Welcome to The Panel where two bootstrappers talk about building a better business and a better life. I'm Justin Jackson, cofounder of transistor.fm.
Brian Casel:I'm Brian Casel. I am building builder methods.
Justin Jackson:This week, we'll probably focus well, we'll at least start off over on my side of the my side of the pie. Last week, we had if you haven't listened to that episode, I thought it was a really good episode where we went through all of Brian's different projects, all of his different bets, and assigned it, like, icons for different things, like amount of revenue, time investment.
Brian Casel:Amount of shovels, amount of
Justin Jackson:batteries. Shovels. Yep. The shovel one is interesting because it's like, how much foundational groundbreaking work am I doing? I think it's gonna be interesting to contrast those.
Brian Casel:I think it's a really great I don't know. I don't wanna call it formula or framework. It's it's maybe the start of some sort of framework or thing, but I I think it's a a really cool game that or a thing that we can turn to anyone, really. Let's let's turn it on you today.
Justin Jackson:You know? Yeah. We should vibe code this thing up so people can do it themselves. I think we got to start with a spicy email client chat, though, because you recently switched your email provider. Yeah.
Justin Jackson:And I think it's worth talking about because I'm someone who tried out hey,hey.com, and I couldn't make it work for myself for a variety of reasons. So I'm curious kind of where you ended up.
Brian Casel:This is one of those and by the way, I I I decided to make this change while I was on a road trip vacation last week down down at the Outer Banks. And so it's like it's like I don't have enough things to do. But Yeah. Anyway, I'm back home now. Yeah.
Brian Casel:It you know, email is I mean, it could be the most used app out of all tools that that any of us ever touch all day. Right? Yep. I mean, for me, it's probably like email and, like, cursor right now. Those those two are probably the top two.
Brian Casel:And email even more because it's also on my phone and everything. Right?
Justin Jackson:It's the killer app.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And it's not going away. Nothing will ever kill email. I I hate it when people try to say that like, oh, Slack is gonna kill. No.
Brian Casel:Like, I stay away from that shit. It's it's email is here to stay.
Justin Jackson:There was a time for the millennial generation where Facebook was looking to disrupt email. They said millennials don't use email. They only use Facebook. And so Facebook you could get a at facebook dot com email address. I don't know if you you remember this.
Brian Casel:Oh, wow.
Justin Jackson:And it connected to Messenger. So they had they were gonna try to disrupt all of email and messaging and bring it all inside of Facebook.
Brian Casel:I just don't know how people even and so many people live that way today, even professionals in our industry. Like so I just I started working with a consulting client and they wanna invite me into their Slack. And that's just like, no. Like, I I don't. I I always I always just say like, no.
Brian Casel:If if we're working together, I'm not joining your Slack. It's I I can't do it. I like, no way. I I have a Slack for me Why and my not? Because I can't, like, get requests and messages from that.
Brian Casel:Like, I'm not I never make myself available for live chat at all. Right? And even if I even if I'm in the Slack and I'm not even checking it on a regular basis, then there's gonna be, like, questions and requests that I have to, like, sift through and find, and I have to log, and I have to process them and make sure I get back to this and that, but that one's threaded over there. Like, it's it's chaos. Right?
Brian Casel:I I just I don't know why most people can't handle an inbox. Just work through an inbox. People send you stuff. It's okay if it takes you a few days to get back, but, like, it's in an inbox. You'll get to it.
Brian Casel:That's how I I think of things. Right? Same thing with Clarity Flow. You know, like, we get a lot of questions from people on Clarity Flow like customers on Clarity Flow who are like, how do I handle all these messages that are coming through? Yeah.
Brian Casel:And like, yeah, we have a notifications menu and everything inside Clarity Flow. We've got unread markers and things like that. But to me, I use ClarityFlow every single day, and I use it with my email. I get an email notification of a new message, and it's unread until I see it. Like, it's the perfect queue of messages for me to get through.
Brian Casel:You know?
Justin Jackson:Yeah. Are you are you an inbox zero person? Are you just reading and archiving everything? What's your approach? I
Brian Casel:think so. I I guess I guess so. I mean, I pretty rarely actually get to zero. I I I mean, I shouldn't say that. I I actually do get to zero pretty regularly, but I get a lot of noise in my inbox.
Brian Casel:Right? And that's that's the big driver for why I switched emails email clients, I mean. So You
Justin Jackson:were using Hey?
Brian Casel:I was So I I've been using Gmail for, like, twenty years. Right? Yeah. And for both personal I have a personal Gmail, and then I have a work email, which is just like @briancastle.com. And, like, all of my company emails sort of forward forward to my one work email.
Brian Casel:Right? Like Yeah. Personal and work, two inboxes. Right? I I never I I really never mix, like, friends and family with, like, work emails.
Brian Casel:That's I don't do that. So about six months ago, I gave Hey a good like, a solid like, at first, it didn't click with me either. Maybe a year ago. And I was like, this is just too weird and different.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. So it
Brian Casel:so it didn't click. But then I did come back to it when I just got so fed up with the noise and the spam. And, I mean, I I really do think that what Hay has done with the what do they call it? The the filter thing.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. Where you can the screen
Brian Casel:Screener.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. Screener. Yep.
Brian Casel:Like, that is pretty brilliant in my in my view. I I think, like and it they literally, like, overnight, like, quieted down my email. Right?
Justin Jackson:Yeah. The screener is basically this thing in your inbox where you can say, hey. There's someone that wants to get into your inbox. Do you wanna let them in? Mhmm.
Justin Jackson:Thumbs up or thumbs down. Yeah. And I don't know if
Brian Casel:that's And then I I also like their concept of, like, the paper trail and and, you know, and they also have, like, newsletters. One one thing that I found was that, like, I never read newsletters anymore because they would always get thrown into the newsletters bin, which is never in my view. Yeah. So, I mean, that was like, I actually got into Hey for about six months. One thing that that was kind of a bummer was that, like, it's an alternative to Gmail.
Brian Casel:So, like, there's, a six month hole in my Gmail history now. You know?
Justin Jackson:There's a few things that I found difficult. One is that email archive from 2005 or whatever that I have that I can search it and find.
Brian Casel:It's so valuable to have that search.
Justin Jackson:It's so helpful. And then the other thing, the way that Hey dealt with calendar events, I found challenging because
Brian Casel:I never used Hey Calendar, you know?
Justin Jackson:Yeah. But every time you get a calendar invite, did you have to copy it over manually into your calendar?
Brian Casel:No. I get because I just use I guess I still what did I do? I still use g like, Google's calendar system.
Justin Jackson:At the time when I was trying it, it was not like, when you get a calendar invite in Gmail, there's a button right in the inbox of, like
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Justin Jackson:Yes, no, maybe.
Brian Casel:I don't get a lot of, like, invites to I I get calendar events that just get created, but I don't I don't get, like, invited to stuff that I have to respond to too much.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. I found that really really a struggle.
Brian Casel:You know, what happened in the past week was, like, even the noise in Hey started to get a little out of control. The the main difference was I've been promoting my new newsletter, Builder Methods. Yeah. And it has like a new autoresponder. So anytime someone gets on the list, they're like, I really encourage them to hit reply and tell me what you're building.
Brian Casel:Right? And I also have some surveys right now about my upcoming courses on Cloud Code and stuff like that. So I'm getting a lot of responses to these things every day, and and every single one of those gets screened out by, hey. So because it's like a new email address coming back to me. Right?
Brian Casel:Yeah. So so it was like every day, I'm getting these responses plus my, like, real emails day to day. Right? Yeah. So that started to get and I was like, if if this is gonna continue, and I'm trying to make it continue with the newsletter and everything, like, like, the the hay is just not gonna really work for me.
Brian Casel:And the other thing that like, I don't I don't like how hay is they're just very limited on their filtering abilities. You can only filter based on an email address. You can't say, like, if the subject line contains this string, then put them over here. Right?
Justin Jackson:Yeah. We use a ton of those at Transistor. Like, we get all these notifications from Spotify and Apple, and they just get filtered basically automatically. So
Brian Casel:I tried a bunch of different tools. I ended up landing on one called Shortwave. I wanna go on one one quick rant Okay. About super Let's Superhuman.
Justin Jackson:Let's do it.
Brian Casel:Everyone seems to either really love Superhuman or just or they just don't use them or whatever. Yeah. I had I just remember I I had, like, a really bad experience with them when they were brand new, when they launched, like, I don't know, five, six years ago.
Justin Jackson:Yeah.
Brian Casel:They were like the new hotness, right? Like everyone was like, oh, you gotta check out this brand new
Justin Jackson:thing called Tons of FOMO around it. You had to like get on a waiting list. They had to like give you a phone call Exactly. Talk
Brian Casel:That's exactly what happened. I got on that phone call as one of the, you know, early people in that first month or two, like, invited to a call to be to go to their personal onboarding flow. Right? And, like, I they ended up, like, charging my credit card, like, there on the call without me really knowing it.
Justin Jackson:Okay.
Brian Casel:They're like, you know, it it was a really awkward thing where they're trying to show me a demo of Superhuman, and they're like, look, and now this is you receiving a receipt from Superhuman. I'm like, oh, so did you just charge me? That that's not cool. Surprise. Yeah.
Brian Casel:Like and I remember that being a real and, you know, it was like this, like, young, like, sales rep person who was just, like, just trying to get through, like, a 100 of these calls a day and, like Yeah. You know? And and I was just, like, the whole fact that I even had to be on a call just annoyed me. And so I had this like bad taste in my mouth then. I ended up canceling it and getting a refund then, right?
Brian Casel:So that was like six years ago. And then I come back to try Superhuman now Cause, you know, I'm trying all these different tools. And then I sign up and it doesn't work. Like the Gmail thing broke. The Gmail integration broke.
Brian Casel:So so I paid to to use it again now and then I can't even start using it at all. It's just
Justin Jackson:not working.
Brian Casel:So then I I'm I'm content in their support. Like, two days go by. No no response. The only way for me to actually get to someone is like a DM on Twitter. It's like
Justin Jackson:Which is yeah. That's super frustrating. So you had not a great experience with them. And then you so what was it about Shortwave
Brian Casel:that Shortwave, I I haven't really been familiar with them. I don't know. I I I must have been googling. Actually, I think I'm I think I found them through a ChatGPT recommendation.
Justin Jackson:No way.
Brian Casel:I I'm pretty sure I did. Yeah. I was asking ChatGPT for, like, power tools around Gmail and stuff and recommended that. I googled it, checked it out, and I really like it. It's it's like a it's definitely a superhuman competitor.
Brian Casel:They do things a little bit differently and and better and a little bit more customizable, a little bit more like a lot of the things that it does all the same things that superhuman does, but shortwave, I think, is just more comfortable, I wanna say. Okay. They have some pretty cool you can do some pretty cool filtering. You can do, like, inbox splits, which I really like. So I can put audience replies over here and I can put, like, regular business emails over here.
Brian Casel:I could I could filter out the noise in pretty much the same way that, hey, did it. But then you have these, like, AI filters to say to say like, you could put a prompt in that says, like, hey, if an email sort of looks like this and maybe sounds like it's one of those, then filter it this way, you know, which is a little bit hit and miss. But Okay. Yeah. So you've moved to this.
Brian Casel:On now. Yeah. They've been really great on support. I've been in touch with them with some questions and really fast and good to work with.
Justin Jackson:So So why not go back to Gmail?
Brian Casel:Well, the other nice thing about this is that it it syncs with Gmail.
Justin Jackson:Okay.
Brian Casel:So I'm I have my whole Gmail history in there, and it it works with my Gmail labels and stuff like that.
Justin Jackson:Okay. So this is like something you add on top of Gmail.
Brian Casel:Yes. Yeah.
Justin Jackson:Interesting. I I'm really curious for anyone listening. And then for those of you watching live, I'm really curious how you do email. I am very much a person who's like in my inbox, and I'm just reading and archiving. So like in this case, I've got three emails here.
Justin Jackson:Bang. I'm I I'm done. No. None of the does anybody use those Gmail smart folders? Do people like those?
Justin Jackson:I don't like those.
Brian Casel:Yeah. See, that's that's the thing is that, like, I have sort of those folders set up in shortwave, but they're customizable, and Gmails are not. You know?
Justin Jackson:Oh, I see. So you've got some smarter folder stuff. Yeah. I just found, like, basically, like, with a newsletter or whatever, I just need to either read it, and then I'll use Readwise to save articles I wanna read later. But if I don't read it right then, it's not going happen.
Justin Jackson:So I just go through it. I'm I'm not and I I try to keep my inbox kind of like this, just like just process it and
Brian Casel:I I literally just spent the past week, like, kind of reorganizing how I deal with email. So I've got, like, my primary inbox, which are like which I'm trying to set up filters so that it's only actually important emails from people I I'm working with. Or if it's my personal email, it's like friends and family and stuff like that. And then I have a, like, an inbox split for newsletters, and that's just a few newsletters that I really care about reading. Yeah.
Brian Casel:Right? And this is the difference between Hey. Like, literally the whole time I was on Hey for six months, I just never read a newsletter. Yeah. Because I never I never even saw them.
Justin Jackson:I found something similar. As soon as they got filtered out, it was like Never saw. Of mind.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And so I've got a a handful of newsletters that I wanna pay attention to. And then I have a category called noise. So all everything else, like, just random updates from apps, promotional emails, like, all that stuff just goes into noise. And I could still, like, go there and just glance through it and see if anything is important.
Justin Jackson:Yeah.
Brian Casel:But for the most part, can just, like, one click, like, archive it all. Yeah. And then I also have, like, one more category just for, like, receipts. And I I named it paper trail. Same same thing as, hey, does it.
Brian Casel:So it's like anything sort of important, like a like a booking confirmation or or a receipt. Like, it's it's filtered with a with with, like, a smart, like, subject line if, like, if it includes the word receipt, like, throw it in there. You know?
Justin Jackson:Yeah. Yeah. That paper trail idea there's lots of great ideas in Hay. And, yeah, Papertrail was one of them that was interesting. I'm trying to even think of how I get in that.
Justin Jackson:Oh, yeah. Papertrail. So then you could just say these anything from this address is a receipt, which, again, I Well, these filters are always tricky because now I'm looking in here. It at one point decided anything from Stripe was a receipt, but then any payment notifications I got also went in there. So
Brian Casel:So you you can you can really start to tweak that stuff with with the rules in Shortwave. You know? Yeah. And I'm also using Gmail's, like, categorization. Right?
Brian Casel:So you can say, like, if Gmail thinks that this is a promotional email, then throw it over here, except if it's from these email addresses or
Justin Jackson:except if
Brian Casel:the subject has this string in it. You know, like, I could start to do things like that.
Justin Jackson:Think I we're gonna need an update on this as we go along. How's how's that working for you? If it if it delivers on the promise. But it looks cool.
Brian Casel:I wanna get into our our matrix for for Justin's world over here.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. That's let's talk let's talk, matrix. So last episode, we we did a, kind of we came up with this, like, these boxes that I was drawing while we were chatting. And if you're listening to this at home, there will be a link in the show notes to these. But basically, you had four big boxes, consulting, clarity flow, instrumental components, and builder methods.
Justin Jackson:And then we just kind of went through it. I said, okay, which are you making the most money from? Which do you invest the most time in? Which are you doing kind of the most foundational work? And we we put a shovel as the icon for that.
Justin Jackson:So like, where are you kind of breaking ground? It takes a lot of energy. And then we also had this idea of like, which of these gives you energy and which drains your battery? And then we categorize them like, which is most important to you in terms of your your focus? And so right now for you, it's builder methods.
Justin Jackson:I think mine is very different. It just shows I'm just at a different stage. So I came up with this right here. So I've got in my boxes transistor dot f m.
Brian Casel:Yeah. First, let's just define the boxes. Alright. So transistor Yep. And then
Justin Jackson:Podcast standards project.
Brian Casel:Okay.
Justin Jackson:Personal brand slash mega maker, I put in another box. And then Holdco investments, put in another box.
Brian Casel:Okay. By the way, I alright. So I sort of know what the first three tell me about your investments. Like, what what goes into that? So
Justin Jackson:I have I have a little fund that yeah. Basically, profits from other businesses go into this fund. And I finally yeah. I was finally doing well enough that after I paid my family's expenses, there was some left over. It's not a ton of money, but it's enough that I can start investing it.
Justin Jackson:So
Brian Casel:Yeah. Like, have have you?
Justin Jackson:Yeah. I invested some money in RevGems, which already hasn't worked out. So that was one one investment that I had to write off. But it felt like a reasonable bet at the time. I invested a a bigger check-in in a company that does it's a box that sits on power lines, and then it uses AI to determine whether or not there's gonna be a fault or an electric like an electrical Oh.
Justin Jackson:Event, you know? And I knew that guy locally. He he built another company that did really well. And I just trust him, and it felt like a reasonable bet. And then there might be a few other things in there.
Justin Jackson:And I'll probably use it if I ever invest in real estate or something like that. Yeah. That's just like if there's an interesting opportunity that I kind of use that.
Brian Casel:Like it. Alright. So tell me about the Podcast Standards Project. What yeah. For those who don't know what it is.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. So it's it's a organization that a bunch of us started in the podcast industry. It was really a a response to all the centralized platforms that are in podcasting. And how can we keep the open ecosystem thriving? How can we keep the RSS standard fresh?
Justin Jackson:How can we innovate on top of RSS? How can we advocate and connect with some of these bigger platforms like Apple Podcasts as a group instead of individually? And also, how can we just have a bigger brain trust of people, all of smart people outside of our tiny little companies? How can we expand that pool of smart people that are collaborating on open standards inside of podcasting?
Brian Casel:Very cool. When did that start? And like, who who all is in on it?
Justin Jackson:It started in 2023. We had a dinner at a podcast conference. And the first we have all the people that were originally there. It was it was all sorts of folks. It was Dan Benjamin, founder of five by five.
Justin Jackson:It was Adam Curry, who's a lot of people call the godfather of podcasting or the pod father. A lot of us from different podcast hosting companies. And we were kind of basing it off the idea of like the web standards project, you know, back when Internet Explorer was kind of just writing their own specs. And there there was a real need to standardize on what's going to load in a in a web browser. And so, yeah, we've been working on this, and I've taken a much more active role in it.
Justin Jackson:And I think I talked about last time, the thing we're really exploring right now is this idea of how can we offer video in the open podcast ecosystem.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Justin Jackson:So I put it as a separate box because it it is it's taken
Brian Casel:up It is like a separate entity from
Justin Jackson:Separate entity. And I it really does. It's taking up a lot of my time and focus right now. And I gave it a lot of shovels because it's a lot of breaking ground kind of work. Like, how are we going to make this a thing?
Justin Jackson:How are we going to organize ourselves? How are we going to, you know
Brian Casel:Yeah. So alright. I I wanna I wanna ask you questions about the shovels and the time and the money on on all of them. Mhmm. What time frame are we looking at here?
Brian Casel:Like, are you defining this stuff as, like, all of 2025 or just this month or this quarter? Yeah.
Justin Jackson:It's this moment. This is a snapshot of kind of my focuses as of this moment professionally.
Brian Casel:Why don't we start with time? Right? So it looks like you are actually spent I I would say you so you are spending the most time in Transistor and almost the most in the podcast standards project. I'm kinda curious to know, like Transistor, it's a obviously, it's a pretty established SaaS. I know you guys are a small team, so you all do a lot of stuff.
Brian Casel:Mhmm. What does your time look like on Transistor? What are you doing every day?
Justin Jackson:I mean, for me, it's just a big bucket of different things. So, like, our payroll software stopped working two weeks ago. So I've been, like, working with John and getting a fix for that. We just changed our corporate address. We're changing so there's, like, a lot of administrative things.
Justin Jackson:We need to do annual reviews with all of our employees. We need we have a stock options program that needs to be maintained. So there's like an administrative component. Mhmm. There's marketing and growth.
Justin Jackson:There's, leadership.
Brian Casel:Is that all you or somebody else doing marketing stuff too?
Justin Jackson:So that's primarily Josh and I. Okay. But Josh is mostly like working on the website. So he's like, it's like, okay, we've got a new, for example, I can give you a little sneak peek at something where we want to build a new feature page for our customer support. And so him and I just kind of sketch up some ideas.
Justin Jackson:And then he will go out and start building that out in Static. And then we'll go back and forth on that. So he's way more on the we'll do a call together and I'll we'll kind of like outline, okay, here's kind of what we're thinking and here's what we want to go. Here's what we want to write. And he'll do a first draft and then we'll iterate on that together.
Brian Casel:I'm actually I want to dig in on that for a second. So like, that's like a creative project that's probably long term, and you probably have many of these that come up throughout the year. And and so how much is like Josh and and and I know Josh a bit. I know he's like super talented. He's one of these like sort of full stack designer, developer, marketer kinda kinda guys.
Brian Casel:Right? Mhmm. How much is it, like, him driving the project and and driving his ideas and then, showing to you for feedback? And how much is it, like, Justin has this vision and these ideas and Josh is helping to, like, build it? Or is it a bit of both?
Justin Jackson:I mean, it's pretty collaborative. I think during our calls, I'm really I'm really kind of identifying, like, here's the vision, here's kind of what we want to achieve. And here's some ideas for like, you know, different feature sections. But then he's going to take that and he'll have all sorts of his own creative ideas. So he'll take it from a a rough marker sketch to something more established, but then we'll work together on refining that.
Justin Jackson:And then he'll go back to his little workshop, and he'll figure that out. Yeah. So like a good example would be I mean, I think we have one of the most customized Staticvix sites I've seen. We've got a lot of different content areas. And for something like, I don't know, like for AI transcription, we would have collaborated a bunch on this whole layout.
Justin Jackson:Like, what's this gonna look like? What do we wanna have in each section? But then he'll have ideas on, okay, maybe we should put this here, organize it this way.
Brian Casel:But like, in terms of your time, there's like a a call or two a week. I'm I'm sure you're probably writing a lot of this copy.
Justin Jackson:Mhmm. Yeah. He'll do the he'll write based on our outline, he'll write some initial copy, and then I'll come in. And in those cases, I'll probably just collaborate right in, like, in code. I'll be issuing pull requests for that thing there.
Brian Casel:Cool.
Justin Jackson:So it it's a real real mixed bag for me. And then a lot of I'm making videos. I'm doing PR. I'm
Brian Casel:And then also, like, how often are you doing just meetings in general with your team?
Justin Jackson:So we have a Thursday meeting every week, and that's our main staff meeting. And then I'll try to do, like, one on ones with people. It's like Josh and I will have a call probably on average every two, three weeks. Helen and I will do a call probably about in the same every two, three weeks. So I'm I'm doing at least kind of maybe one or two one on one calls every week, but they're not daily for sure.
Justin Jackson:And that seems to be it's hard. I think everyone can benefit from more calls actually on a remote team because Yeah. You know, you're disconnected. But in practice, like in terms of getting work done, doing call, like, it's off it feels like every two, three weeks is a good cadence.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I feel like a lot of SaaS teams who who have, like, SaaS businesses like yours, I I feel like most of them look like yours, which is like, it might it's usually a partnership and then a small team of designers, developers, marketers support. And then there are sort of like regular actual meetings, like Zoom calls and stuff. Yeah. And I and I've been like literally a 100% async all the time with everyone I ever work with.
Brian Casel:It's just a totally different dynamic, but it's also because my businesses have been structured very differently over the years than most people I know, I think.
Justin Jackson:Yeah.
Brian Casel:Because I'm I'm pretty much a solo person who just hires people to, like, help execute stuff. Yeah. And for better or worse, I I sometimes I feel like I I miss out on some of that, like, company culture relationship building. Yeah. But other times, I'm like, man, I love not having a calendar full of meetings.
Justin Jackson:You know what? I've realized, in some ways, remote work really sucks. I think I remember Ben Ornstein talking about this, about how he really wanted to be in the office with people at Tupelo. And part of me was like, come on, like, remote so great. We can all live wherever we want.
Justin Jackson:We have all this flexibility, you know, in our team, people are going to exercise throughout the day on their own schedule, and they can kind of organize themselves the way they want. That being said, Michael is our customer support person with Helen, and he lives in this town. And every once in a while, he'll stop by the office or he'll work from this coworking place here. And just getting to even going out for lunch with somebody that you're working with and getting to talk about things face to face is significantly better than being on a Zoom call and I think way better than being in a Slack chat.
Brian Casel:I do think that that's the thing that this younger generation in our industry is is totally missing out on. Yeah. And and it's gonna just keep getting worse now. I mean, that like, just looking back on the earliest years of my career when I was 25 years old, I was working at a web agency in in New York City and in in the office, and there's a small team, like 20 people. Yep.
Brian Casel:Open open air office. So literally, I learned CSS from the guy who sat next to me Mhmm. For two years. You know? Yeah.
Brian Casel:And also, I just talked about, like, music and talk and we went out to concerts together in NYC. And and, like, it was and it was like it was such a a huge, huge professional learning experience being in person with those people.
Justin Jackson:Yeah.
Brian Casel:And I I valued it back then as a 20 solo, like, not like, single, doesn't have a family. Yeah. Like, now I really value, like, async, freedom, like, you know, my schedule. But this is
Justin Jackson:my new framework for tech work is I think for a while I was thinking everybody should be remote, remote first, remote is the best. And I think I've changed my mind. I think when you're in your twenties, in person in a big city is where you want to be. So if you've just graduated, there's some people that just graduated from comp sci programs here. This town is not big enough for you to start your career, especially now that things have gotten so competitive for remote jobs.
Justin Jackson:And we're in kind of a hiring slump, and definitely a hiring slump for juniors. I think if you're a young person, move to a big city, start going to every meetup, start meeting everybody, put your name out there and try to get a job working for a company there. And then as you get older and you get more experience and you have more leverage, that's when you try to get your remote job. And remote jobs are really, I think the most beneficial for people with families. It's like, then you can pick a more affordable place to live.
Justin Jackson:You have more flexibility.
Brian Casel:These like, the modern day version is, like, most companies are remote no matter no matter how old you are. It's just that if you're younger, you can go work in a coworking space in a city. Yeah. And, like, you can get that sort of networking vibe or or or in office vibe. And it doesn't have to be other people who work at your company because they probably all work at different companies remotely.
Brian Casel:Yeah. But if you could just get together and hang, you know, like, that's that's super valuable. I but it's it's also something that's just not interesting to me now, you know?
Justin Jackson:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that's the thing is that a lot of us who kinda grew up in this industry were like, you know, once I had kids, I was like, I got to get rid of this commute. That's what pushed me into entrepreneurship. And like, well, I was always interested in entrepreneurship, but that's what really made me push towards it again is working at a job in a big city and having kids because the kids often forces you to move out to the suburbs, and then you have a commute, and then it's like you just hate your life.
Justin Jackson:And so
Brian Casel:I I did that for, like, a year or two commuting into New York City, like, two hours a day, which sucked. But yeah. Happy happy those days are over. Okay. Let's get back to to our matrix here.
Brian Casel:We got transistor. We got so that's obviously taking up most of your time.
Justin Jackson:So transistors, most of my time, that's where most of my money gets made. And there's still some foundational breaking groundwork I'm doing here. But
Brian Casel:Yeah. Like okay. So like the video project that you were talking about last time a little bit Mhmm. Which is like a new a new, like, video podcasting technology sort of push. Yep.
Brian Casel:I I would have expected to see maybe more shovels on that or maybe I'm missing something.
Justin Jackson:I mean, that's the shovels are kinda happening all over here in the podcast standards project because that's where we're really trying to define the SPAC, trying to decide how we're going to solve some really big issues. Like how are we going to do measurement for this? Like how are we going to measure what a stream is if we're using some of this new technology? How we're gonna pay for it, like the the bandwidth costs and all that stuff. We're trying to figure that out as a group.
Justin Jackson:There's some of that then gets pulled into transistor.
Brian Casel:Yeah. So it's like the standard spec. Talk about that with the standards project, but then, like, how does this also become a transistor feature?
Justin Jackson:That's right. Yeah.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Justin Jackson:And, like, foundational work to me, like, that that shovels in the groundwork is, breaking ground. It's the beginning of the company was like that when we were like just trying to create our own space in the world and carve out our own little piece of the pie and building relationships and working nights and weekends and trying to figure out how to make this all work and answering every support ticket. That's all groundwork. But I would say the groundwork on transistor is basically done unless we decided to launch a significant new feature Yeah. Or new And then I've got personal brand Mega Maker and my courses and some other
Brian Casel:So, like, for people listening who aren't viewing, you know, your personal Mega Maker stuff, you've got, like, one dollar sign, one one clock, and one shovel. Yeah. And it's so, like, that that just seems like the least activity on all on all categories
Justin Jackson:for you. It's kind of like, I still wanna keep it active. I still want to be publishing videos to my personal YouTube. I still wanna have my own personal podcast, my personal blog.
Brian Casel:See, okay. I I don't know if I totally buy your your emojis here because, like
Justin Jackson:Like, maybe I've got more time. I'm actually spending more time.
Brian Casel:Yes. Like because I'm seeing first of all, we do this this panel podcast. I guess that probably falls into that category. Right? And then and then you have, like, your weekly newsletter, which you you do it pretty much every week or you pretty rarely skip a week as far as I could tell.
Justin Jackson:It's it's kind of it's not on a super great schedule, but I'd say
Brian Casel:it's way more than mine. Like, that's for sure. And then you you also do YouTube videos, and I know absolutely firsthand like that takes so much time.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. I mean, the the lines get blurred with a lot of the stuff. So, like, for example, the panel podcast, I put under Transistor because one of the goals for the show for me was I gotta get back in the habit of creating as a creator so that I know what I can get in the customer's mindset.
Brian Casel:Be a podcaster if you're selling to podcast. That's right.
Justin Jackson:So there's probably maybe more than one clock here. It that's that's fair. And I'm still in the Mega Maker Slack, and we still have people signing up. And, you know, it's still I just Ryan Heffner here in the chat just signed up actually. So it's still going.
Brian Casel:You know, the other thing that I'm I'm always, like, jealous of of folks like you is that, like, even though you have these different boxes, they are all connected, and they all feed each other. Right? Like, the the work that you do on the personal stuff and on the podcast standard stuff, like, that feeds transistor. Like, it's all it it could all be the same box technically. Yeah.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Justin Jackson:There's some overlap for sure.
Brian Casel:It's it's not the the the divided attention where, like, if you're if you're giving attention to one thing, it comes at the expense of the other. And instead, it's like, you can do attention over here and it actually helps the others.
Justin Jackson:Yeah, I think in terms of energy, like if I was going to put like some like, where do I get energy right now? I think the the one thing that creates energy for me is like I could be working on something in my personal project, but it could First of all, it could just inspire me to do something over in transistor. But often it just leads into, oh, we should apply this that transistor, or we should try this, or we should do this. Podcast standards project gives me has given me so much creative energy for transistor because it feels like it's just brought a whole new layer of purpose and meaning to what we're trying to do. Like, we're not just building a company, we're trying to change the culture.
Justin Jackson:We're trying to expand the open podcast ecosystem. We're trying to stand up to big mega corporations and, and work collaboratively with all these smart people across the industry that gives me a lot of energy. And then as, you know, all of this stuff makes money, it can go into this holdco where I can then make investments and
Brian Casel:Yeah. So now that one, I see the $1 sign one time. See, I'm I'm and so you have three shovels. So, like, what what's the work that's happening there?
Justin Jackson:The work there is just, like, it's still breaking ground. It's, like, I'm trying to figure out what this thing is gonna do. What's it gonna be? If any new thing I try to get into, like, if it's real estate, that's gonna just require a bunch of kind of groundwork that I haven't done. It yeah.
Justin Jackson:It's still I mean, and even just to get this thing set up was a bunch of administrative work. So
Brian Casel:When when did all that come together for you?
Justin Jackson:I started working on that maybe a year and a half ago and kind of went to Lericon last summer with this thought of I'm going to start making bets. And even that little project that Ferdinand and I built, pod SwagFan, was kind of like in this bucket. Like, let's just start deploying some capital.
Brian Casel:Little little seeds. Ideas.
Justin Jackson:Little bets and just see kind of what happens. And I've learned a lot. Like, for example, this one investment I made. It was pretty big check for me. And I don't know if I'll ever get my money out.
Justin Jackson:It was a bet. Right? And I was talking to some this other guy that does real estate investments. Basically, they help set up, like, palliative care homes and group homes and things like that. And they basically get their initial investment back within two years.
Justin Jackson:So if they're deploying, let's say, $100 within two years, they're aiming to get that initial investment back to pay them back for what they put in, and then it just makes cash after that. Where a lot of angel investing is, deploy capital, and then you're just waiting and waiting and waiting and hoping that there's some sort of liquidity event. And so I've started thinking about that as well. Risks of investing in software companies is actually quite high. Yeah.
Justin Jackson:Even like RevJams. RevJams was a great idea, great team, and it just didn't work out. That that happens.
Brian Casel:I've I've sort of thought about this as like someday if, you know, if if my if I get to a point where I just have, like, a lot of profit and savings kind of built up and I'm at a point in my life where I just wanna be a little bit more hands off and and invest instead of build stuff.
Justin Jackson:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:I don't know that that's actually a goal of mine. I I know it is for a lot of people in our industry. They sort of graduate up to that, like, investor class sort of thing. Yeah. But I from what I observed from friends and stuff, it's like, there's, like, some people who want to be a little bit more active, meaning like angel invest in like five, ten different companies and like be in on the on the investor updates and and offer advice and strategy and stuff and like
Justin Jackson:Yeah.
Brian Casel:And and maybe have a whole thought out thesis of these are the types of companies I invest in. Right? And then there's some that are a little bit more passive, like invest in a fund. Invest in maybe a couple different funds and let the funds handle diversify, spread out, and, like, they handle the vetting and thesis and all that.
Justin Jackson:For me, what gives me energy here is I think I'm realizing there will be kind of two types of investment. One is this is just a great opportunity. You can put some money in and it can be cash flow positive within a couple years or five years or whatever. Those are interesting because it's like, why wouldn't you do that? What's more interesting to me personally is I've just, for example, always been into real estate.
Justin Jackson:I've always loved the idea of owning commercial spaces. Want to If I could buy a warehouse or a workshop or I spend lots of my time just looking at real estate listings and buildings. Yeah. And so that's interesting to me. Also, my family is kind of interested in is kind of in this space.
Justin Jackson:So we've done some big kind of dive into the gaming industry with my one son and exploring that and funding some games, some game ideas and trying to get those into Steam. Those to me feel like if I view kind of this, this bottom half is kind of the family business. And when I view my life in that respect, it's like, yeah, like, how can we empower my kids and, you know, just the family to explore some ideas and fund that R and D and those, you know, trying to get something out into the world.
Brian Casel:The real estate one is is one that, you know, Amy and I have been talking a lot about in over the past year is, like, we started to act like, actively look around for, like, Airbnb properties up here in the Northeast. You know, it's it's something that we'd like to do at some point. I don't know I don't know when like, we started really getting serious about it a few months ago. And then, like, I just feel like the economy feels so unsure right now that it's like
Justin Jackson:Yeah. Don't
Brian Casel:know. But, like, that is something that's that's I like the idea of you know, just like the like, I I started to look into, like, the Airbnb at at, like, business side of Like, what what's it what sort of checks the boxes of, like, there there would be traffic in all seasons of the year. This can pay for itself and become profitable. Yeah. And maybe it turns into a second or third Airbnb, you know?
Justin Jackson:Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, there's even things like, you know, my wife got my wife designed this studio that I'm in right now. She comes from a architecture design background. And then a few other people wanted to hire her to do that.
Justin Jackson:And it's like, well, we can explore that opportunity in under the family business. And, you know, maybe one day I don't think we'll actually do this. But maybe one day we'll find a perfect building, and we'll be like, you know what? Like, it would be fun to just buy this building and turn it into podcast studios you can rent. So let's Yeah.
Justin Jackson:Let's do that. This is
Brian Casel:Feeds right into transistor.
Justin Jackson:It leads right into transistor. Yeah. So this is kind of like, you know, I've always liked having a personal even when I was working full time, I had a corporation that I maintained that I could do side projects under. And for me, that's kind of this section here is this is to do make some small bets to invest in, you know, ideas that family and friends might have, and also hopefully pursue some really good investment opportunities when they come around. So having some liquidity to invest in good opportunities when they come.
Brian Casel:Love it. I feel like you have, like, a again, like, a a really healthy mix of of everything here. You know?
Justin Jackson:This is I mean, this is kind of the dream is once you get a a financial engine that's really going, you know, you can you can start to like, I think if Transistor wasn't working, I wouldn't be investing in the open standards project, really. It it it'd just be too much. Mhmm. And when Transistor first started, you you know, it was funding it was Mega Maker. Mega Maker and Courses was still bringing in just a passive probably.
Brian Casel:And you guys are a 100% bootstrapped.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. Yeah. And if it wasn't for that, like, John was still working full time, but I was able to dedicate so much time to Transistor because I still had this kind of passive money coming in through MegaMaker and courses.
Brian Casel:That's the key, man. That I mean, that is the key, obviously, to bootstrapping and and and really making the transition from, like, not having a SaaS or or a sustainable, growable asset type business.
Justin Jackson:Yeah.
Brian Casel:It it's just like, how are you gonna figure out the the runway thing? And, you know, it's and it's also the thing where partners you know, I've I've always ended up being solo. Mhmm. I came really, really close to partnering with a few people over the years.
Justin Jackson:Yeah.
Brian Casel:And always the hardest thing with that is not the the the not like a split of skill sets, not even like the personal chemistry. You know, there there have been a few people who I really personally wanted to partner with. I think we both did. But it's the stage of life or stage of career or financial situation. Oh my gosh.
Justin Jackson:I think that is worth even zooming in on a
Brian Casel:bit. Yeah.
Justin Jackson:I think, especially now that I've started investing in different companies or exploring the idea of investing in companies, it's so apparent that the the stage of life piece, but also just well, stage of life has a lot to do with it. But
Brian Casel:I mean, definitely, if you're if you're fifteen, twenty years apart in age, you're definitely gonna have, like, life stage differences.
Justin Jackson:Yeah.
Brian Casel:Like kids or no kids. But I'm talking more about, like, financial situation.
Justin Jackson:Like Financial
Brian Casel:most Yeah. Like and and I've been on both sides of it. There there were times where I sort of came to the table as, like, I have time freedom because I have this other business that throws off cash, so I could really invest, like, full time in this Yep. And the other person didn't. And then I've also been on the flip side where it was like, well, I kinda have to split my time here and and maybe that person has, like, a big payday happening or, you know, it's just really difficult because then, like, no matter how much you wanna make it work, how do you, like, account for it?
Brian Casel:How how do you, like, split the equity? Like, who's bringing this to the table if, like, this person's only working half time versus full time? And, like Yeah. It's it's tough.
Justin Jackson:You know? Yeah. And I think that willingness and ability to commit is so underrated. It's this this is, I think, what ends up killing a lot of partnerships is if you're not kind of equally committed and if you don't have an equal ability to act on that commitment, it's just and I've always kind of been like, if I'm committed to something, I like this podcast standards project is a good example. Once I committed, it's like I am dedicating serious energy and bandwidth to that thing.
Justin Jackson:But not everybody's like that. And some people get more stressed out, for example, some people
Brian Casel:Especially if it's like a side project for most of the people in it. Right?
Justin Jackson:Like Yeah.
Brian Casel:It's like, how do people think of side projects? Is it like something that you touch once every three months or is it something like once a week? Know?
Justin Jackson:Here's the other interesting thing is so my son, who we're exploring video game ideas with, he started I I encouraged him to start doing these game jams because it's just a quick way to build something and get it out. And so he would put together a team, and he's just realized this. He's done this now three or four times and different teams. And it's just like, he has this high threshold for like, we're going to get this done. Like, I'm going to stay up late.
Justin Jackson:I'm going to make sure this this gets shipped. Not everybody has that desire or that bandwidth. And it's what the ideal is to find two people, two partners that are kind of equal in that, like, they both have equal desire to make it happen, equal bandwidth, equal grit, like, you'll never be super equal. But, yeah, I think that's the hard part about it. It's just so easy to get
Brian Casel:A few years back when I was, like, actively sort of seeking a partner for a business, and I came pretty close with a few people, it was like you're basically looking for someone who recently exited a business Yep. Or has a super profitable passive income stream Mhmm. From some other business. And both of those are pretty rare. And and even if you even if you find like, there are a lot of people that we know who have exited, but it's the timing of it, right?
Brian Casel:Like, okay, maybe maybe you've exited, but you haven't decided on what your next chapter is gonna be yet. Like, that's a very small window to try to align with someone on, you know?
Justin Jackson:Yeah. And and if you're bootstrapping it, it's just gonna be there's going to be a period of time that you are going to need incredible resilience. Because, like, when John and I weren't getting paid, we're building Transistor, and there's no money coming into our pockets. Like, money was coming into Transistor fairly early, but it wasn't until
Brian Casel:I I think, like, this is one of those things that I I just think that there is a there is a hunger that you have to have. Yes. And and I feel like you and me and most people we know, like, especially early in our career path, like that was that was always the difference. Like when I was young, like in my twenties Yeah. I I also came close to partnering with a few people on some new ideas.
Brian Casel:This was before I did like anything. Yeah. I was just I was just a freelancer. I was willing to work nights and weekends all week, like, for free. Just like, let's let's do this WordPress theme business.
Brian Casel:Let's do this. Let's do that. Yeah. Right? Like and and like, it was really, really difficult to find someone who was willing to partner with me, who was not willing to just give up.
Brian Casel:They would only work on paid hourly rate projects. And I'm like, yeah, I'll do those things here and there. Pay the bills, but let's make something happen here.
Justin Jackson:You know? Not everybody has this DNA. At
Brian Casel:at some point and I and it's, like, sort of a constant that I've seen with most people who who've made the jump. It's, like, at some point, you have to be willing to take a pay cut. Yeah. And and put in a lot of a lot of sweat for free, you know? And it's difficult to to wrap your head around that when you're used to getting paid well.
Justin Jackson:Yes. And it's also hard to wrap your head around it if you don't innately have that desire, that burning hunger that you can't explain. Like, where does it come from? Arnold Schwarzenegger, I think we talked about this on the show. Someone asked him like, man, how do you get to the gym every day?
Justin Jackson:That must take such discipline. And he's like, no, it's I'm addicted. Like, I have to go. It's just inside of me. This isn't like some discipline thing that I have to force myself to do.
Justin Jackson:It's like, there's something compelling me inside of me. And that not everybody I've realized, not everybody has this. Like for
Brian Casel:me It's blessing and a curse sometimes. It's like I'll talk to people, they're like, don't know how you work at home all day. I would never have the motivation. I'm like, my problem is I can't stop working.
Justin Jackson:Is the curse. The curse is and it it is especially hard, I think, on marriages and family relationships is people like us, it is always going to be a challenge for us to shut our brains off to stop. Like my most productive time, and it's it sucks so bad, is around 04:30PM on a Friday, I just get this massive burst of energy. I could go for another six hours on a Friday. Well, that's terrible timing for, you know, so I've had to pull back on a lot of that.
Justin Jackson:But it is a tremendous gift. And it is a tremendous curse that you can you're just being propelled all the time to go after stuff like this. And, yeah, I think realizing not everyone has it is interesting.
Brian Casel:I don't wanna sort of open up a whole other topic here. This could get into next week. But like, one thing I'm noticing because I'm thinking a lot about this right now, this week in my in my world is again, as as we're talking about, like, our matrix, the the shovels, where are investing, we where where are we getting the revenue from? I I think at this age also with between age and family and responsibilities and safety, I do I I'm I'm just noticing now that I have a different calculus on that now than I did twenty years ago. Yeah.
Brian Casel:I I just flat out, I could I could just look back at the some of the decisions that I was making around how I spend my time and investing my time. Yeah. That I was much more I guess, what? Like, I'm I'm more risk averse now, I think.
Justin Jackson:Yes.
Brian Casel:I mean, there's always a sense of risk averse. But, like, I guess what I'm saying is like, there are things right now where I have I literally have opportunities in my inbox for like consulting engagements or, you know, like doing doing things that I don't necessarily want to be my top priority right now. My top priority is building builder methods. That's the business that I that's where all my shovels are. That's where all the batteries are.
Brian Casel:That's where I see the vision for where I wanna be spending. I also happen to think that there is a big time sensitive opportunity with that, with, like, catching this wave and get and getting on it.
Justin Jackson:Yep.
Brian Casel:And so that that is where I'm spending most of my time. So I'm literally now deciding, like, alright, like, which of these things am I just gonna say no to? Like because it's literally the choice between, like, that thing could pay for, like, three months of living expenses, you know? And it's like but is that is that a second or third thing that I want in my inbox every day for the next three months?
Justin Jackson:Oh, my gosh.
Brian Casel:I don't know.
Justin Jackson:I mean, this is I think why those that bucket putting your projects into buckets is so interesting Because it is kind of like that, especially depending on the stage, like when you're when you've got a lot of shovels in the ground, and you're doing all this foundational groundbreaking work, it's like, what's gonna fund all of this groundwork? Like, what's gonna fund breaking ground?
Brian Casel:And I guess when I say it, I like, the risk averse thing is that, like, I'm actually covered now for like, I I have a level of comfort now.
Justin Jackson:Yeah.
Brian Casel:I don't I don't need the extra project. Yeah. I don't need the the extra thing or the extra a little bit little bit more cash from this or that. Like, I don't actually need it, but there's a sense of, like, I should grab it if I have it. Mhmm.
Brian Casel:You know? Just in case, you know, just in case this new thing doesn't doesn't pan out. Like but, like, twenty years ago, I would have been like, screw that. I I'm I'm gonna do you know, like
Justin Jackson:Well, I'm interested to see, like, because now that my kids are going to college, it is still expensive because I'm helping them out financially while they're in college. It'll be interesting to see as my kids transition into true independence, where they've found a job, hopefully, in this economy, where they've beaten out all the AIs, hopefully, in this economy, where they've been able to find housing, hopefully, in this economy. Eventually, my financial burdens, which have been really high for a long time, are going to maybe lessen. And then it will be like, oh, interesting. I wonder what that does to my overall stress and that kind of baseline anxiety you're feeling when you're running your own business, which is this is these are my costs.
Justin Jackson:And Yeah. I I remember you actually I was looking at my 2016 review, and you had this blog post that was, like, pretty kind of fundamental for my thinking, I which was just reviewing my my revenue, I think that year I'd made, don't know what it was, 100 and 144,000. And that was gross. But I was reading this blog post you'd written and you're like, a lot of my thinking at the time was like, Oh, I'm just replacing my salary. So it's just like, I just need to make, you know, I'm at the time, maybe I was making $100.
Justin Jackson:So I was like, I just need to make it replace that $100 and then I'll be fine. It's like, no. It's like, first of all, I when I actually calculated how expensive it is to have four kids in British Columbia, it's insane when you actually do I'm sure. Yeah. And you you need to go beyond just like, if you wanna pay yourself a 100,000, you probably need to be grossing quite
Brian Casel:a
Justin Jackson:bit more than that. And it just it changes the calculus for everything when you're running your own business, especially if you have kids. It's just
Brian Casel:Yeah. Totally. It's Yeah. That's the thing that that is also the toughest thing about bootstrapping a new business, especially a SaaS. Like, even if you're even even if it's like a b to b SaaS and you're and and it's like a couple $100 a month per per customer.
Justin Jackson:Yeah.
Brian Casel:Like, still, like, you're nowhere near viability if until you have, like, a 100 plus customers. And that takes months, if not years.
Justin Jackson:Maybe let's end on this one tweet here that I I just think it's interesting, and I think we close on it, is just encouraging I mean, this was encouraging to me because I think I a lot of this AI chat and economy chat kind of gets me down sometimes. And, you know, I've had friends who are having a hard time finding work. And, you know, it just feels like we're in this weird stage where nobody really knows what's happening. Is there still opportunities in independent SaaS? And this tweet from Kyle Nolan was just encouraging.
Justin Jackson:He has this little product called Projection Lab, which allows it's a B2C product and gives you kind of projections on your personal finances. So like how you know your net worth, if we could project out, it can show you what your net worth will be in five or ten or twenty years. And no AI hype, no VC money, just four years of hard work building good software to solve a real problem we had ourselves. Now, of course, it's not that easy. But I think the story here is still encouraging that he was able to reach $1,000,000 in annual recurring revenue, which is such a great accomplishment.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I mean, you could see that that hockey stick. Obviously, they've they've figured something out around two years in.
Justin Jackson:Yeah.
Brian Casel:February in.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. That's right. Yeah. So it started around April 2021. And then if you look at it's not really till April 2023 that it starts growing.
Justin Jackson:And yeah, then it's it's quite sharp from there.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I mean, I didn't read this whole blog post, but yeah, I mean, I think, you know, again, I feel like every person, every every company is gonna figure out what is their strength or their unique unfair advantage that they can take advantage of. Mhmm. And and it and it takes a little while to figure out what that is.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. And I Yeah. I also think the thing that Kyle did well is he observed people in motion. So there is a class of the economy that's doing very well right now. It's basically families that make more than $250,000 a year are doing very well.
Justin Jackson:So what's a B2C product that makes perfect sense? Well, let's give them something to manage all their finances, manage their investments, and project out how much money they'll have in five or ten years. And Yeah. You know, this is something as soon as you have some financial assets, you start thinking about this. And I think he he just observed that this was a thing that people were thinking about and built a product that he wanted to use for himself.
Justin Jackson:And, you know, maybe he just wanted to use it for himself, and he just lucked into there being existing demand.
Brian Casel:Yeah. It's it's been interesting to watch what Josh Pickford has been doing with with Maybe, and it's gone through so many different pivots Is that still going? Of years. Still going. And he and recently, he he said they're they're going for, like, their next pivot in in focus.
Brian Casel:I'm not exactly sure what it is, but it sounds like it's sort of in line with the or I I think it might be like an AI version of of financial projection, I think.
Justin Jackson:Oh, interesting.
Brian Casel:At least that's the that's the gist I I got from his tweets on it. But
Justin Jackson:But I mean, this is a pretty simple product. It just I don't think there's any AI in it. I think it's just like
Brian Casel:It's basically a spreadsheet in a SaaS.
Justin Jackson:Yeah, it's just a spreadsheet in a SaaS basically. Again, sometimes people are just in motion going, Ah, like I wish there was something pre built that I could just slot in my numbers. I could just, was like there's another one that I use called Kubera or something, that I heard about on MoneyLab one time. Was like, oh, yeah, that's exactly what I want. Just something to manage all my different investments.
Justin Jackson:So, yeah, congrats to Kyle Nolan on that, and we'll link all of that up in the show notes.
Brian Casel:The other tweet that I thought was really worth a a read, what and maybe you'd agree with it or don't agree with it, but I just think that everything that Andrew Wilkinson talks about or does is worth at least paying attention to. Yeah. If you're not familiar with Andrew Wilkinson, he's he's the founder of Tiny. They're sort of like this investment fund. It's it's an incredible story.
Brian Casel:He actually has a new book out this year about his story with it. Like, he's basically a billionaire at at this point, bootstrapped and and built this whole holding company, built investment business. But he has a really long post on Twitter talking about like I I mean, it it it's look, like, this wave of of AI. It's like the opposite of what you're talking about with this b to b. Like, it's just like the wave of of AI is going to change everything.
Brian Casel:It's one of the most convincing and sort of like eye opening painting the picture of what the next three to five years could actually look like. Yeah. There are like second and third effects here that it gets into that are really worth considering. Like what happens if if the it's just a really good read. We should link up to it.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. We're gonna link to this. I would love for people to read it and then reply with their thoughts. Get ahold of us with what you think because I remember reading through it. I saw it as well.
Justin Jackson:And I was like, I got some thoughts on this. I wanna push back on this. So we'll we have a topic for, for next week if we we'll we'll put that tweet in the show notes, and then next week, we'll talk about it.
Brian Casel:That's everybody's homework.
Justin Jackson:That's everybody's homework. Thanks everyone for joining us, and we'll see you next week.
Brian Casel:Alright. Later, folks.
