Build Your SaaS

We both work full-time. Here's how we find time to work on Transistor.fm.

Show Notes

What’s been happening?

  • New iTunes review from Shane Smith in Australia: "Keep up the great work. Love hearing the behind-the-scenes part of setting up your SaaS."
  • T-shirt contest!  Leave a review you’ll be entered to win a limited edition Transistor t-shirt!
  • New features inside Transistor:
    • Embeddable players
    • Shareable links
    • Direct MP3 download URL
    • File uploader
  • We've closed early access. Official launch coming soon!
  • Marketing website is almost done
  • We're working on a secret new thing - stay tuned to hear more.

Main topic: organizing your time

  • This will be interesting because we’re coming at it from two different perspectives:
    • Jon works full-time
    • Justin runs his own business
  • What’s hard about it?
    • Jon: I’m other people’s boss. Running the tech team at CAH/Blackbox. So people are depending on me. Blackbox is also a startup that requires a good deal of product decisions day to day. Both are exciting so it’s hard to juggle sometimes!
    • Justin: I’m my own boss. I tell myself what to do. The hardest part right now is Transistor isn’t making money, but it’s the funnest thing to work on.
  • How do you overcome those obstacles?
    • Jon: Two separate Pivotal Trackers and Apple Reminders lists. if I can think of something for Transistor during work I just throw in the list for later. I have to smart about not doing Transistor during the work day and letting my team down. Transistor is mostly relegated to after hours and weekends. 
    • Justin: notepad, I split it into two sections: “MegaMaker” and “Transistor.” I have a Trello for MegaMaker that tracks what my contractors are doing.
  • What does your ideal day look like?
    • Jon: ideally I’m only working on Transistor  in reality, wake up a bit early and see if I missed anything overnight for Transistor. errors, support emails, etc. Go do the fulltime thing. take a break after work to work out or make dinner and then work on Transistor at night a couple of times of week. Ideally I deploy at least something to Transistor everyday.
    • Justin: I’ve realized I really get energy from interacting with people. I recently did this “Strengths finder” test and activities like doing sales, doing demos, interacting with customers, writing, making videos and podcasts, hacking on ideas, building prototypes… these all play to my strengths.
  • Tips for listeners:
    • Define the end result first:“what does your ideal day look like” is a really important question. 
    • Distinguish between big milestones and daily tasks.
    • Have a way of organizing tasks. Try a bunch!
    • Contextual zones. Have a different place to work on your side-hustle.

Show notes

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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.

Justin:

It's a simple thing. It shouldn't take too long. How many times have you heard that from from a marketing jackass like me?

Jon:

Hey, everyone. Welcome to build your SaaS. This is the behind the scenes story of building a web app in 2018. I'm John Buda, software engineer.

Justin:

And I'm Justin Jackson. I'm a product and marketing guy. Follow along as we launch transistor. FM. So, John, it's Monday, April 23rd.

Justin:

We're recording a little bit late. We normally record the show on Friday, and then Chris Ends, our editor, edits it usually over the weekend, sometimes on Monday, and then publishes it on Tuesday. But we're we're we're really cutting it close today.

Jon:

Yeah. We are. I think Chris Chris is gonna have to move quick.

Justin:

We're just going to have to make sure that there is no editing needed for this episode. We have to be completely on point. We can't mess up.

Jon:

We can do it.

Justin:

We can do it. Let's talk a little bit about, you know, what's been happening. I we call this this intro segment what's been happening. Maybe we need a a better, title for it, but I wanted to highlight a new iTunes review from Shane Smith in Australia. He says, keep up the great work.

Justin:

Love hearing the behind the scenes party part of setting up your SaaS. And, he left that in iTunes. And, John, I don't know what you think about this. I'm wondering if you we should do a little iTunes review contest.

Jon:

We should. I I'm down.

Justin:

Okay. Now this is what I'm thinking. We, let's give let's do a a draw for anyone who leaves an iTunes review, and, I mean, we love the 5 star reviews. You can go to Itunes or go to Apple podcasts, search for build your SaaS, scroll down, click 5 stars. That's great.

Justin:

But to be entered in the contest, let's say you have to actually write a review. So tell us what you like about the show. Tell us what you'd like to hear in future episodes, bug John to get back on Twitter, any of that stuff. And, we'll say let's say at the end of May So you've got until the end of May, we will do a draw, and whoever wins will be sent a exclusive limited edition transistor shirt. And

Jon:

Sounds good.

Justin:

And you just got one, didn't you? You got

Jon:

I did.

Justin:

Okay

Jon:

you sent me one yeah it fits great I believe it was labeled as charcoal and it's green which is weird It looks good, though. I like it.

Justin:

And for a detailed person like you, that would bug you.

Jon:

Yeah. I mean, most of my t shirts are black or charcoal. So Yeah. I suppose have I suppose having some color in the mix is good.

Justin:

Yeah. Yeah. We're using that people might find this interesting. When you're starting up and you don't wanna, you know, a full run of screen printed shirts is probably, I don't know, $500 at least to get kind of a a minimum. They've got to create the screens and all that stuff.

Justin:

And then you got to store the shirts somewhere. We're using printful.com and what they do is print on demand. So, basically, they have a kind of a big industrial, direct to garment printer, and you can sign up and you can get basically one off shirts done. So the pros, you know, it's really quick. They've actually got they can ship things cheaper than anyone else I've seen.

Justin:

I don't know how they do it. They can do, like, international shipping for, like, 2 or $3 sometimes. The disadvantage is they don't give you a tracking number, and sometimes things get lost. I think I've probably sent, like, 200 items, and I've had maybe 1 or 2 get lost. And in, like, Turkey, like, weird stuff.

Jon:

Yeah. Yeah. I guess I do I deal with shipping a lot day to day.

Justin:

Oh, yes.

Jon:

It's a difficult business. Like, international shipping is is interesting.

Justin:

Yeah. So and, actually, I know a guy that built, the kind of the shipping a big part of the Ebay's shipping system.

Jon:

Mhmm.

Justin:

And he says sometimes you you literally have to you have people, like, shipping things on donkeys in, you know, like, Eastern Europe or something, and they have to report back. That's that's that's how they do the Yeah.

Jon:

I believe it.

Justin:

Can you believe it? Like, oh, man. That's that seems insane.

Jon:

Some international addresses, too, are literally, like, left left at the at the mailbox behind that the large tree. Like, it's there's some places don't really have addresses. It's just like directions to a place.

Justin:

Man, it it makes you feel like actually, I've had a few moments in the past week where I was like, I'm so glad we're building a podcast platform because Right. Like, GDRP, which is something we might have to talk about in the future, but Europe just kind of dropped this big privacy legislation, and it has people going crazy. Are you dealing with that at Black Box?

Jon:

We are. Yeah. Yeah. We're we're diving into it. It's it won't hit us too hard, but, yeah, we we have, you know, implement a few changes here and there.

Jon:

Yeah. Let people delete their data or whatever.

Justin:

Yeah. And if we built like, let's say we built, I don't know, a statistics program or, you know, a tracking system for customers or whatever, we would be, you know, we would have to, like, lawyer up right now and figure out

Jon:

Yeah.

Justin:

What and go through all your code and figure out, you know, when you have to release data and stuff.

Jon:

Yeah. I mean, in the end, I think it's a good thing, you know, considering all the stuff that's been happening with Facebook. But, like Mhmm. Yeah. It's it's it's something you don't really necessarily want to think about or deal with.

Jon:

Yeah. Because it's like another it's another thing that's not, you know, it's not making you money. It's just another thing you gotta do.

Justin:

Yeah. Anyway, so back to iTunes reviews. So go and leave iTunes reviews. The easiest way is to just open up Apple Podcasts or go to your desktop, bring up iTunes, search for build your SaaS, leave us a 5 star review, and if you wanna be entered in the contest, write something down. Even if it's like you like you too want Castle Grayskull or, you know, any anything like that.

Justin:

We love to hear that stuff, and we'll do a a drawing at the end of May. We've got some new features, John. You've been busy. What what just made it into the app?

Jon:

So, there's a couple couple big things. We have, the embeddable players that you can copy and paste a snippet of code to embed, one of your episodes into another website. That sort of plays along with this shareable link where you can share a link, share a special URL on, let's say, like, Twitter. Twitter knows how to grab some information from that page and embed, the player into the Twitter stream. Yep.

Jon:

So you can play the episode directly from Twitter. I don't know if it works on the apps, but it works on the website. I know. And let's see. There's a way to find, like, a direct m p three download for your episodes.

Jon:

And this is all now available in the, dashboard if you have a show with Transistor. It wasn't it wasn't before, so you have, like, a whole shareable section per episode.

Justin:

A lot of people have been asking for this, but, you know, just being able to embed the player now is so helpful. I've been Yeah. Finding all sorts of opportunities to use it. One of the things I do is sometimes I'll make a podcast before I write the blog post, so I'll talk it out. You know, I'll have points, and then I'll talk it out.

Justin:

And that's kind of like version 1. But then when I write the post, it's sometimes cool to embed the, you know, the audio episode in the post. And so I was able to do that this past week, which is really exciting. And also just having, in Twitter, having that embedded player is so cool. Just being people being able to, like, listen to the show, write in Twitter.

Justin:

Yeah. It's really cool.

Jon:

We've also had, yeah, we've also had a couple people ask us if they could potentially use Transistor to just have a nice audio player Yeah. Not really have like, they don't want an RSS feed. They don't want they don't really care about statistics necessarily. They just want a nice way to upload audio and have a player that's not necessarily like SoundCloud. Yeah.

Jon:

And it it's, that's interesting. I think there's something there. I think the player right now is really targeted towards a podcast, but Yeah. Sure it could be modified.

Justin:

Yeah. Totally. I and if people were doing like, let's say they were selling, you know, royalty free music, then and you wanted a way for people to be able to play the samples and download the samples. I could see folks using Transistor for that. It's a it's a total edge case we hadn't considered.

Justin:

But

Jon:

Right.

Justin:

When you're brand new, it's you're kind of open to a lot of things.

Jon:

So that's, yeah, that's the, embedding and sharing portion. And then we have another often requested feature, which was just something we hadn't worked on because we didn't need to, was a a better file uploader for your audio files within transistor, which is now finished and mostly working, although I just noticed a few errors rolling through, this morning. But it's a way to upload larger files to transistor with, a progress bar, and it tells you when it's finished. And it's just a much nicer way than using a a regular HTML form, which doesn't really show you anything about what's happening.

Justin:

Because it you were just using kind of like a browser default before or something. Right?

Jon:

Yeah. It was just like the browser choose a file, attach it, and then save the form, and it uploads while it's saving, but you don't really know what's happening.

Justin:

Yeah. And it's interesting. I mean, we built transistor for the desktop, but there's a handful of users already that are using iPads and other things. And some of those built in browser controls are not as friendly on an iPad, for example. But building, you know, this new file uploader you have now, I think that should be a lot more friendly for other devices too.

Jon:

Yeah. So for the for the nerds out there, I use DropZone, which is a a JavaScript library to handle file uploads multiple file uploads. If you want, you can drag and drop. It's nice. It's a nice little integration.

Jon:

You can integrate directly with Amazon and upload straight to s 3.

Justin:

This is, DropZone JS.

Jon:

Yeah.

Justin:

I'll put that in the show notes. Also in the show notes, if you wanna see a little preview, a little video of our new shareable, features. You can, check that out in the share notes the show notes as well. But, yeah, drop zone is in the show notes right now. Other news, we've closed early access.

Justin:

So, we had this kind of automated onboarding sequence for folks that signed up for our waiting list. And one of the emails people would get is, hey. Do you wanna try it out? And we've had many, many people respond to that, and we're getting lots of great feedback, and we're getting tons of folks using Transistor. And so just made sense to, close it down.

Justin:

And, we will be doing an official launch sometime in the future. There's still, I would say, like, analytics we wanna get done. There's a few things we wanna get done before we do our official launch.

Jon:

Yeah. There's analytics. There's still no way to cancel your account. I mean, luckily luckily, we haven't had anyone want to cancel yet, but, yeah, suppose we'll build that when it comes up.

Justin:

Yeah. Yeah. That that one, we we can just build it as we go just in time. Oh, we we should mention Quest Quest. Do you wanna tell people about that?

Jon:

Quest Quest. Yes. Quest Quest, is a a new podcast on Transistor that is actually recorded out of the Cardigans Humanity office with a bunch of people I have worked with or know personally, and it's a live Dungeons and Dragons podcast where they are recording, their quest. So each episode is a new part of their, D and D quest, and they've they've come up with some pretty hilarious character names. A number of the people on the show are, like, really just funny people.

Jon:

So and who can do voices really well. Yeah. So I think I think it'll be fun to to follow along with. So we'll we'll leave that in the show notes too.

Justin:

Yeah. Yeah. It's the I I've I've listened to the teaser, and it's as soon as you hear it, you'll be like, okay. Even if you're not into D and D, I think it's going to be entertaining enough just because the the folks are really funny. They can really kind of shuck and jive.

Justin:

And, yeah, it's

Jon:

Yeah. It'll be good. So that that's kind of a a callback to our previous show where we talked about Dungeons and Dragons.

Justin:

Yeah. And we

Jason:

we got

Justin:

a lot of feedback on that, actually. A lot of people were like, hey. Yeah. Incidentally, one thing I want, John, this is up my own feature request. On our admin side, I wanna be able to sort by total downloads.

Jon:

Okay.

Justin:

But I I okay. Very sure. One thing I wanna note is that this show, build your SaaS, we are just shy of our 12,000th download. And that would make this show one of the I mean, there's a a few other shows that are up there too, but it's this show is actually done quite well for a new podcast. And, again, I just wanna thank everyone who's listened and everyone who's sharing it with their friends.

Justin:

That's how people find out about shows is posting it in Slack or whatever, talking about it to a friend. So thank you again for downloading and listening and sharing it. I think we could also say our marketing website's almost done. We've got, Adam Clark is working on that, and we've, we've he's already kind of shown us the initial build, and it's looking great. And I think I also just wanna say give you a little tease that John and I are making a a terrible mistake, and I I am really excited about a feature I wanted to build inside of Transistor, but the more I thought about it, I just felt like this has gotta be its own thing.

Justin:

This is classic, John. It's like I I I was gonna say, I don't think it's gonna take long to build.

Jon:

Right. Classic famous last words.

Justin:

Famous last words. How many times have you heard that

Jon:

Oh, man.

Justin:

From from from a marketing jackass like me?

Jon:

A lot. Yeah. It's a simple it's a simple thing.

Justin:

It's a simple thing. Shouldn't take too long. Yeah. We're gonna tease that. We're not gonna tell you.

Justin:

We do have there is a domain out there that's been purchased. There's a little landing page that's out, but we're gonna just say it's coming. So if you wanna hear about it first, keep listening to this show, and, we'll talk about that in future episodes. But our topic for this week is organizing your time. We've had a few people say, you know, how do you like, when you're working on a side project or a side hustle or something on the side, How do you manage your time?

Justin:

And this will be interesting, John, because we have 2 different perspectives. You're working full time at Cards Against Humanity and Black Box, and I run my own business. And so, I'm my own boss.

Jon:

Right.

Justin:

Why don't we why don't you start by telling people, like because you've been on both sides of the fence too. You've been your own boss as a freelancer. Yeah. So maybe tell people about your your situation now and maybe some of the challenges of building a product on the side.

Jon:

Yeah. I mean yeah. Obviously, the biggest challenge is just finding the time to do it. But my situation currently is that I'm the head of technology at Black Box, and Black Box is a shipping and fulfillment company that is built out of cards and humanity. So I'm technically like other people's boss.

Jon:

Yeah. So and they depend on me to, you know, make sure that, you know, we have things organized in the right way and we're, you know, the features of writing are good and we're doing code reviews and all this stuff. Make sure the platform is up and running all the time. And it's Black Box is also a start up, so it's, you know, it's a small company. We have a small team.

Jon:

Everyone's really dependent on one another. Yeah. It's it's hard to, like, kind of juggle having a side project. Yeah. They they allow it.

Jon:

You know, they allow it. They're not, like, opposed to edit cards. Mhmm. They want people to sort of, you know, explore different areas and do things on the side and do things on their own. But, like, I don't wanna get too wrapped up in it where I'm, you know, letting the team down or letting the my work go, you know, be late or Yeah.

Jon:

It's it's it's tough because it is, you know, it's, like I said, it's a startup. It's a small company. It's not necessarily profitable. And, like, we're, you know, we're all working hard to, like, try to make this thing work.

Justin:

Yeah. Yeah. It's it's it's especially hard when you're responsible for other people because you you know, they're coming to you saying, what should I work on next? And is this thing okay? And are you know, if you're doing how do you do it there?

Justin:

Do you have daily stand ups? What's your kind of are you We have a

Jon:

we have let's see. So we have, kind of a daily stand up just in Slack. It's basically our check-in channel. It's like, hey. What are you working on today?

Jon:

What are you are you blocked on anything? Mhmm. And from there, we can sort of either do a private chat in Slack or meet just meet in person and talk something over. Yeah. We have biweekly iteration meetings that we do in Pivotal Tracker.

Jon:

We just talk about, like, what we worked on the last 2 weeks and what is upcoming in the next 2 weeks. Yeah. And then I meet with my team every week individually for, like, 15 minute, just like 1 on 1 chats to see, like, how things are going and if they have any problems or concerns or if they just wanna, you know, shoot the shit for 15 minutes.

Justin:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. I I I think one thing I've noticed that's challenging too is when you have, like, a pivotal project for your day job, and then you've got a pivotal project for your side project.

Justin:

Sometimes it's just like, oh, man. Like, it's to get your head fully into one space and then to take your head out of that space and put it in a different space is sometimes overwhelming. It's like, oh, it it's it's jarring to the Yeah. You know?

Jon:

It's a real yeah. It's a really big context switch. I mean, it's it's ultimately you're building a both of them are building a product, and both of them for me is coding in generally the same language, but just such different features that we're building.

Justin:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think, we'll get into some tips a bit later, but that's if you're, you know, hacking on something all day and then you get into, you know, you get into your house and, you know, you eat dinner, and then after dinner, you're like, okay. I'm ready to work on my project.

Justin:

All of a sudden getting into a different prod you know, a different project. It it's like, wow. It's just Yeah.

Jon:

It's tough. It doesn't always it doesn't always work. So Yeah. I mean, you know, for me, like, I have 2 different obviously, a pivotal tracker for for Black Box for the team and then have another pivotal tracker for transistor for you and I. Yeah.

Jon:

I have, like I use Apple reminders a lot just because they sync across devices and I have different lists for just like one off little things. And then Yeah. Like if I'm if I'm at work during the day and I think of something for a transistor, I'll just like throw it in a list so I don't forget about it. Yeah. But I can't I can't really, like, act on that a lot of times unless something's, like, blowing up, and I need to fix it.

Jon:

But

Justin:

Yeah. You know what I found is difficult is I can set those things up. So my business, Mega Maker, I can set those things up for Mega Maker. But then being like, oh, I should also set these things up for transistor, but then it's like, no. I don't want those things to be in the same place almost.

Justin:

I I I need a different zone.

Jon:

Yeah.

Justin:

And that that's something we might wanna consider actually is, like, you know, we're in Slack. We're in Pivotal. We're, like, using some of the same tools we use for our day thing. And I wonder if, for example, like, if we just use base camp and said, you know what? We're just gonna be a base camp thing and, like, really kind of, I don't know, push us out of that other zone and be like, when I'm in base camp, it's like I'm in transistor.

Justin:

I this is a totally new space. I don't use this for anything else.

Jon:

Yeah.

Justin:

Might be interesting. Jason Fried, if you're listening, we need a deal on Basecamp. It's too expensive. Yeah. So I I would say for me, and, John, you could speak to this too as a freelancer, when you were freelancing, but the biggest challenge for me is, and I've been where you were at too.

Justin:

I I was working on marketing for developers when I was working full time, and I just remember that challenge of being like, you have to be in a full headspace at work, and then all of a sudden, it's like, oh, I've got an hour to work on this. And then you're just, like, trying to force yourself out of what you were working on before, stop thinking about what you were doing before, and then really try to get into this thing. The challenge I have now is I have tons of headspace. I wake up every morning and I can just I no one reports to me really. I have a few contractors but, you know, nothing really.

Justin:

I don't have a lot of meetings And so every day, I basically need to do things that make money. So I can, you know, feed the kids, pay the mortgage, and all that stuff. But transistor is so much fun right now. It's you know, we're early on. We've got that early, kind of motivation and energy, and I know it's not gonna last forever.

Justin:

Right? Yep. And so I just wanna ride it because, you know, that that it's perishable. It's like, I know it's not gonna last, and it's just so fun and so exciting. Even, like, writing help docs is exciting right now.

Justin:

Yeah. And so I think the challenge is I could work all day on Transistor, and, you know, I could and Transistor's not making money. And so I've really gotta be careful. I've gotta be like, okay. I need to keep working on my business so that it makes money because that's my day job.

Justin:

And then transistor stuff, I keep working on that too because we want it to make money in the future. But Yeah. There's this balancing act, and I think that's the tricky part is is for when I've got a blank slate every day going, alright. What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do today?

Jon:

Yeah. I mean, that that freedom that you have as a freelancer is fantastic, but it's also, like, terrifying. It's like I mean, you can almost have this, like, paralysis of choice where you're like, oh, what should I work on? Yeah. Yeah.

Jon:

And if you don't sort of plan it out, plan your day out, then you can kinda get lost just doing whatever.

Justin:

Yeah. And and a shout out to, well, maybe I won't shut them up. But I I know some folks I think I alluded to this before, but, you know, they were in a similar position as us. They were partnering up, and they were doing a podcast about it. And I remember listening to those early episodes, and they were just so motivated, so excited.

Justin:

But they recently had to stop, and it was because of focus, energy, money, all those things caught up with them. And Mhmm. You know, it's easy to delude yourself and think I'm, you know, I'm invincible. I can I can work the full the full time job and come home and work on this? And it really like, it can catch up to you.

Justin:

And so we gotta be careful, don't we?

Jon:

Yeah. I mean, you I think you really have to put your mental and physical health first. Yes. Hey. For me, it's I found it there's been there's been evenings where I'm able to work for, you know, at least, 2 to 3 hours before bed.

Jon:

Mhmm. There's nights where I can't and I just give up. It takes 30 minutes or so just to get into it before you start working, and then you gotta figure out what you can get done in that time that you have before you're just totally worn out from, you know, working a full day or, yeah. The the context switching and sort of working at working more after a job where you're doing a similar thing. Mhmm.

Jon:

It's tough. So I for me, I I find it more helpful to block off some time on the weekends, you know, to where I can, like Mhmm. Maybe maybe dedicate, like, 4 to 6 hours, even like a block of time to transistor and sort of, like, heads down, kinda get a small list of stuff I wanna do, and just try to knock it out, as fast as I can. And then, you know, with the idea of at least doing something on transistor every day.

Justin:

Yeah. Yeah. I think blocking out time is really helpful, especially when you have a day job. I I found, when I was working during the day, if I had something to look forward to in the weekend, like I would wake up at 5 am on a Saturday, and I knew I'd have, you know 3 hours before my kids got up. And just I just put everything into that box then so if something if an idea came up I was like oh I'm gonna work on that on Saturday.

Justin:

Or, you know, I needed to fix something, I'm like, I'm gonna fix that on Saturday. And so by the time Saturday rolled around, I had all of this anticipation and energy built up for I can't wait to get to work on this.

Jon:

Right.

Justin:

And sometimes that's better than than, like, teasing yourself throughout the week and being like, oh, I'm gonna just try to sneak 15 minutes in and then it you you can't get quite into it and then you get disappointed and or or even worse, like, you finally get an hour, and you're like, I what do what do I do right now? What should I work on? You know?

Jon:

Yeah. Yeah. Plus, you know, if you if you sort of block off a time, you've probably been thinking about the stuff you need to do before that day or, like, for me, it's maybe thinking about how to fix a problem or build a feature. And then by the time I get to Saturday, I, like, roughly know how I'm gonna do it, and then I can just sorta, like, bang it out. Mhmm.

Justin:

Yeah. And another thing I've been finding helpful lately one thing about, like, project management and, you know, your own productivity and time tracking, I find that these things, they really come and go depending on my stage of life. Like, there's things that used to work for me that don't work anymore. There's things that used to work for me I should probably pick up again that I've just left them by the wayside. But I think I mentioned this last week, but I've just started writing my to do lists on paper for the first time.

Justin:

And it might just be the fact that it's brand new, and and that helps me focus on it right now. But I have this notepad, and it basically has, you know, a sheet on one side and a sheet on the right side. So left and right. And on the left side, I at the top, I write mega maker and then I just write a bunch of to dos for the day. Like, what do I want to accomplish today?

Justin:

And transistor is on the right side, and I write, okay, what are the things I wanna get done today? And, it's just helpful to have this thing. I just put it right by my computer. And as soon as I go to Reddit or Twitter or, you know, I'm I can just tell I'm not focused. I look at this list, and it instantly refocuses me and goes, oh, yeah.

Justin:

This is really important. This thing I need to get this done. So I found this really helpful. I I think if I had 3 projects on the go, this would be it wouldn't work. But the fact that I have, you know, MegaMaker, my business, on the left side and then Transistor, this new startup on the right, it just I and it's almost like two sides of my brain.

Justin:

Like, I can go, okay. If I'm looking on the left side, it's like I'm in that mode, and then, oh, what's what what does transistor need doing? Okay. I should write that help doc or I should, you know, follow-up with that customer or whatever. So, yeah, I'm I'm finding this really helpful, actually.

Jon:

That's cool. Yeah. I have a similar well, no. I guess I don't use paper. Sometimes I use paper, but I have, I have a different profile set up in Chrome for transistor.

Justin:

Oh, yeah. I do that too.

Jon:

So so I can have, like, a transistor, like, namespace almost for a bunch of tabs that are related to transistor stuff. Yeah. It'll it'll be, like, auto logged in to, you know, a different Google account or something. And, just so I can, like, minimize minimize that window and forget about it, open it up. And then if I open it up, then I'm just like everything in everything in Chrome on those tabs are related to, you know, stuff I was working on before or transistor related, projects or things I need to read about.

Jon:

So

Justin:

That's a really good point. That's something I've done too. If people don't know what we're talking about, there's a a section in Chrome called people, and you can go to that menu item and you can add a person. And so I have a transistor person which sets up a kind of a new profile in Chrome just like John said. And then I have another person, another profile for my business.

Justin:

And so it kind of gives you this contextual zone that you can be like, okay. If I'm in this profile, I'm thinking about Transistor. If I'm in this profile, I'm thinking about my day job or or whatever.

Jon:

But it's also like you can have separate bookmarks. You can have your you can log in to you can log in to the same online services, but under different accounts because they're all all the all the, your cookies and stuff are sort of blocked blocked off from one another.

Justin:

Different Chrome extensions. Like, it it's really like a whole kind of new world for your new thing. My my problem is I've got so many projects. I've got, like, 20 of those. Oh, yeah.

Justin:

So I I need to I need to probably get rid of a bunch.

Jon:

Yeah. That's tough.

Justin:

Actually, this is something I'll bring up. This is a tip, is contextual zoning. I think I've mentioned this before. I'm gonna link to this CBC Radio episode on contextual zones, but this fellow, Kunal, I don't know, I can't pronounce his last name, Chandeliya, he kind of made some waves because he wrote this article on how he set up different physical spaces in his house for doing different kinds of activities. And so he found, for example, when he was trying to write a blog post, if he was doing it in bed it was like very bad.

Justin:

But as soon as he created a space in his apartment for writing, he was able to become a lot more productive. And the other thing he did is he paired it with, audio cues, audio contextual zones, and he's using, so I'm using a soft murmur. Do you guys know that? A softmurmur.com. I'll put it in the show notes, but it basically plays, ambient sounds.

Justin:

So

Jon:

Okay.

Justin:

Thunder, rain, waves, fire. Yeah. Coffee shop. There's a lot of these out there, but, but when I turn on the rain and the thunder, it's kind of like, okay, I'm working, I'm writing, that's my contextual audio zone, and I found it really helpful. I've recommended this to some of my coaching clients too, and they they have found it really helpful as well.

Justin:

So

Jon:

It's probably it's probably also useful, as summer comes up Mhmm. To and the weather's nice. Yeah. Now let's say you're you're working on the weekend, and you're looking outside and it's sunny, maybe, like, close the blinds and turn the rainstorm on and make it feel like Yeah. You don't feel such so bad for

Justin:

sitting inside. Exactly. We kinda wish on you at a happy hour. Yeah. Yeah.

Justin:

Yeah. The it and there's something about, for example, that rain sound that makes me the image I get is I'm in a cabin in the woods and it's raining, and I'm writing. And so Yeah. It it it kind of tricks your brain into going into the zone. And, you know, I I know some people that for their side project, they'll just block off the time and they always go to the library.

Justin:

It's just like I'm just gonna go to the library, and I'm just gonna get it work done. And it becomes as soon as I'm in the library, I'm not looking at YouTube. I'm not all I'm doing is working on my side project.

Jon:

Yeah. Yeah. I should probably try that because I think it's it's more about creating a routine and creating a habit. Mhmm. Because you keep you keep doing it and, you know, you you become useful.

Jon:

You've become used to it. And, yeah, you know, you're at you're at the library. You're in, like, transistor mode or whatever.

Justin:

Yeah. Exactly.

Jon:

Let's try that.

Justin:

I think another thing is to define the end result first. So, John, what like, if you could have your ideal day, what would your ideal day look like?

Jon:

Ideally, I would probably just be working on transistor full time, but that's not that's not reality at this point. So for a weekday, I mean, I'd probably get up a bit early earlier than I usually do, especially in the summer because it's lighter out. You know, maybe, like, wake up around 6. Mhmm. Have a coffee, see if I anything happened with transistor overnight.

Jon:

Yeah. If any errors rolled in, we got any support emails that need to be dealt with, anything that maybe you posted that I need to respond to.

Justin:

Yeah. I I post at weird I'm Pacific time, but sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, and I have

Jon:

thoughts. Yeah. And then, you know, I'd I'd, go get ready for my full time job and bike to work if I can, do that whole thing during the day for the full day. Sometimes, you know, sometimes I'm done at 5 with that. Sometimes it's later if if something comes up.

Jon:

We have meetings or we have a few people on the West Coast, so sometimes we have some West Coast meetings.

Justin:

Mhmm.

Jon:

Take a break after work and, you know, make some dinner, work out, hang out with friends or the girlfriend. And then if I'm feeling up for it, work at home. Yeah. At, you know, at my desk at home and do a couple hours of transistor work or decide not to Yeah. And and read instead or something like that.

Justin:

Yeah. I think it's helpful actually to imagine both. Like, what does my ideal day look like within my context right now? And what does my ideal day look like in the future? Because being able to paint that picture of go, oh, yeah, like someday I would really like to work on this full time.

Justin:

And even what would that that look like? But right now, I'm in this situation. So what does my day look like? And when you start with the end in mind, when you think, okay, that's like, you as you were painting that picture, I was, like, mentally picturing, like, wake up, he's drinking coffee, and I I can feel what that feels like.

Jon:

Mhmm.

Justin:

Ride to work. Okay. Then it's like, oh, I've got a big day at work. Okay. I'm gonna need to be prepared for that.

Justin:

K. Get home. How can I decompress? I should go work out. You know, there's just this and then you you had this point in your day where you were like, and then I've got a choice.

Justin:

How do I feel? So I'm gonna check how I feel. Do I feel good enough to work on transistor? I do? Okay.

Justin:

I'm gonna do it. I don't? Okay. I'm gonna read. And so now you've got this, like, nice pattern.

Jon:

Yeah. It's like it's easy to feel guilty about not working on it because you you know you want to, and, you know, there's, like, unlimited amounts of things to do on it. But, like, I think the key is to just accept the fact that you're tired and you're not gonna be that productive and, like, forget about it for that night and do something else. You know? You know?

Jon:

Other, you know, other activities, whether it be just, like, going out somewhere in the city or reading, it might it might give you ideas for Yeah. How to how to fix something or do something later on. So

Justin:

Yeah. I think the worst thing that you can have is guilt or anxiety about that you should be doing something and you're not. Like, that just kills all sorts of momentum. It's it's I mean, there is something to discipline, like, something to saying, okay. I'm going to force myself to do stuff that's not fun and that's not hard.

Justin:

But Right. There's there's also something to giving yourself, to not, like, always having your head up against the grindstone. And it's like, you gotta work. I gotta work. I gotta get something done.

Justin:

If I don't get it this done, I'm gonna fail. You know, I gotta hustle. It's startup life. Come on. And if you're just always forcing yourself to do that, you're in this kind of, like, terrible, stressed out zone Yeah.

Jon:

It's not it's not a good energy.

Justin:

No. And you don't get stuff done. And and so I think way better to kind of visualize your day the way John just did and then, you know, kinda make those decisions beforehand. Like, okay. After dinner, if I'm not feeling like if I'm feeling like, and I kinda have this in my brain.

Justin:

I get this feeling of, like, okay. My brain is really overdrawn right now. And when I get that feeling, it I should listen to it. You know? So Yeah.

Justin:

If you eat dinner and then you kind of check your brain, and your brain's saying, we're done. Like

Jon:

Yeah.

Jason:

Go

Jon:

It's yeah. Occasionally, I've made the mistake of saying of agreeing with that and saying I'm done, but then I go, like, have a coffee at 8 at night.

Justin:

Oh, yeah.

Jon:

And it's just a terrible idea because then you don't really get much done. Yeah. You don't sleep well, so the next day, you're also just like a zombie.

Justin:

Yeah. I think, also, recognize the triggers. Like, my one thing I've noticed is, like, if I if I go, oh, I'm just gonna get a little bit of energy by going to Reddit. Like, that'll, like, kind of wake me up or something, I I realize, okay, I just need to walk away from the computer. I need to go for a walk.

Justin:

I need to if you're if you're like, oh, if I just, like, check Twitter, maybe that'll inspire me. It's like, no. Just, like, close your machine down. Go for a walk around the block. Like, do that stuff.

Justin:

I think the the other thing for me that see, I took this a little bit different, and and listening to you made me realize I need to visualize my day more often. But I was also just thinking about the kinds of activities that give me energy, and I did this strengths finder test. I shared actually the results with you

Jon:

Mhmm.

Justin:

Because I think cofounders this is a great thing for cofounders to kind of talk about. But, it basically and I don't know. This test could be a bunch of hooey science or whatever, but my results really kinda seem to match up with me. The the top result, like, my number one strength is something they call woo. And, and I at first, I was like, come on.

Justin:

I was disappointed. But when I read it, it says, people who are especially talented in the woo theme love the challenge of meeting new people and winning them over. They derive satisfaction from breaking the ice and making a connection with another person. So when I read that, I was like, okay. That's me.

Justin:

Like, that is I totally get energy from that. And, you know, after I read my the results from the StrengthsFinder, it made me realize sometimes during my day, I'm doing a lot of tasks that don't match up with my strengths, and my ideal day would probably look a lot more like me doing things that give me energy. So doing sales calls, doing demos, interacting with customers, also like taking a break and going to the coffee shop. If you guys if you guys could see my little day, like, I'll, like, walk from my office to the coffee shop, but on the way is my barber shop, and I'll always stop in and say hi to them and, like, to gab for a minute. Then I go to the coffee shop, and I know a bunch of people there, and I talk there.

Justin:

And it getting a coffee is kind of the thing, but it's just an excuse to go and hang out because it gives me energy. Writing gives me energy, making videos and podcasts, like, creating every day, hacking on ideas, building prototypes. So it, you know, it made me think, okay. These are all my strengths. And in my side projects, in my side hustle, I need to make sure I'm doing as many of those things as I can because that's gonna help, you know, give me the momentum.

Justin:

And it's probably a good reason to partner up. I think you can, build a business solo, but one of the nice things about partnering up is, you know, like, John is good at stuff. I'm talking about you and you're here. You're good at stuff that, I'm not I that really drains me, Like, especially some of the kind of analytical thinking that you do, the way you process things, it really drains me. So having someone else that's, like, cares about the details, having someone else that's technical, it's just really helpful.

Justin:

And that's probably another way not to burn out is just having someone else in your life, whether it's a cofounder, whether it's accountability partner. I it it seems to really help, you know, when you know that it's not just you.

Jon:

Yeah. Definitely. I mean, I think likewise likewise for me, there's a lot of lot of skills, and the things that give you energy are not really the things that give me energy necessarily. Yeah. Although I do enjoy some of that stuff and, you know, meeting customers and

Justin:

Yeah.

Jon:

It's just not it it's it's draining to me because I, one, I don't really know it. Yeah. I I don't really know what I'm doing in in that regard for, like, marketing and Yeah. Outreach.

Justin:

I mean, it doesn't mean that I'm not challenging. Like, I've been challenging myself to try to deploy little bits of code every once in a while, and I I wanna challenge myself there. I want to get better at that. I wanna understand our app on on the back end a lot more. I wanna learn a little bit of Ruby, all that kind of stuff.

Justin:

But if if I had to force myself, like, every night to go, okay, Justin. You gotta write, like, a 100 lines of code. I'd be like, oh, god.

Jon:

Yeah.

Justin:

Like, it it just wouldn't motivate me. And so being able to play to my strengths while still kind of doing other things and learning new things, I think that's kind of the balance you want. And, that's one way to kinda be feel good about, you know, the your side project or how you're organizing your day or your energy is just getting to do stuff that you enjoy, that you're good at, and not always having to force yourself to do you know stuff that you really don't understand. Because I found I've I found that really frustrating in the past like whenever I wanted to build something, and I'm like, you know, it's just I don't have the skills to do this, and it it was demotivating.

Jon:

Yeah. It's it's definitely about a balance of trying to keep keep doing what motivates you. You know, there's always gonna be the test that kind of drain you of energy. Mhmm. Whether it be like, you know, the legal stuff that we went through or

Justin:

Oh, yeah.

Jon:

Set setting up the business, trying to figure out, like, accounting software is just like, you know, I think we're putting that off because it's like, that's boring.

Justin:

Yeah.

Jon:

Like, I don't you know, it's important. Yeah. But it's draining and it's boring.

Justin:

Yeah.

Jon:

Could be spending your time doing something else. So

Justin:

Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a good that's a good way place to leave it. You know, having that balance, making sure that you're, yes, you are forcing yourself to do the boring stuff, but also making sure that you're really getting to do some stuff that gives you energy too.

Jon:

Yeah. Yeah. But also don't if you're doing a side project, don't don't try to think about your normal job and your side projects all at the same time because you'll just go crazy. Yes. Keep keep a balance there too.

Justin:

Yeah. Definitely have kind of different those things we mentioned, like, have a different Chrome profile, have a different place that you go to, I know some people that use different computers. Anything that helps you kind of make that switch and then really focus and enjoy that time is gonna gonna be beneficial. Right on. Okay.

Justin:

So, yeah, folks. If you want, the show notes, again, sas.transistor.fm. John, where can people find you on the web?

Jon:

Johnbuda.com or on Twitter at johnbuda.

Justin:

And I'm justinjackson.ca or on Twitter, Mi Justin. I am headed to MicroConf in Las Vegas, from April 28th to May 4th. So if you are going there, there's a lot of SAS folks there. Be sure to, say hi, and, I can I'm happy to talk to you about transistor or anything you're working on as well. And, oh, yeah.

Justin:

Is that it? Yeah. That's it. Right. Is that it?

Justin:

That's it. Okay. See you folks next week.