004 — Committing to Projects in 2025 w/ Brian Casel

Join Brian Casel and I as we dig into what we want to accomplish in 2025, and work through the ideas and struggles it takes to building the future you want to live with.

Follow/subscribe:
https://bsky.app/profile/briancasel.com
https://x.com/CasJam
https://www.youtube.com/@briancasel

Projects:
https://instrumentalproducts.com
https://instrumental.dev
https://onemonth.app
https://tailormadeui.com

My (Ryan’s) projects:
https://www.starterpacks.net
https://www.opengraphs.com

If you like this conversation, you can watch future live episodes on Twitter/X and on YouTube. Follow or subscribe to get notified when the next episode goes live, and please comment and ask questions that we can address during the show.

You can find all the podcast episodes and videos on jamsessions.fm.

Creators & Guests

Host

Ryan Hefner — oss/acc

Having fun, building stuff. Currently building: https://www.starterpacks.net

Guest

Brian Casel

Building products with Ruby on Rails.Co-host 🎙️ bootstrappedweb.comSaaS MVPs as a service 👉 onemonth.appRails UI components 👉 instrumental.devFounder 👉 clarityflow.com

What is Jam Sessions?

Where people get together and jam! Join me, Ryan Hefner (https://www.ryanhefner.com), as I talk with some of the best builders, makers, creators and visionaries, digging into the projects they are working on and what they want to make and add tot the world.

#livestream #podcast #indiedev #startups #makers #builders #buildinpublic

Ryan: 00:00

I'll drop the screen. I think we're we're kinda live audio. So people they're getting a little behind the scenes actually here. I mean, that's just the way it goes. That's what this is live.

Ryan: 00:12

You know?

Brian: 00:14

That's right, man.

Brian: 00:15

It's that's a nice

Brian: 00:16

for, Yeah. Good good to hop on, last minute. I

Ryan: 00:20

it it sort

Brian: 00:20

of just occurred to me this week, like, I'm I'm just, like, in this mode of, like, thinking about 2025 as always right now. And, I do have, like, so many things going on and so many projects, but it helps to get them out out of our heads. And why not do it on a on a podcast on the Internet. Right?

Ryan: 00:41

Yeah. Exactly. Why not do it live for everyone to, like, poke fun at you and, like, as you're trying to to, like, figure out those ideas that are just coming out of your head? Yeah. I mean, to be honest, yeah, I've been it's kinda funny.

Ryan: 00:53

Like, I'm so glad that you asked me to, like I mean, we've been talking back and forth about jumping on the mics again since our last episode, which is a couple I know.

Brian: 01:01

And I I feel like

Ryan: 01:02

you always, like, DM or something.

Brian: 01:04

You always, like, shoot a DM and, like, I'm, like, super busy, and I'm like, yeah. Let's let's maybe do it next week, and then we kind of push it off for, like, multiple weeks. And, but, yeah, it it's good to just sort of just, like, hop on and explore the moment. You know?

Ryan: 01:18

Yeah. Totally. I mean and, it's also kinda like a good forcing function because I feel like I've been dealing with, like, all the stuff that's just right in front of me that I'm just trying to get past to then, like, open up some kind of, like, space for some greenfield ish thinking, you know, to try to plan the year. And it's so hard when you just like it's like, I'm not necessarily putting out fires, but I'm definitely not out ahead of a lot of stuff, you know, to, like, to feel like I have the space to be, like, think really strategically about what I wanna get out of 2025. And I mean, not to say that I mean, this is just like a forcing function of the year.

Ryan: 01:58

Right? You know, you're you're gonna be thinking about, like, what do I wanna accomplish this year? And, yeah, that's just I don't know. This is where my head's at.

Brian: 02:07

Yeah, man. I I heard your, I heard your, your year of 2025, you know, solo episode, and I heard a lot of things in there. I I heard, like, a long list of products, and I I've been seeing you, you know, work on some things. And I I am kinda wondering, like, what is the thing or things or or products or things that you're trying to do that, if they're in this kind of building state right now, where would you like to see them 6, 12 months from now?

Ryan: 02:37

Yeah. Totally. I mean, I definitely got caught up in the whole starter pack thing, I think, towards the end of last year, you know, around November time, post election. That's where my head was kind of at then, and it's still kind of good in that space. But I think the problem, there is also with some of the client work stuff.

Ryan: 02:58

I've also been kind of like projects kind of kicked up, ramped up a little bit, around that same time frame and have been. And they're probably gonna stay, like, pretty ramped up at least through the end of January, probably, like, mid February, if not late February. So it's been so hard to really get, like, a good clear read on, like, where when I am actually even gonna have the space to to tackle some of this stuff. But I where I ultimately do wanna go is I mean, I have some stuff with starter packs. I don't think that's gonna be the breakout success.

Ryan: 03:37

I like, actually, over the last couple of days, the amount of traffic that's going to the site drastically dropped. I don't know if I got, like, deindexed from Google or, or what. But, like, I was averaging about, like, 2 to 2 to 3000 people per day at about, like, 6 to 10000 page views, you know, give or take. But literally within the last couple days, like, I I had one massive drop on January 2nd, which actually I would have assumed that that would have been an uptick, like, people after the holidays. Right.

Ryan: 04:14

It did kinda rebound. It did like a rebound to about, like, 25100, and then sustained for a couple of days. And now and then yesterday, it just totally totally fell off. I have, like, 3 100, 400 people on the site. And so

Brian: 04:29

So I guess that that's clearly like a Google index thing. Right? Like

Ryan: 04:33

I I'd imagine. But, I mean, at the same time, I have the most pages. Like, it's almost indexed over, like, 3,000,000 pages on the site because I have profiles in, like, over, like, 200,000 starter packs, which is kinda wild. But I that is it's just like the traffic's kinda fallen off there, and I I kinda cross referenced that against the Google Analytics data. And it it does seem like things are kinda falling off a little bit, but I wouldn't have to expect such a drastic drop.

Ryan: 05:02

So with that said, I guess it's kind of changed my, like, urgency to get starter packs done because that was also kind of, like, it was kind of one of those, like, sparks. You know, you have that inspiration, you follow it for a little bit. You get something out. I mean, technically, it's all working, and it's driving people to discover starter

Brian: 05:32

Yeah.

Brian: 05:33

Did you have, like, a, like, a business model in mind for that or, like, a product like, a pricing thing that that customers would pay for or or have started paying for or anything like that?

Ryan: 05:43

The the thing I was gonna do is basically, and, actually, I have this basically done, but there's one nuance with the Blue Sky API where I can't get authenticated list results back so that when you, like, basically look at a starter pack that your following status for certain users is, like, inaccurate based off of what I get from Blue Sky, so I need to actually do, like, a pull down all the people you follow and then kind of pair that up with the results I get back from the starter pack so that way I can properly reflect whether you're actually following someone in the pack or not, which is kind of a weird thing.

Brian: 06:23

I wonder if like because it seems to me because I I am using Blue Sky more than anything else right now. I'm still on Twitter, but, like, it seems like the the starter packs in general as a feature have started to fall off I would agree. In my radar.

Ryan: 06:40

They were huge

Brian: 06:41

a few months ago when when everyone made the migration over to Blue Sky, but I, like, I never see starter packs in my feed anymore for some reason.

Ryan: 06:50

Yeah. I would totally agree. I think the one thing so the thing I was gonna unlock and basically have for free is the ability to just follow directly from the site. So that way, I'm not losing traffic, and I can kind of engage people a little bit more to stick around on starter packs.

Brian: 07:02

Mhmm.

Ryan: 07:03

The, paid features is gonna be being able to both see the packs that you're in and expose those packs on your profile. So, like, not only the packs that you created, but just yet another kind of, this is me. Other people have, you know, included me in these packs. This is kind of what I'm into. It's almost I I kinda look at it as, like, a vetting of sorts.

Ryan: 07:26

You know? Like, if you're added to, like, a Laravel pack from someone else, that's a little bit more substantial. And it's also just another discover opportune like, discovery opportunity.

Brian: 07:36

Yeah. It's tough to to to make it work with, like, one of these, like, social media tools or

Ryan: 07:43

to be

Brian: 07:43

built on top of a social platform.

Brian: 07:45

You know?

Ryan: 07:46

Yeah. And and I guess, you know, again, at the time when I started it, I felt like I had a little bit of, like, headroom to work on some stuff,

Brian: 07:55

and then that's some and

Ryan: 07:56

some clients have changes. But then I have also the encouragement of the traffic, so I'm burning late nights and then kinda, like, trying to trying to stay ahead of it. So I I wouldn't say I I mean, I I think I had ideas of how I'd monetize it, and I was basically gonna try to get that out. I think also if I was to, like, I could probably put forth the effort. Like, if I had the space, you know, over a couple weeks' time, I could probably finish off the actual, like, initial paid versions and try to see if I could reengage people back into, you know, get them back to the site and start using it.

Ryan: 08:35

But to your point, I think there's other things that I would also like to work on. You know, I've been using I think I probably made reference to, like I don't know if I made reference to open graphs or transmits on that 2025 episode, but I'd say those are the 2 other projects that I'm kind of leaning into because they're actually fit like, open graphs is is something that I use on my personal sites. So it's an Open Graph generate like, image generator, but also

Brian: 09:04

Okay.

Ryan: 09:06

I see opportunities of expanding that out to even be a little bit more just, like, really easy ways to to add Open Graph data to your integrated into your sites as well as manage that data. Yeah. Both that was

Brian: 09:22

a such an annoying step when you're setting up a site.

Ryan: 09:25

Yeah. Totally. I mean and also to be able to you know it's one thing if you just have a generic thing that's used across all of it. It's another thing if you have it towards, like, unique either per page or Mhmm. Like, or a subset of pages.

Ryan: 09:40

But then if you wanna override

Brian: 09:42

Peter Peter soon just built something like that. Like Yeah. I think it generates

Ryan: 09:47

the over graph. Yeah. His, I think his his is, like, based off of, like, a template. The the previous app that I wrote, it's actually like a Laravel app, and, it's called Link Cards. That's, that's what I've been using, but, actually, it's one of my other sites has basically been DDoS ing it.

Ryan: 10:07

So it's generated, like, 3,200,000 open graph images for it.

Brian: 10:12

Oh, wow.

Ryan: 10:13

Because I have this other site that's just like, again, one of those inspiration things that was called package stats, but it was, you know, like the npm repo. You can discover all the different, like, JavaScript package you know, like, Node or JavaScript packages that you can use on your site.

Brian: 10:30

You know, one of the things that I'm curious about about your work is, like, you I I see you as one of these people who who's just sort of hacking on a bunch of product ideas. You know? Yeah.

Ryan: 10:41

And,

Brian: 10:41

obviously, you're doing it in public with Jam sessions and everything. I'm wondering, like, where what is, like, the bigger picture goal for you? You know? I mean, also one of the things that that, was sort of on my mind this week and and, you know, because, we were DM ing about, not necessarily like a mastermind group, but, like, some sort of, like, some sort of, like, group of, like, product people coming together and, I, you know, I I think, like, last week, I was saying, like, I'm not really looking for, like, a regular mastermind group, but but one of the things that I'm starting to think about in terms of my my business, like, things that I'm gonna get into this year is, like, trying to transition into something more like a community.

Ryan: 11:25

Yeah. Totally.

Brian: 11:26

Like, co cohorts of product people. Like, as a product, membership sort of sort of play in in my in, like, instrumental product. That's still sort of developing. But, like, since you were talking about that, I I was sort of curious to hear, like, what you were thinking on on that part of it, but also but I'm sort of blending multiple questions together here. No.

Ryan: 11:47

Totally. I mean, and to be honest

Brian: 11:49

The bigger question is, like, I so you do, like, consulting work, right, with with clients?

Ryan: 11:54

Yeah. I do. Yeah.

Brian: 11:55

Are you looking to, like, phase that out and replace it with products? Like, how are you thinking about your next year or so?

Ryan: 12:02

Yeah. I mean, ultimately, I I would like to phase some of that out. At least I have less reliance on it. Not to say that I'm gonna be dropping any of my clients anytime soon because I feel like we have, like, a good relationship. And one of them, you know, basically, assuming that everything continues to go well with them and me and the project, that's gonna last for another 2 years with because they've already basically it's like through an agency, and they've negotiated, basically, like a 2 year retainer for a continued work on this project.

Ryan: 12:36

So assuming that goes well, that's that's locked in, and that's like, you know, a day rate, you know, locked in for myself as far as just being on the project for the days I work. And then, the other client I have is actually basically, like, my old client. So the end of, not the end of 2024, but the end of 2023, one of the companies I was working for, they were kind of doing some downsizing, and then also trying to, like, raise, like, another round. And so part of that is my job basically got cut, but yet they wanted to they needed to keep me on, so I'm contracting for them. But I'm not sure how long that's gonna last.

Ryan: 13:19

So I wanna try to the goal for 2025 is really start to just get some stuff out there that people can pay for, and then either test the waters. And if there's some traction there, because, like, I'm also building stuff that I'm just inherently gonna use myself, which is, like, where I think, like, Transmit and Open Graphs comes in. It's, like, stuff that I want to have in the world. And then if I can get people paying for it, then all the better. I will still use it for my own personal stuff.

Ryan: 13:51

But, and if one of them gains traction. So I'm just trying to get that rep. You know? Just like keep building, keep putting stuff out, but actually try to so much of my previous stuff. I I never really, like, went that extra mile to integrate in, like, what this like, define what the subscription packages are gonna be and integrate that into the site.

Ryan: 14:11

And that amount of lay work alone, just trying to go through, like, the mental exercise of, like, what am I gonna charge for? Where am I gonna break it up from, like, tier 1 to tier 2? Or is it gonna be, is it gonna be, like, consumption based? Or any of those other factors as you're trying to figure out, like, what makes sense can easily derail you from, you know, like, getting over that that mile.

Brian: 14:36

Those kind of things, like, deciding how to price it or yeah. Like, breaking up the tiers and stuff. Like, usually, I that seems like more of like an easy decision to me and and also the type of decision that I can easily change

Ryan: 14:51

that. That's true. Yeah.

Brian: 14:53

I mean and, like, Clarityflow and and, like, all my other products, like, that stuff changes all the time. Like, we're always running different experiments. The the the far far and away the harder thing is to just, like, figure out what what is the traffic source and who is the customer and why do they buy it and, why do they stay? And if if I don't get a good answer to that, like, pretty quickly, then I'll then I'll probably lose interest in the thing.

Ryan: 15:21

You know? Yeah. I mean, distribution is key. Right?

Brian: 15:25

Yeah. Yeah. Yep.

Brian: 15:28

You know, you're you're doing the the right thing. I I think that, like, just just keep, like, building and shipping stuff, like, pub especially publicly. Because I feel like there are so many people in your position who have these contracting gigs long term, and it's comfortable. And and it's easy to just do that. Right?

Brian: 15:49

Yeah. There's really no reason to be podcasting or or or hacking on things that are that's paying you 0. Right? But do it but it's but if you look at literally any person on the Internet who has who has broken out of the the consulting thing into into product land. Like, it's because they they hacked on stuff, and they did it for free.

Brian: 16:11

You know? And and sometimes doing, like, crazy hours. You know? Yeah. Yeah.

Brian: 16:16

I mean, it's definitely not sustainable. Like, just just build stuff and expect that this probably won't work, but it's still worth doing. Yeah.

Ryan: 16:25

Yeah. Yeah. I mean yeah. Yeah. To your point, I feel like I do need to get a little bit more clear.

Ryan: 16:32

I probably also need to stop making excuses and get some stuff out there and and and, you know, start putting some prices on it. But, yeah, it's just one of those things. So, yeah, this is definitely, you know, the personal show, these jam sessions. I think it's just good just to also talk to people because, like, even just having this conversation is kinda motivating me to, like, rip off the band aid on some of this stuff and just put some stuff out there.

Brian: 16:57

You know, one of the things that I noticed that this is a pattern with myself, especially this time of year, like, every year around the turn of the year, whether it's, like, December, January, I I keep a business journal. I've been doing it for, like, I don't know, 13, 15 years, something like that. And that's where I just jot down, like, ideas, You know? Or mostly more like, decisions. Like Mhmm.

Brian: 17:23

Let me get it out of my head and write down what I'm thinking, what I think that the plan for this or that is gonna be, and why am I deciding this way or that way, to try to to try to, like, logically make sense out of it. And and around this time of year, I'm throwing entries in there, like, every single day. Yeah. They're, like, multiple days at a time. And it's, like, what I think on Monday is definitely the plan.

Brian: 17:52

This is I'm I'm I'm on board. And and then, like, by Tuesday, it's, like, everything has changed. New plan. Yeah. And then, like like, Wednesday, it's, like, okay.

Brian: 18:00

I think that was starting to get there, but now I now there's this aspect of it that I'm that I'm reconsidering. You know? And then I and then I just noticed that, like, I writing it out helped, but talking it out really helped. And, frankly, even doing it publicly helps even more because it it does help to sharpen, like, making the case for why Yeah. Why are you choosing to do one thing or another.

Brian: 18:27

You know?

Ryan: 18:27

Yeah. I mean, you really have to actually, I had, Mubs and I. I'm sure you're familiar with, Mubs.

Brian: 18:35

He Yeah.

Ryan: 18:36

Yeah. So we had a we did a jam sessions last week. And to your point, I think talking it out and also trying to explain it to someone else and hear yourself, like, the words that you choose and how you kind of position it and maybe where you back off versus leaning in to some of your commitments, it really tells something about, like, where you are internally with it. And at the same time, by trying to make the case to someone else, it's like it's almost like, it's almost kinda like not really making a sale, but you're like you are trying to sell the person on your idea and justify internally justify why you're even pursuing it. You know?

Ryan: 19:17

So Yeah. There is a certain salesmanship to it. And

Brian: 19:24

Yeah. I feel like it's like this. Interesting. That's the first you know, valid validating a new idea, validating a product or a business or whatever. Like, it starts with yourself.

Brian: 19:32

Like, you have to convince yourself that, like, maybe other people don't quite see this yet, but, like, I see something here. So what is it? You know? Like, I I don't I don't think it's it's never really worked for me to, like, go do something because somebody else thinks it's an it's an opportunity. But if I'm not convinced of it, then it's not gonna work.

Ryan: 19:53

Yeah. Totally. I mean, how about yourself with, like, instrumental products and clarity flow? I mean, you know, it's 2025. What's the what's the plan?

Ryan: 20:03

What are you thinking?

Brian: 20:05

Instrumental products is the big focus for me this year, and and that that business is, hard to put a timeline on it. It's probably about a year in, maybe a little less than a year into existence. And the first most of that first year has been basically services revenue, like building MVP apps for clients. So it's sort of similar to yourself, except that I don't have these long term contract commitments. Like, my projects are 3 months at a time.

Brian: 20:38

You know? Yeah. And and right now, we have 3 of them on on the like, happening, which is actually a lot, and it's completely filling me up. Like, my my week my work week is, like, the frustrating thing right now is that I'm very busy managing 3 MVP build projects. Yeah.

Brian: 20:57

And these are not my my own product. They're they're for clients. And they happen to be great clients. So they're awesome to work with, and they're pretty cool products that we're building. But, I'm starting to think about, like I don't know that this because instrumental products as a company is the the vision for it is to have a line of our own product.

Brian: 21:21

Yeah. You know, the instrumental components library is gonna be the first one, and that's coming along. And it's pretty pretty close to, like, ready, but, there's a lot of those final pieces to, like, get it into a shippable state. And I've got, like, another product coming right behind it, but an instrumental editor, which is gonna be like a like a a block editor markdown.

Ryan: 21:45

Oh, red.

Brian: 21:45

Kinda notion style editor for for the rails ecosystem. That's also kind of built out in, like, a prototype form, but I need to make it like a real thing. And, so things like that. That's, like, the long game is is those products. The short game is because this is a self funded bootstrap business.

Brian: 22:07

And the way that we're self funding is through these building apps for clients thing.

Ryan: 22:12

Mhmm.

Brian: 22:13

But I'm but I'm starting to become convinced that that might not be sustainable, for much longer. For a few different reasons. I mean, one is is that it's just way too hard for me to break away and and give the time and hours needed on the product side of things. But I'm also I think I'm seeing seeing a decrease in demand for, like, clients looking to hire or outsource their MVP builds to, to a shop like mine.

Ryan: 22:46

Interesting. You see I I mean, also, so a lot of this stuff, especially the client stuff, is pretty seasonal. So, this is kind of more of the downturn time of year. You know, if if anyone had any budget towards the end of year, they're trying to use up, like, whatever they, you know, had allotted for 2024, then they kinda go into a planning period. I bet I bet things will start to, like, rebound come, you know, like, late February, March, and then you'll be hit the ground running, but it is seasonal for sure.

Brian: 23:17

True. I do have a couple new things that are starting to line up for February, but the like, I'm not dealing with large organizations. I'm dealing with small start ups. Sometimes just solo founders. Like, they're just coming to me because they have an idea, and they have and they have the the funds and the and the willingness to, like, work with me on it.

Brian: 23:38

And and I have a team working with. But the, my thought right now is is probably to continue to work with the couple of clients that I have pretty good relationships with if if they wanna continue and iterate on their products and stuff. Mhmm. And I've got a team in place to to do that pretty efficiently. But I am starting to think about, like, what's the alternative to having, like, more of a short term, more sustainable, predictable revenue that can self fund the development of other products.

Brian: 24:17

And that's where like this, like, cohort membership, coaching, sort of concept is starting to form. You know, like, instead of us building, an app product for you, you're building your app. Your your your product.

Ryan: 24:40

Come into the this community to basically, obviously, maybe get some direct mentoring from yourself, but also Yeah. The value of everyone else who is a member supporting one another potentially or

Brian: 24:52

yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Like, my my thought right now is so, like, instrumental products exists to we we help builders build products. Like, we're we have tools and support for people who are building products, software products.

Brian: 25:07

And, and

Brian: 25:08

we have the tools in in development, but the support thing is there could be, like, a cohort

Ryan: 25:16

Mhmm.

Brian: 25:17

Program, maybe, like, a 3 month. Like, accelerator is the wrong word. It's more like, you have an idea. You wanna you wanna build it. You you know, show up, like, a weekly session plus some, like, async support plus a plus a small, like, a small group, like, 5 to 10 people together in a

Ryan: 25:36

cell group and myself. Mhmm.

Brian: 25:39

And, and and we're gonna and I'm gonna help to teach you how to use the tools and AI and and and maybe, like, a primer on on building with rails in conjunction with AI. And and you're getting some support. And and then maybe, like, the longer like, the extension of that, like, after the 3 months, you can sort of, like, roll into, more of our traditional membership community that's just kinda grows in size over time. And but there's there's the other segment of this audience that are already technical. They they know how to build stuff, but they're just looking for more of the community and connection and accountability.

Ryan: 26:24

Yeah. So maybe they're not part of the cohort, but they just

Brian: 26:26

want to give access to the community. Cohort thing, but they can they can be part of this, community option. You know?

Ryan: 26:33

Yeah. That makes sense. I mean, that, yeah, that all makes sense. I mean, you know, jam sessions originally kind of evolved from this, you know, started out weekly, turned into kind of a monthly, meetup, you know, where people are kind of coming together and sharing what they're working on.

Brian: 26:55

It

Ryan: 26:55

did oops. It did. There were visions of basic like, of expanding that, you know, to some sort of more of, like, if you if you've come to a jam session, you're now in the community. We had, like, a Slack channel. People were sharing stuff that they're working on and kinda doing regular updates, and, you know, I'd be probing them for, like, you know, what's everyone jamming on this week?

Ryan: 27:20

And, you know, come you know, on Monday and just trying to get, like, to stir that up. I think that's that is super valuable and to just, like, kinda maintain that. I feel like, you know, you stumble across all these, like, kind of, like, disparate discords, you know, either associated to, like, some sort of open source thing or maybe a community. I know MicroConf has their, Slack channel. The, the level of engagement there is a little bit kind of, like, touch and go.

Ryan: 27:52

You know? Yeah.

Brian: 27:53

There's a few that are, like, really high engagement and because they've been around a while. I mean, MicroConf, like, there's a strong part of that community. And same thing with, like, DC and, I'm in a couple of others.

Brian: 28:07

But,

Ryan: 28:08

Well, Justin Jackson, has is Mega Maker still going strong, I assume?

Brian: 28:13

I think. I'm not I'm actually not sure if he still does that. I was in it at some point. Maybe maybe like, I can't even keep track of all this.

Ryan: 28:20

Yeah. Totally.

Brian: 28:22

But I I I also think that, like, the smaller it is, the more valuable it is. Mhmm. You know, I know that there are some that, like, literally have a hard cap, like, the number of members that there can, like, ever be in this thing. There's there's some sort of value to that.

Ryan: 28:39

Yeah. I mean, actually, your your tiny snow, what is it?

Brian: 28:44

Yeah. Big snow

Ryan: 28:45

Big snow, tiny in

Brian: 28:47

2 weeks. It that's that's, like, 12 people in a house. Yeah.

Ryan: 28:53

It's so rad. I mean, basically, if you could have that and then have that group, you know, or multiples of the of basically that group in, like, some sort of

Brian: 29:04

That is the thought.

Ryan: 29:05

Chat space.

Brian: 29:06

Yeah. Like, if I could run multiple cohorts, maybe only, like, one at a time, but, like, over over the years,

Ryan: 29:12

it's a and then they kinda grow, like, a a delayed you know, they're delayed if they run for 6 weeks or delayed 3 weeks or something, you kinda maybe have a little bit of overlap there, but it's only ever, like, 2 onboarding at a

Brian: 29:24

time. Yeah. It's like beyond myself. Like, somebody else runs a cohort.

Ryan: 29:28

Yeah.

Brian: 29:29

And, Yeah. And and I and I also sort of like the idea of, like, the people who join the cohort who are a little bit more learning how to build stuff. They do the cohort. They're they're hacking on their first or second idea. And then they drop into the into the larger community.

Brian: 29:47

And now, they're sort of, like, mixing in with Mhmm. More seasoned developers. And members of the community can help each other out. And maybe maybe these people from the cohort, maybe they're stronger on marketing and and business and stuff, and they can help the builders, you know? And maybe even like like a like incentivizing that somehow, like, if you help someone out.

Ryan: 30:07

Oh, totally. You you you

Brian: 30:09

get some some coins that you can redeem for some

Ryan: 30:11

I get some karma points or just, you know, it just feels good. Yeah.

Brian: 30:15

Yeah. Or or, like, literally, like, you get, like, you can get, like, discount on your membership fee if you help help x people out or something like that. Mhmm. But,

Brian: 30:27

yeah. That that's because I'm

Brian: 30:28

I'm just starting to think, like, if the consulting projects were to either reduce or go away, what can, like, build that space in terms of my my time and also, like, you know, the revenue source to drive the the business? That's that's what I'm starting to think about. But it's like moving the ship. Like like, it's

Ryan: 30:49

Oh, yeah.

Brian: 30:50

It's a big it's a big shift in, in in sort of direction.

Ryan: 30:57

Yeah. And and to your point, it's like, you know, whatever you have planned for the, you know, rails component library and then this editor, those all have lead times on them too. So, like, yeah, you might get some quick wins by having clients use some of the stuff or kind of almost fund the development of a piece here, a piece there, or even just maybe, like, sharpen the, the use of some of this stuff, but it's not gonna

Brian: 31:20

Well, that that's happening now.

Ryan: 31:21

I mean Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I realize that's happening now. But I was saying, it's not gonna those aren't necessarily gonna fund the entire development of, like, what you potentially need unless you're gonna keep it scoped.

Ryan: 31:32

I know you know, I don't know, whether the Yeah.

Brian: 31:36

I mean, the the components library stuff is, like theoretically, it's, like, really a month or 2 away from being launchable, but I but it's hard for me to find the time to to get all those final pieces in place. Like, the documentation and the and the marketing site and and final testing and stuff. But, but but I'm actively using the components on all of the projects that we're doing. And it's it really is speeding things up. Yeah.

Brian: 32:06

Like, part of the part of the open question for me is, like, my actual audience, which is not very large, but, like, the people that I actually am connected to tend to be more, like, they are builders. They they are technical. Mhmm. So I don't know that they're necessarily the the target customer for, like, a paid cohort thing. I'd have to sort of reach out and find more beginner level or or people who are just not as technical, but they're looking to build.

Brian: 32:37

I think there's some of those people in my audience, but, you know, I might I might need to go outside of that to, like I don't know. Whether it's, like, running ads to to some sort of funnel or,

Ryan: 32:49

I guess it all really depends

Brian: 32:50

on more on YouTube and and I'm tracking some some random some random new people that way, I guess.

Brian: 32:55

But

Ryan: 32:56

Yeah. The engagement on there. I it really depends on probably where you end up pricing this. I know there was I think it was back in I think it was a 2018 or maybe 2019. Y Combinator, they kind of they kind of messed up, essentially.

Ryan: 33:15

They sent out an email to almost everyone who had applied for this one cohort, like a startup school, I think they called it. And, they were only supposed to let a certain number of people in, but they they botched it. And they sent out a reply to everyone who had applied to be part of this startup school. And so as a way to recover from that, they basically said, anyone who wasn't originally supposed to attend startup school, you're not gonna necessarily get the direct mentorship for, like, from the people who are, you know, mentoring the actual people in the startup school. But you will get access to the videos that those people, like recordings with the with the people that are kind of, like, adding those, things.

Ryan: 34:02

And, and you'll also be put into basically, like, mini mastermind groups. So I was paired up with I think it was, like, maybe, like, 6 to 8 people. And we would check-in on a weekly basis. And even though everyone was doing something slightly different, there was a certain forcing function that you knew that you were gonna have to show up with some new stuff to talk about, or you're gonna have to be that person who's like, I didn't do anything this week.

Brian: 34:34

This week.

Ryan: 34:34

Yeah. And it was the same thing. It's basically the same kind of forcing function that jam sessions had if if you were like a repeat, attendee. And Yeah. Even then, even if you're not necessarily getting, like, full on technical support, the camaraderie and the just basically baked in, like, commitment, you know, to like a forcing function to get you to do something was actually worth it.

Ryan: 35:04

And I bet people, depending on where their situation is and where it was priced, would actually even just pay for that.

Brian: 35:11

Yeah, man. I think I like another idea and this gets into like how I'm thinking about what what a funnel would look like for this is, like monthly workshop. Right? But not not really sure. This is very broad figuring it out.

Brian: 35:30

But, like, the idea would be, like, members can or anyone can attend these workshops or maybe purchase a very low priced ticket to to a live like like this, sort of like a live stream. Mhmm. But, like, I don't know, 4 or 5 people on the workshop. Maybe, like, the first five to to get their tickets have the opportunity to present their current

Ryan: 35:51

Oh, yeah. That'd be cool.

Brian: 35:53

For, like, 10 like, give us, like, a 10 minute, like, sort of like a pitch, but and maybe, like, I'll ask a couple questions, but, like, you you get, like, 10 minutes or 15 minutes

Ryan: 36:02

Yeah.

Brian: 36:03

To present it to the to the whole workshop and maybe, like, other viewers. And, and, like, I I could help with, like, asking questions or, like, vetting the idea, same same with the other attendees. And that can be a way that could be that can make these things, like, more interactive and maybe, like, add more value for for people who are building totally new products that are in development. Maybe, you know, get a little bit more exposure for

Ryan: 36:31

Yeah. I think from a distribution exposure standpoint, that'd be really cool. And especially if you could build it into kind of like a almost like a cult y kinda, you know, thing where, some people are just there to watch. You know, maybe they're working on their thing, but they just like to see it's like kind of like a little product hunt live, you know, where Yeah. People are just getting exposed to new things or seeing how people are pitching it.

Ryan: 36:56

It it could even be an interesting thing where, like, if you were to, I guess, depending on how the schedule of this stuff works, if you were to have these things scheduled and people could basically apply, but then part of that application is just the initial application and also sending x number of, like, updates, you know, that kind of could be used to just fuel the community. Like, whoever has, like, the most points or likes or who knows whatever, like, almost gets, like, voted on. So you're kind of incentivized to not only engage on the stream, but, like, even pre stream, you know, kind of, like, win the vote of the crowd to get to, you know, to get to show off, what you're working on. That'd be kinda cool.

Brian: 37:39

Yeah. I mean, that's that is sort of what I was think I was thinking thinking about this this, like, coin system or some sort of, like, reward system Yeah. Where, like, every member every new member of of the community gets, I don't know, 10 points or 5 points. Right? And if if you help someone out in any way like, if I help you out if I or if you help me out, like, figure out a technical bug and and help help me do something or gave me some pretty good feedback, I can give you any of my coin.

Brian: 38:13

Like, I'd like, as as, like, a thank you. And the more that you more of these goodwill coins that you build up, you can redeem them for things like a discount on your membership fee, or you can redeem it for, like,

Ryan: 38:26

getting a start on the live show. Present your Yeah.

Brian: 38:29

Yeah. Like like, you could, like, you could present or, you know, maybe maybe it's like a hard like, you can't promote your own product in the community unless you you have, like, a bunch of these rewards, and then you, like, earn that ability. Mhmm. You know?

Ryan: 38:45

Like, you can only reply. Yeah. Maybe we can't do, like, a main thread, post or something.

Brian: 38:52

Yeah. I mean, I don't know how how, like, social engine how much, like, social engineering I would wanna do in this sort of

Ryan: 38:56

Yeah.

Brian: 38:57

And even, like, just the idea, like, running a a community is not necessarily my thing. I've I've never really I'm in a bunch, but I'm not very act I'm not a big community, like, active person. So I don't know. Like, that might be a challenge for me. But the but the small group teaching and coaching, I've I've done that before with other other business stuff.

Brian: 39:19

So, that could be sort of interesting.

Brian: 39:22

But I don't know if

Ryan: 39:23

it's a It's like the idea is to try to fast track that to then at least have that running in parallel with the client stuff and in case the client stuff falls out. Yeah. Cause like, you know, the tricky thing with client stuff, and actually this is gonna be a question I was asked. So so far, the clients that you've worked with, how many are repeat versus, like, net new? 5050?

Ryan: 39:43

Or

Brian: 39:45

Right now, there's 3 active projects. Before this, there were probably 4 or 5 like, probably in total since since, like, last year up till now, there's been about, like, a total of 7 or 8 projects. Mhmm. One of them one of the 3 that are active right now is actually the second project with the same client. Like, he came back the first product just sort of didn't launch for whatever reason, but he came back to do another one.

Brian: 40:12

The other 2 are new. But the one that's lined up for February is a return client who just has continued like, it's the same product that that we built.

Ryan: 40:24

Yeah. Just continuing development. Evolving it. Continuing development.

Brian: 40:30

That's that's how I think it's probably gonna go for the next couple of months is like the because there are a couple of those previous projects have, like, sort of communicated to me that, like, yeah, some point soon, I do have a list of things we wanna come back to.

Brian: 40:43

Mhmm. And,

Brian: 40:49

like, I could see this shift happen that way. Like, we ship these 3 projects, which should ship sometime in February. And then after that, it's 1 or 2 continued retainers or or sprints with some of these, return clients for, for, like, repeat, cycles to to feed features out or, you know because these are, like, totally new, like, v one, products, and they're getting into the hands of, like, very first customers, which means, like,

Ryan: 41:22

you're gonna get all these new batch. Action. Yeah. Yeah. Feature requests and everything.

Ryan: 41:26

Yeah. I mean and those are actually, if you get into that cycle where essentially, these are not net new clients and net new projects, because the thing that always used to eat up them or still use up the most of my time, like, from, like, a contracting standpoint is, like, if I have to go through and spec out a proposal and do any sort of, like, estimates and do, like, a deep discovery on what you're doing and all this other stuff, and if that may or may not even get, like, land me the gig, it's just a lot of wasted effort, especially if you already have 2 or, you know, 2 or 3 projects that are currently in the go. And if

Brian: 42:06

you're I I think you're doing proposals

Ryan: 42:08

for, like, 4 if you're doing 4 proposals and doing 3 projects, you're I mean, you're hosed. You know? Like

Brian: 42:14

Yeah. I I did run into a lot of that last fall. I spent a lot of time just doing proposals. And I mean, luckily, like, about half of those, like, came through as as projects, but a couple of them did not. And I spent multiple weeks on the proposals.

Brian: 42:31

You know, just going back and doing, like, version 2, version 3, and all this stuff. And, so

Ryan: 42:36

Cutting scope, expanding scope, who knows? You know, like, and then trying to figure out that stuff out.

Brian: 42:41

And then I start to play around with, like, alright. So I'm gonna offer, like, a paid discovery. If you wanna do, like, a 2 week discovery scoping process, we can we can make that paid to sort of make it worth it. Mhmm. But now I'm I'm thinking more like new projects should just come into, like, a monthly retainer.

Brian: 42:58

Yeah. You know, here's here's the monthly price, and we'll figure out what we're building with you along with you in collaboration, like, sort of as we go instead of scoping out, like, okay. In this 3 month time span, we are going to ship this long list of features. It's much easier for us and I think easier for the client to digest if it's like, alright. Here's the big picture of generally what we want to build.

Brian: 43:26

Here's the monthly price. I expect that we should ship something more or less in the shape of what you want to do in 3 months. I'm not gonna get super specific about it. But once we get into the project and and we have the active retainer going, then we can break it into, like, 2 weeks sprints. Like, okay.

Brian: 43:46

We're gonna we're gonna start with these pieces and and sort of just roll from there. You know? Yeah. And then let like, by the end of 3 months or so, like, the it'll be sort of easy for the client to see. Like, okay, we we've got the product to this point.

Brian: 44:01

It's it's shippable now, or, looks like we just need this 1 or 2, like, essential features, and then and then we're good to ship. Yeah.

Ryan: 44:09

Yeah. I mean, both sides are basically trying to derisk the engagement. Right? It's like Mhmm. They're trying to make sure that they're not committing to too much upfront and then landing with someone who's, like, not able to deliver on what they wanna have.

Ryan: 44:23

And at the same time, you don't wanna really put yourself out there and take the risk or put in the effort to basically try to win something that ends up being a waste of time. I mean, I could easily see having it to where maybe there's, like, kinda like a newlywed period where it's actually maybe build out at, like, an hourly rate for the first, like, week or 2 just to basically say, like, are is everyone comfortable with this situation? Are we delivering on what we kind of agreed upon? Alright. Everyone's being compensated.

Ryan: 44:57

This is great. Now at the end of this 2 week period, like, this is when either weekly or monthly retainers kick in, and then and we go from there. But at least that way, they can at least see like, if they have any red flags or they're realizing that because, I mean, another thing that you can run into with the client is they might think they know what they want, but when you start really asking the questions and digging into, like, what they need, they don't really have, like, the answers that they can provide you. So you could easily burn a couple weeks just hashing out what those are to get some

Brian: 45:31

more

Ryan: 45:32

clarity. And it's still valuable to them, but, you know, I don't know. It it's such a it's such a able to build

Brian: 45:40

stuff pretty pretty quickly. And and if it's like a pretty straightforward, you know, Rails app, like, it's it's it I'm able to, like, look at it and be like, okay. We we can do that in a month or or 3 months or something like that. But, but, yeah, like, sometimes there are some some features that are just so new or complicated that, like, even even us, like, once we something that we think is simple is gonna turn out to be you you know how it goes.

Ryan: 46:07

Oh, yeah. Totally. Yeah.

Brian: 46:08

But the, like like, for for me, it's it's like, I'm not solo anymore. I have a team. And, I still do a lot of the direction and architecture, and I and I do work on the apps themselves. But, like, for the most part, it's, I define the scope and then hand it off to my team, and I'm doing more of the QA and and polishing stuff and then and then updating the client. That and that's even that is, like, so time consuming and maybe even more time consuming than me just building.

Brian: 46:41

It probably is. Like, I could probably build it faster myself, but that's how I can free up more hours to work on the product or my product. You

Brian: 46:49

know? Yeah.

Ryan: 46:50

I mean, it's definitely a balancing act. How many I I I think the last time we talked, you're you're maybe onboarding 2 engineers, right, to work on just the,

Brian: 46:59

As of right now, I I've had 3. So just on the instrumental products,

Ryan: 47:03

the process, I feel

Brian: 47:04

Full time on Clarityflow, and then 3 on instrumental products, plus myself. I I think that's gonna start to reduce as we get into February, probably down to 1 or 2 of them are gonna, I I have a good relationship with this, Indian, agency. I've been working with them for years, and they they have a really large staffing, firm that, that brings people on. But, like, when they when they bring a a person onto my team, like, I I work with them for years. It's not like this week, it's this person, and that week, it's someone else.

Brian: 47:42

Like, once they come on my team, they're it's, it's like they're they're on my team even though they're through this agency. That's cool. That's been that's been working out pretty well.

Ryan: 47:52

And it's nice that they can actually flex. What kind of, like, commitments do you have to make to them from, like, do you have to make monthly commitments, or are they pre or they're even more fluid than that?

Brian: 48:04

They're they're fluid, but, like, I mean, they definitely need a lead time. And I try to do my best to give them as much like, if I if I think I'm gonna need an increase, I like, in or a totally new person, then I'm going to probably try to give them at least a month to, like like Yeah. Advance notice. Sometimes they need to actually, like, train and onboard a new person to to fill that need. And they have a huge pipeline of developers coming in, but they they have a whole training and onboarding process for them, which is great.

Brian: 48:38

But the, one of the harder things right now, again, like, why why I think that this client stuff might not be so sustainable is that, like, as clients sort of, like, come and go, I I hate to go to them and say, like, I need to, like, suddenly reduce this person or 2.

Ryan: 48:58

Yeah.

Brian: 48:59

You know, like, compare that to, like, our

Ryan: 49:01

last step. Month a month lead on a lot of this. Yeah. You know, on both ends. You know?

Brian: 49:07

Yeah. I I try to stay in, direct contact with my team there or with with the manager there to to sort of set expectations. But, like, sometimes, like, unexpected stuff comes up with a client or they, you know, they change direction and it and it sort of throws a wrench and everything. You know? But, like, when I have, like, a steady product, like Clarity Flow, like, I've been working with the same developer for, like, years on that.

Brian: 49:31

You know?

Brian: 49:34

Yeah.

Ryan: 49:35

Yeah. No. That's awesome. Yeah. I I mean, yeah, I think the I definitely think the cohort thing is interesting.

Ryan: 49:46

I think part of it's, like, how you position it and the value that you can kind of present to people and, like, what what's, like, potentially, like, the upfront cohort price versus just general member access and and what you could wrap around,

Brian: 50:02

Yeah.

Ryan: 50:04

Wrap around the product in general to just, like, help with either, like, generating connections amongst people within the group, but then also, like, creating, like, opportunities for exposure or distribution or something.

Brian: 50:19

Yeah. For sure. I mean so, I mean, before I I gotta hop off here in

Ryan: 50:24

a minute, but, like,

Brian: 50:25

give me, like, some like, one firm commitment or or Can

Ryan: 50:30

do a little commit here? Alright.

Brian: 50:32

Like, what like, one which product and what does that product need to do or look like for you in in, let's say, 6 months from now?

Ryan: 50:43

Like Actually, I would like to even be more aggressive in my timeline. But Alright. But I will, I wanna have a at least a, a bare bare minimum refactored version of link cards, which will now be open graphs, which is the open graph image generator thing Mhmm. Up and running, like, by March, at the very least, at the latest. I already have spikes on how I plan on rewriting it.

Ryan: 51:17

Like, you know, the the basically, the thing I was running into with, link cards is I had everything running on one box, and I'm doing, you know, I'm using, like, Chrome headless Chrome to to do live captures of the of the image and then, like, throw it off to a CDN and all this other stuff. I already basically, Starter Packs is like the first app that I've written in this new structure that I plan on using where essentially the API is decoupled from, like, the client, which is also, like, has other services that are running around it. So I'm using Neon for the Postgres hosting, so that's also not on a server eating up space and can scale and do fun stuff. I'm using nestjs to do all the APIs. And that was almost like that was like that first rep to just, like, can I sustain a lot of traffic and pay almost next to nothing?

Ryan: 52:18

I mean, I'm I think I have, like, 2 APIs running at $7 a piece. One's like the fire hose ingestor, which is just plugged into Blue Sky all day just, like, trying to take as much as they can off the hose. And then, and then the database, which actually is, like it's kinda cool. It can actually support, like, if you make, like, a GitHub branch, it can actually break fork the and branch the database to be just for that branch. And so you could do active development as database and then merge in those changes, which I haven't got the chance to really do yet on starter packs.

Ryan: 52:54

But, like, those are kind of like the the developer experience stuff that I wanna have with every project that I work on because I feel like I've also like, with the client work that I do, even just, like, having complex setups that you can easily feature branch and do, like, database migrations on and then flow those back into production can be tricky. So, yeah. So that's that's a little background on

Brian: 53:19

all of my building. I I wanna hear more selling.

Ryan: 53:22

Oh, yeah. That's true. That's true. Yeah. I mean, you're right.

Ryan: 53:26

I mean, I guess I'll see how Peter does. I assume as far as his social thing. I think he

Brian: 53:31

I I don't know. I think he probably put it out for sale or maybe not.

Ryan: 53:35

I don't know. I think he did. I think he has probably some some early subscribers on it. Yeah. Mine's a slightly different approach as far as I mean, I do think I will offer templates, but I also I think there is something to be said about being able to utilize, like, the styles and the fonts and everything else that you already have in the app that you're already working on, and then having a very clean way to route those to this, like, kind of dynamic generator and also be able to do, quick updates and changes to those, Azure, or both.

Brian: 54:09

E commerce. Right? With, like, a lot of product pages.

Ryan: 54:13

Yeah. Or even just, like, blogs. You know? Like

Brian: 54:16

Mhmm.

Ryan: 54:16

It's it's annoying enough sometimes to figure out, like you might have an image, but you really want that to be maybe, like, layered on with the title and everything else. And if you're making those things ad hoc, I don't know. It's just I'd rather have a system that you can kinda throw it into.

Brian: 54:34

Yeah.

Ryan: 54:36

I'm all about trying to figure out flywheels. But so yeah. I mean, I would I'd love to have, yeah, I'd like to have that up with a paid option. And, you know, and obviously, I'll be documenting the the development of that. So hopefully, that will also lead to some, things, and there will be some open source, stuff around that to basically Awesome.

Ryan: 55:03

Gauge, like, engagement is from, like, the developer community.

Brian: 55:08

Super interesting.

Ryan: 55:08

But yeah.

Brian: 55:10

How about yourself? This is, what what

Ryan: 55:12

is a

Brian: 55:13

jam session? Do you have, like, a a number on these episodes?

Ryan: 55:16

This is the 4th one right now.

Brian: 55:18

Okay. This is 4. So by March, you'll probably be up, like, jam session 6 or 7, 8?

Ryan: 55:25

Who knows? We'll see. The one of my one of my also, like, commitments for this new year is, like oh, yeah. I had this episode talking about, like, reflect, project, connect, and correct. So this is a connection I see, and I'm trying to do more connection this year just to kinda I wanna go to more conferences.

Ryan: 55:42

I wanna talk to more people. I think working from home and not really being in like, having those kind of, like, random social interactions is is, like, taking a little bit of a toll on me.

Brian: 55:55

Converse thing is definitely worth it. I I recommend MicroComp to everyone. That's a really good one. I I have to skip it this year. I was gonna try to I I missed it last year.

Brian: 56:05

I've been going for, like, 10 years, and I missed it last year. I have I have another I have a snowboarding trip to Whistler. For some reason, they changed it's usually in in April, MicroConf, and he he moved to to March this year randomly. So it's that week, so I can't make it again. No bummer.

Brian: 56:25

I might, I might try to get out to Europe or, the other the other new one for me this year, maybe is going to rails comp or rails world.

Brian: 56:37

I was confused though.

Ryan: 56:38

Nice.

Brian: 56:40

I've actually never really been to, like, a technical, like, developer conference. And I feel like it's I've been building with rails enough years. I should I should go to one of these rails.

Ryan: 56:49

Yeah. Not to mention just, like, really gauge the crowd as far as, like, what people are using within, like, the component library space and

Brian: 56:57

Yeah. For sure.

Ryan: 56:58

And, like, what tools?

Brian: 57:00

Yep. But

Ryan: 57:01

how about yourself? What are you

Brian: 57:02

committing to? I gotta head out and, try to ship some stuff before dinner tonight.

Ryan: 57:06

Oh, sorry. What what are you committing to for 2025 or, like, within the next 6 months?

Brian: 57:10

Oh, man. I mean, for for q one here, you know, by March or April, I I want to do something on this cohort coaching community idea. I don't I don't know like, first workshop and maybe see if I can sell a first cohort. Mhmm. I mean, the the components product is is the other thing that that needs to ship at some point.

Brian: 57:43

I just I don't know when like, that could also ship in sometime in q one. But, like, if I had to, like, choose, like, what is there there's multiple goals and multiple

Ryan: 58:00

Yeah. What's the most crossing room that you wanna do? Right?

Brian: 58:03

Yeah. Yeah. If I if I have to, like, prioritize and figure out, like, what is the

Brian: 58:08

the top problem that I

Brian: 58:10

have to solve right now. It's it's that client services are good right now, and it's a good revenue source right now. But I think I need to think about re replacing those or transforming them into into some new thing. Yeah. Because because that's, like, the sustainability of the whole business.

Brian: 58:28

So I need to sort of get that figured out. Like, progress is not gonna stop on the product stuff, but, like, that's that's more of a long game that's gonna come along as the year goes on.

Ryan: 58:40

Yeah. Yeah. And it's basically securing those like, basically, making those alignments with those companies to secure, basically, ongoing contracts potentially or some sort of, like

Brian: 58:51

I mean, that would really be a

Ryan: 58:53

huge amount actually. And then that way, you can at least rely somewhat, you know, on that to then sustain the development work and whatever you plan on doing for community development. But,

Brian: 59:05

That that would be ideal as because it is always, just a smoother process working with these existing clients and ongoing retainers, especially I I think that 1 or 2 of the current ones are gonna turn into some form of that, maybe not forever, but for some period of time. And, like, these happen to be, like, my best clients yet. And some of them are are friends of mine. So that could be a good situation where it's just like a steady state. Maybe, like, the only clients that that I keep are are those.

Brian: 59:36

Mhmm. And turn all

Ryan: 59:37

the other clients. 6 month commitment, you know, at least that 6 months to where then you can try to wrap your head around the whole community thing and and do a few tests and try to figure some stuff out.

Brian: 59:47

Yep. Yeah. It's it's like everything's in flux. It's like some like, nothing's gonna, like, stop overnight, but it's like just gonna start to, like, dial down this and maybe dial up that, you know. Totally.

Brian: 59:58

We'll we'll see.

Ryan: 59:59

Well, cool. Well, this has been another Jam Sessions, Brian. Thanks for your, second showing on the show. I'm sure I'll do another one. Yeah.

Brian: 01:00:07

Thanks for, letting me hop on and and crash crash the party here.

Ryan: 01:00:11

Yeah. So, I guess, send people over to instrumental.dev if they need any product work done by you and your team. And then,

Brian: 01:00:20

yeah, I've also been hacking on, like, instrumental products.com. Always, like, rewriting that homepage.

Ryan: 01:00:26

Oh, okay. Cool. I think this

Brian: 01:00:27

is what the company is gonna be all about. So

Ryan: 01:00:30

So is is instrumental products dot com the the one that or or instrumental dot dev? Or they're kind of

Brian: 01:00:35

I'm thinking of instrumental products dot com as, like, the main hub of everything.

Ryan: 01:00:41

Alright. So there

Brian: 01:00:42

the one of the links on there goes to instrumental dev, which will be the components product. I also have nothing's up on it yet, but I have instrumental editor.com. So whenever that product comes into play, I'm I'm gonna probably use that domain. But in instrumental is like the brand. You know?

Ryan: 01:00:59

Okay. It's alright. Instrumentalproducts.com. Go there. Hire Brian.

Ryan: 01:01:05

Let him make some Rad Rail stuff for you, and then also fund his products. That's a 2 for it. You get good goodwill and, product out of it.

Brian: 01:01:16

Or It's

Ryan: 01:01:16

awesome, man. It's been great talking, and, have a great

Brian: 01:01:21

one. Alright. Later, Ryan. Yep. Later.