No sleep 'till Brooklyn (what we learned in New York)
This episode is brought to you by profitwell.com. If you want all of your SaaS metrics in one place, you can sign up for free. Also, their new show season 2 of Protect the Hustle is out now in your favorite podcast player. Just open it up and search for protect the hustle.
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 Buda, a software engineer.
Speaker 1:And I'm Justin Jackson. I do product and marketing. Follow along as we build Transistor dot f m.
Jon:How's it going? You're, you're in Brooklyn, and I am I'm not.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I am in Brooklyn. I've been in New York for a week. I I
Jon:How long does it feel like longer than that?
Speaker 1:It's starting to feel long now. Like, I'm starting to get a little bit homesick. Okay. Yeah. It's, you know, of course, when you first fly in anywhere, it's kind of exciting and, you know, it's full of possibility.
Speaker 1:And, I leave tomorrow afternoon. And so and I've had many kind of waves of experiences. Yeah. And so, yeah. It feels like almost like 3 kind of distinct parts.
Speaker 1:And now I'm in that kind of the tail end.
Jon:Yeah. I feel like New York does that though if you're there for a while. It's like there's just so much going on.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yes. And it always brings up this question of, you know, am I living in the right place, I think. Because it's, my experience flying into cities like this is I'm meeting all these people. It's easy to get meetings.
Speaker 1:And maybe the you know, the story I'm telling myself is if I was here, I could do this all the time. But the flip side of that coin is if I was here and I did that all the time, I'd be exhausted.
Jon:Yeah. You'd also be broke because you have a family.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. I I did meet I met with 1 one fellow who's, he just had a second child and is renting an 800 square foot apartment for $40,000 a year, which is Oh my god.
Jon:With with 2 kids?
Speaker 1:With 2 kids. Yeah. Oh
Jon:my wow.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That's that's the life.
Jon:Crazy.
Speaker 1:Yeah. But before we get into my trip, because I think it'll probably dominate a lot of our conversation.
Jon:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Let's let's talk about you. Because last I heard, you were looking for an office.
Jon:Yeah. So, you know, this whole transition into full time transistor work, you know, I knew there was gonna be this point where I would need to find a place to work. I was hoping to have it sort of lined up, you know, by the time I I made the move to to full time, but that didn't happen. So, yeah, there's there you know, there's obviously a couple of options. 1 is just work from home, which I just cannot do Mhmm.
Jon:Anymore. Work from coffee shops, which also really not great for, like, sustained focused work. I could probably, like, write emails and do customer support there for, like, an hour and then just wanna leave. Mhmm. The other option was find a coworking space and rent a desk there where I don't necessarily know anybody, and it would probably be fairly expensive for, like, this, you know, weird like, I I've the more the more I see those places, the more I think they're, like, these manufactured experiences.
Jon:It's like, hey. Look at look at our look at our pictures and how awesome we are, and our community is great. And, like, it's all these people who are happy and working, and you go there, and it's like, nobody it's not that bad.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I I I got I saw WeWork in the in the wild for the first time.
Jon:And Yeah. There's a few here and, like, you know, it's an option. But
Speaker 1:It it's yeah. It is a weird I I actually I had this weird experience just short tangent where I I knew I needed to get a new phone when I got to New York. There's no Apple store where I live. And my phone has just been die like, the battery dies right away. And so, I'm, I was in a place with good WiFi, and I was backing up my phone to my computer.
Speaker 1:And all of a sudden, my phone, like, tried to reboot, but it didn't work. And then I but I didn't realize this. And I left the office thinking, okay. It it'll be fine. I can just reboot it somehow and it'll work.
Speaker 1:And then I'm as it when I got out and I no longer had WiFi, my phone is now every time I turn it on, it just says plug it into iTunes. Like, restart from Itunes. And so now I'm kind of panic is starting to set in. Like, I'm like, I need to get somewhere with WiFi right now. And I saw this WeWork and I'm like, oh, okay.
Speaker 1:I'll just go there. And, yeah. It was it's weird. It's it's like there's these people working there. They clearly don't know each other.
Speaker 1:There's this, like, welcoming committee. And, the irony is that to to rent space at WeWork, you need an app. And I'm like, okay. Well, my phone doesn't work. So I'm gonna have to figure out a different solution.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Anyway, Yeah. I I I totally get what you're saying.
Jon:So I was trying to avoid those types of places. I mean, there's smaller co working spaces, especially in Chicago, but, they're still, like, relatively expensive, I think, for at least for a permanent desk. Mhmm. So the the ideal situation is one where I sort of just share a space with some people I know. Mhmm.
Jon:Just a quiet space where people are there to work. It's not, you know, it's not you're not trying to build, like, this fake community or anything.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. The community is already there. There's connection already.
Jon:Yeah. So, an old coworker of mine reached out and said that his lease he has his own office right now. His lease is gonna be up soon, so he was kind of wondering if if I wanted to go in on something together. Looked around for a bit, and then he ended up reaching out to an old friend of his that he used to work in an office with. And it turns out that this guy who I've I've also met before, a few times in the past, has an office for basically, like, a a satellite office, little satellite office for the company he works for.
Speaker 1:Oh, nice.
Jon:And it's only, like, 4 or 5 people. 2 of them or 3 of them are barely over there. He's only there, like, 3 times a week. So he's renting some extra space for, like, a really, really good deal. And so, my old coworker and I, I think, are gonna both work there.
Speaker 1:Nice.
Jon:So, you know, it's like BYODESK. Bring your own desk. Mhmm. Bring your monitor and chair and everything and just set it up, and, like, you get access to it. It's 247.
Jon:It's in a neighborhood that I've never lived in, but it's, and I don't really go there very often, but it's a nice, like, quiet neighborhood. Mhmm. And it'd be, like, a bit of a commute. But I think we talked about this before. Like, I don't really mind that.
Jon:I haven't had a really big commute in a while. So
Speaker 1:How long of a commute are we talking in? Is this by train or by bike? Or
Jon:it could be biking is, like, 20 minutes. Bus, probably 20 to 30 depending on how many bus switches. So, like, not not bad. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That's not too bad.
Jon:Yeah. It it it's a nice nice neighborhood, quiet space, like, super nice people. And the I know the idea was to just find a place that I can really, like, get some deep focused work done.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Jon:And I think I think it'll be a good spot for that. Like, I don't Yeah. You know, I don't I haven't signed anything yet, but it'd be nice.
Speaker 1:That sounds great.
Jon:Yeah. And it it's not it's kinda similar to, I think, your setup.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Right? Yeah. I mean, initially, when I was renting an office, it was just, it was $200 a month, and it was just this small little, maybe a 150 square foot space or something.
Jon:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And now when we started our co working place, it was just 4 of us that wanted to split rent. And it's expanded since then. We have more members, but very organic kind of slow growing community. And I've really enjoyed it. Just having these regular faces that I see every day, every week.
Speaker 1:People I can go for lunch with. People you know, if work is going bad, we can vent to each other.
Jon:Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. So that's yeah. That's kind of what I was looking forward to.
Jon:And I you know, it's a old coworker that I used to work with that I really liked working with. So I think being back in a space with him will be be nice.
Speaker 1:That's great. So This reminds me of these micro optimizations that James Clear talks about in Atomic Habits, his book. And one of the case studies is the UK cycling team and just how their road to success was always just doing these little optimizations. And I think where we work is one of those things that some people don't think about. They're like, no, I gotta work from home.
Speaker 1:That's the only way to do it. That's the only thing that makes sense. But clearly you were like, okay, wait, something's not right here and we need to change it. And I think those are the things those small little incremental changes actually have, in you know, when you put them all together, that actually does determine a a a big amount of a company's success.
Jon:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So I think it's worth it for us to invest in that. And,
Jon:yeah. Yeah. I think it'll be good. I think it'll be good for me and for the company. I you know, it's I haven't really obviously, I'm working on this full time, but I haven't felt like it necessarily just because it's sort of, like, I don't know, a bit scatterbrained sometimes and, like, schedule's weird, and, like, I don't have a desk that I go to and work at.
Jon:Like, I don't go somewhere that's, like, this is where work happens. Mhmm. I
Speaker 1:think that was actually easier for me when I went independent because I was working for Sprintly. And then when I stopped working for Sprintly, I didn't change offices or desks or anything. It was just, like, I kept the same desk, same location. The only thing that changed was the work I was doing.
Jon:Right.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, that totally makes sense.
Jon:Yes. I'm I am looking forward to it whenever whenever it starts
Speaker 1:up. Awesome.
Jon:In the next next week or so.
Speaker 1:Awesome, man. Cool. Do you are you gonna get a standing desk, or are you a sit down kinda desk person?
Jon:I might get one that's, yeah, convertible. Yeah. There's some, like you know, obviously, I haven't ever bought one for myself, but, there's a lot of good options now that aren't that don't, like, break the bank. Mhmm. Yeah.
Jon:They used to be, like, you know, a $1,000 or $800, and I think there's a couple that are pretty good now for, like, a couple $100.
Speaker 1:Nice. That's great. Actually, while we're talking about this, this would be a good time to bring up a topic, which is, how are we doing expenses?
Jon:That's a good that's a good question. I don't know. I mean, I think it'd probably be beneficial for office space to be paid for by the company Mhmm. Yeah. As opposed to, like, after tax from my personal account or your personal account or whatever.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Jon:Hardware and stuff like that and desks, I I don't really know. I don't know. What do you I mean, we haven't really needed to buy any yet. Right? We haven't needed to buy computers.
Jon:We haven't needed to buy, although you bought this portable recorder, which
Speaker 1:Mhmm. That's by bringing it up. I hope it's
Jon:Could probably be expensed. Yeah. I mean Good time
Speaker 1:good time to talk about it.
Jon:Yeah. I mean, ultimately, I think it's probably beneficial for all this stuff to be paid for by the company Yeah. Pre, you know, pretax, pre payroll, all this. So, like, it's just a business expense.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Here's a here's a suggestion. Because we're just doing this in public. We're just figuring this out. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I it it seems reasonable to me that for most things, anything that anytime we decide to expense something that seems to be like, you know, well, office is an easy one. So if if your office costs a $150 a month, then we would just also credit me for a $150 a
Jon:month. Right.
Speaker 1:And that actually works out well in my case because my office is about the same as yours. With hardware and things, I think it it is reasonable that we would both be spending money. But if we could track it somehow so that it's roughly the same. So Yeah. I just bought this audio recorder that I'm going to be using, But that should almost go in a spreadsheet saying, okay, Justin spent, whatever this was, $219 of his hardware budget.
Speaker 1:And that means John now has $219 to spend.
Jon:Right. Or we yeah. Or we have a set budget per year for hardware or Mhmm. Like, I was thinking about that too. Right?
Jon:I'm you're looking into a new laptop whenever Apple comes out with something that isn't a piece of garbage. Yeah. I don't need one right now, but, like, you know, I don't know what would be reasonable. It's like, as a company, each of us gets to buy a laptop every couple of years or 3 years, but, like, the company owns it. And if you get a new one, you have to, like, sell it and use that money to buy the new one or something like that.
Jon:I don't Yeah.
Speaker 1:Actually, I like that idea better for us to start in the same way that we're we're using Profit First for, assigning these percentages. So 50% of revenue goes to owner salaries. 5% goes to profits. 15% goes to taxes. It would be interesting maybe to, have either a percentage or probably more reasonably a a dollar amount that is like, okay, this is what we spend on equipment, in a reasonable kind of way.
Speaker 1:And, and then it's just it's clear for both of us. We both have some autonomy in terms of how we spend that budget. And it also probably will get if we do ever hire people, it'll give us a framework of, okay. Well, of course, we're going to give them something for a desk and give them something for office space and, like, all the reasonable things.
Jon:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:And, I think we should just account for that. We should probably even, like, whatever you, you know, you spent on well, yeah. We gotta some of this stuff is messy, because we're we've brought some of our own assets into this that we use, but we haven't that are that are not yet on the balance sheet. I don't think we have to figure all of that out now, but yeah, I I thought it'd be interesting for us to at least talk about it quick right now.
Jon:Yeah. Yeah. We should. I mean, I I think it also it also ties into the need for us to get a credit card for the company. Mhmm.
Jon:Which we don't have yet. Which we've looked at a few, but haven't applied for any.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Send us your favorite, business credit card, folks. Everyone has a favorite.
Jon:Because that it would've it would've made it easier for you to buy a microphone. Right? And not have to then
Speaker 1:Now we have to do a reimbursement. Yeah. Submitting it, which is which is fine too. That's and by the way, folks at home, if you have ideas on how you do that, that'd be great. I've had tons of great feedback from folks on our last episode where we talked about how we manage projects.
Speaker 1:And, one, one comment here from Ben. Benjamin says, he's from Okidoki. He says latest podcast was great. I have lots of thoughts on small team, SaaS, and support. I never did figure out the cadence on the features versus refinements and bugs, to be honest.
Speaker 1:Features just take longer to ship. With your MRR, I still think you should hire immediately, maybe even 2 support staff. You can scale MRR more focusing on doing what you and John are best at. I tended to do themed days. So Mondays is for ops and infrastructure, Tuesdays to Thursdays is features, and Fridays is upgrades and bug fixes.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. So I thought that was cool. Just seeing how different people handle things like theme days and stuff.
Jon:Yeah. I think we'll we'll probably do a follow-up episode. I mean, I know we're trying to talk to Jason Fried too. Right? And it'd be interesting to ask him questions Mhmm.
Jon:On this, at least his thoughts and opinions on on how a small team like us would adopt something like base camp uses.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Alright. I wanna get into my big New York adventure, but but first
Jon:But first.
Speaker 1:But first, folks, redash.io, to help you better understand what you can do with Redash, They've produced a few video guides, and those guides use SaaS metrics as the demo data. So it should feel it should hit close to home for most of our listeners. I've created a redirect for the blog post. So all you have to remember is transistor.fm/redash, and that'll take you right to this case study. Really interesting what they've done.
Speaker 1:It's a, visualizing data with redash and then they just go through a bunch of videos that show you how they use it. Well worth your time, I think. And, also if you go to redash.io, you'll get 50% off your first three months when you mention build your SaaS.
Jon:Cool. Okay. So it sounds like you've been talking to a lot people given your voice and how it sounds. And looking at your notes, I think you probably
Speaker 1:Yeah. Home Alone 2.
Jon:I'll preface this by saying the amount of things you did and people you talk to would have would have, like, put me in a coma in a dark room listening to ambient music for, like, 3 days straight.
Speaker 1:I did actually have, there was a moment because I I was the reason I came to New York is I was at the MC and a speaker at Laracon, which is you know, how welcoming the community is. I've, you know, how welcoming the community is. I've I've, not only am I trying to learn Ruby on Rails for the at our app, but, also trying to learn Laravel, which is based on Rails. And, yeah, it's just incredible. The first day, you know, I'm on stage all day.
Speaker 1:I'm talking to people. I'm out in the lobby. I'm running all over the place. And then there's an after party, which was great. But after the after party, there's an after after party.
Speaker 1:And I I couldn't believe it because I'm for sure, like, one of the more extroverted people there. And I was like, I am I'm socialed out. Like, I I need to go lay in my bed.
Jon:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But they're like they're just like they were crazy. I I I couldn't keep up with them.
Jon:Was it an alcohol fueled after after party?
Speaker 1:I mean, they're I think the booze probably probably helps those folks.
Jon:Right. It helps.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. But yeah. Anyway, so that was great. Met a lot of our fans, for this show.
Speaker 1:Hello to anyone listening from Laracon. You know, a lot of people came up, said they listened to the show, and, a lot of people congratulating us on our our progress with Transistor.
Jon:Yeah. Lara Laravel Lyricon and the Laravel community, it seems it seems like a really it seems like a really cool community.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I
Jon:mean, it there's I feel like there's very few conferences I would wanna go to these days, and, obviously, I, you know, I use Ruby and Rails and not Mhmm. Laravel and PHP. But, like, it I I would I would think that the whole conference was not focused on
Speaker 1:Oh, no.
Jon:Like, PHP.
Speaker 1:No. There's I mean, the first talk was Adam talking about Tailwind and how he actually uses that those Tailwind in practice. So it's a lot of live coding.
Jon:Cool.
Speaker 1:There was Evan Yu from Vue that was demoing a bunch of new stuff. And I also think there's there's a lot of benefit from seeing the adjacent possible. Meaning, you know, we could go to RubyConf or RailsConf and and learn a bunch, but there's all of this innovation that's happening in other communities. And, you know, even seeing, for example, how Taylor Otwell develops an app. And, basically, he comes up with something new every year and announces it kind of Steve Jobs style at at Laracon.
Speaker 1:And it it's very much like a Steve Jobs keynote. Everyone, you know, he gets a big slot and everyone's, like, just listening. And he introduced a new serverless, basically, a serverless deployment application for built specifically for Laravel. And the attention to detail like his UI work, and he he's demoing everything on screen. And you can just see he's methodically thought through all these different use cases and made something really special.
Speaker 1:And I think, for me, it's inspiring seeing a product person and how they work and, just how much craftsmanship goes into what he's doing. So, yeah, it was it was awesome.
Jon:Cool.
Speaker 1:But I was also because I'm in New York, I wanted to book a bunch of extra days so that I can meet people. Most of the podcast industry is either here or in LA, and most of the technology companies are here in New York. Yeah. So the first thing I did was I went to Spotify, and I met with our contact at Spotify. We originally had someone in London, and then they they have they get they assigned us a new person to us.
Speaker 1:And, like, my context for our contact at Spotify, I just didn't have any. In my mind, they're the person I email 3 times a day to update shows with new RSS feeds. Right. And so I don't know if someone in a, like, a basement with 3,000 other customer support people. I've I've no frame of reference.
Speaker 1:And so I head downtown, get to the Spotify building, and I'm a small small town Canadian boy. Like, this is a my mind gets blown kind of a few different places. Like, there's a security desk at the bottom that just says Spotify, and you have to go there and they check to see if your name's on the list. Then they give you a visitor tag, then you swipe it and you that gets you into the elevator, and then it takes you up to this floor that's quite high up. And it's a big it opens into a big visitor lobby.
Speaker 1:And then you go and sign in, like, who you're meeting, and it pings them in Slack. And then they come downstairs. So, I met with yeah. The person I the our our liaison is not just like a customer support person. He is in charge of all technology partnerships for podcasting at Spotify.
Jon:Oh, wow.
Speaker 1:And so right away, I'm like, okay. This is good context. And he also, invited one of the programmers who works on the podcast dashboard, like the dashboard specifically for podcasters. Such a good conversation. What I've said to a few people is, you know, you and I have been sometimes a little bit grumpy about Spotify.
Jon:Uh-huh.
Speaker 1:And what was interesting is as soon as I'm with them, their humanity just kind of rubs off on me. And I'm all of a sudden, I'm like, oh, wait. These are real human beings that are doing good work, and the the connection instantly changes. And in some ways, like, my attitude instantly changes. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Because they they were really eager to hear from us, despite the scale the scale. Oh, this is the other thing I thought of is before I got there early, so I had to go to the bathroom. So I went to the bathroom and it's like a typical startup. Like, there's all these bathrooms and they got all these amenities in there, but there's just so many of them. And my immediate thought was Spotify spends more on bathroom maintenance in a month than we make in revenue in a month just at this office.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Like, the scale of this place is just oh, and it, like, overlooks the whole harbor. Like, on one side, you can see the Statue of Liberty. And then all the way on the other side, you can see all the way to Coney Island. And
Jon:Yeah. If they're if they're in downtown Manhattan, that is not true.
Speaker 1:No. No. This is, like, despite the scale of Spotify, they are really interested in what we're doing. Like, genuinely interested. Because this is a big part of their business plan moving forward.
Speaker 1:Like, podcasting is a big deal for them. And so, they seem very serious about developing good relationships and partnerships with folks like us. And that was encouraging, much better than, you know, some other partners. One rhymes with Mapple, that are much harder to get a hold of. And, you know, maybe I shouldn't call people out.
Speaker 1:But honestly, it's been really hard getting a hold of some folks. Yeah. It is. And, you know, like Google, like, they've never reached out to us. So there's no I don't even know who where to start with some of these people.
Speaker 1:But, it was clear that Spotify is serious about, partnering with technology platforms and content creators. And I I learned a lot. I I can't go into all of it here, but there's, a lot of context that was super interesting.
Jon:Very cool. Yeah. I'd I'd love to get up there sometime and
Speaker 1:Yeah. They they were eager to meet you too. So next time you're in town, you you should go for a visit. And, I said specifically to the developer, you know, John would love to meet you. And they they basically said, like, send us your feedback.
Speaker 1:So everything that I I I was pretty, like, raw, like, I wasn't I didn't hold anything back. I said, you know, these are the struggles we've had, and these are the opportunities we see. This is what we appreciate about you. This is where we think there's opportunities to improve, and he they were really receptive. So, a plus grade from Spotify.
Jon:Cool.
Speaker 1:Also That's
Jon:good to hear.
Speaker 1:Also got to see our friend Bill, who now works at Spotify. And, that was crazy because then they left and then I went over to the thing and, you know, put Bill's name in. And he comes down. And then he's like, okay. Well, why don't we go up to my floor?
Speaker 1:I'm like, wait, there's another floor? I was like, I thought this is it.
Jon:Oh, that's awesome.
Speaker 1:How much money is going through this place? It's crazy.
Jon:Yeah. Wow. It's wild.
Speaker 1:So that was worth the trip alone just to meet all those folks. That was really great. Also met our friend, Dave Zohrab at Chartable. Got to hang out with him, and actually go and work out of his office for a little bit.
Jon:Not not quite as nice as Spotify's?
Speaker 1:I mean, comparable. No. A little bit different for sure.
Gavin:Okay.
Speaker 1:Dave and I had an interesting conversation actually about because they've just raised funding about, go big or go home or building a bootstrap business. And, he felt like that decision really is binary. You either do one or the other. It's
Jon:you
Speaker 1:can't really go halfway between. And, Yeah, it was that was a really good conversation. I always found it helpful whenever I could connect with people who are already embedded in the community, and I could kind of just basically what they live every day. I could get a sense of what's going on.
Jon:Yeah. Because everyone has sort of a different, a slightly different viewpoint. They're either focusing on like, Chartable is obviously focusing on analytics and something slightly different than what we are, and they might have, like, yeah, just a different perspective, a different you know, you might learn something new that you didn't didn't realize before. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I actually understand their product better now too. They have a feature called smart links that I thought was just, I I misunderstood it completely. What it does is it's a it's like a campaign link you create. And so, like, one might be called Facebook. And then it will track all of your all the traffic right through to the download and be able to show you how many downloads you got from that campaign.
Jon:Okay.
Speaker 1:Really, like if you're if you're promoting a show and you wanna know, okay, like which campaign work? Did our Twitter campaign or Facebook ads or whatever use these smart links to track the traffic all the way through the funnel, and it will it will, yeah, show you where, you know, where your best kind of dollars spent were spent. And this has already works with our integration with Chartable. So transistor customers can use this right now.
Jon:Cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Really cool. What else here? I met my buddy Willie Morris who's, he's really cool. I met him back in 2,011 at Future of Web Apps, and he founded a company with with, Gary Vaynerchuk and recently, sold it.
Speaker 1:And now he's doing strategy for Fanmio, which is, like I think it's a a competitor competitor to Cameo, where you can, like, meet your heroes and
Jon:Oh, I gotcha.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So that was really great. Really nice to see him. Met a bunch of our customers. I I'm gonna miss a few people, but, Jess and J Mac from the Base Code podcast, Connor from the All Things Auth podcast, and just I just came from a meeting with Sherry from the Water and Music podcast.
Speaker 1:Every person I met, like, it was just encouraging. It was really neat to see people who are creating shows and seeing the benefit from podcasting. You know, Connor is really doing it to network with people in the securities industry, like, the digital, you know, like, digital security and Yeah. All that stuff. Sherry does a pod, a podcast for people in the music industry.
Speaker 1:It's kind of like a combination of, like, music and tech, and overlap between them. So people doing really interesting shows. And, yeah, it was really fun to meet folks that were, you know, in person that are using our product, asking them, why did you sign up? Like, how did you find us? You know?
Jon:That's really cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It was it was really great. And, I randomly met a friend I have not seen since high school. 20 years. He my buddy Nathan, he now works at HappyCog.
Jon:Wow. This is yeah. That's like that's like a dinosaur in the web design.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. They've been around for a long time. Started by Zeldman. And, yeah, he's doing really great work there.
Speaker 1:And then, this sounds like a lot. Yeah. This is quite a bit. It is. Last night, we I hung out with Mike who is, our mutual friend, but you introduced me to him.
Jon:Yep. Yeah. I used to work with Mike.
Speaker 1:In Chicago. Right? You're it's a Chicago convention?
Jason:Uh-huh.
Speaker 1:So he now lives in Brooklyn, and, he, made a reservation at a place, and we went. And he introduced me to 2 of his friends. One works for Amazon. You've met him. And but the other one does biz dev and digital strategy for Sony Music Global.
Speaker 1:And, you know, instantly, it was like I I was talking to him quite a bit. It was there's a lot Yeah. Lots to talk about there. So For sure. Serendipity.
Jon:That's cool. That yeah. Yeah. Feel like New York is crazy like that.
Speaker 1:It is crazy. At some point, I would love to I it'd be interesting to hear what people think about this because I think I have a little bit of not FOMO, but yeah. I guess FOMO, which is this question that I introduced earlier. Is it better for me to live in a small town in Canada and fly in somewhere once a year and be this exotic bird that's coming in that people wanna see? Or is it better to just be embedded in the place and, you know, work from that angle?
Jon:Yeah. It's hard it's a hard it's a hard thing to determine, I think, but, you know, I mean, look look where you've gotten and where we've gotten from where you're living now. Just
Speaker 1:yeah. Just from the way we're doing it now.
Jon:Yeah. I mean, it, you know, it would certainly change things a lot. You'd probably be I I don't know. Maybe you'd have a hard hard time focusing because there's so many other things going
Speaker 1:on. I mean, it's nice to be able to do it and, like, I I just caught up on our customer support stuff today. Like, it was I was so far behind on everything. It just felt like the normal stuff that I, like, take care of all the time was just adding up. So, yeah, I don't think I could do this all the time.
Jon:Right. I mean, yeah. You were there you mean, you're not living there. You're there for a particular reason. You wanted to make the most of it, so you're gonna fill your days up.
Speaker 1:You just kinda go hard. Yeah.
Jon:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I I I still do think it's it's nice having one of us living in a big city. Like, the fact that you're accessible in Chicago and you've gone out with some of our customers and partners. That is helpful. Having somebody Yeah. In a big city where people are already.
Speaker 1:And maybe, you know, maybe eventually, if it's worth it, I, you know, maybe I I don't know. Maybe I should move to Toronto or something like that. But, yeah, a lot of this also depends on the life you wanna live. And and Right. And then there's the the other thought of, like, sure, networking and meeting people is helpful.
Speaker 1:But there's also, like, there's some diminishing returns there. Like, eventually, you've met the people and it's exhilarating at first because you're meeting all these people. But, you know, you also have to just do the work and get really real customers at a grassroots level.
Jon:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:So yeah. That's it, man. That was that's the big New York trip. That's a good trip? Yeah.
Jon:You'll have to you'll have to fill me in all the secret the secret details later.
Speaker 1:There's some there's some secret details. The guy from Sony said, oh, I'm gonna have to get you drunk and get all your secrets. And I said, well, I'm not drinking right now. So I I got a I got a protective hedge around me.
Jon:Yeah.
Speaker 1:By the way, the not drinking thing, this is my first conference that I've been to where I haven't I haven't drank anything.
Jon:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Big difference. I I just I I I haven't been sleeping very well. But in terms of just, like, waking up and feeling good
Jon:Oh, I bet. Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's way, way better.
Jon:I mean, I I feel the same way. Like, I haven't I think I'm at, like, 45, 48
Speaker 1:Oh, nice.
Jon:Of not drinking.
Speaker 1:Good work, man.
Jon:And it you know, even if I sleep 5, 6 hours, like, I still feel okay. Yeah. Right? I don't feel, you know, great. I wish I could have got another hour or 2, but, like, I don't feel like garbage.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Jon:Did does did it surprise you how much people were drinking?
Speaker 1:Yeah. That's yeah.
Jon:Like, not being not being the one drinking, but, like, actually observing.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Totally. And I've introduced a few people to this idea that most of the job to be done when you're drinking is just having something in your hand. Because I noticed that, like, people, you know, the they're they're drinking. And then as soon as their beer is done, it's like, okay, I gotta get another one.
Speaker 1:If I'm staying, I've gotta get another one. But it's mostly to have this, not just security of having a drink in your hand, but, you know, it's normalized. It it gives you something to do. Everyone can take a sip every once in a while. But, you know, even me not drinking booze, I'm drinking a lot of liquid because I always want something in my hand.
Speaker 1:Just try to be in a circle of people and they all have a drink in your hand in their hand, but you're the only one that doesn't. It just feels weird. So, yeah, that was that was, Yeah. That was really, different. The the only time I really wanted one is I went to see Iron Maiden.
Jon:How was that?
Speaker 1:That's the part I've I've I I haven't Yeah. This trip is crazy. I got to this place in Brooklyn, like, after this crazy day on the subway, and I had, like, my big pack on. And then I stopped at the Apple store to get a new phone, and it was just, like, nuts. And I finally get to the Airbnb.
Speaker 1:But while I was getting at the Apple Store, I just noticed all these heavy metal fans, like my Iron Maiden fans walking around. I'm like, oh, wait. Iron Maiden's in town tonight. And I was like, oh, I should go. But I had my pack and everything.
Speaker 1:I'm like, I'm gonna go. Yeah. So I went back to the Airbnb, sat in my bed for a long time just, like, just, like, relaxed, had a shower, like and then it's it's 7 it's 7 o'clock. The show starts at 7:30. And I just decide I'm gonna go.
Speaker 1:And so I just took the subway down to Barclays Center. And, I didn't realize this, but Ticketmaster doesn't sell tickets to you. If the show is gonna start in 10 minutes, like, if it's past 10 minutes to go, then you can't buy tickets from Ticketmaster. So I was like, oh, shoot. And then I I but the box office was still open.
Speaker 1:So I just went to the box office, bought a ticket, walked in, and now I'm at Maiden.
Jon:Nice.
Speaker 1:It was incredible too. It was, like, such a good show. Yeah. It was it was nice to, like, go in there and just, like, not think about anything else except for
Jon:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Satan.
Jon:I think that's the title of the episode.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So it was it was great. But that was the time I was like, everyone's there's like, basically, you can only order beer. That's the only thing that's in there. And so I was like, oh man, that'd be I'm a but it was still that was also my first concert I'd gone to when I not drinking.
Jon:And it was
Speaker 1:also great.
Jon:Cool. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So that's enough for me. Do do you wanna talk a little bit about Vue before we go?
Jon:Yeah. So, I mean, it kind of you know, it's interesting you mentioned Laravel, Laracon, and and Vue because I know, they've really heavily adopted Vue Yeah. Dotjs for for Laravel, which is really cool. Yeah. And I've been meaning to really dive into it.
Jon:Like, we used it at Black Box and and cartoons humanity, but I I really wasn't involved in that part of it. So
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Jon:I'm familiar with it, but I wasn't really like, I couldn't just start coding it. Yeah. You know, like, on the spot. So, I had started a a multi episode, like, playlist player that you can embed in your website so you can embed basically one player that shows all of your episodes for your podcast. And, you know, I designed it and updated it and got it, like, kinda working, but, like, I just hit this point where I was like, I cannot do this with just vanilla JavaScript or jQuery or some combination of just, like, garbage JavaScript that I'm writing.
Jon:Yeah. And I knew in the back of my head that, like, Vue or something like Vue would be really good for this. Mhmm. So over the past well, last week, I guess, end of last week, I just really, like, dove head first into it and, like, I you know, it's hard because you have to, like, ignore everything. You basically have to ignore everything else.
Jon:Yes. Like, I had to just actively ignore customer service
Gavin:Mhmm.
Jon:Requests and, like, emails and just, put on some headphones and, like, read documentation and just kinda, like, start rewriting our entire embeddable play. Mhmm. Or at least well, at least the JavaScript part of it. Like, all the styling and and most of the HTML is is still pretty useful. Yeah.
Jon:You know, it's like with anything new. It's like it's really nice to be in that beginner's mindset where you're like, I don't really know what I'm doing. There's the initial couple days of just absolute frustration, and you're like, this, I don't understand any of this. And then the more documentation you read and examples and, like, couple tutorials, like, you get to a point where you're like, alright. Yeah.
Jon:I get this. It makes sense. And, like, it's actually pretty fun, and, like, you're doing stuff, and you're like, this is amazing that this works this way. Like, it's just like, Vue is really, really nice.
Speaker 1:It it it abstracts quite a bit, doesn't it? Like
Jon:It does. Like, it really cut down the amount of JavaScript I wrote. Like, a lot of the heavy lifting is just in the Vue library. Yeah. But just that I haven't really worked with these JavaScript frameworks much like view or react where, you know, it's it's just, like, two way data binding of, like, the data behind the stuff and the HTML.
Jon:And, like, if you update something, it just, like, magically updates other stuff. And it's just, like, once you get that in your head and, like, get it to work, it's kind of magical.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Like, so that model of I I don't really understand that part, but you're saying there's a a a way of understanding. Like, are you talking the way it interacts with the database or something different?
Jon:Well, not even the database. There's like a there's a data layer in JavaScript. Right? They call it, it's like they talk about reactivity where so you have this almost like this data layer in JavaScript Mhmm. That holds all of your information about all of your episodes.
Jon:Right? It's just, like, JSON formatted stuff. Yeah. And you have HTML templates that have they're sprinkled with, like, this special syntax for view, like, templating language for view that ties into the JavaScript itself. Yeah.
Jon:It's just like it it binds together this data layer and the view layer so that if you end up changing something in the data layer, it just, like, automatically reflects it back in the in the view layer Gotcha. Sort of sort of magically. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's pretty cool.
Jon:It's cool stuff.
Speaker 1:Awesome.
Jon:So that is coming along, nicely.
Speaker 1:And and so now you feel like you're making progress again. Because there was a time where you had to before you could climb the mountain, you needed to kind of, like, you know, prepare your gear, get the
Jon:Yeah. Yeah. Definitely had to dive in and just do some research and be, like,
Speaker 1:I think
Jon:this is what I wanna use. Like, let me see if if it it is. Mhmm. You know, I have, like, a version one of it done, but I think there's definitely room to refactor it and sort of clean things up again. Like, there's just a lot of different ways to do it in Vue.
Jon:But you can, like, you can split off parts of it into into these components that you can reuse elsewhere. Like, we have we have a player in multiple places. We have a player on, you know, our websites that we offer our customers. We have a player on the embeddable widgets. You know, we don't we have a basic player in our dashboard, but, like, those could all be the same player component, and then you just sort of, like, mix that component into an an embeddable player Yeah.
Jon:As the part that handles the audio, but then, like, on top of that is this other component that's the playlist itself.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Jon:Sort of communicate together.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That'll be cool.
Jon:It's cool. So there's there's a lot. I mean, Vue is cool. I think that it'll come in handy too with the just with the dashboard and the amount of, you know, like, interactions we can do, like, better interactions with the data itself.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Well, it's just fun learning new things too. So
Jon:It is. Yeah. It is. And, like, I think combining that with an office space to work at and do the learning will be will be nice.
Speaker 1:Totally. Awesome, man. Well, let I have I am actually meeting with someone from GitHub tonight. So I gotta Nice. I gotta get ready for that.
Speaker 1:I turned off the air conditioning in this room so that it wouldn't make noise, and I am sweating. What why don't you go through our, just thank our Patreon supporters.
Jon:Yeah. Thanks as always, to our supporters. We have, Robert Simplicio Simplicio.
Speaker 1:Brand new.
Jon:Sim is that right? Simplicio?
Speaker 1:Think so. Yeah.
Jon:I like that last name.
Speaker 1:I do too. Lot of good we've got a lot of good last names on here.
Jon:It sounds like sounds like a startup.
Speaker 1:It does. Simplus.simplus.io. Simplicio. Make make things simple. Make banking simple again.
Jon:Yeah. Okay. Colin Gray, from alitu.com. Right? Yep.
Jon:Josh Smith. God. How do I mess up Smith? It's the second time I've done that. Josh.
Jon:I think it's because there's s h and then another s.
Speaker 1:Josh Schmidt.
Jon:Josh Josh Smith. Ivan Kerkovic, Brian Ray, Miguel Pedriofita.
Speaker 1:Guess who I met today? Miguel Pedriofita.
Jon:Oh, nice.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That's another person. Yeah. Cool. He he's on vacation with his family from Spain.
Jon:What?
Speaker 1:Well, look look, he's, 17 years old. He's, like, an incredible programmer.
Jason:Really? Yeah.
Jon:Oh, wow. Cool.
Speaker 1:So got got to hang out with him and his mom today. It was
Jon:it was awesome. Thanks, Miguel. Alright. That's cool. Shane Smith, Austin Loveless, Simon Bennett, Corey Hanes, Michael Sitber, Paul Jarvis, and Jack Ellis, Dan Buddha.
Speaker 1:Danbudda.com, who I've never met.
Jon:No.
Speaker 1:I haven't met him that yet. I got that. Oh, I have to go to Austin to meet him?
Jon:You would have to go to Austin.
Speaker 1:Okay. That's where we'll do our next thing.
Jon:Yeah. Not in the summer, though.
Speaker 1:That's right. That's right. I have met the next fellow.
Jon:Darby Frey, Samori Augusto, Dave Young, Brad from Canada, Kevin Markham, Sammy Schubert, Dan Erickson, Mike Walker.
Speaker 1:Met Mike Walker, by the way.
Jon:Oh, nice.
Speaker 1:It was a
Jon:it was a
Speaker 1:little bit of meetup. Cool. There's actually probably some other people on this list I also met, but I just can't Maybe. Yeah. Connecting it right now.
Jon:That's cool. Adam Devander? Dave Joon.
Speaker 1:Joon, there was a there was one person there was, someone at the conference that I was doing all these prize draws. And so I'd like take the name out and the joke was I could not pronounce any of their names. Like, if this is the mispronunciation podcast, this was like I didn't pronounce one name right.
Jon:I know.
Speaker 1:And so one guy said, next one you take out, you should just take it out and go, Junta. But only only, like, you know, 5 people in the audience would have got it. But
Jon:Oh, that's great. People would yeah. People probably would have thought you're crazy. Kylefox@getrewardful.com, and our sponsors this week, ProfitWell and Redash.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And this is, Redash's last month. So go to redash.io. ProfitWell is around for 1 more month, and we have a new sponsor starting next month.
Jon:Cool. Well, safe travels home and get some rest
Speaker 1:Thanks, man.
Jon:Justin.
Speaker 1:We'll see you folks next week.
