Build Your SaaS

First commit was six months ago!!!

Show Notes

Jon and Justin talk about:
  • The launch of the new marketing site: transistor.fm
  • Built using Statamic CMS and with Tailwind CSS
  • Got tons of help from Jack McDade, Adam Wathan, Ben Furfie
  • "Tailwind is really nice. I have to hand it to Adam."
  • Why working in tandem is better than working independently.
  • DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME. NO.
  • What's the next thing we're going to focus on?

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Creators & Guests

Host
Jon Buda
Co-founder of Transistor.fm
Host
Justin Jackson
Co-founder of Transistor.fm
Editor
Chris Enns
Owner of Lemon Productions

What is Build Your SaaS?

Interested in building your own SaaS company? Follow the journey of Transistor.fm as they bootstrap a podcast hosting startup.

Helen:

This podcast is brought to you by Clubhouse. Clubhouse is project management software for startups, for software products. And guess what? Now it's free for up to 10 people. So if you're looking for professional project management software for your team and you don't have the budget to pay for it, try Clubhouse out.

Helen:

Go to clubhouse.io/

Jon:

build. Hey, everyone. Welcome to Build Your SaaS. This is the behind the scenes story of building a web app in 2019. I'm John Buda, a software engineer.

Helen:

And I'm Justin Jackson. I do product and marketing. Follow along as we build transistor dot f m. And actually, we we just launched a new transistor dot f m.

Jon:

We did. It was a long time in the making.

Helen:

Yeah. Oh, yeah. I was gonna check. I didn't check before we started recording when my first commit was on that, because I remember we so we launched a new marketing site. And I think I've been working on that since April or May.

Jon:

Do you wanna know when?

Helen:

Yeah. What was the what was the first commit?

Jon:

It's May 10th.

Helen:

May

Jon:

that's a a 6 month 6 month cycle of work.

Helen:

6 month cycle of work. Now to be fair, I was learning on the job for a lot of that. I was like, at first, I was just trying to figure things out, but that is I I didn't realize how long I've been working on that until yeah. I saw I think I saw a tweet from June or something.

Jon:

Yeah. I mean, had we made that had we made that an actual cycle of work of 4 or 6 weeks, we probably would have finished it in that time.

Helen:

Yeah. Yeah. It was but and and honestly, I don't know if I could have done it any way other way, because a lot of that time was me was me learning. Like, I was going I was live streaming and trying to figure out stuff and having people me and Yeah. Bugging my friend Adam Wadden about Tailwind and bugging Jack McDade about statimek and getting people from the UK, like Ben Furphy to help me through a bunch of stuff.

Helen:

So let's we'll get to how you feel in a bit, but I just wanna say, I feel like this ins it just feels so good to have that site out because I was so invested in it. It's the first website I've built like that. Like, a a a template that goes into a CMS. And it's the first thing I've done like that from start to finish.

Jon:

Mhmm.

Helen:

And so for me to have that out and just to feel like, you know, a lot of that initial architecture, even though it's not perfect, I built that. And I it's the yeah. So this is the first time I've had that feeling of Right. Of, wow, here's a pretty big project that I was involved from the beginning to

Jon:

the end. And, yeah, it's gotta feel good.

Helen:

It yeah.

Jon:

It You you you you ended up, like, canceling our WordPress hosting and and account within, like, 2 hours of launching it,

Helen:

I think. Yeah. Yeah. Well and it it's funny to think about because and I think back in May June, what I was doing was I was like, I put together a kind of a workable template using Tailwind. And then I was immediately testing it on page speed insights to see if it would be faster than what we have.

Jon:

Yep.

Helen:

And the further I went down that rabbit hole, you know, like, I I think I spent a whole month just experimenting with, like, how could I auto generate web p, and and how do I create the fallbacks? And Mhmm. Yeah. And even just thinking about, like, I had to reach out to everybody that's on the homepage and ask for their permission to let me Right. Use their images.

Helen:

And I I I don't think I realized how much I'd done on it until we had it out. Yeah. And then it's

Jon:

like Yeah. You did almost all of it.

Helen:

But I do have to say, having you come in at the end was I think we talked about this last week.

Jon:

Yeah.

Helen:

But the feeling of both of us working on it at the same time, even even though, I think some of that was stressful for you. Was it was it stress?

Jon:

I'm still trying to figure out why. I mean, there were parts of it I enjoyed, like, the actual, you know, tweaking the design and sort of just making small changes that made a big difference in my eyes to, like, just layout and spacing and, like

Helen:

Yeah.

Jon:

And that stuff felt really good and something I hadn't done in a long time. And learning learning tailwinds was I mean, I I know I initially kind of gave it some shit, gave you some grief about it, but it it is it is really nice. I have to have to hand it to Adam, for how that was made. And probably, like, I I can see I can see wanting to play more with it and maybe in our in our downtime over the holidays, like, building rebuilding a template for our dashboard with it without actually integrating it into rails and just, like, building the dashboard, actually may making it mobile friendly because it's really our dashboard is not great right now for for mobile stuff, and then kinda slowly rolling it into the rails app. But it's kind of crazy how well it works.

Jon:

And I think once you once you get the hang of it, you don't really have to think about it much. Mhmm.

Helen:

Yeah. There's an interesting interaction yesterday between Derek Reimer, who's building a new website with Tailwind and Adam Wathan. And Adam Adam looked at the site and then in just in a tweet was able to say, oh, you know, if you add pydash8 here and if you add, you know, b t 10 here, I think it'll look a lot better. And then add this, there's a I can't I don't know the tailwind shorthand for this. But then afterwards, Derek was like, it's pretty cool that we're speaking tailwind right now here on Twitter.

Jon:

Yeah. It's a shorthand for, like I like it. There are some things I hope they add, and maybe they probably will. But,

Helen:

what what what what do you want them to add?

Jon:

Maybe it's just more around learning better how it works, but the way you write custom components is a little confusing to me because you can't it doesn't seem like there's a good way to hook into the responsive the responsive break points within a custom component that you build in a CSS file.

Helen:

Okay. Are you talking about what we do in that webpack dotmix file, or are you talking about

Jon:

just Well, in our in our base CSS, so we write we write actually, we just write CSS or post CSS, and it had to apply you can apply the Tailwinds classes in the CSS file. But

Helen:

Yeah.

Jon:

Yeah. I couldn't figure like, I wanted to write some stuff, but I couldn't figure out how to apply, like, the, you know, like, the small, medium, large breakpoints for mobile in that component. So I don't know if it's if there's a way to do that or not, but, it doesn't seem like they've they've added anything for, like, CSS grid. I know that's not supported everywhere, but I I would assume they have plans for that at some point, like the act the actual CSS grid. It it's kinda cool how seamless it works by just I didn't have to think or worry about, like, line height consistency and just all this stuff that just.

Helen:

The consistency, I think, is gonna be helpful. And Adam also has some kind of base rules that he was teaching me. For example, he he I think this is what his rule is that he generally tries to apply margin only to the top and not to the bottom. So consistently, he just applies margin to the top. Yeah.

Helen:

Does that sound like a rule you've heard before?

Jon:

Yeah. Yeah. I think yeah. That is.

Helen:

And so I think he he's he's not just implementing a, you know, a CSS kind of language, but he's he's also thinking about best practices. And so when you adopt Till, when you're not just adopting, like, a way of writing CSS, you're adopting a whole philosophy of writing CSS. And Yeah. And there's a bunch of best practices that come with that that I think will be helpful. Because that's usually where I get stuck is, you know, I'll be in one spot and I'll have applied, you know, some spacing one way, and then I'll go to another section.

Helen:

It'll it'll be a completely different way. Right?

Jon:

Right. Yeah. I I will say that I I don't think I think it's still beneficial for people to actually learn CSS before they pick up something like tailwinds because, like, otherwise, you just have it's like learning rails without knowing Ruby. It's like Yeah. Really, you can do it, but you have so many questions about how things work.

Helen:

Yeah. It's true. Yeah. It is it's beneficial to have some some base CSS. So that

Jon:

that actually wasn't the frustrating part. The frustrating part was just, I think, dealing with statimec and how it I I still kind of don't understand how the actual CMS works and how things like collections work and blanking out the name. But it's kind of the way that all the content works together and how custom templates are made. I just

Helen:

If I could share a metaphor with you, it's almost as if I was building a rocket ship in my garage, and then I invited you, the NASA engineer, to come in. So I, I, I don't know how much of that is stativic. I think most of that is just my implementation. Like, you came in right at the end of the at the end of the project.

Jon:

Maybe there's a little bit of that, but I just I don't know. Maybe a little bit, but not I don't know. Not quite. It's still I just can't wrap my head around, like, the the data model they're going for.

Helen:

Yeah. Well, we should we should dive into that a little bit more. We should keep keep figuring it out. I'm super excited about it because I don't for me and me this is my flaw as well. But like in math class, my mom is a was a university math teacher.

Helen:

Like, she taught math ed to university students, and I barely passed math. And I can remember sitting at the kitchen table in high school, grade 12, and just, like, being in agony, like and really being kind of a dick to my mom, like, not being nice. And, she's trying to explain, you know, how things work. And I just turned to her and said, mom, I don't care. I don't care why.

Helen:

I just wanna know how. Like, just show me what I punch into my calculator so that I can at least pass this test.

Jon:

But the why is the important part.

Helen:

Exactly. I I know. I know there's so many people out there, especially the math people that are just like like, the the the room the air just got sucked out of the room. But this is just how I am. I'm I I and it it's not always good, but the and I care more and more about the how as I as I, you know, grow up.

Helen:

But, sorry. The more and more about the why as I grow up. But for me, just being able to create all those collections in statemic is way more important than I don't need to know, like, why it works that way. I just need to know, okay, it works this way. Perfect.

Helen:

Let's keep going. Right. And, I'm I'm guessing that, uncle Bob would like he him and I would get into, like, a a fist fight over this. I saw I saw a tweet by him the other day. You gotta explain this tweet to me.

Helen:

I I'm paraphrasing it. But he said, he said, maintainable code is more important than working code. He's like, working code, you can always make it work later, but it needs to be maintainable first. And I was like, okay. But doesn't it just matter?

Helen:

Like, it

Jon:

Seems like the code isn't actually useful unless it's working.

Helen:

I'm sure we're gonna get all the Uncle Bob, zealots out now, but it it there's something about his philosophy that I just feel like, well, I don't know. It seems too academic. Like, in the real world, like, code just needs to work.

Jon:

I mean, ideally, yeah, all code to me be perfectly maintainable, but I've never worked anywhere that's like that.

Helen:

Yeah. Have you ever worked in a place where they brought in uncle Bob as, like, got him got you the team to watch the videos or whatever?

Jon:

No. No?

Helen:

Do you even know who I'm talking about?

Jon:

I do. Yeah.

Helen:

Yeah.

Jon:

I feel like there was a lot of blowback against him recently for something. Is that someone else?

Helen:

Oh, maybe. I don't know. It's possible. I mean, he's he I all all I saw was this one tweet, and I was like, okay. This is this is funny.

Helen:

I've met him. I I introduced him at, Laracon, and he's seemed like a nice enough fellow, but

Jon:

Alright.

Helen:

Okay. So, yeah, the marketing site's out. By the way, the just before we I wanna switch back to your frustration in a second. But, I I also wanna say that I was it was very gratifying. I think one of the things we always question ourselves about on the web is whether we have good taste, or whether we are, I don't know, whether we're good at making things look good or making things and, you know, I've often struggled with that.

Helen:

And to have, so many people on Twitter and Indie Hackers and LinkedIn, like the design that we came up with, it was really just nice. And I know it's not perfect. I know it's not the craziest thing people have ever seen. But for this for this is really my first website that I've done from start to finish. And, just to have so many people say nice things about it.

Helen:

And definitely the cleanup that you did at the end really helped. Like there's that 10% that just really makes things look good. If you haven't visited the site folks, go to transistor.fm.

Jon:

Yeah. I'm always I'm always unsure if, like, what I'm doing is just is, like, tearing apart what you did, and it's gonna make you feel bad. Or

Helen:

Oh, no. I loved it. Like, every time you did something, I was just like, oh. Like, when you change the header and added that little blur effect and everything, I was just like, oh my god. Like, this just feels so, it's it's exactly in some ways, exactly there's a a nice landscaper that comes along and, like, cleans things up.

Jon:

It's like, I come in with my tiny rake and just

Helen:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

Helen:

So, yeah. Thanks to everyone who who said the nice things. It's it's nice to put something out on the web and and have people say nice things.

Jon:

Yeah. The the feedback the feedback was great. I think I think now the the goal or the hard part is to make sure it actually works well.

Helen:

Yes. Right?

Jon:

It it that people are confused and people, like, are it's clear what they're signing up for or answers more questions.

Helen:

Yeah. Totally. Well and and if you wanna know my fear now, like, yesterday, all I was checking was I was checking analytics to make sure that there wasn't anything really weird happening. I was checking Google search console to make sure that nothing super weird was happening. I was checking our sign ups.

Helen:

I was checking, again, you people who've listened for a long time know that inbound Kayako messages is kind of like a barometer for me. And we launched the site, and there was, like, no inbound Kayako messages, and I freaked out a little bit. And and that's why I changed the the the widget to that god of yellow.

Jon:

Oh, yeah. I just I just changed it to blue today. We can switch it again.

Helen:

No. I I thought I changed it to blue. You you gave you gave me the hex code. Did you do that too?

Jon:

Yeah.

Helen:

Okay. Because I went in there. I took your hex code to that. Certainly stands out more. Yeah.

Helen:

Yeah. I changed it to your bill. I I think that that is better. And folks, you can go check if you think if you like that little blue widget.

Jon:

I wish it was a little more customizable and that you could actually set different colors for multiple embed. Like, you could just set it in the JavaScript, which you might be able to, but their documentation is, lacking.

Helen:

Yeah. I actually think I mean, Kayako is kind of the closest to this, I think. I I kinda wanna check out Help Scout because they they're they've just gotten into the the chat widget game too.

Jon:

I thought about that. We should consider switching, but then I was, like, oh, their help documents are in Kayako and, like, they really it's certainly a good way to get people to stay. It's, like, taking all of our help docs and moving them over would be Yeah. Kind of a pain.

Helen:

Although I have thought about for SEO purposes, it would be way better for us to have our help docs in a collection that's in a folder transistor.fm/help as opposed to help dot transistor.fm. But, that would be a big project.

Jon:

It would be.

Helen:

Although, actually, I should check that out. Because I, doing, like, like do you guys say roots or routes?

Jon:

Routes.

Helen:

You guys say routes? Weird.

Jon:

Yeah.

Helen:

Routes.

Jon:

Routes. I say route. I don't know. Maybe some other people in the US say routes.

Helen:

Statevic has a really, good way of doing, like, routes and doing, like, redirects. But I wonder I wonder if if it also allows you to do, probably not, redirects for, for subdomains.

Jon:

We'd probably have to set that up on our own somewhere.

Helen:

Yeah.

Jon:

But I don't know. Just to make do search and stuff, can you build it in?

Helen:

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, for sure. Alright. Let's take a break.

Helen:

Guess who loves build your sass, John?

Jon:

I hear Postmark loves them.

Helen:

Postmark loves build your sass. You can go to postmarkapp.com/loves /buildyoursass. And why do you need this? Well, Postmark delivers your transactional email better than anyone else. I can speak from experience here.

Helen:

I've used Postmark, email delivery. I worked for in the in the email delivery space for 8 years, 10 years. And it is way more complex than folks think. And if you've ever sent a transactional email and then got a message that from your customer saying, I didn't get it, That though that is exactly the pain that Postmark solves. They have a beautiful dashboard.

Helen:

It's friendly for developers, and it's friendly for jackasses like me. I could go in and I could easily search for a specific message and see why or why not it wasn't delivered. It is really the best in class transactional email tool. And right now, they don't do this very often. If you go to postmarkapp.com/loves/buildyoursass and use the coupon code build your sass, all one word, you get a free month of sending.

Helen:

That's a really good deal. They they rarely do deals like this. So if you are interested in having the best email delivery you can get for your app, go and check this out. The link is in the show notes. I I've I've mentioned this, but you said you were feeling a bit burnt out this week.

Helen:

Do you wanna talk more about that? Like, why why you think you're feeling that way?

Jon:

I think it's a combination of things. Well, some of it was just the marketing is finishing up the marketing site.

Helen:

Mhmm. And specifically, just the fact that it was a bit manic?

Jon:

Yeah. A little bit. Mhmm. I mean, I it like I said, the parts I did enjoy parts of it. The design stuff was it was fun to just jump in back into that for a couple days.

Helen:

Mhmm. Actually, can we just pause here for a sec? Is when thing when you don't understand the model or the the way things work, That that seems to be a big that that is a big deal for you. Hey?

Jon:

Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's frustrating, confusing. I mean, it I think it would be different if I had started it from scratch.

Helen:

Mhmm.

Jon:

Yeah. We had kind of done that together.

Helen:

Yeah.

Jon:

Or, like, I had just gone off and, like, built some little thing with statimec on my own just to play with it, but I didn't really I didn't get that opportunity. So it get yeah. It's when you're jumping into a project like that where it's something entirely new and you're used to you're used to templates working a certain way.

Helen:

Yeah.

Jon:

It just I don't know. I can get a little flustered. Yeah. It just be like, what the what the hell is going on? Like

Helen:

Yeah. Well, I think that's good for me to know, because the I mean, we talked about this last week that working in tandem seems to be better for us than working apart. Yeah. Specifically because this isn't just like a thing that I have with you. I have this with a lot of my partnerships because I think I'm used to going out and just, like, doing a bunch of research or or or or or biting off a big bite of something.

Helen:

And then coming back to the related part parties, whether it's my wife or the people I run co work Vernon with or, you know, whatever. And that feeling of frustration that you displayed is something I see other people displaying as well. Like, woah. Woah. Like, this is too much.

Helen:

You know? Like, you're you have to back back up. And so I wonder if one of the benefits of the shaping process is it really forces people like me to slow down. And, it keeps everybody on the same page, it seems.

Jon:

Right. Yeah. I I think I would agree with that. I would love to say that I I can I can calmly learn things, but sometimes I don't? Like, if I'm in a situation where I know I wanna get something done quickly and well, like and I don't understand it, I'm just it it can get a little frustrating while there's other stuff going on.

Jon:

And, like, I can't Yeah. Block out, like, customer support or

Helen:

Interesting. You

Jon:

know, other bug fixes.

Helen:

This is really good for me to hear because I am completely the other way. I I I I mean, I think that math example is a good one. I I can plow forward and live with a lot of unknowns. Okay. I I've even noticed this when when you're, like, reading something.

Helen:

There's certain people in my family, for example, like, some of my kids, they really need to know every detail, understand every sentence and every paragraph as you read to them. Whereas for me, I I I will keep going. If I don't understand something, I will just keep going. And then the the whole picture, I'll be able to grasp the whole picture when I look at it holistically.

Jon:

Right.

Helen:

So I I I'm not details don't trip me up. Yeah. So that's just a good I think that's good for us to understand about each other because I I don't want I definitely don't want you to get frustrated or and then, you know, the feeling you had this week, which is it's Friday, and you you you feel a bit burnt out.

Jon:

It was also the weather in Chicago right now is, like, 20 degrees for some reason. Like, it's shit.

Helen:

Oh, wow.

Jon:

And it's, like, 20, 30 degrees colder than it should be. And we had our time change on Sunday, which do you do that?

Helen:

Oh my god. Stuff? It just it gets dark at 4.

Jon:

Yeah. And it's just totally demoralizing. So I haven't really worked out all week.

Helen:

Yeah.

Jon:

And and that affects me. So it just by the end of the week, I'm just like, I'm just done. I hate

Helen:

it so bad. You know what? That that would be such a competitive advantage if British Columbia, Washington, and California end up signing this this time zone treaty or whatever and and not doing time zone changes.

Jon:

They should just get rid of it. I don't there's an article that The Verge, publishes every year about how just bullshit time changes and how it's bad for your health and bad for productivity. More people die the day after for heart attacks. We can we can link it in the show notes. But it it's just like it makes no sense anymore.

Helen:

Well, and even, like, for farmers, because they always say it's for farmers. But I'm, like, farmers farmers have huge headlights on their combines. Headlights.

Jon:

Well, they'd used to do it. They used they initially did it for, like, World War 1 to save energy or something and, like, I

Helen:

don't know.

Jon:

The article is interesting. It, like, talks about how Ben Franklin came up with the idea back in way back in the day, but it was a joke. He didn't actually mean for it to ever happen.

Helen:

That that is funny. So it was just meant to be a joke. And then human society is is so odd, you know? Like, you think, like, there's just so many things that seem so weird that they happen. And yeah.

Helen:

But yeah. Yep. No. I definitely felt that too. So time change, the frustration of working with Justin on a project, and lack of exercise.

Helen:

Was there anything else you think that might have contributed to it?

Jon:

No. And I don't think so. I mean, it's a lot of

Helen:

it is

Jon:

lack of exercise, which leads to other bad, I don't know, eating habits and stuff and, like, not sleeping quite as well. And time change obviously affects that too. But Yeah. Yeah. But I I also like I I don't know.

Jon:

I don't think either of us have really taken a break.

Helen:

Mhmm.

Jon:

And, obviously, we have more freedom to do that now, but also less freedom because we're running a company.

Helen:

I I'd actually be interested in because I've been working independently for quite a while. And so I think most days I have a pretty good a cadence that works for me well. You know, I take lots of walks and lots of breaks. I I'm not very good at taking, like, days of time off. I get I don't know what to do with myself.

Helen:

Do you have a sense of what kind of cadence is best for you? Like, do you like to, like, just work 9 to 5 really hard and then maybe, you know, only work 4 days a week and take 3 days off? What what would be your preferred I

Jon:

I think I'm still figuring that out. I I'd like to say 9 to 5 works for me, but I don't I don't know if it necessarily does.

Helen:

Interesting. Okay. I mean, I think one thing I I'd like to say as your partner is that you have like, if you wanna take a 3 day weekend, if you wanna work I mean, if you wanted to work 3 days a week, you could probably convince me on it. Like I I'm I am completely open to how ever like, I will never be, like, secretly upset at you or bitter or resentful if you decide to take time off.

Jon:

Right.

Helen:

However you wanna take it off.

Jon:

Yeah. I mean, I I think I know that. I it's I would just feel bad kind of just, like, disappearing for a few days. But I I I you know, I we've talked about our, like, slowdown over the the holiday break and stuff. And

Gavin:

Mhmm.

Jon:

I think that'll be that'll be nice. I mean, we'll still be doing customer support, but it's not like it's not like we're just gonna head to the office every day.

Helen:

Yeah. Yeah. And that actually makes me think if we're gonna get another 4 to 5 weeks cycle out, we should we should probably start that cycle pretty soon if we wanna do it.

Jon:

Yeah. We should. We've, kinda been in this weird cool down period for a bit. Yeah. I know we we've started talking about the next thing, and we have a document going.

Jon:

And I think we could probably start some of that stuff Yeah.

Helen:

Next week. Yeah. I think Monday, we should do, like a shaping call and go through that document and just start shaping that that new analytics feature. That's what you're talking about. Right?

Helen:

Yeah.

Jon:

Yep. Yeah. And that is definitely a thing that a lot of people have continually asked for.

Helen:

Yeah. That's the other benefit of this cool down period is that you have kind of all these ideas floating around and what you wanna work on next. But you really get to see what comes up over and over again while you're just kind of doing other stuff. Right? So customers keep asking for these new analytics things, and we're able to push back on it a bit and go, okay.

Helen:

Well, what are you actually looking for? What does it look like? And I think the answers to those have, sharpened some of the ideas we have in that document.

Jon:

Yeah. Definitely.

Helen:

But now we have to actually go through it and, you know, make sure that all the contours of that thing are well defined. Like, is this going to be a just a downloadable CSV? Is that is that going to be the the shaped thing? Or is this going to be, and and to get to the downloadable CSV, do we have to do a bunch of back end work?

Jon:

Yeah. I mean, we've had a lot of input and feedback, and we have our own opinions. And I think the the trick is gonna be combining all of that into something Mhmm. That that works for most people.

Helen:

Yeah. It's it's it's product work is such weird work because you're really taking these expressed desires of thousands of people, and you are trying to mold it into something that is number 1 is useful. But number 2, kind of fulfills the the unspoken desire that people haven't actually expressed, which is, like Right. Verbally, they will express, I want this thing, but there's a deeper reason that's driving that. And

Jon:

Mhmm.

Helen:

And so in this process, we're, you know, we're talking to people. We're we're responding. We're asking them more questions. We're showing them little prototypes of, oh, what if the CSV looked like this? What if but at the end of the day, we have to create something that actually fulfills the deeper thing that's driving people.

Helen:

And hope hopefully, it's like there's this common thing that's driving people, or at the very least, there's a a common solution for what's driving people. You know what I mean?

Jon:

Mhmm.

Helen:

It's tricky.

Jon:

It is. I think we'll get there.

Helen:

Yeah. I think so too. I I mean, I think how do you feel, about the private podcast stuff so far? We had, I sent out an email to all of our current $49.99 people. We had a few more people up, add it to their account.

Helen:

Yep. I think you had someone upgrade the other day.

Jon:

We yeah. We had someone upgrade, and I'm working with them right now to to switch their current, like, old style private podcast into the new

Helen:

one. Cool.

Jon:

Which will entail a couple extra steps. Obviously, they have to notify their subscribers that they have to remove the old feed, and then they're gonna get an email with the new feed, their own personalized feed.

Helen:

Mhmm.

Jon:

It's kind of in the middle of that right now. I think the response has been good. I think we had you know, obviously, it's a it's a good it's been a good way to get some expansion revenue. You know, whether or not they stick around and it works well for them, I think, is the question. But

Helen:

Mhmm.

Jon:

So far, I think it seems seems positive. People are interested.

Helen:

Yeah. Yeah. And I think the next test will be to email our existing customers on the starter plan and to say, hey, we've got this new feature. And if you upgrade, we can add it to your account.

Jon:

Mhmm.

Helen:

So maybe I should I should create another email. I by the way, this is the first time I sent, an email to our customers using Mixpanel. And, I think the advantage of using Mixpanel over Mailchimp is that I can really quickly segment people. So I for that the one I just sent, I said, any users that have an active account on the business or pro plan. And it just immediately grabs all those folks, and I was able to send this email to them.

Helen:

And so I'll be able to do the same for the the people on the starter plan. Although another idea would be just to send it to our general list and say, anybody who signs up on the 49 or $99 plan can can get this. Maybe that's a better plan.

Jon:

I suppose at some point, we'll just turn it on for everyone. I mean, everyone who right now, we just have to enable it on their accounts. But

Helen:

Yeah. I mean, we could probably do that pretty soon. It'd be nice to get a little bit more data. And there there is something one one thing I like about this manual process right now is it's forcing us to talk to people. And so, you know, when they when they reach out and go, hey, where where's that private podcasting feature?

Helen:

It gives us a chance to interact with them a little bit. Anything else we should talk about before we say goodbye for the week?

Jon:

I don't think so.

Helen:

It'd be interesting to hear what people think about us not doing the show, over the Christmas break. From I think our Christmas break will start around December 15th. If I'm oh, we still have to do ads though. We're gonna have to figure that out. Because our sponsors paid for November December.

Jon:

Okay.

Helen:

But maybe I maybe I can record some interviews maybe for those last 2 weeks, and do the ads. Yeah. Folks, if you're listening and you have someone you want us to interview, or or if you wanna maybe they just want us to have a fireside chat with, just John and Justin and just ask questions or something. Let us know what you you'd like to have. Yeah.

Helen:

Probably the last couple weeks of December. Yeah. And big thanks to Postmark and Clubhouse for sponsoring these 2 months. John, why don't you go through our patrons?

Jon:

Yeah. So, yeah. Thanks as always to everyone. We have Eric Lima, James Sours from user input dot I o, Travis Fisher, Matt Buckley from nice things dotio, Russell Brown, Evandro Sassy, Pradey Umnis and Becker, Noah Praill, David Colgan, Robert Simplicio, Colin Gray from alici.com, Josh Smith, Ivan Kerkovic, Brian Ray, Miguel Pedro

Helen:

I just wanna pause on Brian. Brian, if you're listening, I think I mentioned this a couple episodes ago, but he really is doing some standout work with podcasting. He has 2 shows he's doing right now, bright and early and slow and steady. And I just think he's done a really good job, on both of those shows. And some of the interviews he's doing, he just interviewed this guy on, Bright and Early, who has a software company for the movie industry for people who do the end credits.

Jon:

Oh, wow.

Helen:

So they they generate the end credits for the it's just a fascinating interview, and he always, I think one problem with the interview format is people ask these really softball questions, or they they they trigger an answer in the interviewee, but they don't really dig into it. And I just think he's doing a great job. So just a just a Nice. A quick sidebar for

Jon:

Cool. Brian. Sounds like he could round it out with a third one called, like, quick and sloppy.

Helen:

There's there's an idea for your fries. It's just this just like it's it's him recording himself while he rides a unicycle. Like, he's just, like, walking around, like

Jon:

Yeah.

Helen:

Drinking. There's an idea for you, Brian. I know. Oh, that made me laugh.

Jon:

Thanks, Brian. Keep it up. Miguel Pedra Fita, Shane Smith, Austin Loveless, Simon Bennett, Michael Sittver, Paul Jarvis, and Jack Ellis, Dan Buddha, my brother.

Helen:

Danbuddha.com. Hey. I should I should show Dan Buddha, statemic. I should get him on the statemic train.

Jon:

He's he's on the Gatsby train.

Helen:

Oh, he's on the Gatsby train. Well, then I should show him Tailwind, and then he can he can use Tailwind with Gatsby.

Jon:

I mentioned I mentioned it to him. I'll have to I'll have to bring it up. That was I think that was before I actually kind of enjoyed it. Darby Frey, Samori Augusto, Dave Young, Brad from Canada, Sammy Schubert, Mike Walker, Adam Devander, Dave Junta.

Helen:

Junta. He was, you just went out for you went for a little lunch with him?

Jon:

Yeah.

Helen:

Nice. He, there's someone that was on Twitter. What did they say? They said, they were reading something, and then it said Junta. And he looked it up on Wikipedia, and Junta, like, j u n t a, is like a military, something or other.

Helen:

And, he's like, oh, it immediately made me think of of Dave Junta. So but then I I was very clear to say, like, Giunta is spelled g I u n t a. That's how he spells his name. But people need to know the actual pronunciation. Like, if you were gonna spell out the pronunciation is capital j, capital o, capital o, capital o, capital o, capital o, and then small t, small a.

Helen:

That's how you pronounce it. That's the official pronunciation. Oh, wait. There's an n in there too. N t a.

Helen:

Yeah.

Jon:

Junta. Exactly. And thanks to Kyle Fox from get rewardful.com. And, again, our sponsors, postmark and clubhouse.

Helen:

Thanks everyone. We will see you next week.