Will vibe coding and AI give product people an advantage?
#21

Will vibe coding and AI give product people an advantage?

Justin:

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

Brian:

I am Brian Casel creator at Builder Methods.

Justin:

And welcome to the show. We've been chatting with our live chat crew here. Got a good group, Emmett, Chris, Zach, Ryan, lot of regular Jacob, lot of regular faces here. And we've got the segments app going, although Brian can't see on his side again. I I tried to make an update.

Brian:

I'm still gonna rely on you just giving me the giving me like the red light when when to shut up.

Justin:

That's right. But, yeah, we thought we would chat about a few things today. You had you wanted to chat about q four goals. I can't believe it's q four already.

Brian:

I know. Right?

Justin:

And what's your least favorite thing about your work today? I like that topic. Why AI will never replace artists? And if we've got time, maybe a little chat about social media and, of course, whatever else comes up.

Brian:

Yeah. And I know that I mean, speaking of segments, you have been vibe coding up a storm over there with some maybe vibe coding some tools as marketing. Oh, yeah.

Justin:

Yeah. We could chat about that too. Now should I add that as a segment? No. No.

Justin:

I don't even know if I can do that. If I pause. Nope. I can't do that. We'll we'll just add it somewhere in there.

Justin:

Yeah. You know what? V zero I don't know if v zero is the best place to be vibe coding. My my biggest question is I built this marketing tool for transistor. Engineering is marketing.

Justin:

And if I

Brian:

Wait. Just for for listeners who aren't aware of that, it it's pretty cool. It's It

Justin:

is cool. Okay. Maybe I should

Brian:

What's your pitch for it?

Justin:

Okay. Here, let me show it to the folks on video, but I'll describe it audibly for the folks who are just listening to the audio version. Let's see. We'll bring yeah. Let's bring this up here.

Justin:

So what kicked this off is

Brian:

Oh, is this like, this is actually your live. Like, you're promoting it now?

Justin:

Yeah. I could I could show people what what it looks like. That's fine.

Brian:

Transistor I can't see that URL.

Justin:

Well, this is just this is Build Your Sass. So here's what kicked us out. Is I was looking at the episodes for Build Your Sass, and most of them looked like this, just inconsistent cover art. And I was like, man, I wish there was a way to just ingest the RSS feed and then grab the people associated with the episode, like the host and guest credits, and generate a bunch and the episode title and generate a bunch of cover art for the episodes instead of having it kind of different styles and everything, you know, that I've added over the years.

Brian:

Yeah. And like so many podcasts just never even do episode images. They just have their show image on everything.

Justin:

That's right. Right? Yeah. So I popped open VZero by Vercel, started working away, and I built this podcast episode artwork generator, which basically allows you to paste in a feed as long as it has as long as it's using this modern person tag, podcast person

Brian:

was gonna ask you about that. So, like, that's actually one of the features that I've always really loved about Transistor. I feel like maybe most of your competitors don't do this, but you guys have had it forever, this concept of people.

Justin:

Yes.

Brian:

Right? So you can have the host, you can have guests, and you can just put in their it used to be like their Twitter bio or something. And so for every episode, like you could feature the cohost, you can feature your guests, and it lists their information, pulls in their bio.

Justin:

That's right. Yeah.

Brian:

You you can have like returning guests, like friend of the show and stuff like that. Yeah. I just love that whole concept as a UI and feature of Transistor. And then it's cool how you can leverage it in this sort of tool. I actually didn't know that the people information is actually published, like, in the RSS feed.

Justin:

Yeah. Yeah. So there's a few angles to this. Right? It's like, how can we leverage some of the cool stuff happening in podcasting, some of this new innovation being built on top of RSS and kind of demonstrate that.

Justin:

Yeah, one of the one of the things is we have all this metadata in the RSS feed that we can pull out. So if you click parse feed in this generator, it will pull in all the episodes. And then you'll see each episode has a bunch of guests associated with it. So here's one I did with David Rose of David Rosenthal of Acquired. Click generate artwork, and it generates this cover art.

Brian:

I mean, you can go even further with this with with AI too. Right? Like, you could just get the topic of the show and generate an image about that topic. You know?

Justin:

Yeah. We could generate images in the background. Right now, have it so you can upload a background image if you want. So Mhmm. For example, for the acquired one, you might want a little background image of them live.

Justin:

Just make it look a little bit different. You can change the color. So if I regenerate, it changes the background color. But these avatars and names of the hosts and guests are getting pulled in live. And you can also change the episode title.

Brian:

Alright. Now tell me from idea to shipped, how long? How hard was it?

Justin:

I mean, the first version, it was, like, probably an hour, I'm guessing. Is there time stamps on my chats? Mike oh, yeah. There is. Okay.

Justin:

So let's let's actually let's actually so the idea I had at 03:02PM. That's when I started working on it. And I probably got a working version. Well, I mean, I got a working version in sixteen minutes. And then I kept iterating on it.

Justin:

You can see there's quite a bit of iteration here. And the latest version, well, was this morning. But 05:55 was when I kind of wrapped it up the night before. So, you know, I worked on it a couple hours. You can keep

Brian:

That's still nothing. That's that's less than a day. You know?

Justin:

I know. And I'm even thinking, like, I could attach a I could make this a custom domain or a sub domain on transistor.

Brian:

Well, I I did wanna ask you about hosting and stuff. But the but just looking at it, just again, for people maybe listening and not not viewing, you know, it the style and the UI looks, you know, like a typical AI generated

Justin:

Yeah.

Brian:

Vibe coded app, but it's still, like, clean and functional. And it does it it does the thing. It's it's like one of these, like, one feature tools. Yeah. And it it looks super easy to use.

Brian:

Like, it is totally publishable, especially as like a marketing like a what is it? Like a tool as marketing

Justin:

Yeah.

Brian:

Type of thing. You know?

Justin:

And some of these things like these the actual UI, you know, I iterated on this a few times for generating the images. I mean, it's pretty clean. Like

Brian:

Yeah. Like, it doesn't need to be complicated.

Justin:

You know? Yeah. It's just, like, nice and clean. Yeah. I I would totally ship this as a first version.

Justin:

And

Brian:

So you did it in v zero. Like, what kind of app is is this like a React app?

Justin:

Yeah. It's like React. It's I think there's quite a bit of React and TypeScript in here. It's all styled with Tailwind, which was nice actually. Because if you have any sort of Tailwind language, you can say, hey, I think we should use you know, for the background image, said, I think we should use whatever that BG blend BG dash blend.

Justin:

Mhmm. Whatever. So and it certainly helped. It helps to have a product sense, and it helps to have done web development in the past. But yeah, man, it this this it's insane how fast I was able to generate it.

Brian:

Yeah. When you say that, like, you because I know that you do have web development and design and some tailwind experience. So you do know the technical and you know how an app gets built and stuff. Obviously, run a SaaS product company.

Justin:

Mhmm.

Brian:

And so, like, I do always sort of, like, wonder because I I'm completely blind to, like, what the experience is for a totally nontechnical person trying to use a v zero or a lovable or replet. Like like, I I guess my question in that chat that we're looking at you know, we're looking at your v zero chat here. I can't actually read it from here. But, like, how much of this like, you were able to accomplish this in an hour or two. How much of that was because you knew the right questions to ask or you knew the right ways to course correct it?

Brian:

But, you know, whereas somebody with no technical background

Justin:

It probably take them longer. I also had a very kind of distinct sense of what I wanted. And so Mhmm. Like, my first prompt is a pretty it's like succinct, but also descriptive of what

Brian:

Multiple paragraphs. Right? Yeah. See that actually, that's an interesting point because it's something that I've that I'm working out in in AgentOS. It's it's worked out actually, which is and, like, I go through the same process when I work with a client on on like building their MVP app.

Brian:

It's always interesting how like a client will ask for a feature or ask for a functionality.

Justin:

And,

Brian:

you know, they might describe it in two or three bullet points. But for me as a product designer developer, that generates like 10 questions about, okay, you want the billing to work this way, but what about this case or that case? Or what about this scenario? And how should we handle that, this and that? Right?

Brian:

Yeah. It's like one of the interesting things with Agent OS, it generates specs for you based on the features that you want to build. But before it rushes into writing the spec, there's a whole process for like, you just type in your raw idea, sort of like what you did there.

Justin:

Yeah.

Brian:

And then it'll have the agent generate clarifying questions to dial in and get you closer to like a well thought out and hashed out and and get just it's almost like a prompt for It has the agent, the AI agent starting to prompt you to get you thinking around all those edge cases and all those design patterns. So then it builds up all those you know, design choices, decisions, and then you can go ahead and spec it out and build it out. You know?

Justin:

Yeah. I mean, what is definitely nice about this, it can be also frustrating at times, is how fast it went from my initial prompt to I was like, okay, it it got the initial gist pretty well. And then I could just keep refining it. There's definitely some loops I got into where I was like, I'm wasting my time here.

Brian:

You know, I'm just so fascinated with using AI in general and in, like, all, like, all of our daily creative work. What and from product work to writing stuff to scripting stuff to whatever it might be.

Justin:

Yeah.

Brian:

And I'm getting more and more accustomed to that idea of, like, I can input my raw creative thought.

Justin:

Mhmm.

Brian:

What I want to create, and and maybe even more just like, here's what I wanna accomplish. Mhmm. Or here or here is the end result that I'm going for. And the latest models are really good at connecting the dots and maybe drawing and maybe making a few assumptions that you did not specifically tell it. Mhmm.

Brian:

Enough to take your raw idea and give you a pretty good first draft. It's not going to be ready to use, but it's enough for you to jump straight into edit mode, where it's like, okay, I gave you my raw thing. Now I got a draft that I'm 60% happy with. I can point to three or four points that are off when you just need to fix those and get to get to a version two, then then a version three. And now by version four, like, this is a really good newsletter that I'm ready to send, or this is a really good script for a YouTube video instead of that blank page just writing line by line.

Brian:

You know?

Justin:

Yeah. I think I mean, for I'm sold now for prototyping. This is incredible. I think the it's sometimes even fun to spell it out the way I mean, for product people, this is going to be it is kind of a game changer because if you can articulate the vision that you see in your head, which in this case, I'm like, I know we've got all this metadata for hosts and guests in RSS feed. I know that their name is in there, their role as host or guest is there.

Justin:

I know I I want to exclude, like, editor and everybody else. And I know we have their photo. This should all be possible to instantly kind of see something and be able to use it is such a massive advantage. Like in the old days, maybe I would have prototyped it with HTML and had people walk through it or, you know, maybe built a really kind of sloppy functioning thing. But this just writes This can write JavaScript so fast.

Justin:

Yeah.

Brian:

See, this is where I'm still trying to figure out my very early design process when it comes to new products. The way that I've always done it is either custom design or I usually just start in the browser with instrumental components and stuff.

Justin:

Yeah.

Brian:

And the reason why I haven't really used I've played with v0 and I've played with Replit a little bit, but I don't usually choose React as my stack or Next. Js, and most of these are built around that. I do use Tailwind for everything. But I also kind of started experimenting with, like, using v zero as just a design tool. Like use it to design.

Brian:

And there's like 50 other competitors to v zero that are

Justin:

Yeah.

Brian:

That that sort of blend what v zero is and what Figma is. You know, like it it'll generate basically an app, but then you can design it like you're designing a Figma document, but essentially you're changing React components.

Justin:

Mhmm.

Brian:

And I played around with that, and I still just can't get into the design workflow. That's where I get stuck. I still think we're a little bit behind, generating new, polished, professional design work. Because vZero, at the end of the day, just like all the others, they're not really design tools, they're just coding tools. So they'll take your description for a design and code it, and that's how it designs.

Brian:

Whereas like a professional designer in Figma will actually use their hands and draw lines and boxes and choose typography and things like that. You know?

Justin:

It's interesting. I mean, I could even try something live here that might be interesting. Let's say, like, we have a website called freepodcastwebsites.com, which is right here. So I wonder if I could ask it to can you replicate the style of this page here. Let's see what that does.

Brian:

See, like, replicating an existing design, it it's it is getting a lot better at that. I don't know how v zero will do, but, like, in general, in Claude code or Cursor, if I give it a screenshot or a mock up of something, like it can follow that design pattern pretty closely. Yeah. Where I'm still like very slow is like that initial ideation process, you know, for something like totally, totally new.

Justin:

V0 does have quite a bit of I probably can't go in there now, can I? I mean, if you look If you go through some of these projects, it is it's almost like browsing. Now it feels like you're almost browsing, you know, designer news or not how come I can't CodePen. What was the designer site? I'm not thinking

Brian:

Like Dribbble? Dribbble.

Justin:

Yeah. You know, there's a bunch of kind of things here.

Brian:

I've tried some of that too. And like, I I guess that's good for, like, getting broad strokes ideas, especially for, like, brand ideas and stuff. But then whenever I get into really what I and I thought about building this as a potential product at some point down the line in the long list of shiny object products that I wanna do. But more like a wireframing tool, really. Basically do what like Balsamiq does, but but AI generate like take a a text prompt or a voice prompt Yep.

Brian:

And maybe already have a library of wireframed components that I that I often use, like a like a navigation menu or a modal box or a this type of layout or whatever, this type of list. And just like use my go to UI patterns and piece them together in a simple wireframe that I can screenshot and then feed to Claude code or something like that and build from there. You know?

Justin:

Yeah. I mean, here's what it did with that. You can see it it kinda updated. It kinda replicated this style. Yeah.

Justin:

It got the colors. It it didn't do bad. I mean, is that a is that better than the old version? I guess so. It really depends on, you know, how it hopefully didn't mess with the other styles where when you parse the feed.

Justin:

Yeah. I mean, it's fine.

Brian:

Let me ask you. What is this for you? Is this you just playing around being curious? Or is this like, I think I can this could be like a strategy that you might start using.

Justin:

Yeah. I think I mean, Josh and I have already been using this for other things. Like, we're about to launch this podcast score tool. And this started off as a this started off as something that we prototyped in v zero. And then we basically brought it into Static and built it as a kind of a add on app inside of Static.

Justin:

In terms and then we also have a monetization calculator. I think I showed that to you last time.

Brian:

What is the score? Like, what's the score for?

Justin:

The score gives you it gives you a score basically how are you using modern podcast features like people, like the guest credits? So if we put a non like, kind of a non modern app in here let's put Conan O'Brien. He's a friend. Let's see if this works. It'll give you suggestions.

Justin:

So his gets a 4.4 out of four. It says, hey, your switch hosting provider to get all the modern feed features.

Brian:

Come on, Conan. Get on that.

Justin:

So here's the strengths. Here's the suggestions. And then it also actually go through and find all of the, you know, all of the things items in your XML that are supported or not supported. So this one's missing the podcast transcript tag and feature. And then you can download your podcast score as well if you want.

Brian:

That's cool. It sort of reminds me of, like, the Ahrefs, like, what? Like, page health score? Yeah. You know?

Justin:

Yeah. There's there's some, like, podcast validator feed validators out there. This is kind of taking it to the next level. Like, let's actually give you a score on, you know, like this his he's also missing chapters. He's missing pod roll, missing pod ping, which like dramatically increases the speed at which podcast apps pick up your show.

Justin:

So, yeah, I think like this one in particular, I'm even fine to like I might publish it as a tool, and then if it gets a lot of usage, then we might bring it in to the Static site, or maybe we'll bring it in right away. I don't know.

Brian:

Nice. Yeah. Good stuff. I I like I like this trend of Justin getting his hands dirty,

Justin:

building stuff. Well, again, it's kind of as a as just someone who's always considered themselves to be a product person. In the old days, my I was limited by what I could personally build even as for the first prototype or MVP. And to now be able to envision it. And I've I've also said that I think ideas are more valuable than we think.

Justin:

And so this idea I had, even though it's small, being able to envision it, here's what I want. I'm a podcast creator myself. Here's how I'd like it to work. Eventually, what I'd like it to do is using the Transistor API, just automatically backfill all of my episode cover art. So I'll eventually modify this tool so it does that too.

Brian:

Nice.

Justin:

But to be able to iteratively build this thing, and then you also get a sense of the trade offs like I there's other features I would add to this, but I'm picturing the interface, and I'm picturing even the structure. And it's like, oh, to add that feature, I would have to add an additional kind of UI option on the front end to accomplish that. Would that ruin the tool? And, you know, there's all these other thoughts you have. And it's just really shortened.

Justin:

It's given me a superpower. I can now Yeah. I can now, like, start building stuff.

Brian:

And I really do think that this era of AI first product building, the product people win.

Justin:

Yes. I that's true.

Brian:

Someone with your skills, even if you were less technical than you are, but you still have the product background that you have, like product managers at companies or product focused founders, this is your time to shine.

Justin:

This is the time.

Brian:

Because you don't need to know all the stupid syntax in PHP or Python or Ruby or whatever, or JavaScript, whatever it might be. Like Yeah. That stuff is handled now. You know?

Justin:

Yes. And the other thing I'm thinking about is really the important piece of building a product is often just getting something out there that interacts with real people. So for example, I've been thinking about building the sponsorship tool. And the best way for me to actually know if that's has any legs is to build a minimal version of it and start using it myself and see if anybody else wants it.

Brian:

Yep.

Justin:

And the the the shorter you can make that on ramp. Like, how can I get this in front of people as fast as possible and see if there's any sort of customer pull? Like, when people see it, are they like, oh, that's cool for you? Or do they say, how the hell do I get that?

Brian:

Yeah. I want that.

Justin:

I want that right now. And that, I think, is that that is going to be very valuable. And I think it's going to separate good product people who have a clear, keen understanding of customer demand and have an instinct about what customers want. It's going to allow folks to test that stuff out faster. Yeah.

Justin:

It's gonna be interesting.

Brian:

This might this might kick off a little rant. You know, because I I see a lot of, like, I don't know, like negativity or negative mindset out there, and it comes in a lot of flavors around how fast what it means to build is changing.

Justin:

Yeah.

Brian:

Right? So we see it we like, I see it a lot from career developers, programmers, especially, who are more, you know, more programmer focused people, who it's like their craft, their art form is writing code, especially more back end focused, less end product, less design focused. AI is shaking everything up, and and and there's this threat that their livelihood or their craft is becoming less valuable than it used to be. That's a reality. But then at the same time, we see career developers, programmer focused, who are extremely excited about the possibilities of leveraging AI and building it, not only in a new speed, but actually raising their craft to levels that they couldn't before.

Brian:

There's positive and negative way to look at the same coin, you know, just just like most things. But the other thing that my that really sort of triggered me this week this is our this is our weekly what triggered what triggered Brian this week?

Justin:

Hear it. This is was listening to

Brian:

so I listen to it less and less these days. But the New York Times, the daily podcast, I don't know if you ever listen in on that.

Justin:

I've listened a few times.

Brian:

I used to listen all the time, like, couple years ago, and it's just been fewer and far between. And I don't know, a year or two ago, I canceled my subscription to The Times. I just have been very turned off by the just overly left leaning bias. I used to trust that institution as a sort of like one of the most trustworthy journal you know, historic journalists. And it's just become way too biased for my taste.

Brian:

Yeah. Anyway, so but the podcast, The Daily Podcast used to be a little bit separate from all that. So I would stop reading the times, but I would still listen in to the podcast, especially on topics that interest me, right? This week, like two days ago, it was like Tuesday or Wednesday of this week, they published an episode on recent college grads who were convinced that they should get a computer science degree. And they're and they're left without any job prospects in the tech industry.

Justin:

Yeah.

Brian:

Right? And I understand, like, obviously, that's a thing that's happening now in 2025. There are a lot of young recent college grads who are lacking career experience and they have degrees in computer science. And I'm sure they're having a very hard time landing junior engineering roles at companies. Now that whole area of the industry, the recruiting and hiring, especially at the junior level, is not something that I'm very familiar with.

Brian:

I'm not in that part of the industry really.

Justin:

And

Brian:

there's no doubt that slowdown in hiring, especially at the junior level, is definitely happening. But the way that this podcast was framing it, and frankly, with a ton of bias, they were going back ten years. Like, were literally citing stories and trends from, like, 2012, 2013, where the software and the tech industry was convincing all of these young people going through college that if you want to have the most valuable skill set in today's economy, get a computer science degree, get an engineering degree, and get hired as an engineer. And you can be making 6 figures very early in your career.

Justin:

Yeah.

Brian:

And they framed it as like the tech industry duped at all these kids, and now they're now they're left in 2025 now that AI is here with with no job prospects. And everyone was tricked, and the tech industry is evil. And all these venture backed and and, like, billionaire tech founders, you know, they like to frame it in these terms Mhmm. That, like, they that they had some, like, evil plan back in 2012 or 2013 that convinced an entire generation to get the wrong degree, and now they're left, like, not knowing what to do. And I just I was, like, screaming at at the radio while I was listening to this, you know, because I'm like, yeah, I I get that it's tough out there for a junior engineer.

Brian:

But you can't tell me that like it's not like software turned out to be a fad that went away. The whole world is still powered by software, software in general continues to grow. So there's always going to be a continuous need for development of software.

Justin:

And

Brian:

yes, AI is more involved in that process than ever, but it still involves people, professionals in this industry, especially product people.

Justin:

I think there is it's multifaceted, all of that, though. Because in a sense, I think the big tech companies and a lot of venture capitalists have operated in a way that is not great. Meaning Yeah.

Brian:

I mean, you can point to a lot of things, but like but you you can't say that, like there there was no scheme to to get people to, like, get degrees in engineering.

Justin:

No. No.

Brian:

And and leave them without prospects.

Justin:

Maybe not overtly, but there is there there were a lot of like, the big tech companies, like Microsoft, and Amazon, and Google, were signaling to young people, like, hey, you we want the brightest and smartest, and we want you guys to go get degrees, and we hire these kind of skill sets at this amount of money, and we're gonna show you our cool campus that you can go to. So they they were certainly doing all sorts of promotion and marketing on the recruitment side.

Brian:

I yeah. But like, even if Google might not end up hiring you the way that they they would have hired you five or six, seven years ago, you as a young college grad gaining technical skills in building software is still valuable even if you won't get that job at Google because, you know, like

Justin:

Yeah.

Brian:

And I still think that you are at an advantage, and I would say even a superpower in today's economy, even with AI, to go into any small business, any small company, medium sized company or large company, and bring technical skills. And, yes, of course, you need to adapt quickly into into today's world with with AI. But, like, I I really think that the people who are who are most equipped to adapt into this world are the people who come into it with some technical background.

Justin:

I I agree with that side. And I also think that big tech companies are are letting society down in a way because they could be hiring way more people. And really, the tech economy especially works best when the big companies are hiring hiring junior developers. So if you go back to anyone think of anyone that's big now, Taylor Otwell. His first job is he gets hired out of college.

Justin:

He had his, like, electrical engineering or something. Gets hired out of college to be a junior dot net developer for a big trucking company. If that big trucking company doesn't hire Taylor as a junior developer, it's very possible we don't end up with Laravel and everything that's come everything his career got started there. And every kid does need that first job and that first chance to do that. And I don't like the fact that tech companies are saying, we're gonna use all this AI, not hire junior devs, and we're just gonna give all that money to the rich shareholders.

Justin:

I think there's a part of the social contract where big corporations used to put tons of money into research and development, hiring, hiring junior talent, all these things that benefited society. And they've abdicated a lot of that responsibility. And I I do think that's shitty.

Brian:

I think that I think it's one of these things that, like, there's a lot of, like, conflicting realities at play here.

Justin:

Yeah.

Brian:

Like, I I definitely agree with you that it is sort of like a shitty predicament that, like, today's junior technical people are not going to have the same company experience that someone like like Taylor might have had. But I also think that like ten years ago, when the tailors of the world were working in those positions, like they were actually needed in those companies. Like those companies had a need for a large headcount. And sort of like a happy accident of that is that a lot of these engineers gained the experience and had the wherewithal and initiative to go start the Larabels of the world. I think today's economy and today's operational needs of these big companies like, the other conflicting reality that I think about now, and thought about even then, is like, how because I'm not even connected to these like large organizations.

Brian:

I've never worked in one with hundreds of engineers. It always baffled my mind. Like, what do they literally do with all these people? Even ten years ago, before AI, I know how software gets built, and I theoretically wrap my head around how a 50 person software company works. Like, I could see what all those job titles could be, what the org chart could be.

Brian:

But then when I think about something like Stripe, and they've got like 3,000 engineers working on Stripe, I could probably name jobs for like a 100 of them. But what about the other 2,900? What are they literally working on? And so I sort of It did seem natural to me in the last four or five years, even before AI came into its full swing, when these big tech companies just stopped the crazy hiring. Because that just seemed like, yeah, it's kinda shitty for a lot of people in the economy.

Brian:

But at the same time, it's like, I don't know. Maybe maybe this bubble needed to burst at some point. I don't know.

Justin:

Maybe. But we I think one thing we talked about before is that what's gonna happen is that the the there's going to be a a big need in the future, we think, for experienced engineers. We've kind of all been talking around that point. And if there's no pipeline for creating experience, need junior engineers that get started and kind of grow up and get experience and then eventually become senior, quote unquote.

Brian:

I think that's true. Like, that problem, like, needs to be solved. I wonder how it gets solved in the 2025 to 2035 era.

Justin:

Yeah. Right? And there's just also, I think, the r and d and kind of benefit that corporations used to give back to society was much higher ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years ago. And now a lot of that has been replaced by we're just trying to increase shareholder value. And so the benefits of a company doing well, like in a factory town, if the company did well, the union would get people to get higher wages.

Justin:

The company would invest in the community, they would build a museum or a library, they would, know, contribute to local events. And that's just happening less and less and less. Less of the kind of the fruits of what companies do these days are going to people in society. And I do think that's a huge problem. And one of the things that mega corporations used to do is they just required so many people, at least they were providing employment for people.

Justin:

You know, it gave people a chance to get a foothold in the economy and get started and gain experience. And you get so much from that. Right? You get even if you're a junior developer working for Microsoft and all you're doing is writing tests, you're learning to work with a team. You're learning how to get instructions and process those instructions.

Justin:

You're asking questions to the senior developers. You're getting mentored. And if we eliminate that as a society, then that there's everybody in ten, twenty years is going be looking for senior engineers. And to hire one, you're going to have to pay a billion dollars a year or whatever.

Brian:

I think this is probably one of those areas where it's like, you know, I'm like socially very, very left leaning and then like economically sort of like middle of the road, a little bit more right, like conservative leaning. Yeah, I just don't really know what the answer is to that. We're certainly not gonna figure it out here on this podcast. But like

Justin:

Yeah.

Brian:

Yeah. I just think that we are just entering like broad like very broadly speaking, we're at the very, very tip of the beginning of a major change. Like, yes, it's driven by AI, but I think the entire economy is going to be changing. And I think that the tech industry is the tip of that spear. Right?

Brian:

Like we're already And seeing then I'm seeing it like literally here at my desk. Like the way that I make software is completely different from twelve months ago. But then that scales out to larger companies in the tech industry. But it hasn't yet reached the rest of the world. My non tech friends and family, They they hear about ChatGPT.

Brian:

Maybe they dabble with it a little bit at work here and there. Maybe they play around with it. Yeah. Maybe they don't. They don't have to.

Brian:

It's not essential for them. I I think it still remains to be seen how far and how quickly it'll infiltrate the rest of society. Yeah. I tend to be one of these people that thinks it is going to. I don't know the timeline or what that's going to look like, but I can see it here in our world already.

Brian:

We're already talking about it. You know?

Justin:

Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. I mean and we should probably get on to other topics. But this was a good meaty topic.

Justin:

We might have to revisit it. I yeah.

Brian:

Sorry. I didn't I didn't know I didn't mean to throw off our our segments here.

Justin:

No. I think it's good. That's the that's the whole that's the whole point of the show. And people in the chat, I think, got fired up about this one too. I I it is worth talking about because it's gonna hit everything.

Justin:

And I do think that AI is such a crazy change and is going to dramatically affect the whole world that we are going to have to figure out how like, countries are gonna be thinking all sorts of things. Like, do we have to tax AI in order to somehow support the society that gets disrupted by this wave? There's some big questions here. Sure. The peep there will be kind of the tip of the spear or the tip of the iceberg.

Justin:

There's gonna be highly actualized, creative people that are well built for this moment. I think people that are naturally entrepreneurial, that are naturally founders, that are naturally builders, that have developed a keen sense of what people want and can move on that really fast. But, you know, having once I started writing about entrepreneurship, and getting, you know, having people in my newsletter and everything, over, I don't know, decades now of writing about it, and podcasting about it, I just realized very few people are actually cut out to be entrepreneurs. Such a small percentage. I do think it's shitty to think, man, like, yeah, I think people who are highly actualized, and even those of us that are highly actualized as entrepreneurs, even for us, the success rate is not 100%.

Justin:

And so, what's the solution going to be for a whole society?

Brian:

And I do think that, like, getting back to, like, the using AI in the day to day creativity, I'm just observing the way that I work today on, like, literally every task. Mhmm. I mean, I'm using AI in, like, just about every single task that I do in the day, not just coding. Like, a lot of it is writing. A lot of it is creating.

Brian:

A lot of it is just thinking, just planning. You know? Yeah. And so I think about like, like it still does amaze me that other industries and other professionals in all different industries, and you don't have to be entrepreneurial to get like, I feel like I'm doing literally some of the best work of my career. I guess you could make the argument that we always feel that way, like we're always getting better.

Brian:

Yeah. But but I do think that there is some it feels something like a 10 x of, like, improving at my craft.

Justin:

And

Brian:

and that and that's a bunch of crafts. That's my product design and coding skills is 10 x from from using AI. It's my writing. Yeah. I I feel like I'm doing some of the best that I've ever done.

Brian:

Mhmm. Yes. Obviously, Claude is, like, literally writing a lot of the actual words that end up in my newsletter or whatever, but the idea is mine, and the argument that I'm making is mine. And I went through 10 iterations of the draft, that is me and my creativity. But the only way that I was able to hit publish on that version of it in such a concise way, in a direct way, compared to what People talk about slop and AI slop.

Brian:

Honestly, if I look back at most of my blog posts and newsletters from the last ten, twenty years, to me, that is slop. Mhmm. You know, to me, like, that is, like, rambling and way too many words and not and not being concise and not communicating my core idea elegantly.

Justin:

Yeah. But

Brian:

when I'm using Claude code, like, I can get right to it. You know? And and then I think about, like, I don't know, like the teachers in my kids' schools or or, I don't know, accountants or or people who are just operating jobs. You know? In their role, most people just aren't touching it.

Brian:

And so they're not unlocking these benefits. And you can't unlock it overnight. It took me two years of just It started just tinkering and playing with AI. And then I just used it a little bit more and a little bit more, and now I feel like I can't work without it. You know?

Brian:

And I and I it'll it's just interesting to me, like, how that trend is going to spread to the broader economy, workforce. Mhmm.

Justin:

Yeah. Yeah. I think I agree with it still has a long way to go. I think there's still it'll be interesting to see how it plays out out with regular jobs and education. I do I also think there's lots of opportunity for people who wanna work.

Justin:

Like, eventually, anything that I build with vZero or any of these other apps, I'm going to want if it's working, I'm going to want someone to come along and rebuild it. So what I build in one or two or three hours, that's such a small investment. And to have someone come along and look at all the TypeScript that got written and look at all the pages and everything. And I could say, I want you to rebuild this the right way in Laravel or Rails. There's going to be work for those people.

Justin:

And it might take time for the pendulum to swing back. There might not be as many of those jobs. Like, there there's all sorts of ways this could play out. But I do think there will be work for folks that wanna do that.

Brian:

Yeah. So I I do think that that's why you you do see that, like, the more secure jobs in the software industry are the more senior, you know, because you you because you do need senior engineers to get a real SaaS product shipped to production with real customers. That's where vZero, you can't just get away with shipping that with a real SaaS company.

Justin:

That's good. Let's keep moving here.

Brian:

The other thing, I don't know if we wanna get into it now, but we can we can jump around, but the thought on, like, artists and AI.

Justin:

Yeah. What was your thing about that? Like, what was your thoughts around that? You had that on our list.

Brian:

Aaron tweeted the Aaron Francis tweeted this, and this is a thought that I've that I've had for quite a while as well. It it totally resonated with me. Let me see if I can find his tweet. Yeah. Here.

Brian:

September 29. He he wrote, on a on a totally subconscious level, I have no desire to read content, watch videos, or listen to music purely generated by AI. Just skip right over it. I think the future is still bright for people who put themselves into the work. Okay.

Brian:

So he may maybe that was speaking a little bit more to what I was just talking about, where where, like, when it comes to creative work, like in the workforce, like I do leverage AI. It doesn't generate the initial ideas, but it helps me develop ideas and ship them. Right? Yeah. Yeah.

Brian:

But what hit me about that was more about artists. Mhmm. You know, because I'm also tuned into like, in my free time, like, my hobby is is music. Writing music, recording, producing music. So on my personal YouTube feed, I I get a lot of, like, home recording and saw and songwriting and music producer type content.

Brian:

Like, I I like to tune into that kind of stuff. Yeah. In that world, like, in the music industry, like, I'm also tuned in to a lot of these, like, influencers in that world, and a lot of them are hemming and hawing about how there are now, like, AI generated musical artists. Right? And it's gonna come for all the all the and and there's that, like, Hollywood actor actress

Justin:

Well, and the AI podcast slop is where is it? This CEO from this company is they're pumping out thousands of AI slop podcasts.

Brian:

Oh, I didn't see that.

Justin:

And she says her critics are Luddites. I think they're doing 3,000 episodes a day or something like that.

Brian:

That's crazy. And then I also read about this there's some, I don't know, like some Hollywood studio that's generating an AI actress that has a whole personality and going on shows and and all those different stuff.

Justin:

Yes.

Brian:

Yeah. And then, like, there there are, like, these, like I think there's, like, an AI, like, K pop, like, pop group that kids are really into.

Justin:

Yeah. But what's your angle here? You don't you think AI will will replace artists or will not?

Brian:

I think that might I think it will not. Because I I do think that like, there there will, of course, always be these, like, AI generated pop stars and actresses. Like, that's gonna continue to go on, and it's gonna continue to be bigger and broader, and it's gonna happen everywhere, of course. Yeah. But I think there's always going to be a hunger for consumers to hear real art or see and consume real art from real artists.

Brian:

And I always and and more importantly, I think there is always gonna be the human need of artists to create from their soul. Like Yeah. Like, you know, like, like, I'm I'm no professional artist or anything, but I do like to play, and I like to write music. Yeah. I I have absolutely zero interest in using AI to generate art.

Brian:

Like that comes from me. It's like a human need. Right? Somebody who's a painter, somebody who's an actor or actress, like that's an art form.

Justin:

Yeah.

Brian:

You know? And, like, great screenwriting, great, you know, great authors, like, yes, of course, AI can write a book, can write a screenplay. Yeah. Maybe it'll become hard to distinguish over time. But I think there's I think there's always gonna be especially a hunger for, like like, content in a certain content from a certain style.

Brian:

Like, you're if you're a fan of Quentin Tarantino,

Justin:

like,

Brian:

you want Quentin's next movie. You don't want something modeled after his style.

Justin:

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. I mean, I think this is I feel this most acutely in the podcast industry. And everybody's so worried about this inception AI company.

Justin:

And they're like, it's gonna you know, they're gonna make it so much harder for the podcast industry and for new creators. And I'm like, there's no way we're gonna be talking about this company in twelve months. This is a short term arbitrage play. This happened before. As you mentioned, there's been slop content before AI.

Justin:

And this is that classic, like Jason Kalkanis, his Mahalo. Remember Mahalo? That was an arbitrage play about producing tons of content at scale, and then running AdWords on it to try to make money. And then eventually Google said, no. First of all, it's it's slop.

Justin:

No one really wants this content. And second of all, you're just trying to get impressions. So you get these, you know, tiny fractions of ad dollars. And yeah. Sure.

Justin:

It'll work for six months, but then we're shutting it down. It's gonna be the same for AI slop houses. AI slop houses producing YouTube content, trying to get those, you know, monetized videos and stuff. Eventually, people are just gonna be like, first of all, no. Like, we don't want this.

Justin:

Anything that even feels like AI, they're gonna push it aside. I think creators are gonna have to work harder to make themselves not look like AI. That's gonna

Brian:

be Yeah. Exactly. I was just gonna say that I think it I think it's gonna be one of these forces that pushes creative people and artists to to to cut through that noise. Like, it's always been difficult to make a living as a professional artist, of of course. But just just from the art form standpoint, like, art like, art is always going to happen, like, no matter what.

Justin:

Yeah.

Brian:

It it might become a lot more difficult to make a living at it, but, like, I still think that people are going to create it, and people are going to want to consume human made art even if they even if, like, on the surface, it's indistinguishable. Like, was listening to a couple of months ago, I was listening to Bill Simmons talk to what's his name? The author. Oh, that guy.

Justin:

You want me to start guessing? Malcolm Gladwell. Seth Godin.

Brian:

No. James Clear. No. But, like, those are regulars on his show. Right?

Brian:

The other guy, oh man, Klosterman, Chuck Klosterman.

Justin:

Oh,

Brian:

okay. So they had like a whole episode about AI. This was maybe two months ago, three months ago. And they were kicking around and talking about the future, like what we're talking about here, how AI is going to change the world. It was a really good episode.

Brian:

I love when Bill Simmons does these random non sports topics. And so they got into this interesting question, talking about nirvana. Right? Like and I guess they heard somewhere that, like, it is technically possible now to produce Nirvana's next album. Just just train the AI on everything Nirvana has ever created and then generate what is what would most likely be their next album had had Kurt not died.

Brian:

Right?

Justin:

Yeah.

Brian:

And the interesting and so and so it's like they they they presented the the thought experiment. Right? Of like, if you if you were just just to play the actual, like, Nevermind record to two individuals

Justin:

Yeah.

Brian:

And individual a knows Nirvana. They know Kurt Cobain. They know the history. They know the story. They they know what happened with him and and the band and everything.

Brian:

Person b has no knowledge of that. Maybe they're younger. They they didn't live through it. They they never they they don't know they committed suicide. They don't know all all all that backstory to it.

Brian:

They just hear the song Lithium. Right? Yeah. Those two people might hear the same song, but the person who knows the story and the humans behind it is gonna hear this the music and the story so much differently

Justin:

Yeah.

Brian:

Than the other person is gonna hear it. Right? The other person is just gonna hear like a a hard rock grunge song from the nineties, but but the first person is gonna be like, they they know, like, the struggle that this person went through to generate that music. You know?

Justin:

Dude, this is bringing up that other thing I I didn't think we'd get to, but just this idea of exhaustion. And this article in particular that I highly recommend everyone go read, The Last Days of Social Media. But this social media promised connection, but it has delivered exhaustion. To me, this relates to music. It relates to film.

Justin:

It relates to all types of content. I think people are exhausted from all the options. And every day I'm on Instagram, I I see all sorts of quote unquote cool bands playing quote unquote, cool songs that I like. But there's so much of it now. It's overwhelming.

Justin:

It's like, I it's like you don't you don't get any connection, like you're saying. Like, where's the I've got nothing to hook into. I've got nothing to kind of that sticks with me. It's just like, I saw a video. It was well produced.

Justin:

It grabbed my attention for one second or three seconds or five seconds. And maybe I even went and added the song on Apple Music. But when I revisit it, I'm just like, okay, like a faceless band from a faceless stream. And that exhaustion from options. It's like all this is the other funny thing that's about with all this AI generated stuff is like, there's already enough human content.

Justin:

It's already overwhelming. Already, I can't form a meaningful connection with it. And now you're just gonna add more content that, hey, I have even less connection with. Like, we don't need this as a society. We don't need more AI bots tweeting.

Justin:

Like, we don't need that. But that's what's happening. We don't need more AI bots producing songs. But that's what's happening. We don't need more AI producing videos.

Justin:

There's enough shitty videos already. And Yeah. I I think this exhaustion people are feeling now from everything. They're exhausted about the news. They're exhausted about everything.

Justin:

It's just all too much.

Brian:

I think that's it's definitely true. Like, I think about, like, what is gonna replace or what needs to replace that now? Like, I I do I completely align with what you're saying because I feel like I'm bored Yeah. With most of the things when I'm when I'm scrolling through feeds. And for me, like, feeds generally include, like, my personal YouTube feed of of, like, what like, watching videos.

Brian:

Mhmm. There's the Twitter feed, Twitter slash blue sky, and then there's, a news feed. Right? I I usually just use, like, Apple News as my curator, which is has been broken lately. I don't know why.

Brian:

And, like, all of it has been more boring than ever. Like, I find myself, like, scrolling for two seconds

Justin:

Yeah. And be

Brian:

like, there there's nothing here for me. I used to be addicted. I used to sit on Twitter for like an hour and scroll because there's so much content that I actually want to read.

Justin:

And

Brian:

now it's like, alright, I could pass by like five tweets and be like, I've that I'm either I'm either angry and I don't like that, or, like, it more more likely, it's like more of the same. I'm bored.

Justin:

I mean, that's why this article hits so freaking hard. Here's a quote. The social Internet was built on attention, not only the promise to capture yours, but the chance for you to capture a slice of everyone else's. But after two decades, the mechanism has inverted, replacing connection with exhaustion. Time and yet time spent on platforms remains high.

Justin:

People scroll not because they enjoy it, but because they don't know how to stop. He continues. These are not the last days of these are the last days of social media, not because we lack content, but because the attention economy has neared its outer limit. We have exhausted the capacity to care.

Brian:

I do think that there like, there's some sort of, like, opportunity in here. I don't know what it is. But I think that there's maybe people more around, like, our age and then, like, not like the younger crowd.

Justin:

It's the kids, dude. It's the kids. Why why are kids why are my kids and my nieces, all the kids I know that are nine nine to 25 are obsessed with the nineties. My my son's favorite band is Sublime. Like, these are old bands.

Justin:

They like Creed. Creed is a big band right now, which is insane. Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Pearl Bush just did a giant tour. And Yeah. There was just as many Gen Z kids there as Gen X.

Brian:

What's going on? Oasis is like the biggest band in the world. Oasis.

Justin:

What's going on here? What's going on is kids are tired too. And they've they've opted out even earlier than I think millennials and Gen X.

Brian:

That's really interesting because your kids are older. So I don't you're you're more tapped into that than than mine. Yeah.

Justin:

I I think I think the pendulum is going to swing back. Now, whether a majority of society just stays in this addictive prison, I don't know. But I do think there will be more people seeking out like, if I was an artist, for example, I would be being the anti like, I'm not gonna post shit on Instagram. I'm going to figure out other ways of connecting with people because I don't wanna be a part of that exhaustion machine.

Brian:

Ben Thompson made has talked about this for a while. I'm a big fan of, like, Ben Thompson's Stratechery and and also especially dithering that he does with Jon Gruber. Yeah. I've been I've been paying for that podcast for years, and I love it. I I don't miss an episode.

Brian:

And just talking about, like, the role of these tech products in general. Mhmm. And, you know, where I think that there's some sort of opportunity, I don't know what it is exactly, is how do you bring quality back to short form content consumption? And like, what I mean is like, we loved Twitter from from the early days. Mhmm.

Brian:

And it wasn't a mass market. Like, yeah, it got big, of course, but not like It didn't take over the way that Instagram did and Facebook and YouTube and TikTok did because those became much more visual. And like, that's what made everyone so addicted was the visual stimulation of the photos and everything. Yeah. But for some subset of the world, especially in the tech industry and also the news industry, short form text content in the form of, like, tweets was what we wanted.

Justin:

That's right. Because You know? It was because we were nerds, though. Yeah. Here's what I kinda think.

Brian:

I mean, like, where do we get that now? Right? Look. So, like like the rest of my family are like voracious readers of novels. They're just constantly reading.

Brian:

There's books everywhere in my house. And they can like sit for an hour or two at any hour of the day, morning, noon, and night, and just read. And I'm so accustomed to short form content bursts, right? Also I have these short periods of time. I'm doing the dishes, I'm eating lunch, I'm out on a twenty minute walk.

Brian:

Yeah. I might listen to a book on some of those, but, like, a lot of times I'm you know, I I just I just wanna scroll and read some, like, interesting quality substantive content that is bite sized, like tweets. I don't we're gonna get back there. Yeah, like, right now, maybe I'm getting some of it in maybe a couple of, you know, private communities that that I'm in. I I like to check those in in place of checking Twitter because it's, like, people that I know, and it's short bursts of conversation.

Brian:

Yeah. But there I don't know. There's something there. Right? Like, I I think that, like

Justin:

I wonder if that I wonder if that moment that we had on Twitter will ever be replicated again. The the way I think about it is nerds are a special a special group of people. And you can tell we're a special group of people. Go to any nerd meetup. Go to any nerd event.

Justin:

We are actually very social. We love to talk about the shit we're interested in. And so just imagine this Geek Beers meetup I run every month. So there's a group of 20 people. We're all talking.

Justin:

We're all chatting. Then imagine if any asshole in the world could just come and start yelling at us or interjecting in our conversation or throwing shit at us or just making a bunch of noise or starting a bunch of fights. Like, nobody at the meetup would enjoy that. They'd be like, okay, we're getting the fuck out of here. That's essentially what that happened with Twitter.

Justin:

Early Twitter was just nerds. We were just having our own little nerd meetup inside this place. It felt so magical because it was like, when you were scrolling your feed, it was all like your internet friends or at least people that you would want to be your friends. And then we invited the rest of the world to the party. And there's just a lot of shitty people in the world.

Justin:

Yeah. And now it's like, you can't have that space unless you do it in a private Slack or private Discord or something like that. And even recent efforts to replicate it, like Mastodon or Blue Sky or whatever, it's just very difficult to recreate that magic. Because early Twitter, if you were a nerd and you showed up, you were like you signed up and you're like, woah, these are all my people. Like, this has attracted all of my people from around the world.

Justin:

We're all here talking about this shit. And now, I don't know if there's ever gonna be another moment like that again.

Brian:

No. And I I'm bummed with where we've ended up with Blue Sky today. I was hopeful when it first launched because I thought that we were gonna see a massive migration of our people, our industry, all just converge on Blue Sky and be like, this is where we're hanging out now. And

Justin:

And it felt like that early on. But then

Brian:

For for a minute. But but it didn't get everyone. And then, of course, freaking politics has to, like, over override everything. Yeah. And and now it's like, it's so stupid to me, but, like, that, like, Twitter is associated as, the right leaning place.

Justin:

Mhmm.

Brian:

And Blue Sky is considered the left leaning place. And people like me who go to these networks to just get away from that crap, It you know? And and like but now it's like so I'm, you know, I'm one of these people who who just remained on both networks. Mhmm. Because a lot of my people are on Blue Sky only, and a lot of my people are on Twitter only.

Brian:

And I still am fine with my feeds on both, but I I hate that I have to use both. I just wanna use one. Mhmm.

Justin:

And it's exhausting. It's exhausting.

Brian:

And also, like like the fact that, like, Blue Sky is, in in my view, sort of, like, failing at this point. Because, like, every time I look at it, it's quieter and quieter, and it it does seem just overrun with, like, unbearable left leaning people with nonsense that I just can't get on board with. You know?

Justin:

Although my Blue Sky feed right now has some really cool Anzi art.

Brian:

Like, these are these are my favorite types of of accounts. You know? Like, the the the random, like, art account like, so there's one my favorite account, this is on both Twitter and Blue Sky, is Retro Tech Dreams. Do you follow that?

Justin:

I think so. Yeah.

Brian:

I love it.

Justin:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I am following them. Oh, I love this game.

Justin:

Three d Pinball for Windows?

Brian:

Oh, hell yeah. Alright. You're literally playing it on that. Yeah. Awesome.

Brian:

Yeah. I mean,

Justin:

even here's the thing. Even Aaron Francis wants to sign off. Like, the people that used to kind of be known for social media or loves, you know, being on Twitter, everybody's feeling this exhaustion. And even the old dream that we're still holding on to was like, these places also give us distribution for our projects and for

Brian:

our ideas. I'm way over that. Like, that's not happening anymore. YouTube. Yes.

Brian:

But not not Twitter. No.

Justin:

It's like everything. Everybody's just hunting for a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of somebody's attention. And I mean, this is crazy to me that we have this live chat here. We've got, you know, whatever, 20 people, 17 people watching live, they're chatting, they're following along. The fact that they are here paying attention is crazy already.

Justin:

And there's just less and less of this. There's just Yeah. Less and less cases where you can get anybody's attention. And I Anyway. Yeah.

Justin:

I I think it'll be interesting to see where that goes.

Brian:

For sure. What else we got on the board here?

Justin:

Let's let's do one more topic, I think. One more to end things off. Any or Sure. Okay. What do you wanna do?

Justin:

What's your least favorite thing or q four goals?

Brian:

Yeah. That's sort of the same thing, really.

Justin:

Okay.

Brian:

Okay. So we're we're here in it is October 2. So I I guess this officially, you know, begins q four.

Justin:

When you told me it was q four, I was like, what?

Brian:

I know.

Justin:

I was

Brian:

like, what?

Justin:

And then I was I I couldn't believe it. Q four. So end of the year.

Brian:

Yeah. Can't believe it. I'm curious to know how you think about this. Or maybe just the month of October. Yeah.

Brian:

So like we can maybe blend this into the same conversation. Right? Like the idea of like what in our business let's just like, you know, come back to what what are we actually working on in our business and what are our personal or business priorities between now and as we as we lead up to the end of the year? Are there any, like, unfinished business or unmet goals that, you know, weren't we're in the fourth quarter here. So can Mhmm.

Brian:

Can we nail them by the end of the year? Are we thinking about that at all?

Justin:

Yeah. I mean, for me, personally, I want to try to take some sort of vacation or break before the end of the year. Two to four weeks, probably in November. But we'll see. Have a

Brian:

lot of like solo or family or

Justin:

I mean, it would probably have to be a combination. The the two at home are in high school. So it's I can't it's not easy to, like, take off. And honestly, it's harder to get them to come on trips as well. But I have a lot of anxiety around that, actually.

Justin:

Like anxiety

Brian:

Are they at an age in high school? I'm curious, like, could like, you you could leave them

Justin:

Oh, yeah.

Brian:

Home Yeah. Overnight?

Justin:

We we were just at a family reunion for four days, and we left them at home. Yeah. They've got their driver's license. They can drive and get themselves. So it's like like the house is super clean when we get back.

Justin:

But Yeah. We can we can oh, that was one funny thing because I got a notification from my HomePod that an alarm had sounded. And so I called them right away. And and I could hear the smoke alarm was going. So the the the HomePod detected that there was a smoke alarm.

Justin:

I don't know if you've ever had that. But just in

Brian:

I don't have HomePod.

Justin:

Oh, interesting. Yeah. So yeah. So we could leave them.

Brian:

And this might be one of those, like, generational things. Right? Like, like, when I was a kid, if I was left home alone overnight in high school, there there would be parties happening.

Justin:

Yeah. I mean

Brian:

And like the but like this generation, like, do they even party anymore?

Justin:

I mean, they they party a bit. But there's also they're the most surveilled generation. Like, we have Yeah. Yeah. Security cameras around our house.

Justin:

And we, you know, we can see where they are when they're walking around town and stuff like that. So there's good and bad about that. But, yeah, I want to take some time off. And we want to finish this

Brian:

I like that goal.

Justin:

Spotify feature for private podcasts. I think to ship that before the end of the year is important to us. And I think also just like kind of set ourselves up with maybe a regular product meeting every week or every two weeks, where we start to kind of shape things up for a big feature in 2026, which I think will probably still be video, even though there's lots of complicating factors around it. But that's Mhmm. Kind of what I'm thinking.

Brian:

What about you? I like it. Yeah. Let's see. So Builder Methods is, like, off the ground now with with revenue.

Brian:

It has MRR. It continues to grow. I'm continuing to get daily sign ups, new customers for this Builder Methods Pro, which is pretty exciting. Here in October, like, I think by tomorrow or Monday, I'm gonna actually ship Agent OS two point o. It's it's at the finish line.

Brian:

Like, literally today, I'm just writing documentation and trying to button it up and get it into it like a launchable state. But the product itself is basically done, finally. Nice. It took and it took more weeks than I hoped it would. It was one of those things where it just got I I ripped it apart and rebuilt it like three times over the past month.

Brian:

But it's it's in a good place now. I'm really happy with it.

Justin:

How far out do you think that is? Like, what's left before you can launch it?

Brian:

It's done. I'm, like, halfway through writing the docs right now. I need to, like, get those docs up on the site and which means a little bit of, like, site redesign work. Not redesign, but, like, just, you know, set up the doc pages a little bit differently from how they are now, cause there's gonna be more docs.

Justin:

Like, right now, they're just on the builder methods site?

Brian:

Right now right now, agent yeah. They're gonna continue to be at that location, but right now, it's one page. It's buildermethods.com/agent0s.

Justin:

Oh, yeah. Yeah. I'm looking at it here. Yeah.

Brian:

Going for once I launch two point o, that's gonna be the home page for it. But that left navigation, right now, those are just anchor links. Those are gonna become, like, actual sub pages.

Justin:

Nice.

Brian:

So I need to sort of, like, build out that. That that's famous last words. That shouldn't take long.

Justin:

Are you already ranking for, like, how do I install Agent OS? Is that okay. Yeah. It looks what is this? Agent OS NPM.

Brian:

There's a lot of other, like, Agent OS things out there.

Justin:

Yeah. I mean, you're the number one organic result. But my guess is once you have separate pages for that, it'll you'll start to rank better for this as well.

Brian:

And I don't have a good domain. Like, right now, it's just buildermethods.com/agent0s. And I've looked at the available domains, and there's nothing really that's like like, I can't get like agent0s.com or even like .dev or anything like that. So I don't know. I I mean, I like it living on on builder methods anyway.

Justin:

Yeah. I think that's fine for now.

Brian:

That is a big rock to push across the finish line. Mhmm. Because it it was a big project, but also, like, it's so core to my business at this point, this this Agent OS product. Yeah. Because it literally forms the basis of, like, most of my content is Like almost every video I do is educating about AgentOS or it's related to how I do things in AgentOS.

Justin:

Yeah. And a lot of the people who signed up for Builder Methods Pro as well. Right?

Brian:

A lot of them are coming in just to have that support. I'm getting like enterprise leads for big engagements who just want my AgentOS consulting. And having that out in the world as a living, breathing product that I don't have to spend all these hours, like, building and shipping, and and now now I'm just maintaining and supporting it Mhmm. That'll be really good. So I can sort of like move on with the other big priorities in the business.

Brian:

Right? So anyway, like that shipping that is like the first goal here in October. Yeah. I'm planning on doing another workshop in October, probably like two three weeks from now.

Justin:

That will be interesting to see if you like, how hard is it? How hard is it to sell another 100 tickets?

Brian:

Yeah. And that one, I think I'm gonna try it being agent OS focused.

Justin:

Okay.

Brian:

Like like, the title will be something like spec driven development with agent OS. Yeah. And

Justin:

good one, dude. Like, that's the kind of I like that because that's I would encourage my team to go and check that out, for example. Like, I think you'll get a good funnel of people with that specific call to action.

Brian:

So, like, as I look to through q four. Right? Like, I I need to throw up a workshop registration purchase page for that in the next couple of days so I can promote it for the next three weeks. But I but I'm gonna do this October workshop. That'll be my second workshop that I've done.

Brian:

Mhmm. Then we're in November, and there's I don't know. I might do a workshop, but November is gonna have a Black Friday. So I'll do some sort of deal on Builder Methods Pro then as well. Yeah.

Brian:

So like between now and the end of the year, I would like to have done at least two workshops plus Black Friday. There will probably be a third workshop in there somewhere between November and December. And so what that'll do is it'll by the end of the year, it'll give me the data points of, like, how many workshops I've done, how many tickets I sold on each of those workshops, and how many of those people converted into members, and what's the overall membership growth. Because I'm also just getting organic daily growth of the membership right now. It'll be interesting to see how that grows.

Brian:

I did just hire a video editor. So he is finished he he just finished editing the first video, which is not live yet. It'll probably publish on Monday or Tuesday.

Justin:

Oh, that's cool.

Brian:

And I'm pretty happy with it. Like, I I went through, like, two or three rounds of revisions with him. Like, as an early hire for for video editing, it takes a little while to to lock in, but he's but he's very good. He's in India. And I'm pretty I'm pretty happy with having found that person because he's gonna be my guy for

Justin:

That's a big deal.

Brian:

All the video editing going forward. Big deal. Yeah. So, like, that's gonna be huge because now I can just spend about a day Mhmm. Writing and recording a video and then hand it off.

Justin:

I mean, what's great about the flywheel you're building is actually not super complex, which is nice. It's make YouTube videos. That's top of the funnel. They there's some sort of call to action that's relatively low lift, like a workshop or something.

Brian:

Get on get on the newsletter. Join the Get

Justin:

the newsletter list. And then eventually get them to sign up for Builder Methods Pro. So that that it's you still got to figure out with as with any flywheel, whether it's gonna work, whether it keeps spitting out reliable income. But I like the simplicity.

Brian:

I like that. That's where the data will be interesting. Because right right now it is working. Like, right now it's I'm organically getting every single day I get, I don't know, what is it? I haven't looked at it.

Brian:

Maybe 50 new email subscribers every day right Oh, wow. Just off of the the the YouTube channel.

Justin:

50 a day.

Brian:

Especially on the days that I publish. It it probably decreases down to, twenty, twenty five on the you know, once I get further away from a published day. Yeah. But they're coming in every day, and and and I'm and my inbox is full with replies from people on on the automated reply.

Justin:

Yeah. That's that's wild. If if that's already pretty like, giving you that many people with email addresses.

Brian:

And like like today, like three people signed up for Builder Methods Pro. I have no idea even where they came from. They they could have just come from the Builder Methods GitHub or from the YouTube channel. Yeah. I haven't even promoted it in the past week.

Brian:

Like, they're just coming in.

Justin:

That's awesome.

Brian:

So it but it'll be interesting to see how that increases between now and the and the rest of the year with with these additional workshops, with two point o being out there in the wild Mhmm. With more videos, like more frequency of videos. Right? So I just crossed 15 k subscribers on the YouTube channel.

Justin:

Nice.

Brian:

And I think I I think it's not I think I should easily cross 20 k by the end of the year.

Justin:

And your videos are still getting 15,000, 12,000, 17,000, 28,000. Like, it's you're in a nice, like, double digit realm every video.

Brian:

Yeah. It's it's pretty good. There there are some folks in my space, like, technically competitors, like, covering the same content that I'm covering, who are doing double and triple the numbers that I'm doing on on their videos. So, like, it's like I'm not, like, one of the top I think I'm doing fairly well. Like, I'm thrilled with with the numbers that I'm seeing.

Brian:

It's it's way more than I've ever seen.

Justin:

Yeah.

Brian:

But but I can I can still tell that there's, a lot of room to grow? Yeah. Because, you know

Justin:

And you might be killing it. Like, who knows? You don't know their business. You might be getting more email subscribers than they are every day. Yeah.

Justin:

They might be getting more views, but the quality of your viewer is higher. So comparing sometimes is like, you know

Brian:

Yeah.

Justin:

I mean, if

Brian:

it helps then. From a business growth, projection standpoint, like, I I think that, like, I'm onto some there's there's definitely some, like, natural interest here. So, anyway, my main goal between now and the end of the year is, like okay. Well, this gets into the other topic, really

Justin:

Yeah. Which

Brian:

is fixing the thing that I I feel is suboptimal in in the day to day.

Justin:

Right? Like What's that?

Brian:

Because I this is this is like a general mindset thing where everything I ever work on business wise is solving a problem. Mhmm. Like, every day, every business I choose to build, everything I use I choose to work on, there's something that's broken or something that's that I don't like. Yeah. And I need to correct that.

Brian:

Yeah. That's my operating principle, essentially. Okay. So bigger picture the last couple of years, my main frustration in work has been like, I don't have a business that's steady and going. I'm flailing.

Brian:

I'm trying to choose which idea I'm going to do. I'm trying to figure out what I'm gonna sink sink into for the next couple of years. Right? Okay. So I feel like I finally found that with with builder methods.

Brian:

Yeah. But I it it financially, I'm I'm I can't sink into it 100%. Right? Like I still have a consulting client. I still do Clarity Flow.

Brian:

And I still feel the pressure and the urgency to work every single day of the week and really push and really ship and not take breaks Mhmm. And and work on a on a on an accelerated timeline so that I can get this revenue level up from, you know, low 4 figures to to 5 figures as quickly as possible to get it to that steady cruising altitude of like, this is a solid business that it's enough to pay my bills as a bootstrapper in in my lifestyle here, and it's a solid foundation to just to just build on. Right? Like Mhmm. Like, really, the main what I'm saying is, like, as soon as humanly possible, I wanna get to the point where I'm so confident in the trajectory of builder methods and its ability to pay my bills in full

Justin:

Mhmm.

Brian:

That I can slow down. Yes. And I can even work four days a week. And I can I you know? Like, yes, I'm gonna I'm gonna keep building and keep working on this for years, keep doing YouTube videos, keep keep doing agent OS, but it doesn't have to be at the same level of urgency.

Brian:

Yeah. And everything that I do outside of builder methods can fall away. Yep. And that can mean multiple things. It can like, I could just drop consulting.

Brian:

I could, I don't know, sell Clarity Flow or hire somebody to run it or whatever that might look like. But like like you said, make videos, make software every day. That's really all I wanna And and also I I would like to get to a point where, like, I don't have to work five days a week. I could just, you know, take it easy.

Justin:

What what do you have how many Builder Methods Pro memberships do you have so far? How many people joined so far?

Brian:

Today, it's probably up to 75, 80.

Justin:

Okay. Wow. That's even higher than last time.

Brian:

Yep.

Justin:

So you're

Brian:

at about growing every day.

Justin:

$15,000 ARR right now.

Brian:

Let's check it. Let's see.

Justin:

And what And just just

Brian:

so folks know, I'm not gonna just report numbers on every episode.

Justin:

Yes. Yeah. That's fine.

Brian:

But it but it's early enough that I can

Justin:

It's early enough. And I think

Brian:

1,400 MRR, 75 active subscribers.

Justin:

Okay. So and really I mean, what what do you think your goal for number of annual memberships you'd like? What would be the what would be an amazing milestone to hit before the end of the year?

Brian:

It's hard to project like, it's hard to understand what what is realistic because it's so new. Like, the very first dollar was September 15. Mhmm. But that's, two weeks ago. You know?

Brian:

So, like, I I can't, like, project, really. It's too early.

Justin:

For this to have proven itself as a good business, how many memberships do you think you'll want? How many members?

Brian:

I don't know how it translates to number of members just in terms of, like, MRR. I I think, like, a good first milestone is, like, cross cross 10 k, you know, 10 or 12 k. Yeah. Because that's that's the the number where I feel, like, secure. Yeah.

Brian:

And, like

Justin:

So that would be I

Brian:

really start to let other things fall away financially. It doesn't matter. But, like, obviously, like like, just to be clear, like, that's not my goal for this business. Like, you know, I I wanna grow it much larger than that. Yeah.

Brian:

But like, but that's the first like, I think that within the next three to five three to six months, like, ten ten k could be realistic. That that might be a stretch, but it but it could be realistic.

Justin:

Yeah. So that's 612 members, and you already have 75. So you need 537 more members. I think you are really like, there is a lot of momentum here.

Brian:

And There's other revenue opportunities too besides just the membership. There like, there could be these engagements. There could be sponsorships for the YouTube channel. I haven't I haven't even opened those yet. You know?

Justin:

Yeah. I mean, what I like about focusing on memberships is all those other opportunities are still available to you if you keep publishing videos, keep getting more subscribers, keep growing your email list, and then keep getting people to sign up. If all of a sudden, the top of this funnel is now doing instead of, like, 15 to 25,000 views a video, you're now doing 50 to a 100,000 views, or you're publishing more videos and you're just getting more Mhmm. Viewers, which ends up with more then you're gonna get sponsorship requests and all that stuff. And my guess is it'll always be kind of a cherry on top.

Brian:

Yeah. I agree. I I like the idea of, like, zeroing in on, like, some number of subscribers and just Builder Methods Pro as the thing that I'm growing. Yeah. Because the other thing stuff is cherry on top.

Justin:

Yep. I mean and this is the opportunity, I think. I think one thing that I've always done, and I think you've done this as well, but sometimes you just have to be more explicit about it, is like when we launched Transistor, and it was in early access, I emailed about 100 people personally, and just said, hey, I'm building this thing. It's really important to me. I think we got something here that's incredible.

Justin:

I'm emailing my friends and my contacts to say, I'm

Brian:

trying to

Justin:

build this. And what would really help right now is for people to be signing up on our early access plan. And I'm wondering if you would be interested in doing that. And I'm wondering if you have friends that would be interested in doing that. And

Brian:

That's interesting because it's like that's something I've been thinking about. Yeah. I talk a lot about it here on this podcast. There's obviously my email list, which I am actually sending now every Friday. I went a long period of time just not really sending very often.

Brian:

I do wonder I I'm not really talking much about this, like, gets back to, like, how much can we actually promote on Twitter and stuff. Like, feel like most people that, like, might have known me for many years don't know that I'm actually this focused on builder methods now. Yep. Because obviously, I've I've changed businesses so many times.

Justin:

Mhmm.

Brian:

I I think a lot of people still think of me as, the Clarity Flow guy. Pretty phenomenal. There's probably there's probably people who still think of me as, like, the product I services For sure. You know? But, like which is funny because I even sold that years ago.

Brian:

But I don't know. The like, I I don't I don't even know how to go about,

Justin:

announcing to the world,

Brian:

I'm the Builder Methods guy now, just so you know.

Justin:

I think you've got to write this explicit post. My post was why I'm switching to SaaS or something like that. That was kind of me putting my my stake in the ground and saying, I'm now doing this. So you may have known me as this person. I'm telling you, I'm now in on this.

Justin:

This is what I'm doing. And it had a specific request too, which was I need people to come along for the journey. Like, I need people to be signing up for Transistor and trying it out. I need if you have an employer, I need you to be telling people about this. I'm gonna need as much help from the people I know and the community I have to make this work.

Justin:

And

Brian:

I guess that yeah. That could be valuable, especially from that angle. Like, if you or your team or someone you know, your employer Mhmm. Have this need for, you know, improving your your your team's workflows with AI, that's that's what I'm offering now.

Justin:

Yes.

Brian:

Because it because it is true. Like, even even friends that I've that I've known for a while, like, anytime like like, I still I still hear the pain point of, like, my team is not leveraging AI in the way that they should. Like, that Yeah. That continues to come up from everyone I know. Like, I guess what I'm saying is like, I'd of question the value of making a big effort around like announce like, I've been thinking about like, at some point on Twitter, maybe I'll do that stupid thing where it's like, hey, look, I have a 100 subscribers and crossed this level of MRR.

Brian:

I've never I've never been a fan of

Justin:

Yeah.

Brian:

Broadcasting MRR goals like that. But it but it might be a way like, I could see the the point of doing that, especially early on when it's only like two or three k MRR. The the that serves as a form of an announcement. Yes. So like, look at what I'm working on now.

Justin:

Yeah. And I also think that reaching out personally to some of the pillars of the community is helpful because those people have enormous influence. So when I started Transistor, I emailed Rob Walling. And I said, just to let you know, I'm now building this. And this is my thing.

Justin:

I'm just letting people know because I know that you know people and I might need some of your advice. And I was just letting Brennan Dunn, Nathan Barry, Paul Jarvis, I just emailed all of the pillars of the community that I had built relationships with to say, I just want you to know this is what I'm doing. And those people have heat and shaw. Those people have big spheres of influence. They take

Brian:

That's a good point.

Justin:

10 coffee meetings a week. They are talking to folks all the time. They have their own newsletters and podcasts. That is helpful.

Brian:

That is a good point because it I I remember in 2015, the week that I launched Audience Ops. I I did exactly that. Mhmm. That's that's where the first customers from Audience Ops came from. I I emailed 20 friends, like like you just described, influential people who I happened to be in contact with to let them know about this little one pager landing page I made for Audience Ops, get their feedback, and some of them became clients, some of them told clients, and then and then we became like the go to shop for for blog content for SaaS companies.

Brian:

You know? Yep. That's interesting. And

Justin:

I think the other thing is this same pitch works really well for a Black Friday sale, which is to preamble it with, hey, as many of you know, I've been on this journey. I've tried different things. This is really working. Like, it's got traction. I'm excited about it.

Justin:

And my goal for this Black Friday is to get a 100 more people to sign up. And you give all the same kind of benefits. Like, here's people that are already in that are but you give them the opportunity to be a part of your journey. Like, I'm doing this. It's working.

Justin:

And what I really need now are for people that are kind of on the fence, or people that are like, oh, yeah, that looks really helpful. I should get that sometime to make a decision today to say, I'm going to help Brian out today. I'm going to do this thing I already know I should be doing. And I'm going to jump on this train of other people that are doing it. It the same kind of like I'm that same communication of like, this is what I'm doing can be really helpful for people and having them jump on the train with you.

Brian:

It's interesting because I've never I've always had a hard time, like, you know, like asking for for help in general, but also just like self self promoting, especially to friends. I just don't like doing that. But at the same time, I can think back to so many instances where friends, especially friends with influence, have been so incredibly generous and instrumental in my growth of my business, whether it's having me at their conference or telling people or talking about it or amplifying it. Like, it's it has absolutely helped. So Yeah.

Brian:

But I like, at the same time, like, on the flip side, like, I think at the beginning of this, I was thinking like, well, what's even the point of that when really I should be focused on the funnel, which is YouTube videos into the email list, into workshops? And and and, like, one of the beautiful things that I'm super excited about is that I don't need to rely on my personal network and personal following because I I finally I feel like for the first time in my career now, have a actual funnel that I can drive. Like, I know how to get exposed to new people every single day through YouTube. I've never really had that. Like, all of my previous businesses have been what I always felt like as as luck, but it's probably more like what you're talking about.

Brian:

It's like people hear me on the podcast. Mhmm. They know me. They talk they they recommend it. But this is more like I actually have a funnel where strangers are coming in, and they're and they're buying Yeah.

Brian:

From from day one.

Justin:

I think you gotta do both and. I think Yeah. You could write an email like this that I just wrote while you were talking to all the teams you know, and I think it would be super helpful. And so this would be to a team that you know. Right?

Justin:

You know, Matt Wensing at he's he's got a job with a software company. You know, all these there's lots of people you could email. Hey. It's Brian. I know a lot of teams are struggling with what to what do we do with AI?

Justin:

Wanna let you know I'm doing a workshop coming up in November. I think it will be really helpful for teams like yours. It's whatever amount, so it's really affordable. We only have a 100 seats available, so I wanted to let

Brian:

you That's awesome. For you to write For everyone that I know who's listening to this, you could expect that email, like, pretty soon.

Justin:

I think you gotta send it. I think you just gotta send it and say and you could also, in the PS, go, PS, here's a brief video that shows you the benefits of AgentOS. So just write this email. Send it to 20 people. Send it as you think of new people.

Justin:

You just have it in TextExpander, and you just have it ready to go. As you're like, oh, I just ran into whoever. I'm going to email them and just say, hey, I'm doing this workshop. I think it'll be helpful for your team.

Brian:

This is what I love about about the whole workshop model. I feel like every time I talk about it to fellow founders or entrepreneurs, like, I don't know. It I feel like a lot of people I explain it to don't quite get the benefit of this model. They see it as sort of a distraction. Like, Oh, don't do workshops.

Brian:

Just focus on Builder Methods Pro, just focus on the product. Right? Mhmm. But I actually think it's such an incredible mechanism. Yes.

Brian:

Because it's so low commitment, but it's still above free. You pay for it. It's a two digit price tag. You want, you don't even have to attend live. You can get the recording.

Brian:

But if you do attend live, you can just hang out for thirty, forty five minutes. To me, like anyone in our industry, a $25 or $50 ticket is whatever. Like, if if I if I kind of want it, I'll just pay for it. It doesn't matter. Right?

Brian:

So it's like so low commitment, but it's also enough of a signal to be like, yeah. Like, that's not nothing. Like like, I am actually interested in that. You are scratching a pain that I have.

Justin:

Yes. I also like it because it's just another if we're talking about increasing your surface area for luck. Yes. You want to keep doing the repeatable YouTube thing. But another sort of network effect is emailing Heat and Shaw and saying, hey, I'm doing this thing.

Justin:

It's been really helpful for people. I know you're writing a lot about AI. Maybe this is something people on your team would benefit from. But also, PS, if you know other people that you think should go to this, can you just forward this email to them? And you're just giving people you're increasing your surface area that that whole network could work for you as well.

Brian:

Yeah. Exactly. And and also just like I think that, like, our industry, our circles get so hung up on the idea of, like, what is the product? How can you charge more for it? How can you optimize the the the revenue per customer?

Brian:

Mhmm. Charge more, charge more, charge more. Yep. But what I'm realizing with the value of this workshop model as a top of funnel mechanism Mhmm. Is that if if you're only selling a high ticket product, and even even if it's just a couple $100, like, that's high ticket enough that, like, if you send it out to a bunch of people, they might even be interested in it, but they're not going to be interested in it right now.

Brian:

They're going to be like, Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, maybe at some point. And then they will completely forget about it forever. And also, a couple $100 is enough money for them to not want to just pass it on to their coworkers or their employer or their friends. Because it's like, nobody wants to promote a several $100 purchase to friends.

Brian:

But if it's an offer that's like, oh, like, you know, we've been sort of struggling with this problem. Here's the thing, it costs like almost nothing. Yes. The very least we could do is just buy a ticket and watch the recording. Then as soon as you do that, it's like, I haven't lost them forever.

Brian:

Now they're in my email list. Now they might even go to the workshop. And and, like, chances are they're gonna they're gonna see an email or two or 10 from me over the next couple of months. Mhmm. And and they're gonna become members.

Brian:

Like, it's it I think it's so essential to have some mechanism like that at the top that's not purely free. It's it's valuable enough to be like, noteworthy.

Justin:

Yep. I love it. I love it. I think I've got two kind of follow ups to that. One is, again, these kind of prompts to people that you know, like sending Heaton an email or whoever, it it just it it becomes something that they can then use.

Justin:

So for example, if you send me that email, and I think you should, I need that prompt. I need that reminder in my day that Brian's doing something. I have no idea when you're doing it. I'm not gonna I'm gonna forget. You you might DM me, and I'll I'll still forget.

Justin:

If you write me an email and say, hey, I'm doing this. If you know anyone that would benefit from this or if Transistor wants to do it, please sign up now. And I will then go and paste it in the Vernon Geeks Slack because there's a bunch of 25 year olds that need to learn this stuff. I will go to my coworking Slack and talk to the people that work at these big companies that have expressed interest in this. I'll be like, hey, that guy Brian I told you about, he's doing this thing.

Justin:

You should sign up. I will go to my own team. So it activates a connector like me who will then you're just reminding me. You're giving me a prompt to go and do something. And you could even specifically ask that I go do those things.

Justin:

So I think that is helpful.

Brian:

It's interesting because again, it's like it falls in that sweet spot in the middle where it's it's sort like of time urgency. Like, it's a workshop that's happening on this date. So so you don't wanna so you'll just, throw it in it, like, the next chance you get. Second of all, it's like, again, it's not priced too high because that would turn you off from being too promotional to

Justin:

Mhmm.

Brian:

Or salesy to to your people, but it's also not free. It's not it's not just another newsletter or just another YouTube channel.

Justin:

Like Yeah.

Brian:

No like, nobody wants to promote somebody else's just free YouTube channel. And then, like, everyone else who just sees that is gonna be like, so what? Why do I care about this?

Justin:

Yeah. Yeah. I think it's valuable enough, especially because people might have already heard about Agent OS or things like this, or they just might be struggling with it. And you're giving people the opportunity to advocate on your behalf. So if I walk out of this door right now, and I go for coffee with somebody, and they tell me how their team is struggling in this way, it gives me something to recommend them.

Justin:

Right? The second thing I wanted to bring up is I just got this email yesterday. This is blows my mind. Hi, Justin. I saw you interacted with you on social media years ago.

Justin:

I bought a marketing course from you as well. I knew that you started something to do with podcasting, but didn't really follow as it wasn't particularly relevant to my needs. Fast forward, we have a podcast now and need to distribute it to various platforms. I went and looked. This guy bought marketing for developers for me ten years ago.

Justin:

Ten years ago. This is kind of how it works is you have been going you have a long career. This is one of the benefits of having a long career of being on the internet, of helping people. And when this guy knew me, I was doing something completely different. But he had kept enough of the thread that when it came time, who's he recommending to the company for their podcast?

Justin:

Transistor. That's a 10 sales cycle. That started this implying a course for maybe $199 or something like

Brian:

that. Yeah. And, like, it's I think that it goes to show just, like, ship a lot of stuff and and, like, actual products too. Right? Like, I still get people in my inbox who are like, yeah.

Brian:

Like, I bought your productized course back in 2014. You know? And I think back to, I'm not a big course buyer myself, but I have bought a few over the course of my career. And there's one or two that I bought ten, fifteen years ago that, like, I something about, like, paying for somebody's expertise, even if it's just in the moment, like, I just need to learn that one skill from this one person. Yeah.

Brian:

I'm basically gonna keep tabs on what that person is doing. Maybe if it's once a year just to find out what they're up to.

Justin:

Yeah.

Brian:

Or or or the next time I hear their name, I'm like, oh, that's that person I bought that course from years ago. Like, I do think about that.

Justin:

This is why I love the catch up email. The the the subject line could literally be an update or catch up or whatever. And that's just to say, hey, it's Brian. I'm curious to what what you're doing these days. I've seen a little thing.

Justin:

And I just want to let you know what I'm doing right now. I've just moved, done this, da da da da da. You know, we've interacted in the past. Just wanted you to have the update. Those emails, like, you gotta send them.

Justin:

You gotta send them. Especially to those key people that I think, you know, can still be influential and helpful. And it's just another lever to pull in saying, here's what I'm doing. Right? Hey, just

Brian:

an I do like that, like, for some sometime in the next month or two. Because like at that point, this this just becomes even more real. It's it's a couple thousand in MRR. It's it's already probably crossing a hundred first customers. It's I've got this YouTube channel that clearly I've been doing.

Brian:

So it's like, this is going. This isn't just another idea. Like, I've been on this thing. You know? It's it's getting real now.

Brian:

You know?

Justin:

I just found a bunch of these emails that I I wrote a blog post on this. It's called Justin Jackson dot c a slash hundred dash emails. But, yeah, here's the email I wrote when I was talking about Transistor. Hey, Nate. This year, I'm building a SaaS with another guy from Chicago, John Buddha.

Justin:

It's called transistor.fm. At the time, it was the best way to create a podcast for your business. We no longer we eventually got away from that positioning. Folks like

Brian:

You don't claim to be the best anymore?

Justin:

Yeah. Folks like Redacted are investing big into podcasts. They have whatever. We wanna make it easy for companies that might not have the same resources they do. Here's a quick demo I made for Balsamiq.

Justin:

Balsamiq never signed up, by the way. I just made that demo. We're thinking of having a product

Brian:

Well, they're coming around on that, like, ten year mark. Yeah. Yeah. Has

Justin:

your team thought about doing a podcast? If so, I'd love to show you Transistor. So these are personal notes that I wrote to people. I also wrote personal notes when we launched on Product Hunt. Yeah.

Justin:

It's a classic do things that don't scale action, but this is it's it's a it can be massively helpful

Brian:

And I remember that that Nathan Barry playbook in the early days of ConvertKit. Mhmm.

Justin:

Yep. Yeah. Well, I think we did it. We did not hold to segments at all. RIP segments.

Justin:

But sometimes that's what's great about podcasting. We're not an AI that you just prompt once and then spits out content. We got to

Brian:

go That's what happens when we go we get going on a couple rants, you know?

Justin:

Yeah. And Mitchell Davis just joined the livestream. Mitchell. You're coming in at the end here. Yeah.

Justin:

This was good. Let's let's do it again. Maybe next week. What's going on next week?

Brian:

Yep. I'll be around.

Justin:

All right. Next week, I think I'll be here. My wife believe it or not, my wife and I are celebrating '24 our twenty fourth wedding anniversary.

Brian:

'24? Yeah. Woah. Holy crap. You guys got got together early.

Justin:

We got together So I I think I'll be here. But depending on our plans, I might not. But thanks everyone for joining. Live in the chat.

Brian:

Thank you, folks.

Justin:

We'll see you again. Later.