Jason: 00:00

This podcast is brought to you by honeybadger.io. They're wild about DevOps monitoring. Exception monitoring, uptime monitoring, check-in monitoring. If you have a web app or you're building 1, you need it. Head over to honey badger dot I o and start a free trial.

Jon: 00:29

Hey, everyone. Welcome to build your SaaS. This is the behind the scenes story of building a web app in 2019. I'm John Buda, a software engineer.

Jason: 00:38

And I'm Justin Jackson. And my middle name is Ian. Just thought just thought I'd mix it up again.

Jon: 00:52

What's your My middle name, Michael?

Jason: 00:53

Michael. Yeah. We've, I think, we've covered this before.

Jon: 00:56

Yeah. Probably.

Jason: 00:58

Ian. Ian. Real, really short. I wish my middle name was Dusty.

Jon: 01:02

That'd be a good one.

Jason: 01:03

Because then I could just switch I I wouldn't have to fight all these NFL players for their

Jon: 01:07

for Yeah.

Jason: 01:08

For good, you know, domain names and Twitter handles. I could just be Dusty Jackson.

Jon: 01:13

I knew a Dusty growing up. Really?

Jason: 01:15

Yeah. Was he super awesome? Did he did he end up flying airplanes bush bush planes for a living?

Jon: 01:21

No. He was he was incredibly athletic, though, like, in every his entire family. They also had a really cool trampoline at their house.

Jason: 01:27

What was cool about it?

Jon: 01:28

It was just a trampoline. I don't know. It was big. It was the only only friend I knew that had trampoline.

Jason: 01:32

Oh, yeah. I mean, I can yeah.

Jon: 01:35

Like, back in the day, it was, you know, the the whatever, late eighties trampolines. They had no safety nets. It's just like just Just give her. You fly off that thing if you want. There were some in there were some injuries

Jason: 01:49

Yeah.

Jon: 01:49

Of friends on that thing.

Jason: 01:50

Like, it it came with some padding at first, but that eventually got thrown away.

Jon: 01:55

Yeah. There's, like, padding on the edges, but then you could so easily get your legs just jammed in this between the springs, like, on the side. It's pretty fun, though.

Jason: 02:03

How far did you get in your trampoline acrobatics? Could you do a back flip?

Jon: 02:07

No. I could do, like, a front flip.

Jason: 02:09

Yeah.

Jon: 02:10

But but barely. I think over time as I got older, I got more afraid.

Jason: 02:14

Oh, yeah. For sure.

Jon: 02:15

And I just I couldn't.

Jason: 02:16

Eventually, you can't do it anymore. I'm having so much fun watching my 11 year old on the trampoline because he's just crazy. And and I'm just living vicariously through through him. He just figured out back flips today, this morning. Nice.

Jason: 02:33

Nice. Well, welcome back to the show. Yeah.

Jon: 02:37

I got a I got a new microphone in front of me. So

Jason: 02:40

Oh, yeah.

Jon: 02:40

If I sound different or better, I guess, let me know.

Jason: 02:43

Yeah. Folks, just listen to this episode. Pause. Go back to the previous episode. Better or worse?

Jon: 02:51

Like, I still need to do a comparison recording. But

Jason: 02:53

Yeah. No. You sound nice and crisp. I like it.

Jon: 02:56

Good.

Jason: 02:56

Yeah. I like it. And you got a pop filter. So you went with the Samson?

Jon: 03:01

The Samsung yeah. What is this thing called? The Samsung u. Q two u. Yeah.

Jon: 03:07

Not Samsung. Samsung.

Jason: 03:09

Samsung. Yep. And, you just ordered it on? Amazon. Okay.

Jason: 03:16

And what was the total what was the total bill for the the pop filter and the microphone?

Jon: 03:22

Let's see. I ordered some stuff that I'm not using yet as well. Okay. So pop filter pop filter and the mic was probably $60.65. Yeah.

Jon: 03:35

That's incredible. I know. Yeah. It's really cheap. And it was it's such a highly recommended microphone for that price.

Jason: 03:42

Mhmm. I

Jon: 03:42

feel like there's a fine line between quality levels Mhmm. But a huge price disparity. Yes. The next step up is, like, $400.

Jason: 03:51

Yes. Yeah.

Jon: 03:52

How much of a difference? I mean, I'm not in a professional recording studio, so it probably doesn't matter.

Jason: 03:57

The nice thing about these mics is that as long as you're close to them and as long as they have kinda sufficient power, they're great, in most situations.

Jon: 04:08

Yeah. So I'm not I'm just plugged into USB to my computer. I'm not using, another mixer or preamp, but it does have the option to use the XLR connection if you want.

Jason: 04:18

Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. We'll put that in the show notes again. I think for folks that don't have a microphone that have started a podcast, just $60, order yourself a pop filter and and a microphone, either the Samsung or the ATR.

Jason: 04:35

And, man, it really helps. I've I actually have a question for you to start things off. It's been well, actually, I I was just writing out the timeline here. Actually, tell me if this timeline is rings true to you because as we've gone along, I felt like I wanna record our history a bit. Yeah.

Jason: 04:53

I actually wanna put this on an about page on our site or something. So I said we we signed our partnership docs February 2018. Does that sound right? I think so. And when did you when did you write your first line of code for what became Transistor?

Jon: 05:13

Let me look that up right now. I'm in GitHub right now, and I have a first commit, and it says from 3 years ago.

Jason: 05:19

Oh, well, there you go.

Jon: 05:21

It does not it doesn't. It says March 8, 2017.

Jason: 05:24

March 8th. Okay. Well, let's just So

Jon: 05:26

I started that pretty, pretty early. I I think there was probably not much movement.

Jason: 05:30

Yeah. For

Jon: 05:31

a while. I don't remember when I registered the domain or when I actually signed up with Stripe Atlas to make it a company. Mhmm. I could I can look at that too. But

Jason: 05:43

So that's actually really interesting, I think, for folks. First line of code, 2017.

Jon: 05:48

So, yeah, 3 years ago is not that's like an estimate. That's not 3 years. Right? March 2017 is like

Jason: 05:56

2 2 years ish.

Jon: 05:57

2 and a half. Yeah.

Jason: 06:00

Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, so first line of code, then we signed our partnership docs. We invited our 1st beta customers in March of 2018. We also started this podcast then.

Jason: 06:12

And then, the official launch was August. I said I went full time in April, which isn't like, we never had a hard line. I was just kind of, like, gradually spending more and more time.

Jon: 06:23

Right.

Jason: 06:23

But April is when we hit 10 k MRR, and that's also when we paid ourselves for the first time. And then you went, full time in July. So it's been, almost 2 months now. And, we'll get back to that timeline in a sec. But what how has it been for you to work independent?

Jason: 06:45

We've been kinda checking in with you each week. How's it been? And have you experienced any loneliness? Has there been any like, what's been some of the the feelings you've had so far?

Jon: 06:55

Let's say there's definitely days where I don't talk to many people. Mhmm.

Jason: 07:00

Yeah. Yeah.

Jon: 07:01

I can certainly there are certain days, yeah, where I just I sometimes don't physically interact with many people besides, like, a barista at the coffee shop. Mhmm. I think that's something I could probably get better at, you know, setting up some more lunches or coffee meetups in the morning or something. Mhmm. I wouldn't say it's particularly lonely.

Jon: 07:22

I mean, I'm obviously talking to people throughout the day. But yeah. It's it's it can be a bit isolating, certainly.

Jason: 07:29

I mean, you'd normally record the show from home. Yep. But you're you've been going to that office. Has that helped at all, or is it still not quite there?

Jon: 07:38

Yeah. Yeah. It helps. I think I'm not there every day because certain things just come up during the day. Mhmm.

Jon: 07:49

I think I'd like to get on more of a full time schedule with that. I mean, I know, you know, we we both wanna have a lot of flexibility throughout the day to kind of do things we need to do and take breaks, but I think there's definitely a benefit to trying to set a schedule to say Mhmm. I'm gonna be there Monday through Thursday, you know, for at least 6 hours

Jason: 08:14

Yeah.

Jon: 08:15

And record on Friday. Mhmm.

Jason: 08:18

Oh, and that's what kinda threw you off today.

Jon: 08:21

Right.

Jason: 08:22

Because because we're recording on a Thursday.

Jon: 08:24

Yeah. We moved it today, and I was had totally forgot about it. And my phone didn't remind me until 10 minutes before.

Jason: 08:33

But that but that's clearly a big deal for you in the sense that you like to be kind of locked in. Like, you like to know in your subconscious that, okay, I'm gonna be at this place doing this kind of work Monday through Friday.

Jon: 08:48

Yeah. Yeah. I wasn't like, today, I wasn't really prepared to record. I was kind of prepared to work on, you know, do this feature work that we've been doing. Mhmm.

Jon: 08:58

So that's where that's where my mind was, and I was like getting ready to dive into that. I've been thinking about what I was gonna do and how I was gonna do it. So now, you know, after this, I have to get back to that. But

Jason: 09:08

Yeah. This is a big context shift.

Jon: 09:10

Yeah. Yeah.

Jason: 09:11

And has there been anything that's been helpful for you trying to navigate this kinda this this switch from being in an office with a bunch of people and a lot of activity to this new life? Is there anything that's worked so far that has been helpful?

Jon: 09:30

Yeah. I think that I like I mentioned a few minutes ago, I think the days that I have scheduled either a coffee in the morning with someone who's in a similar spot Mhmm. Or something like, let's meet up after work for a drink or dinner with a group of people who are also working on their own. Like, that really Mhmm. Yeah.

Jon: 09:53

I think that that part of it can replace going to an office for the most part. No. Because you're still you're still getting those interactions. You're still you can talk about some work stuff, but usually it's just you end up talking about non work things. Mhmm.

Jason: 10:08

Yeah. It's just nice to be with people similar to you.

Jon: 10:11

Yeah. And they're all, you know, they're all people I know, and they're they're good friends who I've had who I've done different things with outside of work a number of times, but a lot of a lot of whom I've worked with in various places.

Jason: 10:25

I think some people wanna know how did you find those people? Like, is it just because you're in Chicago and it's a big city? Or were was there like, how did those interactions happen?

Jon: 10:36

Most of them are several years old. Like, one of them is one of them is, from when I used to do refresh Chicago, which was a meetup group that I used to help run. One of them was from a guy who is independent, and he used to work out of the cartoon humanity office when there was more coworking going on. One of them was actually a coworker from cartoon Humanity. Mhmm.

Jon: 11:02

2 of them 2 of them were actually. So they're just, like, you know, acquaintances, friends that I've known in the industry throughout the years of being in Chicago, and, like, you know, they're not I wouldn't say we hang out all the time. We're not best friends or anything, but, you know, it's, it's a great group of great group of people who can get together and have a good time and just catch up and, you know, vent a little bit Mhmm. If they need to or just discuss what's going on and get some advice.

Jason: 11:33

Yeah. I think, yeah, I think that could be really helpful that that Brian Ray, who's one of our patrons and one of our customers as well, has been tweeting a lot about remote loneliness. And and he's talking not just about, you know, folks that have gone independent or working on their own companies. But he thinks that loneliness is going to be a big problem that companies need to deal with.

Jon: 12:00

Yeah. Well, I think I think it already is in our society.

Jason: 12:04

Yeah. I

Jon: 12:05

think it's a huge problem. I mean, the the sense of community, I think, is really I don't know. I think there's something missing, especially I mean, maybe it's just the US, but I don't know. Mhmm. Just a sense of community within cities and

Jason: 12:18

Yeah. And this actually brings up this NPR article I read. The headline is want to feel happier today? Try talking to a stranger. And, basically, it's this research, University of British Columbia.

Jason: 12:32

Oh, that's nice. So I think we've all had those days where we get on the subway. We don't wanna look at or talk to anybody. We get to the coffee shop, and we just kinda, you know, don't look at them in the eye. Give them our money.

Jason: 12:44

Get our coffee. We, you know, you know, somebody smiles at you on the street and you just kind of ignore them. But what they found is that those seemingly trivial encounters, I'm reading now, with minor characters in our lives, the random guy at the dog park or the barista at our local coffee shop can affect feelings of happiness and human connection on a typical day. And so the point is is that when when we when we ignore these little encounters throughout our day, that it actually has a really negative effect on us emotionally. And reading this for me, obviously, as an extrovert, this is this is, maybe is a little bit easier.

Jason: 13:25

But I know I have those grumpy days where I'm just, like, fuck the world. You know? Sorry. I know I'm now this is a a bad episode. But it's just, like, you know, fuck you.

Jason: 13:36

I don't wanna talk to anybody. I don't wanna I just, you know, shut myself off. And, actually, while I was in New York, I had this all this other feeling, which was, you know, I'm from this little town, and I'm in this big city, and I'm frightened a lot of the time. But as I was in New York, and I just had to ask people for help a lot, I found that the more I interacted with folks, the more, my mood changed. And these little micro interactions throughout the day actually dramatically improved the way I felt.

Jason: 14:13

I felt less stressed. I felt less anxious. I felt more at home. And so when this article is interesting because it just kinda articulated this, like, wow. Like, this even just saying, you know, how's your day to your barista or to the cashier at Safeway can have a huge impact on our emotions.

Jon: 14:37

Yeah. I can I mean, I can definitely see that? It is kind of an odd thing, especially when you live in a in a bigger city. There's all these 1,000 or millions of people, and you're willingly choosing to ignore them. Like, you're on the train and you ignore them and you go to a coffee shop Mhmm.

Jon: 14:52

To be around to be around people, but then you ignore them. Mhmm. Yeah. I don't I don't know if it's a I don't know if it's a personality, like, introvert, extrovert thing, or if it's a, like, a generational shift. Like, my parents, whenever they travel somewhere, they always have stories of meeting people.

Jon: 15:09

Yeah. Just random people that they end up staying in touch with and, like Yeah. And I occasionally have that experience, but not certainly not as often as they do.

Jason: 15:19

Mhmm. I think what was interesting about the article is it just felt like this subtle little switch that gets turned on or off inside of us. Like, just this switch of, like, I'm going to be open to the world as opposed to closed off to the world. Right. And for me, it's just it's very subtle.

Jason: 15:39

Like, am I gonna be closed off today? Or am I gonna be open today? Yeah. It was it was interesting for me to think about that. Yesterday, I I shared with you in Slack, which actually by the way, I think this is another kinda helpful practice is if you're having, a shitty time emotionally to just share that with your team, whoever that is, if you have a team like that.

Jason: 16:01

But, you know, we just had a hard morning in the Jackson household. Just nothing crazy, just like family drama. You know? You know, there's stuff going on. And I remember, you know, feeling just I just wanted to be so closed off to the world.

Jason: 16:16

But I'd read this article. And so I I'm like, okay. Well, I'm just I'm gonna get on my bike, and I'm gonna go downtown, and I'm just gonna try to open myself up. And I couldn't believe how quickly my mood changed from feeling almost like absolute despair for some reason

Jon: 16:36

Right.

Jason: 16:37

To, oh, no. The world's okay. It's also such a gift when you when you, like, force a smile on your face and, like, so, like, how are you today? For someone else, you know, it it becomes a gift for them too. It's something I've been thinking about.

Jon: 16:53

Yeah. No. It's it's I like that idea. I mean, there's certainly no point in closing yourself off when you're in when most of us are in cities with thousands of other people who probably wanna interact with other people.

Jason: 17:04

Yes. Yeah. Do you think this is why one reason podcasts are so popular?

Jon: 17:11

So we can close the world off?

Jason: 17:13

Well, so we could close the world off, but also feel like we're building a relationship with somebody.

Jon: 17:18

Yeah. Maybe. Like having a, I guess, a one way conversation. But I think over the years, I've I've I've personally fallen out of going to meetups. I mean, there's so many different meetups in the city now, like, way, way more than there were when the group of us started refresh Chicago.

Jon: 17:36

You know? I don't know how many years ago. Now that was 7 or 8 or something. Yeah. I think I sort of started just overlooking them and and just being overwhelmed and saying, like, I don't know which one I should go to, or or maybe I've already met enough people.

Jon: 17:48

I don't really feel like meeting more people. Mhmm.

Jason: 17:51

By the way, I just wanna pause right there. I think that's called when you don't wanna meet new people, I think you're at risk of relational churn. Relational churn. Because if you don't add more people to your life, naturally, people are going to move away and become disconnected.

Jon: 18:11

Yeah. There's only there's only so much room at a given time for meaningful relationship. Like, a number of meaningful relationships at a time.

Jason: 18:20

Yeah. I agree with that.

Jon: 18:21

But same goes for me for, running groups. Like, I used to go to a lot of running groups or one in particular, maybe 2 different ones, like, 6 6 years ago maybe, 7 years ago. And then the groups changed or the groups moved to a new location or, like, it just that one group stopped, and I never really reached out to find another one. But Mhmm. You know, I met some cool people through that, and it's it's a way to, I think, reach people that are not they're in a lot of different, you know, different, industries, and they, you know, they all have one thing in common, which is running.

Jon: 18:57

But

Jason: 18:57

Yeah. No. I I think that is important, and I I think you've identified something that happens to a lot of us, which is there's a period of time where we're investing a lot in that, and then it can be easy to just kinda let it.

Jon: 19:10

Yeah. And I certainly did a number of years ago. And, like, I there's really no reason to stop. I mean Mhmm. You know, I get yeah.

Jon: 19:17

I get older, but there's really no reason for me to stop doing those things.

Jason: 19:21

Yeah. So what are you gonna do? What what's what's I mean, it sounds like you're already you you started meeting up with the same group again, which is good.

Jon: 19:29

I don't know. Yeah. I don't know yet. I mean, maybe I'll look for some another running group.

Jason: 19:34

Cool. Well, I think it's good to check-in on that. Let's also check-in on our other sponsor, ActiveCampaign. I was on their site the other day, and they have, another blog post about how businesses can manage their sales leads. And they have 5 tips in particular.

Jason: 19:50

Learn everything you can about your ideal leads. I actually have a lot to say about that. Score your leads. Nurture over nature. I'll talk about that in a second.

Jason: 20:01

Master the handoff from marketing to sales and track everything to keep improving. And the the nurture versus nature was I was kinda like, what are they talking about here? What they're talking about is you don't want to only field leads that are ready to buy right now. You wanna turn any interested party into someone that wants to buy from you. And so you set up a a nurture sequence.

Jason: 20:25

Meaning, maybe someone's not ready to start a podcast right now, but we could set up a sequence of emails that would help them understand here's why podcasting is important. Here's how it might help you. Here's what it looks like. You basically open their mind to this idea of podcasting could be right for you. And then after that point, when they're kind of fully open to the idea, they become a lead.

Jason: 20:52

If you wanna set up this type of funnel to nurture your leads, head over to active campaign dot com slash build your SaaS and start a free trial. With that URL, you get a second month free free migration and 2 free one on ones. So we have a bunch of things we could talk about. I think let's give folks an update on our shape up process so far. We had we had another call yesterday.

Jon: 21:15

Yeah. We did. So we're in, what, week 2 of this now in building? Yep. Week 2 week 2 of 6.

Jon: 21:21

I think we're still figuring out if it's gonna work. I mean, we're we're obviously adapting it to our our needs and our schedule. Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Jon: 21:31

We did. We had another call yesterday to sort of catch up to where we're at, what I've been working on.

Jason: 21:37

Mhmm.

Jon: 21:38

I did issue a couple different pull requests that got merged into our big master branch for this feature and actually put those on our staging site.

Jason: 21:47

Yep.

Jon: 21:48

You you you ran through it, and and you were you were, you know, you were kind of, like, really excited and happy and amazed at where it was at already

Jason: 21:57

Yeah. Yeah.

Jon: 21:58

To the to the point where you're where I think you said, oh, I I think this is ready to launch. And me me having worked on it and knowing knowing the code I wrote Yeah. I was like, no. It's definitely not.

Jason: 22:14

To me to me, it looks like this beautiful polished thing. And and to you, it looked like this thing that was just being held together by duct tape.

Jon: 22:22

Yeah. I mean, it's, you know, maybe more than duct tape, but a couple spots for sure. I would think of it more as a prototype or proof of concept that is fully functional, but really has a lot of rough edges. Like, there's really we haven't done any copywriting. Yeah.

Jon: 22:40

I I sort of just, like, threw the interface together with elements we already had. There's really no onboarding for this new feature. Mhmm. We still haven't figured out pricing or who gets the feature or how they sign up for it. Mhmm.

Jason: 22:54

Yeah. There's still some unknowns.

Jon: 22:56

There's a lot of yeah. There's a lot of testing behind the scenes to just make sure it's working the way we intended it to.

Jason: 23:02

I mean, to I think part of my reaction is just my personality, but the other part of it is a testament to the shaping work. Because because we were both working on that shaping together, and we were both on the same page about this is what it looks like, we had asked some hard questions about the flow. We had gone back a couple times and revised some things. Seeing what you put together, it just felt like this is it. This is exactly well Yeah.

Jason: 23:35

I mean,

Jon: 23:35

I think it it is turning out to be pretty much exactly what we talked about. Yeah. Because we had a good outline, and we had a good, we had a good document to work off of. Mhmm.

Jason: 23:45

Yeah. I I think that that part was exciting. And it it it also immediately because part of the shaping process is saying what appetite what do we have an appetite for? And for me, that's all related to what is really gonna help customers. Like, what are customers so hungry for that, like, if we don't make it for them, they're gonna go somewhere else.

Jon: 24:11

Right.

Jason: 24:12

And when I saw it kind of live in the flesh, I was just like, this is it. Like, this is exactly what people have been asking for. This is what they this is what they want. And it was so exciting to see, you know, to be kind of you you're always getting hit with these people that are looking for solutions. And then to have the solution right in front of me, I was just my immediate response is, like, let's just get this out.

Jon: 24:41

Yeah. Yeah. And mine is, no. No. No.

Jon: 24:43

Let's wait. Like, I, you know, I I'm excited about it too. I but I I would not wanna get it out at at this stage because we would then have to support it. It might not be exactly what it will end up being. Mhmm.

Jon: 24:59

We might have to go back on some things that we already released. Customers are upset. We'd have to support it. Customers are gonna I I, you know, I think we both know the customers, once they see this, will probably start requesting other stuff right away.

Jason: 25:12

Yeah.

Jon: 25:13

It that might detract us from, you know, other improvements we could make on what we already have. So

Jason: 25:21

Yeah.

Jon: 25:21

I I, you know, I I think it's in a good spot, but having 4 more weeks to really polish it, I think, will be Yeah. I agree. Will be really beneficial, and it and it will end up being a thing that we can launch and announce and and feel really good about.

Jason: 25:37

Yeah. Yeah. I agree. This is, by the way, the central tension of our relationship, which I think which I think is actually healthy, which is, you know, my inclination is always like, oh my god. This is it.

Jason: 25:49

Let's get this out. And your inclination is like, no. No. Let's slow down. Let's think through this.

Jason: 25:54

Let's, and, I think, actually, most teams do need both. The the other thing I've liked about this process is so much of it is focused on what unknowns do we have. So we just have this this in Clubhouse, we have these stories that are just, like, we have 4 unknowns right now. And the question is always, like, we're working we're in week week 2 of 6. Are we answering these unknowns?

Jason: 26:27

Right? Are we and that's probably what a lot of our calls in the future weeks are gonna be about is

Jon: 26:32

Yeah. It's yeah.

Jason: 26:33

Are we getting these done? Right?

Jon: 26:35

Turning these unknowns into a research step and then either figuring it out or saying, we can't do this, or it's it's not, like, let's not do this in this in this, 6 week cycle.

Jason: 26:50

Yes. Yeah. It and it also I think for teams that you you joked, like, this is a a well known thing in software development that the last 10% takes you 90% of the time.

Jon: 27:04

Yeah.

Jason: 27:04

And I think that's true because it's only in the last 10% that you start to tackle these unknowns. Like, oh, wait. What are we gonna price this at?

Jon: 27:13

Yeah. Or some cracks start showing, and you're like, oh, we gotta got it. That's you know, maybe we overlooked that. Let's look look at that again. Mhmm.

Jon: 27:21

But I think having, you know, you wanting to release this stuff quickly and me saying, let's wait a bit. I think having the 6 week time frame is really gonna be beneficial for that because it would be really it'd probably be really easy for us to to just keep pushing it off.

Jason: 27:40

Mhmm. So,

Jon: 27:41

it's not right. It's not ready. It's not ready. Mhmm. Yeah.

Jon: 27:43

Or, you know, we'll end up in 10, 12 weeks instead of 6 and then Yeah. Totally. So having that 6 week cutoff, I think, will be great because we'll we'll get to a point where we'll know exactly what's gonna be in it for that 6 weeks. We'll, you know, cut things out that don't need you know, that won't fit. Maybe we'll add some things in if we have extra time.

Jon: 28:06

It's it's hard to say. But

Jason: 28:07

Yeah. No. I've I yeah. I totally agree. And I I mean, if you, honestly, if we look at the marketing site project, which I'm really starting to like I just wanna get that thing out.

Jason: 28:17

But I can see the advantage of shaping now, because I just got started on it, which is fine. Like, that's a that's a that can be a noble trait. But the when you really have time to think things through

Jon: 28:32

Yeah.

Jason: 28:32

And and say, okay. We're gonna start here. We're gonna end here. And in terms of scope, it really helps you say, okay. If maybe we can't get, for example, with a marketing site, maybe we can't get everything done, but we could get this to the point where we could launch it and feel like it's better than what we have.

Jason: 28:54

And then we can go back to the betting table and decide what we're gonna do next with it. Yeah. I think there's there is something about this shaping work that I can see ends up being more beneficial, because then projects can just go forever.

Jon: 29:09

Yeah. Yeah. The marketing side's been going for a while. I mean, we haven't really focused on it full time, but maybe maybe that'll end up being a a 2 week cycle, and we can actually shape it and work on it together for 2 weeks.

Jason: 29:19

Yeah. And get it out.

Jon: 29:21

Yeah. Or get it out and then have a you know, then we can have another cycle, 2 week cycle, and and actually like revise it or

Jason: 29:32

Yeah. It just sucks because I've been, like, holding off. I haven't been writing anything new because I'm just waiting for the new the new site. And I'm, like, itching to, like, I got I want I've got some stuff I wanna write about. But the other thing maybe we could touch on is how how has this made you feel?

Jason: 29:47

I I don't think feel like we're perfect yet on this. But in terms of kind of temporarily ignoring requests, do you think this is helping? Or

Jon: 29:59

I I think so. Yeah. I mean, we I think we keep telling people, you know, if if a customer requests something, we'll tell them, oh, well, we've, you know, we've thought about that. We're currently working on something, and we'll think about it for a, you know, a work cycle down the road. Mhmm.

Jon: 30:15

I don't think we've had any necessary blowback on that. No. I Obviously, you know, in in the last couple weeks too, we've we've still fixed bugs and things that have come up. Yeah. As it needed to.

Jon: 30:26

But

Jason: 30:27

And I was also trying to figure out because I think one of the open questions about that people have been asking is how do you track ideas? Like, how do you track requests? And, you know, it seems like the message from base camp is is, oh, we just keep them in our mind or whatever. But I was thinking about that. I was like because they have these cool down periods where it's, like, 2 weeks of they just call it where oh, where people can freelance within the company and just kinda go around and, like, pick up things that need to get done.

Jason: 30:58

Yep. But I'm always, like, well, where do they go? Like, how do they know that something they're picking up is even a thing? Right? As we as I'm answering customer support, I'm seeing these things and I'm like, oh, like, I just I I just wanna put that somewhere, but I don't wanna put it in Clubhouse because then it becomes this task.

Jason: 31:20

And when Jason said that, like, the tools matter and the setup of your project kinda matters, I that really resonated with me because I I realized yeah. Like, as soon as it becomes a task in Clubhouse, like, I don't want that.

Jon: 31:39

It become does it become, like, a burden that you think about or what?

Jason: 31:42

Yeah. Well, don't don't you think so? Like, as soon as it's a task there and it's even even if it's just sitting in one of those columns, like, unscheduled or whatever, it's like, like, this is

Jon: 31:55

Yeah. And we still have a lot. We we have a lot of those.

Jason: 32:00

Yes. And and they're just kinda always there hanging around.

Jon: 32:04

Mhmm.

Jason: 32:05

And so I said, okay. I'm just gonna start throwing these in a Google Doc because then it's not in our project management software. It's just, you know, it's just somewhere else. We don't have to think about it. But if we get to a 2 week cycle where we're saying, okay.

Jason: 32:21

We're just gonna freelance in the company. We're just gonna kinda walk around and pick up a few little things. There's a a spot to go and go, oh, yeah. This looks interesting. I'm just gonna I'll pull this into Clubhouse right now.

Jon: 32:34

Mhmm.

Jason: 32:35

So, yeah, what do you think about that approach of just putting in a dock versus Clubhouse?

Jon: 32:40

I like it. I mean, you could still get I I don't know if we lose it because we don't really use it, but you lose some ability to discuss particular topics. But if they're just if they're just sitting in a list of ideas, there's not really much discussion that needs to happen until we actually choose to work on it and make it an So Yeah. As long as it's I I like it as long as it's, you know, as long as we don't forget about it, as long as we don't keep adding to it and adding to it with enough detail that we don't forget what that idea was.

Jason: 33:21

Mhmm. Mhmm.

Jon: 33:22

Like, I think I think you you just add, a kind of a little title description and a little bit of text to just kinda say what it is and maybe link to Mhmm. A help ticket or something.

Jason: 33:33

Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. And you think that's not enough detail or that's okay?

Jon: 33:37

I I no. I I think it is. Yeah. Yeah. I think it is.

Jon: 33:39

Yeah.

Jason: 33:40

Interestingly, Clubhouse just released a document feature that I need to look into.

Jon: 33:45

They've got Yeah. Yeah. That that seems pretty cool.

Jason: 33:48

Yeah. I gotta I gotta check that out. Yeah. Anything else about the shaping process so far? I I know a lot of people are trying this out right now in the software bootstrapping community.

Jason: 34:00

One thing Tyler Tringus said on Twitter that I thought was also, interesting is, Ben, Ornstein requested something really small, and I was able to just go and fix it really quick. And Tyler was like, oh, man. He's like, I hope people keep doing those kind of, like, quick fixes and don't get too addicted to shape up in the sense of, like, no. We only do, like, you know, what's in our 6 week cycle.

Jon: 34:29

Yeah.

Jason: 34:29

Which I think is a fair criticism if you get too crazy about it. It's like, no. No. You you you can still delight people by doing a little thing here. It's not like Yeah.

Jon: 34:39

Yeah. We've still done some of that. We've definitely rolled out some fixes and small small updates even within the last 2 to 3 weeks.

Jason: 34:46

Yeah. Totally. Cool. I'm trying to think I don't think we've got some other topics, but I think we could we could talk about those another time because we're just about 40 minutes here. We have a new Patreon this week.

Jason: 35:01

You wanna tell folks?

Jon: 35:02

We do. You're right. Yeah. Thanks as always to all our supporters. We have Travis Fisher who's new.

Jason: 35:10

That's right.

Jon: 35:12

Matt Buckley from nice things dot I o, Russell Brown, Evandro Sassy, Pradyumna Schimbecker, Noah Praill, David Colgan, Robert Simplicio, Colin Gray from alici.com, Josh Smith, Ivan Kerkovic, Brian Ray, Miguel Piedorafita, Shane Smith, Austin Loveless, Simon Bennett, Corey Haines, Michael Sitwer, Paul Jarvis, and Jack Ellis, Dan Buddha, my brother. Danbudda.com. Darby Frey, Samori Augusto, Dave Young, Brad from Canada, Sammy Schuichert, Mike Walker, Adam Devander, Dave Junta.

Jason: 35:53

Junta.

Jon: 35:54

Kyle Fox from get rewardful.com, and our sponsors this week, Honey Badger and ActiveCampaign.

Jason: 36:01

One interesting thing about our Patreons, I I might be wrong about this, but I think, Chicago is very represented, Canada is very represented, and Germany is very represented.

Jon: 36:13

Big in Germany.

Jason: 36:14

Yeah. I I could be wrong about that, but there's just a lot of names here that I recognize as German. Although, Spain because Pijafita yeah. We need to get all these folks to if you're one of our Patreon supporters, just let us know where you're from. I wanna test this out.

Jon: 36:31

Speaking of Miguel, Pedro Fita, I think he you tweeted something yesterday about us. You were excited about the thing we're working on and that I showed you and didn't give any details, and he asked if we were making a bread slicer, which I thought was funny, but we're not we're not making a bread slicer. We should, though. Although I could use 1.

Jason: 36:51

Yeah. For your sourdough.

Jon: 36:54

Yeah.

Jason: 36:54

Is that is that is that, bad bad, bad sourdough game if you use a bread slicer? Like, are you supposed to slice it 1 at a time, or is it okay?

Jon: 37:04

It would be great if I if I had a, you know, like, a commercial bread slicer. You slice the whole loaf at once. Oh. Great.

Jason: 37:10

Okay. That's our next Patreon goal. Get John a commercial bread slicer.

Jon: 37:18

Yeah.

Jason: 37:18

How big are they? Do you think you could fit 1 in your house?

Jon: 37:21

Probably not. They're huge.

Jason: 37:22

Just throw away your TV.

Jon: 37:24

They're pretty big. Yeah. Right.

Jason: 37:28

Alright, folks. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week. Transistor.fm.