Welcome to the panel where founders talk about building a better business and a better life. I'm Justin Jackson, the cofounder of transistor.fm.
Brian Casel:And I'm Brian Casel, founder of Builder Methods.
Jordan:And I am Jordan Gal, cofounder at heyrosy.com. Good to see everybody.
Justin:Good to see you. Hey, Jordan, you do the same thing I do. I have a little trick, which is I I've basically made the transistor brand transistor.fm. And I was always puzzled. I remember I remember that Des at Intercom always hated it when people would say intercom.io.
Justin:And I'm like, why?
Brian Casel:I feel like the the .fm and the dot you really have to do it. And I think, customer IO that they did did did that for a while, like Yeah. Like built into the name.
Jordan:Part of the name. Yeah. Yes. Yes.
Brian Casel:The.com, can like, don't say .com.
Justin:Oh. I don't know. But but it makes so much sense. Like, if you're gonna say rosie, why not just say hey, rosie.com?
Jordan:Yeah. This is the home. Look. If the Rosie O'Donnell superfan who's currently squatting on rosie.com is interested in selling. I'm interested in buying.
Justin:Wait a second. Is there a thus far. Is there, like, a blog there? Is there a Tumblr there or something?
Jordan:There is an old school Rosie O'Donnell fan page blog there. Yes. Wow.
Justin:Wait. Rosy.com? Because rosy.com is just going to please check back later. So maybe they got new plans now. Please check back later.
Justin:This is your chance, Jordan.
Jordan:This is it.
Justin:Let's bid on it live.
Jordan:Oh, man. Please check back later. What does that even mean? Someone's buying it. Goddamn it.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Uh-oh. Mean, my thing with domains is always just like, if if you could Google like, if you were to Google transistor, just the word transistor
Justin:Yeah.
Brian Casel:Do you guys even show up for that? Like, probably
Justin:Let's see. I mean, if I Google for it probably not. But Yeah. Trend oh, no. Transistor well, in my search, transistor is is AI overview, Wikipedia, and then transistor is number three.
Justin:But
Jordan:Okay. Shout out to our SEO team because if you Google Rosie, hey, Rosie comes up number one. Wow.
Brian Casel:Just the word Rosie?
Jordan:Yeah. Just the word Rosie.
Brian Casel:No way. That's crazy. Take that.
Jordan:But I I hear you. I have a problem with it because some people call the company Hey Rosie. I'm like, that's the domain. The product is just Rosie. Yeah.
Jordan:So clearly, I need to check back later at rosie.com and do something about that.
Justin:Yeah. But also, like, especially in the world of LLMs now. Hey, Rosie. People that people find it. LLMs are pulling that into.
Justin:They're they're connecting behind the I I think people sometimes get a little too precious about their brand name. Like, you know, it's like, no. It's Transistor. Just Transistor. Nothing else.
Justin:It's like, no.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And and, like, and really, like, the person who wants to buy the thing is gonna track it down. Like, Transistor Podcast or Rosy AI or Rosie's Call thing. That'll bring it up. Yeah.
Jordan:Exactly. Very high quality domain, I am convinced is worth it. I mean, if you could
Justin:get rosie.com, that would be we should we should do it live on there.
Jordan:We can check and see. These things.
Brian Casel:Oh, man. Alright. So, yeah, I think today is is my week. I've got a a couple very random and disjointed topic ideas or or prompts that we can that we can use for today's discussion. But, you know, before we get into it and before we start talking about the the story on Twitter this week, which was, you know, anthropic hiking prices for for developers and the why behind that, and what's what's going on there.
Brian Casel:Big Lot lot of open questions there. But before we get into that, why don't we do some updates? Jordan, what what's on your end this week?
Jordan:So I have been a good individual contributor over the last few weeks. I have taken some things onto my desk, mostly out of necessity. So we have a great advertising agency. They are very reliable and steady and good and they don't make mistakes and so that part's good. What they, fall short on is like the forward progress.
Jordan:Like we should be doing this next and this is what's next and and get us this thing and this new creative. So what I've understood or internalized is that it's up to me to do that driving part of it. And so I think of it as like, like our advertising funnel are like five levels. So level number one is like purely organic. Right.
Jordan:Not really part of the advertising funnel. It kind of is because it helps retargeting, but at the very top is purely organic. Then one step further is partnership ads or spark ads. Those are the ads I've been talking about that look like they're coming from the creator. Then level three is just the UGC like ads that we are currently running that you know it's an ad as soon as you see it, but it's got a good hook and a CTA and an offer and so on.
Jordan:And then level four is the retargeting. And then level five is like the bottom of the funnel retargeting, click here, free trial, you signed up, you didn't finish, whatever else.
Justin:Wow. This is a system.
Jordan:I mean, this is our channel.
Brian Casel:I have So you do it
Justin:right I have stopped
Jordan:I have stopped feeling bad about the fact that advertising is like an expensive channel and just realized, actually, we're blessed that this is our channel because we can just spend money and acquire customers. And therefore, we should just get really good at this channel. I probably should've done that a while ago.
Brian Casel:I remember you brought this up with Jason Cohen last week, the question or or or you you sort of mentioned offhand that like you you felt like like like bad or or ashamed or that there's a lot of like but but I I I wanted to chime in. I didn't really get a chance to do it last week, but I I just wanted to say that, like, as like a career long bootstrapper myself, I'm more jealous of that than I'm always looking at it like the grass is always greener, like the the predictability, the scalability of of ad funnels and But And and even right now, it's it's that thing that's continuously on the to do list. I I need to start getting some ad. Okay. Ad channels going.
Brian Casel:And I and I haven't done it yet.
Jordan:The the grass is greener is is definitely a factor here. I found it interesting that Jason kept using ads as like his example of go to market. So that that's why I like double clicked on that with him. So in these five levels, I realized that we were only doing levels three, four, and five.
Brian Casel:We were
Jordan:running ads that looked like ads, then we retargeted them, and then we had the bottom of the funnel ads and that turned into sign ups. And what I've taken upon myself to do is create levels one and levels two. So we are we are we are hiring creators for level one. I'm working on a platform called SideShift. Very interesting platform.
Jordan:And I have a campaign manager and she's hiring creators. And so we'll have level one of purely organic content soon. And those are like skits and posts that don't feel like ads. You know, someone will be talking about their own business and their own struggles and they'll kind of like mention Rosie as a solution in part of the post, but it's not this big bang over the head ad. And then level two is what I'm working on with the partnership ads.
Jordan:And so I feel like our advertising funnel is about to become much more effective. I'm trying not to get overly optimistic because either that usually ends in disappointment. Yeah. But I think it's gonna be much more effective. I'll know more in the next, like, sixty days on what that does to our overall sign ups, and trials, and cards on file, and so on.
Jordan:Yeah. So that that's like my focus the last two weeks.
Brian Casel:Very nice. Justin, what's happening over oh, sorry.
Jordan:I just wanna say, if you wanna feel like a boomer, hire a few creators. This is different language.
Brian Casel:I'm sure.
Jordan:I can barely understand what they're talking about. I I have to constantly look things up on, like, oh, get me this thing. And I'm like, I don't know what that thing is at all.
Brian Casel:What does that emoji mean?
Jordan:Yeah. So I'm I'm stretching my comfort level. But instead of just, like, well, let me just hire an agency for it. I really wanted to, like, understand what is going on here. And it's okay.
Jordan:The the the truth is the founder of the ad agency and I have become friends mostly because I'm very, very direct and honest with him. Mhmm. So I think he values the feedback because, you know, as I'm, gonna give it to him straight. And I'm helping guide them on like, this is what your customers need out of you. Because when I go off on Twitter and I do my research and I talk to Claude and I realize we should be running like 40%, at least 40% of our ads should be partnership ads, and we're at 0%, I'm not happy with you.
Jordan:If you wanna get ahead of that with your other customers, get a move on.
Justin:Great feedback.
Brian Casel:Like, dumb dumb question. So alright. Like what what is like the difference between a partnership ad and like the other ads that you're running?
Jordan:So first and foremost, it comes from the Rosie account. So when you see an ad, it's published under the Rosie logo and Rosie, and then there's some ad copy and then there's the video and then there's a CTA. So it is and then the content itself is an ad. Like, there's a hook and then it talks about Rosie and then the screenshot and then it shows the app and then there's then the CTA get started with your seven day free trial. Right?
Brian Casel:It's like
Justin:thirty Yeah,
Brian Casel:like what we traditionally think of as like a pay per
Justin:click ad.
Jordan:Yes. Yes. And a partnership ad is like somewhere in between fully organic I'm gonna tell you a story and the thirty second ad. It's somewhere in between those two, and it's being published from the creator's handle. And this is it's actually incredible.
Jordan:Meta has been pushing this partnership ad approach over the last year and it has developed into something that I think is an arbitrage opportunity. I think it is a temporary glitch in the matrix where so there's content level and then there's account level. So the content level permission allows you to take that one post that they made and run it as an ad. But account level permission basically allows you to run whatever content you want through their handle. You can post ads.
Jordan:You can post versions of the ad. You can change the captions. You can post comments on your own ad as the creator. Like Wow. It is an extreme level of control, and I don't think that's gonna last forever.
Brian Casel:And is it marked sponsored?
Jordan:Or are these two deals? A little word sponsored Tiny thing. Corner.
Brian Casel:Yep. Interesting. Okay. Yep.
Justin:Yeah. There's also these, like it even on the organic level, it feels like that invite to collaborate piece on Instagram where it says this is being posted by two or three accounts. Yes.
Jordan:That's So there's a lot of options.
Brian Casel:I like, I'm so not interested in even using Instagram and Facebook. Like, I never go on those as a consumer, and I should just for to understand how the mechanics work so that
Jordan:I can
Justin:use them,
Brian Casel:you know.
Jordan:It's incredibly effective. Instagram ads are incredible. But you're you're right, Justin. You have a lot of control. Sometimes you wanna post from the brand.
Jordan:Sometimes you wanna post just from the creator. And sometimes you want people to associate. Right? Let's say you did account level partnership with an amazing podcaster. And you want the Transistral logo and that podcasters handled together like we aren't a team.
Jordan:Don't you wanna be like them? Mhmm. So it gives you an enormous amount of control around how to show your content to people through your ad campaigns. Yeah. Interesting.
Brian Casel:What's happening at transistor.fm?
Justin:Wow. It is just insanity. Really? Oh, dude. It feels like we're building the airplane in the air.
Brian Casel:Transistor.fm, the video platform?
Justin:Oh, yeah. It's I mean, there's just so many things coalescing all at once. First, we have our own work building this video podcasting platform. We have a very, very large waiting list. So the demand is demonstrated in a list that's over a thousand Like, it's Oh, yeah.
Justin:It's very, very big. So
Jordan:Existing customers or both? Or
Justin:Both. I I would say it's maybe sixty, seventy existing customers. Or I mean, the thing is we tag it with a plan, but a lot of people have signed up just to try this out. So
Brian Casel:And where do you like, where are the the new people or the non account holders discovering that Transistor is is now offering video? Like, where where is that where is that waiting list coming from?
Justin:We have a banner everywhere on the site saying Transistor now does video podcast hosting. Click here. And then it takes them to transistor.fm/features/video. And, that basically there's a thing that says, this is an early access. Click here to sign up.
Justin:People sign up. And, it's also in people's accounts. So when they go to their distribution tab, they'll see, oh, now you can submit to video, request access here, and then they go on the list as well.
Brian Casel:Would you say that it's it's, like, still most of that list is either from existing customers or at least people who already know you or Transistor. So that's how or or are there, like, new people who are Googling for, like, video podcast platform and discovering transistor for the first time?
Justin:It's it's all of it. It's, I think we did a really good job. I I I don't know if you remember, like, it was probably a month or two now where I started basically seeding the Internet with this idea that Transistor now does video podcast hosting. Transistor is one of the official partners for Apple HLS video. Transistor is doing HLS video in RSS feeds.
Justin:Transistor is allowing you to upload video to YouTube. Like, I was just putting that out over and over again everywhere. And that has is now showing up in LLMs. It's showing up in AI overviews. And we're just getting sign ups from that.
Justin:People looking for that. And it's got a more busy. Like, at first, we were like, maybe we could be first to launch with everything. But there's a few competitors that launched first. And in some ways, that just took I'm like, okay, strategy has changed now.
Justin:I'm not in a rush to, like, say this is future complete out the door. Like, I want us to keep building this, do it well. And we have a list of a lot of people. We're sending out invites, like, every day. And it does feel like we're building the plane in the air.
Justin:Like, it's just like, oh, we invited five people, and then two of them had this challenge. It's like, okay, we gotta we gotta fill that, fix that. I gotta record special videos just for this beta period. So this scenario will not exist in a month, but we're gonna create a whole knowledge base called video beta. And we have this whole automated, email sequence that goes out to the waiting list.
Justin:Yeah. It's just wild. It's just
Brian Casel:it seems like you can really it sounds like you are really capitalizing on not only that you offer video as a as a big headline feature, but like Mhmm. This term, like HLS video, which I I don't even really know what that means, but it but it's but it's it's like a a a new emerging growing technical term that if you're Googling for that or asking AI about that, you're looking for that, and and and so you can start becoming known for that. But I I feel like the other marketing opportunity, of course, is like Apple Podcasts now has video, and people who are going for like looking around for app. How do I get my video on Apple?
Jordan:Like, transistor in that an Apple announcement or two.
Justin:Yeah. Yeah. And we have been in we have been in those announcements. And we will get official status, I think. We're actually not allowed to talk about anything with Apple, but anyway, it's coming.
Justin:And Forthcoming. So that is happening, which is insane enough. And then at the same time, we hired a summer co op student, somebody who's going into their fourth year of engineering. So here in Canada think this is everywhere. You go to university, you get a co op, like, work program.
Jordan:Just Canada.
Justin:Just Canada. Okay.
Jordan:We we do internships. Maybe that's the
Justin:Oh, yeah. It's like an it's like a summer internship. Yeah. And so we hired our first student intern over the summer. So we've been getting him onboarding.
Justin:He's, like, literally working right here in the office. We've had three people co located in the office every day, which has been kind of fun. Like, just having these people coming into my office all day. Hey. Can I ask you about this?
Justin:Hey. Can we talk about this? Hey. Let's have a quick little meeting here. Yeah.
Justin:I'm having just a lot of fun with that. His name is Ian, and he's been great. And then the third thing that's happening is this the London podcast show, which I leave for on Sunday, is happening. The biggest podcast industry event of the year. There's lots to coordinate there.
Justin:We're doing a sponsored talk, which is the first time I've done this. The second time I've done this. Very expensive. It was about $10 to get this, like, dedicated conference what conferences charge would blow people's minds. Like, if you want a TV in that room, $3.
Justin:You know, it's just like, oh, you want an extra microphone? That's another grand.
Jordan:Yeah. Just weird scam industry.
Justin:Yeah. Yeah. It's insane. So we've been putting a ton of effort, the topic that we have we I think we're already we had a 110 capacity. I think we're already over it.
Justin:We have a waiting list. The topic is video and AI. Is podcasting cooked? And there's just like, I got some advice from some other people that had done sessions, and they're like, if you put video and AI in your title, the industry, which is
Jordan:Ding ding ding
Justin:ding an amalgamation of old radio broadcast executives and tech executives and creators and massive platforms and small platforms. It's just like everybody's thinking about this right now. Yeah. It just feels I've been putting in, like, ten hour days on average and just big long days, always something going on. Go, go, go.
Justin:I feel exhausted at the end of the day. But at the same time, I kind of love it. So You got
Jordan:a waiting list. You have an audience.
Brian Casel:Yeah, that's huge.
Justin:Dude, it's so fun. It's so fun. Cool. It's Good. Stressful, but intense.
Justin:But I personally I just kinda love this. You can't do it forever, but little modes like this.
Jordan:It's awesome.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Love it. Love love to hear it, dude. Let's see. Yeah.
Brian Casel:On my end, so, I'll give you my my update for the week, but actually speaking of conferences, in June, like, of June, I'll be going out to The UK for I'm at Brighton Ruby for any Ruby on Rails developers and doing a private workshop the day before over there. And then I'm also booked to speak in Copenhagen in September at Future Product Days, which is which is a pretty big conference in in Europe. Designers, developers, UX, product people from all over the industry, lot of lot of people going out to that, and I have a I actually have a coupon code that I can share with folks if if people want it. So that'll that'll be a good time as well. Speaking of of those, like, I'm I'm So I have, like, these upcoming speaking engagements and a few other, like, workshops that I'm doing, and I'm, like, booked month months out to do them, and I give them a little blurb about, like, what I'm gonna talk about.
Brian Casel:But I'm already, that's all gonna change between now and, like, three or four months from now, you know.
Jordan:Yeah. So And a caveat next time you make a promise.
Brian Casel:Yeah. No. I mean, I'm, like, in touch with these organizers. I'm, like, here here's a blurb you can put on the website, but I'm gonna talk about something different, And don't even know what it what it's gonna be yet.
Jordan:Are these, like, coming out of the YouTube? Opportunities, people reaching out?
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah. You know, just I'm I'm a I'm a voice out there talking about AI and adoption and and, what, you know, like, what it means to build, what it means for teams. I think the the future product days one attracts more companies and and teams. So, and then also with Brighton Ruby, I'm just doing a, like a, like, you know, one of the keynote talks, but then the private workshop, which is sold separately, that's like aimed at like teams, get getting your team to adopt, which is I would say that's The the team thing is is becoming more of a secondary focus in terms of my ICP with builder methods, but I still get a lot of leads through it.
Brian Casel:Anyway, on on my end, I I sort of relate to what you were talking about, Jordan, with like, taking your existing channel, your marketing channel, and and like kind of
Jordan:Getting better.
Brian Casel:Super superpowering it. Like, that's what I've been doing with YouTube for the last, especially this week. I'm I'm really starting to build it, but I've been really working through the a bunch of related problems that I'm trying to solve to like, I'm trying to like solve some pain points, but also how can I double and triple quality level and capacity and frequency and reach and audience through my YouTube channel? One of the really fascinating things about YouTube as a channel in general, like a marketing channel or a creative channel, is that there are so many levers that you can pull and improve. And that's the case with most channels, but like, especially, I feel like with YouTube, it's it's the writing, it's the it's the hook, it's the it's who you're who you're targeting.
Brian Casel:It's the packaging. It's the thumbnail design. It's the it's the pacing. It's the production value. It's it's the ideation is a huge one.
Brian Casel:It it's like all these different factors. Right? And these are things that I've been every every single video that I do, I'm trying to incrementally improve on at least a couple of those factors every time. And it's still, you know, hit and miss, like, you know, some some videos do well, some some videos do less well. Right?
Justin:Yeah. How how are you feeling about that? How are you feeling about just the YouTube train?
Brian Casel:It's it's still hard from a roller coaster standpoint. I released one a few days ago, which did a little bit like, I had a I had a huge hit in March, and then I had a big drop in like the three or four videos that came after that. Yeah. And this last one this week, it it ended up getting to to like a five of 10 or a four of 10. So YouTubers track like your top of your last 10 videos, did you get a one of 10?
Brian Casel:That's like a breakout hit. Yeah. Or a 10 of 10. It's like, okay, that was a flop. I was getting a lot of like seven or eight of tens.
Brian Casel:And then this last one got up to a four of 10. So, you know, I'm still kinda climbing back, but but, but anyway, the the video I dropped this week was pretty good. I'm really excited about the one that that's gonna be dropping on Monday, But, like, doesn't matter if I'm excited. I There there have been videos that I thought were gonna be bangers that that, you know, flopped, and vice versa. So you never really know.
Brian Casel:But what I'm what I've been working on, there are multiple strategic goals that I'm trying to solve right now. One is, it this has been continuous since the very beginning, which is like my capacity. It still takes me so much time and effort and mental bandwidth to push out one video to create it. Right? It's so much work.
Brian Casel:I I put so much effort into the ideation, the scripting, the rewriting, the editing, and then the recording. I mean I mean, editing the script before I record it, and then and then the recording. And then I hand it off to my editor, and then I still do the final 10%, and then and then we and I do the thumbnail, and then we publish, right? There are so many steps. Like, it literally takes three to five full working days to do one video.
Brian Casel:How do I improve that, streamline that, right? So I'm building actually multiple custom internal tools now. I won't get into all the specifics, but like multiple tools that that house my training material for, for agents that help me in the process, like, you know, like, like the strategic direction, my, my voice, the topics, the ICP, like that kind of training that goes into AI models that help me draft stuff. Some some new tools that will help to analyze trends on YouTube and and see what kind of topics I should be covering and and angles that are that seem to be resonating right now. So trying to raise that batting average of like, like choosing the right topic.
Brian Casel:Like, I before you even get to scripting or production value, it's like, I I really think that the most important factor at this point is like choosing the right topics to cover at the right time. That's Mhmm. That has probably the biggest impact. And all sorts of other factors. So I'm trying to get it to the point literally, and this might sound kind of far fetched to people, but like, if you think about a real YouTube team, like a like a tea like a production team, any of the big YouTubers who have like a a team around them, like producers and writers and and and, you know, ideation people and analytics people and script writers and and and creative people who help the the YouTuber on camera behind the scenes, I'm trying to recreate that with agents.
Brian Casel:And I already do that to a to an extent with me plus Claude, working together at the desk together, we're we're hashing out a script, but I wanted to I wanna literally get it to a point where like, I show up on Tuesday morning, I have a script that is not only written, but it's tightened up, it's it's like basically ready to go, and I don't need to spend a whole day editing and and fixing that script. That's that's one piece. Bunch of other pieces along the line
Justin:So you're trying to get all these agents to just build this to they work overnight, you show up, and you want it to be so good that you could basically just use that script.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah. I already do use AI a lot in my script writing, but it's still a full day of me working with AI to get
Justin:it there.
Brian Casel:And it's and and so, anyway, I've I've some new internal tooling that goes much deeper on the training that goes into the AI to not only to get it in my voice, in, like, literally how I speak, but the topics in the ICP and, like, story arcs and story formulas, and hook formulas, and title formulas, and things that that the AI can have less guesswork on, and just things that we know will work, and and formulas that we can take any idea and run it into this machine. Yeah. That's that's sort of the concept. Because, like, a, I think that that will actually increase the quality of the script writing and the ideation, which gives it a higher chance of success on the YouTube algorithm. But b, if I could if I could cut out days of work on my end, that could mean me recording three videos on a Tuesday instead of one.
Brian Casel:Mhmm. You know? Yeah. And then we can be, like right now I'm publishing about four videos a month.
Jordan:Yeah. If I could be
Brian Casel:publishing eight videos, 10 videos a month,
Justin:I better
Brian Casel:mean, and, and it's so tied to my revenue and traffic, like every video. And even and what's also interesting is like like this past video this this past week, like, sales were pretty good, but the video didn't it wasn't a breakout hit. It was just a mediocre hit, you know.
Justin:This is what Jason was talking about last week, which is it's like we get used to thinking, oh, all this traffic, like more traffic, more sales. But the truth is is that the customer is in the 500,000 views or 5,000 views.
Brian Casel:Yes. That's the thing. We talked about either way. Like so last week's video and next week's video and all of all the videos going forward have been created in my post ICP shift mindset. So I'm it might not seem like it on the surface, but I am speaking to a different person now on in my in my videos, like starting this month going forward.
Brian Casel:Yeah. At least a slightly tweaked version of that. And I think that's actually showing up in the sales now. Because like Nice. Like I think that I'm seeing some a couple different factors.
Brian Casel:The first of all, the website has been live for over a month and totally organic sales are still happening. And the videos, like, people are responding and and joining and and buying off of the videos even if those videos are not performing super well on YouTube. So so they're connecting with the right people.
Justin:That's a good sign, man.
Brian Casel:And then the other the other sign that I'm seeing too is a pretty steep drop off in churn and, like, cancel and and, like, refund requests. It's like, a lot more Like, I was getting a lot because I had a huge spike of a lot of random people buying back in March, so that brought a lot of noise of like really good fits, some some really bad fits, which results in some churn. Mhmm. But now, it seems like all the people coming through the funnel are pretty happy. I mean, I also released a bunch of new courses, and so there's lot more value that people are getting inside.
Brian Casel:So anyway,
Jordan:that's, What it what it makes me you remember what I mentioned as, like, you know, level one, two, three, four, five? For you, that level one that I think is missing, but let me ask instead of assume, you don't have anything above the main content of a, you know, thirty minute YouTube video. Your level one and two would be Reels
Brian Casel:Yeah. So that's
Jordan:the And other TikTok and Facebook all leading back into the YouTube It's almost like you're starting at step three also.
Brian Casel:You're right that that that's been missing. And that's that that is also part of what I'm building right now is, like, right now, my editor does cut up my longs and and does some YouTube Shorts out of them, but those kinda suck. The I am gonna start to record dedicated short form content that's like optimized with like that four beat structure of of a of a short that can go out on YouTube, but also like link, LinkedIn, Instagram. I need to be getting out on those platforms because because you're right because and on also also back to your question, Justin, is that like, I I still feel too too dependent on YouTube. I don't wanna like, it's it's always gonna be the core of what I do.
Brian Casel:Number one, like, I I really think there's there's a huge market out there that are just not watching YouTube. Mhmm. They're just on these other platforms, and and I should be selling to them and reaching them.
Jordan:Everyone has YouTube and watches YouTube, but only a certain percentage live on YouTube as their default go to content. Right? Which is why the concept of like seeding short form across platforms while maintaining YouTube as home base.
Brian Casel:Yeah. That's what need to be doing. Yeah.
Jordan:I use a product called Post Bridge that we really like. Postbridge.com. And you can just post it all over the place. You know, it's like a buffer. Yeah, We'll talk about buffer later,
Justin:actually.
Jordan:So this product, you just make a short and then you could hit a button and it will go to LinkedIn, which I never go to, and it'll go to YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels and it'll go to TikTok. And it might be great timing timing for you because as you shift ICP, now you can make short form video like, hey, you know, in house developers or whatever that call out is of exactly your audience. You you can make shorts just for that.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I mean, like, part of this system that I'm that I'm putting together here is that, like, when I like green light an idea, like like, out of these 10 ideas, this is the one that that we think is gonna is gonna hit best with our ICP. My system is gonna help me draft the long form version of that, and multiple short form versions that are take that are direct, you know, derivatives off of that idea. And also draft, tweets and articles and newsletter messages all off of the same idea and LinkedIn posts, text, video, like, and so I again, like, I could just show up on Tuesday and I can have a list of like, here's the long form to record, now here are four short forms to record, get those into the into the queue and we're pushing those out to all the all the different platforms. Like, right now, I don't have that machinery in place.
Brian Casel:I I I only do the the heavy lift of getting the the long form out. We do a little bit of YouTube shorts, but other than that, like nothing, you know. The the the the that top of funnel problem is like twofold. It's like if my videos fall flat on YouTube or or if I fall behind, then my funnel suffers from it. Mhmm.
Brian Casel:And I also feel like there are all these traffic sources that just are not gonna stumble into my YouTube videos, but they will on LinkedIn or Mhmm. X or somewhere else, and I'm just not there right now, you
Justin:know. Yeah.
Brian Casel:So
Justin:Yeah. I think that's worth doing for sure. I I I told you guys last time that I've posted videos where, you know, I I I posted it on YouTube and it got 50 views. I posted it on TikTok, got a 100,000 views. Sometimes what works and what grabs on one platform does it just you have to kind of balance it out, have more out there, and then you increase your chances that, you know, it'll hit over here, maybe not here, but
Brian Casel:Well, why don't we talk about the the elephant in the the the ex Twitter? There's there's always one story that's winning the day. And and Yes. I think yesterday or the day before, it was Anthropic announcing this, this pricing change. And I I wanna I wanna, like, frame it because, like, you know, there's been a lot of lot of grumbling about Claude and their pricing and and their communications around like, which use cases are allowed under their terms of service and not, and people kinda giving Anthropic a lot of shit about their about the way that they go about things.
Brian Casel:And for the record, like, for throughout most of that, I've been sort of a defender of Anthropic. It's like they they could charge whatever they want. They should. They have high demand. Right?
Brian Casel:Mhmm. That's been my stance on most of these recent, over the last couple of months, like, right? And it's like, fine. If their terms of service say you can't use it for OpenCloud, just don't use it for OpenCloud. Sure.
Brian Casel:And like, yeah. Like, but this one Can yesterday
Jordan:you This change one step back? I'm not so aware of it. Like, is it Okay.
Brian Casel:So Just the numerical
Jordan:price change or, like, how they price or credit versus seats? Like, what what what's the change?
Brian Casel:Okay. So with Claude, as a developer, you can use Claude in multiple different ways. Right? So you can use Claude Code, which is their CLI product, created by Anthropic, it's Claude Code. You can use claude.ai, the the web chat.
Brian Casel:You could use Claude Code on the web on the web or on their desktop application. You can use Cloud CoWork. All of those things are Cloud owned applications, Cloud owned properties and they want you to be using those and if you have a Cloud Max subscription, which I do and most developers do at this point, you wanna be able to use that subscription. You want like, I'm paying $200 a month, I like, I wanna be able to use that everywhere I wanna use Claude. Sure.
Brian Casel:They are have they are obviously heavily subsidizing that subscription. Right? If, like, I am using, like, $200 a month is nothing compared to the amount of actual tokens that I'm using every Right?
Jordan:I probably use $10 worth and you probably use $2,000 worth, If if not
Brian Casel:not more. I mean, I I really think I'd, like and I and I'm not even using it the most out of a lot of people we know. Like, I I wouldn't be surprised if if my actual usage is like in the multiple thousands. Right? So the other way that you can use Claude is what they are now labeling programmatic usage.
Brian Casel:So this would include, if you go into your terminal and you write Claude dash p and then you write a prompt, you can get a response just like you would as if you're in Claude code, except you're not in Claude code.
Justin:Okay.
Brian Casel:So any tools that you might be using where you're where you are using, where where it says that you're using the Claude model, but it's not Claude code, so Okay. If you're using a tool like Conductor, which is a which is a popular Right. Or a coding
Jordan:Right. This, like, layers that Aaron is
Brian Casel:No. Building all on top of different. I I wanna get into these these Okay. These new There's there's another interesting thing happening in that product space. We can get into that.
Brian Casel:But programmatic usage would be if if you're using OpenClaw with it, if you're using any sort of tools that, like, that, like, create a new interface for interacting with Claude. Mhmm. You're not using actual Claude code. You're using the programmatic version of that. And so their their new announcement was that, like, it's officially not included in your Mac subscription.
Brian Casel:They give you they give you a little credit every month. So as a $200 subscriber, I get $200 worth of credits toward using that stuff, which is nothing compared to how much I would actually use it. Means that, like, if if I wanna use a tool like, I've been using this tool Conductor as my daily driver for, but now it means that, if I wanna continue to use Opus models, that's gonna cost a lot a lot more than what I've been paying. So I for coding, if I wanna stick with that tool, I'd probably have to switch to Codecs or I need to go to a tool that supports ClaudeCode CLI. Now, the question, the question about like who does this actually impact?
Brian Casel:If you just use Claude code CLI, which I was for a long time and I might end up just going back to that, you're basically not affected because you are using Claude's
Jordan:Right. So you're using their branded product compared to a third party.
Brian Casel:A third party like rapper product.
Jordan:Right. It's it's almost it sounds almost like a whenever I see a pricing change, I like to think about, well, why would they do this? Assuming they're not
Brian Casel:doing That's what I'm trying to understand.
Jordan:So let's assume they're smart and with anthropic, pretty safe assumption. If this is a smart thing to do, how do they get here? Sometimes you can see compromises that are made in that decision process where you're like, that's probably stupid, but that's probably something that they felt like they had to do. But it's fun to kind of fake try to figure out how someone landed on a pricing change.
Brian Casel:There's a couple different theories. Anyway, go on. Yeah.
Jordan:Yeah. I'm curious what the theories are. The theory that immediately pops up in my mind is how do you deal with a third party ecosystem that's building around your platform? And there are some tried and true ways to do that. Right?
Jordan:Apple, pretty straightforward. Third party sounds great. We're gonna take a big chunk out of it. And all the transactions are gonna flow through us. Therefore, we're gonna have control of the payment flow.
Jordan:We're gonna keep our 30% if we can do whatever they whatever they want. Right? That's one approach. Shopify has a different approach with their ecosystem. All these big platforms have different approaches.
Jordan:If you're anthropic and you're looking at this blossoming ecosystem that wants to rely on your models, my worry if I'm anthropic is that puts me in a position of being a commodity. And I don't wanna be a commodity. So if if you go to Conductor and you choose the Claude model, I'm not important to
Brian Casel:you. Mhmm.
Jordan:And that's fine, but I'm not about to subsidize that. If you wanna come to, you know, claud.com or what whatever, you know, direct branded website experience desktop app that I'm staring at Claude all day, there's a lot of value in that that I'm willing to subsidize. But if you're gonna go one step away from me, you will not make me a commodity. Uh-uh. Sorry.
Jordan:Not I'm not gonna subsidize being a commodity. You're gonna pay for the service. And that is a way to kind of remain central and not invisible to a third party ecosystem that might wanna just shove you down and say, you're an API. Don't we don't you don't have worry about us. Worry about Conductor.
Jordan:That's who your relationship is with. Pay us. Mhmm.
Brian Casel:I think you're probably right about their strategy there. But I also quest I don't know what the right answer to this is, but my question, their folk their their so like, if they want you to stay on Claude's apps, which clearly they do, right? Okay. Claude Code CLI, in a lot of ways, that was like a revelation. It came out about a year and a half ago and it sort of changed everything and it was the first of its kind to break open that type of product in the market and it's still fantastic.
Brian Casel:It keeps getting better and better. It's pretty, it's really great, but not everyone likes the terminal CLI experience, especially I would say like non technical, but even there are technical people, like even myself, like I've come to start to really like Conductor and that's not a CLI based thing. If it's true that Claude wants you to be in their desktop apps or their Claude co work or their Claude their Claude Code on desktop or Claude Code, I would say, okay, Claude Code is pretty great if you like terminals. Claude Desktop kinda sucks. Claude CoWork kinda sucks, you know?
Brian Casel:So it's like, why are you pushing all these developers into, I would say subpar competitors in that space? Like you you you can't say and you cannot say that Claude desktop is a serious competitor to like, most serious coding tools. So if Really? If that is their strategy, they should go should go buy Conductor or they should go buy or or or, like, some, like, I don't know, like, buy one of these companies and and have a legit, coding platform. Right?
Justin:Yeah. I think they probably will. They'll probably I don't know if Zed is for sale or
Brian Casel:Yeah. But then there's a there's a theory beyond that. It's like, they they might be working off the assumption that, like, coding as a profession and software development as a profession is a temporary state. You know, like
Justin:Oh, that's the deep state conspiracy theory is like
Brian Casel:No. That's yeah. That that like even they they might be thinking along the lines of like, look, in in another eighteen, twenty four months, the models are gonna be so good that, like, you can just go into a claud.com and get whatever you want built. And and like, I question the speed on that. Like, the yeah.
Brian Casel:I I believe that the the models are gonna keep getting getting, you know, really great. But, like so, like, I get what I'm saying is, that would be the the argument for, like, well, they're not gonna go either acquire a a well known, like, IDE because that Right.
Justin:And and
Brian Casel:they're not gonna invest in building their own, like, best in class IDE. Mhmm. That's why they have these, like, sorta janky, like, cloud desktop apps and even cloud CLI, you could say, like, feels like a temporary solution until the until whatever the next generation of this looks like. Yeah.
Justin:The other thing
Brian Casel:I think what is interesting though to me is that, like, I really think that, like, this like, we're clearly seeing it now. This could be the thing that is actually pushing a lot of Claude diehards over to Codex. Mhmm. And it's and it's interesting that, like, Claude as a company has has always positioned themselves, like, if if you code, we are the coding model. Like, we are that is our that is our strength.
Brian Casel:We are the best coding model. We are built around code. We've been built around code since day one. Mhmm. And this kind of change, at least the at least the way that they've communicated it and the way they've rolled it out, like, it definitely has me considering like, alright, maybe it's time for me to actually get on the codex train.
Justin:Yeah.
Brian Casel:And other other people, at least when it comes to coding, you know, like, why would they be pushing off?
Justin:They they can see the demand coming in. So so what we can't see is and we all know they're getting crushed. Not just the Claude apps, but Claude code usage is just crushing right now. And the other thing that they just turned on was these new enterprise plans. So remember, the diehards come first, but the diehards are like the tip of the iceberg.
Justin:They are not a profitable market. They're you actually lose money on them. Yeah. The the big market is the people that come after. So then you get after the diehards, then you get the first group of kind of early adopters after them.
Justin:And then the big caboose that you really want is enterprise. So enterprise is just coming online now. They're they're catching up after whatever, six months a year. And now now, Claude is really getting hammered. And those enterprise customers, unlike diehards, are like, this has gotta be stable.
Justin:This has gotta we have to have agreements. We can't just have, like, these these these kind of, like, willy nilly, like, oh, yeah. You get you can use it with this. And Uh-uh. No.
Justin:They're like, no. We wanna know how many tokens we're paying for.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And and, like, they, you know, they they need investment. Like, they are they they need capacity. They need servers. They need and and they're and that's OpenAI's, like, advantage over them.
Brian Casel:It's like they have all this money and they have all this compute, and Anthropic is is starving for the compute. So maybe maybe this change is factored into that where it's like we need to clamp down on revenue, and show investors that we have a path to, you know
Jordan:Yeah. I mean, they're about to raise another 30,000,000,000. They just did a deal with xAI for all the compute that x AI, you know, turns out to not need. Elon kind of admitted defeat on that. And their revenue went from, what, 10,000,000,000 to 30,000,000,000, and now it went from 30 to 80,000,000,000.
Jordan:Think they're raising a 30,000,000,000 round at $990,000,000,000 So just under 1,000,000,000,000 for a private company, I think they assume they will not have any trouble attracting capital. And capital is not a problem.
Justin:Mhmm. They will
Jordan:they will buy whatever compute they need. They'll buy whatever they need. So I always assume that they're just looking out into the future and if they're ignoring something like this coding layer in between, it's because they don't care. They don't they don't think it's relevant in a year. Or they have other plans or they're doing it themselves or just something that there's good reason for it.
Justin:You know, can Can I just add one more thing here? Which is my barber had a six month waiting list. So people were waiting six months to get in.
Jordan:And To get their hair done?
Justin:To get their hair done. And he's like, I don't know what to do. And I said, raise your prices. Look at this demand. He's like, okay.
Justin:And he raised his prices. Then his waiting list went down to three months. I said, dude, raise your prices. Yeah. But people are gonna complain like these diehards have been with me from the beginning.
Justin:They they're like my best customers. I said, raise your prices. And he's I mean, you have to do it sustainably. You can't But, do it all the you know, every couple years, he raises his prices, and he'll just cut down the you know, it goes from, like you know, originally, he he would accept walk ins. Now, no walk ins.
Justin:Then you gotta book a week out. Then you gotta book three weeks out. Then you gotta book So the answer is
Jordan:Not not good. The answer
Justin:when there's a ton of demand and you are capturing a lot of that that demand, the answer is usually to increase prices.
Jordan:Yeah. Why give anything away? They're they're in the most powerful position.
Brian Casel:I mean, if you think about, like, the yeah. Like, I think, like, the three the big three. Right? Like, Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google. Those are the three that are that are in this horse race for for AI market share.
Brian Casel:Right? So I guess I guess the working assumption here is that, like, they believe that they are not in the commodity game and they are in the product game. Mhmm. Right? Like, how do they like, their main lever is have the best product ecosystem and keep people in your ecosystem.
Brian Casel:Because, like, because my thought is like, well, if I sort of love aspects of Claude's actual products, but then there are aspects of them that I hate or just don't use, and that's why I go to other products to use the Claude models on. Mhmm. So, like, what if what if the products are not their focus and just the models are their focus? Like, we like, if they're if they just keep competing on, like, we have the best models, especially for these use cases, whether it's programming or creative or whatever it might be, like, is is that not good enough from a competitive lever, you know?
Jordan:They don't seem to be satisfied with that. You know, the the number of releases, right, what went on my radar a few days ago was Claude for Small Businesses launched. And it's like a package of connectors to invoicing and accounting and HR and that kind of thing.
Brian Casel:Mhmm. Mhmm.
Jordan:I how do you become a $10,000,000,000,000 company unless you are going for everything?
Justin:Mhmm.
Jordan:I think they're just gonna go for everything. It's like, why not? In some ways, they're playing, like, defense along the way to make sure that they don't regret allowing one category of products to get too much leverage over them. They just have the they have the underlying magic.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan:And and it's, you know, it's like Apple. Like, we have the phone. So we're gonna say what goes. Why would we give up any power in this situation when we have the thing that matters most that everyone wants access to?
Brian Casel:And But do you think that they're working however Do you think that they're working on the assumption that like OpenAI or Google or Anthropic, like two of them are going to lose and there's gonna be one winner or or are they working on the assumption that there's always gonna be these three or for the next while?
Justin:Think it's just honestly, I think that it's just the the the way in which the Twitter ecosystem is a distraction is that it is just this tiny percentage of the world. And the Claude brand talking about the barbershop again. The barbers are now saying, should I use Claude? They're just hearing about it. I heard it was the next big thing.
Justin:I heard it's like So now the rest of the world is waking up. And Claude has all of this demand coming in. They've got demand coming in on the coding side. Tons of new people using that. They got demand coming in for their apps.
Justin:They got demand coming in on the enterprise, small business. It's all happening. And what a great time to raise prices because it's like people have just heard about this thing that's better. So so instead of whatever, it could be instead of $200, it's $250 now. I heard it's the best.
Justin:And the other thing is that there's always hand wringing from the the original people. You know, they're like, I remember when Claude was just for us. It's like, yeah, it's not just for you.
Jordan:Yeah. Good luck.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And that that's why I've always been, like, sort of a defender of them, especially especially when, like, they they kinda clamp down on limits. It's like, oh, I gotta upgrade again. I gotta like, well, yeah, because it's because it's freaking amazing and they and and, you know, we have these superpowers, like, I'm happy to pay a couple $100 a month for it. Mhmm.
Brian Casel:But then that that's why I I want and I and I realized that, like, I think, like, me and the people on Twitter are are like the very small drop in the bucket of of what they actually care about here. But if if they did just continue to allow, like, they they could have just, like, incrementally increased the price of the Mac subscription or or clamped down on what the actual limits are causing people to to upgrade to double and triple their Mac subscription without without saying like, hey, we we just don't support that use case anymore. So go away if you wanna use that use case. Mhmm. That that just seems like a weird move.
Brian Casel:You know?
Jordan:Yeah. I don't
Brian Casel:know if you you
Jordan:heard Aaron on one of the recent guest. He was like, well, I ran out. So I had to just sign up for a new account. Pulled out a different credit card, used a different address, and just created a new account
Justin:so that he could access. Codex. Doing that on codex. He's signing up for multiple codex accounts. Okay.
Justin:And and again, this is another thing, like so all of these companies could see this. I don't think I don't think they're naive. Like, oh, Aaron guy has got just three consumer accounts. It's like, well, fine. That Aaron guy is in the top 0.5%.
Justin:I don't care about
Jordan:He's not signing a $2,000,000 a year contract anyway.
Justin:So But you know who I wanna make sure isn't doing that shit? It's IBM. And I'm gonna I'm gonna make a nice, big enterprise package. And, like, woah. Wait a second.
Justin:Somebody at at IBM is doing a ton of high volume programmatic workload. So
Jordan:Sorry, buddy. Trigger the sales team to reach out. Yep.
Justin:Yeah.
Brian Casel:Yeah. By the way, I mean, speaking of that, there there is this really interesting, product thing happening. Like, so Aaron is working on Solo. Mhmm.
Justin:By way, Solo would not be affected by any
Brian Casel:of That that's what I wanna mention here is that, like, there's a really interesting moment right now happening in agentic development tools. Mhmm. And I've been deep in this because I've been trialing, like, five of them over the last month, bouncing back and forth. Because I I I've been a long time Cursor user for, like, the last two or three years. I would say Cursor has been, like, the big winner for the last three years or so.
Brian Casel:Before that, probably Versus Code and and and others. Yep. But that's getting shaken up now. And and I think finally, we're we're in this space now where, I I guess, they're calling them, like, agentic tools or agentic development tools. Right?
Brian Casel:Where it's a it's a really common layout. You've got like workspaces or work trees on the left. Mhmm. You've got your main agent conversation in the middle, and maybe your file changes on the right.
Justin:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:And that's the new layout across a bunch of these diff different tools, and, like, ones that that I've been bouncing between have been one called Superset Mhmm. That I was work using for a couple of weeks. Currently, I'm using Conductor. Aaron's thing, Solo, is I I would say, like, in in this in this ecosystem. Cursor version three is is also, like, a take on this.
Brian Casel:Same same layout.
Jordan:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:And the the main idea is that, like, instead of having multiple windows open, you can have multiple agents working on multiple projects and branches and WorkTrees all in the same in in the same, like, window. Right? Yeah. And But there's one dividing line between them, and I I think Aaron is on the right side of this, which is some of them are built around the native CLIs. Mhmm.
Brian Casel:So, like Claude Code CLI or Codec CLI or Gemini CLI. You can use whatever CLI from those companies in inside the app, in each tab, or in each work tree, and and you're good. And and and this Claude price change does not affect you.
Justin:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:Conductor on the other hand, which is the one I'm currently using, does not use the CLI. It they they wrap it up. They they have a super nice UI and some nice benefits to that. They they do have a now like a built in terminal, but it's not it's not quite the first class feature. I I'm I've been begging them to make it more more like that.
Brian Casel:Superset is more is on the on the CLI side of that. So anyway, there's this dividing line that up until this week, in that product category, was more of a personal preference. Like, if you want CLI, then go for those. If you don't, then check out Conductor. It's got all these other product benefits.
Brian Casel:Yeah. But now there's a big cost factor. Right? Because now it's like, well, if I'm a Claude user, now I very much question of whether I wanna stick with Conductor or not.
Justin:Or Yeah.
Brian Casel:Stick with Conductor, but switch to Codex. Right? So it's it's really interesting product that's happening right now.
Jordan:It sounds equally intended to drive revenue as it is to change behavior. It's like a it's like a stick. You just get whacked. You you wanna you wanna go farther away from us, it's gonna hurt one way or another. Yeah.
Jordan:Maybe it'll drive some revenue, but it also shifts behavior in the way that they want.
Justin:Yeah. Yep. Bo is saying in the chat that Aaron was saying that any of the muxers I guess that's, like, anyone any of these tools that are mux based or whatever, like TMux, Solo, Gene are fine for now because they are just basically emulating a, you know, clot in the terminal. But Yeah. It's like literally
Brian Casel:like a terminal within a window. Yeah.
Justin:Yeah.
Jordan:Yeah. Like, while we were talking, I went and asked Rock and Andrew, right, our our eng team, like, what do they do? And they were almost a little confused by the question. They were like, we open our terminal in a new cloud session.
Brian Casel:Mhmm. Right.
Jordan:Know? He's like, think all my terminals to Storm. You know, like, whatever I just like to look at. Yeah.
Justin:But all the terminals are gonna go this way increasingly. Right? Like, they're they're all going to have more of so there's a lot there's actually a lot happening in this space that's very interesting. And OpenCode is, like, I think, a very popular, highly funded has you know, Dax is one of the key people there. He's very popular on Twitter.
Justin:So and he's been hit over and over again with these, you know, these restrictions. And the there's stuff happening in this space. Like, some like, Cursor is also highly funded, and this is gonna affect them. So there's a lot going on here.
Jordan:It's
Justin:awesome. And it's actually quite an interesting space. Like, I
Brian Casel:think It really is. I mean, if if you have a tool in this space, like, this this is major news for you and your users, and it's a it's a positioning wedge now.
Justin:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:You're you're either on this It's it's which side of this line are you on? Because it's literally you could put copy on your website to say, like, you don't have to pay more to use this tool or you do need to pay more to use this tool if you're a cloud user. Like, it's a
Justin:Yeah. It's it's reminiscent to me of Apple. And Apple would say this behavior is ordained and this behavior is not allowed. And so the developers who are in the ordained category really benefited from that. Every time Steve Jobs came down with an opinion and said, we don't like this usage of our products or our App Store or whatever, we're getting rid of those and all everyone gets wiped out.
Justin:But we do like this. We're encouraging this. And then those folks do fine. So it's like blessed and non blessed. That's you know, there's a there's a big discussion for a while about what was a what is a platform?
Justin:You know, what is a platform versus something else? Like, is Facebook a platform? Is is Microsoft Windows a platform? And people would say, well, Facebook isn't a platform because they because of this and this and this. I think maybe Claude I don't know if Claude is a platform or not, but it's that level.
Justin:Right? So they do control a lot in the same way that Apple controlled a lot basically, controlled the App Store and could say, unless the EU came and sued them.
Jordan:Yeah.
Justin:Yeah. Like, we can we are doing what we want here.
Jordan:It's the rules.
Justin:And Yeah. You know, all of the Android people are like, how come you can't just, you know, build it's like, we're not doing that here. Yeah.
Brian Casel:It's it's super interesting. Well, we've got a bunch of things on the list. So what do we wanna pick?
Jordan:One of the great meme formats to come out of the list.
Brian Casel:Been
Jordan:so good. I I did just see this like
Brian Casel:But it's
Justin:so happening more and more and more. I mean, I don't know movie is
Jordan:that from again? Show? The
Justin:Truman Show. Yeah. Yeah. It's this it's this guy. I don't even understand all these references myself, but I I have even even me who's not on X, really, at all, I'm seeing this guy show up.
Justin:It's he's like a director.
Brian Casel:Do know the do you know, like, the character in the movie?
Justin:Yeah. He's the director in The Truman Show that's, like, behind the scenes, like
Brian Casel:okay. Master He's life. Puppet master. Yes. He's, know, he's he's, like, controlling the world.
Justin:Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Got it. So this is,
Jordan:like There's a meme for everyone. There's, like, the dad meme versions. There's the tech version, movie, entertainment, pop culture. There's everything. But at some point yesterday, because I kept liking so many of them, my entire feed was just one after another after another.
Brian Casel:I they're so funny. Now I now I know where to go find them. I'm just gonna go on your profile, Jordan. Yes. And see what you like.
Jordan:Go to my
Justin:Well, this one this one this one is related because it's like the Yes. The line says, he's become fully reliant on LLMs to code. Now increase the price by a thousand percent. You know, that's like the
Brian Casel:Love it.
Justin:Yeah. Memes are fascinating to me. Fascinating. That the the way that they spread I I I often also think about the kinds of memes that happened pre Internet, like skipping songs, like Cinderella, Dressed in Yala. I don't know if you guys but but the but there's some of these that I can
Jordan:Oh, they like introduce,
Justin:and I'll be like, did you guys have this meme on the elementary school? Like Yes. Like, another you know, for a long time when Kobe was the big person, it's like you would you would Kobe a shot or something. Mhmm. Kobe.
Justin:And the fact that these things existed pre Internet is always fascinating to me too. And that they would spread from Stony Plain, Alberta. Well, they probably wouldn't spread from Stony Plain, Alberta. They would spread from from Manhattan or Brooklyn.
Jordan:No one knows where they start.
Justin:And they would cut they would go all over, and it's an like tribal
Jordan:sharing of knowledge Yeah. Thing. Yeah. And it's like a
Brian Casel:comedic device. Like you like in an instant, you can you can tell like a whole story.
Jordan:Right. Yeah. Like Right. There's like a cultural foundation and you could put some stuff on top of it and it works. Yeah.
Jordan:Yeah. But it's very powerful because it is it is the shortest version of an argument or the shortest version of a statement. Like, the fewest words possible. It could be just the image or a image in a caption. Yeah.
Jordan:And then you're writing you're writing on top.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Like, you're riding on top of that cultural knowledge, you know.
Justin:Yeah. And it keeps going until brands start using it or boomers start using it too much and then it's like, that's dead. Yeah. Now we're moving on.
Brian Casel:I know that we've been talking about AI so much, but like, I don't know, Justin, did you want to get into this question of like AI brain exhaustion?
Justin:I think we could probably end with this. This is this was something that came up. Dave Jones. Is Dave still in the chat? He he was like, oh, I want to talk about this brain exhaustion burnout.
Justin:He replied on on Blue Sky about this. I think this is just something we've touched on before, and I feel it too. I feel like AI has just increased the speed of everything. And I feel like I'm on drugs all day. Even if I'm not using AI all day, just the momentum has increased dramatically.
Justin:Like, for example, this video podcasting feature we're working on. Well, guess who else is working on it? Our competitors. Guess who else is also using AI in everything they're doing? Coding and Mhmm.
Justin:Our competitors. Guess who's going faster? All of us. So this this feeling that a lot of us are getting now, we look at the clock and it's a 1PM. And I'm going, I'm freaking My brain is burnt.
Justin:I've just it feels like I've been running on the fastest treadmill or doing, like, snorting coke. And then I'm like I'm just like You gotta crash. You kinda crash at the end. It's like the high is almost addictive like a drug. And again, the pace is kind of set by AI, but it doesn't mean you're always on AI.
Justin:It just feels The like intensity? Everything. The intensity. And I'm seeing a lot more devs talking about, like, yeah, like, by eleven a. M, I'm kind of burnt out.
Justin:Or by three p. M, I feel like I've my brain hurts, you know?
Brian Casel:I relate to the exhaustion thing. I wonder what you mean by the burnout part. What's the what's the, what's the blowback of it? Because I have some thoughts on it too, but what you seeing?
Justin:I think the burnout I mean, even I think Marc Andreessen was talking about this recently. I mean, I'm a great example. I went from working, you know, seven to eight hour day to a ten to eleven hour day. Getting way more done. The intensity of the day is way higher.
Justin:I know I can't sustain that for a prolonged period of time. It's just too high intensity, too many hours, and too fast.
Brian Casel:So you're saying, like, now that AI is embedded in your work day to day, it's actually it's actually causing you to work more hours Yeah. Not less.
Justin:Yes. The industry our industry the fact that, basically, Apple makes this announcement doesn't tell any of the podcast hosting companies that they're supporting this thing. So we have really three, four weeks to build the initial version of this. In a previous world, that would have been impossible. Right.
Justin:We would have not been able to do that. And, you know, we've always been a small agile team and we've got really good people. And so, you know, for us, we were always doing things 50% faster than our competitors in a lot of in a lot of cases because they're just bigger, etcetera. But now it's just like everybody somehow is releasing a working initial version of this feature in weeks. And just the intensity of that.
Justin:And it's not making us it's not like we're just, like, working an hour a day and being like, Claude, do this and then we go to the beach. It's like, no. You're you're it's like it's like an intense 100 meter dash. You know, it's like it feels like you're just on this treadmill going faster and faster and faster. I think it's I'm starting to see this play out in capitalism.
Justin:It's just like, oh, wow. We've got this Claude code tool. It's our little secret. Nope. It's like your competitors have it.
Justin:Oh, but we're really good at using it. They don't know. Nope. They're doing the same thing. They're all watching Brian Casel.
Justin:Like, we're all watching Brian, implementing it and, you know, and making it happen. Now, of course, there's laggards. But teams like ours, there's a lot of competition in this space And right
Brian Casel:the speed is becoming normalized now.
Justin:Yeah. And I do think there's a risk of and just individually, as I talk to people, like, if I've been in a really crazy Claude code session all day and I'm, like, thinking through the problems and the user experience, and I'm going back and forth, and I'm you know, it by the end of the day, I'm holding so much, like, strategic decisions in my head, And I I don't want to tell the LLM everything. And I've made the plan, but I know I've got to keep it on the tracks. It's it's exhausting in a way that I was different than before. Mhmm.
Justin:Because before, I would have stretched all of that thinking out over, you know, weeks and months, but now it's all happening in a single day. You seeing any of that on your team, Jordan?
Jordan:So I worry about it more than I see it. So I I look at how much we're doing and and how much engineering is happening and product, and I worry about the people. But generally speaking, when I check-in with them, what I hear back is I'm having a great time. This is fun. Yeah.
Jordan:And I'm able to do more stuff. And yes, I am working more. That part is challenging, but it's so fun and we're growing. And so it doesn't feel like this dangerous thing yet. Yeah.
Jordan:It does feel like, yes, the capitalism element is intensifying everyone's experience. Or at least at the forefront. Just generally speaking, it's like the temperature got turned up. And it is good because the productivity and the efficiency, that's actually how we grow and that's how there's less poverty. All these things where it's like people able to do more stuff with less.
Jordan:Mhmm. But at the individual level, it's pretty intense. And I hear you on, like, the brain context. It makes me think of, like, you know, sometimes you'll see, like, like a mathematician, and they look crazy. Like, be it's because the it's so intense.
Jordan:They're they're thinking for years and years, and you'd see it on their face and their hair. They're, like, wild.
Justin:Dude, I had a math teacher in in grade 12 called mister Holland. And one day, he came to to his class with a comb still in his hair. Like, he had just forgotten the comb in his head. Yeah. And we're, like thought
Jordan:it was something in the middle. Shirt
Justin:untucked. He was wearing two different shoes. Like Right. He was just
Jordan:partly personality, and it's also, like, profession. And you I mean, you see them. In general, you you do wear your stress Yeah. On yourself. And and there is an element to the intensity that it it will get to you.
Jordan:I am starting to see it as almost a form of entertainment. Mhmm. Like, when I'm sitting on the couch, normally, I'm like, I don't wanna think about
Justin:work. Mhmm.
Jordan:You You know, let me think about other stuff. What barbecue do I wanna order? And look at this thing I gotta do. And but now it's kind of fun Mhmm. To go explore something.
Jordan:And and that that part of it, I really like. So it's like, yes, I'm on the computer more, but it does feel like I'm learning more than I used to learn. So that part's cool. Think maybe I get away with it because I'm not an engineer, that might be the most intense version of collaborating with AI.
Justin:Yeah. I I mean, it can also be a personality thing because largely, I'm the same way. I'm having the time of my life. I feel like I'm running hot a lot, like I'm running the engine hot. I do feel like that.
Justin:Kinda like that.
Brian Casel:I think that's interesting. Feels amazing. Like like, where are we getting the pressure from? I think we all have the pressure. Like like, that that's making us want to work more and more hours, squeeze more into each week, ship more.
Brian Casel:And yeah, maybe we can point to AI, like, now that we have this capability, like, speaking for myself, like, knowing how much I can get done in a day or in a week, it does make me want to bite off even more.
Justin:Yeah.
Brian Casel:Which does drive more hours and more intensity. But I, like, in your case, Justin, like, you know, you have this pressure in this date from from Apple and and hustling with a competitive thing. Like like, Jordan, you've you've got your your pressures, and and I and my my pressures are more a lot of them are like self inflicted, I think, but also like a lot of the the challenge is like the my business is the content of of of AI and the and the transition to AI, and how do we adapt and how and, like, I'm thinking about these things all the time and what my members need.
Justin:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:And when that stuff keeps shifting so damn quickly Yeah. That where, like, literally, I'll release a course two months ago that I feel is like, now I gotta do another course cause it's like that's out of
Justin:date. Mhmm.
Brian Casel:That's that's kind of a lot of pressure. But the I think the other thing about the speed, the exhaustion part, because like, even before AI, I worked my ass off. I still work my ass off. I'm a workaholic. Mhmm.
Brian Casel:Like, I I've sort of always been that way. And I and I've always been self motivated to a fault to, like, keep I I do work a lot of hours because I because I want my business to to to grow, and I put a lot of pressure on my on myself to do that. Mhmm. And and definitely to to a fault, I would say. But the exhaustion part of it is more of, the strategic pace.
Brian Casel:Yeah. So like there used to be natural, normal lead time for for like releasing new products or releasing new features. I remember like a few years ago when I was working on, like, the big changeover from Zip Message to Clarity Flow. This is back in, like, 2022, 2023.
Justin:A hundred years ago.
Brian Casel:A hundred years. Yeah. You know, I I worked on that for, a year. You know, like like all the things, like changing the product, changing the marketing website, changing the the name, changing the and and like, it took me so long to put all these pieces in place, line them all up so that in March 2023, we could flip the switch and now our marketing engines can go and we can and everything is riding on the on the same track. And now the exhaustion to me is like, okay, literally this month, I released I I have published three new free open source tools on GitHub.
Brian Casel:And I think that these are kind of I hate the word, but like game changers. They they are there's so much value. I I released this PRD creator. I released a design system skill. I released an a whole Rails app template.
Brian Casel:I have not talked about these anywhere. I haven't had time to talk about them. Yeah. You know, like like I I just create them and ship them
Justin:And This this train's going so fast, it doesn't have time to pick up passengers or publish a schedule or nothing. It's just
Brian Casel:going Literally.
Jordan:Here's my question. Well, my question to both of you. Isn't this all grounded in the fact that success feels closer and more attainable than ever? Isn't that the motivation? Isn't that what's driving you crazy?
Jordan:It's not like I need to keep up with my even if it is that. It's like it's everything feels closer. It's like you make the right few moves. Six months is so much time Yeah. That everything feels more attainable.
Brian Casel:You're like,
Jordan:what am I what
Brian Casel:am that's what that's what's so exciting
Justin:about it.
Jordan:What I've been doing this for.
Justin:It it might be kind of like Formula One, like Brad Pitt. He had the car before, and it's like, this isn't working. And then he's like, that's the car I want. And then he gets in the new car, and he's like, I can fucking push this thing. I can go.
Justin:I can win with this car. Yes. And I think that's the feeling. There is a divide, I think. Some people I think it's just, like, it's too much.
Justin:And for them, they can't it's they're not having fun driving this car right now. It's just too fast. Everybody's slipping around. It's like too much.
Brian Casel:I think the I think the reality that I think most of us need to start to wrap our heads around is that there is a there is a flip. For years, we we were we were trained and and sort of brought up as like SaaS founders and product and and entrepreneur and startup founders to like start the marketing engines up while while you're in the long slog of building the the product and you have this long coming soon phase where you can build anticipation and build the early access list and but that is flipping now because now we can ship products so much faster that I think the new way to think about it is that it's it's okay to just ship the product today and let the marketing develop over over the coming weeks. And that's how I'm I I I'm sort of forced to think about it. Right? Like, I launched a whole course called Become the Builder on teaching people how to learn how to build with AI.
Brian Casel:And it's 35 lessons, like if you don't know how to code, you can now code and build with AI. I think it's a fantastic course. I built it in about two weeks and released it. It's a I would say it's like a flagship course now in Builder Methods Pro. A lot of my marketing and content is is pushing people toward this and it's working.
Brian Casel:Like new customers really like
Justin:it. Mhmm.
Brian Casel:I I I didn't think about it like a big lead up, like months from now, this whole thing is gonna drop and there's gonna there's gonna be launch. Like, no, like, it just started and now it's just gonna grow and become this pillar piece over the over the coming year. Same thing with these new free open source tools. Like my my video next week covers one of them, but I actually released it two weeks ago. So I think we need to start to get comfortable with the idea that like, we can just ship, we can just launch stuff and and the marketing will follow rather than than like hold back the launch to build anticipation.
Brian Casel:There's There's just not enough time.
Jordan:There's no holding faster.
Justin:Yes. Mhmm. Yeah.
Jordan:Whatever you got, send it.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan:Yeah. And and if it happens that you need a few weeks for the product, then send the marketing. Same as you did Justin. Mhmm. And if you have the marketing, send that too.
Jordan:If the product's ready, push that forward and market after. There like there's the there's no room for hesitation. And you don't get rewarded for hesitating. You don't get rewarded for being careful or slow or deliberate. Yeah.
Jordan:Market just rewards going.
Brian Casel:And and ultimately like I don't I've never been interested in launch based products or or marketing. Like, I don't I don't care about a big launch. Don't I don't care if I have hundreds of thousand dollars on day one. What I actually care about is an engine. I I really want this thing to be a slow steady, like, month is just growing and growing in in a funnel that keeps so so, like, I'm happy to have the product in hand ready to sell on day one so that I can just start chipping away at building up that marketing engine over time, you know.
Justin:But one thing I'm thinking about the burnout thing, and I I we should probably wind down here, but that came to mind while we were all talking is I think in the past, Brian, we've talked about two types of burnout. Like, there's the burnout when you're just working too hard, too often. Like, I am I'm going for after work beers way more. In my head, I know I can't do this forever. Like, I can't just, like, have an insane day.
Justin:And then, you know, my wife calls me and says, hey, I said, Let's go for beer. And I go for beer and then I'm just like, you know, talking to her about all this stuff. That's not sustainable. I can't do that forever. So that is a type of burnout where you're just like working so intense for so long.
Justin:It's like, you know, the the secretary that is just working way too long, way too many hours, way too many responsibilities. That kind of burnout. There's the other kind of burnout that we talked about, which is feeling like you're repeatedly you're just not getting what you want out of work. And it's like, I'm I'm frustrated or depressed about, like, I want to be moving and I can't. There's some obstacle in my way.
Justin:And I think there are maybe it's not everybody's like this, but there are a group of us that are largely founders for whom it's like all of a sudden, the thing that was blocking us all the time is not blocking us now. And that's why we're fired up. We're fired up. Ironically, it puts us at risk for the other kind of burnout. But this kind of burnout where you're just, like, always hitting obstacles and you're getting frustrated because you can't make progress, well, now Yep.
Justin:We're just like, it's here's the engine. Rev it up. I'm I'm going. You know, I've been waiting for this.
Brian Casel:I mean, I think that, like, founders who've been around, you know, a while and done this a few more a few times have the the advantage now. Like, okay, like, I know all the pieces that that are gonna need to be, you know, figured out and put into place. Whereas I think that the the younger, the newer founder is still sort of guessing at like, okay, this is this should be the priority versus that should be the priority. Mhmm. And and I think that's the other exciting thing about having this speed at our fingertips now is like, I know all the things that are that need to exist and and and just need to get them in place.
Brian Casel:And that's pretty exciting that I can do that in like a month instead of like six months. Mhmm.
Justin:Alright, gents. Well, it is 12:30 here. I also have to really go to the bathroom. So I we gotta stop this. That's it.
Brian Casel:That's all I gotta go.
Justin:Thanks to everyone that showed up and chat. Again, I'll be off the next couple weeks, but I'm sure Bren and Jordan will let you guys know.
Jordan:We'll hold it down. Look forward to hearing about your your travels.
Justin:Yeah. Thanks, everyone. See you.
Brian Casel:Later, folks.