A framework for getting what you want
#17

A framework for getting what you want

Justin:

Welcome to the panel where two Bootstrap founders talk about building a better business and a better life. I'm Justin Jackson, the cofounder of transistor.fm.

Brian:

And I'm Brian Castle. I am building buildermethods.com.

Justin:

And we got lots to talk about. I've I've been diving into Stripe Sigma. I've got all this historical revenue analysis. I had a big deep phone call with Jason Cohen, I think I want to talk about a bit. Lots on my mind.

Brian:

I want to hear about that.

Justin:

But why don't we start off with some personal updates? What's been happening with you for the last

Brian:

three I'll get into the personal stuff just to tease the business side a little bit later. I'm thinking about monetization ideas still for for builder methods. Some some new change in thinking there, maybe I'll get into. Still super

Justin:

nicely with what Aaron and Ian have been talking about the last few episodes on Mostly Technical. I think there's some overlap there.

Brian:

Yeah. For sure. And still super into YouTube, and I feel like I'm improving a couple small things. I can get into that as well. So but, yeah, personal side, I feel like the the summer has been pretty eventful probably for for both of us.

Brian:

Took a few trips. I had some surgery like two weeks ago. Oh. For the for the first time in my adult life. I think I had a little thing when I was a kid.

Justin:

But Oh, wow. Is everything okay?

Brian:

Yeah. Everything's much better now. I was in a lot of pain about a month ago. So I will backtrack here. Some people know that about a year and a half ago, I had shingles on my back.

Brian:

Yeah. And it was extremely painful. It was also probably came from some stressful times in my life and career and stuff. But the Yeah. But yeah, so that happened about a year and a half ago.

Brian:

And some of the aftermath of that was I had a a lymph node, like an enlarged lymph node Oh, no. In my, like, hip my left hip area. And and so it's the kind of thing that, like, those usually, like, flare up, but then they go away. This one just didn't go away. And it and it sort of just remained it didn't hurt at all for, like, a long time.

Brian:

Had it checked out about about eight months ago. You know? Like, it it's a lump. You gotta go talk to a doctor. Yeah.

Brian:

Know? And see see what's going on. It was nothing. Just an enlarged lymph node. Like, they were like, you know, it's not a hernia.

Brian:

It's not it's not this or that. So we can just leave it, and it's it's not bothering you. Fine. So then a month ago, I guess three or four weeks ago, I I was just doing my normal morning workout, you know, strength training, doing some, like, squats and ab work and stuff like that.

Justin:

Mhmm.

Brian:

Workout went fine, but then two hours later, this thing started hurting a lot.

Justin:

Oh, man.

Brian:

And and just and then the pain and, you know, at first, was like, okay. Maybe it's a muscle thing. It'll go away tomorrow. Tomorrow, it got much worse. And then the next day, it got much worse.

Brian:

And then it just kept increasing. And it's like just super pain. Can't walk. Can't even, like, stand up for more than two minutes or something.

Justin:

Oh, man.

Brian:

So I go back to the doctor, and it and it's and it's like that same lump, essentially. They're like, well, I guess it's time to take that baby out. I can I can just rant all day about The US health care system? I mean, the doctors are fantastic, and and the person the the surgeon who worked on me was is fantastic. Yeah.

Brian:

But the system, man, oh my god. Like, first of all, just being able to get in to see the doctor took me over a week. And this is, like, excruciating pain. Like, I went to urgent care. They literally told me nothing.

Brian:

They they were like, don't like, can't even prescribe anything. Like, nothing. Still get a bill for $250 just to that visit. And then and then I get and and then it took me, like, over a week to even get in with the doctor to see this thing. And I'm I'm trying to explain to them, excruciating pain, can't sleep, can't walk, can't drive.

Justin:

Yeah.

Brian:

I don't know what you have I don't know what code word you have to say to get me in, but,

Justin:

like, get

Brian:

me you know?

Justin:

What what's the secret code that gets me a FastPass?

Brian:

So finally, I get in, and and then and then he's like, okay. We gotta take it out. I was like, great. Like, when when are we gonna do this? A couple days from now?

Brian:

He's like, yeah. Maybe a week or two. I get a call. Okay. We scheduled it for two months from now.

Brian:

I'm like, no. Like, that's just not gonna work.

Justin:

You're just thinking this is gonna be two months of excruciating pain. Yeah. I'm guessing you can't focus. You can't think.

Brian:

Not only can't focus. I mean, I got zero sleep for, like, six days straight. Oh. Like Brian. You know?

Brian:

Oh,

Justin:

this is so painful.

Brian:

So, I mean and, you know, here we have this, like we have these, like, massive health networks. Right? So even even though I spoke to my doctor in person, they've got an assistant in the office, and then it goes to the scheduling coordinator in the corporate office, and then it goes to this person and that person. And I'm I'm following up. I'm like, September 26 is not gonna work for me for like, we gotta get this sooner.

Brian:

I don't know if I gotta go to another doctor or what. But, like

Justin:

Yeah. Like, you're thinking I might not sleep for two months.

Brian:

And I'm like so I made like a thousand calls. I I started getting super angry on the phone with people, which I don't like to do, but it's like at a certain point, you just have to. Yeah. And and then then, like, I finally got through to my actual doctor's assistant. She was like, oh, we had a scheduling mishap.

Brian:

You can get in on on this Monday. I was like, great. You know? So that so anyway Relief but frustration. Yeah.

Brian:

Exactly. Like, I I can't believe, like, it it took me being an asshole to all these different people on the phone, you know? Yeah. But anyway, I got in and the surgery went great. So it was like a nerve because like the thing is like close to a nerve, so that was causing all the pain.

Brian:

That's all resolved now.

Justin:

I mean, that's the thing. Sometimes surgery doesn't resolve the problem. So to have it resolve it in a definitive way is a big win.

Brian:

The pain itself like went away within, you know, hours after the surgery.

Justin:

And

Brian:

then still sort of waiting on results. And I'm like, what the hell was that thing? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Brian:

Yeah.

Justin:

Dude, that's rough and rough when you're trying to like it's just so clear that if your health's not good, it's hard to live. And

Brian:

It really is.

Justin:

Yeah. It's one of those things you don't really value good health when you're in it. It's just kinda like whatever. You know? Like, I get up.

Justin:

I do things. My head is reasonably clear. You know?

Brian:

You know, sometimes I and, you know, I'm in my forties. I get I get body pains and back pains and stuff. I got headaches.

Justin:

Right now. I got three I could talk about right now.

Brian:

You know? And and, especially people like us, we become comfortable in some pain.

Justin:

Yeah.

Brian:

Like I'm always in pain and like I don't even talk about it. So sometimes I'm like, do the doctors understand how much pain I'm really in? Because they might be getting the vibe that like, it's oh, not so bad. He could take it.

Justin:

You know? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. That's frustrating to be able talking to someone and saying, listen, like, this is a big deal.

Justin:

And they're going, nah, it's fine. You know? Yeah. You're fine.

Brian:

Tough it out. Yeah. And then, you know, it's like and then it's the whole, like, compartmentalizing thing. Like, I'm still actually trying to do work and record YouTube videos while I'm, like, killing myself. Oh, yeah.

Justin:

Oh, man. Wow. Wow. Well, I'm glad that got resolved. Anything fun?

Justin:

Have you been doing anything fun? Anything fun in the past

Brian:

Actually, coming just booked a little vacation. We're gonna go this Saturday to book a lake house in New Hampshire. Gonna do that for a few days.

Justin:

Was this last minute, or you had it booked before?

Brian:

Last minute. We just booked it two days ago.

Justin:

Okay. I have this, like

Brian:

That'll be good.

Justin:

Confusion about how people plan trips. I just I just messaged Taylor Otwell about this because him and his family are always doing these family trips. I'm like, dude, how does that happen? How do you get those things planned?

Brian:

We also did a trip about, like, earlier in the summer. So this is, like, two months ago. We went to down to North Carolina, the Outer Banks, which is pretty funny because Ian Landsman was just there last week. Jordan Oh,

Justin:

yeah. I heard about this.

Brian:

Jordan Gaul was there, like, two weeks before, and I was there, like, two so we were there, like, within weeks of each Oh, sequentially. Total, like, coincidence. So anyway, we yeah. We drove down there, like, two months ago, which was a great time. We had an Airbnb right on the beach for a week.

Brian:

Yeah. That's the kind of so we always plan a summer trip after the girls get out of school. Yeah. And that was the one for this summer, and we were planning that one for several months. Got it.

Brian:

But but then we you know, the girls have, like, one more week off before school starts, so we wanted to do, a quick three day thing at a lake.

Justin:

Got it.

Brian:

Got a nice Airbnb.

Justin:

Usually, that's hard to do last minute. At least in British Columbia, you can't get a last minute lake house or anything, really, campsite. It's all booked up three, four months in advance.

Brian:

Usually, that there it's like that here. I mean, the fall time in New England is impossible.

Justin:

That's when it gets

Brian:

kinda popular. Everything. And and also ski season gets gets kinda crazy. But right now, end of summer, I mean, especially since we're going on, like, a Monday and Tuesday, you know, we probably just grabbed a a pretty good house last minute. You know?

Brian:

Sweet.

Justin:

Yeah. Alright. Well, anything else per personal? I I I'm I'm kinda eager to get into the stuff I've been looking at.

Brian:

Alright, man. Let's let's do it. Let's dive in.

Justin:

So have you heard of Stripe Sigma?

Brian:

I've heard of it. I've never looked at it.

Justin:

Okay. I think more people need to know about it. And I'm probably using it differently than most folks. I think I can show this to folks.

Brian:

I was gonna say, are we gonna see some numbers? Or what?

Justin:

I'll show you just like this report that I ran. I this one's pretty safe. Let me know if I accidentally reveal something here. Shouldn't. But this is kind of the interface.

Justin:

And the basically, it allows you to write write these what looks like kind of SQL templates and get information out of your Stripe you know, everything that's happened in Stripe. And so in this case, all I've done is I'm saying I wanna see every invoice for people who have purchased AI transcriptions. And so

Brian:

And your goal in this query is to understand usage of that feature?

Justin:

Yeah. Well, in this case, be this is actually just like a weird product type. It's like an add on, so we can't really track it in our regular reports. It's it shows up as one time revenue. And so I'm trying to figure out how much revenue have we done on this particular add on feature since we launched it.

Justin:

And so I think you can use they they have their own little AI thing that should allow you to generate these. But I've actually been generating these with Claude code.

Brian:

Mhmm.

Justin:

And the there's some interesting things I've found. Now, I'm not gonna share what I've shared with you. Did you see that doc? Were you able to access that doc that I sent you?

Brian:

Yeah. I'm looking at it now. Also, I'm I'm curious. Like, do you use something like Chartmogul as well?

Justin:

Yeah. I use Profit. What we use ProfitWell.

Brian:

Okay. I use I use Chartmogul for this kind of stuff.

Justin:

Yeah. Chartmogul, I think, I could check it out again. In some ways, I think now this is going to change how I do things. Because usually when I go to those tools, I'm looking for these kind of reports. But this allows me to create these reports in a bespoke way.

Justin:

I can really ask it for exactly what I want.

Brian:

So what I'm looking so for those like listening and not viewing this. Oh, wait. So that I've this is what I can't talk about on air?

Justin:

Well, I'm gonna refer to it. And so that what I've done is I did a report for year over year revenue growth for transistors from 2019 on. This is something I I generated through Stripe Sigma. Very, very easy to get this kind of information now. And I was able to customize it for what I wanted.

Justin:

And there's just some interesting things that I had never seen before. So the most interesting piece is we John and I started Transistor in 02/2018. And 02/2019, the revenue that year was $320,000. I can share that. 2020 was COVID and we grew a ton.

Justin:

I can share that too. We it was like over 200% we grew that year. And the next year, 2021, if you look at the revenue change year over year, both those numbers for 2020 and 2021 are substantial. Like, that was that got us a huge boost in terms of where we were revenue wise in terms of annual revenue. And then since 2021, we've grown every year.

Justin:

But you can see it's in the, let's say, the 18% range. So year over year growth kind of exploded during COVID. And then for 2020, 2021. And basically, since 2021, we've added the same amount of revenue every year.

Brian:

Yeah. And I like, without without getting too specific in the numbers. Yeah. What like, seeing huge year over year growth in '20, very big in '21. I'd say there was a big drop off in still growing in '22, but just drop off in growth rate.

Brian:

Yeah. And then and then just a slight tick down every year since '22. The the big changes were, like, '19 to '20, and then '20 to '21, and '21 to '22.

Justin:

Now I had a call with Jason Cohen about this. Jason Cohen is the founder of WP Engine. By the way, I I was messaging with Adam Waddon about this. He is just the most generous, awesome dude ever. Like Yeah.

Justin:

I try not to bug him too often. But when I do ask him for help, he is incredibly generous with his time. I think he's also just generous with his time for the startup community. He writes a ton of articles. I think he does not get his due.

Justin:

Like, he should be should be the most popular person on Twitter, and he's not. Like, his advice is just unparalleled.

Brian:

He's he's definitely pretty popular, at least in our circles. You know, I I and I don't I don't know him too well. I think we sort of know each other from afar, but I I think of Jason as, like, he's like an LLM for SaaS knowledge. SaaS business knowledge. You know?

Brian:

Like like, he knows all the all the scenarios and all the calculations of, like, if this, then that. You know? That's how I think of

Justin:

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah.

Justin:

And I've got a I've got a new illustration I can share with everybody that that for Jason's kind of framework that I think is interesting. So and in the chat, Lewis Nichols is asking, added the same amount of net revenue. So, yes, basically, big in terms of revenue change, twenty twenty twenty one, without giving too much away, big numbers, 2020, 2021. And the numbers in 2022, 2023, 2024 are good in terms of the amount of new net revenue we're adding every year, but it's not, like, increasing. That number is not increasing every year.

Brian:

I just wanna give you my quick impression of this or maybe the question. Because, like, this seems to me to be extremely expected, especially with your type of SaaS in in in market space. Like Yeah. And I feel like this probably explain this is probably very similar to not all SaaS, but many.

Justin:

That's exactly what Jason Cohen said.

Brian:

Yeah. You know? And and, like, I what I wonder about is because, like, okay. The the the slowdown in growth, that just happens generally with most SaaS. Right?

Brian:

Yeah. And, obviously, the the big growth in 2020 that happened with a lot of SaaS. So there's obviously going to be a big correction for that in the year or two after. Right? So I my question is, I'm wondering because your numbers here only go back to '20 really just 2020, a little bit of 2019.

Justin:

Yeah.

Brian:

Because you guys started way before that, right? Like 07/2018. '18. Yeah. So like what I wonder about if there's any see, that's still like if if you had started even a bit earlier, like '15 or '16, then maybe you can see if you can normal if you can normalize out 2020, if you can, like, exclude that, where would you have been if COVID if COVID never happened?

Justin:

You know? Yes. Yes. I mean, COVID was definitely an accelerant. That was

Brian:

Like, I almost wonder if if you would sort of be in the same place that you actually are.

Justin:

Yes. That's that's another interesting yep. Yeah. That could be as well. I mean, that was certainly the trend with everybody.

Justin:

A lot of people said it pulled forward demand. So there was future demand that might have materialized itself later.

Brian:

Forward. Right. Yeah.

Justin:

Yeah. So there's just latent demand. People there's a lot of people out there that are like, I would like to start a podcast one day when I get the time. And then all of a sudden, COVID happened and suddenly lots of people had the time and they're like, that's it. I'm at home.

Justin:

I am going to act on this dream.

Brian:

I

Justin:

mean, the previous from 2018 to 2019, we grew 1258%. But that the numbers at the beginning are so small that it's it's not as relevant. Right? Going from your first year of business to your second year of business.

Brian:

Can we also get into the monthly sign ups by plan stuff? That graph?

Justin:

Yes. Yes. Okay. So that's the first thing. And I think I'm asking a bunch of questions in this.

Justin:

I mean, basically, we didn't start hiring people full time until the 2021, that last half of twenty twenty one. The you know, since really, since and the other interesting thing thing about this is I would say most of the meaningful features we've added and most of the meaningful positioning we did was in 02/2019, 02/2020, and 02/2021. John and I were kind of like in a not a funk, but just a little bit like COVID was happening. We were kind of I don't think we realized how much we were growing even. Was just like, we were just kind

Brian:

of Yeah, in it's like that business might be good, but life is not so good.

Justin:

Yeah. We were just like, what's going on? And so there's this interesting idea of the effort we're putting into something, and whether it's generating any sort of additional revenue on the back end. And since 2021, for sure, there hasn't been anything that has like dramatically shifted the trajectory of our revenue. Right?

Justin:

We're just adding the same amount of new revenue every day.

Brian:

So to unpack that a little bit. So your marketing channels largely haven't changed? Like where where most customers find you? Yep. No new channel emerged in these years.

Brian:

It's been the same.

Justin:

That's right. And it built on each other. It definitely like, a lot of that groundwork was set in 02/2018, 02/2019, thousand twenty.

Brian:

But it's not like, oh, in '22, you started doing Facebook ads and that adds to the like, nothing like like that.

Justin:

Correct.

Brian:

Yes. And then the other thing on the product side, my understand I know that that you've released some some pretty interesting features over the years, but nothing like that changes what people think of what is transistor.

Justin:

Yes. And and or nothing that has, like, dramatically affected the revenue trajectory.

Brian:

Mhmm.

Justin:

Even with AI transcription, you know, new revenue added last year is still relatively I mean, it's up a little bit from the previous year. But so here's the other interesting thing is I could almost share this chart, but not quite. Monthly sign ups by pricing plan. Oh, I wish I could share this.

Brian:

Just just to highlight here, like, there there is a noticeable change that happened in 2025 or around the start of '25.

Justin:

Yes. Yes. So this is monthly sign ups by pricing tier. And what you'll see is sign ups on our starter plan, professional plan, business plan, and enterprise plan. So these are number of sign ups.

Justin:

And good one good thing that's happened is in the last year, sign ups to our starter plan have increased. So generally, this chart is pretty even. We get a nice number of new trials every month. And it's kind of like clockwork. Like, you know, it's hundreds of new trials every month.

Justin:

And this is kind of where people start. You know, most people are on the starter plan. Makes sense. This is kind of a creator type business. And there's a few people signing up on the professional and business plans.

Justin:

This is interesting. I mean, on the from the marketing front, this latest kind of inflection point where more people are signing up on the starter plan is a big win. I attribute a lot of that to the groundwork that we laid before. So increasingly, sign ups from ChatGPT, Grok, Gemini, and Claude have increased. So, you know, if you want to get let's say you want to get 20 sign ups a day, the a portion of those sign ups are now coming from all of those places.

Justin:

And we did a bunch of groundwork in the early years that has made that that's why that's happening is because of stuff we did before. Likewise, we're still getting lots of, referrals from Reddit and from other places. So these like organic channels, content channels, SEO is still doing well. But all of that, it just started to inflect kind of this past year.

Brian:

I I definitely see the increase in starter plans. And it was interesting how how starter so my understanding from that, correct me if I'm wrong, is that you're getting more new lower plans at the top of the funnel. It doesn't Mhmm. Wait. Was that a graph of new sign ups?

Justin:

New sign ups every month.

Brian:

Yeah. What about expansion? Like, are are they expanding into the upper plans?

Justin:

So this is the other thing I did. Now I'm not gonna reveal this number, but then using Stripe Sigma again, to run the queries, I said, okay. Show me how many customers upgrade from the starter plan within thirty days, ninety days, six months, one year, or who have ever upgraded. That number is low. It's very few people who start on our starter plan upgrade.

Brian:

And I'm just thinking about it from a podcast space perspective. That makes sense to me because I feel like podcasts are notorious for huge numbers of nobody podcasts

Justin:

Mhmm. With

Brian:

very, very tiny, miniscule audiences

Justin:

Yeah.

Brian:

And then a tiny sliver who are huge. And there's a very big gap in between. Like, it's just not super common for a small podcast to step up to a medium size, to a large, to an extra large. Like, don't see that like you do in other spaces.

Justin:

That's right. And it's it has a fundamental difference between us and someone like Kit, for example. Because

Brian:

Right.

Justin:

It's a lot harder to just kind of accumulate new podcast listeners than it is to accumulate new email subscribers. Now, accumulating a new email subscriber, not easy. I could start on the free plan on kit. But if I eventually get up to, you know, I I I just kind of passively build my list over time.

Brian:

That's the thing. You can passively do it. Like, like with Builder Methods, I'm actively growing my email list, and my Kit account is growing every day. Like, I'm promoting it every day and stuff like that. But, like, my list for the Clarity Flow business, we're doing almost nothing to grow our email subscriber base, but it's naturally growing.

Brian:

Yes. Like every time we get a trial sign up, like there people are like the list is just naturally gonna grow. So there's expansion just built in.

Justin:

That's right. And if if you think about it, we did some great episodes on the Build Your SaaS Podcast about pricing and our whole pricing methodology. Our pricing positioning is what, like, created our business. This idea of doing unlimited podcasts on one account for one price was incredibly novel at the time. It is still one of our biggest reasons that people sign up.

Justin:

And we went through like, what value metric are we going to tie our pricing to? And what seemed to make the most sense is make it, you can start as many podcasts as you want on an account. But we're going to tie the value metric to monthly downloads.

Brian:

Makes sense.

Justin:

Because that's where the cost is. It's bandwidth is the primary cost. Maybe in retrospect, I don't know if that was a good idea or a bad idea. We're we were somewhat limited in that we had to our pricing had to reflect somewhat of what was going on in the industry. So we introduced this new idea of unlimited podcasts for one price.

Justin:

But we still had to tie ourselves to something. And some people limit it by amount you can upload, and we didn't want to do that. Some people limit it by storage. We didn't want to do that. We're like, what's something people can understand?

Justin:

Well, people understand views on YouTube. They understand, you know, views on a website. We think they'll understand monthly downloads. And so that's what we tied it to.

Brian:

I I mean, I think that that does make sense because it it is the value metric, right? Like if you have more than 20,000 downloads, like you're definitely a growing podcast. So theoretically, you would have some budget behind it if you're at that level.

Justin:

Yeah. And we tried other things. I mean, initially and this is actually an interesting observation about these LLMs. I wrote down a bunch of notes about because I did this big deep dive into, like, how different LLMs were ranking us. And one thing I realized, you realize quickly is that old information about your business is cached in LLMs for a long time.

Justin:

So something

Brian:

That's true.

Justin:

That like positioning that you might have wanted to like, we were the podcast hosting company for businesses for, like, the first maybe six to eight months of Transistor. And in LLMs, that's still, like, the thing that shows up sometimes.

Brian:

I had a customer support request the other day through through Clarity Flow, and we we killed our free trial, like, eight months ago. Mhmm. There's you know, you pay upfront. Person says, ChatGPT told me that there's a free trial, so we we'd like to we'd like to take that plea. Like like, well, ChatGP is not accurate right now.

Brian:

You know?

Justin:

Yeah. This is an interesting idea of this, like, the stuff you have about your business gets kind of stuck in these things. So, yeah, Lewis is also asking if we've done any pricing changes. We have not, except we've introduced enterprise tiers because some customers did move into those. Pricing in podcast hosting is challenging.

Justin:

We were already on the upper end of paid podcast hosting. And so there's not a lot of flexibility for us to increase prices. Like, what do we do? Increase price on our lowest tier, which is where we're getting the bulk of our business and pricing ourselves out like everybody else is kind of either lower than us or they copied our $19 tier.

Brian:

I did a pricing change maybe three months ago on Clarity Flow that I think had a positive effect. I I I did some major pricing changes like a year ago. Mhmm. But I did do the thing maybe this was more than three.

Justin:

I mean,

Brian:

it was like six months ago where I actually lowered all the prices.

Justin:

Mhmm.

Brian:

But I got the ARPU up.

Justin:

Yes.

Brian:

And so we went from the lowest price being 49. We brought that down to 29.

Justin:

Yeah.

Brian:

The middle tier went from 99 to 79. The upper tier went from 200 to $1.49. Yeah. And more people And we made the 29 more limited than the 49 was.

Justin:

Yep.

Brian:

In some very key features. And there's a lot of people who just stick with the 29, but anything interesting business wise, you're going to the upper plan. And then the other thing is like our highest plan, we had almost zero subscribers. There's really no compelling reason to even be on our 200 plan. We just had it there.

Brian:

And so then we pushed some features into that plan. And and so, like, overall, it it brought the ARPU up a a bit. You know? And I I think it also helped reduce churn a little bit. Yeah.

Brian:

Lowering that price.

Justin:

I mean, right now, for a beta prosumer product, our churn is very low.

Brian:

You have that beautiful thing, man. The hosting thing. Yes. Like, yeah, man. Like that is something with SaaS that I really am jealous of a few Like, because I have podcasts that I don't even publish to anymore, but I still want them online.

Justin:

Yes. We we have the hosting thing, but this kind of reveals some of the pricing dynamics in our industry. And by the way, I I know we're gonna get messages from people telling us to raise our prices and all this other stuff. I did a great episode. I've done a series of episodes on Build Your SaaS.

Justin:

One was a debate with Jordan Gahl. I think it was Jordan Gahl and Ben Orenstein. I can't remember where that is. But if you search that up, our brother's ass. And I think if you we listen back on that episode, I think my hunches were correct.

Justin:

Like, they were pushing me, and that was good. But the the

Brian:

You know what? I I I agree with you that I'm and I'm all for raising prices when especially at least to test it. But, dude, the podcasting space, like, it is I I know how competitive it is. Yeah. And I know how price sensitive podcasters are in general.

Brian:

Even if it's a business podcast, it's still still price sensitive.

Justin:

Well, and it has that thing of, like, just think about the hosting market. There's Squarespace and Wix and that kind of target the lower end of the market. WP Engine targets the upper end of that market. So, you know, but in web hosting, that makes sense. Right?

Justin:

There's a lot of businesses. What does every business need? What's a priority on every business's list? We need a website.

Brian:

We had that thing back in the day when I was doing Restaurant Engine. And we were using WP Engine as our host that we were reselling to our Restaurant Engine customers. And that It was a churn, like there was no churn because of that fact. Right? And that But, you know, with podcasting, I totally get it because like even business podcasts, it's a side dish.

Justin:

Yep.

Brian:

It's a thing like, all right, yeah, maybe we'll try a podcast.

Justin:

And

Brian:

so the podcasters that want to put real money behind it are the big podcasts. And by their nature in the industry, there's very few of them.

Justin:

Yes.

Brian:

We're we're You know?

Justin:

We're talking about it was funny hearing Aaron and Ian because Ian's thinking about launching this product, outro.fm. And they they're, like, trying to figure out, like, how many other podcasts are in our space, you know? And I know. And it's like Buzzsprout releases this information right now. The number of podcasts that get, like, 4,000 downloads a month, very few.

Justin:

Where is it? Episode downloads, first seven days. Top 1% of podcasts get 4,177 downloads in the first seven days. We this show here, which is just started out and is not that we're already in the top 5%.

Brian:

Wow. Very good.

Justin:

So if if the top 1% of podcasts get 4,000 downloads in the first seven days, this is a and that that's not even really that monetizable for most shows.

Brian:

Right. And and, like, you don't you still don't even know what that means to the owner of that podcast. Yeah. Like, how important is that to them? Are are they gonna are they hiring an editor for that?

Brian:

Are they are they putting real resources into this thing? Does it actually drive sales for them? Or is it just a fun thing to do on the side? Like Yeah. That's gonna drive how much they they pay for this stuff.

Brian:

You know?

Justin:

Exactly. Yeah. So okay. So that's kind of that's kind of part of that feedback. Okay.

Justin:

And then, so, yeah, very few people upgrading. Makes sense when you think about it. Even, add ons that we did like our add ons generate new MRR, which is great, but it's still not significant. The interesting thing about doing this call with Jason Cohen is you like, you know him. He is like no bullshit, does not care about your feelings, does not care.

Justin:

He will push any button. And I said, give it to me like I want. And he had some interesting things like, here's an interesting thought exercise is, Justin, if you brought in some young, hungry, ambitious person, could they fire some of this stuff up? Maybe.

Brian:

Fire what up?

Justin:

Meaning Sales? Even take something like AI transcription. The thought exercise is interesting because it's like if you brought

Brian:

somebody new

Justin:

in, it's table stakes. But could a could new blood on the team, for example, would there be enough that they would be able to push that up higher? Probably. Maybe.

Brian:

You could ship features. I don't I don't know if features like that would really move the needle.

Justin:

I mean, that's that's a good example. And I've got down below. You can see that. And then I've just got kind of ARR over time. So this exercise, I guess I'm bringing it up because it was just profoundly helpful for me to I'm looking at numbers all the time, but often you're looking at like MRR and other things.

Justin:

But to have this historical analysis, and then to ask myself hard questions, like, have have we built anything that's substantially moved the needle? Not really.

Brian:

But you know what? Dude, at the at the end of the day, and I'm looking at this ARR over time, you zoom out from the very beginning of the business to today, you know what it looks like? A straight line that goes up into the right. I mean, Yeah. Like

Justin:

is it is true. It's I mean, that part is yeah. That part's great. Right? Like, you can't you can't be as upset about that.

Brian:

Sometimes I wonder about that because I look at the same graphs with with Clarity Flow, and I go in and out of thinking that the business is plateaued versus, no. It's actually growing a little bit. It it and I think it does fluctuate between those. Between, like, plateaus and then a little bit more growth, and then plateaus and a little bit more growth. We haven't really seen a decline.

Brian:

But, like, when but when I do that zoom out on the whole lifetime of the business, it's it overall, it's still up into the right. And even in recent years, but it still feels like and, I mean, it it it's it's really not growing fast enough to be an interesting business, to be honest. But it's like but it is the angle of the line is still upward. You know? Like, that's that's SAS for you, I guess.

Justin:

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Well and I think what's what's particularly interesting for John and I, something that we've wrestled with from the beginning, and I think still this is an ever present question.

Justin:

People who have listened to John and I on podcasts have heard this. Once we got to a million ARR, we kind of chilled out for a bit. That was kind of when we like just It was like, I went and worked on some side stuff. John was just kind of chilling. We weren't pushing things forward that much.

Justin:

And there was part of us that was wondering, like, maybe we'll just do this for a while, you know?

Brian:

Nothing wrong with that.

Justin:

And then it was like, well, what? But what do we want? Like, we want to we should try something else. Like, you know, that was during COVID. We were both kind of lonely.

Justin:

We wanted to work with interesting people. So that's when we started hiring. And that's we started hiring to for people to take things off our plate. So like I was doing tons of customer support. Let's hire someone to do our customer support.

Justin:

But I think the thing that I'm wrestling with is asking the question like, am I happy with the direction we're going? What direction are we going? Like, are we a business that's like, we're building new stuff so that we can really grow the business? Like we build stuff, and then we see a result from building that stuff? Are we building stuff just because we think it's interesting?

Justin:

Are we building stuff because we think we have to? We just have to keep up with what's going on. Are we building stuff just because we're a team that just loves to build stuff together? You know, everybody is motivated by different things. And I think I've been asking myself that question of, you know, what am I motivated by?

Brian:

Do you and John have like I know you guys meet up from time to time. Like, do you have, like, these, like, retreats or just Yeah. Sessions where you think big picture and answer answer those questions together for each other?

Justin:

Yeah. We've done that a number we should do it more often. So last August, I did. We met up in Chicago. But it should happen more frequently than it does.

Justin:

But that is often what we'll talk about during those those meetups. It's the reason I think it needs to happen more often is because things can just change. Like, things are always changing.

Brian:

The thing that I I always try to frame all of the questions like that around is, like, what is the single big goal? And that and that can be very different for each person, and that can change over time. It's not always a number on the graph to reach. Like, is is it is it maybe that at at this phase of the business, like, for you, maybe for John too, like, whatever that goal is, it's it's changing? Like, it's a it's a different type of goal now?

Justin:

Yeah. I think so. And I think often what will happen is we'll try something. You know? Like, I am about to go to podcast movement.

Justin:

And for the past few years, I've been going to this conference, and I'm like, I don't really wanna go. I don't wanna go to Dallas in August. I'm not

Brian:

That's a good indicator.

Justin:

Like, not really looking forward to it. Like, do I wanna be there? Not really. The reason I'm going is because I've been doing this big push into podcast standards. But now I'm also asking myself, is this worth it?

Justin:

Is this what I wanna be doing? You know? And depending on how it goes, I might come back fired up. I might not be. But I'm trying to notice what I'm feeling.

Justin:

And some feelings, you just have them all the time. It's like every year at tax season, do you get kind of down about your business? Yeah. Because it sucks. You're doing accounting and all that.

Justin:

But there's this repeated feeling of like, there can be something that was true and is still true to an extent. Like, Justin, do you like podcasting? And do you like podcasters? Yes. But is that enough for the next ten years?

Brian:

Mhmm.

Justin:

And I think those are some of the questions I'm thinking about.

Brian:

I wonder if an answer to that question because, like, I'm sure people are thinking like, well, why don't you start to think about exiting and selling the business? But, like and maybe that could be something on the table. I'm sure you guys get unsolicited offers all the time. But like the I think that there's value in just holding and letting it ride and grow

Justin:

Yeah.

Brian:

And maintain like, I came to this it was a very different situation, but like around the turn of this year in 2025, or, you know, when I start to think about these big what are my big goals? How am I what what is this business to me at this point in my career? One of the one of the themes that I came out of that with was win now. I wanna take the win now. So, you know, I'm not actively trying to sell a business right now.

Brian:

And so it's not like I'm pushing off that big win until years down the road so that I can maybe get the outcome then. Yeah. I was like, no. I how about I just start experience experiencing that win now? And that and that can be in the form of working less hours on it.

Brian:

Like, I decided to stop working on Fridays, which I've started working on Fridays again. Yeah. Yeah. You know, like the but, like, working less, maybe taking out more profit, maybe letting it ride, maybe starting to work on other things, like like, still reaping the benefits literally financially sometimes, like, and and still, like, accumulating what what would be an an exit, but still holding the the asset. Yeah.

Brian:

You know? I to me, there's nothing wrong with that, especially when it's a bootstrap business. That

Justin:

brings up perfectly this Jason Cohen's framework for getting what you want, which is what him and I talked about. He was so generous. He just listened to me for an hour, and then pushed back on

Brian:

a Here's bunch of a blog post I wrote about that.

Justin:

And then gave me this framework. And I shared this with him. And he said, it's not quite there, but it's directionally kind of, I think, there. So I'll just show you this, and I'll link to this in the show notes. Basically, it's like, here's where I am.

Justin:

Am I happy? Yes or no? What could make me happy in my current situation? So if if I'm unhappy, what's making me unhappy right now? And it could be maybe the company is not making enough money.

Justin:

It could be maybe I just don't love running a big team. It could be maybe I just don't love this industry anymore. Okay. Well, what would make you happy in this current situation? Well, you know, if all of a sudden, the team was much smaller, or if all of a sudden, we were making this much more revenue, or if all of a sudden, the industry changed, that would, you know, maybe make me happy in my current situation.

Justin:

And then he's got this great line, what would have to be true for this to happen? So you have okay, here's what would maybe make me happy. But what kind of external and internal not requirements. What kind of external and

Brian:

Yeah. What are the conditions under which that would would happen?

Justin:

That's right. And so it could be stuff like, well, this vendor would need to start acting differently. We would need to build the same product, a new product for the same audience, or consumer behavior would need to shift substantially. And what's so great about this part is I think, first of all, very few people kind of ask themselves the question and are honest with them at all. Am I happy?

Justin:

Am I happy doing what I'm doing? I've been doing this for, in my case, for seven years. Is this am I happy with this? And that can change, again, depending on the year, the time of year. It can change if, you know, there might be other factors in your life that are there's all sorts of things.

Brian:

But And then I think there's, like, even fewer people who do the next step of like, okay, like, I know that I'm not happy in this. Yeah. But I'm And I know something needs to change, but like actually making things change is I'll just push that down the road.

Justin:

Well, and I The other thing that was interesting that came up here was would need to make me having my current situation? It might just be, I just need a break. And then what would need to be true for that to happen? Jason and I talked about this. I need a sabbatical.

Justin:

Right?

Brian:

Mhmm.

Justin:

So this is interesting. And now is this practical? What's interesting for transistors is if I wanted to take a sabbatical right now, that's completely practical. Right? We're running.

Justin:

We're profitable. We got team that can run things. Could I take a sabbatical? Absolutely. So if it's if it's practical, then you should go and do that thing and then start this whole process again.

Justin:

If it's not practical, you could start asking again, well, what do I want? And if you have a business partner, you also have to ask your business partner, what do they want? And so again, it could be a bunch of things. It could be I'm just tired of working. It could be, so I don't want to do this anymore.

Justin:

It could be, I really want more money in my bank account. Like, I want to this thing might eventually be worth 2,000,000 or a million. And I just want I want that now instead of later. Or I want a way of getting there that's practical. And so, you know, what do I want?

Justin:

What does my partner want? Again, John and I have done this. But I think we want to do it again just for

Brian:

Yeah. And it's especially good to look back on. Okay, we talked about this three months ago, or we talked about this earlier in the year. Where are we at on

Justin:

it now? Or this this theme has come up before. Right? This line was so great. This is a Jason Cohen line right here.

Justin:

He said, and both in a partnership I mean, I also felt like he was giving me relationship advice here. But in a partnership, both partners need to be equally committed to helping the other person get what they want.

Brian:

That's super interesting because it's not like both partners have to have the same goal. It's about helping each other get to their goal.

Justin:

That's right. I just thought that was such a great line, and I'm still reflecting on it.

Brian:

That is good. Yeah.

Justin:

And so then what are some possible paths to us getting what we want? So you can have ideas there. And then this is the part where he was saying, maybe he said this next part, everyone thinks it's going to be linear, and it's very unlinear. Even to the point of, like, you know, start exploring options. Does this one work?

Justin:

Nope. Does this one work? Nope. Does this one work? Maybe.

Justin:

Okay. Let's try that out. Did it work? No. No.

Justin:

Oh, wait. This part worked. Okay. Let's do that. But then, that's not really workable.

Justin:

That didn't work. Oh, we found something that worked. This is still quite linear. And he's like, often what happens is you start exploring options, and then you realize, you know what? Everything here is not tangible.

Justin:

So we need to go back to all the way back to what do I want? Because now we realize that what we wanted wasn't practical. There's no workable options. And so we got to start this progress again.

Brian:

You know what this makes me think of is like, I go through an extremely similar process. I do my own personal planning because I don't have business partners. But it's exactly these questions I'm asking again and again throughout the year. You know, I write it in my journal and think through it, including like, I happy with this? If not, what would make me happy and what would need to change or what would the conditions need to be?

Brian:

So I really write all that kind of stuff out. And then what usually comes out of that is as you sort to get to like the right side of that diagram there is like, I start to think through options and I start to write down like, okay, so I know what I want. I know what needs to change. So now here's the game plan, right? And I start to write that down like, okay, so if if I commit to doing this once a week for six months, or if I if I do these types of I do videos every week, or if I build this, or if I do this strategy and I continue with it, And then what ends up happening is I don't stick with it, but it's not through laziness or distraction.

Brian:

It's like things on the ground change very quickly. Yeah. I had I had this idea for the YouTube channel, right, which I have committed to this year. But like one of those ideas was like, I'm I'm I know that I'm gonna be building a lot of new products, like software products this year. So why don't I kill two birds with one stone?

Brian:

Build the products and show the product building on the YouTube channel. Right? Mhmm. And and makes perfect sense. And I'm writing in my journal, every month, I'm gonna do a a new a new app this month and I'm gonna show it on YouTube video.

Brian:

Yeah. Well, what happens in practice is that the building of a real app doesn't make for interesting content. It's too messy, too boring. It doesn't like, it's it's just gonna be extremely difficult to make the video and the video is not gonna do very well. That what I found was videos that do really well are scripted and thinking about a topic to teach something.

Brian:

And and and so it's not actually building a real product on screen. It's just teaching something interesting and those things take off.

Justin:

Yes.

Brian:

And so like that kind of thing, like like changes, like, whatever whatever plan I had, it's like, you know, once you once you get into the ring, like, you you know, you you all the planning, like, you you can get punched in the face, then all the plan planning goes out out the window. You know?

Justin:

Well, I think this is exactly what Jason said here. He said, I would add lines going back from maybe back to what do I want. It would be nice if it were linear like this. And if you're lucky, it will be. But more likely, there will be a back and forth.

Justin:

And it's important to see that as progress and not a framework failure. So like your example there of trying something out, it's like, well, that failed. So that's a failure of this framework. But it's it's not a failure of the framework because that's the whole point is you're identifying what you want. And then you're identifying options.

Justin:

And sure, you need to be he says, you know, come up with the feasibility of these options. Like, sure, if you could come up with an option which theoretically solves for everything, that would be great. But, you know, you do want to have a general sense of whether something seems plausible or not. And often what it looks like is when you ask, what would have to be true for this to work? That question really helps, right?

Justin:

So it's like, you could say, well, for this to work, I need to release a video every week. And then you go, okay, well, how feasible is that? One, the answer might be, I don't know. I got to go try it. So then you go try it.

Justin:

And then you're like, holy shit. That was not feasible at all. That was

Brian:

Yeah. Exactly.

Justin:

Too much too much work. Or maybe releasing one video a week has this emotional component that you'd never considered. Like, actually, doing a video a week, like, it just kills me because, you know It's

Brian:

too draining.

Justin:

Too draining or whatever.

Brian:

But, you know, the the like, my thing with it is that, like, I I over plan. I I I think through a problem. Like, my problem is I'm not happy with this thing, so I know what needs to be true to change it. So the solution must be I'm gonna write down a super detailed plan and execute that plan. And I think that's the wrong move too.

Brian:

Yeah. It's like once you define what you know needs to change, then I feel like don't like, I'm talking like to myself here. Like like, don't over plan. Just make sure that the activities that you start engaging with are, like, directionally helping

Justin:

Yeah.

Brian:

Not hurting that goal. Yes. So every every small experiment, every small project that you decide to take on, which may come and go, you're gonna learn things on the ground that change. Just when I'm deciding on new projects, should I do this project? Is it gonna help my bigger goal?

Brian:

Or is it gonna take me further away from that goal? And that's it.

Justin:

And he was very clear to say, don't jump to the thing you're trying as the goal. Like often people go, well, what do you want? Well, I just want to sell my business. No, that's not what you want. That's a way of getting what you want.

Justin:

What is the actual thing you want? Well, what I really want is to have $10,000,000 after tax in my bank account. Okay. Well, that's a thing. What would have to be true for you to get there?

Justin:

Well, I guess at our current earning rate, if I get this many dividends, it'll take me this many years to get there. Okay. That's one option. What about selling? Is that an option?

Justin:

Well, let's see. For that to happen, know, who would the acquirer be? And you go through it all and you're like, that's not really feasible. Most businesses are not sellable. And so you could try it.

Justin:

Like, could go on but that was another interesting thing he said. Was just like everyone immediately jumps to selling often as a solution to their problem. He said most businesses are not sellable. Even good ones, he said. Like, you know, like transistor to business that's doing very well.

Justin:

We make lots in profit. But even that is not sellable. Private equity wants to see a high growth rate. They just want to see big, big numbers of new sign ups going up, you know, 30% month over month for a long time.

Brian:

And even if it is sellable, which I'm sure I'm sure it is sellable in some version.

Justin:

Oh, sure.

Brian:

Yeah. The the question then is, like, is the aftermath like, aside from the money, like, there there's still the aftermath that it that most people don't think about enough.

Justin:

Yeah.

Brian:

They they literally can't because they're not in it. And then the other thing is, like, dude, the the process of selling it can be such an extreme stress Yeah. For months, if not longer, you know, that like, is it is it worth it compared to the option of just holding?

Justin:

Yeah. You know? Yeah. So, yeah, I know that took a little while, but I was just pretty fired up about that. Just have to have that call.

Justin:

It was just so clarifying for me.

Brian:

I love those strategic roadmap, like like North Star questions.

Justin:

Yes. And and and just it's simple enough that I can follow it. But it also acknowledges that it's messy enough that, like, this is not an easy, like, Instagram bro, startup bro, like, just follow these six steps to your happiness. Like, it's like, no, like, you've got to go through this process. But it's not linear.

Justin:

Like, you're gonna think that what's going to solve your problem is and we can hear this all the time on these podcasts, right? It's like, when you and I are listening to Ian and Aaron or people are listening to us, that the people on the sidelines are like, well, you should try this or do this or whatever. And the truth is just that life is messier than that. Like the factors and the variables are more complicated, and what we think will get us there isn't always what gets us there. Now, you still gotta you that you still gotta make plans.

Justin:

You still gotta like

Brian:

I could sort of go through a version of what of that whole thing from what I'm thinking right now Okay. With Builder Methods because it's like

Justin:

Let's do it.

Brian:

So because I'm I'm I'm active. This is my primary number one focus is buildingbuildermethods.com.

Justin:

Yes.

Brian:

Right? This is my new business that I'm really trying to take a big swing with. Right? Like the current state of this business is, I feel like for the first time in any business that I've ever done, I've started with the marketing channel first before I even know what the product is. And I feel like I finally, with YouTube, I finally found something that works for me in terms of like, aligns with all my strengths.

Brian:

I found a way to actually get consistent exposure to more and more new ideal customers for this type of business. Right?

Justin:

Yeah. Can can we pause first? Can we can we just get, first of all, what what do you want? What's the thing that you're aiming for?

Brian:

Overall, big picture, big picture is I want to get back to a a state of security and and sustainability with a business. I feel like I'm halfway there right now. There's there's still a lot of the the main stress in my life and in business is that the the revenue that I that that comes in now is very choppy. Half of it is consistent from Clarity Flow.

Justin:

Mhmm.

Brian:

And the other half is good cash that comes from, like, some consulting projects and stuff. But that those come and go very quickly because I do, like, these relatively short MVP contracts. I've I've got a you know? And I've a developer who helps knock them out. I do them extremely efficiently.

Brian:

So I'm actually able only to spend like a day or so on each project and have the rest of the week to work on builder methods. That's good. But that's not the business that I'm trying to I'm not trying to build an agency here. I'm trying to build builder methods.

Justin:

And so just to flesh that out a bit, that looks like maybe more, passive is the only word I can come up with. Like, more, like, regular revenue that's just coming in.

Brian:

Predictable revenue. Yes. And it doesn't have this is not gonna be a SaaS business, Builder Methods. The the short to midterm goal is to eliminate consulting. Like, just that that's no longer needed.

Brian:

Get get rid of

Justin:

it. Mhmm.

Brian:

And Clarity Flow is it it becomes sort of just like a nice icing on the cake. Like, who like, who knows what will happen from it? But right now, it it accounts for, like, the only predictable income that I have, and it's only part of it. Yeah. So the main goal with this business is to get it get it monetized to a point where I know on a predictable basis, or at least on like a baseline basis, I can expect this much revenues because I'm getting this many new customers who are paying this much for these predictable products.

Brian:

And I have a predictable funnel that sells those products on a on a recurring base not on a on a repeatable basis. And and then that like, that's an entity that I can grow. Mhmm. Like, the the first goal is, like, just get it to survivability. Like, get it to that baseline on its own.

Brian:

It's paying my full salary. That's goal number one. And then it's like, okay, now I've got something to work with. How do we double and triple this revenue and make it a real growing business? And and so I got and so I I'm thinking a lot right now about, like, how do I achieve that short term goal within the next six to twelve months Mhmm.

Brian:

And and then something to really grow it in in two years and beyond.

Justin:

Yes.

Brian:

And this is one of those things where I'm starting to figure out what kinds of things I need to say no to.

Justin:

Mhmm.

Brian:

One example is like now now that I have a lot of I I get a really pretty consistent lead flow now

Justin:

Yep.

Brian:

Through YouTube. So every day I'm getting anywhere from 20 to 50 plus email subscribers a day coming off of the YouTube channel over to my email list. Yep. And I'm getting very regular emails, inquiries, just people inquiring about coaching for AI.

Justin:

Mhmm.

Brian:

Like, build building with AI. One learning from that is there are a lot of people who are asking for solo coaching, and I give them my rate for a single session and not many people convert that. So there's some price sensitivity more, I guess you might think of them as more beginner level. I'm also getting inquiries from teams. I had a call with a guy who runs a huge team, like 400 developers.

Brian:

And they want me to come and like speak and coach and do a dedicated session for their huge technical team on how to leverage AI. Now, and this is something that I feel like I could probably land and maybe I can help them in some way, but I'm also kind of intimidated because I'm like, I've never even worked at a company that large. How could I consult with a company? You know? Yep.

Brian:

But also like, I'd obviously be charging a lot of money, and I would I would want to I I would need to commit a lot of resources and time and effort to make that a solid thing that I can offer this company and maybe other companies. But I feel like that's something that I'm probably going to either decline or do a very limited version of. I'm not sure yet. But it's like, what am I trying to build here? And and the ideal in my mind is like, okay, stepping back, I have a marketing channel.

Brian:

I have leads coming in. I know that they're in the space of like wanting to stay ahead of the curve with building with AI. They're professionals or at various levels of their career, some early career, some more established, but they're all professionals. And I'm promoting some potential new courses on builder methods. Mhmm.

Justin:

A

Brian:

Claude code course, a cursor course, maybe some other courses. So I have emailed some sign ups for those with some surveys on the back end, and I get those sign ups every day as well. I get some survey responses every day. So there's definitely interest in those courses. I expect that this business will involve courses to some extent as as a big part of the revenue.

Justin:

Mhmm.

Brian:

The question becomes in what form should all of this take? Yeah. And my my thought earlier from a few weeks ago was, okay. I'm gonna I'm gonna create a lineup of small just in time courses.

Justin:

Mhmm.

Brian:

A relatively short Cloud Code course, a short Cursor course, and then a few more courses beyond that. And each one might be priced at a couple $100.

Justin:

Mhmm.

Brian:

And you can pick the one that you wanna learn this weekend and go with it. And hopefully, I'll I'll just have enough volume that I could just keep selling one off of these courses, maybe sell a package of a couple courses. Now, the more that I think about that, I'm starting to lean into the membership model again. And we talked about like community, community is not really a huge strength of mine in terms of like being a leader, like cheerleader for starting a new community from zero. I do have an audience now that I can potentially start this community with.

Brian:

Oh, and I have the Agent OS product too, which is a free open source thing, which is actually getting a lot of traction right now. That's another another whole thing, but it's like under the umbrella of builder methods, and it's bringing volume. It's bringing action into the business. Yeah. And I get a ton of questions about it and support, and it's a free thing.

Brian:

So I'm trying to figure out what is the paid thing that I need I I need to start monetizing this business. Mhmm. Right? And so but my thought with a membership is make it like, yes, there will be a community aspect to it. But instead of selling because my hesitation with a membership is like, I don't wanna just sell it as a community because I feel like I can't deliver a quality community because I'm not a community guy.

Justin:

But

Brian:

if I make the membership more centered around access to the courses. So I'm not gonna sell the courses one off. Just if you want a course, you buy a Builder Methods Pro membership, and that gives you access to all of our courses. Yep. Right?

Brian:

And so that's the thinking there is like make the course content and maybe whatever other resources like advanced guides to using Agent OS or advanced support for Agent OS, like maybe that's built into it. And by the way, you get access to our community chat too. That is the that that forms like a value proposition. And then and then the nice thing there is that, like, I don't need to promote each individual course individually. I'm just always continuously promoting Builder Methods Pro.

Brian:

Like Yeah. Every promotion, every marketing angle is pointing towards, like, I sell one thing. It costs this much per year. It's Builder Methods Pro. You get everything that I do.

Justin:

Okay. I think let's just pause here. I I just wanna let's let's I've been trying to put this into Jason Cohen's framework here. I I don't know if I did a good job, but let's just kinda walk through it because I think I think there is that what's interesting about it is I think it's clarifying for some of these like, what if questions. So here's where I am.

Justin:

Am I happy? No. What do I want? State of security and sustainability with, you know, money, more predictable regular revenue coming in every month.

Brian:

Yeah. On what do what do I want? I wanna add one more point to that, and that is like the nature of the work that I'm doing every day, every week. That's a big one for me. Like, for me, that's extremely important equally, if not more than the than the money.

Justin:

Yes.

Brian:

And that and that is, like, I really don't wanna be committing to heavy amounts of coaching engagements or calls or even like scheduled community things. Like I'll do occasional workshops, maybe some office hours and stuff, but I don't want this to be like, you buy this membership, you're gonna get me every Friday on this call. Like, no. Like like, I've I highly, highly value deep work, creative work. So creating, building apps, and creating videos for YouTube.

Brian:

Like, that's how I wanna be spending most of my time.

Justin:

Mhmm.

Brian:

And then 20% of my week can be some asynchronous interaction with my customers, but the the bulk of it has to be quiet, creative building.

Justin:

I mean, that's so clarifying. Even that right there. Sometimes to ask what you want, you have to say what I don't want.

Brian:

And also just the other thing about selling it as a membership is that I could sell the same product to individuals and teams.

Justin:

Mhmm.

Brian:

So like, it let's say the thing costs $500 a year. A solo buys it for that. There's there could be a team license. Get 20 seats in in the same thing, you know.

Justin:

So we put like, actually, right now, it seems like what are some possible paths for you to get what you want? Membership is one. Is there anything else that would be on that list?

Brian:

We talked about this in previous episode. It would be like sponsorships on the on the YouTube channel and in my newsletter. And I I expect I'll do those, but I I I think it'll be in the category of, like, icing on the cake. Yeah. You know?

Brian:

There there and I guess there's one more, and and we talked about this too, would be, like, the occasional cohort. Because I and I think I might I I would wanna do this too where it's like because I think that the membership alone might not get it there financially. Yeah. You know? Because, like, there is an upper limit to what you can charge for this type of membership in this space, I think.

Justin:

Mhmm.

Brian:

My my thought is, like, anchor it to, like, $500 a year and the early members get it for a bit less than that, and and that's that. But, like, if there's some mechanism where where the most engaged members, especially the ones who have budget to spend, can can join a thousand dollar, $1,500 thing

Justin:

Yeah.

Brian:

Or, like, an intensive six weeks where we're building together, I I'll do that twice a year, and, like, that that adds a chunk of the annual revenue. Mhmm. You know?

Justin:

I mean, this is why it's so funny in the because in the comments, some folks are saying, you know, maybe you should just start by building the course content. And I think that's actually that is jumping the horse. What I jumping the horse. Jumping the gun. Jumping the the

Brian:

Jumping a horse with

Justin:

a gun. Putting the horse before the cart. The cart before the horse.

Brian:

We'll put the gun in the cart. Okay. The

Justin:

horse is shooting the gun. Got it. Asking what you want, and then even like continuing to add to this and really go, okay, is that what I want and testing it and thinking about it and feeling it? This is so important. Because then it's like, okay, what practically could I do to maybe get what I want?

Justin:

And then you start listing them out. And then the next question, of course, is what would need to be true for this to happen? So in order for this to work oh, actually, this goes over here. Yeah. So you would have to stop consulting.

Justin:

Lots of devs need to be stressed out about AI. Courses would need to sell regularly without continual launches. Devs stressed about AI would need to want a membership without a community aspect. People would have to want to pay the price for cohorts to make them worthwhile. Right?

Justin:

There's there's all things that would have to be true in order for these particular paths to work. And then you can start asking, is that practical? And you can try some of that on before committing too much. Right?

Brian:

I I think, like, looking at that list, I'm trying to think, like, what are the things that stress me out right now? Mhmm. I feel like stopping consulting is just something that's gonna naturally happen once I feel like I don't need it anymore. Mhmm. And that that's when I have revenue to replace it.

Brian:

Yeah. And, like consulting honestly is something that like I just continuously feel lucky to get leads because I'm not promoting it.

Justin:

Mhmm.

Brian:

Like I'm not it's not a business I'm growing. Yeah. I I feel like I do see the natural demand and lots of devs need and stress to like Like, I'm seeing that on YouTube. Yep. Like, people are strangers are coming in every day.

Brian:

Yep. The courses thing is the and somebody brought this up in the in the chat. At the most basic level, I could just create a course about Cloud Code and ship that in about two months, and just sell that and that's that.

Justin:

Mhmm.

Brian:

Right? And yes, like, especially the space courses are going to be quickly outdated. So I need to figure out a way to create courses that are highly adaptable and updatable.

Justin:

Mhmm.

Brian:

But that's another big stress point is because like, I don't even know where I'm going to find the time to create extra content that I'm not creating for YouTube. And I'm also thinking like, what is the value of an actual course? Because you could just learn most things by reading the docs or going on YouTube. So like, is there some extra value? Maybe like we build a project together and that type of course.

Brian:

Like, so I need to figure out a rhythm and a process for manufacturing the product that I'm selling. And yeah, so that's a big one.

Justin:

The membership to work, dev stressed out about AI would need to want a membership without the community aspect.

Brian:

Well, I think there will be a community aspect. It's just that like, that's not the main event. And one thing to note is like, I would say my quote unquote competitors in this space, like other YouTubers in this space, most of them sell a membership.

Justin:

So there's competition.

Brian:

Yeah. But I noticed that, like and a lot of them are like these, like, younger guys on YouTube who are more naturally, they're doing the Discords. They're doing the, you know, they're they're doing things that I I just would not commit myself to be doing. Yeah. But they're also also, I I could I look at some of these guys, and frankly, I'm like like, I could I could market this better.

Brian:

I could sell it better. I could price it better. And also I know like who my audience is, and I see differences in my audience from those guys. Like a more serious and more professional side of the industry seems to resonate more with my stuff and and less so, like, the VibeCoders.

Justin:

Yeah. In this list here, what would have to be true for this to happen? There's kinda two or three components. One is, is there enough pull from the market to make this happen? And then the second part is, is it tangible, realistic for me to be the one that delivers this?

Justin:

Another dynamic would be, does that path involve things that are gonna make me deeply unhappy? There's just all this extra stuff, you know? I've been really getting into this poll framework I've told you guys about from Rob Snyder. And it's so simple. It's just is there a project on their to do list unavoidable for some reason where they've what's the L again?

Justin:

It's like they've looked for options, but they are lacking for some reason. I think this is one of those things that you could use to help determine, like, what would have to be true for this to happen? Well, there would need to be poll. So is there enough devs out there for whom this is a project on their to do list? Like, I've got to figure this out.

Justin:

I've got to figure out how I'm going to use Cloud Code. I'm getting left behind. I'm stressed about my job. I think there is a lot of those devs. The second part of that would be, is there enough of them there is there enough of them that aren't just going to go to the young YouTubers who are doing Discord and everything else?

Brian:

My my questions on those things, I'm like validating this, is like and this is probably true for most products that I start. It's like, I'm maybe I'm maybe a little naive here, but like, I I don't think I'm super worried about like, is there an an initial need in the market? I see it Mhmm. Every day in in my in in the activity on on stuff. But the and other products like this do exist.

Brian:

They appear to sell at at some level. Mhmm. So I I know that I can get, like, first customers.

Justin:

Mhmm.

Brian:

My my big I don't know for sure, but I think that I can. Mhmm. My my my big open question seems to be willingness to pay

Justin:

Mhmm.

Brian:

Or, like like, how much

Justin:

Yeah.

Brian:

They're they're willing to pay. Because another part of this is, I really don't wanna do it as a monthly membership. I think I only wanna sell it as an annual membership. There's a bunch of reasons for that. Like, memberships in general are known for for super high churn.

Justin:

Mhmm.

Brian:

And a bit and I think a big part of that churn is is because they they sell it monthly. And especially if it's like the draw is the courses, then you don't wanna just sell it. You get one month and you get everything and then you leave. But also like, I heard Jay Klaus talking about this. There's this, if other members see the rapid churn, if they if other members see new members coming in every week and seeing those members leave after three weeks, like that just feeds on itself.

Brian:

So, like, just make it a an annual thing so that, like, once you're in, you know that at least you're gonna be around for a year and you can you can decide if you wanna come back for a second year.

Justin:

Mhmm.

Brian:

But at least there's not this like visible churn in the community, you know? And and then of course, the the financial, like, you you get a year's worth of revenue upfront. Like you expect, like Jay was talking about how his is like two thirds of people stay. So, you know, 66% will will stay. And with a membership like that, that seems to be like a benchmark.

Brian:

Yeah. And so I'm running all these like projections out in like, with ChatGPT as I'm doing these, like, strategic planning stuff. And it's like, okay. Assume that that's the that's the the benchmark. How many new members do I need during the first year?

Brian:

Yep. At what price point At and what what revenue target is that gonna lead to?

Justin:

Mhmm.

Brian:

And it's like, if if I'm trying to play it conservative on the question of willingness to pay, like if if I'm finding that this audience really won't pay more than $300 a year for a membership or $400 a year, then that might be the upper ceiling. And so then it's like, okay, well, how far does that get me on like an annual revenue target? And it's like, okay, it gets me to the basic sustainability of like paying the bills, and I could probably eliminate consulting. But to make it what I'm trying to build as a real business, I'm gonna have to layer upsells on top of that. Yeah.

Brian:

Cohorts and stuff like that, and sponsorships.

Justin:

And it is I think in this stage, it is also helpful to you just alluded

Brian:

And it's like, there I go again, like over planning before I even do it.

Justin:

No. I think that's great. I think but one thing you alluded to that where this question is actually really relevant is so there's these names. Wes Boss, there's Jay Klaus, Lyricast.

Brian:

Yeah. And like the equivalent in Rubyland is the GoRail.

Justin:

GoRails. And I think one question is first to ask, do these people have what I want? And that answer could be yes, no, I don't know. You know, I know for sure that these three have a great business. I I'm not sure about GoRel's.

Justin:

Maybe it's

Brian:

He does. Okay. It's it's solid.

Justin:

These folks all have a good business. Okay. So that okay. Now, do I want to be what they're being? So, like, Jay has been super transparent about what it takes to run a community right now.

Justin:

And he's going more into events. He's going more into kind of the human to human, investing deeply in chat and other things. So that's one way he's gone. WesBoss, like his market his thing is like, build you build up this repertoire of courses over years and years and years, and then you do a massive sale every year, and it's a big, big launch. And you're basically just attracting attention and audience up till then.

Justin:

Big YouTube channel, big podcast, big newsletter. That's what it takes to run that business. And you can kind of go through this and go, okay, do I want any of that? Can I do any of that? If the answer is no, then the question is, can I still get what I want if I'm going against what the people who have success have done?

Brian:

I I really think that, like, what I'm what I'm like, the activity that I'm already doing every week, creating a creating a YouTube video every week or every other week. And then on the alternate weeks, I'm I'm building SaaS products. Like, I'm building this this newsletter lab AI idea right now to help me build my newsletter, but it'll be a a little SaaS thing. Not really part of this business plan, but it's like a an app that I'm building and learning relearning my workflows with AI so that I could teach them on the YouTube channel. Mhmm.

Brian:

A tool that I'm gonna use in in this builder methods business. So like, that kind of thing is what I really enjoy doing week to week. Mhmm. It's like building a tool and creating YouTube videos. And so I'm already in that in that rhythm.

Brian:

Yep. And and that's feeling good. And I could I I could definitely see myself continuing to do this, especially, like, I'm really and and Adam Lathen had a really great tweet. Well, actually, was retweeting Nathan Barry earlier this this week about the future of marketing is going to be audience or or creator Yeah. Marketing.

Justin:

Yeah. I saw that too.

Brian:

And I just I just really agree with that. And I know that, like, not every person, every business founder is like, naturally aligns with being the the public facing on camera creator type. Mhmm. I get that. Yep.

Brian:

But I but I do think that like most businesses are gonna I think the second the second reality of that is most businesses are gonna need to be sponsoring creators or hiring creators or buying them out. Yep. You know? Because that's really only the only mark In my experience, that's the only marketing that has broken through on a consistent basis Mhmm. Among all the noise.

Brian:

Because I feel like everything else before that for me has been felt like a hack or felt like sheer luck or a tactic that that runs out pretty quickly or just feels like forcing it

Justin:

Yeah.

Brian:

In some way, you know, and without results. YouTube is the first one that like, yes, it's a ton of work, but it's exposing me to new people every day. Yeah. And so like, given that, I really like the idea, just in general, of investing in a business that grows my audience

Justin:

Mhmm.

Brian:

As a creator. Like, no matter what the product ends up being, I know that, like, if I'm investing in a creator audience based business, that's gonna make everything easier to do no matter what it ends up being. You know? Like and it's a ton of work. But like

Justin:

For that to be true, you still have to figure out what the product is. That's gonna be the challenge

Brian:

Mhmm.

Justin:

I think. Because you can have there are I mean, we've seen this a lot. That used to be the old joke was this dude's got 500,000 followers on Twitter, but he can't monetize it at all because it's a Twitter

Brian:

I feel like that. And you see this a lot with YouTubers, like millions of subscribers, and either they burn out or they quit YouTube or they can't do it. And I think the common theme among most of those is that their audience are consumers. And it's a topic space that's just, that it's not a high budget customer. Yeah.

Brian:

Right?

Justin:

You're definitely in a better space.

Brian:

I'm in space that has money to Yeah. Theoretically. Theoretically. Yeah. Yeah.

Justin:

Has has anything Like on the builder methods front, has anything worked in terms of because you launched You did launch one course. Right? No. Oh, you didn't launch one course.

Brian:

The only thing that that from a product perspective that I've launched is Agent OS.

Justin:

Okay.

Brian:

And that is a free open source product tool thing, you know.

Justin:

Yeah. I mean, that does feel like the there's maybe that is part of it is that you launch something and just see by the way, we've got some great comments in here. And and and some debate actually here on on YouTube comments. Jeremy was saying he bought a AI course for $300. I love that kind of stuff where someone's like because it's easy to talk in hypotheticals, but if someone has actually spent money already on their own accord, it's like, okay.

Justin:

That was a project on Jeremy's list that had become unavoidable. He went and looked for options, and he found something that worked for him. And he said it was well worth it for that. It was well worth it in terms of coalescing ideas and helping him get to his conclusions quicker. So he spent $300, and the end result was it helped him to coalesce some of his ideas and get conclusions faster, and that was worth it for him.

Brian:

Yeah. Bobby Clink doesn't seem to agree that that this membership model is is ideal for this. On that thing that you're highlighting there about annual memberships are hard to sell, like the idea of requiring a subscription seems to be a turnoff. To that, I would say, I don't even think of selling this. Like, yes, it is a subscription, but I would expect that most buyers would think like, well, I'm just buying a year.

Brian:

I'll decide if I wanna continue for a second year. But like a year, like I buy annual memberships to things where I'm like, I'm probably only gonna be in this for a year, but it's worth a year. Yes. You

Justin:

know? Yeah. And I think

Brian:

that that's where, like, honestly, like things like Go Rails and LyraCast, I know that those are fantastic businesses, but I've been members of those, $29 to get access to everything, and then you leave after a month. Mhmm. Like, could because, like, to me, like, they they are, like, leaving some some money on the table there, or at least they're they're leaving a little bit more they have fantastic loyalty as it is. Mhmm. But I could see how the churn happens in that business.

Justin:

Yes. Know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Justin:

Yeah. I mean, we like, again, we know West Boston is a great business. I don't know what the makeup of that business is now. We know Jay Claus has a good business. He's been pretty upfront with where he gets all of his revenue.

Justin:

The project on the list piece is so important because I think then what you offer has to fulfill that thing. It's like the project on the list might not be go get a course. The project on the list is like, I gotta figure this out because my career depends on it. I'm really fucking scared. Everybody else is going ahead of me.

Justin:

I'm getting massive FOMO every time I'm going Twitter. I don't know what the fuck anyone's talking about. I tried it once, and it didn't work. Like, that's the project.

Brian:

You know, that is the general vibe that I get from most people in in the audience and the comments and the emails that I get. Yeah. And so I think that's why they're joining my newsletter and watching the channel and stuff. But the so so then, again, like, another reason why I like this idea of a of a single pro membership annual price. It's the only product that I generally offer.

Brian:

It's I think of it as, Amazon Prime. It's like, I might as well pick up an Amazon Prime membership because I'm probably gonna want at least some of the benefits that come with it. And so I want it to be the kind of thing where it's like, I consider myself a pretty serious developer. I'm making a career of this thing. Like I should have a Builder Methods Pro membership because that's what professionals do.

Brian:

They get their Pro membership. It's like an ID card. Yeah. You know? And like, maybe you only wanna learn Claude code, but, like, the relatively low price for an annual membership is, even if that's the only thing you actually wanna learn, like, that should be worth the price.

Brian:

And you happen to get these other courses and tools and access to a community too. But,

Justin:

like Mhmm.

Brian:

Instead of instead of trying to sell you on this course and only a small percentage of my audience might be interested in that specific thing and then then spending months selling this other course and doing a big launch around that, and maybe only some people want that. Like, I like the idea of like, I'm always just promoting Builder Methods Pro. And that also adds a lot of freedom to the YouTube channel. Mhmm. You know?

Brian:

Like every week, what I'm finding with YouTube, the way to be for me, the way to be effective with it is to follow what's really inspiring me right now.

Justin:

You

Brian:

know? Like I could have a long list of ideas, but if I'm gonna do the one that I'm thinking about a lot this week Mhmm. Whether whether we like it or not. Like Yeah. That's the one that's that's gonna come out.

Brian:

So I I just like that freedom of being able to create, and I think I think that's what great content comes from and and gets the results that you want. So I don't wanna have to think about like, okay, this month I'm launching a Cursor course, so I have to make all the videos about Cursor. You know?

Justin:

I do like the one offer. I personally, I think what people are looking for though, is community. I think they're looking for somebody it's like, if it was me, I'd be like, I want to get into a chat with a bunch of other smart people that Brian has curated. And I want Brian to be there too, because I'm already messaging you. Like, there's already there's already behavior that people are doing towards you.

Justin:

Like, I message you in Telegram about Claude stuff, and I'm like, have you seen this? What do you think about this? Like, I can imagine there are a lot of people in the audience that want to do that with you as well. And if you're not if you're not super excited about that piece, I wonder if

Brian:

I think I'm excited about it because, like, I participate in community.

Justin:

Mhmm.

Brian:

You know? Like, I'm a member in some. Yeah. Most most of the time, I'm I'm lurking. Occasionally, I I engage.

Brian:

Yeah. Especially if somebody tags me on something. But sometimes I have a question that I wanna get people's feedback on. But, like, it's like, if the community just existed, I would I would love that. Mhmm.

Brian:

But, like, starting from from zero and making sure, like, alright. Every week, what's everyone working on? Okay. And now I gotta review every single person's project and give them personalized feedback. And, like, that's I don't know if I can even get that bandwidth.

Justin:

Even like Bobby Clink here is saying community and group coaching from Brian is probably what people want. I'd gladly pay $1,000 a year for that, and I'm not even your ideal customer. I mean, who knows if there's a number of people like that. But $1,000 a year, that's an interesting number. And it there's something about that that is, know, could you get I mean, that number is so great.

Justin:

Because then you can instantly it's like, well, to make that worthwhile, you'd probably want at least 200 plus people.

Brian:

I'm I'm I'm constantly aware of how much time I'm spending on activities Mhmm. In my week. And for better or worse, like, maybe this I don't know if this is a good habit or a bad habit. Yeah. But I'm constantly, like, not exactly to a number, but I'm thinking about, like, am I doing something right now that is worth my time?

Brian:

Or does this feel like

Justin:

Mhmm.

Brian:

Like, for for example, customer support with Clarity Flow. Right? Yeah. I try to keep that to a minimum in terms of, like, how many minutes am I spending on this every day? And I have systems in place.

Brian:

Like, my developer helps with some of it and we automate some of it. But but at the end of the day, I'm the one responding to most customers. Yeah. If it's a if it's a super quick question and maybe my developer answered most of it and I just need to press send on it, great. If it's a customer who's asking for, like, a strategy session for how to design their coaching business on Clarity Flow

Justin:

Yeah.

Brian:

Like, you're really asking me to, like, coach them and, like, inspect their account and, like, and spend half an hour, like, digging into it. And I'm like, that's not worth the $29 a month I sell this product for.

Justin:

Yeah. I think you could create expectations. But

Brian:

I think what do you tell But it's like customers like that. It's like, do you Like, go away? Like, I'm not gonna say that. I gotta tell them something, you know? So if I think about it in the builder methods context, I would love to just have a general chat.

Brian:

These are my people anyway. I already talk to people about product all day. I it's fun for me. So that's that's exciting. Mhmm.

Brian:

But it's when I'm selling acts like a commitment Mhmm. To, like, you bought this thing so that entitles you to get my direct focused energy on you and your questions.

Justin:

Yeah.

Brian:

Like, maybe there's a tier for that, but I don't know if there's a time slot for me to give that kind of energy.

Justin:

Yeah. You know what

Brian:

I mean?

Justin:

I think it can look different ways. Like, Jay Klaus has been really good at setting expectations. I think he's he's pretty clear to say, you know, our chat, that's where everybody helps each other. And I'm just a participant along with everybody else, but I'm curating that group. And then once a week, I'll jump on a group Zoom call.

Justin:

We will have a topic. I will present on that topic. There will be q and a afterwards. And that's kind of where it ends. And then he also has hired other people to help him as well.

Justin:

So enabling other people to be like, you know, if there's someone and you're good at this, you're good at finding people. And so there is a world where you also find a great community moderator or whatever. And they are just like the expert at curating this and making people feel heard and creating those connections, you know, telling people when their behavior's bad and, you know, all that kind of stuff. You could you could potentially outsource it.

Brian:

I agree with that. I I like that because it's also like I think about it the reason why I'm more open minded to this idea of a membership and a community in there is that like at the at the outset of it, at the launch of it, it's really more about the courses. Mhmm. Or or the first course or two plus a community. Yep.

Brian:

So the community is gonna be pretty quiet, like most new communities are. At least the main thing that I'm selling is the courses. So that sort of like justifies the price. But then but but through that, through months of selling that, we accumulate more and more members. More and more activity.

Brian:

Now there's some natural chatter that happens, so that's good. But then out of that, it could get to a point where it's like, okay, now I have some revenue. Maybe I do hire a part time community manager in this. Or somebody in the community already wants to step up and be a leader, you know?

Justin:

I want to challenge the course thing a little bit. Maybe I'm just burnt out on courses. I've made my own courses. I think if it was me, I would be considering the cohort thing first. Like, that's what gets you into the community.

Justin:

You pay this amount. Cohort based thing. We are this is for old developers who are older than 35, who are feeling this pain. And we are going to just I'm gonna do a one week cohort. You're gonna show up every day.

Justin:

We're gonna it's gonna be day one. We talked about this day two, day this, day three, this, day four, day five, day six. And then then you're in our community chat. And you get the first year free. But after that, you gotta pay to continue to be a member of that.

Justin:

There's something about that that I think is may could be better even and less work. Just like courses to me are such a large amount of work.

Brian:

Yeah. I I I that that was actually my first thought a few months ago was, like, start with a cohort. I have a couple of hesitations with that because, like, I feel like I'm still very much learning and developing my the things that I teach. Even like the app that I'm building right now, like I'm building it in a completely new way from how I've built apps before.

Justin:

Mhmm.

Brian:

You know, much, Very much AI first. And there's still things that I need to develop, like best practices and frameworks that need time to settle in. I feel like I don't have a solid framework that I can build a whole cohort program around. I guess that's one thing.

Justin:

I think you actually do have more than you think. I I think you could do a one week cohort on using Agent OS. And I think you could already Yeah. Like, I you've told

Brian:

But even that is, like, very young. Like, it's less than two months in. I'm already like, I have a lot of GitHub issues and PRs and and people and I'm using it every day. And I'm finding where the holes are, and I need to like redesign parts of it. Like it's an open source project that is like, it's in its infancy.

Brian:

You know?

Justin:

My inkling though is that if you're gonna do this as a business, you're gonna have to get uncomfortable with that reality because it's moving so fast. So you're it the the the state of the the state of tech, the state of AI is never gonna slow down enough for you to ever feel like you're caught up.

Brian:

That is very true.

Justin:

I think what people want is they feel like they're drowning, and you literally have the one life raft available. And you're like, well, the life raft could be a little bit better. I'm like, well, let's just throw people the life raft, get them on. And you could be very upfront about this to say, listen, we're doing this one week cohort. Here's the price.

Justin:

First time I've ever done it. It's gonna be a bit lower this time because of this. But, I know you guys need a life raft. And I think I've got a actually great initial solution. I'm gonna help walk you through this because I there's a lot of people who have checked out Agent OS and have not used it yet.

Justin:

Or they used it once

Brian:

That's true.

Justin:

And they're like, whatever. Or they've used it, and they they have questions about it. And I think you could just address all of that. Say, hey. I know a lot of you have checked it out but haven't started using it.

Justin:

I know a lot of you are trying to figure out how to implement this on your team. I know a lot of you are trying to figure out you know, you have questions about it that you want to ask. And I'm making myself available on September 1 to September 7. You've joined the cohort for this amount of money. You will get one day a week, I will be do a live session.

Justin:

And it will be most it'll have a loose structure, but there'll also be time for q and a.

Brian:

And That is an interesting way to position it actually. It was like not so much like like, yes. Like Agent OS is actually a framework in itself already, right? Even though it's still evolving, like it's a pretty solid thing. I use it every day.

Brian:

But you do open my mind to this idea of like, okay, maybe it's not like the be all end all flagship cohort program, but a one week, like, almost like an office hours cohort. Like, yeah, you get some community with some other users. You get me every day. Not private, not one to one. No.

Brian:

But office hours, whatever, like one or like two hours a day for five days straight. Mhmm. Here's the price. Yep. You know?

Brian:

And and maybe I do that a couple couple times, like once every month for three months. Right? Like and like, I don't I don't think that would be the end thing. But like as as a starting point, first revenue.

Justin:

It would get you there. Like, for instance, there I think I I don't really even have any expertise in this, but I think I could do this successfully, is there's a lot of developers out there right now that need help getting hired. And I think I have enough good ideas along that line. I could say, we're doing a five day cohort. It's $500.

Justin:

You show up every day. And I talk about different issues that are stopping you from getting hired. I talk about the realities. First day is just gonna be here's the realities. Everyone's getting a thousand applications.

Justin:

Yours is getting cut right away. Let's fix it. Day two, you guys aren't solving the boss's problem. Let's just talk about how you solve the boss's problem and how you communicate that in your thing. Again, I'm not the the perfect expert, but I think I could offer enough value.

Justin:

And there's so much pain around that right now. People are just looking for any sort of release valve.

Brian:

I like this, dude. Because because it's like I could, like, come up with a fifteen minute slide deck for five days

Justin:

Yeah.

Brian:

And and do, like, fifteen minutes and then, like, an hour of open QA.

Justin:

Yes.

Brian:

Do that every day for

Justin:

five this a number of times with different things, and I found it very, very good. It it was I was honest about what it is. There's just a lot of pain.

Brian:

It's also a good way to, like, filter the, like, the broader audience. Like, okay, these are the people who are raising their hand, and they're serious. You know?

Justin:

That's and and it doesn't preclude you from selling them something later on. So you do that whole thing. You're getting all this customer feedback of like, here's the struggle. Here's the struggle. I need this.

Justin:

I need this. Okay. Hey, guys. It's day five. We accomplished a lot the past five days.

Justin:

But over these five days, I'm realizing a lot of you are struggling with this. So I'm gonna go back into my lab, and I'm going to work on something that's gonna help you guys get and it might be another cohort. We're gonna do this again in a month. And I I know you guys still need help, and I'm committed to being the one that's gonna help you get there.

Brian:

Okay. So this changes everything. I like this.

Justin:

It only took we're this is this is a two hour one.

Brian:

We're we're The the good stuff comes at a comes at an hour fifty one. Alright. We're gonna we're gonna wrap in in a minute, but I I have one okay. Let me I need you to coach me on this for a second.

Justin:

And and just to be clear, we are still in the messy exploring. Will this work? Maybe. Like, we don't know. But it's we're we're still in in this phase right here.

Justin:

But yeah.

Brian:

Here is my question about, like, okay. What like, this is, my what if this is how this could go wrong question. Right? Like, I I I think the first one will be a great learning experience. Let's let's say, like, I get to a point where it's like, okay, 50, a 100 more people have joined this thing.

Brian:

So now it's like every day we're on this live Zoom

Justin:

Mhmm.

Brian:

With maybe a 100 people there.

Justin:

Mhmm.

Brian:

How could I possibly offer advice to like, there's gonna be more there's definitely not gonna be enough time to get to everyone's question.

Justin:

Mhmm.

Brian:

And there's gonna be need there's gonna need to be some sort of hard limit on the people who do get a question in, like, many minutes can I actually spend on that question? Is that gonna bore the other 99 people in the room? Mhmm.

Justin:

Mhmm.

Brian:

Like, if it if this is a group coaching situation, how do how do we

Justin:

I think you would set expectations. And I mean, Bobby Klink is asking questions. Why would you only do it as one week? Simple scope. Just keep the scope really short, really short and offer value every day.

Justin:

Too too long, I think, for initial thing would be too much.

Brian:

Like, I just can't commit myself to six weeks. Like, I just have so many

Justin:

You're thinking about it as a emergency conference. Like, okay, guys, the industry's totally been upended. Everybody is like, what's going on? It's like we need to have an emergency conference. I mean and you could literally do this for every new release.

Justin:

GPT five is out. We all we're gonna talk about is GPT five, how it's gonna affect you as a programmer. We're going to get on the call. I've got to hear a rough outline. But you can I think the way you get away from what you're worried about is setting expectations?

Justin:

And to be very clear in questions to be clear in all the materials, this is for this. This is not for this. And if they ask questions during the live session that are more personal, like one on one coaching questions, you say, that's a great question. That probably doesn't apply to the whole group, but that would be a great thing for us to pursue in a coaching call.

Brian:

Like, here's how I think about this or that, and let's move on.

Justin:

That's right. Yeah. And the broadly, again, you're just trying to hit the 80% of what most people are struggling with. So if you set your expectations

Brian:

What is really interesting about this is that the few sort of like sales calls that I've had with team leaders who are interested in team coaching, they literally describe this. Because I'm in at these sales calls, they're really just research calls for me where I'm just asking questions like, well, what do you envision something like this looking like? And literally the guy yesterday was telling me this. He was like, well, maybe it's just like a one week thing where you're just available to my whole team every day for a week. You know?

Justin:

I mean, we did this with what what's that point based project thing that everyone was doing for a long time? Sprint based planning or whatever? But has a name. Somebody's gonna help me out.

Brian:

Agile? Or the

Justin:

Agile. When Agile was a new thing, we what did we do at my first software job in Edmonton? We brought in an Agile consultant. He came in every day for a week. And there was just a a one or two hour session every day with that guy.

Justin:

Here's how you do agile. And it was like And then at the end, we we knew how to do agile. So teams do this all the time. Have you done it with a team yet?

Brian:

No. I I did one very, very early on.

Justin:

I mean, that could be another

Brian:

It wasn't this. It was more of a coaching thing. But the

Justin:

You could do it with the team and then just take that same material. You get paid to do it with the team that just did that call with you. Yeah. And then take that same material and do it for your YouTube audience.

Brian:

Yep. I like this. I The one thing is like, I don't want this to be the business. I don't want it to be like, I need to do one of these every month forever. Like, this is more get a little bit of first revenue, but more about like the research and getting the the feedback from paying customers.

Justin:

Yes. Although, just to pause. Yeah. For that, it's also interesting to ask the question, what would need to be What would need to happen for that not to be true? So, you said, I don't want this to be the business.

Justin:

But if this was the business, and it was bringing in $100,000 a month, and you just had to do one of these a month, would you do it?

Brian:

I know that sounds like a lot of money to to a lot of people, and it and it's a lot of money to me. I don't think I would want that business.

Justin:

Okay. I mean, that's

Brian:

a To me to me, it is just too live. Too much live commitment on my calendar that I and I don't like that. Yeah. If but it but I know that there are other businesses that do millions a year with two cohorts that run twice a year Mhmm. For, like, an intensive two months, and the rest of the year is

Justin:

Yeah.

Brian:

Pretty light.

Justin:

And that could be the model too.

Brian:

Yeah. Like that that I can Again, like I could be open to that, but I don't like it as much as the idea of every month, I have a content funnel that produces 50 new paying members in my annual membership. Yeah. You know?

Justin:

The the the challenge, though, is can that membership like, is there enough pull from folks in terms of their pain? Because the other thing to realize is that if what people really want is a monthly cohort, and there's some other person out there that's willing to do it for a million dollars a year, They would love to make a million dollars a year, and they'll do it. That would become your competition. So your preferred method might be membership. Their preferred method is like, we're fine.

Justin:

They're fine with doing the live thing.

Brian:

Well, like the because also the membership can be combined with what we're talking about. Like, I I still think that the one week cohort as a first start is is a great idea.

Justin:

Yeah.

Brian:

But, like, ultimately, what the business could look like is, like, I could do those. Like, okay, this week GPT-five just came out. Hey members, let's have a live call about it this Friday. Like, it almost feels like an extra bonus that they didn't initially buy, but as a member they get access to.

Justin:

Yeah.

Brian:

Or just these are like upsells that like members can get the higher tier where you do get access to these live calls or something. Yeah. Yep. But I like it as like a component of the again, like I'm just promoting Builder Methods Pro. That's the thing I sell.

Brian:

You get a bunch of stuff and occasionally it includes these these calls.

Justin:

Yes. I do like the idea of one offer that's consistently given. Whether that offer is a membership, whether that offer is, I just do a cohort twice a year, and you better sign up now because they always sell out. Whether that is, I do these live cohorts every month, and you can sign up for the next one. It's gonna happen next month.

Brian:

And I feel like the businesses that do really well with that twice a year cohort thing, I think that they have a topic space where they could easily where they do charge, like, $2,000 a seat. Mhmm.

Justin:

Yeah, I think it would have to be pricey.

Brian:

Yeah, and like that's where I start to question it. Like, I don't know if this audience I don't think that this audience does have that appetite. The other thing about this audience right now is that like, yes, I focus on quote unquote professionals, but professionals means a lot of things. I'm seeing it across the board, right? Like there are older, more established people who wanna transition to the new way.

Brian:

And I'm seeing a lot of younger, There's some people who are nontechnical and they're But I think that they like my content because it's like they feel like they're stretching into like, all right, now I could see what the pros are doing and it makes me learn a little bit more as a nontechnical. Yeah. But then the then there are other people who are professional, but they're more junior. Mhmm. So they're going up in their career.

Brian:

They don't have a lot of personal I'm even getting some people, like, who are like employed right now, and they are fearful that they won't be employed soon. Yep. So they need to learn AI

Justin:

Yes.

Brian:

Privately, like not through their company. You know?

Justin:

This is what I would be interesting to test for you is there's the let's say that you did two small cohorts just, again, to get some revenue to see, you know, how much people want to pay for this desire to pay. But test it with two separate groups. One is the individual contributor, who is an individual developer who's just worried about their job, worried about getting left behind, FOMO, all that stuff. The other group is this group you already have inbound with, which is the CTO and the teams. I think it would be very interesting and price them different.

Justin:

Individual contributor is, let's say, for five days is $500. The CTO, let's say, it's 1,500. I think that would be fascinating to run those two and contrast I

Brian:

already see you're right. And I already see the contrast in like, what's the problem? Like, what's the job to be done? Or what's the problem? Right?

Brian:

So for contributor, it's like they just want to learn the tools, the workflows, get up to speed quickly and be proficient personally. For the leader, the big one, and this has come up multiple times from these people, is like, how do I get my team on board? How do I train my team? How do I champion this within my organization? What's the program that I need to get my developers to start to A lot of them are like, yeah, I try to ask them to do it, but they all kind of grumble about it.

Brian:

They don't like it. Honestly to that, I hear that question, and I want to solve that question. I don't know that I have the answers Yet, you know?

Justin:

Yes. But you do have an answer in the sense I sent you a message that I got from one of the leads at a very big tech company that everybody would know. And I showed him Agent OS, and he was instantly like, this is really great. I'm gonna see if we can implement this at said big company. And this person also told me, like, right now from head office, they are telling every division, spend as much as you want on AI tools.

Justin:

Everybody must use AI. And so all the team leads and all the way around the organization are scrambling to figure out how we're going to incorporate this, how we're gonna use this. What's the and that there's pull there from CTOs and heads of organizations that like, you might open that up and notice like, oh, Microsoft is signing up. And, like, there might be some big names on there. And you realize, I can actually charge Oh, yeah.

Justin:

$5, $10. Like, you might be able to charge a lot of money.

Brian:

I don't doubt that. It's, yeah, it's it's more like the the impostor syndrome through the roof kind of deal. You know?

Justin:

Just no. You could do that. You you've already built something.

Brian:

I could I could sell it. I don't know if I can deliver it well. I I think I I think I will learn how to deliver it well over time. But

Justin:

I I I again Like, I know

Brian:

I know how to help the individual.

Justin:

I think you should stretch a little bit. I my guess Yeah. Time I'm in a room with those people that work for big organize they're the same.

Brian:

My aversion to enterprise sales in general, and especially in this case, is that literally in my whole career, I've never worked in a large organization. But I the I haven't either, but

Justin:

I I you can talk to those people. It's not that different. They are Yeah. It's just the same. And especially if right now they're like head office is saying, spend as much money as you can on this.

Justin:

That could also mean on education, training, consulting, whatever to get this implemented. And I'm telling you, like, I showed him the life raft you'd already built. And he's like, wow, this is really good. Like instantly, it was a framework that he was like, we could use this. It feels like and the other thing is that individual contributors are often on the cutting edge.

Justin:

Enterprises are way behind. So anything you say is gonna be, like, fucking crazy to them. They they they're so far behind.

Brian:

I agree with all that. I do agree with all that. I mean, literally, like, that's where the leads mostly come from is like they find AgentOS. They want wanna hire the guy who made it to help their team implement it. Right?

Brian:

And so it's just that it's so new right now. Everything is so new, including Agent OS that like I'm still wrapping my head around what what the teachable framework is. But the

Justin:

The teachable framework could be could just be, here's how you set up Agent OS for your organization. Here's some things to consider. Here and and day two, day three, let's just do a little round robin. What kind of pushback are you getting from your team? What kind of pushback are you getting from the higher ups?

Justin:

Okay. Well, let's just, you know, figure out some answers to that. Like

Brian:

I I think at the end of the day, like, I still like, I I real and we're gonna wrap this up. This is getting too long. My my takeaway is I go away, and this is gonna probably change completely by next week. But the I I like step one of just do a week long Yeah. Cohort thing offer, like paid thing.

Brian:

You get me for five days. Let's all let's all hang out for five and and get into this. See see what hap just like see what happens. See what we learn. Mhmm.

Brian:

That's step one. I I still really like the idea of a membership as like the base core flagship product that I'm always selling. That's there's gonna be some price ceiling to that, but that's that's like sort of like the bread and butter. Mhmm. And I think I'm always gonna continue to receive leads for teams and there absolutely should be an enterprise coaching engagement.

Brian:

And that eventually that should grow into some sort of template offering where it's like, okay, I'll do some like private group sessions, maybe give you like a recorded workshop that you can show to your whole 400 plus team. Mhmm. And it's like a month long engagement with a big price price tag. Mhmm. You know?

Brian:

And I'll I'll do a couple of those as as availability as as as as I'm available. But like

Justin:

Mhmm.

Brian:

You know, it's like that to me, like, that's a great business. It's like membership based model is like the is like the sustainability aspect. Occasional enterprise sales adds adds some nice cash on top. And then also some, like, some passive stuff from sponsorships. Like, that's that's a good business,

Justin:

I think. Yeah. Yeah. That could get you there for sure. I think we did it.

Justin:

This this just shows we need to we need to do a call more than every 30. Although, part of me just loves this too. Like, we're gonna publish this episode. It's gonna be two hours.

Brian:

I I like I like podcasts that are really long. I don't listen to them straight through, but I like I like listening to them in chunks throughout a week.

Justin:

Yeah. You know? We're gonna have chapters on this episode. You can you can

Brian:

You can skip around.

Justin:

Work around. Yeah. Skip around. Thanks to everybody in chat. We had so many great people show up.

Justin:

Really nice to have you here.

Brian:

Yeah. Thanks for all the feedback, folks.

Justin:

I'm gonna be in Dallas next week. So unfortunately, we're not recording next week. So that's why we have a big episode. You can just listen to this bit by bit every week.

Brian:

Good stuff. I can actually get some work done next Thursday then.

Justin:

Alright, everyone. We'll see you next time we record. Bye.

Brian:

Alright. Later, folks.