Zach emailed me. He replied to the email saying he was he's coming back from an appointment. So he he he wanted to let me know he wouldn't be in the the live chat.
Brian:We we were worried sick.
Justin:And we got Ian Landsman, business dad. He as well.
Ian:Business dad.
Brian:So Ian went all the way on quitting x. Because I tried to I tried to tag him today on this tweet for for today, and and he is not available. But but, Justin, you you sort of quit x, but yours you still have your username and your and I see you poking around in there, like, liking tweets and stuff
Justin:like that. Yeah. Yeah. That's what that's what Adam Wavin called me out on that when I was in Toronto. He's like, I see you liking my tweets.
Justin:Yeah. I here's what I told Adam is that this is so petty, but Christian Christian Genco? Genco? Mhmm. Wait.
Justin:Is it Genco or Genco?
Brian:Friend of the show. He was on the show a couple weeks ago. Like, one of the early episodes. Yep.
Justin:Yeah. Christian. Anyway, he said, I'll bet you'll be back in a year posting on X, and so I will not post at least for a year.
Ian:A year and a day.
Justin:But I you know what? I I browse it, but it's not on my phone. And it has been better for me to just not be on it. And I had all this fear, like, oh, we're gonna lose so much business and stuff. And I
Brian:don't care about the business side. What annoys me is just having the two different apps. Because, like, I'm not one of these people who gets angry at either one of them. I frankly, I I enjoyed you like, the feed on both of them. And Yep.
Brian:It's annoying to me to have to copy and paste every tweet that I do to both places.
Ian:Yeah. Yeah.
Brian:It is what it is.
Justin:I get it.
Ian:The the thing for me actually is, like so I definitely left just with, like I was, like, you know, whatever. Everybody has their lines and all these things. I was like, Elon, you know. I definitely left because, like, Elon, I just can't take it. Right?
Ian:So I left for Elon. Let's just leave it there. But the thing that kinda gets me is and I'm still on there for, like the Mostly Technical has an account. So, like, I will occasionally be on for Mostly Technical stuff or, like, somebody if somebody posts a link to Twitter, I can I'll go in through Mostly Technical so I can you know, because now, like, Twitter boxes it all out. Like, you can't see, like, any of the history of a tweet or whatever or the replies if you aren't logged in.
Ian:Right? So whatever. So, like, once a week, somebody links something, and I'll I'll be in there. But the thing that, like, is crazy to me is I feel like the algorithm is so almost entirely focused on making you sad. Like and forget Elon.
Ian:Forget Nazis. Forget forget all that meta stuff. Right? Forget all
Justin:the meta
Ian:stuff. Just purely objectively. Like, two weeks ago, somebody had a link. I went in there. I was like, I'm looking at the feed.
Ian:I was like, this is just designed to literally make me sad. It's like, here's a person, like, building a new help desk app. It's all AI. Right? Like, so should I feel sad about that?
Ian:Here is, like, somebody who's, like, you know, I made a zillion dollars in a in a day. Right? Here's, like, a sad news story. Here's, like, this it's like it's like literally thing after thing about, like, you're not good enough and the world is shit. And, like, that is literally the only thing in the feed.
Ian:And that's like, I don't know. It's so not not good.
Brian:I just never see I know everyone always talks about that. Like, it I just never see it to be that extreme and and that bad. And and to be honest, and we were talking about this last time, and man, I we did we did not intend to just dive right into politics right off the bat.
Ian:We're opening with that.
Brian:But you know what? I because we were talking about this last week, how even if you don't use the algorithm, which I don't, I just use the following tab on both on both platforms, everyone still edits themselves. But you know what? Like, as someone who like, I'm mostly, like, center, middle, kinda little like, I tend to vote left at by default, but I don't I don't really identify with the left anymore. These days, in the last couple months, the last past year, I see more anger and negativity on Blue Sky than I do on my Twitter feed Mhmm.
Brian:To be to be completely honest. Like, the the only thing I enjoy about being on Blue Sky is that most of my friends are there.
Justin:Yeah.
Brian:But I but I actually enjoy the content and the other half of my friends on on x. You know? Like Right. Because I I I just see a lot more negativity and, like, nonsense, like, politics wise on Blue Sky these days. You know?
Justin:Yeah. I mean, I've been able to, I think my blue sky feeds pretty good now, but there's just not as many people there.
Ian:I Yeah.
Justin:The feeling I have is just this idea of digital fatigue. I just have fatigue about everything. I have. I used to love getting into Twitter fights. I I just do not want to anymore.
Justin:I used to love you know, it it all feels very performative. It feels like there's all this AR AI garbage. It feels vapid. It just I'm I think a lot of people are just tired now of Yep. It doesn't feel like it did in the early days, which is people talking about cool stuff, sharing cool links, sharing the blog posts they just wrote.
Justin:Like, Jason Cohen would I mean, he's still doing this, but Jason Cohen would write a blog post, and then you could actually just reply to him on Twitter and say, well, what did you mean about this? And you'd have a big discussion. Just hate to
Brian:it. Of it all. I like, because it used to be just Twitter, and all of our people were on Twitter. And we only ever need to go to there, and that was our our industry's water cooler. Yeah.
Brian:And now now that water cooler is Twitter and Blue Sky and Telegram and and a bunch of Slacks and then a bunch
Ian:of Yeah.
Brian:This and that. And it's like, who's who is where? It's so annoying. I hate that.
Ian:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's the other thing with, like, making you sad feed is, like, every tweet is, like, ultra see, I feel like Blue Sky is still a little bit better for me on this. It's, like, every tweet is, like, ultra optimized by, like, a committee of, like, AI algorithm experts.
Ian:Right? Of, like, what is gonna get people riled up and, like it's, every single one. It could be, like, four words. But you know those four words, like, just come across as, like, so inauthentic. You know?
Ian:There's just, a it's so inauthentic, like, practically everything in the Twitter feed. I'm just like I I've been thinking more about this is a website we can talk about quickly. My ianlansman.com was, like, in this terrible state, And me and the AI rebuilt it the other day just because it didn't even talk about mostly technical. I had, like, nothing there. Right?
Ian:And I was like, I have, like I have twenty years of blog posts. Right? And I'm like and they weren't even indexed in Google because something was messed up, and it was, like, redirecting wrong or something. So it's like I was totally off the Internet, my ianlambs.com site. So it's like, alright.
Ian:Let me fix this. And I fixed it up just like whatever the AI decided to do. I literally spent like an hour, right, with AI, just like mostly fixing 900 markdown files, right, And cleaning that stuff up.
Justin:Looks good.
Ian:Yeah. It looks good. Right? It threw it together pretty good. And so it's like, alright.
Ian:I'm kinda gearing myself back up. I have a few topics in mind for, like, an actual blog post. And I'm like, maybe I just gotta go about this that way. Like, maybe we could build, like, what you were talking about, Justin. We can start to get some more of that, like, that vibe of, like, posting about something, and maybe then you can talk about it on social media.
Ian:But it's not like you're trying to convey this idea in your 200 characters, and that's all you got, and you're micro optimizing it and all that. You know?
Justin:Yeah. Just like following your curiosity, following what is interesting and exciting and vulnerable and real for you as opposed to I it's just so hard, especially when you're like I get into this all the time posting on YouTube. You post something and you just can't help but go, I hope this gets a bunch of views. And then you're like, start like shoehorning yourself into what will get more views and Yep. Just to be able to honestly, like, the one thing that I don't miss about from selling courses and being a a whatever that is, you know, info product person
Ian:Thought leader.
Justin:Is having to every communication I had, whether I was writing an email newsletter or a tweet or making a video, it all had to build up to a launch and me selling something. And now that transistor is going, the biggest relief in my life has been, I can just write what I wanna write. I can just publish what I wanna publish.
Ian:Right. Yeah. That's huge.
Justin:It's way less popular. It's not you know, I'm not getting the hits that I used to get. But and some of that kind of sucks. But it is nice to not feel the pressure of this has got to be a banger because I eventually got to make some money on this thing. Like, got to get some attention.
Justin:I gotta have a little PS. PS, my course is launching in three weeks. Like, that whole game, I I don't miss that at all.
Ian:Yeah.
Brian:I I am walking that line now, but I have a in my mind, I've I've I've finally, like, come to this, like, clear distinction between what is my marketing channels and what is my personal putting my just sharing stuff sharing me. Right? And and to me, like, this podcast and and Bootstrapped Web, you know, that's always just been like me. Even though it has resulted in business, like,
Ian:that's Right.
Brian:And and I think of Twitter and Blue Sky as well as like, that's just sharing whatever's on my mind. It could be about the Mets. It could be about AI. It could be about business, whatever. Right?
Justin:Yeah.
Brian:The YouTube is different. Yeah. Like, I treat YouTube as like I this is my marketing channel. So if I'm creating a video there, yeah, I care about the views and the subscribers. And like Right.
Brian:That's the top of my funnel. So, like, I guess it's just and I and I put a lot more effort into, like, planning it and and hiring people to help me build it, which I'm doing. And like, yeah. But like, I I you're right. Like, there's this, like, freedom of, like, like, just not giving a shit about, like, what I put out there on these personal channels, you know?
Brian:Yeah. And like the the personal blog, like, rarely write to it anymore because why? Like, I I it's it's sort of become my my annual recap place. Mhmm. I might I might throw in, like, a couple extra articles throughout the year, but I I used to, like, really care about, like, keeping up and, like, having a consistent feed of, but, like, my briancastle.com doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things anymore.
Brian:You know?
Justin:I mean, Ian, it's been five years. Yeah.
Ian:What's going on? I think I did have one or two newer ones like I call.
Justin:I don't think you should be allowed to call yourself business dad if you haven't published a blog post in the past three months.
Ian:That's true.
Justin:You lose the title if you haven't published.
Ian:I published a podcast in the last three months. Podcasts are real. Yeah. Well, this is like
Brian:I I like, the thing is like, where do most people follow you? It's it's your podcast. And that's probably the same with with me too. Like, because even people who follow me on Twitter, they're probably not catching most of my tweets, you know?
Ian:Well, this is the thing. With the death kind of of RSS, it's been a little bit of a problem in that regard. Right? Because it's like yeah. So it's like now, I guess, the angle, right, is like, well, you have the newsletter that goes with the blog.
Ian:Right? So you can email people directly, and maybe I'll do that. Like, yeah. I don't know. The podcast is definitely I don't view I'm lucky enough that I don't view any of it as marketing, so I feel comfortable, like, just saying whatever I wanna say on any of these platforms.
Ian:I do think maybe with, like I could see YouTube being the most different for me, but I don't really other than publishing mostly technical on there, I don't ever do YouTube videos. Maybe that'll change at some point. But yeah, I don't know. I do feel like I've been using RSS more myself, and I'm, like, enjoying it. It's like, oh, somebody wrote something, and I'm reading it, and it's, like, got a full context of what this person's talking about in the context of the last few things they thought was interesting enough to share.
Ian:Right? And it's, like, all right there. First, like, it's just the random tweets and it's all flying around and all the short form stuff. So, yeah, there's something there. There's something missing.
Ian:I don't know. It's probably never coming back, though, is the real reality. Right? But Yeah.
Brian:I do think RSS feeds are still alive in terms of podcasts. I I Yeah. Of course. The blog RSS feed thing. But, like, yeah, like, that's probably not coming back.
Brian:But the like, going back to what you were saying, Justin, about, like, you know, caring about, like, how promotional you are and, like, your
Ian:Mhmm.
Brian:Like, that was me, like, I don't know, five, eight years ago when I was doing, like, the audience ops and the productize course. I I did during those years, I did always feel this tension because I knew that most of the audience ops client roster were like listeners of Bootstrapped Web.
Ian:Mhmm.
Brian:And or a a large portion of them were. And then same thing with, like, productized course buyers. And that that was, a significant income for me for a few years. Yeah. And so, like, all the tweets, everything I shared on air on the podcast, like, I'm always thinking about, like, alright.
Brian:Like, whoever's whoever's listening to this, that accounts for the core of my MRR right now. So I have to I have to, like, be careful about what I say about things. And I Yeah. You know? And that was always kinda tricky.
Brian:And and I really like I I I really like this better where it's just like, don't care what I say on here. Yes. It might help a little bit on the sidelines, but, like, the people discovering me on YouTube don't follow this podcast. You
Justin:know? Yeah.
Ian:Right. Yeah. It's a safe space here.
Justin:But What were you gonna say?
Ian:I was just gonna say, like, I feel like this has also been, like, in my brain rattling around. I don't know if I've totally formed it yet, but I think, like, all the, like, you know, thinking about views or you're on Twitter and the likes and retweets and whatever. All that kind of stuff has also, like, led us in this, like, weird direction where, like, of course, that those things could be powerful if you're selling something directly to the people, like, of course, is or whatever. Right? Like, of course, that's it could be a business channel.
Ian:But for me, anyway, it's like there's, like, the difference between being in front of a lot of people or being in front of the right people. It's like one of the things with mostly technical. Right? It's like yeah. I feel like mostly technical.
Ian:Like, the listeners we have are, like, the most influential possible listeners we could possibly have. Like, everybody in Laravel Inc. Right? All these all these bootstrappers. Like Mhmm.
Ian:I feel like I have, like, a direct connection to so many extremely, like, important people in our circles. But I also but it's not that huge a podcast. Like, it's like, how do I get every dev in the world to listen? Like, it's like the reverse problem. It's like, I have all these connections to really important people in the in the sense of, like, people in positions of power, let's say.
Ian:Right? Mhmm. But it's like the regular people out there actually are not listening as much as those people. Right? But then it's like that's that's how I felt my blog was twenty years ago too.
Ian:It's like I have a connection with Joel Spolsky or whatever. Like and those people helped me in the beginning. Right? And it's like so that's really valuable. And then but when you start to chase the idea of, like, well, I just wanna get everybody.
Ian:I wanna have a 100,000 followers or whatever. Right? Then it's like that makes you do things that actually pull you away maybe from the stronger connections to key people.
Justin:I mean, I I wonder if it's just not possible to make Yeah. Really deep, substantive content and have a Jason Cohen. Like, if you look at Jason Cohen every once in a while, Jason Cohen gets a banger somewhere and people notice and retweet. But his stuff is so deep and
Ian:So good. Heady.
Justin:It's like the audience for that, like, people are just most of the people out there, they just want a pithy Sahil
Brian:Right.
Justin:Tweet. Like, they just want, like, you
Ian:know we can come Dude, with dude, I can't take him. Like, no. It's so it's so it's like, yes. That's so perfect. That's what people think business is.
Ian:It's like this one sentence Sahil tweet about some petty thing. Yeah. It's like
Justin:Yeah. Like What
Ian:are you talking about? It's like
Justin:in business, mindset is everything. So make sure your mindset is right. You know? It's like, well Yes. Okay.
Justin:Fine. Those things take off. But then you get some somebody that knows their shit and writes this big like, for me to unpack a Jason Cohen article, it it takes a long time just to be like, what's he talking about?
Ian:You got to take it to the AI.
Justin:Explain what he's talking about. And it's also hard realities. You know, like, what people want to hear is everything's gonna be okay. And this is a dream fairy tale utopia. But the truth is, is like, life and business is complicated.
Justin:And it's not there's no easy path here. And when Jason Cohen says, you're probably, you know, going to even out. Your growth is gonna even out, and that's knowable right now. People are like, That's it's not it's kind of a bummer. You know?
Ian:The the other thing with Jason, though, I feel like it's very old school and I love about it, is, like, the modern equivalent of Jason Cohen is here's my MRR graph from WP Engine. Right? That's that's the tweet. Right? Is here's my MRR graph.
Ian:I'm I'm exploding upward. Right? Yeah. We're killing it with the, like, customer service and the sales. Like, that's all you get.
Ian:Whereas, Jason, can you get, like, here's my MRR graph, but here's, like, 2,000 words about, like Yeah. What we did to get there. Right? And then here's 28 other linked articles in there of how I told you we got here and details on every option. It's like, yeah.
Ian:Okay. I feel bad about myself because my MRR is not there. But you know what? You're giving me the playbook to actually help me. Whereas this tweet is useless.
Ian:Right? It's just like, I feel bad that I'm not at where you are, and that's it. That's the there's nothing else there. It's all just empty. You know?
Brian:You know, Ian, you were talking about Jesse Hanley's tweet from a week or two ago, which was which is really good. I I don't have it right in front of me. But, you know, just talking about, like, I I think all all three of us and people in our direct circles are are a little bit older than a lot of the younger younger guys and and gals coming up, you know, and and, like, what does it actually take to to navigate this whole journey and, like, build your own thing? And I think a lot of it is just like natural entrepreneurial drive. But at the end of the day, I think the hardest thing for people who are a little bit younger, you know, a few years behind us, is sifting through all of like the, just the fire hose of advice that gets thrown And of all shapes and sizes, whether it's a 2,000 word thing from Jason Cohen or a tweet from Sahil, like the thing is, like, most of these things, they are good advice.
Brian:It's solid advice for someone. The the harder question for each individual is like, is it the right advice for me? Yeah. Yeah. Most people I know I've struggled with that over the years.
Brian:It's like hearing a lot of like really well respected and grounded advice. And, you know, and I'm sure it's, like, out of, like, lived experience and evidence from across a lot of companies and everything. But still, you have to adapt it to, like, does this apply to me and what my currently sit situation is, my assets and liabilities, my strengths, my weaknesses, my experience, like where you know, it's like, there's there's good advice everywhere. Is it the right advice for you? Yeah.
Brian:That's why I I much prefer, like, just in terms of content, whoever I'm following, any podcast I listen to in our industry or Twitter, like, I'm not there for the education or the advice. I'm there to hear the real story. Like, I just wanna hear what's happening and how are you personally, like, navigating this? I just want the case study. And then I can pick and choose the nuggets of wisdom that might apply in my situation.
Brian:You know? Yeah.
Justin:The the right advice at the wrong time is the wrong advice. You know? That that's the that's true. I mean
Brian:And I I hate how, like, build in public, that term has been, like, co opted by, like, just share your MRR graph. Because to me, I really, really want to see people building in public. I try to build in public. I try to share what I'm building. I wanna see what people are actually building, like, behind the scenes.
Brian:That's love hearing people talk about it on podcasts. Tell me about the building. Like, I don't care about the MRR. Like, you know?
Justin:Yeah. Let's let's break this up a little bit. And welcome, by the way, to Ian Landsman.
Ian:We're twenty two minutes. We got
Justin:right into it. Why don't we just do a quick round of what we're kind of working on thinking about this week? Yeah. So this week, we're going on our team retreat for Transistor. We're going to Banff Canmore, leaving on Sunday.
Justin:Helen in The UK is gonna fly on Saturday. Gonna meet up in Calgary. We're gonna jump in some vehicles, do a little drive through the Rockies.
Ian:Oh, that's awesome. Wow.
Justin:This will actually be the first time where all six of us because John had to miss last year. So this will be the first time all six of us are in the same place. We got a photographer booked for we're doing some team photos in the Rockies.
Brian:I wanna unpack I wanna I wanna
Ian:I have some questions about
Justin:your retreat. Okay. Well, let's do a little round, and then we can we can what about you, Ian? What what are you up to right now?
Ian:This week? Oh, jeez, man. You know, it's like it's I feel like I'm just getting off of summer. It's like our summer was insane, and kids had like, the kids are busier in the summer than, like, during school. It's like there's just stuff all day long, and they're doing stuff, and we're driving them and all the stuff.
Ian:So I feel like this is back in the fur and my kids go back to school late. They just went back to school Monday. It was their first day back at school. So, yeah, so this week has kind of been, like, resetting a little bit, prepping, getting ready. I thought I was gonna get some work, coding type work done, but no coding type work has gotten done.
Ian:But got some business stuff done and kind of like I had, you know, backlog of emails and things kind of got cleaned up. So it's been just that kind of thing. And, like, the last few weeks before that, I've just gone ahead and keep my head above water. I So haven't been, like, any work on my side project stuff. There hasn't even been much work on HelpSpot, my main thing.
Ian:It's just been a lot of business sort of, you know, things. Just I couldn't even tell you what they all were. Like a health care stuff, like, you know, insurance. There's, like, accounts receivable, weird things. The state of Hawaii needed something crazy from us because they're our customers.
Ian:We had to, like, jump through some IRS
Brian:You should probably fly there to to figure it out.
Ian:Yeah. Right. I do need to go there and have a meeting with those guys. So, yeah, just like, oh, man. And this is the thing.
Ian:Feel like when your business reaches a certain size, it's not like my business is huge. It's, you know, probably smaller than transistor at this point. And but it's like it's just enough that it's like you just have all these little things all the time. They just eat away at your time.
Justin:Oh, yeah.
Ian:And it just is amazing how that happens. Like, it's just that there's no time for, like, what you would call call work. What you would have called work back in the day, there's no time for that. There's just kind of the management.
Justin:Well, and it's not the most exciting or compelling content either. This is why it's so hard, like, when you're doing a like, when you're doing a show or any sort of updates, you know, people wanna hear about outro.fm. They don't wanna hear about Helpspot or or administrator.
Brian:I have this hunch that you're just starting outro for the content.
Ian:Oh, that's that's what I saw on the show. It's not even that's not even a hunch. That's just like what I've talked about. It's like I'd say it's a good, like let's call it 30%. 30% is like, you know what?
Ian:This would be fun for the show. Yeah. Which is cool because it, like, derisks. It's like, whatever. Nobody buys it.
Ian:Whatever. Who cares? You know? Like, it's just it'll be fun. They're gonna do the logo with the fancy logo agency.
Ian:We're gonna talk about it on the show. Gonna be exciting. Yeah. So and, you know, I think it's a cool idea, I hope it exists in the world. But also, it'll be it'll be fun for the show, which definitely not not 0% reason to do it.
Brian:Yeah. So I I wanted to light a fire under under under my ass on this builder methods business. So two weeks ago, I announced this this workshop that that's happening on Tuesday Yeah. September 16. You know, because two weeks ago, three two, three weeks ago, I was like, alright.
Brian:The the only way the ball is actually gonna start moving on this is if I put a date on the calendar and start promoting it and start selling tickets. And then, you know, people are so I I don't know. I've sold, I think, close to a 100 tickets now.
Ian:Wow. It's pretty cool.
Brian:Which is definitely a lot more than I expected. Like, at first, I was like, let's see if somebody buys one. I was like and then they're like, may maybe 20. That would that'd cool if if I get, like, 20 sales out of this. I'm not you know, it's a low low ticket price.
Brian:That's the whole business model with this workshop idea. But I'm doing the workshop on Tuesday. That's like five days from now. I have not really prepared anything for like, I don't have any slides yet. So I'm gonna have to, you know, procrastinate that like like I've always done.
Brian:But that that's sort of the whole point is, like, it's happening September 16, so I'm gonna have to get this figured out between now and then. I'm I'm not too worried about it. But the like, the the thing or the the the thing that I'm spending all my time right now preparing is that on that day, I'm going to be opening up the doors to this new subscription membership for for Builder Methods Pro. So I'm I'm setting up the systems for being able to buy that and what what do people get inside. I think it's gonna be a Discord plus, you know, content, which I don't I haven't created any content for that yet.
Brian:So it'll be interesting to see what I could get away with in terms of, like, pre selling this thing before the product really exists. I have some open questions about that. But
Justin:Well, let's let's jump into that because I think yeah. I think Ian and I might both have ideas and things to help. I one thing I'll say is I love the workshop in terms of a, like, low threshold thing to do because the important part is you put something up for sale. People are signing up. I mean, I sent it to my team as well, but we're on team retreat while you're doing it.
Justin:But this is exactly the kind of thing that I think does get passed around Slack groups. Like, hey, we've been trying to figure this out, you know?
Brian:I'm getting some interesting sign ups, both ticket purchases and I get regular inquiries every day for coaching and and from teams. I do want by the way, on this podcast, Ian, you gave me some interesting advice this week. I wanna get to that because it's different from what I've heard about about teams.
Justin:Interesting advice as in, like
Ian:Iffy iffy advice.
Brian:Anyway, like, there are some, like like, big, like, well known, like, companies and stuff, like buying tickets to this thing and and reaching out about about coaching and stuff. But, yeah, like the the workshop and, like, workshop is a weird name for it because the way that I'm thinking about it is that and I'm promoting it as, like, probably half of it is gonna be a couple slides and talking points. And then the other half is just an open discussion. Just ask anything. Let's talk about what what we're what's working.
Brian:What's what are the current workflows? Who's using what? Like, what's my take on this? Like, I don't I'm also trying to feel like I don't really have all the answers, but I'm just gonna tell you what I'm seeing out there. The the the thing I wanna get to at some point here is the question of, like, what do I do with the leads or the inquiries from teams for Builder Methods Pro or build just Builder Methods in general?
Brian:Like, right now, like, it nothing actually exists on Builder Methods. It's just my YouTube channel. I've got this website. I've got a contact form on it. I've got this newsletter that people sign up for.
Brian:And I'm I'm sort of, like, promoting potential ideas for courses, potential ideas for for coaching, but I'm not actually really couple people have purchased, but, like, not many. And so up until now, most people who look at this who look at what I'm doing here with Builder Methods is like, you should sell coaching to teams. Mhmm. They're saying you you should like, that's where the high ticket, that's where the high revenue potential is. I'm hearing it directly from team leaders.
Brian:This is the pain point. People want their teams to get up to speed on AI. They have dollars to throw at that problem. But I have felt this friction of like, okay, yes, I'm hearing the inquiries, taking sales calls, but I don't want to just create a consultancy here. I'm trying to create a business that I wanna run for for several years and that looks more like a like a Larocast for the build in with AI space.
Brian:Yeah. Ian, you you were the first person so we were batting this around in our little Telegram group this weekend. And Ian, you were the first person to sort of point out, like, just just forget the team stuff and just just focus on building the, like, the educational feed of course content for the membership. And really just framing it as this is Laracast or Go Rails for building with AI. And and that and then I start to wrap my head around.
Brian:It's like, I I love the idea of just like putting something that I thought had to be part of it. Just putting that aside and like, it it feels so much better this way. Like, it just feels so much simpler and clearer proposition. And and as I'm working on, like, the sales page, it's like, okay. I'm really just selling educational content and access to this community.
Justin:And I'm I'm wondering why you said that, Ian. Why why go why go the course way instead of the team consulting way?
Ian:Well, yeah, it's not even really course. Right? It's like a subscription course. Right? It's a subscription video platform.
Ian:Right?
Brian:Exactly. I'm not doing, like, the big course thing. It's like Right. Just a course launch. Of me.
Ian:Mostly because I think the other stuff to me seems very like a distraction and combined also with the fact that I've my understanding was Brian's looking for more like this sustainable business, and I just feel like consulting is rarely that. Like, obviously, I know a lot of consultants, and they have created that with over a lot of time, with a lot of work, and like but there's I mean, every consultant I know is like, it's bet it's only ever better than it's ever been, or I'm not sure we're gonna make it. Like, I feel like they're just like, that's it. Right? Right.
Ian:I mean,
Brian:that's it. That's my life right now. It's like I I have, like, a couple of consulting clients that come and go, you know, and
Ian:It's either you're overwhelmed. It's like I need to hire people or whatever because I have so many leads. And then you hire the people, and then the economy changes or whatever happens. Right? And then now I have extra people, and I don't have enough work, and all that Mhmm.
Ian:That stuff. You know?
Brian:The thing with builder the idea with builder methods was not necessarily to to make the whole business dependent on on the consulting with large teams. It was more about like, okay, I'm I'm gonna do this membership thing. But the fear is that that can't there's gonna be a ceiling on how much revenue that can actually grow to, both in terms of, like, price point and how long it'll take to get a good sized customer base.
Ian:Yeah.
Brian:So in order to to bridge that gap, I'm gonna have to have some some higher ticket offers out there.
Ian:Yes. Yeah. I I think there's no that's the one with the least ceiling to me because, like, you can only do so much AI consulting for teens. Like, there's there's only one of you, and you can only have so much time to do it. Right?
Ian:So even though it is more money, of course, it's like you're gonna charge somebody $5 or $10 or whatever to do this consulting gig, that you can only do a couple of those at a time. Again, it depends exactly what you're offering and how in-depth and blah blah. But still,
Brian:like Yeah. I mean, my thought was it would be very like, it'd be like one private workshop for their team, you know, like, couple weeks. But but still, like, it's it's like, I still just don't want things on my calendar or, like, calls. And, like Yeah.
Ian:It's still gonna be heavy. And I still think those are hard things to close. Like, if you're thinking you're gonna be able to $5,000 and for, like, a three hour workshop, I feel like that's going to be a hard deal to close. Like, not impossible, but, like, you're not gonna close all those ones that come in. And if they do, then you should take them, and that's fine.
Ian:But I feel like look at this workshop. You've already sold you've sold a 100 tickets to this workshop. Right? Like, it's like a nice price point. That's why I feel like the same thing about the video course.
Ian:It's like, hey. It's $15 a month or whatever. Right? It's in that range. Like, $20 a month or whatever it is.
Brian:We can get into the pricing. I think I'm all only gonna do annual.
Ian:But whatever. Like, it's a it's a approachable cost that people can get into.
Brian:And it and it did just focus me on, like, just build the thing, the main dish.
Ian:Yes. Yes. Put put the consulting in the thing. Like, here's a video on
Brian:how to
Ian:get your team started. Right? Like like all those things.
Brian:Yeah. Like, it can still be sold to teams. If you want your teams to be up to speed on AI, just get them all Builder Methods Pro memberships, you know?
Ian:Yes. Yes. Exactly.
Brian:And so, like, that also focused me in on, like, okay. So, like, what does it take to go from zero to I have a a subscriber base that's growing? And and like, it's it's like the the bottleneck is time. And so it it I started to realize like, I have to keep YouTube going. That's extremely time consuming for me.
Brian:So, like, this week, I, like, I have to hire a video editor so that I can, like, double the output on YouTube and free myself up. Because that's the thing. It's like, there's so many, like, trade offs with everything. Like, you like, if if it's own if we're only going with memberships, which are generally lower priced
Ian:Mhmm.
Brian:We have to go higher volume, which means I have to have a a larger top of funnel, which means YouTube has to keep growing and and grow pretty fast. Yep. In order to do that, like, I'm I'm currently only capable to do of doing, like, three videos a month, and each one takes me several days. I need to, like, double that output. So I need I need to hire a video editor and then just focus all my time on churning out those videos, churning out some content for the members, and, you know, setting up this funnel to bring in people into the membership.
Justin:I think you this is what's so hard about businesses. You've got to try things, and then you've typically, what happens is you choose a topic or a product that's at least somewhat interesting to you or has piqued your interest for some reason. So Ian chose customer support software, I'm assuming, because you'd used it before. I can't remember the story. You were like at a college
Ian:or Yeah. Was using that terrible one at a college. Yeah. That was like a mainframe based and horrible. And yeah.
Justin:So there's something that drives you to go, you know what? This could be better. I'm gonna try to fix this. But what happens after that, what you typically end up following in terms of your energy is usually where you get the best results. So, you know, if you get a bunch of money from consulting and the leads are just coming in every month, and it's doing well, then you end up saying, well, consulting is great.
Justin:I'm gonna go and consult it. If you do a course business or a membership business, and you, you know, I always think of Adam Wavin with this because he messaged me when he was about to launch his first course. And I had done marketing for developers that had done pretty well. So I'm giving all these tips to Wavin. And then he started sharing with me what he was making after he launched it.
Justin:Like, I shared my email sequence and all this stuff. He's using my exact email sequence. It's not like he's marketing any different or any better than me. But the the combination of his profile and just how many software developers there were out there that wanted that thing and had money in hand was eye opening. Because all of a sudden, it's like, holy shit, this is just this is insane.
Brian:You know what's interesting about about that is the is the, like, the volume play. And and it's what is always like what always trips me up is my past experience and the things that I had a hard time with in the past, I just assume are things that I can't do. So, like, every time I've ever tried to do a volume play in my previous businesses Mhmm. It never worked. Right?
Brian:Like Like at one point with Clarity Flow, previously Zip Message, it was like, let's do freemium. Let's have a free plan and do a volume play on that. And like, I couldn't make that work. I was like, I guess that's just not my skill set to do volume, right? Even like Audience Ops, like we did really well with just a small client base that, you know, like higher ticket stuff, you know?
Brian:Yeah. And like, I've always kind of leaned more heavily into like the bootstrapper mindset of like, just find something that you can charge more for so that you don't have to, get because I like
Ian:Totten some funnel.
Brian:Totten volume has never been my strength. And so I always lean away from that. That's what has me with builder methods. It's like, well, if I'm going with the volume play and sort of saying no to or putting aside the higher ticket, you know, it makes me a little uneasy. Like, is this going to work?
Brian:You know? But but it's like Yeah. I already have a little bit of evidence that, like, it it could be different this time. Like, the YouTube channel is I'm seeing numbers there that I've never seen before. The email list, the, you know, the the ticket sales.
Brian:Like, so there is a world where it's like you could just forget about the the past experience and see because this is a totally different time. This is a totally different market. You know? Mhmm.
Ian:Yeah. I was just gonna say, like, I think the main thing to me in that and that was, I think, one of the things I sent you too is, like, this the thing about this is that, like, it's super hot. Right? Like like, the coaching software was not super hot. Like, there were coaches, and they needed software, but it wasn't like every coach in the world just discovered coaching software, and they're all looking for coaching software.
Ian:And, like so that was going to be a more traditional sales process where you're gonna have to, like, knock on a million doors and really convince them they need this that's gonna prove their lives and blah blah blah. Right? Whereas, like, this is, like, man, it's like there's just chum in the water. Right? Like, everybody's out there.
Ian:Like, we gotta build with AI or build with AI. Blah blah blah. So, like, you it's much easier in that regard to be like, hey. Just anything to get them in the door, you're gonna be able to get them you're gonna have way more people even kicking the tires. Who knows?
Ian:You might you know, can you hold them and all that? But
Brian:Like, it it does feel like that momentum. You know, Justin, you've you've you've written a ton about this. Mhmm. And, like, for the last three three, four years, as my mindset has been like, I need to figure out what my next business is going to be, what I'm going to sink the next several years into, I've been jumping around and sort of looking around for what that's going to be. But it wasn't until the past year where it's like, okay, this wave is is actually swelling.
Brian:And like, this is something and and it fully aligns with what I'm personally into with building, you know, software, building with AI. So like, it's like, I I couldn't just make this happen for me and my business like two or three years ago because the wave didn't quite exist yet. Know?
Justin:Yeah. Yeah. And I do think it's important to get the positioning right. And to get the positioning right, I do think you just want to be thinking is and observing all these people that are signing up and watching your videos. And I if I was you, I'd be taking those calls with teams just to be figuring out what they want.
Justin:That's also
Brian:why I'm, like, hesitant to to say, like, I'm not serving teams because I am. Like, The thing I'm building this week is the ability for Teams to sign up for Builder Methods Pro.
Justin:And
Brian:maybe here and there, a big ticket thing comes along. I'll do a private workshop, Sure. But it's just not something that I'm stressed about building a big sales page for right now or anything like that. The inquiries are coming in even without that.
Justin:I've got people here in this coworking place that work for massive multinational enterprise companies, companies we've all heard of. And when I talk to them, I tell them about, oh, my buddy Brian's building this thing. I've told them about Agent OS. And what they're telling me is my boss and the from the CEO on down, we're getting a constant directive to use AI as much as possible. We're getting as much budget as we want for exploring AI.
Justin:We can use all the tools. They're just saying, we want this fully deployed. If you're not using AI as a developer, you're fired. Like, strong language.
Brian:I'm getting I'm getting exactly that feedback in a lot of the sign ups. And I I could see it in the people who are signing up. Like, they're from companies. They're in this job. Yes.
Brian:So They're just signing up for everything they see.
Justin:The tricky part is if somebody from Cloudflare signs up, Cloudflare is a big company that has a lot of money. And if Cloudflare can learn from Brian, even just Brian's best practices in terms of AgentOS, and maybe they've heard about AgentOS and they want to, you know, implement it, but they need help because they're Cloudflare, they're a big company. If you can improve Cloudflare's efficiency by 3%, that's like billions of dollars that you've just made them. So it doesn't make sense to to charge them, you know, $500. You've potentially created a bunch of value.
Justin:Now, I don't know how you close those deals, like Ian said, but there is something about that. And I've always been the guy like you that's like, no, I'm just gonna sell to prosumers and independent businesses and all. And then my buddy Tim takes all of my ideas, and he goes and sells them to like one of the biggest retailers in the world.
Brian:Yeah.
Justin:And he's like, Justin, these are all your ideas from your blog. But I if I make them 3% more money, that's billions of dollars, and they're willing to pay me a lot. And he's like, it's not that hard. He's like, I just flew down to their head office. And, you know, I just knock on the door until I get some answers.
Justin:And, you know, it's possible to do some of this stuff.
Brian:It's possible. But it's also like, you know, if there is a if there's a good business to be had that that aligns with the type of business that I'm trying to build, which is I literally, I just want to spend. I was talking to my wife about this yesterday about like, there was a time when I came into my office and every single morning I was psyched to be here because I I'm just building stuff and I'm creating stuff. Like, that's all I wanna be doing most of the time. Yeah.
Brian:And and that's what I'm doing, like, 80% of the time. Some some days I have to do a client project or some days I have to do the the support inbox for Clarity Flow, you know, and and like, if if I can just eliminate that stuff and and just create content and build tools, like, that's all I wanna be doing every single day, like my own products. Like that, you know, That that's Yeah.
Ian:Well, there's always, like, opportunity cost. Right? It's like Jeffrey Way of Laracast. Right? He is the mow I mean, he's as well known as Taylor, basically, at least up until maybe the past year or two.
Ian:But I'd say before that, like, they are almost equally known. So, like, Jeffrey could have gone out there and been a consultant. He had the bet biggest name recognition possible in the But he's never done that. Right? Because he's, like, probably, a, because he doesn't want to run that kind of business, and b, he's like so making so much money and busy with the business he has.
Ian:Right?
Brian:Yeah. Like, has the volume coming his way so, like,
Ian:can make something from that. Yeah. So it's like, I think there is always that trade off, like, well, you could do that, but it's gonna be you're also gonna be competing with Accenture and McKinsey. Right? Like, McKinsey is trying to go to Cloudflare and be like, I could save you 2% with AI.
Ian:Right? And we're gonna come up here with 700 people, and we're gonna go into every corner. Right? So, like, it's hard as, like, a solo guy to be like, I could do it too. Right?
Ian:Like, I think Yeah. Whereas, like, if you go from the ground up, like, you might still have that impact and you won't be able to capture all the value of it. But kinda who cares? It's like, if you get 20 Cloudflare devs and they're gonna pay you each $400 a year, And they're gonna tell a bunch of devs they know on social media, and then you're gonna get 20 more from each of those 20. Right?
Ian:Like, that's all just work still in your favor. And we know that these are people who have money. We know they're all paying $200 a month for Claude. Right? So if you want me to charge them $20.30, $40, whatever, $50, whatever it is, to like make them more efficient with their $200 they already have in.
Ian:Right? Like this all works together, you know? Yeah.
Brian:And something we we chat about a lot is like is like it's right there. It's like getting to that freedom. It's like, you guys obviously have it in your current businesses. I had it before, but in the last couple of years I've been trying to get back to It's literally like what I'm working on right now with builder methods is like, the way that I look at it is like, it's just a couple of months away. If I could just build this into the beginnings of recurring revenue and a membership base.
Brian:Of course, there's all the challenges of membership. There's gonna be churn to deal with and limits on what you can charge for it and everything. But the opportunity cost, if I get distracted with some big engagement over here or some other project that takes me away from just grow the YouTube channel and just grow the membership. Like
Ian:Well, I also think order of operations wise, like, it's easier to get people to spend less money. Just period. Right? So, like Yeah. So you and you have more direct connection right now with, like, individual developers than with CEOs and CTOs.
Ian:Right? That is more your current audience. So I also feel like phase one, get the platform, get customers in the platform. Right? Now, once that's going
Brian:And that only gives me more credit eliminate everything else. Like, because I have these other distractions, whether it's whether it's Clarity Flow or client work, like like, I could I could I could be just a few months away from eliminating that stuff, you know?
Ian:Right. And even just, yeah, within builder methods, don't get distracted. You need to make YouTube videos, and you need to produce videos that are on the paid platform. Like, those are the things that absolutely must happen. And then in a year, if you have a thousand paying customers or 2,000 paying customers or whatever in a year, right, you could always stand up a consulting thing then and be like, look, Brian Castle, the creator of Builder Methods, now we offer this consulting thing and you're gonna be able to charge way more money for it because you're be like, we have the, you know, the preeminent platform in AI coding tools and techniques, blah blah blah.
Ian:Like, right now Or I'll just never
Justin:do that.
Ian:You'll never do it. Right. And either way, it's like you that opportunity is not going to be missed, guess, is my point. Like, that's the opportunity that could come in and be better later than it would be today. Whereas, like, the video stuff, think, is different.
Ian:I think the video is selling the platform itself. Like, I think in twelve months, they're gonna every fool in the world is gonna have an AI coding video platform. So, like, you wanna be in there earlier. Plus there's Udemy or whatever all you know, there's all the big video course platforms already. Right?
Ian:So, like, you want to be catch the wave. Like, you don't want to miss the wave and be the guy who's trying to swim against the wave or the tidal wave of competition that's already there, you know? Like, you want to be out there early.
Brian:I also really think that the just the investment in general in audience for for what I'm doing, like it's it's already working in terms of like driving the top of my funnel today. If I can triple, quadruple the YouTube subscribers and just keep that train going, a, that that's exactly what this business needs for the top of the funnel. But b, like, just long term in terms of, choosing any business that I'm gonna sync years into, I I like the idea of like, at at this time investing in audience. Like, in the future, that that's that's the type of thing that like just produces unforeseen opportunity. And also just investing
Ian:in audience in something that's hot. Right? Like you were investing in audience and coaches too, but did you have a 100 people sign up for a webinar in a week? Do know what I mean? Like
Brian:But also, like, I can't Like, I physically can't do that because I don't identify as a coach. I don't you know, I'm not connected to coaches, but, like, I am a builder.
Ian:I am It's easier to connect to this audience. It's more natural. But I just think it's a better audience. Right? It's like I I always tell people never sell anything to devs.
Ian:Like, this is one of my top rules is that devs are the worst customers. You should not sell anything to devs. And I'd stand by this rule, and I think there are very, very few exceptions. But I do think sort of coaching training stuff is a reasonable exception to that. Like, I've seen that work enough times with, like, bootstrappery type folks that I'm like, okay.
Ian:Like, I think that's reasonable. Like, you could sell that to software developers because it's also not the kind of thing they really move on from. Like, the biggest problem with developers is they're always looking for the next best thing. It's like, oh, what what editor am I in? Oh, you're a better editor?
Ian:I'm move to this better editor. Right? It's like we'll go back and forth. Claude, GPT, GPT five. Oh, GPT five.
Ian:Oh, Claude updated. Right? You're always like they're terrible customers. Like, I want a customer who signs up and doesn't leave for twenty years. That's my favorite kind of customer.
Ian:Not the one who's always looking for the next best product that's this much better than the product they are already using. Right? Like, it's a terrible customer.
Brian:But I and that's also
Justin:where I,
Ian:you know,
Brian:I think the investment in audience and also community, you know, that's where you get that, like, loyalty, that connection that you just don't don't personally just don't wanna leave. Yeah.
Justin:Because there is a big there would be a big incentive. If I'm a professional developer right now. And I'm like, I got to figure this out. Like, management is breathing down my neck, or all of my clients are expecting this. And you're just looking for some sort of for me, it feels like once you get a bunch of people in a Discord group or whatever, that's going to actually solve a lot of problems in the sense that you're gonna know who the group is.
Justin:They will have proven themselves and that they've paid something. And then you can do the work of, like, DM ing them and saying, hey, like, can you tell me why you're here? Like, what What does it take to What's motivating What you does
Brian:it take to to attract more of them?
Justin:You're gonna
Brian:get all sorts of answers. Have one more question for you guys, and then we'll get off of me. I wanna hear about outro and everything. On that. So okay.
Brian:On Tuesday, I'm doing this workshop. Yep. I have basically the website, like, set up ready to start selling annual memberships to Builder Methods Pro. Yeah. The only benefit that I have ready to deliver on Tuesday is, like, a Discord.
Brian:And I haven't even opened that up yet. Like, I haven't even created that. Like Yeah. Sometime between now and Tuesday, I'll do that. But, like, I don't have any premium course content to start delivering on day one.
Brian:So this is I guess you could think of this as, like, the presale. Like like Mhmm. These are gonna be the, quote, unquote, founding members. They're gonna get a discount. How comfortable are we with the that idea of, like, just starting to open the doors?
Brian:And and I I I've I've already started to to, like, drip out. Like, you you've you've signed up for this workshop. You've paid for that ticket. Just so you know, I'm gonna be introducing Builder Methods Pro, and I've I've I've asked for, like, pre interest. A lot of people are interested in it.
Brian:I'm getting messages like, I can't wait to join that, whatever it is. It is like you're I'm gonna be asking for an annual fee, couple $100, on the promise that over the next several weeks, I'm going to start to drip out some educational content.
Justin:Yeah. I well, I think you should make the
Brian:offer. One, you'll get the community, but it's gonna take months to build up a decent library of ten, twenty, 30 videos that you could start watching.
Justin:Yeah. Think you should I think you should offer it. I think the positioning will be important, but I I do think you should offer something for sale. Again, because I think right now, what I'm seeing is just a bunch of people freaking out going, I need And they're looking on Twitter and all they're getting is the AI thread boys saying all this bullshit. They're like, somebody, I need a calm voice to just help me ride out the storm.
Justin:And so And I think you should have some sort of next step after the workshop. So I think you should offer it. Again, I think, you know, maybe it's a little bit less expensive for the people that start. Maybe you sit you you say, you know what? I'm just gonna take 20 people right now.
Justin:So if you want in first and you want to be able to help us figure this out, I'm gonna, like, give 20 spots, and then I'm gonna close it down. And then there'll be a waiting list.
Brian:Yeah. I figured I would make, like, the the heaviest discount for the first 20 or 30 people or whatever that number is going to be. Then but the other thought, the other benefit of membership, if I do keep doing these workshops, which I think I will Again, these are more like office hours, like open discussion sessions. The general public would buy tickets to those, the members get in for free. So that's another immediate benefit that you could Maybe four weeks later, I'll do another workshop that members can just attend.
Justin:And once you get that initial group in, you can you could also position this to say, listen, everybody needs help here. We need to figure this out. I've figured some stuff out. But once we're in the community, you're we're gonna start you'll be able to vote on what I start producing. So here's a bunch of ideas.
Justin:And if this idea rises to the top, okay, that's the first thing we're gonna do.
Brian:Like, I'll I'll do a video on that next week. Or or or we're gonna do this sort of thing for the members.
Justin:Yeah. And you give you send them a link of your early edit, you know, if you've got a early draft edit. Here's the draft edit. What do you guys think? If they have questions, I'll update that.
Justin:Then you're getting a way better product and the people in the community. The other thing I think is that's underrated is that people in community, like, they want you to solve their problem, but they're also want to be a part of it. Like, they want to be a part of the like, we're all in this together. Or, yeah, we're gonna help suggest what we want. Because people are like, have a million ideas about Agent OS and all sorts of stuff.
Justin:It's like, well, if I if I could inform And it
Brian:there's like different pain points that that's actually bringing people in currently. But I think the biggest one across the board, no matter who you are, whether you're a junior developer, you're a team leader, is everyone with this AI, building with AI stuff, they're just trying to see how other professionals are using it. And everyone is using it differently. Most of the time I'm in Cloud Code, Ian, I know you're in Codecs a lot. Everyone's got their own preferred tooling.
Brian:And even within those, way of doing spec driven or doing prompting or like everyone's got their own process. Whereas years ago, it used to be like, all right, there's this test driven development approach. There's this Laravel has that framework, Rails has that framework. And there's more or less a way to build software, like an accepted workflow. It's the Wild West right now with building with AI.
Brian:And yeah, there's some popular tools, but the way that we all use these tools is so different. And that's what people want to see. When people are constantly asking me for a community around Agent OS, around all this in general, they just want to see how people are actually using it. So that's the thing is like, I want to make this membership not really just about me. It's like come in here, share what you're working on, share what's working for you.
Brian:What's you know, share your projects.
Justin:I mean, and that could be a recurring content type. Like, hey, this week I did a call with Frank from, you know, IBM, and we're gonna see how they are using these tools inside of IBM. There's there's a lot of value in cur curation. So if you're the one who's bringing the group together and curating the group, this is why the mostly technical party at LariCon was so popular. It's like the group is curated.
Justin:We all love this show. We're all here. The value is Brian is bringing these people together because individually, nobody else can do that. So you get so I would also not undersell that a big draw is just like Brian is curating this group.
Brian:He's bringing people together.
Justin:Bringing people together. Yeah.
Ian:Yeah. I love it. Alright. I
Justin:it's Alright. We've got
Brian:Gotta get to work. We
Justin:I wanna hear about outro. Yeah. We've got lots of people in the chat that wanna hear about outro. Oh, jeez. That guy.
Justin:I'd love
Ian:to look at the chat.
Justin:Chirkin says ask Ian how much he is trying to he said invest, but I think he meant invest in outro. Because Oh, invest. I feel like sometimes I spend too much money on side projects and they don't take off. So what's
Brian:By the way, outro.fm. Right?
Justin:Yep. Outro.a fam. Bring it up on screen here.
Brian:Plan, organize, and monetize your podcast. Shut up and take my money.
Ian:There we go. Right? So that's that's the idea.
Brian:Alright. Well, my my first question, Ian, is, like, how come I can't sign up for anything on
Justin:this page?
Ian:Can go to Mostly Technical and sign up become a member of Mostly Technical, a free member of Mostly Technical, and that's how you would sign up here.
Justin:It says I can sign up right here. There's a sign up page I just found on the login.
Ian:Oh, on the log. That probably does it that way too. This whole this is like this is a very this is very early here, guys. Very early. Right there, you can become a member.
Ian:Become a free member right there. Yes. There you go. And you put your email in. I Yeah.
Ian:Think you did. And then you can click it and, like, whatever, all the stuff.
Brian:Yeah. So I I I have some questions about the because, you know, I I I've heard you talking all about it on the show. I I get that you're or my sense is you're going for this I mean, you write it there. This, like, all in one type of platform. I I sense that you're starting to lean a little bit more into, like, the the idea of, like, building a kind of a membership community around your podcast, which Mhmm.
Brian:I I do think that that is the strongest play. That that was sort of my thinking when I was doing Ripple. Mhmm. Anyway, like, I wanna hear what is your case for this? Like, what like, where where's the value
Ian:on on this? So it's a there's a couple things. I mean, I think maybe I'm wrong, but the way, like, Ripple approached it, I thought was more like the community communicating amongst each other. Was there's like a forum around the show kind of. Right?
Ian:Is that Yes. Correct? So I guess I think about this a little bit differently. Not that it won't have that ability, because probably there will be, like, a place where you can just have, like, open discussion or whatever. So it's not that that wouldn't be there, but I view a little bit more like Substack in that, like, you are pushing things out to your community.
Ian:And, yes, the community can comment on your posts. And, yes, there's probably a way to, like, just have open chats or whatever, but it's more about the, like, is the center and then people are commenting on the the content. Maybe you're polling and things like that. But so it's, like, subtle, but I do think there is, like, a little bit of a different take there, I guess, I would I would say about that. And then also, like, of course, like, you know, providing perks to the members.
Ian:So whether it's, like, popping your transistor private RSS feed, and this would be the way you can distribute that to your members or downloads. Like, I'm a member of a Patreon of, like, a photographer, and he, like, posts, you know, photos, just like the raw photos of his stuff. Right? And so you got, like, those kind of perks and things like that. So that's kinda, yeah, the member aspect.
Ian:And there's definitely, like it's two sides of this app, and they are quite different. There's, like, the podcast organization. Yeah. The pod like, literally organizes an episode. Like, you are everything from, like, a not professional podcaster up to, like I think of this as, like, even a tool for, like, very professional podcasts.
Ian:And, like, I can break out all the segments. I can have notes on the segments. I can have comments on the segments. I can have video links and everything. Like, so I'm fully producing and prepping a show, like, totally different than what we've done here, right, which is like hop on this show and we all just chat.
Ian:Right? Like, that's one end. But on the other end, there's lots of shows that are highly produced. And then there are, of course, many in the middle that, like, mostly technical. We always have a list of things we're gonna talk about in Trello.
Brian:Yeah. You guys are so much more organized.
Ian:I thought you But we're not all the way to, like, it's really buttoned down. You know? I want I want us to be a little more buttoned down, which is hopefully what Outro will help with. So so there's that part of it.
Brian:I'd like to put you through proposition. What I I've heard you talk about both sides.
Ian:Mhmm.
Brian:I I think there's there is probably this this quote, unquote professional podcasting industry, the the larger podcasts that are, like, actually, like, media brands. Right. I I could imagine they have a process. They have a they have producers. They have teams and everything.
Brian:Mhmm. But you do sort of need, like, a project management tool for podcasters. But, like, I don't know anything about that world. I'm like a hack bootstrapper podcast with Right. So that's where I just don't really relate to what that pain point would be in a product.
Brian:Where I do think the value side is, is like listeners of a podcast, like as a podcaster, if I don't have a way to ask for my listeners to put in their email address or literally subscribe, just to RSS, but give me their email, then I can't really reach my listeners except for publishing another episode. It's like, having that private podcast feed with an email opt in, getting them into some form of a community, that's actually valuable to even small podcasters.
Ian:So you got it. That's it. That's it. So I kind of view it as as the the production side of the app where you're organizing your episodes and that part of it as being free, even though it could absolutely be a tool you sell for a lot of money to a a more professional podcast. Like, if you're a Ringer Network podcast, if you're Joe Rogan, right, if you're whatever, like, you have multiple hosts and multiple producers and you got all and whatever they're using right now, which is there's no tool really to do this, so they're using Trello or Google Docs or whatever they use to organize their show on a high level.
Ian:Right? So I think one version of this product could have been it's gonna be 3 or $400 a month. It's a tool for professional podcasts who are making a lot of money to organize their show. And that's what it is. Like, it's just the production side of it.
Ian:But that's kind of like an enterprise sales angle, right? It's like not ever going to have that many customers. It's going to be a specialized tool for podcasts that are making a 100,000 and up in revenue, and we're starting to get into, like, a pretty small number of podcasts that exist in that realm. Right? So and just in general, this is my side project.
Ian:I wanna do something that's, like, gonna reach more people. I don't necessarily want just another thing to enterprise sell. Right? So so then the other angle to me was, yes, exactly what you kinda said. And, like, I view then now the the production side of it as totally free because what you use now is totally free.
Ian:Right? What you use now is Trello and Google Docs and whatever. So me trying to come in here and be like, well, pay me $10 a month, which is you're not gonna pay more than that anyway, but you don't even wanna pay that because you're already using these free tools. Right?
Brian:So And I feel like that's the thing with like any SaaS that starts to veer into project management land, you you immediately start competing with everything that's free. You know? Exactly.
Ian:So I feel like it has to be free. So it's free, but it's like Trello or Google Docs, but actually understands you're making instead of just here's a generic list, and hopefully you figure out some strategy for organizing it and all that stuff. Right? So get them in the door with, like, this tool that's free that helps you make better shows. That's, like, step one.
Ian:Then how we make money is what you just described, which is step two, which is, like, build your audience. Because we all know, like, when you make a show, you actually get surprisingly little feedback. Even as you get into thousands of listeners, it's like you'll get a couple comments on social media, or if you're on YouTube, you get a couple comments down there.
Brian:It's the classic You're
Ian:not getting tons of feedback. Right? Like, so
Brian:And and, yeah, that that's the thing about podcasting. Even even with, a pretty large solid audience, like,
Ian:we
Brian:just, like, Bootstrap Web and even us with the panel, like, we get some comments and we have this nice live chat and stuff, but like, people are not really I'm always kind of surprised when somebody just randomly tells me that they've been listening to the panel. It's like, oh,
Ian:you have? Like, You haven't heard from know? When we did the party, it's like all these people were there, I was like, this is amazing. Like, all these people, it's like, they don't ever comment, but they're coming to my party in real life. You know?
Ian:Like Yeah. So, yeah, it's like, so can we add tools that make it more likely for you to succeed? And part of it is, like, people just lose energy. Right? It's like, well, I'm talking and maybe you know, I have the stats.
Ian:Like, transistor tells me people are listening
Justin:Mhmm.
Ian:But it's not
Brian:I mean, that was the thing that I can't
Ian:feel it. Right? That's why
Brian:I like what you're doing, because that's what drove me to start playing with Ripple, which, you know, became like a non project for me. But the driver was this sense that like every podcast is a community, whether they realize it or not. Like, because everyone who because if you listen to a podcast every single episode, which many people do, like You're all
Ian:you know on that. Yes.
Brian:Yeah. You already by that nature, you have so much in common with every other listener who doesn't miss an episode. You know? Yep. You just vibe with with that with that host, that personality, that that topic.
Brian:So anything to connect those people together.
Ian:Well, that's, like, even, like, some of the stuff one of the things I think Stubstax has, which is cool, just like there's, like, a like type button or whatever. Like, like, you don't even have to comment. It's like just, hey, here's a little heart icon thing. Right? And it's like just a little a little interaction.
Ian:So can we make, like, those little interactions, build up the way to connect with people, with your audience in ways besides just making another show, like like you said? And just, yeah, build up those audience tools, which again is just yet another thing you have to figure out on your own, which for us, we can of course do it right because we know how to do it. But it's like, go figure out Mailchimp, go figure out ConvertKit, go figure out whatever, you know, how do I tie that in to what I do with the show? Like, there's all these other steps that become yet more tools that you need to have to make it all work together and against more barriers to, like, having a successful show. So, yeah, it's like I think it's the thing that sounds mhmm.
Brian:Well, my my question also still comes back to, like, how serious are you about outro? Me? Like, yeah. Like, because my like what I and what I mean is like, I know you're building it. I know you're doing like the weekends thing on it, but like, what are you doing in terms of like bootstrapping it, like talking to first users outside of just you and Aaron and like doing the things that a bootstrapped startup would normally be doing?
Brian:Or is it really just more for fun putting it out there? You you do have mostly technical to to to get it out there.
Ian:Yeah. So I think I'm in a little different spot, right, in that I and this is just my personality somewhat too. Like, it's like your question before you had before about, like, I'm gonna start selling this thing and there's no videos in it. Like, I I would have a personally a little bit of hard time with that. Like, I'm more of a, like, I build it, and when it's done, I shall release it kind of mentality.
Ian:And that's not I don't think that's necessarily the right that's not a approach I would even necessarily recommend to somebody starting out. Right? But this is my approach, and also I have a product that makes a good amount of money, and so I don't have that pressing need to, like, where I must get it out. And so
Brian:I And it's not like you need to validate your like, this is a product that you want to build. You're scratching your own itch. It you know? It's it's not like you need to validate or invalidate it and then decide to go to a different product. Like, don't want to
Justin:do a
Brian:different product. Right.
Ian:Exactly. So to me, it's like I need I'm not gonna wait till I'm done done with it, but it's like, Aaron hasn't even used it hasn't been used yet by anybody. And it's just not that far along yet. So it's it's pretty far along because we could talk about the AI development and all that stuff. Like, it's way farther along than it would have been if I didn't have AI to help me, but it is still not quite ready to use.
Ian:So once it's ready to use, I'll start using it. We'll get some other people in there. I feel like it's all doable. Like, I don't there's nothing in here that's like, boy, how are we gonna do that? Like, the technology doesn't even exist.
Ian:Like, this isn't that kind of product. Like, it's fairly cruddy. Mhmm. So my phase one, and because the time pressure isn't as heavy for me, is to, like, build it so it's workable. Start using it myself, let friends and family and people who are interested use it as a phase one.
Justin:Wait. You have family that's gonna use this Not
Ian:actual family, but, yeah. You guys. You know? And then, yeah, and then go from there on, you know, I think I know a lot of people in podcasting. I know a lot of people in circles that listen to and produce podcasts a lot.
Ian:So I feel like I could do the podcast tours and I can do I have money to do advertising. Like, I have those type of things that can then follow on after that. So Yeah. That's kind of my that's my plan, which is not a plan I would recommend for necessarily somebody who's like, I have a full time job and I'm trying to do a traditional bootstrapped weekend project. Like, I don't think I don't think it's a good idea to try to do a product that's replacing seven other products.
Ian:Like, I would say that's a bad idea. Right? You shouldn't do that. So these are this is do as I say, not as I do on my advice here to some degree, but because I'm in a little bit different position than than somebody else might be with it. But, yeah, that's that's kind of it.
Ian:But I am excited about it, and I do in terms of, like, my seriousness about it, I'm I'm pretty serious. Like, I mean, I'm spending 5 figures a lot, know, on a logo. And, you know, like, I'm intrigued by the idea of, like, the more, like you know, this is a weird space. I've heard Justin try to describe it before. Like, prosumer y like a different space than the pure, hey, we're enterprise b to b.
Ian:Like, that's what HubSpot is all day long. Mhmm. Colleges, banks, whatever. Like, very traditional. Go to a committee.
Ian:The committee's gonna think about it for weeks, months. We had a customer today who, like, didn't pay their bill and we turned them off, like, eight months ago. And then they just came back today and are like, oh, turn us back on. We need to keep using like, you know, just crazy enterprise stuff like that, which is like, you know, so it's gonna be cool to be like, oh, if I can convince this person who is the host of a podcast to use it, well, then I got the sale. There's no, like, other level of people who are gonna be involved for the most part and things like that.
Brian:So The thing
Ian:that Interesting challenge.
Brian:The the thing about the it's not it's it's the podcasters market that that also sort of I I like it quickly scared me away from Ripple. Like Sure. Like like, very quickly realized like
Ian:that It's awesome. Market.
Brian:It's tough, like, you know, because it's like, unless you're in hosting, because like you do need to pay for a host, but outside of hosting, it's so tough. If you're selling like editing services, but even that's going away with all the tools being able to auto edit your stuff these days. Yeah. Podcasters, the challenge that I have with it as a as a market to sell a tool to. And again, this doesn't even apply to you, Ian, because I think it's great that you're doing this.
Brian:It's, you know, it's it's I I wouldn't quite call it a passion project. It sounds more serious than that. No. I would
Ian:say it's above that, but not all the way to, like, I'm selling my main business and throwing everything at me.
Justin:Exactly. Yeah.
Brian:So so, like, what I'm saying here is doesn't really apply to outro, but, like, in general, the thing that I would have trouble with like the podcasters market is that like, even if your podcast is for your business, a lot of them are just for fun. So then you're just really not going to spend money on it. But even if it's like for your business, it's still like a side hustle in your business, or it's still like an experiment in your business that's not essential in your business. So like, it warrant really spending real dollars on it? Unless you're like hiring someone to be your podcast host.
Brian:But if it's like something that the founder is doing on the side and like we'll see every now and again and it's like
Justin:It is still surprising. I mean, on one hand, yes. The podcast market is tiny compared to other markets.
Ian:Help desk software.
Justin:Help desk software, email newsletter software, all that Yeah. But on the other hand, I'm always surprised at how much people do pay for in addition to hosting. So there's this tool called PodPage. It says they're used by 30,000 podcasters. I talked to the founder of this.
Justin:And people are paying like an extra $12.19, or $39 a
Ian:It's bucks a month on average. Yeah.
Brian:What is it? Like a website for podcast?
Justin:It's just a website. So Transistor provides this for free. But some people are paying for this. Like, they're paying for a host. And then they're also paying for a website.
Justin:It's like, wow. And then, you know, we're using Riverside right now. There's also Descript. You know, Descript is Yep. I don't know, another whatever.
Justin:And so there are people you know, it's never gonna be like the you know, it's not gonna have the same effect of like, Nathan Barry only needs to capture, like three to 4% of the email newsletter industry to be very, very rich.
Ian:To be a billionaire. Right. But
Justin:there is opportunity there. The other thing I like about it is I think it's a nice gateway into other prosumer creator types. So you could start with podcasters, but then you're gonna get some podcasters in there, they're gonna be like, you know what? I should use this for my YouTube channel. Like, my YouTube channel is YouTube kind
Ian:on my list for sure. Yes. Absolutely.
Brian:And there's a be interesting to see, like because because podcasts are very niche y. Right? Like, you're gonna like, oh, like Right. Like, maybe, like, sports podcasts really resonate with Outro or maybe, like, the the the mom bloggers really resonate with their I don't know. Whatever.
Ian:If gets picked up by a niche or whatever. Yeah.
Justin:Yeah. And there's also other things kind of in the water. Like, you said, build community. Like, a podcast is a community. And I just think about tools like Luma, which I've been using to organize my my Geek Beers meetup.
Justin:Well, this is like it's like you've get you have this idea of events. You have this idea of newsletter. You have this idea of payments. I think there's a lot in the water here of, like, creators and meetup organizers and community people who are building these things or using additional tools. The other one, of course, is Patreon.
Justin:And you know, like Patreon, people are supporting it. We're posting things. People can comment. And this is like a well, just in podcasting revenue, they did $350,000,000 in revenue in terms of what people were contributing through Patreon. Yep.
Justin:So there's there's stuff here. You know? There's community. And
Ian:that's Patreon to me is like, there's no product that does what Outro does in a holistic sense. But to me, Patreon is our competition. Mhmm. Like, Patreon is the place people are spending money that I want them to not spend money anymore and instead use Outro. Like, you wanna have memberships for your podcast, I want you to use Outro, not Patreon.
Ian:If you wanna sell sponsorships, which isn't exactly what Patreon does, but let's for fuzzily, let's say I want you to use Outro, not Patreon. Right? Like, to me, that's, like, the the place where there's like a direct competition. And where I feel like Patreon is okay, but it's really kind of generic and wonky. And it's like, could we have a Patreon for podcasts that understands it's a podcast and they can do cool things around that as opposed to being just like, this is like, for some people, it's an OnlyFans alternative.
Ian:Right? For some people, it's Mhmm. You know, from my knitting club. Like, Patreon has to cater to everybody in a generic sense where outro doesn't have to.
Justin:I think the other the other advantage is that we are in a community of tech podcasters that have been doing this for a long time. So I thought of the changelog. I mean, the changelog has been doing memberships, events, and community forever. Five by Five did this back in the day. West Boston Syntax is doing this as well.
Justin:So there's there's a lot of existing momentum. And I mean, even if you just started off and all you were doing is selling this to tech podcasters that had done well, I think you would be It could be okay. There's also just so much opportunity in doing this in an opinionated way. Everything from we're going to create a podcast planner that is super opinionated. It's gonna help Justin and Brian make these episodes not an hour and a half.
Justin:It's gonna help them get the episode down to forty five minutes. And it's gonna be like, do this, then do this. No longer than twenty minutes. Like, you can be opinionated in how you set some of this up. Yeah.
Brian:And I feel like from a product
Justin:will pay for it, I think.
Ian:Well or even the reverse of that, like, just in terms of making your podcast longer even. Like, I feel like sometimes people don't know what to say if you're just getting started. It's like, no, plan this out. Right? This helps you plan it so you actually make full episodes.
Ian:What were you saying, Brad?
Brian:That's the thing is that like, segment of the podcaster's market would this be for? Because like, that's the other challenge, I think, with podcasters is that like, it's very rare for a small podcaster to become a large podcaster. Usually small gets a little bit of traction to a point like, but like, we are not going to become like the next ringer, right? It's Since like
Ian:I'm willing to be patient, my plan and I've actually had this interesting discussion with, the designers about this and the logo. Because, obviously, if you're going more after, like, existing podcasts, you might go more conservative and be like, we are an enterprise y type tool and you're safe with us and all that kind of stuff. Or are we going go more exciting and like for the earlier in their journey podcasts? And to me, that I think is the play.
Brian:And I feel like the earlier you are in the journey, the more opinionated the tool. Like like you are shaping how they
Ian:should This is the right way to do it. Yes.
Brian:Yeah. And Whereas like if you're trying to sell to existing podcasters, they already have their own workflows. There is a question of like whether they can adapt to what you're offering or or
Ian:Especially you're gonna fit with the things I plan to charge money for, since I don't plan on charging money for the actual organization part, like, terms of planning your episodes, like, it's a much bigger lift to be like, hey. I know you went out and set up Mailchimp and you got Patreon and all that stuff, but now you need to, like, move all that stuff into outro and blah blah blah. Like, and hopefully, some people do do that. Right? And we will make sure that the tools are there so they could do it.
Ian:But that's just a much higher bar versus, like, get in with younger podcasts. And then as some of those become bigger podcasts, right, well, now they have 10,000 emails in their outro mail list. Well, now now it's the reverse lock in. Right? Well, now leaving outro is hard because now I gotta am I gonna set up Mailchimp and Patreon and blah blah blah and do all this stuff and export everything and blah and hope it works?
Ian:Like so yes. And like and like in terms of even like the the goals that what you guys were talking about earlier, it's like, I feel like my goal for this is fairly you know, I'm not trying to go public here. It's like I've said on Mostly Technical. It's like my my big success goal is $50,000 a month. If this could get to $50,000 a month, I will be like, hot damn.
Ian:That was an awesome success. You know? And so it won't be as big as HubSpot, and that's fine. So that to me is kind of like, I feel like achievable even if I can't get, you know, huge numbers of podcasts to pay and or you can't get the biggest podcast to move or things like that, that it's not so much money that it it's not achievable. So that's the goal.
Ian:Who knows? Maybe nobody will wanna pay for it. Maybe I'll never even finish building it. I think that's unlikely. But you never know.
Ian:But, yeah, that's kind of how I'm thinking about those parts.
Justin:Yeah. I mean, there is something about building a second product. It's so funny. Like, you get to a point and you're like, okay. This is stable.
Justin:For me, there's always, like, this feeling of, like, yeah. But I should have a second product just as a backup.
Brian:Yeah. I'm just so excited that Ian is doing a I second mean, you've you've other products before too, but like
Ian:Yeah. But none have worked.
Justin:I feel
Brian:like they're I few and far feel like you I feel like you do a a product like a side product outside of HubSpot, and then three or four years go by before you do the next one.
Ian:That's kinda how I do I'm overstating that. No. It's about right. But like The
Justin:other thing is that outro could help you and Aaron really improve the podcast and make a bunch more money from the podcast. And so it could just be like you built it for yourself, and you're the primary user.
Brian:Sponsor their sponsor business seems seems to be
Justin:cooking It right it could help you get to 50 k a month in just mostly technical business. Right?
Ian:I mean, this is like a really fascinating part of this because I feel like we didn't even talk about this yet, but, like, one of the things I really want Atra to do is take over the sponsorship sales thing I have for mostly technical, which is, like, a little terrible thing I slap together in the afternoon and do a better
Brian:version of
Ian:that. Product. And, like, that's a product. Right? And it's like and, again, I think people could use that on its own without using the none of these things will be tied together in a way where you couldn't cherry pick.
Ian:So you could just use the sponsorship stuff and pay us our cut of that and not use the rest of it. So that's fine. But it's like we have people asking us for, like, they just wanna be on subscription with their sponsorships. Like, they just literally wanna subscribe as a sponsor forever. Mhmm.
Ian:And right now, like, my little thing I threw together doesn't do that. Right? So I wanna do that so I can have that money for Mostly and have that permanent sponsorship. But it's like so many podcasts I mean, not like Mostly Technical is a giant podcast with a 100,000 listeners. Like, you know, it's probably got across YouTube and audio and everything, like, four or 5,000 listeners.
Ian:Right? Or maybe, yeah, probably about 4,000. And, like, you know, we charge a thousand bucks an ad. And, like so, you know, if you could make an extra 4 or $5 a month and you're just I think there's a lot of podcasts out there that maybe don't even realize that they could or not sure how they do it. Or it's like, well, I gotta set up Stripe, I gotta figure this thing out and collect the money and blah blah.
Ian:So, like, just making these things more available and easy and obvious and, like, yeah, why wouldn't I try that? I'll push this button and have, like, a little page now where I can collect, you know, sponsorships. And when I get one, it'll put it into the episode rundown so I know that I don't forget the ad read
Brian:Mhmm.
Justin:Because it's
Ian:already in the episode and all those little things, and that's where, like, it magically works together nicely because it knows you have ads, and it knows where to put them and all that kind of stuff.
Brian:Yeah. The thing I got really excited about a couple years ago is this dynamic insertion, which I I know you have on on transistor. I've used it a bunch on on some of my podcasts. Mhmm. But a couple years ago, I think before you guys launched that, like, I was really thinking about that as, a potential SaaS product that I might do someday, which I'm definitely not.
Brian:But like the the but I like that was always super interesting to me. And it's it's become more popular now, especially with larger podcasts. But like, I feel like that's something that like even smaller podcasts can really benefit from. Because it's like, once you get to 50 episodes or 100 episodes, the idea of being able to sell spots on your past episodes and insert them and sell them for periods of time and rotate them, that's a really interesting model. It's technically challenging.
Brian:Yeah.
Ian:And even if we end up with tons of free users, right, maybe there's like you could have bigger sponsors who sponsor across the network and people could opt into that and things like that. Right? Like, that's mean, if
Justin:you end up with tons of free users, you could make $50,000 a month just being an affiliate for Transistor.
Ian:There we go. Well, that that's already on my list.
Brian:There we go.
Ian:To be an affiliate of Transistor, that is high on my list of things to do.
Brian:Let's get
Justin:it So you
Ian:guys do the thing where you pay out you, like, continuously pay. Right? If I recall?
Justin:Yeah. I think we're one of the last ones standing. 25% ongoing for as long as they're a customer.
Ian:Dude, this is literally like I plan on having that in like the onboarding of like transistors I recommend. If you don't have if you're so early that you don't yet have, you know, your host, like, we recommend transistor.
Justin:Let's do I
Ian:already already built the Transistor API integration, so it pulls in the stats and shows shows them on your dashboard. So You
Justin:scratch my back, Aaron. Ian, I'll scratch yours. Yeah.
Ian:Yeah. Yeah.
Justin:That's so great. I mean, I keep thinking about, like if you think
Brian:about He's he's pulling out
Ian:the pad.
Justin:Pulling out the
Ian:drawing out. Yeah.
Justin:I'm pulling out the pad.
Ian:Getting serious.
Justin:I'll describe it for people listening via audio. But if you think about, like, the amount of work to get to something as a big arc, what I'm always thinking about is, like, whatever the payout is at the end. So you have like, okay, this made When I did my course, I did all this work and then I got this payout. And this was like maybe my line for you know, like, success was here. But in order for it to be awesome, I really needed it to be up here.
Justin:And then Adam Wadden released his course, and his his was like way up here. Right? Like, he just made so much more from the same amount of work. And I think we talked about this last week, this asymmetry between investment and then what you get out of it. And then the tricky part in business is that every business has its cadence like this.
Justin:Like if you're consulting, you're like, do some work, and then you hope you get a little payoff. And then you do some work the next month, and then you hope you can bill your clients. The nice thing about SaaS is you do some work, and then you're just hoping that it builds up to revenue increasing every month.
Ian:And
Justin:that can feel like that feeling of just knowing we're doing a bit better than we were the previous month.
Brian:I just wanna break those down, like, the the top one and the bottom one. The differences between, like, putting a because I I I think a lot about, like, what you guys have been talking about, you and Aaron, about, the courses business.
Justin:Mhmm.
Brian:And and then, like, comparing that to to the SaaS concept that you're saying there, Justin, like, putting a lot of work and a lot of hours and a lot of sweat into creating a a large course on a on a bet that it's going to be a hit. Yeah. Feels like a lot I mean
Justin:These are all bets too. Like, the the the amount of work you're putting in is the bet. Like, that's Yeah. I'm betting this time.
Brian:I do think this gets back to because even the thing with a SaaS, when it comes to validation, you're going to have early signs that you're on the right track. So even if it's very low MRR or beta users you can have a form of this with courses too. But like any anything you can do to get clues that like it's it's okay or it's justified to keep putting more hours into this. And it's different for every person, their their own goals. We were just talking about this with with with Ian, like in in your case, this matters a lot less.
Brian:But, like, that that's something that's constantly on my mind when I'm because I because I do spend a ton of hours. I I have the perfectionist bug that, like, I wanna you know, I I I hate things that are, like, half built and not buttoned up. But, like, the longer it goes without getting it without at least putting it out there and asking for money for something
Justin:Yeah.
Brian:The more the more uncomfortable I get, like, while I work on it, you know?
Justin:And my experience with the course slash membership business and what why I think it was hard is that I mean, this is what's hard with anything. This is why whatever ends up getting traction becomes your favorite thing because it's just like for Adam, when he released that course, he was like, this is the best ever. I love this. This is a money machine. It's just like spitting out money money.
Justin:And then he did it again two more times. And it was like, this is this is so easy. Whereas for me, I got into like, oh, I launched this course. And it did great. But it wasn't enough that I didn't need to launch another course the next year.
Justin:And so, know, and that one did a bit better, but it was still not like quite at that line of like, I can relax a little bit. It was just like, no. And I got myself in. And then the problem with this is that with especially like one time sales and courses and even memberships is if you do one of these bets and it doesn't do well, that really hurts. Then it just feels like you're you're way below your threshold.
Justin:Then
Brian:I actually don't think that hurts as much as middling success. Oh, I mean I think that's even worse.
Justin:I think that's
Brian:because like the the total the total flat out failure, even if you busted your ass for three or four months building that thing, grand in the grand scheme of things, that's only four months that that you wasted on a failed product. I I would love it if something totally flopped and it only cost me four months. But like, you know, where I came to is listeners know, like with Clarity Flow, which I still run, like it got to a point where it's a level of success that I can't shut it down. It's not even close to that. It's also not at a point where, you know, I'm not like actively trying to sell it or anything like that.
Brian:But it's also like it's costing years. Yeah. So then it's like opportunity cost in my career. Like I can't just be all in on it for years on end if it's not reaching certain goals. And that's why I turned my focus a couple years ago from it.
Brian:Yeah. Like that's the hardest thing. And that's always been like, what do you do with these projects that make a little bit of money on the side?
Justin:Yeah. Mean, it was a lot easier
Brian:to At one point, like in 2021, I had a bunch of those and I sold them all off. Yeah. And and that was sort of, like, easy to do on that at that one time. But then it's like then then things get complicated, especially with the
Justin:SaaS. I think
Brian:this is
Justin:the one thing that that people don't talk about enough is there is even if you did I mean, you see this in the indie hacker community all the time. The kid that was had the massive success two years ago, what happened to that kid? Like, now that product's not doing any revenue. It all turned away. You know, like, to get a sustainable lasting business, what does it take?
Justin:And
Brian:I mean, that's honestly why I'm also down on SaaS in general. And in terms of like what you're going to invest in starting up in 2025. Because I'm pretty confident that a lot of solid product people and entrepreneurs can build and launch a SaaS and get customers. Like that's not a problem still. You can definitely do that.
Brian:The question is, if you commit to that as your business, two or three years in, is the churn going to plateau it? And then what do you do with it? Like, do do you keep going? Do you get investment? Do you shut it down?
Brian:Do you sell it? Like, whereas a a course or some something else, like Mhmm. You could see where it goes and you can see what it's gonna be pretty quickly. And by pretty quickly, I mean like a couple months.
Justin:Yeah.
Brian:Not just overnight.
Justin:Think what I'm exploring is there's there is something about how big of a splash is this thing going to make is one kind of thought. But there's also just I think you do start to get a sense of like, is this does this thing have enough legs? And sometimes you have to go through a bunch of experiences to know this. Like, if I was going to launch a course today, I would have a sense of like, for me, at my point, like that course would need to make $500 in its first year for me to feel like it's got legs. Because I know what it's like to sell a course and do $100 in a year and $150 in year.
Justin:And I know that feeling of being feeling like I was just always behind. So so you start to get a sense of like, what does it take in these different categories? And I launched plenty of SaaS businesses before that they didn't have the you know, and it really you know pretty quick as soon as people sign up and you're like, like, Ian's gonna get a bunch of podcasters and support and he's gonna be like, okay. Like
Ian:Oh, boy.
Justin:Is this what I'm signing up for? So there there is something about that feeling of am I getting to the point where this thing just has legs? You can have sometimes And something can look like it has legs like, oh, wow, that course did 50. But then it's like, oh, like, it it it that's not enough for this to be a sustainable business. And this is why actually I do I actually think SaaS has people.
Justin:Tons of
Brian:Like, that's the thing is like $50.50 k in sales for a course represents, like, what, a couple 100 customers at least. So like Yeah. That's that's a sizable number of people that even if that's all that individual course is going to get, can learn about what the follow-up to that course should be to keep the business going.
Justin:Yeah. But when I was in that cycle.
Brian:Yeah. That's that's the thing is like that launch cycle. That's why I do prefer like a like a membership model
Justin:Yeah.
Brian:Over the launch model.
Justin:All all of these businesses have characteristics that are innate to them. I still think SaaS is the best. I think it's the best for independent And what's SaaS? Yeah. It is difficult.
Justin:Yes. But what is also difficult was me getting caught in the cycle of like, oh, fuck, I got to launch this thing. And then I tried something new and it didn't work. It's like, oh, shit. And then that feeling was also hard.
Justin:And I think SaaS still has lots of opportunities that can be taken advantage of. Not saying that you shouldn't pursue anything like it could be good, but it's just I all of these businesses have characteristics. Like, for example, one thing about
Brian:I think it just goes back to like because whatever I say about SaaS only applies to me and my experience. So anyone listening to this should not should not hear what I'm saying and say like, SaaS is dead. Don't don't do like, most people probably should do SaaS. It's it's still a fantastic I agree. It's like the holy grail of a
Ian:business You're talking about doing SaaS anyway. Right? SaaS is the really what we're talking about is the business model of a subscription. Mhmm. Right?
Ian:Yes. So like Yeah. Right? So like the subscription business model, whatever. It's like, it doesn't matter that what your SaaS is is gonna be video.
Ian:But well,
Brian:it's a little bit different in in terms of the customer and the product market fit. Right? Like, people buying a course or buying community, they're they're solving a different problem than a business who who needs to plug a tool into their operation.
Ian:See, but I guess this is where you and me it'll be interesting to see what happens because I think we differ on what you're actually selling for Builder Methods because I'm I don't think people are buying a community. Like, I don't think they want to pay money for that. Not I'm not saying nobody wants to pay money for it, but some I don't know if there's enough people that wanna pay money for purely a community. I think people are plugging a hole. I think people are searching in Google right now for like, how the heck do I AI develop today?
Ian:How do what's vibe coding stuff? How do I how do I do this efficiently? How do I do this better? What do I say to my boss who's telling me I must use AI? And then I have to tell him it's actually not as efficient as you think it is.
Ian:And I have the expectations set him. Right? Like all those kind of things. I think that's exactly what they're trying to buy from you. Right?
Brian:So No, I mean, I totally agree with that. Like And I'm not saying like they're It's not solving a pain. I'm saying the job to be done that it's solving is very different than what, like, Helpspot does for a customer. They're plugging that into their operation.
Ian:You think that's true? I don't know.
Brian:Yeah. Because like a business buying a tool, buying a SaaS tool, they're not trying to learn anything. They're trying to solve a job to be done in their business operations.
Ian:But I think that's the same thing. I think I'm trying to solve for I want my devs to be more efficient
Brian:and leverage these tools. Jobs to be done. I'm just saying they're very different jobs.
Justin:Mhmm.
Ian:Alright. I guess. Sort of. I think in
Brian:the But I I I picture
Ian:they're they're pretty similar. But, yeah. I mean, obviously, the nuts and bolts of it are different.
Brian:The getting back to the the community versus courses thing. I mean, I I definitely see sort of demand in in the audience for both. The the thing that I that gives me a little bit of pause about, like, saying, like, every like, the vast majority of people are are coming for the educational content is that, number one, most most, if not all, of this educational content is available, A, on YouTube, but B, just in the docs. Like if you look at like the ClaudeCode docs or the Codex docs, like you're going to It's actually very easy to pick up how these tools technically work. You could do it in a day.
Brian:So that is where I think community but you could also say that, like, maybe the the way that I explain certain courses or show examples of content.
Ian:Yeah. Agent OS, right? Putting it all together. I mean, you could say the same thing about Lara Cast. There's nothing in LaraCast that's not in the Laravel docs because it's just about Laravel, right?
Brian:People do, I think people do value community, not for like the hanging out part of it so much, but it's like the seeing what other people are doing. Sure.
Ian:I'm not saying they don't value it at all, but to me it's like the sugar on top of the value I bought from you as opposed to it is the value I'm buying from you. Do you know what
Justin:I'm saying?
Ian:Like Yes. Especially for, like, teams. Like, if an individual wanders in and buys this, right, that could
Brian:be that motivation has could be to be both. Like, agree that it can't it can't just be about community. I I don't wanna just sell that. And but I also think that I can't just sell courses and not offer some sort of community because everyone for it.
Ian:No. Think you absolutely should have a community aspect to it. I'm saying it shouldn't, but I think I guess to me, like, the big difference too of, like it all ties in with, like, courses. So if we're selling a course, right, you do all the work and you sell it, you get the big bump, Nobody buys again. Right?
Ian:A a big part of that is because, obviously, the course is good and people bought it and they liked it. Right? But the thing is almost always the case is that you're selling course into your existing audience. Those are almost all the customers for it. And then as soon as you've maximized that existing audience, like you have no more customers.
Ian:There is no more customers after you've sold into your audience. Right? Right. So the difference with like a SaaS app or even something like a subscription video course is that that's not true. Like, I'd never sold into my audience ever.
Ian:Right? I don't even have an audience in terms of HubSpot sales. And in outro sales, I won't either. It's gonna be that like people are searching for solutions to certain problems, whether it's an AI search or Google search, and then you will be there. You will either have an ad or you will have content that gets you ranked in front of them.
Ian:Right? Whatever it is, like you have a solution to their problem that's ongoing and that's why you can then sell on an ongoing basis. And you're not limited to only the people who know about Ian Landsman.
Brian:Yeah. But I I I mean okay. A couple of things with that is that, like, number one, on the course side, on the on the course business, like, yes, like you could easily like sort of exhaust your existing current audience. But if you have a funnel where you're constantly being introduced and exposed to new people every day, like people are discovering on YouTube every day or you're running an ads funnel or something like that, any business can have a top of funnel that just produces new leads every day. Right?
Brian:But the other thing about SaaS, what makes selling SaaS actually harder than selling courses or coaching or community is that when you choose to buy a SaaS, you're choosing not to buy all the competitors. If I
Ian:I'm just like The comments are funny to ask. Aaron's yelling in the comments.
Justin:Aaron's saying don't dare stop the show. This is the best part.
Ian:Yeah. We're playing the show. Got to keep it going.
Brian:Like, if you're choosing Helpspot, you're choosing not to use all your competitors. So like, so making that sale is harder. You have to convince customers to either switch away or choose yours over the competitor. Whereas like, people buy five, ten different courses for the same thing, you know?
Ian:I bought a 100 courses. I never watched any of them, but I bought a 100 of them. I've literally never watched a complete course
Justin:ever You in whole
Brian:know, and then also like keeping them as customers, like, you know, it's a battle of keeping them from switching to another competitor when you know?
Justin:I mean, there's lots in there too. Like, I bought a I bought a 100 courses. I never watched any of them. Sounds like a country music lyric. There's yeah.
Justin:What what's motivating people? What motivates people to stay? I think the
Brian:end of the day, every model is great. Like, pros and cons on all
Justin:of them. It can be. It can be. It was it was interesting for me to sit around with Wes and Adam and Steve and Caleb, who've all tried courses. And Wes does have a very good funnel.
Justin:He gets like 400 free sign ups to his free JavaScript. Like, I think it's 400 free a day or something.
Brian:I'm sure
Ian:it is.
Justin:So Yep. Yeah. You can create that. And I I think, Brian, it's worth exploring it because if you hit that pay dirt, like oil is gushing
Brian:It still gives me pause. Like, the volume play still gives me pause. But that being said, I think it I I think that's I think it's better than just a personality driven, like, buy my course, and then the launch goes away and it's over. It's better if there's an ongoing demand that and there's a solid funnel that I know every single month I can drive this many people
Ian:through it.
Justin:Yeah. And that's what happened with Wes. He was one of the first people to do the JavaScript education thing. He did it well. He had this big free course that just has drives tons of top of funnel for him.
Justin:And, you know, if if he doesn't now he's not even really using that funnel that much. But it's possible. Like, you know, it that that does happen. So
Ian:So this is always, to me, like it's like if we we can bring it back to a topic from near the beginning before we even start recording, which is it's kinda like DHH's advice. Right? Like, lot of DHH advice, there is a presumed starting point of become extremely famous. And then if you do that, his advice makes more sense. Like, if you run the largest framework in the world for web development Yeah.
Ian:And then you do the things he says to do, you will make lots of money, like, for sure. But the problem is, like, the advice comes from this presumption of you will become famous first. Right? And so, like, that's where I feel like a lot of the problems with this stuff. Like, Wes Boss is famous.
Ian:Right? And so he has a podcast that has 200,000 listeners or whatever. Right? And he's, like, built up this huge audience. But the problem is building up a huge audience is freaking harder than selling a product that solves a pain point to somebody who is right now in pain and wants to pay money to get rid of the pain.
Ian:Right? So, like, that to me is always the problem with that this kind of, like, build the audience as the main goal is that it's, like, it's extremely hard. And I think it's harder than just finding the right angle for your product in the right market. So, like, again, like, with the everybody wants AI anything. Right?
Ian:And they're, give me solutions to AI stuff. From a manager level, how can my team make this work? From an individual contributor level, how do I make it work? There's all these questions. There's no right answers.
Ian:There's no good guidance. There's all this stuff. There's a lot of people looking for solutions to that problem where you could just be there with a solution, and they don't have to know Brian Castle. And I feel like you shouldn't have that not that you shouldn't do that too, you should. But I think that's still separate from the idea of, like, you could just run Google Ads that are like, hey, AI, AI tutorials.
Ian:Right? Like, boom. That's more keywords, but you
Justin:know what
Brian:I mean? Mhmm. Well, wait
Ian:a minute.
Brian:Are are we talking about selling tutorials or selling a SaaS?
Ian:No. No. We're selling selling your subscription tutorials. Subscription you know, builder methods as a subscription.
Brian:I thought you were saying like it it like it no. Okay. So I don't think that the playbook for selling SaaS should be build your personal audience so that you can sell the SaaS. I think audience is more geared for selling courses, tutorials, community. But the idea of like just creating a perfect solution to a problem that businesses have, if you have zero reach, zero distribution, even if that pain point exists, you still have to figure out how to get in front of those people at the time that they have the problem and have the sales cycle that gets them to switch off the competitors.
Brian:I'm talking about SaaS here. So that is what's so much harder in 2025. Like the playbook of just run Google Ads or as people are searching in Google for SEO for all these problems, like that is extremely overcrowded now and going away. So starting up in 2025, that's why my personal stance on it is that like you can have a good solution to a problem. Like, I'm building this newsletter lab thing.
Brian:Like, I think it's a pretty good solution. I don't I don't expect to get a lot of customers on it because I'm not gonna reach many you know, like, I don't I don't have a funnel to do that Yeah. Out of the gate. Yeah.
Ian:I mean, Google's Google's revenue last year was $307,000,000,000. Actually, it was 2023. So, like, is it going away? You know? I don't know.
Ian:Like, it's gonna be less. No. It's not going down. I mean, it's going up. So I don't know.
Ian:It's kinda weird. Like, organic traffic in general
Brian:is going down. Even if it's Organic
Ian:traffic is trashed, of course. Organic traffic's gone.
Brian:But even if it's not, it's extremely competitive. So if you are a new player with no traction yet, even if you have a great solution to an existing problem, how are you gonna get on page one? You
Ian:know? You're gonna pay money.
Brian:I'm not saying it's a dead end. I'm just saying it's a really long game. Right?
Ian:Yeah. I think there there's more I think the, like, days of, like, Google is going to give me a 100% of the value, right, of this transaction are gone. Right? Like, the because, like, organ your organic links on Google are, like, literally three pages down. Right?
Ian:There's, like, the AI summary
Brian:There's the ads.
Ian:And there's ads. And there's a box, and there's a map, and there's a right? So, like, yeah, like, okay, that's that's been hurting and still hurting for sure. But I don't know about the ads. Like, I feel like I feel like the ads I mean, while OpenAI doesn't include ads, Google is gonna be happy to include ads in their AI summaries.
Ian:Right? And so I don't know. I just think it's not gonna be as profitable as it was because it used to be you could just rank for one, two, or three, and you just got literally free money after that. And that's definitely gone. But kind of like, who cares?
Ian:Like, I have to pay 80% again, as a subscription, right, I can pay a 150% of first year revenue. And Yep. It's still super profitable. Right? So, you know, and Google knows that and their algorithms all know that and they've got it all dialed in.
Ian:Right? So it's it's not
Brian:Right. But you you can fund that. It start can it like, then then it's a question of like, if you're SaaS, like, yes. Like, how do you start from zero? How do you fund it?
Brian:Do you do you go the investment route? Do you do you have to have a big savings built or some some
Ian:cash Like flow at Do you go I mean, there's always like, I think it's I think part of the answer is always more work. Right? Like, yes. Like, for me, even for me, to go be number one page one, link one, help desk software, $150 a click. So even for me, I can't do a $150 a click.
Ian:Like Right. Not gonna happen. A click. Yeah. A click.
Ian:So not a conversion. A click. Which I don't even understand how Zendesk and these guys are paying that because, like, isn't there fraud and all this stuff? Whatever. Somebody's paying it.
Ian:Right? So fine. But, you know, obviously, as soon as you make it just even slightly different, right, it's like well, now it's $15 a click. Once you add, like, one word in, like, you know, whatever. Email, help
Brian:desk Help desk or universities.
Ian:Right. All that stuff. Right? All the variations. Well, now it's $15 a click or $20 a click, which now I can do it.
Ian:So, you know, so I think it's like it's that kind of stuff and optimizing and all this stuff, blah blah blah. So it's a lot of work. I'm not saying it's not, but that's also what we're signing up for too. Like, that's the deal. Right?
Ian:Like, if it was easy, everybody would do it, but nobody can't do it.
Brian:I that's I really think that the play with SaaS is like use whatever unfair advantage you have. You're already if you've been working in an industry and you have some insight about a problem that nobody else really knows about unless they're an insider and you have contacts in this industry, you know where your first 10 customers can come from, like, that's what you got to be doing.
Justin:Yeah. That's the play with every business is what is what unfair advantage can you, you know, can you bring to the table.
Ian:And that's even the thing with the courses. Right? It's like you have the unfair advantage of an audience. Right? Let's say whether you're Aaron or Brian or Justin, you have some kind of audience.
Ian:Right? 10,000 to a 100,000 people who's in your overall audience. That's a huge unfair advantage. Right? So then it's just like, what are you selling those people?
Ian:Like, selling them a subscription is way better than selling them a one time course.
Justin:Yes.
Ian:Right? So things like that.
Justin:Yeah. I think I think the approach of selling a membership is a good idea. And and this is the thing is, like, early on, like, until you launch it, Brian, that's the unfortunate part is that you don't know until you've launched it and it's out. And then these people are gonna show up. And then you just have to, like, talk to those people and figure out, is there enough people here?
Justin:Is there enough of the right people here? What kind of groups are here? What do what do they all expect? Like, you might just have all indie devs that are using AI for the first time. It's like, okay.
Ian:Yeah.
Justin:Is this a good customer? I have
Brian:a I have a lot of info and response from a lot of surveys, a lot of emails, a lot of conversations. But
Ian:the That you got a 100 people to pull out their wallet and pay $25 for this workshop, I think is unbelievable. Mhmm. You know? I think I I
Brian:think it is too. Was expecting, like, maybe two.
Ian:Right. Exactly. Like so I think that's like yeah. You just gotta start selling selling stuff to these people. They're ready to buy.
Brian:Membership piece, yeah, I always prefer recurring revenue over spiky nonrecurring, but that's not really the main driver behind choosing that model for me. It's more about like, I don't want to have or have to create these one big standalone single topic courses. I think it's better to have in this at least in this space Yeah. To have For sure. A feed of smaller, quicker to consume, but but also from a topic standpoint, being able to jump around and do do a do a couple videos on codex, do a couple videos on Cloud Code, a couple videos on whatever, using AI to build some Tailwind stuff.
Brian:Like, jumping around and then being able to do a Cloud Code specific video today, and then like two months from now, do another one so that it's up to date, rather than like investing all this time in a single course that's gonna go out of date in like two months this space.
Ian:Yeah. For sure. Mean, the beauty
Brian:of from SaaS a content and product standpoint, I think it fits that membership LaraCath's kind of model better.
Ian:You know? And the whole thing with SaaS is it creates practically perfect alignment between the motivations on both sides. Like, you are motivated to keep producing content because the money comes in. It's not stopping. And they are motivated to keep paying you because you are still producing content.
Ian:Right? And if one of those things goes off, then the transaction is dead and they leave or whatever, or you leave and they stop paying and whatever. But, like, there is perfect alignment versus the other models where there's actually not alignment. There's no motive. It's like all every course is like ongoing updates.
Ian:But, like, what is the actual motivation for ongoing updates if you're never getting paid again? Right? Like, it's very low. Yeah. So that's where the SaaS of you know, the memberships, ongoing subscription, you know, is very beneficial to both parties.
Justin:And the great thing is we could all be wrong. Like, people could show up, and they could just be like, we are just paying to be in this Discord. And it's it's it's because Brian is cultivating this thing and bringing all these people together.
Ian:I mean,
Justin:that would be amazing. It's like the That's true. It's like the
Brian:I think if I
Justin:Mensa or something. Is
Ian:I mean, what are the I mean, Justin, you had a network like that. Right? Wasn't, like, Mega Maker basically that?
Brian:That's still gone.
Justin:Still going. Yeah.
Ian:Still going. Yeah. Do people pay for that, or is it free?
Justin:It's free. Right? Pay one time. Yeah.
Ian:Two it's Oh, one time.
Justin:Lifetime. Yeah. It started off as a membership. But
Brian:Do you get new members?
Justin:Yeah. Yeah. We still get new members. Yeah. Alright.
Justin:I think we gotta wind down. We've done a Herculean
Ian:Only been two hours.
Justin:Two hours. Although there's some people just showing up here. Something People.
Ian:They're they're ready for another two hours.
Justin:Because I I'm starting to hear Ian lose his voice. He's getting conference voice already just
Ian:for I know. I know. I've been talking all day. It's unbelievable.
Justin:Well, I wanna think
Brian:Well, to get him
Ian:going on DHH. That that's a Oh, dude. We didn't even get to
Justin:talk about the the the DHH
Ian:to take my victory lap, but I was on your podcast and predicting Oh, we haven't even talked about it.
Brian:We're gonna
Justin:talk I about know. That that is
Ian:Oh, man.
Justin:But even then, you know, you can we can have all sorts of critiques, everything. DHH is doing just fine. You
Ian:know? He'll be okay. He's not starving. He's get his latest race car. So He's got he's got he's got he bought a new $300,000,000 race car.
Ian:This is
Justin:the point of the livestream where we we we need to have a pay per view for the for the the you know, it's like After hours. It's like after you want the after hours DHH talk? That takes yeah.
Ian:Yeah. It's $10. $10. Pony up the cash, people.
Justin:Alright. Well, thanks, Ian, for being here. It's great to have you on. We'll have to have you back I think this one we touched on so many things that affect so many people. So I think we're gonna get a lot of comments on this.
Justin:We might have to have a follow-up discussion.
Ian:Cool.
Justin:And thanks to everyone who showed up live in the chat as always. Great to see some new faces in there. We got Beau just showed up and who CMAQ, which is just a bunch of acronyms. But, yeah, great to see Pascal.
Ian:Look at Bo is a Builder Methods customer. He's he's paid his $25.
Brian:Oh, yeah. There's there's bunch of familiar
Ian:faces in here. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah.
Justin:That's the real time feedback. Alright, everyone. Thanks again for sticking with us. We had the most concurrent viewers and for the longest. They're still still with us.
Brian:This is a can we see the numbers, baby? Where do we see the actual numbers on this?
Justin:That's in that's here. I mean, it's not
Ian:I feel
Justin:so old.
Ian:It's not crazy. 50,000? A 100,000?
Justin:No. There's people here the whole time.
Brian:We're we're breaking the Internet here.
Ian:We're breaking the Internet.
Justin:Is this is Taylor Swift
Ian:gone down. It's too much. You you AWS East is offline from us here. Yeah.
Justin:Alright, everyone. Talk to you later. Bye.
Ian:Later. Thanks, guys. Thanks for having me.