Welcome to the panel where two bootstrappers talk about building a better life and a better business. I'm Justin Jackson, the cofounder of transistor.fm.
Brian Casel:And I'm Brian Castle. I am creating things over at buildermethods.com.
Justin Jackson:Well, Chris will probably put this in the audio version too, but we did we we have a little app that I vibe coded right before we started, which just shows we planned out the episode, all of our segments. Today, we're gonna talk about the Transistor Retreat, Builder Methods revenue, maybe a postmortem on that episode I did with John on Build Your SaaS, Agent OS competitors and hiring. We've allotted some time for each one. Right now, we're in the introduction section, and we've got eight minutes left.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And I just wanna say, like, Justin sort of looks just, like, sprung on me that, like, you know, you've you've vibe coded this little app Yeah. To manage these segments. We're both looking at a timer. I'm I'm getting very stressed out about this timer happening right now.
Brian Casel:But but, yeah, this should be fun. I I feel very unprepared, but here we go.
Justin Jackson:I mean, I like it. I like I like that. I I mean, this probably doesn't fit with your form of planning as much as mine, but I love they'll just like quickly it's like, okay. Hey. Let's what are we gonna talk about?
Justin Jackson:Give it a time.
Brian Casel:I I mean, as I said, like, I I would like to at least try some form of segments. Like, this is cool that you have this now. You know? But and, like, maybe between now and the next episode, we could start to, like, throw in just random ideas. Like, oh, that would be good to talk about for ten minutes.
Justin Jackson:You know? You brought up a good idea, which is about this idea of having recurring segments as well. That's almost like another thing on top of this. You know?
Brian Casel:Yeah. And I feel like there's always a bunch of stuff that comes up throughout the week that I'll forget about by the time we get to Thursday. Mhmm. But if I can if I can just chuck it into a card or something Yeah. And then, oh, what was that thing?
Justin Jackson:You know? Yeah. Then it's going. Alright. Well, let's move to the next segment.
Justin Jackson:We'll see if this works. So this should just move us to the next thing on our list.
Brian Casel:Oh, it did. Hey, it works. So All right. So, yeah, transistor retreat. So when did you get back?
Justin Jackson:We just got back on That's a good question. Feels like we The thing is we did the retreat from like Sunday to a Friday. But then Helen, Michael, and I stayed an extra three days to go to a podcast conference in Calgary. So the the idea for this year was we'd get the whole team to fly into Calgary, and then we would drive to Banff, Canmore. We stayed in Canmore.
Brian Casel:That looks amazing, by the way. Like, we love going to national parks, and that's been like, I would love to get up to Canada and and check out Banned. Dude. The photos and stuff that I've seen just look incredible.
Justin Jackson:It was so fun.
Brian Casel:What I'm always curious about with company retreats, and I'm always this is something I'm always, like, very jealous of of, like, fellow Bootstrapper friends who have these, like, small companies with a small team with, you know, revenue that a staff that that that that supports the idea of getting everyone together for for these retreats, you know, once or twice or more a year. Yeah. So what I'm always curious about is, like, what is the structure? How do you plan these things? What have you learned, like, works well or doesn't work well in terms of just agenda, if you will?
Justin Jackson:Let me I'll bring it all in, man. I'll bring it all in. Yeah. It was really fun. So John missed last year's retreat in San Francisco.
Justin Jackson:So we we had hired Michael Michael Green, who's here in a bright pink sweater. He's always visible in every photo. But but John and Michael had never met. We had never had all of the team together, all six of us in one place.
Brian Casel:That's cool.
Justin Jackson:So that was the big goal. It was also I'm from Alberta. It's my home province. And it was just it was I've always kind of wanted the team to come and see the Rockies and Banff and Lake Louise and Canmore. They're beautiful places that I grew up going to when I was a kid.
Justin Jackson:They're kind of world renowned, like Helen on our team, who's from The UK, really wanted to see Lake Louise. So people had it on their bucket list anyway. And Michael and I actually drove. So we drove through the Rockies to get to Calgary to meet up with the team. And then we all we kind of backtracked back to Canmore.
Brian Casel:Nice. How far is that from where you live?
Justin Jackson:That's about a six hour drive, something like that.
Brian Casel:Okay. Yeah. That's a that's a that's a whole day.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. It was a day. It was a day. But really great too.
Brian Casel:So, like, how what's the balance between hangouts, like outdoor activities versus, like, business chatter or business activities?
Justin Jackson:This is actually really challenging because the you know, some folks on the team are like John really likes to get together and work. Especially when when John and I paired up initially, we would do these founder retreats. But they were really like times for him and I to focus, go heads down, and just like work side by side. And we've tried to replicate that with team retreats. And we realized it's just it's just really hard to get work done.
Justin Jackson:Partly because we're always somewhere cool. And you want to get out. You don't want be inside all the time. Secondly, because you're basically making up for lost time. Yeah.
Justin Jackson:It's like this is our only time to get together. And so we need to prioritize relationships, fun, experiences, all that stuff.
Brian Casel:I yeah. That's how I would think of it. Like, that to me seems to be the the most business value that you can get here is is the hangout and the relationship building. Yeah. And a lot of that can happen like through activities too, like hiking or whatever.
Brian Casel:But like like also, like if I were a part of this company, like I wouldn't get any work done, even if we're supposed to be working right now. Yeah. Like, I I I when I work, I need to be alone in my studio. Like,
Justin Jackson:I Yes.
Brian Casel:I'm not like a unless we're really, like, collaborating on something together. But, yeah, to me, it would be more about the FaceTime and Hangouts. And and, like, I feel like I'm I'm curious to know about, are there any are there any business conversation activities that you get to do because you're in person? Like, whatever, like strategic planning, vision for the year, whatever, that that kind of stuff?
Justin Jackson:Yeah. So I really actually liked how we did it this year, which was, you know, first day, everybody kind of gets up for breakfast. We have breakfast together. We drove out to Banff. We did a bunch of sightseeing in Banff.
Justin Jackson:That's all these photos right here. We just walked around, saw these incredible falls, took a nice photo. Now, Jason got sick right about this point, so we're really thankful that we had we had at least one nice team photo. But there we are in Banff. Yeah.
Justin Jackson:So that was the first day. It was just kind of exploring Banff, get into Canmore. We sit at this really cool place that was right on the Main Strip in Canmore. And so we were like, literally, you would walk out our front door. Here's a here's a photo here.
Justin Jackson:Nice. So front deck, back deck, and then this is Main Street out the front the front door here. And you want to go eat? It's right out there. There's like 10 restaurants.
Justin Jackson:You want to go for beers? There's like six pubs. That part was so, so fun.
Brian Casel:That's awesome.
Justin Jackson:The second day was all about this is, I think, the part that other teams should copy because we wanted to do something together. But, like, working and finding work time and all that. So what I did is, by this point, Jason's sick, which is really unfortunate. So he's in his room suffering. But I broke the remaining people into teams of two.
Justin Jackson:So John and Michael went off in one area. Helen and Josh went off in one area. And we basically just explore I asked them to explore what it was like to sign up as a new user in the app and then go through the whole process all the way to publishing your first episode and to pay special attention on what it was like to create an episode as a first time user. So
Brian Casel:I like how it's two different teams doing the same thing.
Justin Jackson:Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And it this part was really fun. So if Jason had been around, I would have I would have had a partner as well.
Justin Jackson:But just to see folks yeah. Here's, you know, Josh and Helen are starting to discuss. They ended up doing a whole it was really fun to see how the different teams did things. Like, they actually created a whole slideshow and recorded an m p three. Like, they recorded their own trailer episode.
Justin Jackson:Then we got And to
Brian Casel:get identify, Did like, common friction points? Mhmm.
Justin Jackson:So basically, we all got after probably two hours, this was two to three hours in the morning. So I asked them to, like, actually explore it. What do you notice about the process as a creator? How could this process be improved? How can we improve that first run experience getting to that magical experience when you get to publish an episode?
Justin Jackson:And then using no code, drawings, illustrations, whatever, put together some sort of demo or list of ideas on how we could improve this process. So how can we improve the user experience of signing up for Transistor and publishing your first episode? And I said, you could also zoom in on just the episode creation page if that's what you want to do. Then in after lunch, we all came back and sat around in you know, by the TV and had each team present on what they found. And then we discussed it.
Justin Jackson:And this was so useful. Just to have, I think, first of all, people team up and get to work on something together. Second of all, to put themselves back in the position of being a creator, trying to inhabit that space of what it's like to be a new podcaster. And you're just coming. You have no idea when you're looking at a screen.
Justin Jackson:You have no idea what's coming next. So every single thing that they have to make a decision on, there's anxiety. They're like, am I going to get to come back to this? Do I get to Is this permanent? Yeah.
Justin Jackson:So we got to talk through all of those issues. Really think about how to improve this process.
Brian Casel:I think that is by far the hardest thing from a product standpoint. Even if you're scratching your own itch with your original product idea, once you have a lot of users and once you've been at it for a bunch of years,
Justin Jackson:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:It's it's so weird how, like, the closer you are to your to your product, like, the farther away you get from what it's actually like to use it.
Justin Jackson:And so we spend a lot of time on the episode creation page. First of all, this page has just gotten longer. It's gotten more complicated. For a new user, there's things that, like, don't make sense. Mhmm.
Justin Jackson:Things like author and keywords have actually, I think, been deprecated by Apple Podcasts, so we don't really need them anymore. There's just so many ways we can improve this page. And the funny thing is we we might not actually even get to a lot of those things for a while. We have a big list of things we need to do. A whole like UX UI revamp is is especially some of these ideas were so good, especially for that first user experience, like having a progress bar at the bottom of the screen that takes you through each phase of what you're doing so people can see how much progress they're making, but also where they're going to get to.
Justin Jackson:These are all great ideas. Even if we don't get to implement them soon, it still felt worth doing. It was like
Brian Casel:Yeah. That seems like the kind of thing like again, like, yeah, even if it's not gonna be an actual project that you ship, like, next month, it's still just the experience. It's like the memory of like what it was like to be in the shoes of a first time customer. Like that's gonna stick with everyone on all the different projects that they work on the rest of the year. Right?
Brian Casel:Like, or when they're talking to someone on customer support, like they're gonna have that extra level of empathy for what it's like, you know?
Justin Jackson:That's right. Yeah. So, really enjoyed this part. Yeah, it was fun to see how the different, like, Michael and John had a very different approach to Helen and Josh. It was it was just fun to have that kind of that kind of brainstorming collaboration.
Justin Jackson:Everyone felt like it was it was worth doing.
Brian Casel:Do you do any sort of, like, maybe, like, you and John sharing information with the team about your vision going forward? Like like topics or strategy planning stuff that, like, rest of the team just might not be in the loop on most of the time? Anything like that?
Justin Jackson:Let me go back here. And so the other thing that John and I did this year that I think we did better than past years is we really tried to set, like, what was going on with us and our intentions and our focus before the retreat. We met three or four times, and that was really helpful. So that was the first day, though. That that was basically as as much work as you're gonna get done on a retreat, I found.
Justin Jackson:Like that that's it. Actually, Chris Enns, the editor of this very podcast Mhmm. While he was editing I can't remember if it's this show or Build Your Sass. He said, hey, would it be okay if I came and just, like, said hi to you guys? Like, he lives in Saskatoon.
Justin Jackson:It's about a seven hour drive. Dude, come and stay with us. We have an extra bedroom. So he came and hung out with us. He arrived kind of around this time.
Justin Jackson:And here's all of us kind of hanging out and talking. Sweet. So that was fun. The next day, had in the morning, we booked a photoshoot for the team. So we we've we started this in Nashville.
Justin Jackson:I really liked it. You can hire a professional photographer. Other people on the team like it depending they like it high or low depending on what but it has a few advantages. One, you just always have someone to take a bunch of photos of you. You get a bunch of new headshots.
Justin Jackson:You get a bunch of new photos of the photos of the team.
Brian Casel:Was this that so that photo that you that you sent me Mhmm. Was that was that from the photographer?
Justin Jackson:Yeah. Yeah. Thought
Brian Casel:so. I was like, I I that was one of the things I was wondering about. So you sent me this photo, you know, like, week ago of your team, like and you're all, like, laughing at the table at this breakfast restaurant or something. And I was like, that either looks staged or AI generated or, like, it's too perfect. It looks like it's from some, like, catalog for a for, like, a college campus or something.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. Yeah. This is this is one of those photos too.
Brian Casel:And I was wondering, who is taking that photo? The
Justin Jackson:the other reason I like it I mean, it's nice to get a bunch of photos of the team. And, unfortunately, Jason's not in this one because he he managed to be there for the the morning photo shoot, but then he was just not feeling very well. That's the photographer there. What I like about it is that you get this other person that kind of comes into the team, and they kind of disrupt things. They they're setting up shots.
Justin Jackson:They're like they've got all sorts of tricks to get you to respond to the camera. At one point, she got John to throw a pancake at her. There's all sorts of hilarious photos of oh, yeah. This one here of she's like, wrestle each other. So we're
Brian Casel:John looks like a big dude.
Justin Jackson:He I mean, if you actually see us where's us side by side? He he's him and I, he's slightly taller than
Brian Casel:me. Okay.
Justin Jackson:He's like five nine, I think.
Brian Casel:That's always the weirdest thing with Internet friends. You never know how tall people are.
Justin Jackson:I mean, the first time I met Helen, I think Helen is five ten or something like that. Like, what is going on?
Brian Casel:These photos. Alright. We want you all to just play in the water. Well,
Justin Jackson:but this is what I'm talking about. You set up the opportunity for this. So this was like just happened. We were out in the water and we were we were taking photos around this lake. And then Michael goes out and then I go out and then Josh goes out.
Justin Jackson:And now we're just playing, and she's getting us to do stuff like run towards her. She's getting us to jump up in the air. And it just creates more opportunities for play. And we went to this. We every time we've done this, well, we've only done it twice, but the photographer ends up taking us a bunch of cool spots.
Justin Jackson:And so it just becomes another opportunity to do something as a team.
Brian Casel:She knows the area.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. It's like a guided tour, basically.
Brian Casel:I'm curious to know, like, like, when you started when did how far out do you plan these retreats? And how often do do you do them once a year or do they more than once? Once
Justin Jackson:a year.
Brian Casel:And like when But when you started planning it, did you have a main goal in mind? Or was there a reason for like, I think we're due for a retreat?
Justin Jackson:No. We have them every year around September. So we've been doing this every single year. Even since John and I were just doing it, the two of us, we found like I get the kids back to school. And then either mid to late September
Brian Casel:That's always a great time weather wise too.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. It's still like, you know, the leaves are just changing color in a lot of places. It was still warm every day. So we do it every September, and we start planning it, like, more seriously, basically six months out. Mhmm.
Justin Jackson:And this year, Helen helped us a lot. She helped do a lot of the the planning. So she she booked the photographer. She helped us book the lodge. We had a big upgrade.
Justin Jackson:Usually, John and I plan everything, and it was just so nice to have someone else on the team help plan it.
Brian Casel:This was one of those things when I was doing audience ops, which at its height grew grew to about 25 people or so. Mhmm. But when I say 25 people, it was like 20 mostly contractors. But it that was a weird team because it was like it was contractors, but it was like everyday contractors who worked there for years. Mhmm.
Brian Casel:So, you know, really walking that line between like, what's a contractor and what's an employee. Then there was always the other thing where which is like, okay, we've got these 25, maybe eight to 10 of them only really work on audience ops stuff like one day a week. And then the other 15 really work on stuff like five days a week. And they're a little bit more core and they're more management. And
Justin Jackson:so Mhmm.
Brian Casel:Like, I always kicked around the idea of doing a retreat for that team. And we've had people all over the world, mostly in The US, some in Europe and stuff. And, like and I never really got it to work where just like logistically, it made sense to bring everyone into one location. Mhmm. Funny enough, the only the only time I did actually was so we had we had like 20, like, I don't know, like 20 people or so in in The US and Europe, and then we had like five people in The Philippines.
Brian Casel:And when I traveled to The Philippines, you know, my my wife has family there, so I go there every, like, three or four years. Yeah. So when I went there on a trip, I got the Philippines team together.
Justin Jackson:Oh, nice.
Brian Casel:And we did, a dinner and stuff. And, like and and it was, like, funny because, like, the basically, like, only people I've ever met in person from the Audience Ops team are the people in The Philippines. And all The US people, I've only met, like, one or two of them.
Justin Jackson:It's crazy. I mean, the the bigger the team, it it definitely gets more difficult. It every time we get together, we do have this moment where we're all sitting around. And I say the same thing every year. It's just like, wow, it is so great for all of us to be together in one place.
Justin Jackson:We don't take this for granted. We're so lucky that we get to do this work, but also that we've managed to all be here in the same place altogether. And also acknowledging it does cost everybody something. Like we have to travel. You know, Helen typically has to travel the furthest from The UK.
Justin Jackson:But, you know, people with kids have to ask their spouse if the their spouse can watch their kid for a week. It is there's a cost to it. And they're also expensive. You know, I I can't remember what this one cost us, but I'm guessing they these things cost us 20 to $30 a year at least.
Brian Casel:Sure. Yeah.
Justin Jackson:And
Brian Casel:Between the lodging and travel and all that.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. We also always feel like, man, it would be nice to do them more often. So it feels like once a year is bare minimum for a remote team. You just need FaceTime. You need relational time.
Justin Jackson:You need to be building experiences together. You need to be knocking into each other in the hallway. You need to have just chance encounters where, you know, somebody's in the hot tub and you go and join them and then you end up having a great conversation. That stuff can only happen when you're in person. So
Brian Casel:Love it.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. It was really helpful. So that day after the photoshoot, the afternoon is kind of when John and I have our fireside chat where we talk about where we're headed, where we're thinking what we're thinking about strategically, where we see the industry, how, you know, we're thinking in terms of, you know, the direction of the company. We talked a little bit about our desire to take some time off this year. Or in the next few
Brian Casel:episode with John, was that recorded before or after?
Justin Jackson:That was recorded before. Yeah. Okay. So, yeah. And then they can ask questions if they want.
Justin Jackson:It's also kind of about, you know, we try to look at, from our perspective, what we see as kind of not working well and what we want to improve.
Brian Casel:Any like big takeaways or or learnings that you were kind of surprised or didn't expect to take away?
Justin Jackson:I think the biggest thing is I talked about this on the episode as well. But leading a team is challenging, especially a small team when there's two co founders. Because basically, for us to set any direction, we first need to figure it out between John and I. If we don't do that intentionally, frequently throughout the year, it just becomes hard. It's like where which direction are we going?
Justin Jackson:So I was glad that John and I had done that before the retreat. And we had at least kind of nailed down. And even the morning of this day, him and I went for one more walk. And it was just like, kind of going back and forth figuring out, okay, what are we going to talk about? What do we both feel is important enough to discuss in this way?
Brian Casel:I'm curious to know, like, what you can share. I'm sure, obviously, there's private stuff. But like
Justin Jackson:I mean, I think one thing is just like any team, we've recognized that we often get excited during these retreats, and we'll come up with a bunch of ideas. But actually implementing those ideas is tricky. So one was just let's set some realistic expectations of what we're gonna accomplish here. The second is we we do want to get more projects across the finish line. And so what is causing us to not do that?
Justin Jackson:And we've decided to implement a weekly product planning session that John, Jason, and I would kind of commit to, to basically getting things shaped up and into our project management software. And then also to, like, track if we're actually getting things across the finish line. Like, how can we keep things going, keep things moving, stay focused, and be ruthless? This was the this was one thing that we really stood up. We need to be ruthless about our priorities.
Justin Jackson:Because there's just not that much capacity. The capacity of a small team is small. And I've always felt like we actually are at peak capacity now in the sense that if we added five more people, I actually don't think we'd be going any faster.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Justin Jackson:I think our size of team is kind of peak capacity unless we decided to grow to 25 or 30 or something. I I think there's
Brian Casel:Yeah. Or or least like the next like the next level isn't one more person. The next level is probably like a doubling or a 2.5 x of your of your team. That's right. And like add and like breaking it up into sub teams and maybe adding a management level at some point.
Brian Casel:Like
Justin Jackson:Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. The thing
Brian Casel:that like, when it comes to shipping and, like, getting things across the the finish line, for me, the way that I track that Mhmm. Is is very simple. It's like how often am I able to make a public announcement of something new?
Justin Jackson:Yes.
Brian Casel:Like, launching a new feature. And so in in, like, the Clarity Flow business, it's like how how long between my next broadcast email that's just like, hey. We just so, like, this week, we launched inner, you know, language translation. And it's been a while since we launched like a bit like something that's launchable. We're we're always shipping little improvements, but it doesn't warrant an an email announcement.
Brian Casel:Yeah. So so like for a SaaS business, it's like features that are big enough that deserve a dedicated email. How long between when I can actually press send on one of those? And then, like, like, now with with building methods, it's like YouTube videos. So I just went I published one yesterday, but but I I had a a gap of, like, over three weeks or so without publishing.
Brian Casel:And and it's like every day that that pain or annoyance just increases by a tick.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. Feel it. You feel like I'm Like I
Brian Casel:published one yesterday, so good. But I know that every day now for the next two or three weeks, if I don't publish something, it's gonna be like, I'm falling behind. Know? Yeah. Urgency.
Justin Jackson:So we set And we also said, let's realistically, what are the priority? What's the short term priority? Short term priority is finishing this basically a way for people to listen to private podcasts in Spotify, which has been requested for a long time. Spotify has a very unique way of doing it. So it requires a lot of custom software.
Justin Jackson:We've been working on that for a while. That's the next goal to get that out. That's the immediate goal. The goal after that is a we'd really like to do a I don't know if I can say who this is with, but there's a integration partner that has been really eager to make us their primary podcast hosting partner. And if we build this integration, I think they would open us up to a bunch new customers.
Justin Jackson:And basically, they don't want to work with anyone else except for us right now. So if we got to take advantage of this or it's going to slip by and it's already been about a year that we've been sitting on it. And then the final big thing for 2026 is video. Is to at least I'm not we're not committing to a full every we're just I want something in beta that we can roll out to people who want to upgrade to a higher price plan that allows people to upload a video, have it distributed to Spotify, have it distributed to YouTube, and then also potentially as a bonus, have it distributed as RSS as an HLS video stream in RSS.
Brian Casel:That's cool.
Justin Jackson:We don't know if we can make we we don't know if we can sell that economically. We don't know feel like there's a lot of demand. But part of our our ruthless prioritization is thinking this has to be a big improvement for existing users and something that new users want. Or this has to have the potential to be a really good bet for getting new users in the door.
Brian Casel:Mhmm. Yeah. It's always that it's always that question with like new features. It's like, is this a conversion feature to bring in new people? Or is this a retention feature to keep our customers happy?
Brian Casel:Right?
Justin Jackson:Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. So we did that. We did a games night, which was really great.
Justin Jackson:Oh, we had a chef come in and cook us a meal. That was really fun. We had a nice space for
Brian Casel:We do that with with Big Snow. And, you know, Brad Tunnar has been has been sort of taking over the the organization of it, the the East Side. And we've had the same chef every year for the last
Justin Jackson:Oh, that's cool.
Brian Casel:Years, and he's incredible. He's from Montreal. He comes down to Vermont. Just incredible, incredible meals. And he he does breakfasts and dinners for the whole week.
Justin Jackson:Oh, that's And That's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. Here's a few shots from from that night. We had, yeah, just a nice just a really nice night.
Justin Jackson:Some of us got dressed up, some of us didn't, but it was fun to just hang out and have like a six course meal. So that basically we had two full days in Canmore. We've just finished our two full days. The next day, we got up early ish. We checked out.
Justin Jackson:And we then went to Lake Moraine and Lake Louise, which is that picturesque. It was so packed. But it's those are those classic photos of Lake Louise you've probably seen that
Brian Casel:are Yep.
Justin Jackson:You know, and now this spot has been ruined by Instagram. It's just it was so packed. The pictures don't do it justice. I think there was like at least a thousand people here. It was so many people.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. It was like those photos of waiting to get up Everest, you know? It was like that up and down the the viewpoint. It was just wild.
Brian Casel:That is a bummer when like these huge tourist spots get like that. Like Yeah. And then, like like, one of my favorite parks, just, like, views wise and everything is, Yosemite. But when you go there, the crowds are just so insane. You know?
Justin Jackson:Yeah. The crowds not always not always super fun. But it was it was really it was still nice to go. It was a lot of driving. We had to get on a tour bus to go to these places.
Justin Jackson:Whenever I look at the photos again, even like, this was a long day. It was a long drive in the bus. We got out there.
Brian Casel:But that's part of it. That's like it's like you're doing a road trip.
Justin Jackson:We're just doing just hanging out. And unfortunately, Jason Jason went home early at this point. He was really not feeling good. But, yeah, we got got a nice photo here at Chateau Lake Louise. And then we drove back to Calgary, stayed in a hotel there, had a nice, really nice dinner in Calgary.
Justin Jackson:And then the following morning, the people who weren't attending this conference left. So that was kind of the whole retreat. That was that was the whole thing.
Brian Casel:So the retreat checkbox is checked until the next one.
Justin Jackson:That's right. Yeah. Another idea we came up with that I thought was really great was we'd like to because John really likes these work sessions. And what I realized is we just need to have sometimes, like some hack weeks where just a few of us go into a spot and say, we're going to work on this one specific thing together and getting it out. And that's the focus of this trip.
Justin Jackson:I think being really deliberate about the focus. Team retreat, it's for hangout time. It's for dinners. It's for, you know, walking around together, enjoying a place together, building memories, connecting. The purpose of these hack weeks, I think, will be we're going to just get some serious work done.
Justin Jackson:So yeah. We'll see.
Brian Casel:Yeah. See, I I always have a hard time picturing any serious work getting done.
Justin Jackson:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:Like in terms like, I would see it as a a an in person retreat environment shift and, like, vibe shift would be a it it would have a slowing effect. Like, I like, me and I feel like other individual contributors would would be faster working alone at home in their studio. Mhmm. But the but the in person stuff is is not only for the relationships and memories and all that, but also, like, more strategic planning, like, especially for like you and John. I'm sure it's like it's a chance to like, we're we're here.
Brian Casel:Let's let's talk big picture.
Justin Jackson:I mean, we've we've done that as a founder retreat before. And I think, yeah, I think that that has a lot of value too. And it's just nice to have these kind of distinct units of here's what this trip is for.
Brian Casel:Cool. Love it. Looks beautiful out there.
Justin Jackson:How are we doing on a timer? This says have we have I only been going six minutes? Is this timer
Brian Casel:No way. I I was thinking that you probably blew past your timer, but I I wasn't gonna call it out.
Justin Jackson:I the is this timer just going really slow?
Brian Casel:I I wonder if the timer is on a loop. I I think we might be on our second or third cycle on that one.
Justin Jackson:No. No. Because after it's finished your time slot, it's supposed to automatically go to the next segment. So
Brian Casel:I'd be surprised if that was only six minutes.
Justin Jackson:Was anyone in chat actually testing timing us?
Brian Casel:I mean, we it's four it's it's ten after four here. We, you know, we must have been going for at least, like, an hour.
Justin Jackson:Alright. Let's move to the next segment. Let's see if this works. Ping. Alright.
Justin Jackson:You're
Brian Casel:on. Alright. Nineteen minutes. Alright. So, yeah, Builder Methods.
Brian Casel:I think I talked about how I was launching so I had the the paid workshop that that happened about two weeks ago. And I sold I ended up selling about a 100 tickets for 25 each. And I think most of those attended Yeah. Pretty good. And then on that day, on the on the workshop is when I opened the doors to Builder Methods Pro,
Justin Jackson:which
Brian Casel:is like the new the new membership offering. I'm thinking of it as like the the flagship product that I'm doing from Builder Methods. Mhmm. And the presentation was okay. So the the normal pricing for Builder Methods Pro is $2.99 a year.
Brian Casel:It's an annual subscription fee to be a member. The first 50 members get are are considered founding members. Yeah. And they get it for, like, what, 34% off. They get it, like, $1.97 a year lifetime.
Justin Jackson:Okay.
Brian Casel:Right? Those 50 seats have all sold out. Oh. And and like 30 of them sold on the on the day or two of the of the workshop. Another 10 later that week, and then a few more the week after.
Brian Casel:So it actually went past 50. So it got up to like 55 and then the coupon expired. As of now, I switched it to, you're no longer a founding member. But it is still sort of early access. You get access to this Discord community.
Brian Casel:I have not started creating any educational material in there. I feel wrong about charging full price for it because it's very far away It's
Justin Jackson:still developing, yeah.
Brian Casel:It's still very much in development. So you do get the same discount for the first year now. Okay. As of today, it's above 60 members. It's like 65 members Okay.
Brian Casel:Or
Justin Jackson:Hold on. Hold on. We gotta pause here. We gotta pause here. Yeah.
Justin Jackson:Okay. So first of all, you did a workshop with about a 100 a 100 people signed up, maybe seventy, eighty showed up at the workshop or something like
Brian Casel:that. Yeah.
Justin Jackson:Wow. Okay. And then, by the way, how did that go?
Brian Casel:That was good. Yeah. My my voice was shot after it. I I was more nervous about tech issues. I was running Zoom and it's just been a really long time since I've done a live workshop presentation.
Brian Casel:Because I have to also show slides and manage a chat and all just myself. I don't have a producer with me or anything like that. But all that went smooth. I did a bunch of test runs beforehand, and that was fine.
Justin Jackson:Pascal said Brian did well. Cool.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Thank you, Pascal. So I think that was good. I spent a lot of time on the slide deck, which is good because now that's like a template for future workshops. I'll tweak slides and stuff, but the workshop What went
Justin Jackson:was the vibe? Like were people asking questions? Was there Yeah.
Brian Casel:A lot of questions. Okay. And collected a lot of questions beforehand. So I had a I had a lot to work off of. But then, yeah, I had a ton of questions on it.
Brian Casel:A lot of questions about Agent OS.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. Wow. That's so valuable, Brian. Like, you just got a supercharged injection of customer feedback research desires. It's all kind of in there.
Justin Jackson:Was there anything big that you noticed, like, in the discussion?
Brian Casel:It's hard to tell because I I think one of the challenges is that they're so varied. Like, the the people are coming from different people are resonating with this general topic, but they're resonating with it in different ways. There's the individual developers, there's the team leaders, there's the nontechnical trying to go beyond vibe coding and get a little bit more serious. And it's just like everything in between. And then there's a big contingent of people who are pretty much just here for Agent OS.
Brian Casel:Like access to the creator of Agent OS, access to support to ask questions for it. Yeah. But then there's also just people who are like, they might be interested in Agent OS, but they just want to be up on the topic of building with AI.
Justin Jackson:Okay.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I mean, also think that like, okay, I always have a pessimistic view. I think like a healthy pessimism about things.
Justin Jackson:Is that a show title? A healthy pessimism?
Brian Casel:Well, do think that there was some pent up demand for something like this. Right? Like I've been building up the email list and I'm continuing to build it up. Like people come into it every day. But this was the very first workshop.
Brian Casel:So I think that like anyone who was waiting for some kind of workshop is gonna buy the first one. The question is like, when I do a second one, maybe in October or something like, what are the numbers gonna be on that? Are there gonna be people who just buy access to both or repeat it? Of course, if you're a member now, if you're in Pro, that's one of the benefits. You get free access to future workshops.
Brian Casel:Yeah. But for non members, you would pay for a ticket. So the real question going forward from a funnel standpoint is like, how can I get new people?
Justin Jackson:Yeah. I mean, I know
Brian Casel:how it's YouTube into the email list. And hopefully you've discovered me for the first time since my last workshop. So my next one is going be the first one you see for you. Right?
Justin Jackson:Yeah.
Brian Casel:And so that's that's gonna be the the repeatable ongoing funnel, if you will.
Justin Jackson:You know, I always I loved this. I we actually built a version of this as a side project. I love this idea of progress bars. And I love this idea of like a waiting list where it grows until it gets to a certain number and then something happens. So it's like, hey, everybody, join my email list.
Justin Jackson:When it gets to when the waiting list gets to 500 people, I will announce the next workshop and open it up again. And then there's this, like, idea of, like, we're just trying to build this up. And then once it gets here, that's an indicator that, okay, now we can run the workshop again.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I like that. And also, like, again, like that, like, what is it that people are buying? What's what is convincing them to buy now rather
Justin Jackson:than
Brian Casel:just hold out? And I was a little bit afraid that like, okay, it was the it was the founding member deal. And once I sell through those 50 spots, I'm not gonna sell anymore. But I've been, you know, pleasantly seeing that like in the last couple days and today and yesterday, like people are still buying the pro membership. Wow.
Brian Casel:I'm still offering that discount for year one now. It's just you don't get it for life anymore.
Justin Jackson:Okay. Let's talk about let's talk about that part. You've sold 60 of these annual membership subscriptions?
Brian Casel:Annual subscriptions. Yep.
Justin Jackson:I mean, how does that land for you?
Brian Casel:That's pretty it's above 1 k MRR now, technically, Wow. On the on the Stripe dashboard.
Justin Jackson:Do we have confetti in here? Don't feel good.
Brian Casel:It feels good. It's It's interesting because it's like there there are more customers than that on Clarity Flow, but not a lot more.
Justin Jackson:Yeah.
Brian Casel:And this and this grew to to that number in a week. You know? So that's that's an interesting tidbit.
Justin Jackson:How did that how did that land for you? How did that feel to have that? How does it how does it resonating for you right now?
Brian Casel:It feels good. Like, I'm definitely I'm I'm I'm definitely pretty thrilled with what I'm seeing. It's it's not a viable business that can support my full income yet, of course. But but it has the it it gives me the confidence to keep pushing, to keep going. Yeah.
Brian Casel:Like, I'm on the right track. I'm onto something here. So that's that's reassuring. Yeah. But at the same time, if I'm honest, like, the thing that I get stressed out now, it's like a new kind of stress.
Brian Casel:I'm always stressed about something. So the new stress now is it's less about So I did a private podcast on my thing talking about this, but before launch, before you get your first paying customers, of the stress is like open questions. Like, should I price it at this? Or should I sell this type of product versus that type of product? Or who is my target customer?
Brian Casel:Or how am I going to market this? Right? Like they're all
Justin Jackson:Is anybody gonna show up? All that stuff.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Is this even gonna work? So all these what ifs, right? And so that can be stressful in itself. Okay.
Brian Casel:So now we get into revenue land, and now we have paying customers. There's activity. We have members. So now it's about projects and priorities and things to ship. Were talking about like
Justin Jackson:Yeah.
Brian Casel:So now it's just the competing Every day there's a competing priority. And there are big, big problems that have to be solved. And some of them are sort of urgent and time sensitive.
Justin Jackson:Give me an example. What's an urgent project?
Brian Casel:Well, right now, the things that are on my mind, today, if it was possible to clone myself three, four, five times, I would wanna be working on all these things, which is shipping Agent OS two point o, shipping or creating some new content just for the members, like educational content. I did do a behind the scenes video last week to give them, like, a preview of Agent OS to give them something new. And I'm and I'm in the Discord. I've got the Discord going. But but I haven't actually created any, like, official training material that you get with Builder Methods Pro.
Brian Casel:Mhmm. Okay. So so then there's other things going on. Like YouTube has to keep going. Like that that train is the funnel.
Brian Casel:That is the top of funnel. So I said I I haven't published something in three weeks. I finally spent two days yesterday, this week, recording and editing myself the next video. And I released that yesterday, which means those are like two full days that I couldn't work on anything else. Right?
Brian Casel:Yeah. And then and then I've been hiring I've been looking to hire a video editor to help me with that video production process. I I did interview two people, and the next step is to give them test projects, test videos, but I still need to record those test videos to give them. Right? Yeah.
Brian Casel:So there's that. I feel like there's still other stuff on the list too. There's other stuff that would come later, which is optimizing the email funnels, promoting the next workshop, whatever that's gonna be. I was talking about that newsletter lab tool. That has been on pause essentially because Agent OS two point zero and getting revenue into this.
Brian Casel:Yeah. So I did start doing the weekly newsletter, but I'm doing it basically manually right now. But I still want to finish that project because I still think it's going to optimize, improve my workflow. Yeah. But that's not as urgent, would say.
Brian Casel:Yeah. But one of the I would say the big urgent thing that actively deep in right now is Agent OS two point zero. And that might seem like, well, just keep pushing on one point zero and two point zero will come along. But I see it more as an urgent thing because two point zero changes everything in terms of the architecture of this product. And for good reason, I would say.
Brian Casel:It makes it much, much better at the promise of what Agent OS does. Much more reliable. It leverages sub agents. It has a mode for non. It's also more customizable for Teams.
Justin Jackson:Okay.
Brian Casel:Oh, that's the other thing. I had another sales call with a very large team, like a 500 plus engineer team. And they're expecting a proposal from me. I have to do that at some point for for like a like a private workshop engagement with them on AI.
Justin Jackson:So what's so funny about all this is there's this this mix of feelings, which I know so well, which is on one hand, it's like that vulnerability you have before you launch something is is one of the most vulnerable places you can be, which is I'm about to launch this thing. If nobody shows up, that will just be devastating. You know? And so that that alone, a lot of people have a hard time getting over that threshold. Right?
Justin Jackson:It's like that is too much. But then you get over that threshold. And then there's all these subsequent thoughts. Like, obviously, one thought is, can I do that again? Like, sure, that got a good response.
Justin Jackson:But can I do that again?
Brian Casel:You know, I hear what you're saying. I think you're probably right that most people sort of stress over like, anyone going to buy this? Am I going to even get one customer? That actually doesn't bother me too much. I don't get hung up on that kind of thing.
Brian Casel:Sometimes I wish something would totally flop because it would It's be a clear like, okay, I can just
Justin Jackson:move on. Totally agree.
Brian Casel:You know what actually does get to me in a way that might be a little bit unhealthy? Is now that I have this thing out in the world, especially Agent OS, but also, like, Builder Methods Pro now and and the YouTube channel, there's a lot of inbound. Every single day, I'm getting inbound. And that comes in the form of support questions, feature requests, integration requests, requests for YouTube content, questions on my YouTube channel. I don't want those to go unanswered.
Brian Casel:Mhmm. Now I have paying members in a Discord and there's inbound over there. And then of course, just my email inbox. And then after like business leads, like teams of 500 engineers that want to hire me to do an AI workshop. So it's always a question of anyone who's ever worked with me before knows that I'm extremely responsive.
Brian Casel:I don't let I generally try not to let emails go unanswered. Yeah. Or any message go unanswered. Right? Yeah.
Brian Casel:But I am in a position now where I cannot answer everything.
Justin Jackson:There's too much.
Brian Casel:Like, there's just no physical way that I can like, I there there's just a lot of messages that I receive that my default has to be like, I have to just ghost this one. I can't actually reply. And I that doesn't sit well with me. I don't like that.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. Managing inbound. You know, the the funny thing is that for Transistor, so much of our inbound came through our live chat app and our support email. And I definitely felt it. I mean, those first two years, first three years, I really felt it.
Justin Jackson:And it wasn't until we hired Michael, and that's only been about a year in the North American time zone. So all of a sudden, all that inbound, somebody else is taking care of it for me. And man, you really do feel it. Once once you don't have Once someone else is managing that channel, I still get inbound. But now it just feels like it's so much more manageable.
Justin Jackson:But when you're just getting waterboarded with messages
Brian Casel:Totally. And by the way, I still have at least 20% of my time, there's Clarity Flow. And most of that is Clarity Flow support that comes to my inbox. And then I've got a client who I have to like deliver something So every it's like, it's all this. And so, I tend to prioritize paying customers, obviously.
Brian Casel:Like if you're a paying customer and especially if you're a client or if you're a lead for becoming a big client, I'm obviously going to respond to your email. Especially with like
Justin Jackson:And you could message that too. You could indicate that with some sort of communication or message to say, folks in Builder Methods Pro get my first attention or whatever.
Brian Casel:That's like what I have on the sales page. It's it's the official support channel for Agent OS. You gotta be a member in there. But I also see release, like getting to the point where I could release Agent OS two point zero as a a big relief to some of that. Because right now, every single day, I'm answering questions by saying, oh, that's gonna be fixed in two point o.
Brian Casel:That that thing you're asking about? Yeah, that's totally solved in two point o. Don't worry that's coming in two point o. Like, I it's it's it's getting to the point where it's annoying me to keep saying that.
Justin Jackson:Yeah.
Brian Casel:And and what that what I need is focused multiple hours of blocks of quiet time to work on it. You know? I mean,
Justin Jackson:Caleb Porzio, it sounds like the way he deals with this is now he has somebody help him with the inbound. And Yeah. Yeah. It seems like whenever people get to from the people I've talked to, and I mean, was my experience with Transistor as well. It's just those first years is just shitty because you are.
Justin Jackson:You're just being overwhelmed. You're getting pulled in a million different directions. You can't answer everything. And I think this is even more true for open source projects. It's just hell.
Justin Jackson:And then eventually, the business is at a point where you can have someone else deal with the fire hose. That's their job. And then it gives you space to do this other thing.
Brian Casel:And also what I try to do and this, you know, this is obviously like a creator led and and like audience based type of business. So there's always gonna be this element of like just inbound comments and questions coming in. Right?
Justin Jackson:Like, I
Brian Casel:I understand that. But the I think the thing that I try to stay focused on to to overcome it is that like what I put out there publicly on like, in YouTube videos or the documentation around AgentOS, I try to put as much effort and clarity as I possibly can into that stuff. So that, like, even if you can't get a direct answer from me all the time, like, the stuff that I put out there on, you know, in public Yeah. Is quality and it's also what really frustrates me, especially with, like, open source projects, but any even paid products. What really frustrates me is when the company does not put effort into their self serve documentation.
Brian Casel:Guys, I don't want to bug you with support questions. So just put an extra hour or two into making your docs best in class. It's one of the things I've always admired so much about Atom and Tailwind is I think it's like the gold standard of docs. It's just like Like 99% of questions are found, are answered in those docs, if you're willing to just read them. And yeah.
Brian Casel:So that's that's something that I really care about. Think it's really important. And and look, it it's easier than like, technical docs, it is easier than ever to get them done right. Like, I've started having AI build them and, like, I'll I'll put the doc drafts in the code base for Agent OS. Even though it'll end up being on the site as on like a separate website, I'm I'm putting them in the code base.
Brian Casel:So when I'm working with Cloud Code to build the thing, it can also know what it's built, so then update the docs.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. That that would be a cool workshop actually. How to get AI to help you write docs. That would be, I think, pretty popular. Yeah, man.
Justin Jackson:Wow. Well, congrats on getting 60 paying members. That just seems like a great start. I mean
Brian Casel:Yeah. It's it's something.
Justin Jackson:That's that's awesome.
Brian Casel:I am still interested in the Teams thing. I'm gonna I know I'm gonna continue to have inbound. I I had a great call with these They're they're a SaaS company and and a pretty well known one and pretty huge. They've got a team of 500. And and it's so interesting to me to to talk to these team leaders and CEOs and CTOs because so many teams are struggling with the exact same things.
Justin Jackson:Interesting.
Brian Casel:And even like a team of 20 is having the same challenges that a team of 500 is having right now.
Justin Jackson:Dude, this is what I love about customer research and customer development and taking those calls. It feels like you get this secret insight into a problem that nobody else has. And so you're just sitting on that knowledge right now. You gotta figure out what to do with it. But
Brian Casel:I have one of the insights that I'm and and and this even came up on the call because the package that I'm putting together for teams who who want to, like, have, like, a a private consultation is it's a private workshop. Like, I'll I'll put on a private workshop for your team plus, like, an async well, there would be, a coaching session for the leadership team. You get a private workshop and then an async one or two week window where anyone on your team, after they've watched the workshop, they can submit a question to pick my brain about about it. And the workshop is largely built around, like, implementing AgentOS with your team and some other best practices. Right?
Brian Casel:But one of the patterns that I've found in talking to teams is that, like the big challenge is that they all struggle to get their teams to adopt AI. And there's a lot of grumbling and there's a lot like, I even heard them say like, most people on their team are still going to Google and Stack Overflow. That blew my mind. I was like, how are you going to Stack Overflow anymore? I haven't touched it in two years.
Brian Casel:And I think that there are a lot of, especially employees at companies, developer employees, who just don't have the time or bandwidth to really even play with Cloud Code or Cursor or Codecs or any of these. Let alone like spec driven development or agent OS or anything like that. But then there's like 10% am I five, four, three, two just want to see if
Justin Jackson:it goes over. Timer.
Brian Casel:Yes. Oh, okay. All right. All right. You can cut me off.
Justin Jackson:Oh man, that was amazing.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Anyway, there's like, just real quick to finish that thought, there's like 5% of team members who are, like, the power users.
Justin Jackson:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:So it's like if if I could help train them on how to disseminate to the rest of their team Yeah. Yeah. The the workflows. That's an interesting pattern.
Justin Jackson:That seems like a great opportunity. That's awesome. You've got another fifteen minute segment coming up for Agent OS, so we we can come back to it.
Brian Casel:Yeah. That's that's actually more of a smaller thing, but but more about competition in general. We'll we'll get into that. But I I wanna ask you because I I did listen to your episode on Build Your SaaS podcast with John. It was great to hear I don't know John personally, but it was great to hear him back on the mic Yeah.
Brian Casel:With with you. I thought it was a really good listen. I definitely recommend people check it out if you haven't. I I I'm trying to remember back, like, some of the questions that that I had on my mind while I was listening to you guys.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. I mean, I I definitely expressed in that there was some things that him and I had been talking about privately that the big one was, I think, exploring a few kind of things we've noticed over the past few years. And one is just, you know, I had that conversation with Jason Cohen and, you know, how to get what you want, his framework for how to get what you want. And he said, you know, you've been doing this eight years almost. And this is usually the time where people founders need a break.
Justin Jackson:And founders need to figure out what they want to do next. And that might mean what do I we want to do next within the company? What do we want to do next in my personal life? What do I want to do next in this industry? What do I want to do next in terms of my next project?
Justin Jackson:It could be all sorts of things. But he said the only way to really get there is you need to have some periods of break and time completely unplugged off work. And I mean, here's where John and I are similar, which is this is what I think one reason we work so well together is we like to work. We've been our earliest of twenties, we have been cranking this wheel on our own projects and business. And keeping these things going requires us that every day we get up and we crank this wheel.
Justin Jackson:Even with help, it's gotten more calm. But the responsibility for it is always there. The you're always plugged in. You're always kind of wondering what's going on. Mhmm.
Justin Jackson:And it does as a leader, it you do you are the kind of spark that that kicks off something happening. And you're the one that also keeps things moving. You're the one that keeps things on the right track and make sure that we don't go too far off the track. You're the one that's setting the vision. You're the one that's working towards the vision.
Justin Jackson:You're just responsible for a lot of stuff. So that And you're having to consume some sort of fire hose of information and also putting out some form of effort, which I've kind of imagined as cranking this wheel. And that can eventually, I think, lead to a point where you're just cranking the wheel and then you're going, wait, hold on. What am I cranking this wheel for? Like, is this getting me the results that I want?
Justin Jackson:Is this taking me where I want to go? What what do I want now? When I started this company, I was how old was I? 38? You know, now I'm 45.
Justin Jackson:I when I started this company, I had four kids at home. I was in a different house. There's just lots that's changed. And
Brian Casel:What I was curious about listening to you guys was and I heard I heard all of that those same thoughts from you on on that episode. I was a little bit unclear on where John sits with all that. Are you guys kind of in the same place mentally with with that sort of like, been at this a while? What are we building towards? Where is this going?
Justin Jackson:I think his is different. And the cadence with John and I is usually I am kind of the pokey spear that gets the conversation going. And usually, I'll say, here's what's been on my mind. But then I know it's gonna take him a while to process it, think about it, and then kind of talk about what he thinks. So I think I mean, he just moved.
Justin Jackson:Right before his move, he did this big six week road trip across The United States. And he wasn't completely unplugged. But I think he felt like he had a good kind of trip and a good break. And he's feeling right now like he probably wouldn't take a bigger break until the New Year. So that's one thing.
Justin Jackson:The second thing is yeah. We're I think we're both I don't know if either of us knows what we want.
Brian Casel:But this is That's the interesting question. Right? Because I it you know, I've I've always been, in the last couple of years, working out of this sense of urgency. When I just talked about a minute ago about all the different competing priorities, I don't wanna be working on all those things. Like I do in general, but I don't wanna have to work on them at the same time.
Brian Casel:I'd be much happier if I could just spread them out throughout the year because I don't have the sense of urgency. But I do have that urgency because I need to get this business to a point that you have, which is like, we have this steady state where it's, yeah, you wanna ship things, but if a feature takes a couple months to get out the door, like, that's fine. You still have a great business,
Justin Jackson:you know? Yeah.
Brian Casel:So, yeah, that is an interesting question. I guess it comes down to like how much, I feel like a sabbatical is good no a good idea no matter what
Justin Jackson:you end up doing. I think that's what Jason was saying. And these questions are not easy questions to answer. I think the important thing is that I was feeling something and that some sort of I'm not happy. And not in the sense of like, I'm really dissatisfied or I'm, you know, it's nothing like but just feeling like, like, I'm feeling maybe happy is not even the right word, but I'm just like, I'm feeling something.
Justin Jackson:And feelings are also don't always last forever either. You know, they go up and down. They often depend on, you know, what context and what your your you know, if all of a sudden, the every industry in the world is sucking except for podcasting, I might just be more like, oh, man, I just got to be thankful for what we got here. But but there's some sort of yearning, I think, that was interested that I wanted to explore. And once I had that conversation with Jason, I just realized, oh, yeah, like John and I need to be checking in with each other all the time on because we actually just did this the year before.
Justin Jackson:We had to check-in and going, hey, what do you want now? Like, what are you happy with where we're going? Where are we going? What's our goal? Is our goal to, like, build this to, you know, $25,000,000 in revenue every year?
Justin Jackson:Or are we happy just kind of clipping along where we are? Are you do you want to build something else? Do you want to just chill? You want to retire at 55? Like, have you had usually, the response will be, man, I don't know yet.
Justin Jackson:But now that I'm kicking off those thoughts, it's like interesting to think about how you might answer it.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Does. So just on the sabbatical idea, I think not only will would it result in like space to go explore new ideas or just see where you're at personally, but it's also a chance to test and for you to learn, like, let's see what happens with my business when I'm not there. Yeah. Like, what what does it mean for Transistor to run without Justin in the office, in the quote unquote remote office for weeks on end?
Brian Casel:Yeah. Right? And I think I think just that realization of what, first of all, yes, of course your business is to be just fine without you. Also, I think that can open the door to like, that fact alone might even re energize you for years to keep going on transistor.
Justin Jackson:Yeah.
Brian Casel:Knowing that like, that you could take a sabbatical anytime, or you could push down to part time effort if you wanted to at periods, or you could take trips whenever. That that could be just like an interesting byproduct of like like the sabbatical itself could be great. But but the the the realization of what what do you actually have in transistor that it can run without you, like, that could be pretty big as well.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. And so that is true because Jason talked about that too. And at the same time, he said, it's true that you could actually you could probably take a break for a year. But he said there would be a lot of stuff that wouldn't happen in that year that where you would notice it, maybe not in that first year, but you would notice it in year two or year three or year four. So there's this both and, which is in one sense, yeah, we got a team of six people.
Justin Jackson:Both John and I should both be able to take off an extended period of time. And it should having a co founder to run all the the admin and other things that we do. They can do that. It's great. On the other hand, there's this recognition that I think I have a certain momentum, and a company also has a certain momentum where you're investing time and energy and resources.
Justin Jackson:I'm just in motion. And I've been thinking a lot about that motion applied in this direction might get a certain output. And I think we've realized what that is in podcasting. So it's like you have to kind of I don't know how to operate unless I'm operating kind of up here. And so if I'm operating up here, and I'm working hard, and I'm pushing forward, but the results are iterative, which is where the podcast industry is now.
Justin Jackson:It's a mature industry. It's grown about 15% a year. Is there another direction where you could apply that same momentum, effort, energy, and get a different result? And it's interesting for me to think about that.
Brian Casel:I feel like if you if you think about, like, the world where you are committed to transistor, like your role in transistor, even if that means, like, you you'll you'll do a sabbatical every year or you'll Mhmm. You'll ease off on your actual work hours, but still you're in your seat, you're in your role as, I don't know if you guys do titles or whatever, but like you're very involved. It's not like you're gonna step away and hire a CEO or anything like that, right? I mean, could be an option at some point, but I'm just saying, let's live in the world for a second where it's like you are still doing what you're doing for several more years. Yeah.
Brian Casel:Then it's sort of a question of like, okay, what is it are we actually building? Is it like, are we trying to is the goal to hit some growth target? Like, financial, like, like double, triple revenue, whatever that that looks like. Or is it like we're happy with our current growth rate? We expect to we're we're we're we're calm.
Brian Casel:We're bootstrapped. We're not on this rocket ship trajectory that that VC backed companies are expected to be on. So we should be happy with our steady state growth rate that we have. Right? So maybe given that, a financial growth target is not the thing.
Brian Casel:Maybe it's like maybe, you know, you're gonna overhaul the the UX, the UI of the product. Mhmm. It might not be like a groundbreaking new product, but it's it it could be the best in the industry podcasting experience, like and and and really go deep on, like, the craft of making the best possible product.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. I think I think that could be motivating for us because that's the other tricky part about this is that not only do I individually have to figure out what I want and what's motivating for me, I then have to John also has to do that as well. That alone is a lot to ask. Then him and I have to reconcile that together, and then both be committed to helping the other person get what they want. Then we have to take it to the team, and we have to figure out what is going to motivate each individual on the team to continue to do their best work.
Justin Jackson:And that is a lot to figure out. I think we're up for the challenge. I It does really get I think it will get easier the more that I can personally, and then with John, figure out what do we want individually? How do we combine that into a common vision? And then how do we translate that into something that excites the whole team in terms of us committing to it for the next little while?
Brian Casel:Yeah. I I do know, like, people who are cofounders and and run, like, well established SaaS companies for for many years. And I've seen them go through these similar cycles. And I've seen a few different I have seen the sabbatical playbook happen, which has had very good results. But also, at one point in the history of of this one SaaS company I'm thinking of, it's like they did they did decide to do a second product.
Brian Casel:Mhmm. Or like a same company, but, like, related second like, cross sell to a second product.
Justin Jackson:Right? How did that work out? Because I'm always curious
Brian Casel:I mean, about doubled and tripled their revenue. Okay. Because normally what
Justin Jackson:you hear is the second product doesn't do as well as the first product.
Brian Casel:No. It was like an obvious it was like their customers are telling them like, all right, you solved this one problem. Now we want you to solve this second problem.
Justin Jackson:Oh, nice.
Brian Casel:And and their revenues has that that was their what what I was gonna say was like, if you decide that growth, like a like a significant trajectory change in growth is the thing that you wanna go for.
Justin Jackson:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:Like, yeah, you could push on maybe new some some new marketing and branding ideas
Justin Jackson:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:That might result in some growth. But I feel like for a well established product like yours and the and the industry that you're in, probably the biggest impact is like figuring out what the most obvious adjacent product to sell to your existing audience is. Mhmm. And then it's it's almost like you're back to startup mode. And and, yeah, like it like, you're in it, your team's gonna be in it.
Brian Casel:It's more energy required, more hours. But you do have the advantage of being Transistor FM. Yeah. Right? Like you have like, you have that built in advantage of like, yes, the product might be sort of a startup, but you have the customer base as long as you're selling something that they still need.
Brian Casel:Mhmm. That's another play. And then, I mean, yeah. I'm I'm curious to know, like, if that if that's something that that you ever it when you say, like, like, something is, like, itching at you, like, is it, like, this desire to start something?
Justin Jackson:I think a lot of it was this realization that most of the greenfield opportunity in podcasting, I think, has been captured. I think I think we entered the market at a good time when there was lots of market to gobble up, and we grew really fast. And then we kind of hit the natural constraints of the market. And now we're just growing along with the rest of the market. And there's some things we could do here and there, but they're iterative.
Justin Jackson:They're not like I I don't enjoy that, like, individual tweaking as much. I'm pretty good at watering the garden, you know? Like, I'm updating old blog posts, and I'm going in and making sure SEO is good and making sure Reddit comments are still positive. And I'm doing a lot of watering. But what would fire me up is, yeah, like we're now here's a new opportunity.
Justin Jackson:Here's like, let's go after this. Because this one, there's not much more oil or gold to dig here. It's like, we've gotten most of it. And now we've got a good business and it's growing. And, you know, so I think another opportunity I think a lot of it was just me wrestling with the podcast industry and going, I think there's actually not a lot more market to capture here.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I can see
Justin Jackson:that. We could. There's there's still things we could do. But when I look at the levers we could pull, it's like, yeah, we could pull this lever and get into the ad market. But, man, that would be that would be a big deal.
Justin Jackson:Right?
Brian Casel:So feel like a lot of these big product changes for transistor almost cross the line into, like, these are separate products.
Justin Jackson:That's the other feeling I'm getting is I've
Brian Casel:Because, like, even even if, like, technically, you could connect it to to your existing transistor product, I see that's a departure on the on the core job to be done.
Justin Jackson:Yeah.
Brian Casel:You know, like your customers today are coming to transistor because they wanna host their podcast. Yep. Yep. It they it's not a given that every one of them also cares about advertising or even the video thing I was thinking like that could maybe be thought of as like a separate product. Like, it could benefit your existing customers, but presenting it, positioning it as a separate product, can start to market it as like, if you have a video problem, you know, like, come here for that.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. I really like that. I yeah. I oh, five, four, three.
Brian Casel:We need like an alarm or or even like a warning too. Yeah. Like
Justin Jackson:a Yeah. Yeah.
Brian Casel:Like a two minute warning. Warning. Warning.
Justin Jackson:Wrap it up. What yeah. Let's talk about let's switch. Let's talk about what you were thinking about competition. I I I was kinda eager to talk about that.
Brian Casel:Yeah. So, like, not not necessarily like my competition. There's I guess that you might consider some. But, like, it's more like this what to think of competitors in general. I've talked about this before on various podcasts, but I just tend to not care what what competitors are doing.
Brian Casel:And also, like, I also try to avoid even looking at them a lot of the time, even if I know them personally.
Justin Jackson:Why is that?
Brian Casel:Because I because I get pulled into those, like, I would say, unhealthy thoughts. Like, oh, what are they doing? Or or are they copying me? Or am I going to be accused of copying them? Or are we competing for the same customers?
Brian Casel:And am I better than them? Are they better than me? And I don't really care about all that. Like, I only care about what my customers want and my ability to serve them something that's valuable. And also my personal taste on things.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And I guess the thing I wanted to bring up here was because I, again, receive a lot of inbound now through builder methods and Agent OS.
Justin Jackson:Yep.
Brian Casel:Agent OS is an open source thing, but it's a product that is aimed at spec driven development. Yeah. It's a tool. And I've been talking about spectrum development for many months now. There are multiple There's a few other frameworks that are similar in concept or at least trying to target the idea of spec driven development
Justin Jackson:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:In in AI. And there's a new one that just dropped this week from GitHub.
Justin Jackson:Okay.
Brian Casel:What's it called? So that one I think it's called SpecKit. SpecKit. And they they put someone on this, like, basically full time to be, like, the the the and he's doing YouTube videos and everything, which are which are blowing up on you know, because they're they're doing this, like, spec driven framework tool, open source, and it's it's interesting. Mhmm.
Brian Casel:I think it does some things. I I I have I I did my video this week was, like, sort of my thoughts on how my approach is a little bit different from what you see out there with other tools. Okay. Yeah. And and this is me being competitive.
Brian Casel:Mhmm. You know? You know? But I I do think that there are some, like, important, like, real world use cases that some of these things don't really address and that I hear from customers in my own experience. But anyway, like like so with with that popping up, what inevitably happens, I'm sure you see this with transistors, like, people just messaging you like, hey, how's Transistor different from competitor x?
Brian Casel:Yeah. Or competitor y? Or what or hey, Justin, like, have you seen this this hot new podcasting hosting startup? Like, what do you think of them? Yeah.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And I, you know, I know you're well meaning when when you send these kind of messages.
Justin Jackson:Yeah.
Brian Casel:But I don't care. I don't wanna see it. I don't wanna even have an opinion on what someone else is doing.
Justin Jackson:Interesting. Like I I'm I am John, I think, is more sensitive to this than I am. And other people on the team actually have asked me even to stop. Because sometimes I'm that guy in our Slack saying, oh, these guys are doing this and this. And they've asked me to stop because it affects them emotionally.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. For me, it hits a little bit different because I'm always interested in what's in the zeitgeist. What are people talking about? Why are they talking about it? Oh, well, these guys are I mean, if these guys are picking up or getting a lot of word-of-mouth, it's just out there talk.
Justin Jackson:I'm interested in that because Mhmm. I do wanna think about how I'm gonna react to it.
Brian Casel:So I'll tell you. I am interested in because I ask this a lot. When I'm on a call with a customer, I do always ask, what are the alternatives that you're looking at right now?
Justin Jackson:On
Brian Casel:that call the other day with the team, they're gonna hire me talk to their team of 500. I was like, okay, so you guys are expressing to me all these pain points that you have, and I'm getting a good understanding of them. And I have some ideas on how I can help. But I'm curious, like, what have you done? What are you doing?
Brian Casel:Have you hired any other consultants for this? Have Have you enrolled in any other programs? What are you seeing out there? And then I also ask people about When I'm in conversations about how they're adopting Agent OS in their team, I have asked about like, have you tried to adopt anything else? And first of all, I know of what the other competitors are, but I'm not going to feed that to them.
Brian Casel:I'm gonna say like, What are you seeing? What are you considering? Right? Because I wanna know which competitors are you actually even aware of, first of all. Yeah.
Brian Casel:And then second of all, they will name one or two and they'll say, Yeah, we looked at this one, we looked at that one, and I wanna ask, what'd you think of it? How did it work? Then they will It's a little bit hard because you gotta take it with a grain of salt. They know that they're talking to me, so they're gonna try to be nice. And what that means is they're going to try to point out the shortfalls of the competitors to
Justin Jackson:me
Brian Casel:because they think that that's what I wanna hear. Yeah. In fact, I probably actually wanna hear what did work for you. But at end the of the day, it's like, you're on this call with me, so there must've been something that fell short over there. Yeah.
Brian Casel:Right? So I'm always very interested to hear about my competitors from my customers. I want my customers to tell me like, what do you see? Yeah. That's much more interesting to me.
Brian Casel:Like, even like with Clarity Flow, it's interesting because like there are a lot of competitors to Clarity Flow. Like, I know of a lot of them, but a very, very small subset are even visible to my customers. I know exactly which ones I think are huge companies that zero of my customers have ever brought up to me. And it's not just like they haven't run into them. It's like they must be marketing or doing the job to be done in a little bit different way that just didn't connect with my people.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. I I mean, I think this is why having customer conversations is so helpful. That email I send to every new customer, you know, what's going on in your world that brought you here today? Often, people tell me other options that they considered. And I always follow it up and say, why did you choose us?
Justin Jackson:Like, what was it? And sometimes it is vibes. They're like, I just liked your guys' vibes better. Yep. And that might have been how they got treated in onboarding call.
Justin Jackson:It might have been how they got treated in chat. It might have been our website. They might have gone to our team section and saw our photo. They might have seen me on social media, and they just like the vibes. And that's interesting.
Justin Jackson:Other times, they'll say, oh, you know, they didn't have these features, or we were really looking for somebody that did this. Or the fact that you had this podcast that uses your platform, that was the decision maker. Like, once I knew that they So getting those frames of reference and feeling like, wow, this is what actually This is how real humans are actually making decisions is fascinating. Because it can be Oh, I love this podcast. And you host it so that, you know, I was deciding between you and three other people three other companies.
Justin Jackson:But yeah, I just decided to go with you because I love this show. It's like, man, that seems arbitrary.
Brian Casel:And sometimes it's like a speed thing. It's like it's like, well, you're the one that I found today, and I wanted to get this done today. So you know?
Justin Jackson:Yeah. Or you're the one that ChatGPT recommended. Or you're the one I mean, that one's happening a lot.
Brian Casel:And or
Justin Jackson:you're the one that Google recommended. So, yeah, I think those conversations are so helpful.
Brian Casel:The other point I wanted to make about competition is that even if they do exactly what my product does, and even if we share a lot of the same customers, and maybe they switch between us pretty frequently, or they consider us both all the time, I don't even think of it like a competition. Or at least I try not to. There's always the human element, like when I look at them and I might be jealous of this or that or, you know
Justin Jackson:Yeah.
Brian Casel:But at the end of the day, when I step back and I'm like, what do I actually think? Like, I I think a more healthy approach, and I have to remind myself to do this, is like, we should both exist. There's a reason we both exist. We're gonna continue to exist. They're gonna do great.
Brian Casel:I'm gonna I'm doing my thing over here. Yeah. I like, I think the thing that triggered this for me was that I had a YouTube comment. Okay. You know?
Brian Casel:What what do you think about this this spec this this
Justin Jackson:That's how we should start every segment is what actually triggered this segment? Gonna I'm add that
Brian Casel:into And my usually it's gonna be like, YouTube comment triggered Yeah, yeah. So, but it was like, hey, this hot new thing just launched, and they seem to be making lots of updates really quickly. And if you don't catch it had the tone of like, if you don't respond to feedback and release as frequently as they are, as this big company is doing over there, then you're going to miss out or they're going to win in this. And my first response was, well, he was also asking about like, how are you different or how are you better or worse? And my first answer was, look, whichever one works for your workflow is the one you should choose.
Brian Casel:Like if mine doesn't work for yours, then don't choose mine. You know, that's number one. And then number two is like, I don't Like, I hope they do great. I think they're doing really interesting things. I, you know, I'm not I I don't see it as a as a game to to win or lose.
Brian Casel:I know that, like, some people in business see it that way. And in certain contexts, you do have to try to dominate a market share Mhmm. To a point and and and, you know, but like, that's not interesting to me. I'm much more interested in like winning on the best possible product for my customers, you know.
Justin Jackson:The podcast industry is interesting in that we hang out together. So, you know, we're all at the conference and we're hanging out together. We're spending time. We connect well with each other. I would consider many of my competitors my friends.
Justin Jackson:But when it comes to our marketing, and especially our customer service and our product, I'm absolutely competitive. I want to be better than them. I want the better product. I want the better customer service. I want our market to be our marketing to be reaching more people.
Justin Jackson:I I I feel that competitive competitiveness in that sense. And it leads to sometimes awkward situations where all of us have made comparison pages between each other. And every once in a while, somebody you know, every once in while, I'll email someone and say, hey, come on, man. Like, this is not really true, and they'll do the same for me. I do actually think this is a difference between me and maybe some other people on my team.
Justin Jackson:I have a hunger to compete in this way. I'm not really competitive with sports. I'm not really competitive with I wasn't really competitive with anything else in my life except for this. In business, there's something about like, I want to do better than these guys. I want to I want to have a better product.
Justin Jackson:I want people to be I want more people to know about it. I want us to be the product that gets recommended the most.
Brian Casel:How do you react when a competitor does something awesome? Like, something that you like, if it's any if if you're looking at a product that's not in your industry and they do something awesome, you look at it and like, oh, that's really well done.
Justin Jackson:Yeah.
Brian Casel:They well designed. They executed that branding thing in a really good way. What happens when when it's one of your competitors?
Justin Jackson:I think if it's I mean, sometimes I'm, like, worried about it. I'm like, oh, man. We gotta think about that. Sometimes I'm like, oh, let's wait and see. Let's see how this you know?
Justin Jackson:And now I've been in it long enough, I know that not not all of these big pushes produce any sort of meaningful results on the end. So you can have a big cool feature that gets tons of press. And we've had those features, got tons of press. People loved it. Did it change our monthly sign ups that month?
Justin Jackson:Nope. Didn't. Yep. So I think I can see it through this lens sometimes I'm like, that's a great feature. Like, we should build our our version of that.
Justin Jackson:And, like, let's get on that. Like, that seems important.
Brian Casel:Yep. So yeah.
Justin Jackson:I I I It's cool. Yeah. It's I mean,
Brian Casel:I think that, like, it's it's interesting that the competitive spirit, like where it comes from. For me, it's always been self, like like competing with myself, trying to trying to get better. Yeah. Trying to trying to beat my personal best at whatever it is.
Justin Jackson:Yeah.
Brian Casel:You know? Whether it's revenue, whether it's product, whether it's like, you know, my craft.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. I I get motivated even by, like, silly things. Like, how often are we in the press? How often are we getting mentioned online? You know, the things like that are motivating to me to feel like it's really motivating when someone says, I tried this other competitor.
Justin Jackson:They were no good. Somebody recommended transistor. I've been using you for a month, and you're way better. I love that stuff. That's fuel for me.
Brian Casel:It it does burn me when I especially when I see churn and cancellation reasons. Mhmm. When they cite that, like, yeah, we we had to cancel because we're going to this competitor. Mhmm. Because we we like we like the way that they handle your feature better than you do.
Brian Casel:And and that like, there's there's no there's no way around it. Like, that's gonna burn, you know, to for me, it is.
Justin Jackson:I think it burns, Yeah. It burns people differently. Again, I think that I think it does burn John more than it burns me. For me, I'm more emotionally distant from that. I'm like, oh, that's interesting.
Justin Jackson:Like, people really seem to want that. I'm also always interested. Like, I wonder if they're gonna come back. Maybe they'll come back.
Brian Casel:If if they cancel because they do something that we don't, I I'm I'm cool because it's like, yeah, I I get it. Yeah. I would cancel too because we don't do that. But when it's something that we do and it's like a core feature, they just like their version better. Yeah.
Brian Casel:That's like, ugh. Alright. That stings.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. That was exactly 15.
Brian Casel:Oh, alright. Nice.
Justin Jackson:Do we wanna talk about hiring Or do is there something else you wanna
Brian Casel:I I sort of talked about it already with the video editor. Unless you have any thoughts.
Justin Jackson:But I think I think I'm good.
Brian Casel:I think we got a good one here.
Justin Jackson:Anything else we should chat about? Or we did we do it?
Brian Casel:I think we did it. Another marathon. Hour forty three.
Justin Jackson:Well, it was an hour and forty three. But
Brian Casel:I don't know how much was recorded.
Justin Jackson:We did have we started recording early. So we'll see how long the actual show was. But I I kinda like this segments thing. So
Brian Casel:I do too. I wanna, like, prepare for next time.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. Yeah. Next time, I gotta make this collaborative.
Brian Casel:But yeah. This is I expect you to vibe code it by tonight.
Justin Jackson:I mean, what what what the limitations of vibe coding are just so clear on this.
Brian Casel:Like I know. I well, like, I've played with the v zeros and a couple others. And as as someone who builds stuff, you know, with my hands Yeah. That that that those tools are very frustrating to me.
Justin Jackson:You know? It's like even till the last build, the colors on this were all wrong. And I was like, what what are you doing? And to get something, like, fixed, it even if you highlight, like, listen, there needs to be more contrast on this title.
Brian Casel:Like, I'm all for building with AI in the code base itself, like in Cloud Code or Cursor. Yeah. But typing into a box and expecting an app to come out. Yeah. I I don't buy it.
Justin Jackson:The other there was some cool things about it, though, because I I I do find this step that's helpful is the having to describe to it what you want. And I think like this first part just forcing me to articulate like, okay, build an app that I had to articulate it in succinct a way I could, while kind of spelling out what this thing is. And then as I'm interacting with it again, I have to kind of describe these interactions in a way that a machine would understand. It largely
Brian Casel:It has been interesting. One real again, this is an insight that I picked up from the sales call with the team. It's something that I've had on multiple sales calls with large teams. Because I'm really asking a lot of questions about like, what does your workflow look like? How are you using AI so far with your team?
Brian Casel:I've been surprised to to hear about more serious software companies using these tools, vZero, Replit, and Lovable.
Justin Jackson:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:Because I always associated these with the indie hacker who's vibe coding, who doesn't know how to code anything, and they're gonna put together this AI slop and ship whatever from out of v zero. Right? But it turns out that these tools are being used on larger teams in Yes. The early prototyping So whatever they're creating in vZero is nowhere near what they end up building and shipping to customers. But it's the product managers, the designers, the idea people that are going into vZero to whip up something so that they can go have a meeting about it with somebody in their department.
Justin Jackson:With an interactive demo.
Brian Casel:Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It's an interesting tool in that. Like, never really thought of these in that context.
Brian Casel:There's gonna be the audience that uses it to actually try to ship a small app in a weekend. But I think in the professional context, it's like a prototyping tool.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. Yeah. And I I found it hugely helpful to to it's so hard to describe to people what you want. And I've done it with TLDraw. I've done it with wireframing.
Justin Jackson:I've done it by kind of quickly coding up a series of HTML screens. I've done it by, you know, building the best MVP and Rails I could. But this it was just so fast, and the feedback loop is so quick. It's like, no, I don't want that. I want this.
Justin Jackson:And then to instantly be able to test it out with you like this. Mhmm. This is also fuel for me. Because then it's like, oh, like, it would be really great if Brian could collaborate on this. So yeah.
Justin Jackson:That's a much more complicated app. Now we need multiple users. We need
Brian Casel:Right.
Justin Jackson:A way of figuring this out.
Brian Casel:I'm really curious to see how far you get with this thing. Yeah.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. I mean, we'll see what we'll see if I I think if I was actually gonna build it for real, you know, I would I would probably say, okay, let's make this see, the interesting thing for you in this is that as after I built this, I was like, ugh, you know what I really want now? Is for Brian to help me get set up in the existing transistor code base with some sort of plot or whatever, and then help me get a a j like, if this was a tool on a subdomain, but I wanted to use our UI and our way of building a Rails app and all that stuff, help me train the AI to do that so that I can start building a product in the transistor way with AI that's going to be It'll just be a tool that's on the footer of our website. Right? I
Brian Casel:think that that is getting a lot easier and better now when you already have a reference point. Are now actually tool like, Cloud Code itself is very good at you can just give it an image, it a screenshot of of your interface, and it'll pick up details pretty well. And then there are this gets a little bit into the weeds. There's like a tool called Playwright, actually lets lets your agent it's like an MCP that you could use with Cloud Code and Cursor and all these, which which basically allows your agent to fire up a a browser
Justin Jackson:Oh, okay.
Brian Casel:And click and test test things on its own.
Justin Jackson:This is a Microsoft thing.
Brian Casel:Yeah. It's a Microsoft project that it's so it it basically gives you the ability to to type into Clog code and say, open this in a browser and check it at mobile screen sizes and click on this navigation and make sure the flow all works. Like, it can you'll you'll see it actually do that in the browser.
Justin Jackson:Interesting.
Brian Casel:But also but just just even giving it screenshots, you can say, like, make it look like this or use the same color scheme or style guide as as what we're using. That's pretty good. What I'm interested in and still haven't felt good about the options now is the design phase. So if I'm working on a totally greenfield, like totally new product, I have not found a solid design, an AI driven design tool that's that I feel better than just me going into Figma and creating something. Now, I don't don't do that process very often.
Brian Casel:I usually just go straight into the browser and start designing in Tailwind and HTML and stuff.
Justin Jackson:But
Brian Casel:when I do want to mock something up from scratch for a totally new brand, totally new look and feel, v zero and Replit and Lovable are supposed to be able to do this. Mhmm. And maybe they're better at it now. And there's other tools that are like it, but I I'm just never happy with like verbally describing something and and the output that it gets out. And, like, I still wanna go in there and tweak things, make it pixel perfect.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. I think you can upload
Brian Casel:Like, Figma's built in AI is not very great, you know, not very useful right now. So that's that's the side of the stack that I think is still behind.
Justin Jackson:I noticed in v zero, there's an add from Figma option or upload from Figma.
Brian Casel:That assumes that your design team has already created a a mock up in Figma.
Justin Jackson:Yeah.
Brian Casel:Yeah. So but it's like the creation of the mock up. How do we get there with AI?
Justin Jackson:There's also this design mode in v zero. I I need to check this out.
Brian Casel:Cool.
Justin Jackson:Well
Brian Casel:Yeah, man.
Justin Jackson:That's another panel.
Brian Casel:Another segment. We got we got we got a bonus segment.
Justin Jackson:We got
Brian Casel:a bonus. On vibe coding.
Justin Jackson:And by the way, I I didn't think anybody was gonna show up in the live chat. I got the announcement out late. Heck, we had so many people show up. We had Ryan Heffner, Casper, Daniel Roberts, Emmett, Zach Gilbert.
Brian Casel:The regulars.
Justin Jackson:Adam. A new Adam I haven't seen before.
Brian Casel:Yeah. It's cool to see some some new and familiar faces popping in here. It's awesome to see you guys.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. Thanks so much. Ben Daily. Simon Bennett.
Brian Casel:There's Yeah.
Justin Jackson:There's a name. There's a name I haven't heard in a while. Well, I've heard it. But he's I think he's been building something new, I think. Yeah.
Justin Jackson:Thanks, everyone, for showing up.
Brian Casel:I wanna hear about it.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. Well, maybe have to have him on the program. Alright. See you all.
Brian Casel:Thank you, folks.
Justin Jackson:Talk to later.
Brian Casel:Alright. Bye. Later.