 10 transistor t shirts, and 5 1 year of podcast hosting and analytics on transistor. And so, I mean, it's easy for us to give away the podcast hosting and analytics. People just sign up, and then I just credit their account for a year.

Justin: 41:19

The microphones were a little bit tricky. I anyone in Canada and the US and Europe, it was easy because I just went to the respective Amazon site and just ordered it on there and just sent it to them. But we had a few people in, like, other countries that won.

Jon: 41:34

And so

Justin: 41:34

Oh, yeah. I think I'm just gonna send them the PayPal equivalent just because I I don't wanna spend 100 of dollars on shipping and

Jon: 41:45

other stuff. That would be tough. Yeah. We were talking about how to limit that, right, to a certain 100.

Justin: 41:49

I think it's still cool. Like, even if like, let's say they get the money and they don't spend on a microphone, who cares? It's like you've won something. It's it's cool. And then, the T shirt is actually the really cool one.

Justin: 42:02

For that, I already have, like, a design set up in Printful. And so, all I have to do is go in, copy the duplicate in the order that I've done before, And I just enter their address, enter their size, click order, and then it just automatically starts the process. And they have fulfillment centers in Europe and in, the United States. So Nice. For folks in the EU, it gets created and shipped directly from there, which is pretty cool.

Justin: 42:40

So it's kinda fun. It's been fun to give away stuff, and contact these winners. Like, so so many people are super excited.

Jon: 42:48

So That's awesome.

Justin: 42:50

So, yeah, I'm gonna I I have an idea on how I'm gonna iterate on this idea next. I don't wanna talk about it though because it's I I just don't wanna let too much out of the bag.

Jon: 43:02

Gotta have something for people to look forward to. Some suspense.

Justin: 43:05

Exactly. Well, we got to about 50% of what we wanted to talk about, but I think this is a pretty good time to to to, end it. Why don't you read out our Patreon supporters?

Jon: 43:21

Alright. Yeah. Thanks to everyone as always for supporting us on Patreon. We have Chris Willow, Mason Hensley, a Borja Solaire. Am I saying that right still?

Jon: 43:33

Ward Sandler, Eric Lima, James Sours, Travis Fisher, Matt Buckley, Russell Brown, Avendra Sasse, Prady Umna Schenbecker, Noah Praill, Robert Simplicio, Colin Gray, Josh Smith, Ivan Kerkovic, Brian Ray, Shane Smith, Austin Loveless, Simon Bennett, Michael Sittver, Paul Jarvis, and Jack Ellis, Dan Buddha, my brother, Darby Frey, Samori Augusto, Dave Young, Brad from Canada, Sammy Schubert, Mike Walker, Adam Devander, Dave Junta.

Justin: 44:10

Junta. We get it. And We that that is that our next retreat has to include Junta. Whether he Probably should. He likes it or not.

Jon: 44:21

Yeah. We'll just capture him and bring him

Justin: 44:23

Yeah. Exactly. That'd be fun.

Jon: 44:29

Oh, and finally, Kyle Fox from get rewardful.com.

Justin: 44:33

Thanks, everyone, and we'll see you next week.