Adam Wathan sat down with Justin and Brian to talk about the challenge of staying motivated with your own business, even when you've "made it."
However successful you think a well-known product or founder might be, the truth is everyone's dealing with stresses and challenges and things that don't work and figuring out what to do next. That's what this episode is about.
However successful you think a well-known product or founder might be, the truth is everyone's dealing with stresses and challenges and things that don't work and figuring out what to do next. That's what this episode is about.
The discussion also touches on the potential of video content and YouTube as a way of getting in motion and regaining motivation.
Timestamps:
- (00:06) - Intro
- (02:52) - Evaluating past efforts and losing confidence
- (27:27) - Do we try and get more of the same thing, or build to a new thing?
- (29:58) - Getting excited about building out a new space
- (37:51) - Publishing when you're inspired
- (59:11) - Are we too old?
- (01:03:23) - Finding inspiration in new locations
Tell us what you think! 🗣️
- 🎤 Send us an audio or video message
- 📧 Email us: panelpodcastshow@gmail.com
- 📺 Leave a comment on YouTube
- 🦋 Reply on Bluesky
Links mentioned in this episode
- Tailwind CSS - Adam's company
- Tailwind's YouTube channel
- Instrumental Products - Brian's company
- Clarity Flow - Brian's SaaS product
- Transistor.fm - Justin's company
Creators & Guests
What is The Panel?
When it comes to bootstrapping and building software, there's rarely one right answer. We want to dive into the nuance. In every episode, veteran founders Justin Jackson and Brian Casel bring together a panel of sharp minds from the indie tech world to tackle thorny topics – from pricing and product strategy to work-life balance. No gurus, no easy answers – just real conversations we'd normally have behind closed doors.
Welcome to The Panel: where smart founders discuss the realities of building better products and a better life. I'm Justin Jackson, the cofounder of Transistor.fm .
Brian Casel:And I'm Brian Castle. I'm the founder of Clarity Flow, and I'm currently working on instrumental components for Rails.
Justin Jackson:And in a moment, you're going to hear from our guest.
Adam Wathan:Adam Wathan. I am the creator of Tailwind CSS.
Justin Jackson:And Brian, this was kind of the perfect episode in my mind.
Brian Casel:I agree.
Justin Jackson:This is three founders sitting around, shooting the shit, talking about, like, the real things we're going through at the moment.
Brian Casel:We were shooting the shit. It was great to catch up with Adam, but it was more than that. I think we got we got deep. There was a lot of real talk Mhmm. Here.
Brian Casel:I think I think this is what conversations with folks like us really feels like, and it and it's just awesome to be able to get it on on the mic and on and on an episode here. You know, the thing that that really sticks out to me and however successful you think a well known product in your space, like like Tailwind might be, or the founder and the team behind it, everyone's dealing with stresses and challenges and things that don't work and figuring out what to do next. Like, everyone is dealing with that no matter what level you're at. And that we we talked that's what this whole episode was about.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. I love that. Like, every every stage has its, like, benefits and its drawbacks. And, you know, like, this talk reminded me of, like, being in that early stage and how you kind of, like, sometimes long for those times where you're building stuff. But when you're building stuff, you're just so desperate to get to product market fit or whatever.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. I think regardless of what stage you're in building a business, you'll find something here. There's gonna be something a lot of perspective.
Brian Casel:For sure.
Justin Jackson:You'll get a lot of perspective from this. For sure.
Brian Casel:I think we're already starting to see some, like, running themes or recurring things that are coming up. I mean, on this one, we talked a ton about YouTube and the value of of content in in video form. Mhmm. I think another running theme, at least in my mind, is this idea of, like, how personal business is and how there is no right or wrong way to do it. And, actually, the right way to do it is to trust your own instinct and your own strengths and weaknesses.
Brian Casel:And we we kinda got deep into that with all three of us and and something that Adam's been dealing with. So Yeah.
Justin Jackson:Totally. Let's let's get right into it. Let's roll the tape. I wanna hear about some of those thoughts you shared with me in Telegram.
Adam Wathan:Yeah. I mean, I guess I I guess I don't know where to start, but I I mean, if anyone's listened to me on podcast for the last couple years, I I I almost feel bad because I feel like it's mostly just like me being, like, sad and down about things and not being able to figure out my life. But I still kinda still kinda wrestling with that. I think like I we did this video course, this free email course that I put out a couple weeks ago. I don't know if you guys saw it, but I had this idea after giving someone else some advice on like, you know, basically building out a funnel to sell their thing to do this free email course.
Adam Wathan:They're called Build UIs That Don't Suck. And the idea was like, okay, it's gonna be like, every day you get a video from me showing you basically something you've probably done that's like not the best way to do something, and then iteratively kind of improving it and landing on like what I think is a really clean nice solution to some problem Mhmm. In building, like, web interfaces. With the goal sort of being to build a bit of authority and get you to really thinking, like, man, these guys really think hard about this stuff and really sweat the details. And maybe like Tailwind UI, which is Tailwind Plus now, would actually be like a valuable thing for me to have because there's like 600 of these examples in there that are all built to like this level of detail.
Adam Wathan:And even if I'm just gonna go and like look at how they did something, maybe I'll learn like some sort of tip or something. Right? Basically, just like find some way to sort of build a bit more rapport with a potential customer than we get from just having a the landing page where they can go like browse around, like, be able to tell the story a little bit better and communicate the value. And every example in the course was, like, built using something I pulled from Tailwind July, you know, to really just, like, drive that point home.
Justin Jackson:Sound sounds good so far.
Brian Casel:Just to pause on that real quick. It's it's I'm guess and that makes a lot of sense because I'm guessing that today in 2025, probably the vast majority of your customer base for the paid stuff is just coming from the open source Tailwind project. That's
Adam Wathan:Yeah, like tailwindcss.com is our distribution channel, right?
Brian Casel:Yeah. So that being as huge as it is, like that's just sending a of traffic. But now you're missing what you had in the earliest days. Like the earliest days people were following you on Twitter and YouTube and and really trusting you, Adam. Where whereas like now it's just like this tailwind thing.
Adam Wathan:Totally. And I I kinda it was kinda funny because when I did this video course, a lot of people in the YouTube comments and stuff were like, woah. This is the guy who made Tailwind? You know, it's like, wow. That's hilarious to me because, like, I I sore I totally missed that tipping point where people know the tool but don't know me.
Adam Wathan:You know? Yeah. But that clearly did happen. So anyways, I thought this was like a really smart thing to do. In my head, once I had this idea, I was like, man, I think this is gonna be like an incredibly high leverage thing for us to do for the business because we basically don't do any deliberate marketing.
Adam Wathan:The website gets something like 10,000,000 visitors a month. So it's an insane amount of traffic. There's a lot of places we can sort of promote this on there. And basically, the email course like on the third day, it sort of has like this like preamble at the beginning sort of italicized. Like, hey.
Adam Wathan:If you're digging this, like, I think you'll really get a lot of value out of Tailwind Plus. Like, go check it out. Here's a discount even. You know?
Justin Jackson:Mhmm.
Adam Wathan:And then on the fifth email, the last one, it's kind of like a harder pitch. Like, hope you enjoyed this. You know? If you're you got a lot of value out of it, this is the best way to support Tailwind. Helps us, you know, really try and sell it in every way that I could.
Adam Wathan:So we got, like, I don't know how many sign ups we have right now. It's, over 15,000 people
Justin Jackson:Okay.
Adam Wathan:On this list in like three weeks or something. We get like 500 people a day sign up.
Justin Jackson:And where does that come from? Just the website?
Adam Wathan:Just the website. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So And maybe Twitter and So you guys I not even really Twitter because I didn't really promote it that hard there because it was it was kind of like an experiment in my head.
Adam Wathan:I kinda wanna see like what is the distribution channel, the Evergreen sort of like self serve distribution channel do. Insane amount of people signing up. Right? Good stuff. But I'm I wanna if you guys have to guess, like, what do you think the conversion rate is on this email course?
Brian Casel:The thing that I that comes to mind in terms of thinking about this traffic is that I'm guessing so I wonder how much of that 10,000,000 are like me. Like, I come to the site all the time to check docs. You know, like I'm a daily user of Taylor.
Adam Wathan:Thousand people signed up for the email course. I would say 13,000 of them were not existing customers. So 13,000 people getting emails from me who do not own Tailwind July.
Justin Jackson:Okay.
Brian Casel:But they I mean, they opted into a course. It's not like so they're doing something else than like, I just come to check a quick thing in the docs and they came to learn.
Adam Wathan:Well, they signed up for the course. There's some small percentage of the regular daily traffic that converts to the free email course, you know, and then some of them bought. But I'm curious
Justin Jackson:I mean, I my guess off the problem is this funnel is a little bit different than how I I typically evaluate funnels because with SaaS, you would say, well, a visitor to trial and then try trial to paid, and those are kind of two separate things. So I would say, you know, if
Brian Casel:you were
Justin Jackson:converting 5% to paid, that would be high. Mhmm. My guess is it would be maybe even lower than that. So I'm I'm guessing under 5%.
Adam Wathan:Yeah. So 25 people have purchased out of 15,000.
Justin Jackson:Okay. And you're not happy about this?
Adam Wathan:Yeah. That's one way to put it. It's not like I'm angry about it. I'm more like discouraged, you know, because I think I was really pumped like, man, I think this is like sort of low hanging fruit obvious thing for us to do that's gonna have like a big impact. Like, maybe this will bag us like seven to 10 sales a day that we weren't getting before because which see totally seemed like realistic to me, and it's been like less maybe one, you know, instead.
Adam Wathan:Annually, it's like a drop in the bucket, really, and it's just like so there's that. And I guess like where the places has put me mentally is I I feel like looking back, I feel like I'm getting kicked in the balls over and over and over again with basically every idea I've had for this business for the last, like, three years. So, like, the one before this is in maybe September, we finally, like, built up the courage to try increasing the price. Because everyone says, like, that's, like, the highest leverage thing you can do. Right?
Adam Wathan:And it's just, like, so scary to do. We were charging $2.99. 1 day, we're just like, screw it. Let's change it to $3.99 and see what happens. Right?
Adam Wathan:Yeah. And, again, I got, like, super pumped. I was like, okay. Things are gonna drop off a little bit in terms of total amount of sales, I'm sure. But, man, even if they drop off by this percentage, like, we're gonna make this much extra.
Adam Wathan:It seems like as long as we have the courage to do it, it's gonna work out.
Justin Jackson:Yeah.
Adam Wathan:And you know what happened? Literally, the conversion rate perfectly balanced with the price increase such that if you looked at the chart, it's literally impossible to know when we changed the price up and when we changed it back down. Impossible. Completely impossible.
Brian Casel:How long was that test?
Adam Wathan:Average daily sales, exactly the same. We ran that for two weeks before just reverting it because it felt like more customers is better than fewer customers if we're gonna make the exact same amount of money.
Brian Casel:I know you have a ton of volume, but that that still feels a little bit short.
Justin Jackson:When you reverted it, it just went it it continued on the mean? Like, continued the same
Adam Wathan:Just went exactly the same. Just like the universe is just like, nothing you do is allowed to affect anything.
Brian Casel:On the video course thing, just for a second, my read on that is that this market is developers. And I'm sort of convinced that, especially for more technical, like, designers, developers, product people, the video or the email course thing in general that leads to a sale at the end, that's not the go to pathway to buying a product for this type of product.
Adam Wathan:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:But I still think that the act of releasing this course and releasing content in general is a good move. I think it goes back to that let's get Adam out in front
Adam Wathan:I agree with that.
Brian Casel:Thing. Like, if that course were were just released on YouTube or just or there's some regular cadence of of of these course style videos coming out on a regular basis, like, it's the kind of thing that you won't really be able to track or or attribute. No. It's just good because it it I and it might not you might not even see it in the revenue numbers. But I I tend to think more about like what creates a higher quality customer.
Brian Casel:Like a customer who really gets it, gets our philosophy,
Adam Wathan:you know. Yeah. So and then even before that price increase, like, last thing we did before that was this, like, catalyst UI kit that we worked on for, like, probably nine months. And we thought, you know, the application UI package that we sell, which is, like, little examples of how to build inputs and buttons and stuff, that's the thing that people, like, seem to want the most. Because if you look at our sales, when people don't buy the full package, that's the smaller package they buy always.
Adam Wathan:But it's not really componentized. Right? It's just like all individual examples. It doesn't give you like a kit where like examples build on other things and components import other components like a real system. You know, it's just a lot of duplicated stuff.
Adam Wathan:So we thought, well, let's build like a really high quality opinionated UI kit. We don't have anything like that. Maybe that will like unlock some stuff. Worked on that for like a year, no impact on revenue at all. Just kinda stayed exactly the same.
Adam Wathan:Before that, the big bet that we made was the Tailwind Jobs thing. I thought, oh, man, like, this seems like a nice little extra source of revenue that we could try to try to land, build a job board. I know that, like, people who use Tailwind like it so much that they would so much rather work at a company that uses it than a company that doesn't. It feels like a competitive advantage in hiring to me. Mhmm.
Adam Wathan:So let's try that. Like, just couldn't sell posts on that job board to, like, save our life no matter the traffic that the website gets or whatever. So we ended up, like, shutting that down. Mhmm. That's basically, like, the last four big things that, like, I can think of that we've done, and that goes back to, like, mid twenty twenty three.
Adam Wathan:And none of them have just, like, done anything. And I guess what it's making me feel like is that I thought those were good ideas. I think I still have some good ideas, but now I'm starting to think they're probably not good ideas either. And that I just like I just basically have lost all confidence in myself as
Justin Jackson:Like your instincts and stuff?
Adam Wathan:Yeah. Yeah. A %.
Justin Jackson:The my first thought about this is I love this. I I this is so good to talk about because immediately, I'm thinking about this idea that other people have brought up, which is, you know, the Basecamp guy is saying Basecamp is our best idea. And Ian Landsman saying, Helpspot is my best idea. And there is this weird phenomenon, which is often, for whatever reason, the first idea that really hits although in your case, Adam might argue, you had you had some ideas before that really hit. So but at your current position on the staircase or the ladder or whatever, it does seem that entrepreneurs eventually hit some sort of maximum.
Adam Wathan:Uh-huh.
Justin Jackson:And is that just is that just our destiny? It's an interesting thought. Like, maybe it's just our destiny. Like, although, HAY, I don't know what revenues of HAY, how they compared to
Adam Wathan:To Basecamp.
Justin Jackson:To Basecamp. And I honestly still don't understand how Basecamp the reason this probably makes sense is how does Basecamp still make money? I it's like, when you ask people if they know, like brand recognition, it doesn't have the brand recognition, like man on the street, if you talk man on the street, like name a project management tool. My guess is you're not gonna hear Base Camp very often.
Brian Casel:Yeah. But my but my guess is their their whole business, past and current, is is built on loyalty that that grows over time. And, like because their their their churn is probably pretty low for long time Base Camp lovers.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. My guess is it's a lot of word-of-mouth, but it just it just shows that I think there is a lot of value in that that original rock that you heave into the lake and makes all the ripples. Like, the size of that initial impact does kinda determine your life sometimes, it seems like.
Brian Casel:But I I actually think that that's a good analogy to tail end. And my my high level question for you, Adam, is like, what's actually motivating all of this of this like effort to try like, you have a ton of traffic, you have a ton of users, and is it like are you seeing like the same baseline sales every month? Is the traffic decreasing? No. Traffic is increasing.
Brian Casel:So the convert the conversions are decreasing?
Adam Wathan:Conversions are decreasing. I can only speculate, like, there's, like, a lot more free alternatives to the stuff we sell now. AI, I know, has taken, a big chunk out of, like people just ask tools to generate stuff for them instead of, like, coming in buying stuff and copying and pasting stuff. I think that's part of it. I think another part of it is just, like, it's a lifetime one time purchase thing, which I still would defend to my grave as being, like, the right decision for what we did.
Adam Wathan:But it also means, like, eventually, you do sort of start to saturate the market. Like, if the number of Tailwind users, even if it's growing, it's not the rate that it's growing is, like, slowing down because it has sort of reached a saturation point. Like, 2022, early '20 '20 '3, Tailwind was still, like, rising to become, like, the dominant choice for styling stuff on the Internet. At this point, it's just, like, if you make websites, you know what Tailwind is. You know?
Adam Wathan:Like, there's still people are are purchasing the product.
Brian Casel:A lifetime thing. I I do question that because if you think about all these people who love Tailwind and they've only paid you once.
Adam Wathan:I think we so I do think we should find ways to get give those people a chance to buy something else from us. I still don't believe that, like, making Tailwind UI a subscription would have been good. I think we could have charged a hundred bucks a year for it and everyone had churned before the third year because it's not it's just like you you could subscribe for a month and download everything and and cancel, you know.
Brian Casel:So But there could be other benefits that come with that. I mean, I'm I'm literally building a components product in the Rails ecosystem right now and I'm I'm planning on doing like an annual license with it. I expect to see a ton of churn with that, but I'm also thinking like, especially with you branding it like Tailwind Plus, there could be more to it than just
Adam Wathan:Yeah. And and that's kind of the that's kind of the the play now. Yeah. But it's still one time purchase at the moment. I still don't really wanna pivot it to being subscription honestly because I I just think the conversion rate would drop by so much that it'll counteract any of the recurring benefits?
Adam Wathan:Like, to be, like, candid
Brian Casel:think of, like, annual recurring licenses as essentially, like, one time purchases that they just have to, like, choose to purchase again each year. You know? Even if it's automatic, it's still sort of a decision. Like, do I still want this?
Adam Wathan:Yeah. Yeah. It's true. Yeah. I think, like, we've talked about maybe doing subscriptions for Teams because we actually have companies email us telling us they wanna cancel.
Adam Wathan:And we're like, hey. Good news. Like, it's not a subscription. So that might be something to, like, experiment with. But I guess, like I mean, even looking at, like, the motivation for even doing any of this stuff.
Adam Wathan:So, like, keeping the revenue up is is one. You know, I I don't wanna stress about, like, the finances of the company. And to be clear, like, I don't have to in its current state, but I I still feel like I need to figure out how to, like, just stabilize it. And I think it kinda has stabilized. Like, I think we've sort of found, like, the comfortable floor ish, but a lot of it is more about just, like, it's a good feeling to have, like, a good idea and do it and Mhmm.
Adam Wathan:Have it validated by the market. Like, that's motivating. And when you do it and it doesn't work over and over again, it just starts to make you feel like a loser. And that's what I feel like right now.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. I mean, emotional side is that's the that's the wild thing that I think a lot of people don't I mean, I remember when I was just striving to get something that worked. You know, the first thing I ever did that really worked was marketing for developers, this course. And then it was like, okay, this feels great. But now I need to make this sustainable.
Justin Jackson:And at first, I just tried to keep launching it. I just found that exhausting. And then I basically just followed Nathan Barry. He switched from all his revenues on courses to SaaS. And I was like, you know what, I think I should do that.
Justin Jackson:And so then I did it. Then I remember at the time I was in a mastermind with with Paul Jarvis, and he was like, looking at me and he's like, you know what? I'm gonna do that too.
Adam Wathan:Yeah. Yeah. But
Justin Jackson:the the hunger to like find something that works, you just think once I get there, it's golden. Like, I'm never gonna have to struggle or worry again. And the truth is, is that eventually, you're like, you there's an emotional side to it where you're especially if you have ambition, or you're just used to or addicted to or like the feeling of having impact. When things are not up and to the right, that is difficult.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I'm in a different place than both of you. And this tends to be a trend on this podcast. But like, the thing that comes to mind today and I just all of this really resonates with me big time because this year in 2025, I feel like I'm finally turning a corner. I I I've gone through like three or four really, really tough years.
Brian Casel:Mhmm. From like 2021, '20 '2 up up until through '24. And '25, I'm I'm coming out of it. And the way that I'm coming out of it is trying to get back to like really trusting my gut instinct again. And I got away from I feel like I I can trace a lot of these missteps, like poor decisions in business in the last three, four years to I was not truly following my gut instinct.
Brian Casel:Whether it's taking general advice from other people or Nothing wrong with their advice, but it's I really believe that this type of business is so personal for all of us. Probably a lot of people listening to this podcast. Like, at the end of the day, you have to go with something that you feel truly just really fired up about. Like, I have to put this out to the world. And I feel like, Adam, you had that when you created Tailwind.
Adam Wathan:Yeah. For sure.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Like And I I really And this is why I'm I'm I'm starting to, like, really under Truly understand the value of, like, a scratch my own itch kind of product. Yeah. You know? I've done other products that I that I like, that I use.
Brian Casel:But like the one that I'm building now, this this Rails components thing, like, I don't even care if other people buy it. Like, I'm I'm the only customer that needs to be happy with this product.
Adam Wathan:Yeah. Sure.
Brian Casel:Like, tailwind from what I remember, from what I understand is like, you sort of just hacked this little thing for your own use. Right? Totally. To make writing CSS easier. Yeah.
Brian Casel:And it's like, I think number one, having this mindset of scratch your own itch, it doesn't even matter what the market thinks. If I'm happy, then then I'm happy with what I But the other the other thing about that is that I think that happens to play well in the market because that's what leads to truly unique and different ideas. Right? Like, not just another CRM
Adam Wathan:Yeah.
Brian Casel:Or not just another accounting software. This is a totally new it's taking CSS and flipping it on its head. It's a totally different way of looking at it. Like, I think that's where these, like, scratch your own itch. It's like weird.
Brian Casel:It's different. This one person loves it. And then you're gonna find, like, 10 people who are, like, obsessed with it. And that's how it actually spreads, you know? Yeah.
Brian Casel:I agree. And also, like, this like, I went through hell the last three or four years. We all go through these, like, cycles of, like, depression and stress and all this shit. And Yeah. And and to me, it's like, don't even care how successful or not my business does.
Brian Casel:If I'm not happy, if I'm not doing things that actually fire me up every day, then then what's the point? You
Adam Wathan:know? %, dude. Yeah. I struggle with that hugely. I think a lot of that happened for me, like, when we start to grow the team.
Adam Wathan:Like, I like I think we are a great team, and I'm really appreciative of having, like, support from people on all the stuff that I need help with. But it has, like, changed my role into, like, being more responsible for just, like, making sure that we're working on the right things, that people know what they're doing, and that things, like, are being done in a way that, like, lines up with what the vision I have is or whatever. And I I just don't I'm never like in flow state almost ever anymore in terms of like what my role is at at the company. And it's unfortunate because like the what I'm doing what the company needs from me, you know, in in a lot of ways, but it's not really, like, my favorite role to be in. But then, like, even on top of that, like, I think the frustrating thing is, like, Tailwind still as a tool, like, does fire me up and, like, scratches my own age, and I really love working on it.
Brian Casel:Like, how involved were you in, like, the build out and release of of Tailwind four? Like, were you in the weeds in the in the design and development?
Adam Wathan:In the early of it, part of it, I was. But then, not so much. Then it became a lot of just coordinating and just making sure that we were working on the right things, that the right people were working on the right things, and just a lot of surface level involvement in, like, six different things at the same time versus, like, just heads down, listen to music, slinging code. It just, like, it's more efficient for me to just, like, almost use, like, people as my programming language, which is, you know, not fun for me, but, like, it's how we get the best results of the company. You know?
Adam Wathan:Yeah. So I've been trying to figure that out because honestly, like, I I have a hard time just, like, waving a magic wand and saying, if I could just wake up and do anything today, this is what I would do. And Like, you wouldn't say that
Justin Jackson:right now.
Adam Wathan:Have no idea what it would even be. Like, I I'm starting to get some ideas, like, just this week, which I think would be, like, something that we can talk about. But the thing that's hard with Tailwind as a product when when you're getting kicked in the balls, like, feel like I had been with these ideas, not, like, panning out, it's it's hard not to sit back and think, like, every website I look at on the entire Internet is built with Tailwind. Yeah. ChatGPT is built with Tailwind.
Adam Wathan:Shopify.com is built with Tailwind. Like Netflix uses Tailwind. And like how much of an idiot must I be to not be able to figure out how to turn that into something bigger? Because, like like, you know what I mean? It's it's hard not to think, like, if you took someone who was, like, a really great Internet marketer and said, I have this website that gets 10,000,000 visitors a month.
Adam Wathan:They'd be like, what the fuck? You what?
Justin Jackson:What? Give
Adam Wathan:me the keys. You know? Like because you know what I'm saying?
Justin Jackson:Yeah. That's I mean, that might be something to try.
Adam Wathan:I mean, I'm not saying that that would actually work, but I just kinda I just kinda feel like we are not getting the most out of what it is. And I also feel like, candidly, it's probably not even possible. There's only certain types of open source projects that even have the potential to be real significant businesses, I think. And we're lucky that we can even make anything. And at the end of the day, it's a great business.
Adam Wathan:It's an it's an insane business,
Brian Casel:really.
Adam Wathan:But again, it really just boils down to, like, the idea is just, like, not working and how that just kinda stings. And then combine that with, okay. So what's the what's the logical next step for that? Because, like, the thing that we we've talked about a lot internally that I've wrestled with for a long time is do we try to get more out of what we're doing? Or do we say, okay.
Adam Wathan:This whole thing, maybe we need to view this as, like, the stepping stone to the next thing, just like how, like, the refactoring UI book funded building tailwind as a company.
Justin Jackson:Yeah.
Adam Wathan:Maybe now we do the SaaS thing, you know, which I've always thought I wanted to do. But I honestly am struggling to even get excited about I don't think I think I would hate running a SaaS company, to be honest with you. Yeah. Even though I love the idea of building the software and crafting the interactions and making it like a great tool, when I really think hard about it, it's like, well, I'm gonna need to hire support people. I'm gonna need to deal with those support people.
Adam Wathan:I'm gonna need to stress about, like, downtime. I'm gonna need to worry about, like, what if we lose someone's data because, like, of some, like, weird thing that we screw up in managing our infrastructure.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Adam Wathan:And it's like, I don't have those problems, like, right now. Like, why the fuck do I want those problems when, like, I already make more money than I need? Mhmm. But but it's also leaves you in this unsatisfying position where it's like, there's all these reasons not to do that because I don't think it would make my life I think my life would probably be worse, but I might enjoy some small part of the process more than, like, the stuff that I'm doing right now, if that makes sense. So you just end up in this place where even if you think there's something that could be sort of rewarding, it's it's it's so easy to convince yourself not to do it because you're not as hungry.
Adam Wathan:You know what I mean?
Brian Casel:I don't know if it, like, checks the box for, like, the thing that will fire you up every day. But I I do think that at this point, given everything and given your position with all this traffic and this entity of Tailwind, like a YouTube channel or content brand makes a lot of sense to me. Educational content that a lot of it free, maybe some of it premium behind a subscription paywall. But like, you probably already have a YouTube channel that's like has an awesome baseline.
Adam Wathan:I'm I got this in the mail on Monday. You
Brian Casel:know? My Oh, there you go.
Adam Wathan:My hundred k.
Brian Casel:Wow.
Justin Jackson:You know? But like that
Brian Casel:that's the thing that that comes to mind because it's it's still even as as popular as Tailwind is, I still get people, like, kinda skeptical on, like, the Tailwind concept. You know?
Adam Wathan:So it's funny that you say this because that's actually, like, exactly the thing that I've started getting really jazzed about at the end of last week and the beginning of this week. I kinda, like, had this day where we wanted to do this video course. Steve came over to my house for the whole day to, like, set up all the new gear that I bought and, like, get the camera angles and the lighting working and stuff. And just like at the end of that day, I was just like, man, this was like the most fun that I have had at work in years. And I think a lot of it is just like being physically in person
Justin Jackson:Mhmm.
Adam Wathan:Moving stuff. And then we did the I did the video course. I actually had, like, quite a bit of fun, like, recording the videos and stuff too. And the feedback on the videos has been really good, which has been, like, good. Yeah.
Adam Wathan:And I just kinda decided at the end of last week, Steve, like, I think we should rent an office and work from an office and build out a studio and get heavy into content stuff. So we've just been obsessed with that, talking about that lately. We're going to see, like, two spaces tomorrow. Like, I found, like, this, like, 3,000 square foot, like, old warehouse that we're looking into, like, renting and setting up, like, multiple video rooms with different sets. Just kinda and and honestly, it's so exciting to me because it's, like, it's sort of the thing I feel like I fantasized about for, like, ten years.
Adam Wathan:Mhmm. I've just you know I think it's like it's like the ultimate, like, man cave. Like, this is like put all your cool stuff here. Yeah. You know, you just go and hang out with people and do fun stuff.
Adam Wathan:And and Steve wants get back in the refactoring UI videos, and, you know, we had a lot of fun doing this stuff. I think it'd be fun doing all that stuff in in person. So, yeah, that's what I'm kinda jazzed about right now, and I almost don't even know, like, how that if it's gonna be just like marketing for the current business or if it's just gonna be like a separate thing in a way that the current business benefits from, but maybe other things happen from it. You know? So
Justin Jackson:I mean, the fact that you're getting comments from people saying, woah, this is the guy that created Tailwind is there is some evidence there that you have a lot of white space to explore. To increase your visibility might be a really good thing to be known as, well, that is the creator of Tailwind. And he's regularly putting out content, and I'm following him. I'm getting jazzed about using Tailwind. I'm maybe just getting jazzed about web development because he pumps me up.
Justin Jackson:Like, it's inspiring to watch him build stuff. I think there's a lot of opportunity there. I I've had this kind of reversal. I talked about this before. You know, this used to be the debate.
Justin Jackson:Rob Walling would say, a personal brand and audience doesn't matter for SaaS or whatever. And I I've now that I've got we've done transistor since 02/2018, I just have this steady stream of customers that who sign up and say, I came here because of a video you Justin, you recorded two years ago
Adam Wathan:Yeah.
Justin Jackson:Or a podcast you recorded ten years ago, or I've known you ever since you started your newsletter.
Brian Casel:Makes your thing like the default choice when when they're ready.
Justin Jackson:And yeah. And it I would it's hard to quantify it in a percentage, but I I wouldn't be surprised if it's ten, fifteen, 20 percent of our new sign ups to this day. And building up that profile and maintaining that profile, but continuing to build it. And to me, there's just tons of greenfield there because, know, lately, I've been on LinkedIn and I'm like, man, none of these LinkedIn people know who I am. And it's kind of fun to figure this out and like how I can create a profile here and be talking and exploring interesting things through writing and video and podcasts that then in turn, like, might generate new business for us tomorrow or in six months or in six years.
Adam Wathan:Mhmm.
Justin Jackson:So I think there's a lot of opportunity there that and I think in an AI world, in a generic marketing, whatever world, the enduring pieces of a brand is like Jason Fried, DHH, Taylor Otwell, Adam Wathen.
Brian Casel:They they can shift from blogs to newsletters to video to podcasts. It's still just the the person that you follow.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. And it doesn't work for everybody. It's not for every company. It's not but for those that can do it, and those that like it, it's a really potent way of creating awareness and eventually, I think, sales for your company.
Brian Casel:Do think that this year, and this is already a theme on this podcast on multiple episodes now, is just YouTube and video as, like, it it to me, it's the most obvious and and far and away best thing that that we can, like, invest ourselves in if in terms of like right. This year, I'm doing like at least one weekly new video on my YouTube channel. Just trying to put a real effort in into that. That's my one main marketing channel for everything that I'm doing. But I'm not even treating it like marketing.
Brian Casel:I'm just trying to create something that I'm fired up about this week. And it's usually whatever I built this week, that's what I'm gonna make a video Mhmm. But what's exciting to me about it from a marketing perspective is that, like, every almost every day, I'm getting, like, new totally new people who are coming and filling out the early access form. They're coming off of YouTube. They're coming over to Instrumentl components, and they're putting their email address, and then they're filling out, like, writing multiple paragraphs in my survey form for early access.
Adam Wathan:Yeah. That's awesome.
Brian Casel:Like, none of these people follow this podcast or follow me on Blue Sky or Twitter or have ever heard of me. They're it's the YouTube algorithm. Yeah.
Adam Wathan:You know? YouTube is great for, like, discovering things. Like, it's it's it's crazy how many videos it suggests to me that have, like, 65 views. You know? Yep.
Adam Wathan:Yeah. Just to, like, find out. You know? It's like it's I don't know how what the secret sauce is there, but it really does a good job at, like, surfacing absolute nobodies to people and, like, making them into somebody's. You know?
Adam Wathan:It's
Justin Jackson:And when we're talking about a high leverage activity you could do like, I'm looking at the Tailwind Labs YouTube channel. You before the video you published three weeks ago, which has 70,000 views.
Adam Wathan:Mhmm.
Justin Jackson:Your last video was a year ago, which was the Tailwind Connect twenty twenty three keynote. Yeah. That has 352,000 views. And then the last video before that is two years ago. What's new in Tailwind three point one?
Justin Jackson:Hundred and twenty two thousand views. Like, I think one high leverage experiment you could do is just release more videos.
Adam Wathan:Totally. Yeah. And that's like what I kinda wanna go all in on honestly. Like, I've got so many ideas for content. Like, I think it would be awesome to have like a budget for every month we fly someone in.
Adam Wathan:And I record like pair programming videos with that person. Or we do, like I I mean, I'm I really wanna make it even, like, almost more entertaining than educational. Like Yeah. Steve designed something, and I have to, like, code it without ever opening the browser and, like, see how close I get. You know?
Adam Wathan:Like, I don't know if you like, we were talking about Drumeo, like, Brian. You know, like, Drumeo does all these great like, this person has to, like, make up a drum part to this without ever
Brian Casel:hearing the original song. Is hearing, like, some metal band for the person.
Adam Wathan:I kinda just wanna do, like, Drumeo for front end development. You know? That idea. And That sounds have have that be, like, the the top of the funnel for like pure educational stuff that we could sell. Because we are gonna do like a paid tailwind course, think, this summer.
Adam Wathan:Because that seems like another thing that we could finally sell to like the existing 20,000 people who bought tailwind UI who have no other way to buy anything else from us.
Brian Casel:The other mindset thing that I I I wanna share with you, Adam, I think that it just comes back to like this like enjoyment factor of of what you do every day. And and I think that this again, I I do think that it makes a lot of sense to go in this like YouTube direction, but I actually don't think you should think so much about this as like a business model or a business plan. Yeah. I think it should just be like create good shit.
Justin Jackson:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:And and and and keep changing it up. Like keep like that's that's it. That's all it needs to be. Eventually, it'll turn into something. You don't even know what it what it's gonna be a year from now.
Brian Casel:You know?
Adam Wathan:For sure. That I mean, that's what I miss honestly is like there was like a the early days of all this stuff was just like me scratching my own itch and just being so excited about it that I couldn't not talk about it on the Internet,
Brian Casel:you know.
Adam Wathan:And that was just kind of like the and I've lost that for sure ever since I've, like, been delegating so much work instead of doing it myself. But I also, like, don't know, like, making video content, you need I I need to have something that drives that too. Like, that's like another sort of, like, impostery sort of feeling that I do with a lot. It's like, I just don't feel like we build real stuff. You know, like, whole business is basically making fake websites.
Adam Wathan:You know?
Brian Casel:You know, I so I have this video editor that I've been working with for for all of 2025 now. And it's been great for me to, like, be able to just record and then pass it to him and he handles the publishing and the editing. Yeah. That's been huge. But one thing was, like, early on, I wanted to build up a backlog of videos.
Brian Casel:Right? So I I gave him, like, four, six weeks worth of videos to roll out. And I actually didn't like that because I didn't I didn't like how the video that's publishing this week, I recorded for six weeks ago. And I was like, I'm not even thinking about that anymore. Like Yeah.
Brian Casel:Maybe I don't even agree with the things I said in that video even just even just six weeks ago.
Adam Wathan:Yeah. Like, I've already thrown that out and rebuilt it a different way now or whatever.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Exactly. Like, I I actually did some some Tailwind videos and like they were about Tailwind three, like a month before Tailwind four comes out. Then like, you know, and like like I trashed a couple of them. And so like, now I'm like, alright, let's just forget the backlog.
Brian Casel:Whatever I record this week, we're publishing next week. Yeah. You know? Mhmm. And just and and I I think I'm really just trying to focus on like what is interesting to me that I can record today Yeah.
Brian Casel:And get that published next week. And and and like, my only goal is to be consistent and to keep publishing and to grow the channel. And eventually, that can turn into distribution for my products, hopefully. But, like Yeah. Right now, I'm just trying to create.
Justin Jackson:I I do like that idea because I mean, that's generally how like, people always ask me, what's my marketing plan? What's my marketing schedule? What's my publishing schedule? I have none of that. I just generally go with what is driving my curiosity or what's inspiring to me in that moment, which means I publish a lot of stuff that people do not care about.
Justin Jackson:Like and I'm okay with that because I have to get out of my system. Yep. I have to be and I feel good when I get things out. I it does make me feel bad when they don't resonate because I want to be exploring ideas and concepts that have some resonance. Yeah.
Justin Jackson:But it still feels good to publish even when, you know, people don't care about whatever I'm talking about, whether it's business ethics or, you know, why we need to keep working on the RSS standard or whatever. If it fires me up and I gotta get something out about it. And but what I have seen is over my career, the accumulation of all those things. Every year, I'm going to have a hit. And that hit might be just one blog post that got 20,000 views that year.
Justin Jackson:That might be my hit for the year. The accumulation of all those things and just regularly publishing eventually has created traffic, trials, and revenue for the business I'm doing.
Brian Casel:Yeah. There was something you said, Adam, maybe a year over a year ago, maybe it was a tweet or something that really stuck with me. It was like, you don't really know what's going to hit unless you are publishing all the time. Whether it's content or putting products out or putting code out, like like, I'm always surprised at, like, the things that resonate with people. Right?
Brian Casel:Because I like, I'll create a a YouTube video. I'm like, oh, this one's a banger. Like, I I think this is one of my best all year, and it and it plays like shit. And then and then I'll do something along something, like, totally simple or maybe like an like a like a sidebar on a video. People are like, wait, what was that?
Brian Casel:You know? Yeah. That's totally true. Happens all the time. Yeah.
Brian Casel:I think
Justin Jackson:I think this is a thread I wanted to pull from earlier, which is you you said you keep getting kicked in the balls, but that was, like, three things you tried.
Adam Wathan:Four. But yeah.
Justin Jackson:Four things you tried.
Adam Wathan:And it was the last four. If there was one in between, I think I would feel better. But it went from like every idea that I had, like being validated, you know, I'm feeling I I'm smart. I know what I'm doing to then hitting this tipping point where every idea is bad.
Justin Jackson:You know? I mean, I can understand that, but I also think and maybe this is the disadvantage of of having, you know, you hit two or three home runs kind of back to back. And that feeling of being so so high. Yeah. It's it's hard to replicate that.
Justin Jackson:Where, in my career, I've been much more of a line drive guy, line drive, bunt, or strikeout. And that's just like, I've just had this steady
Brian Casel:I always refer to it like that. Like, couple base hits, never a home run.
Justin Jackson:Base hits, whatever. And there's advantages and disadvantages to both. But I think in your case, unlike sports where I I mean, they're similar in the sense that you can really get in your head, You know, if you've struck out the last three three or four times and you go up to bat, you're like, fuck. Like, you're just in your head.
Adam Wathan:Yeah.
Justin Jackson:But the the way business is different is that if you can keep just doing stuff, do stuff, talk about it, publish it, do stuff, talk about it, publish it. It does, you know, it doesn't if you're relentless in trying stuff out, and and maybe you just need to move the bar, which is I tried four things, but we should probably actually be trying 10 things in a year. And if we get a line drive out of that, that's great. The other thing that's different in business, which is the other thread I wanted to pull, is that there's still like some of those things that you tried that you felt failed. You you it's still worth it to come back to those and go, like, if I sent added one email to the sequence three days after that says, why didn't you buy?
Justin Jackson:Yeah. What responses do I get to that? That's a fairly easy low lift thing. And if you get a bunch of replies from people that say, all I I just use ChatGPT for that now. Well, then you've got your answer, and that's interesting and motivating in its own way.
Justin Jackson:But there might be other things you could do even with that email course that would be productive. Like, for example, publishing one video a week where the call to action at the end of every video was sign up for this course, and maybe also tweaking the hard sell in it a little bit more. So
Adam Wathan:I guess in my head, it's like, man, it's done so poorly that it's like, what can I even if I optimize it, is it gonna 10 x? You know? But you never know.
Justin Jackson:I mean, that was the other thread I wanted to pull that we haven't really talked about, which is this idea that there is just a there is a local maximum for a lot of things. Totally, you may you may have just hit, like Jason Cohen talks about this a lot. Like you may have just hit, there's nothing you could do. And this is why I sometimes get frustrated with like, raise your prices. And so you've raised your prices, and it's just stayed the same.
Justin Jackson:It's like, listen, people. You there there's not an unlimited like, the ceiling doesn't go up forever. Sometimes you hit the local maximum, and it doesn't it really doesn't matter what you do. You can tweak as many of these variables as you want.
Adam Wathan:And I think what I believe now is that, like, it doesn't it takes almost zero optimization to hit that local maximum. Like, you know how many, like, terrible websites there are?
Justin Jackson:Yeah. Yeah.
Adam Wathan:That where the product still sells, like or ecommerce websites that take eleven seconds to load and doesn't stop you from buying that pair of shoes or whatever. You know what I mean?
Justin Jackson:Like I think about this all the time because I feel like when transist when we launched Transistor, it was like at this crucial pivotal time, like serial was big. Every editorial in the New York Times was about podcasting. There hadn't been a new podcast hosting platform in years. And it, like, aligned with my audience and everything I'd been building. And in retrospect, I didn't realize how much white space there I I don't is that the right word?
Justin Jackson:How much available market had just been created? And I wish in retrospect, I could go back in time and just double down, like spend as much money as I could to gobble up as much market share as I could, because it literally was like this, and then it expanded. So all of a sudden, there was all of the space to explore. And now it feels like the industry has hit the ceiling. It's hit the maximum.
Justin Jackson:And so now we're just all growing 15% a year.
Brian Casel:But Yeah. Now the benefit of hindsight is like now you actually see what kind of moment you really did launch it.
Justin Jackson:Oh, yeah. Because now it's like, damn, like if we had when when it was the industry was here, but the potential was here, we could have spent all this money to just like gobble up as much of that opportunity as possible before we hit the constraints of the market. And now we're just all in this slow. It's like the garbage disposal in Star Wars. It's like slowly moving out now, you know, but we could have really captured that moment.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I think like coming back to this idea of like, alright, four attempts at something and you feel like they're all failures. But I think at the end of the day, you're still operating within the business that is Tailwind Labs. Like, and that has its own set of realities. So you can't just try anything.
Brian Casel:And and and also the things that you do try, they're they're gonna come with some some, like, baseline realities. It's not like trying totally new products as like a, as a first time founder. You're throwing new ideas at the wall. Like, those, who knows what's gonna hit or not. But like, once you're operating within this certain reality, like, I really think that the idea of an email based drip course just isn't the format that this type of traffic is comfortable buying from.
Brian Casel:There are certain realities like that. I mean, with Clarity Flow, started a Zip message and then I pivoted to coaches because just looking at the current reality on the ground, like these are the customers who resonate the most. And then from that point on, like all the decisions I made in that business and still make today are are built around these assumptions about the coaches market. And and like for better or worse, that's like those are like sort of the constraints that I'm working with it.
Adam Wathan:Yeah. Think that makes sense. Yeah. I think I think I'm starting to feel like the Tailwind plus stuff is like it's not like it's hard to discover. You know what I mean?
Adam Wathan:So like, the problem is not like getting people to see it who are already on the website, who didn't happen to see it in the nav on the website. You know what I mean? So, I mean, that's one thing I've been thinking about. Like, anyone who finds out about the course, they'll find out about Table One Plus in the exact same place they found out about the course. So it's not like we're finding people on Instagram who have never seen the thing and then introducing them to it.
Adam Wathan:We're just pitching it to people who've probably already seen it, which I I think is probably a big part of it. Whereas doing like the YouTube thing or something or even like we have like a Refactoring UI ad in the side of the Tailwind docs. Right? And when we put that there, it doubled sales of Refactoring UI.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Adam Wathan:And so now Refactoring UI, which is this book, PDF file Me and Steve released in 02/2018, you know, because of this ad on the side of the Tailwind docs. And that works because people on Tailwind docs haven't seen that site. But the course is just pitching people who are already in the place where they would have already discovered it. You know? Yeah.
Adam Wathan:So I I guess that the thing is I can I can look back at any of these things and rationalize, like, why they they didn't work? It still stings to feel like why didn't I know that before? You know? I still I'm still stupid because I should have known that in the first place.
Justin Jackson:Well, that's not no. No. That's not true though. Because you you you know intuitively that you gotta try some stuff, And it's in in the process of being in motion that all the good stuff in your life has ever happened. Like, you're really tailwind is a result of you failing at SaaS.
Adam Wathan:Because you tried
Justin Jackson:Yeah, dude. Because you tried to build a SaaS, and it that that was a failure. You were like, you failed at that attempt. But you ended up creating one of the most valuable open source brands that has ever existed. Mhmm.
Justin Jackson:You've you you completely if if you look at everyone who came before you, there was, you know, other paid UI frameworks. There was Bootstrap. You didn't just, like, leapfrog over Bootstrap in terms of it being a business and a brand and impact. Like, you you you are way, way further than Bootstrap. Like, they if anything, the Bootstrap guy should be pissed.
Justin Jackson:You know? Like, they had the opportunity. And Yeah. What you created is so much greater, you know? And very few people can you you know, you had this fortunate you think you saw what Taylor had done with Laravel, and you could kind of emulate some of that.
Justin Jackson:You and Taylor and Caleb, there's a small group that has done what you've done with open source.
Brian Casel:I I hear what you're saying, Adam, though, about, like, how come you you didn't, like, you know, predict that
Adam Wathan:this was Yeah.
Brian Casel:Yeah. How come I didn't see the the data before the data happened? Right?
Adam Wathan:I mean Yeah. Yeah.
Brian Casel:But you can't think that way. I mean, I I've tried probably three or four different pricing experiments just in the last twelve months on Clarity Flow. Switching from free to free trial to no trial to increasing the price to lowering the price again. And each time I learned why it didn't work. And in my case, I have much lower volume, so it takes multiple months of just waiting and seeing before I
Adam Wathan:can
Brian Casel:draw a real conclusion. Like, the price increase, maybe six, eight months ago, I increased the price and I got rid of the trial. So people pay on day one. No free trial.
Adam Wathan:Yep. Yep.
Brian Casel:And that worked. That seemed to work for like three or four months. Like, revenue went up and it was great. Then I started to realize in month five and six, like, damn, the churn rate from this cohort is too high.
Justin Jackson:It's higher. Mhmm.
Brian Casel:And then it started to normalize. It's like, well, I should have expected that.
Justin Jackson:I Yeah. But at the same But you
Brian Casel:know what? The real The mindset is like, I had to test it, so now I know. Like, I had a hypothesis. I now I have real data behind it, and now I know.
Adam Wathan:Yeah. I think the other thing is like, I think historically, I've I've underestimated the impact of things that I thought were good ideas. Know, like when we're factoring UI, when me and Steve were gonna launch that, I thought it was gonna do pretty well. But, like, when we turned on the website at two in the morning the night before and didn't tell anybody and just, like, woke up the next day without even launching it to $40,000 in sales from people who had just been refreshing the website, I was like, what the hell? Yeah.
Adam Wathan:You know, like, I I never would have anticipated that. It was the same with Tailwind UI. Like, didn't think Tailwind UI would do better than refactoring UI. I I that as like a product me and Steve built and finished and then found something new to do. But it's turned into like a company with people maintaining it for five years.
Justin Jackson:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:I do think like you have reached some like, as as huge as your footprint is today, the word saturation just keeps rattling around my mind in in the in the tailwind world. And I just see it anecdotally, like day to day, like I because I I get a lot of feedback from developers who are looking at my instrumental prop instrumental components thing. They're filling out a survey, and my thing uses Tailwind. So, like, there's a there's still a portion of people who like, Tailwind is totally known now. Everybody knows what Tailwind is.
Justin Jackson:Yeah.
Brian Casel:And they've seen it. And I I think probably the majority of developers these days are choosing to use it, or they're comfortable using it. And there's still like a a portion that is just like, nah, not for me, or I never got into it. But I but they know what it is.
Adam Wathan:And I'm unlikely to win those people over. Like now, like our revenue is sort of like throttled by like the fucking population growth of the planet. You know mean? Yes.
Justin Jackson:It's
Brian Casel:Yeah. But I I do think that in in front end land, especially in CSS land, there is not there's just not enough content or educational material out there, in my opinion. Like, yes, you can learn the fundamentals of CSS. Anyone can learn that. And there's plenty of places to do that.
Brian Casel:But I feel like it's Unlike unlike things like Laravel and Rails and React and JavaScript, there are so many resources for like, this is the way to build with these tools. Yeah. Or these are the design patterns. There are so many resources for that. But I still think that most developers struggle with designing in the browser with CSS and Tailwind.
Brian Casel:Like Mhmm. You know, and and I I feel like that's that's always been my strength as a as a product designer. But like most people I meet, they hate dealing with any kind of CSS no matter what they're using for it. Like, and I and I that's why I think like a YouTube channel from the makers of Tailwind, it makes a lot of sense to me.
Adam Wathan:I'm excited about it. I think there's a lot of opportunity there. I think, like, the bigger thing that I sort of struggle with there that I'm trying to come to terms with is just feeling like it's almost like a step backwards in terms of, like, climbing that ladder, you know, of the types of business, you know, I should be running. It's hard not to feel like, okay. Well, like, I failed to try to make, like, a real product, so I'm just gonna go back to being a course boy, you know, as Peter levels would say.
Brian Casel:I kinda think that it's cycling back. And we talked about this, I think, on the first episode, like, is is the SaaS opportunity, has it passed? I I don't think it's passed. Of course, you could still build a great SaaS business today. Mhmm.
Brian Casel:But I do think it's a lot harder. And I think that the growth of YouTube again, of course, YouTube is not new, but I feel like it's having this resurgence.
Adam Wathan:I agree. Yeah. I feel like it's it's kind of it's hard to explain it because, yeah, it is like ancient. You know what I mean? But it's sort of become something different in the last few years, it feels like.
Brian Casel:Like, I'm still building SaaS products. That's like what I that's like my craft every day. Yeah. But I'm less interested in running a SaaS company this year as I was in previous years. I'm more interested in investing in YouTube and showing my craft on you.
Brian Casel:Like the the work that I'm doing on SaaS is mostly for material for for YouTube at the moment. Yeah. Sure. That's sort of like the the the mindset that I have. I am building, like, real products for for real markets.
Brian Casel:But, like, I honestly, like, I'm not I'm not going into it expecting huge SaaS success. I'm more thinking about, like, let try to grow the YouTube channel.
Adam Wathan:Yeah. I'm trying to do the same thing. I'm trying to sorta, like I wanna build real things because I feel like without the constraints of something being real, like, it the outcome is just different. You know? Like, if if you can just say, like, well, yeah, this works in Chrome, but I don't care if it works in Firefox Mhmm.
Adam Wathan:Because I'm just doing something for fun Yeah. Then you you don't you're not forced to solve certain problems, and I think there's a lot of interesting stuff there. I'm trying to tell myself that, like, I should build real tools and put them on the Internet as real products, but almost, like, don't even market them. Don't attempt to grow them. Mhmm.
Adam Wathan:But just do them for real just so they're real and still, like you're saying, Brian, kind of with the goal of being like the goal here is to is to produce this, like, side content, you know, that comes out of it by doing whatever. Because if I'm just, like, trying to sit around thinking what random video can I make today, I don't think that's a good place to be either?
Justin Jackson:The one thing about doing YouTube and live streaming is for me, and I think for both of you, those activities have cultivated inspiration and these collisions that have created good things in my life. And, you know, like, Tailwind came out of you doing live streams and people going, I I don't give a shit about this SaaS you're building, but what's this CSS that you're doing? And creating the ground, the the fertile ground for those kind of opportunities to come to to happen is something I think about all the time. It's like, is it worth like, I've been podcasting forever. Is it worth doing another show?
Justin Jackson:Well, yeah. If it results in somebody calling me up and saying, hey, like, I thought about this, or have you ever thought about this? Is it worth going to a conference anymore? I've been to dozens of conferences. Well, it's worth it if I, you know, have one of these collisions in the hallway
Adam Wathan:Yeah. Totally.
Justin Jackson:Or meet somebody or whatever. And I think it does change as you get older. Like, I've said this a few times. You know, I hired this college kid to build a Laravel app over the summer. And working with somebody younger than me was so inspirational that I'd like to make that a regular habit.
Justin Jackson:Like if I can hire a college student every summer, you know, like the median age or the average age of a transistor employee is like 40 or something. That's too fucking old. Like, we're like, we're just not getting the same kind of inspiration even for me.
Brian Casel:Had a great post the other day about Apple. Like, their whole board is, like, over the age
Justin Jackson:of 60.
Brian Casel:Yes. And, like, you can start to see it in some of their
Justin Jackson:products. Too old. You know? It's like, I'm at the point where I don't allow myself to sometimes have creative ideas because I just wanna sleep through the night.
Adam Wathan:Totally. You're
Justin Jackson:right. So so it's like it's like I'm, like, turning that part of my brain off. Like, no. No. No.
Justin Jackson:I can't stay up all night. I gotta I gotta sleep.
Brian Casel:That freaks me out a lot where it's like, I'll it'd be late in the day or late at night, and I'm just, like, trying to grind to keep to keep shipping more at the end of the day. And I think that I'm awake, and I think that I'm sitting here coding. Yeah. And then I I finally go to bed. I wake up the next morning, and like in the first five minutes of the morning, I have like an idea that that is so far and away better than what I was doing last night.
Adam Wathan:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:And it's like, was I drunk yesterday?
Justin Jackson:Like, that's
Brian Casel:that's kinda how I feel, like, when I wake up and try and see work that I did, like, late night. It's like, I must have been drunk or something.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. This is I think my point is that there's other path like, some of the old pathways still work for us, I think, like live streaming, making videos, publishing articles, publishing podcasts, all of that stuff has increased increased my surface area for luck and has paid incredible dividends, I think it's still worth doing that stuff. But I'm also acknowledging I'm getting older. And the new pathways that are I've I'm starting to discover that are exciting for me are working with younger people. Like, I think a lot of our teams have people that are way too old, and we need to be working with younger people.
Justin Jackson:Going to different conferences. And some of this has to do with my kids getting older. Like, I went to this game this indie game expo. Super inspiring for me. I'm just like talking to every indie game developer, like, how does this market work?
Justin Jackson:How do you get traction? What does it look like for you? Is this thing profitable? Like, it it was inspiring for me to be in a totally different world. And I think you should go to some music industry events.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. I think you should go I think if you got really into architecture, you should go and check out all of the architecture software. There's all of these other places. Like, my wife's a designer and she uses Revit. Go and download Revit.
Justin Jackson:It's an Autodesk software. Go download Revit and try to use it. There is so much opportunity in software. Me
Adam Wathan:and Steve are both renovating our houses right now and trying to find, like, software to do, like, three d mock ups and stuff. And we both were like, oh, man. I wish I was smart enough to build, like, a better version of this because
Justin Jackson:it looks really hard. But that's the kind of challenge that might be perfect for you. I I think about Caleb at Panic a lot. So talk about local maximum. Caleb makes Yeah.
Justin Jackson:Mac desktop apps. FTP software is their number one seller. Like, they've reached their local maximum ages ago. Yeah. But they took that money.
Brian Casel:Coda used to be the thing. And it just got
Justin Jackson:They took that money and they still make sales or whatever. They took that money. And now they're making games. They're making like, they've got a game
Adam Wathan:studio. They're
Justin Jackson:making little hardware things.
Brian Casel:The the the what is it? The the play date? The play date?
Adam Wathan:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Brian Casel:That's right.
Justin Jackson:I think there's some models with other people that have done gone before us here as well that we can follow that could be inspiring.
Brian Casel:I am inspired by stuff like that. I was so psyched to see Panic just taking a complete left turn into, like, gaming hardware after after creating software. You know, another guy I for years, I've been following is is Josh Pigford. You know? I mean Yeah.
Brian Casel:Long time SaaS entrepreneur. But now, like, he's, you know, he he's got, a three d print toy store, you know. Yeah.
Adam Wathan:He's stuck to, like,
Brian Casel:off the wall.
Adam Wathan:He's unmatched to just, like, never being bored. You know? Yeah.
Brian Casel:Yeah. It's just like the the the creativity. I mean, thought I I think that I have a lot of projects that where I'm context switching. I don't I don't know how someone like that operates day to day.
Justin Jackson:But Yeah. And there is still opportunities in Tailwind land. Like, an adjacent market, I think you haven't even touched is marketers. Mhmm. And I'm even looking at your page, like, you've got you've got two little calls to action for plus.
Justin Jackson:Like, there's this little thing up in this on the right. And then way down at the bottom, you have a button for section and a button for plus.
Adam Wathan:Well, if you're in the docs and you click templates in the sidebar or components in the sidebar, if you if you do command k and you type in nav bar, you know, you're gonna end up until a plus. There's lots of little little secret entries.
Justin Jackson:I think if you were inclined and now if you if it doesn't pump you up, then that's your answer. But it would be interesting. The a huge place where web dev intersects with another market is marketing. People are building marketing websites with you guys as components. And what's interesting is a marketer will look at a page like your homepage, and they'll go, I would probably add five times more buttons to buy, like calls to action.
Adam Wathan:Sure.
Justin Jackson:Every time I add more buttons to home pages, my I get more clicks and I get more people buying. And I would put some ugly buttons in there. Like, all these things that Steve's gonna hate, I would personally love that content.
Adam Wathan:Yeah.
Justin Jackson:Now, if you guys aren't into it, then you shouldn't pursue it. But there are these adjacent, I think, markets that are massive. And for sure, there's a big percentage of your user base that are marketers. I think that's another way to get inspiration is just to send an email with a survey to all your customers and say, who the hell are you? And why are you here?
Justin Jackson:And what are you using this for? And just seeing all of the different use cases. And, you know, you might be surprised that maybe there's 15% of people buying Tailwind UI that are marketers. That's interesting.
Adam Wathan:I think that's true. But then I come back to what Brian was saying, which feels right for me, which is like, I need to build something that's like solving a problem that I have and just hope that enough other people give a shit about it. Yeah. Because
Brian Casel:I I think even that is like maybe two steps down the line that you shouldn't even shouldn't even be thinking about. I, to me, I I just love the idea of, like, YouTube creating content, getting Adam out there more on a regular basis, and just follow they call them creators for a reason. Like, just create like, just create content, something that you, like, I'm sure you already have a list of 50 ideas that would that you think are interesting ideas to put out on the Internet. You know?
Adam Wathan:Yeah. Maybe. Like I don't know. I struggle with that, man. Like, again, I I building out building out this physical studio is, like, the first idea I've had in several years that I'm, like, actually excited about.
Adam Wathan:Like, I you know, Justin, you were saying, like, you kinda, like, have to write about stuff even if you don't think other people are gonna care because you just gotta get it out of your system. Like Yeah. And that you don't like to sort of, like, have a plan or a schedule. Like, for the last several years, I feel like the exact opposite. I feel like unless I, like, sit down with, like, my time block planner in the morning and, like, pick something to fucking do this morning, Adam, because otherwise, you're just gonna watch YouTube videos and do nothing.
Adam Wathan:And I mean, I'm the same way, but
Justin Jackson:I just know I know every day I create something, I feel better at the end of the day. And so I just have to follow what's driving me. And if that's like to think about whatever whatever topic it is that people don't some people don't give a shit about. But if I care about it and I make something about it, I feel better.
Brian Casel:I'll tell you something that I've struggled with this year with with videos, and I'm I'm starting to get over it, I think, is this impostor syndrome. Like, I'm it's it I'm not new to creating content and putting myself out there even on video. I'm I'm comfortable with that. What I've never really been comfortable with is me showing my code or talking about code on video. Like, huge level of impostor syndrome for me.
Brian Casel:Because I'm constantly second guessing, like And I already get it in my comments. Like, people picking apart, line you said, that's wrong. Like, you Yeah. That's you know? Or there's a better way to do this or that.
Brian Casel:Like, I know I'm I'm sure there is, you know? But I also get comments now from people saying, like, thank you for explaining it in the way that you explained it because you're speaking to me. Like, I I'm trying to speak to myself from a few years ago. You know? And I'm and I'm trying to speak to the person who's just trying to ship a product.
Brian Casel:Just trying to design and build and ship a product as a solo bootstrapped person, right? Yeah. I'm not trying to teach the person how to go get an engineering job at Google, you know? Yeah. So just remembering that, like, I have my voice and my point of view.
Brian Casel:Adam, you you were saying earlier, like, sharing the level of detail and the level of just perfection that you that you put into everything that you craft. Like, that has to come through, you know. Like, it it it's so business is so personal and especially a creator led business is extremely personal. There's always get. And I think actually that, like, YouTube's algorithm is even smarter than we than we even think.
Brian Casel:Like, it's going to match up people who just vibe with your level. You know? Yeah.
Justin Jackson:I think I think the opportunity for both of you as well is to to lean into like, you if you think about the videos that really have a hook, they're just constantly retelling their story in one line. So hi. I'm Brian. I'm a designer turned developer, and I'm working on this. I'm gonna show you something.
Justin Jackson:There's something authentic about that. There's also something about that that just authentically sorry, honestly tells people where you're at. Like, I haven't been a developer for twenty years. I'm a designer turned developer, And this is what I'm working on. For Adam to say, hey, I'm the creator of Tailwind, which is now used by 3,000,000,000 websites worldwide and companies like this.
Justin Jackson:Like, having a tagline at the beginning of every one of your videos that can in turn also become great short form videos so that people see your guys' stuff and go, oh, this is a designer turned developer. I'm interested in this. Or holy shit, that's the creator of Tailwind. I wanna watch this. And you continue to reassert your identity and your story.
Justin Jackson:You just repeat it all the time. Like, this is who I am. This is who I am. This is who I am. I think there's something special about that hook that can be helpful.
Justin Jackson:I like
Brian Casel:that. I also think that there could be I think there's a big opportunity for behind the scenes with Tailwind. There's so much of of under the hood on Tailwind that I had no idea how that magic works. And and, you know, I think about this a lot. I have no idea what it looks like on the inside of your team.
Brian Casel:But, like, how do you actually build something like Tailwind? And how do you even ship version four of Tailwind? You know? And and all the changes that came in version four. So like, seeing some videos of like, behind the scenes, maybe even like some like, this week we're we're thinking about this direction.
Brian Casel:And then a month later, like, we decided to go that direction. Like, I think I think just that's just interesting content. But also as a person who uses Tailwind every day, I think that would really help me and others. Like, I know a lot about Tailwind just from the docs and from using it every day. Yeah.
Brian Casel:But there are things that like, you know, certain habits and different use cases where I've started to learn, like, it's better to do it this way rather than that way. It'd be even better if I knew why, like the technical underpinning of like why it's
Adam Wathan:better to
Brian Casel:do it this way. Yeah. And that kind of stuff can come straight out of your GitHub issues. Find a popular GitHub issue. I'm sure there's 10 videos that come out of that.
Brian Casel:You know?
Justin Jackson:Yep. Yeah. I think this is like what like Brad said, this is so personal. And I think leaning into your characteristics, like, I think another thing I've missed from your content, Adam, is you were always the guy that was if you were talking to someone, like, if you were doing an interview with anybody, you would, like, challenge people and dig into things in a way that I'd never seen. Like, there's this, like, lack of bullshit.
Justin Jackson:Like, let's just throw out all pretense here. I'm building this thing. And they would say, well, they would give you some, you know, rote answer. And you'd be like, but that's not a satisfying answer. Like, what is going on here?
Justin Jackson:I loved that content of, you know, every every once in a while do a live stream with someone that doesn't agree with you or that you don't agree with. There's some nice tension in that that and you used to do this all the time. You you'd read somebody's tweet, and you'd be like, I'm gonna reach out to that person and get to the bottom of this because Yeah. I have to satisfy that. I I
Brian Casel:wanna see a series of videos of, like, Adam building a design in talent versus somebody building it with a non talent approach.
Adam Wathan:Dude, I've wanted to do that for so long at, like, a conference, like, a fucking front end death match.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Adam Wathan:You know? Where it would be so fun.
Justin Jackson:That would
Brian Casel:be great.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. This did feel like a little bit like talking at the bar at a conference. I I feel like we got we got into it.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah. I like this one.
Adam Wathan:Yeah. Yeah. It's good.
Comments and Discussion