$30k in MRR – how does this feel?
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Jon:Hey, everyone. Welcome to build your SaaS. This is the behind the scenes story of building a web app in 2019. I'm John Buddha, a software engineer.
Jason:And I'm Justin Jackson. And I I'm too scared to watch that new Joker movie.
Jon:It looks good.
Jason:I I was I was looking at the reviews on Twitter. That's where I get my movie reviews from. And I noticed a lot of people wanted to see it. When you saw the trailer, did you did you feel like, okay. I gotta see that?
Jon:Yeah. I thought it looks really good. I like Joaquin Phoenix as an actor.
Jason:Because I I saw that trailer, and I was like, nope. I I cannot watch that and ever sleep again. The weird thing is my son is, like I mean, for context, like, I I just got over my fear of the dark crystal. Like, that was just this year. I finally faced that fear.
Jon:Yeah. Those are puppets. That's that's creepier.
Jason:I I've watched a total of 2 episodes of Stranger Things, and I can never do that again. Movies that get inside my head, I I just I can't do it. But my kids are super into it. Like, my both my teenagers have seen it for have you seen it? Yep.
Jason:And and did that give you nightmares?
Jon:No. The new one it the part 2 was was honestly, like, more of a comedy. It was a horror movie, but every every horror scene was followed immediately by something really funny. Like, it was a funny movie.
Jason:I I I just I don't know if I'm more sensitive than most people or what, but those movies I still haven't even seen the Dark Knight. Is that the one is that the first is that the one previous to this one with Joker?
Jon:No. Well With Heath Ledger? Yeah. That was the yeah. That one.
Jon:Yep.
Jason:I haven't seen that one. I I've only seen the the Jack Nicholson. Jack Nicholson? Nicholson?
Jon:Right.
Jason:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I if it's too creepy, it just gets inside my soul.
Jon:Yeah. I mean, you certainly gonna have to see it.
Jason:But you're gonna see it?
Jon:Eventually. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I'm in no rush.
Jason:Do you do you wait to to see movies on the small screen? Or you are you a big screen guy?
Jon:Either. It depends on the movie.
Jason:Okay.
Jon:Certain movies, I think, lend themselves to the big screen
Jason:Yeah.
Jon:Quite a bit more than others.
Jason:Yeah. It's true.
Jon:Like, I wanna see this new Brad Pitt space movie on the big screen because it it's supposed to be, like, gorgeous. It's like space scenes.
Jason:Oh, I haven't even heard of this.
Jon:Yeah. I think it's out it's out now.
Jason:I'm I'm so out of the loop.
Jon:Movies like that where there's, like, a spectacle.
Jason:Yeah. Yeah. Where yeah. You wanna feel it a little bit.
Jon:Yeah.
Jason:Alright. Last movie I saw in the theater was Rocket Man, the Elton John story.
Jon:Oh, yeah. That was a good movie.
Jason:That was a good movie. Yeah. I I like stuff like that. Rocket Man. I liked the one Bohemian Rhapsody.
Jason:Yeah. I like those are those are my kind of movies. Oh, yesterday yesterday was great.
Jon:Yesterday was good. That was great. Yeah. That was a fun movie.
Jason:Yesterday kind of reminded me of, it had a little bit of that Jared Hess flair. So Jared Hess is the writer director of Napoleon Dynamite and, Nacho Libre and all these other comedies that I love. And there's a little bit of kinda offbeat, even the pacing and things in that movie. I like it when it's a different pacing when it they there's a few little, quirks in it. Yeah.
Jason:It was good. Yeah.
Jon:That was a great movie.
Jason:Well, this is not a movie review podcast, but maybe we should start one. I want I actually wanna start this episode off by listening to this clip of Charlie Kammerer. Have you listened to this yet? No. Okay.
Jason:So you we'll listen to this, in real time right now. President of Slate. He's on the Digiday podcast here. So let's just listen to this, and we'll come back.
Speaker 3:We started a company. It was called Panoply. It's now called Megaphone. It's basically an ad serving as a CMS. Megaphone has a marketplace, and we use that marketplace to serve our our unsold ads.
Jason:So, I mean, this is completely different than display advertising then. I mean, because, like, so much has swung to indirect channels versus direct channels.
Speaker 3:It's completely different for now. I think,
Jason:you know Is this gonna follow the same story?
Speaker 3:I hope not, but yeah.
Jason:Why do you hope not?
Speaker 3:Well, I mean look what happened in display. Look what a lot of ad networks came in and and with that came a lot of really good things. Right? There was a lot of efficiency, A lot more data came into the marketplace, all really important. But, you know, environment and brand safety things became an issue When when kind of the ad network thing comes into this business, that host read will go away.
Jason:Let's pause right there. What do you think about that so far? So Slate was once a part of Panoply, and Panoply also had a product called Megaphone, which is a competitor of ours. And then they split those off. So now Slate is kind of the the content division, and Megaphone is the software division.
Jason:That clip is so interesting to me where he basically the host asks, is this going to follow the same story as display ads on the web? And Charlie says, yeah, probably. But I hope not.
Jon:Yeah. Well yeah. I mean right. I hope not either, but it's also up to the people do running the ad businesses to make sure that doesn't happen.
Jason:Well, this is what's ironic to me is and and it gets glossed over fairly quickly in the interview. I I recommend people go and listen to the whole thing. It's in the show notes. But the display ad business on the web is a cautionary tale. We basically added, you know, at first it was, you know, banner advertising, which was not super great.
Jason:But then we got kind of conscientious ad networks like Carbon Ads, and they were really simple. They if you had a popular blog, you could put carbon ads on your site, and you can make a fairly good living that way, if depending on how popular your blog was. But it seemed like a reasonable form of advertising. You know, if you wanted to target people who are the kind of folks that read Daring Fireball, you could put an ad on Daring Fireball. But then we added all of this layer all these layers of complexity on top.
Jason:Like, user targeting, retargeting, harvesting user data, collecting data, and then putting it together with other data, tracking people all over the web. And the net result doesn't seem super great to me.
Jon:Well, yeah. I mean, the net result is that everyone's tracked, but also ad revenue is terrible. Exactly. It's really low, and then everyone's information is getting tracked and saved and processed and to the point where it's creepy when ads pop up because they know you so well that you think your phone is listening to you, but it's not.
Jason:Yeah. So you just created a connection that for some reason, they don't say explicitly in this interview. And I do think it's interesting, you know, like, newspaper publishers right now are not doing super great. Anyone who previously depended on display ads on the web, they've actually moved to podcasting because the it's kind of like the old school ads. If you Yeah.
Jason:Want to reach the 5 by 5 listener or you wanna reach the, This Week in Tech listener or you wanna reach you know, who if if you can find a show that has the audience that matches up with your product, you can sponsor that show, and the host will read an ad for you. And the right now, the CPMs for those ads are quite high. You know, like, 35 dollars per 1,000 downloads or something like that is probably even on well, that's probably I I don't know what's average these days. But it's ironic to me that Charlie here is saying, I hope it doesn't go the way the display ads went. But Right.
Jason:He's they've they've created a company that is going to drive podcast advertising the way that display ads went.
Jon:Right. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I think there's a lot of the dynamic advertising in podcasting is I feel like a touchy subject to some people.
Gavin:Mhmm.
Jon:Some people like it. Some people don't. But I think in order for it to work at all, you you have to track you have to track what listeners listen to. Mhmm. But combine that with what they look at on the web.
Jon:So it's you're gonna get in the same situation of, well, you looked at this stuff on the web. You searched for this. They now you're gonna tie that back into what podcasts you listen to. Some somehow, I don't even know if that's possible, but
Jason:Well, this probably this probably brings us to this DHH tweet.
Jon:Right.
Jason:Which, you know, there's always these things that reverberate on the web and, you know, it's big when people start DM ing you. And so this happened September 27th. David Hennemeyer, Hinton, Art 19, which is another podcasting platform, wants to bring listener targeted ads to podcasting. Fuck. No.
Jason:This is me quoting right now. Podcasting is the last oasis where listeners aren't being targeted by who they are, but on what they listen to. We will ditch art 19 for another provider for rework podcast immediately. And so, I don't even know how David finds these things because I I hadn't seen this clip of Lex Friedman, talking about this, but he somehow found it. And things happened very quickly.
Jason:That was at 10:0:5 AM. At 10:17 AM, he tweets, the plan is to move to transistor. I feel pretty confident that they are not going to sell out to listener targeted advertisement schemes.
Jon:I think he's probably right about that.
Jason:Although he should have checked with me first. Yeah. Yeah. So this was kind of a crazy day. In terms of revenue, base camp switching to us is not a huge deal.
Jason:But in terms of cultural significance in this one, slice of the culture that you and I participate in, having Basecamp as a customer is a a big deal.
Jon:Yeah. It is. Yeah. I think we, obviously, we respect them. I mean, I I respect, David and Jason's opinions on a lot of things.
Jon:Mhmm. I I do frequently enjoy a good DHH rant whether it's on Twitter or on another podcast. He he one of their more more recent rework episodes was about a lot of the problems that are popping up with Facebook and, like, privacy issues and stuff like that. And it was it was a pretty good pretty good David rant in there that I quite enjoyed.
Jason:And and to their credit, they put their money where their mouth is. They have if you go to the the base camp Instagram account, for example, there's just a single black photograph with the with, a comment that says, we believe that the Facebook business model is unethical. And by if you support them, you are basically supporting I actually had a moment of panic when when David said he was signing up for Transistor. Cause I was like, I wonder if I have the Facebook pixel installed on our marketing site. And I like ran over there like, Oh, shoot, dude.
Jason:Do we have that? Because like a lot of companies, I think we're some of we've talked about this in the past, actually. Like, we're forming our our opinions and our values on these things. And, you know, it's possible that just as a part of my normal marketing stack, I threw this Facebook pixel on there.
Jon:Right.
Jason:We didn't have it. We don't have it on our site. But No. We don't. There's a few different things to talk about here because it's interesting in a few different ways.
Jason:One is, I think, founder values. David made a decision based on his values very quickly there. Yeah. Like, those values that come from the top, they kinda determine the direction of the company in all sorts of ways. And it was kinda weird.
Jason:It was crazy to see that happen, kind of so fast, you know?
Jon:Yeah. Yeah. That was that was kinda crazy. Pretty quick.
Jason:So for us, I wonder what does this mean for us in terms like, let's just go back to the values topic for a second. First of all, you and I how do we discuss these things? And then how do they become codified? Yeah. How do because it's like, you and I we we're a 2 person company.
Jason:Yeah. And we're basically, you know, everyone has individual values, and then we have to bring our individual values to the table. And somehow, we have to figure out, okay, what does this company stand for now? And I think we've done some of that so far. But, yeah, what do you think about that?
Jason:How does that happen?
Jon:Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of the stuff we've talked about behind the scenes, but we've never actually we never I mean, we don't have, like, a a web page of our values necessarily.
Jason:Mhmm.
Jon:But I think I think it's impossible if you're a small company of 2 people to not have your personal values bleed into the company values. Mhmm. I think we're aligned on most of that, if not all.
Jason:Yeah. We've been pretty lucky, actually. Or, or maybe some of this is just the we knew we could work together because if if if we'd been hanging out before and, you know, I was like, man, I love Trump. I just love him. I love him so much.
Jon:Yeah.
Jason:That that might have been hard for us to
Jon:I think it probably would not have worked out.
Jason:And here's an interesting thing. I got called out on this on Twitter. I've been called out on this a number of times. But, you know, someone's saying, basically, hey, Justin. Be careful how much of your personal values and your personal leanings you talk about publicly.
Jason:Because there might he was he was kinda dancing around this thing. It was funny. It's like, some people might view that as an affront to their values, and then they might decide not to to, you know, buy your products or your services or whatever.
Jon:I could see that happening, but I think I think I'm okay with that.
Jason:And I think even if we were on different ends of the political spectrum, we could have still worked together. It would have been probably been a bit harder. In the same way, it's probably hard to get married to somebody that votes differently than you.
Jon:Mhmm. It
Jason:it it just creates an additional layer of of, friction to every decision.
Jon:Right.
Jason:That that makes it hard. And, certainly, we don't, we wouldn't deny someone to becoming a customer if they were different politically than us. There is a line there though of of things that we will do or not do based on values. And and I think, targeting people, you know, with advertising, tar tracking people all over the web, retargeting. It feels like we're mostly aligned on that.
Jason:Do you think?
Jon:I think so. Yeah. I mean, privacy concerns aside, like, which are a huge deal and that's something I, you know, agree with, with what, you know, David is is worried about. Building that type of software and platform doesn't even fun to me. Yeah.
Jon:I I don't wanna I don't wanna build that. Yeah. Sounds terrible.
Jason:Yeah. Yeah. There's kind of 2 two sides to that. Isn't there? There's the philosophical side, which is when we started this company, one of the things we said from the beginning is that we want to build mindful technology, meaning, calm technology.
Jason:Technology that doesn't stress people out. Technology that doesn't make people addicted. Technology that doesn't take advantage of, weaknesses in the human operating system.
Jon:Yeah. I mean, yeah, we're I think we're building software that, well, doesn't lend itself anyways to customers using it as much as possible. Like, we don't need customers to use it all the time as much as possible. Mhmm. Basically, the quicker they can get an episode out, the better.
Jon:Mhmm. I mean, the the listening aspect of it, obviously, you know, you want your listeners to listen to your show for as long as possible. Mhmm. But that's kind of a separate issue. So
Jason:Yeah. And we did explore that too. Certainly, you can get addicted to a podcast, but it is a lot hard to podcasts.
Jon:Yeah.
Jason:And certainly, you could be listening to a podcast when you should be spending, time with your family or paying attention to your feelings. Yeah. But it is a lot harder to get addicted to podcasts. It it's just yes. It happens.
Jason:Yes. Maybe our culture has their earbuds in too much. But when you compare the addictive nature of something like, what what's one of those games, those terrible games? Candy Crush? Candy Crush.
Jason:That. Yeah. Or
Jon:or e Fortnite? I
Jason:don't know how many Fortnite or and even the the the dopamine rush that you get from browsing Twitter and Facebook.
Jon:Yeah.
Jason:Yeah. We don't it doesn't have that same thing. It's not it just and it's it's not as it doesn't pull you in even though you can binge listen to a podcast. It it's it doesn't feel the same as Netflix. Maybe this is me looking at this with rose colored glasses.
Jason:I don't know.
Jon:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. Maybe. But, I mean, I think yeah.
Jon:We wanna build mindful software. We wanna build software that allows you to get a sense of your audience, but not track your audience. Mhmm. I I have a I don't think we're gonna go that route ever.
Jason:Why don't you talk about the other side of that, which is when you said building that type of software doesn't sound like fun.
Jon:Well, it just I it doesn't it's not what I'm interested in with this company. Right? It's it's not I don't wanna build an advertising analytics tracking platform. This I mean, there are analytics obviously built into it, but I don't wanna build an advertising network platform. That's not I don't think that's why we're in this.
Jon:Mhmm. But we're not trying to necessarily become an ad network that sells advertising and makes money that way because, you you know, I think you talked about that in the really early episode is you don't wanna become an advert an ad salesman. Yeah. Like, you don't wanna you you don't wanna have to reach out to advertisers and try to get them into our system, and that's not it's just not why we got interested in this space.
Jason:Yep. I have this blog post about product founder fit, And I quote Marco Arment in it. I don't know if you remember this, but he created he had for a while the number one app on the App Store. It was called, it was a it was a ad blocker. Do you remember this?
Jon:No. I don't.
Jason:September 2015, Marco Arment woke up to discover he had the number one paid app in the App Store. The app was called Peace, an ad blocker for iOS. Despite earlier successes like Instapaper and Overcast, Marco had never achieved this level of success before. He should have been ecstatic, but instead, he was miserable. He described his inner conflict on his blog.
Jason:And now I'm quoting, achieving this much success with peace just doesn't feel good, which I didn't anticipate, but I probably should have. I still believe that ad blockers are necessary today, but I've learned over the last few crazy days that I don't feel good making one. Even though I'm winning, quote, unquote, I've enjoyed none of it. And that's why I'm withdrawing from the market. I'm just not built for this business.
Jon:Oh, I had no idea he even made that.
Jason:But that really articulates, I think, what we're talking about is every day, you and I show up to work, and we we want to enjoy this. Yeah. If we were working on something that we didn't enjoy, why wouldn't we just go and, work for Salesforce?
Jon:Right. Right? But then you, you know, you contrast that with, like, Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg, and they are dealing with major privacy issues and they're I mean, I think the way they go about their business is really kind of detrimental to society in general, but Mhmm. They don't seem to really feel bad about it. They don't seem to care.
Jon:They're I mean, they're a public company, so they obviously have to make money. Mhmm. For their shareholders, but they don't seem to have any regret about the problems they've created.
Jason:Yeah. And that is because and this is applies to us as well. But so much of our bias so much of our bias comes from who is paying our salary. There's this great Upton Sinclair quote that says, it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it. Right?
Jason:Right. So if you are an oil worker in Alberta, and that's what pays your mortgage every month, it's much more likely that you're going to lean politically towards, you know, a party that doesn't care as much about climate change.
Jon:Right.
Jason:It it shows you that it actually does matter. The businesses that we get into do matter. There's a friend of mine here in in Canada. He was a cofounder of a of software that basically helped people get more leads. And so I think it was, like, scraping websites or something, and and it would, like, grab people's email addresses.
Jason:I I'm not exactly sure how it worked. And it was a good business. Like, the the the upside financially was really good. But he decided to quit because he just didn't feel good about it. And the more that you become dependent on something like that, then you eventually get into Zuckerberg's, situation where he is so dependent on the Borg now.
Jason:He has to defend it at you know, subconsciously, he might he might not even realize that this is happening. But when you've created this big machinery and it's all of your status is wrapped up in it and all your finances are wrapped up in it and all of your public obligation as an employer and everything else is wrapped up in it, And now you've just has to defend this thing, this monster that you've created.
Jon:Right. Yeah. I mean, all their money comes from advertising. So why would why would they reevaluate and rebuild something that doesn't depend on advertising? Mhmm.
Jon:I mean, they can't they can't at this point. Mhmm. Which is kind of the terrifying part of it is that they wanna still keep selling as many ads as possible. So whatever protections they talk about putting in place for, I don't know, whatever fake stuff is gonna come up with the election and all these like, they're still gonna wanna sell ads. Mhmm.
Jon:I don't know if they really care where it comes from, which is kinda why I, you know, I I don't want I don't really want us to ever advertise in Facebook and give them money because it's just going towards this machine that Mhmm. Kind of doesn't really do society any good.
Jason:And that might mean making some hard decisions in the future. For example, I interact with podcasters quite a bit on Instagram.
Gavin:Mhmm.
Jon:And,
Jason:eventually, I might have to decide how complicit do we wanna be with them. Right?
Jon:Yeah. Because that's a that's a Facebook company.
Jason:Yeah. I mean, even harder for me is Twitter. Twitter has kind of, like, been able to just because they're not as bad, they've been able to kind of become the safe choice that everyone's okay with. You know, David Hanenmire. Hansen's on there.
Jason:He's fine with it. But
Jon:Yeah.
Jason:I mean, we could we could we could bring them to the I keep on saying the witch hunt. You know? We could we could bring them to the the public hanging and and decide that they're no longer worthy. And I have so much invested in Twitter personally. That would be a a tough pill to swallow.
Jon:You know, there and then there's Amazon, which is, like, this huge huge mega corporation.
Gavin:Mhmm.
Jon:We use them for our hosting and infrastructure. Yeah. I buy lots of things on Amazon, but, like, I mean, they're also not a great company.
Jason:Yeah. And I and I wouldn't say that you and I align with Bezos and his values a ton. No. So, yeah, there's some the more you get down this train, the harder it is to figure it out. But I don't think that means we shouldn't wrestle with those issues.
Jon:Right.
Jason:So just because it's difficult doesn't mean we shouldn't we shouldn't have some let's let's confront this a little bit.
Jon:Yeah. I mean, there are conversations there that are worth having.
Jason:Totally. Let's take a break and do a non targeted ad for ActiveCampaign. They've chosen this audience because, folks, they they think you're the kind of people that need something like this. It's customer experience automation for growing businesses. They've got some great tips on their blog.
Jason:I was just reading this post about how to write better marketing reports. And I think this is something I'm gonna be start doing for Transistor regardless of, you know, if you're a one person business or a part of a team. It's just a good practice to get into, because it's a a chance to know, identify how you're doing, where you can improve, and where you're succeeding. And and they recommend a few different categories, like search engine rankings, which are very important for most businesses, email performance, you know, who's engaging with your email newsletter, leads and customers, how many first time visitors or buyers do you have, how many repeat customers, and then social media performance. Are people engaging with you on social media?
Jason:Is it positive? Is it moving in the right direction? And I think you you and I might add a, what do you call it? A values based evaluation there too. Do we wanna continue to invest on this platform, or do we wanna, you know, go somewhere else?
Jason:So, yeah, the biggest lesson from this post is tell and show the story with numbers, explain each point simply and succinctly. And this is all reports. These are reports. These are the this kind of data you can pull from ActiveCampaign. You can start right now, activecampaign.com/buildyoursass.
Jason:Start a free trial with that URL. You get a 2nd month free, a free migration, and 2 free one on ones. Wow. We really we really got on fire there with that that that topic. I'm sure we'll hear from our listeners on that because that will that will tickle the opinion bone of, Yeah.
Jon:I mean yeah. Let us know what you think.
Jason:Yeah. Let us know what you think. So maybe we should quickly talk about this. Our numbers we've been looking at our numbers, and we're really close to a new milestone. I don't think we've quite hit it yet.
Jon:I think we did. Oh, we did? Well, it depends on where you look. Okay. Yep.
Jason:Let me take a look here.
Jon:We did according to Stripe.
Jason:Okay. So according to Stripe, we've hit 30 k in MRR. According to BearMetrix, we are 29671. I just wanted to talk about this because, one, we keep, not threatening. But, I think we're on the verge of shutting down our public numbers.
Jason:And so while they're still public, I think it's it's good for us to to discuss these things. I know a lot of people check the numbers before they listen to the show. I I just think it's nice to touch base every once in a while and take a deep breath. And just think about this. So what is what does 30 k mean to you?
Jason:Is it does it feel significant? Does it feel yeah. What what are some of your thoughts?
Jon:I don't think this one feels as significant as, let's say, 20. I mean, it's it's a certainly, a milestone. I mean, it it it feels good. It feels great. I mean, considering we had a slow August, slower when it's not like we went down.
Jason:But Yeah.
Jon:I don't think it feels as significant because we are already full time.
Jason:Yeah.
Jon:I don't know. We haven't really talked about this, I don't think. But, like, with the growth, like, what is the next thing we're working towards?
Helen:Mhmm.
Jon:Obviously, we can pay ourselves more. Mhmm. Once we reach some other level, like, what what does that go towards? Is it more for us? Is it now we can hire someone else?
Jason:Mhmm.
Jon:I guess that's why it's not quite as exciting because before it was, alright, we'll reach this point, and now we can go full time. Yeah. And we did that. Yeah. Yeah.
Jon:So now I guess we gotta figure out what the next milestone is and what that means for the company. And
Jason:Yeah. I I mean, I think you're right. You kind of
Jon:hit it
Jason:right on the head. It's going to be less dramatic and emotional from here on out. It it won't be, you know, when you're driving towards this goal of we we really just wanna, you know, we wanna go full time. We wanna get paid for all this work we're doing. We still want those things.
Jason:I I think we still practically have quite a ways to go. Again, I think around 50 k is is gonna be a healthy company for 2 people living in North America.
Jon:Mhmm.
Jason:And so that's still on my mind. But what we're gonna do from here on out is is basically pretty boring. You know, we're gonna release some new features. We're going to, I I shouldn't say it's not all gonna be boring. I think new features are gonna be exciting.
Jason:I think when we hire our first person, that'll be exciting.
Jon:Mhmm.
Jason:I think, whatever aspirations we have in the future will be exciting. And that will be, you know, do are are we gonna try to go big and take over the world and hire a 100 people? Or are we going to really espouse this these values of staying small and having a nice life? You know, Honeybadger, those 3 founders, they've hired, I think, a few other people. They work 30 hours a week.
Jason:They just have this nice business that pays them well. They work 30 hours a week. They enjoy their work. And they're not trying to, you know, be they're not trying to build a $1,000,000,000 company. I think that will be exciting in in the sense of, oh, I I can't believe we get to live our best life, You know?
Jason:But in terms of drama, it it might not be as dramatic because, you know, now we've just we we hit the big milestone that most people are interested in, which is when are these folks gonna get to go full time on it?
Jon:Right. Yeah. I mean, we're still working back up to, I think, what we were making before. Mhmm. That'll that'll come in time.
Jon:I think it's it's still growing and, that's not that's not to say, like, us getting to 30 k isn't something to be incredibly proud of because it is. Mhmm. Yeah. Alright. Like like you said, it's just less exciting.
Jon:Yeah. Because we've already hit, like, the the big milestone we were going for, which was going full time.
Jason:Yeah. And, this is actually, is interesting to me, because I know so many people listening to the show. That is their big goal is I wanna build something that allows me to go full time. And, and we often don't think about what comes after that. And, you know, when I when I would talk to more experienced entrepreneurs like Jason Cohen or Rob Walling, And they would say, yeah.
Jason:You know, like, after you hit those first metrics, it kind of just becomes a lot more day to day and, like, you know, you still have stressful times. It's gonna get harder in a lot of ways. That was actually one thing Jason Fried said in an interview is that it actually gets way harder from this point on, which I was like, oh, great.
Jon:I didn't sign up for this.
Jason:Yeah. But, yeah. So much of the of what you're driving towards is I just can't wait till this pays me something, and I can quit what I was doing before. One thing I will say that I'm incredibly grateful for, You know, I've been doing my own business since 2016. I've never had a since I went independent, I've never had a stable monthly income.
Jason:And for the first time in my life, I can now plan. Like, I can I can plan? This is how much I'm gonna have personally in my bank account every month. Mhmm. I don't have to be, like, always wondering.
Jason:Okay. Like, is this big payment gonna come in, and I'll be able to cover my mortgage for 3 months? You know what I mean? Right. That part has been really, really nice.
Jon:Yeah. That's that's pretty huge. We we've been talking about over the past week, like, kind of preparing for the end of year financial tax situation. Mhmm. And you mentioned this in regards to that too is that we've been paying ourselves as a percentage of our gross revenue Mhmm.
Jon:And leaving a bunch of money in the bank for expenses and taxes and stuff like that. Mhmm. But we have enough left over to where we can probably give ourselves a nice bonus at the end of the year Mhmm. And still be okay because we know that we basically get a deposit from Stripe every week. Yeah.
Jon:So you were you had the mindset of, let's keep, you know, x amount of dollars and x amount of months of expenses in the bank Mhmm. In case something goes bad. But but then you I think you realized as you were thinking about it, like, we have money coming in all the time, and it's on a regular schedule. Yeah. So we don't necessarily have to have this massive, like, emergency fund in the bank.
Jon:Yeah. And our expenses are pretty low. So
Jason:Unless unless the bandwidth police come and, and destroy us and destroy our margins, there's certainly always threats. But, yeah, that's that's been huge. And and, I I do wanna, like, emphasize personally, I've never had a Christmas bonus my whole life. And so if that happens this year, that will be a huge thing for my family. Also, like, I I've been pretty open about my mental health.
Jason:And, you know, those few years where I was depressed, we had to dip into our line of credit. And Mhmm. We've been steadily paying that off. And so for the first time in a while, we're I'm hoping if we do get a bonus this year that that'll just that will completely pay off my line of credit. And for the first time, I'll be able to kinda breathe easy again.
Jon:Right. Yeah. Yeah. Debt is debt is no joke. It's definitely a pair of handcuffs you don't really want.
Jason:Yeah. And so, I know there's a lot of people listening that they're in business, and it it is stressful, and it is month to month. And I know how that feels. And now that I'm in this position, I I wish that you and I had paired up earlier in some ways. I was, like, I was in such a rut, you know, doing my own thing and trying to make this one thing work that, yeah, doing this has been a real gift to have this business that's again, it could it could crash anytime.
Jason:But to have the sustainable this the sustainable revenue right now, it it really has been a gift. And, yeah, it's just it it just feels like, it feels really nice.
Jon:Yeah. So I guess I guess that's something to keep in mind. Every time we hit one of these milestones, even if it's not a big celebration, like, reflect on that.
Jason:Mhmm. Yeah. Totally. I mean, again, more transparency. Like, I I need to start saving money.
Jason:And Yeah. I you know, between, like, raising 4 kids and, you know, paying a mortgage and doing all this stuff. But you live
Jon:in you live in Canada. What do you have to worry about?
Jason:I know. I know.
Jon:Isn't everything paid for?
Jason:Some things are paid for.
Jon:I'm just
Jason:scared. My goals have changed for sure. Like, before, it was just survival. Like, if I can pay the mortgage, and I can feed the family, and I can pay our orthodontics bill, that's great.
Jon:Yeah.
Jason:And I I know a lot of other families are in that mode. And, by the way, there's if you are in that mode and you're paying the mortgage and you're putting food on the table and you paid for braces for your kid, you're already doing incredibly. Like, that's awesome. Like, you you do get gold stars for doing all of those things. I was always saying, like, no one ever, like, writes, I don't know, an indie hackers post saying, hey.
Jason:Guess what, guys? I paid my mortgage this month, and I paid my utility bill. And it's it's, like, you should get some gold stars for that. That's good work.
Jon:The lights are still on. Yeah. The water is still running.
Jason:Yeah. That's that's we're celebrating. But definitely, I think, eventually, as entrepreneurs and this is Jason Cohen has really reminded me of this. Like, eventually, you do need to get to the point where all of that risk you're taking comes back in some way. And Mhmm.
Jason:In some ways, I've I haven't really recovered financially from when my these 2 snowboard shops I started in my twenties. When they when they, closed down and, you know, I had to pay $80,000 to suppliers, that was a that's been a hard one to overcome. Right? I took a risk. It did not pay off.
Jason:And, eventually, as an entrepreneur, you've gotta it's gotta pay off. And, if I've learned any lesson since then, it's that, you know, you wanna invest in something that pretty quickly, let's say within 2 years, is giving you a reasonable return on all of that effort.
Jon:Mhmm. And not necessarily financially only.
Jason:And not necessarily financially only.
Jon:Yeah. I think right. I I I'm not gonna speak for you, but I feel like you're on the same path. But, like, we didn't take investment money because of what that would, I think, do to the business and how it would change it and how it would change our relationship, how it would change our stress levels. I think for me, like, I wanna, like, build this business, but use it as an opportunity to sort of build a calmer, more intentional life, I guess.
Jon:Like, I don't wanna take venture money. I don't wanna move to San Francisco and be in that rat race. I don't like, none of that appeals to me. Mhmm. So, yeah, I think the reward is, you know, there's a financial reward you get from putting in hard work, but there's also a lifestyle I don't know, lifestyle or Yeah.
Jon:Something like that. Like, to not have to worry about the stresses of where's the money coming from, or I don't wanna the stresses of managing 10 people or a team or running this massive company.
Jason:Totally. Totally. But Yeah. I'm sure I I want someone to build an AI that analyzes our voices for anxiety and stress throughout this entire podcast. Because I I think if you did that, I I'm sure people have noticed, like, you are much more calm now that you're not doing both full time work and Yeah.
Jason:Building in the afternoon. People have told me people that have been listening to my voice forever has said, Justin, you are way less wound up now. You're more relaxed. And that, in a lot of ways, is what 30 k a month means. It means I can finally breathe a little, and I'm not expecting it that it's not gonna be hard.
Jason:You know, like Jason said, it might get harder in some ways. But on the other hand, there is this sense of calm that's been really nice. And I think if I never got here, if I was always in that haggard, just like if you're if you're if you're still working a full time job and doing this evenings and weekends forever, and there's just no relief, that would be hard. And so
Jon:It would be.
Jason:It yeah. This is this this has been just yeah. It feels good.
Jon:We can end soon on this topic. Mhmm. I had a friend ask me recently that, he's like, what's so what's your what's your mindset right now? Like, how how are things feeling?
Jason:Mhmm.
Jon:And I think about it, but I don't necessarily people don't necessarily ask me that. And, like, honestly, it's, like, it's pretty great. Like, at this point, you know, we're we're getting paid. We're getting paid a little more every month. Mhmm.
Jon:The freedom is there to kind of work how we want. Like, we both enjoy it. Yeah. It's it's it's all good. Yeah.
Jon:It's a good spot.
Jason:Yeah. So folks, someone clipped this out for us and to remind us when things get really shitty. Like, when John and I are are fighting in public about something and then, and or everything everything's crashing in on us. Yeah. Clip this out.
Jason:Do do you wanna end with this shaping progress? We're going a bit long. Sure.
Jon:Yeah. We could talk about it pretty quick. Yeah.
Jason:Yeah. We could talk about it. So yeah. What do you you you put this in here small enough to wing it?
Jon:Yeah. So we've been working on this private podcasting feature for the last, what, 4 or 5 weeks now.
Jason:Yeah.
Jon:It's going well. Yeah. It's going really well, I think. We're aiming to be done on 15th. Whether or not we release that or not, I don't know.
Jon:But Yeah. It'll be probably. You know, we've been working off of this shape up book that base camp wrote Ryan Singer wrote at base camp, and he he updated he constantly updates it.
Jason:Yeah. You know where this actually came from? One of our customers, Brian Ray, has a podcast called Bright and Early.
Jon:Uh-huh.
Jason:And he asked this question during the interview. And Ryan said during the interview, I'm gonna add this to the book. So I'll I'll put that interview in the show notes. But, yeah, that's where it came from.
Jon:So there's a there's a new section about adjusting to your size, which is about adjusting to the size of your team. Mhmm. And I think this was a question we initially had was, like, how does this work with 2 people? Like, if and there's a section, you know, there's a there's a a section in here called small enough to wing it, which is, I think, us. Yeah.
Jon:You know, it's 2 of us. We're small enough to wing it. It's like from this book, it says when your team is just 2 or 3 people, everyone does a bit of everything. Since a few people are wearing many hats and performing many roles, difficult to commit long chunks of un inter uninterrupted time to a specific project. Yeah.
Jon:Person doing the programming might also be answering customer support requests and dealing with an infrastructure issue at the same time, which is
Jason:Definitely. Yeah. That's definitely us. Yep.
Jon:And so, you know, he kinda goes on to say, like, it changes a little bit when you have a small team. You don't really have to strictly adhere to everything. Yeah. And you might not work at in 6 week intervals. You might work in 2 or 3 week intervals, which I think we'll probably do next.
Jon:Yeah. Like, this feature is a big feature.
Jason:Yeah.
Jon:I think it needed 6 weeks, but the next one probably doesn't.
Jason:This is really helpful. Just to have so have someone kind of clean things up a bit and, like, talk to us where we're at. Yeah. Nice. I'm gonna put this in the show notes for sure.
Jon:So yeah. Overall, it's going well.
Jason:Alright. Why don't we flip the script? I'm gonna read the Patreon shout outs this week, and I'll see if I can Okay. If I can if I could do it. This is just this week only.
Jason:We'll be back to we'll be back to John Buhr the next week. Here we go.
Jon:See how you do.
Jason:James Sours, like flowers, from user input dot I o, Travis Fisher, Matt Buckley from nice things dot I o, Russell Brown, Evander Sassy, Pradyuma Schrambrecher. Sorry, PD. Noah Praill, David Colgan, Robert Simplicio, Colin Gray, Josh Smith, Ivan Kerkovic, Brian Ray. Man, it's been nice hearing you pronounce some of these because I I I just remember Miguel Piedrafita, Shane Smith, Austin Loveless, Simon Bennett, Corey Haines, Michael Sitver, Paul Jarvis, and Jack Ellis, Dan Buddha? Danbuda.com.
Jason:Darby Frey, Samori Augusto, Dave Young, Brad from Canada, Sammy Schuckert, Mike Walker, Adam Devander, Dave Junta.
Jon:Junta.
Jason:That was worth it. Just read that.
Jon:We'll see how he gets we'll see how he reacts to
Jason:that one. Calfox@getrewardful.com and our sponsors, ActiveCampaign and Honey Badger.
Jon:Cool. Thanks, everyone.
Jason:Transistor dotfm.
