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Justin sits down with Daniel Coulbourne and John Drexler (the founders of Thunk agency) to workshop the launch of their first SaaS product, Tidy. Built from years of running their own agency, Tidy consolidates time tracking, invoicing, scheduling, and client agreements into one opinionated tool built specifically for hourly-billing agencies. This episode is a live marketing strategy session: positioning, messaging, content, LLM discoverability, influencer partnerships, launch tactics, and landing page feedback.
Key Takeaways
Key Takeaways
- Sell the philosophy, not just the software. Tidy's real product is an opinionated system for running an agency; the software is how you implement it. Lead with conviction. They should own the term "Build a Zero-Risk Agency."
- LLM discoverability is the new SEO. Building a wide, authentic web footprint across Reddit, LinkedIn, YouTube, review sites, and the founder's personal accounts is the strategy for a new product launch.
- The anticipation phase is your most powerful marketing window. Don't wait until launch day to tell people what you're building. A waiting list and a drip of updates are worth more than the launch itself.
- Human faces convert. Nothing Justin has tested beats having real people (founders, team members, customers) visible on your homepage.
- Feature copy should come from lived experience. Rewrite every feature description as a story about a problem you've actually faced. "We built this because we got burned" is more persuasive than "track your hours."
Links
- Thunk
- Tidy
- Transistor.fm
- Basecamp homepage
- SparkToro (referenced for "zero click marketing" concept)
Creators and Guests
What is Marketing for Developers 2026?
A podcast for people building software products in the age of AI. Hosted by Justin Jackson.
Yeah. I'm I'm intrigued because you said that you guys have you talked about this this idea that you have or this thing that you're could we is that Yes. I know you guys don't edit, so I I don't wanna say too much.
John Rudolph Drexler:Well, we can we can edit too. I I'll also just say welcome to the show. And for anyone who doesn't already, you you don't have to shill. Everyone who is smart, hosts their podcast on transistor.fm and Justin Jackson made
Justin Jackson:it happen. Clips I'm gonna I'm gonna grab from this already.
John Rudolph Drexler:So we'll shill on your behalf. Happy to have you here and thanks for making a platform that we use.
Justin Jackson:Oh, yeah. I I love listening to your show. Your guys' show I often listen to your show on my way home from the office. It's like this is my I I have different vibes for different times a day, know, going down to the office is a different vibe. This is a going home.
Justin Jackson:I'm climbing up the hill. I'm listening to you two talk about the business and yeah. I'm a big fan.
John Rudolph Drexler:Thanks, man. I really appreciate Yeah.
Daniel Coulbourne:So I I don't know if you to what extent you're aware of sort of, like, Kapow, which has now become Tidy, which is, like, has been our sort of internal time tracking, invoicing, scheduling agreements system. Right?
Justin Jackson:Like Okay.
Daniel Coulbourne:Agency management software of a of a sort. Right?
Justin Jackson:Yeah. I've heard you talking about it and I remember some of these names. And then Tidy you you were talking about Tidy in your last episode, I think.
Daniel Coulbourne:Yeah. So Tidy's we just rebranded Kapow to Tidy because Kapow, we felt like didn't say anything about what the app was. I
John Rudolph Drexler:just sent you the the the URL if you wanna glance at it.
Justin Jackson:Okay. Okay. Let me take a look here. Tidy up.
Daniel Coulbourne:Some some live landing page feedback. Yeah. Exactly.
Justin Jackson:I mean I like Tidy as a brand name. I think that is yes. Having something that's kind of descriptive is is nice. You're bringing everything in instead of juggling multiple tools, you're just gonna do everything in one tool. This is similar to the positioning that Basecamp has.
Justin Jackson:It has that one screen where it has like here's all of the things. Mhmm. And it's like you could use all of this and manage all this, Slack and everything else. Or you could manage this. And, you know, that that's that's one of the things that they use as a lever to get people to sign up.
Daniel Coulbourne:Which I think is like a very, like, SMB desire. Right? Like, enterprise actually has no interest in that proposition. Right?
Justin Jackson:Yes.
Daniel Coulbourne:But, like, small business owners are like, oh dude, I'm paying for so many things. I would love to just pay for one of them. Yeah. Like we feel that all the time. Mhmm.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. Here's here's the other key that I think might be if you wanna get right into it.
Daniel Coulbourne:Please do.
Justin Jackson:I think the big pull for a lot of people signing up for Basecamp is they are buying into the Basecamp way. The Basecamp method or in a less charitable way, the Base Camp Cult. Mhmm. And I felt this too. You know, sometimes I'm just like, man, I wonder if our tea would operate better if we just did things the Base Camp way.
Justin Jackson:Mhmm. Like, you're really signing up for a philosophy and a system that is opinionated and it's all through the product. I don't maybe not everyone can pull that off, but I think there's something about that, especially in this undifferentiated vibe coded apps marketplace where there's gonna be tons of things like this. Like Tidy where it's like hey pull everything together in one place. We've been an agency.
Justin Jackson:My guess is there's other agencies doing this at the same time.
Daniel Coulbourne:I'm sure this has been built a thousand times, yes.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. And what differentiates it I think is you're giving people more than the software which is you're giving them hope. It's like give me a system that's been battle tested, and when I'm using your software, I'm not just using your UI or your way of doing things. No, I am using your way of doing things. That's what I'm signing up for.
Justin Jackson:You've got a system, a methodology, a philosophy that seems to be better than what I'm doing right now. And when I sign up for Basecamp, I'm not just signing up for this project management software that's generic. I'm signing up for a a different way of doing things, a different way of managing projects.
Daniel Coulbourne:Yeah. Yeah. I I think there's, like, something like, Tidy is, like, very opinionated, I would say. Mhmm. Like, there are just, like, built in assumptions about how you're gonna run your business that Yeah.
Daniel Coulbourne:You could work around them, I guess, if you wanted to. But, you know, like, we assume that you're selling hours. Yep. And like that's there's we don't have like a you could make an invoice that just had like a bespoke line item for like a project thing or whatever, but like everything's sort of built around the assumption that you're gonna sell hours And
John Rudolph Drexler:then Yeah.
Daniel Coulbourne:You're gonna pay people by the hour, and you're gonna get paid by the hour.
John Rudolph Drexler:And that those are downstream of assignments of like Right. Hey, worker, you ought to do this this week. You know? And and then the hours are are downstream of that.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. The nice thing about it is it can be very differentiating. So, like, when I heard what you just said, part of me is like you're already putting a stake in the sand when it comes to, like, know, there's value based billing and outcome based billing. And you could just say, you know what? We all know that's bullshit.
Justin Jackson:Or we all we all know that most of us are charging for hours. We are unrepentant about the fact that we're charging for hours. Here's the best way to charge for hours in this environment. Right?
Daniel Coulbourne:Right. And like when you eventually admit to yourself that you are selling hours. Yes. Come on back to TV.
Justin Jackson:Right. And even like it gives you so much opportunity for content that actually gets distribution. So like
Daniel Coulbourne:Because you can have a little bit of a controversial take.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. I mean you could just say you know the whatever the mistake and folly of outcome based billing. Then you just write a post about here's the history of it, here's what kind of was driving it. But in actual practice, it turns out that that's just kind of silly to base your quotes and your billing on that and you're actually losing a lot of business and it just kind of writes itself and it would do well on YouTube as well. And right now, I don't know if you guys have paid attention of what's going on in the marketing world, but for Transistor, trial sign ups that we're getting from LLMs has increased dramatically.
Justin Jackson:Like, it was like maybe 15% a year ago. I would peg it now at like at least 50%, maybe
John Rudolph Drexler:That's crazy.
Justin Jackson:And I think a lot of the lift we've had is coming from LLMs. If you look at the ranking factors right now for what they can tell is getting sourced by different LLMs, it is Reddit, Quora, LinkedIn, YouTube, all the review sites, Facebook groups, and the advantage of being kind of you know, like every day I basically kind of show up and just push the ball forward in these different channels for years has now translated to the fact that we get consistently recommended in these non deterministic models. But most of the time, we're getting recommended in the top three or the top five or whatever. Super interesting. What's interesting about the LLM stuff is that if think about the kind of queries that people would be asking about now.
Justin Jackson:It's like, you might ask Google this, but now in ChatGPT or Claude, it makes so much more sense. Like, hey, I've been trying to run this agency for three years. I really bought into this outcome based billing model, but none of my clients wanna use it. Is there anything out there that can help me? And it's gonna go out and look for what are all of the opinionated takes about outcome based billing.
John Rudolph Drexler:Right.
Justin Jackson:And if you've published something under that brand, but also a personal brand, so like founders showing up and actually doing a lot of this work themselves under their personal accounts is another kind of hack. If you've shown up so if Daniel writes that blog post and he publishes it under his own name, he publishes it on Twitter, he publishes it on LinkedIn, he publishes it, he submits it to Hacker News, he submits it in some conversations tactfully on Reddit, it's gonna start ranking because what the search engines like Google and Bing are looking for, but also what the LLMs are looking for is, is this a real entity? Like, does it have a big footprint across the web? And then part of that is, does it have a founder that's public? Because a sketchy entity is like something that just has a website and they're just publishing blog posts and there's no founders, no about page, no people connected with it.
Justin Jackson:And increasingly, Google especially is looking at entities that have a very narrow footprint and are saying, This doesn't seem that trustworthy. It seems fake. But if you have a profile, both as a brand and as a team, and as individuals across the web that reference each other and bring up topics that might show up when someone's talking to an what you might ask a ChatGPT for podcast hosting is very different than what you might ask Google. Like in the past, was like best podcast hosting, but now people are like, hey, I really don't like what Spotify is doing, and I really want a host that's independent, allows me to have multiple shows, and maybe is somewhat Canadian. Well,
Daniel Coulbourne:Vaguely Canadian. Don't you put keywords in our transcripts?
Justin Jackson:The answer my friends is transistor.fm. And podcasts are a big part of this too. Yeah, I think launching a new brand right now is gonna get a lot more competitive. And what I would be thinking about is this footprint idea, like how can we have a wide footprint across the web that makes Tidy look like a real product with real reviews on Trustpilot and G2 and all that, with real founders, real team members, and then anything that differentiates it, you're just frequently talking about on podcasts and on YouTube and on blog posts and all that. And the cool thing is you guys already have the podcast, and so you can talk about it here, like what makes Tidy unique, and then you can bring that over, publish a blog post on it, and then you've got enough of the assets, like YouTube video, audio podcast with transcript, blog post, and now you can start getting it across the web.
Justin Jackson:Hacker News, Reddit, LinkedIn, etcetera. And that's what kinda builds reputation both for LLMs and Google and Bing.
John Rudolph Drexler:Yeah. That's super interesting and informative. It's it's it is really interesting also just that the LLMs are depending on these like sources of trust in order to figure out like what is not vibe coded. Yes. Fascinating.
Justin Jackson:But there like I just did a interview with Lars Lofgren who's a frequent speaker at MicroConf, widely known as a very good marketer, and also has dipped into kind of the the gray hat, black hat world of SEO. And one thing he's saying right now is that this is kind of like the Wild West of Google when it first started, and you could rank for keywords by just doing this, this, this, and this. The LLMs are kind of like that right now because they're just sucking up data and now there's a recency bias. And so, his joke is that if you wanted to start ranking in LLM queries, which are difficult to track because they're so non deterministic, he said basically I would start posting on Facebook groups, and I would start my own Facebook group, because now a lot of them are sucking in Facebook groups. Reddit for sure, and then I would get a bunch of reviews on Trustpilot and G2, and then just set up my brand everywhere else.
Justin Jackson:He's like, it's surprising how fast these LLMs pick up this stuff. Like, it is super quick. And there's a lawsuit going on right now where I can't remember if it was Reddit that was suing, but basically, what they figured out is they were wondering they had some honey pots out there to be like, we are not allowing any of the LLMs to scrape this content on Reddit. But what Claude or somebody was doing was scraping the homepage of Google, looking for these things that got getting sourced from Reddit and then just ingesting that. That's really So they are hungry monsters.
Justin Jackson:But I think the advantage for new products right now is there is this kind of time, while it's the Wild West, things haven't settled down, to start building this footprint and know getting some of this traffic.
Daniel Coulbourne:Yeah.
John Rudolph Drexler:Yeah, I've seen several people making like Instagram reels and stuff about gaming this right now. Where they were just like, and I can't, it's hard to tell how real anything is. But hearing you say that makes me wonder if they're a lot more real than I thought they were initially. But there was a guy talking about like just setting up his website in a way that was like, he wrote like a fake book called like the best SEO book or something. You know?
John Rudolph Drexler:And like and quickly, he's like this ranks horribly in page ranks, but you can like get Gemini to say that this is the best book about SEO. You know?
Justin Jackson:Yes. Yeah. I think for the ethics driven founder, really what you're doing is you're just expanding your scope of what you might have done before. So before maybe you just wanted to have a really good website where you're ranking for keywords with blog posts. That playbook is done.
Justin Jackson:You still wanna do that but you just need to widen your scope.
John Rudolph Drexler:And
Justin Jackson:the reason it's helpful for customers is they're trying the reason Google cares about this, what is the reputation of this brand and these founders, is they're trying to figure out if this is a scam, if this is a legit product, etcetera. And so yes. There are people that are buying fake Trustpilot reviews and all those things. I wouldn't recommend any of that. I would just say be kind of consistently diligent at doing this stuff.
Daniel Coulbourne:Like putting the real things out there.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. Putting the real things out there and just you can add it into your for example, your onboarding emails. So you give them an onboarding email, welcome to the product, thanks, etcetera. Two weeks later, if they have signed up for a paid plan, just say, Thanks so much for signing up for a paid plan. We're a small independent team.
Justin Jackson:One of the big ways other people find us is reviews on Trustpilot. If you could leave us an honest review right now, we would really appreciate it.
John Rudolph Drexler:Yeah.
Justin Jackson:So, yeah. It's just kinda having this new hat on where you're just looking for opportunities and always driving this forward. Like, hey, we should be getting a couple new reviews every month, and then by the end of twelve months, you've got 10 to 20 reviews on Trustpilot. We should have somebody participating on Reddit. We should have somebody participating in Hacker News.
Justin Jackson:We should have somebody, and again, on my team, no one else wants to do this except for me, so it's me. Somebody on LinkedIn, just building that profile. Other thing that's challenging is I've noticed that these models and search engines are so simplistic, they don't want to encompass the entirety of what makes me an individual. So, I have other interests other than podcasting, and I want to talk about other things. But it is to my benefit to be known as a podcasting person on LinkedIn.
Justin Jackson:Anytime I talk about anything else on LinkedIn, it doesn't do well, first of all. But second of all, I just notice I'm not getting the same kind of engagement and all that other stuff. So, the other challenge I think for founders, especially founders that like to do a lot of things, is if I look up John Drexler, am I going to see Game Guy or am I gonna see Tidy Guy? Right. And where do you wanna build the reputation the most?
Justin Jackson:There's a few questions like that. You might not all need to be that person, but I think in the new world, unless you're gonna spend a lot of money on paid acquisition, you need to have somebody on your team that's an influencer.
John Rudolph Drexler:Yeah. I think that makes sense. And it also I don't know if this checks out, but I have been noticing just what's been happening naturally is like the channel itself has determined what guy I am. Mhmm. That like Yeah.
John Rudolph Drexler:On Instagram, I am game guy. Yeah. And on Twitter, nobody cares about that at all. Yeah. And so like I I have I've kind of like bifurcated, well that's not the right, multi whatever.
John Rudolph Drexler:Yeah. I I've split my personality based on the on the platform in a lot of ways.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. I've done something similar. Yeah. And I like my username on Reddit forever was spanky mustard. And I just made the decision this year to start a new Reddit account, get rid of this account that I've had forever.
Justin Jackson:That's really the perfect Reddit name. I I think it's hilarious. But I started getting referenced in the the podcast industry trades as Justin who is spanky mustard on Reddit.
John Rudolph Drexler:That's so funny.
Justin Jackson:So now I'm the Justin j on
John Rudolph Drexler:That's really funny.
Justin Jackson:On Reddit.
John Rudolph Drexler:Well, do think it makes a lot of sense for Daniel too. I mean, I'm partly doing this because I don't wanna go I mean, I'll I hang out on LinkedIn. I'll I'll post on LinkedIn, but, Yeah.
Daniel Coulbourne:You got LinkedIn.
John Rudolph Drexler:I I hate I hate being on Reddit. And Daniel already is a Facebook sicko, so he's he's hanging out there.
Daniel Coulbourne:I'm in the Facebook groups. Nothing is this one. Still, like, community ones arguing about trash.
John Rudolph Drexler:Yeah. I think it does make sense though for this to be a big part of what you do because Mhmm. You have also before this, you freelance for so long. And so many of the opinions that are in there are actually opinions that I've inherited from you. You know?
John Rudolph Drexler:So it's like, it actually does I think it does make a lot of sense for you to be kind of the Yeah. I mean John's Baptist to this thing.
Daniel Coulbourne:I will say this also. Like, I have, like, not used Instagram in years, really, in, like, a creative way, only in, like, a consumptive way. So I might just start, like, banging out some, like, annoying agency owner reels that what's that guy? Jamie Jamie something. He's the, like, freelancing reels guy.
Daniel Coulbourne:Yeah. And he's, like, got it on lock. And it's all, like, very, like, basic, like, services business stuff. Like, hey. I signed this contract, but I actually don't have resources to do it.
Daniel Coulbourne:What should I do? They're like, easy. Raise your prices. Call in a subcontract. You know?
Daniel Coulbourne:Whatever. Like, that that's, like, his whole bit. You know? But he's like, you know, he's selling a course. He's doing
John Rudolph Drexler:all
Daniel Coulbourne:this Whatever. Yeah. But, like, I do feel like there is, like, an a lane on, like, TikTok and Instagram for, like, people doing agency content. So maybe I should just go do some like basic agency content. And then every once in a while be like, hey, well that And that's why we built a feature in Tidy that like does that, you know?
Justin Jackson:Yeah. And I would also hire those people. Like there's a lot of those influencer people that are happy to sign partnership deals, to do integrations is what they call them. Like I've tried multiple times to be get more traction on YouTube, for example, in the podcasting space. And I had a few things that did well, but there's just a few people that are just killing it on that.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. And you can sign deals with them for to become a partner and and sometimes finding somebody who is gaining track.
Daniel Coulbourne:What's the shape of that deal?
Justin Jackson:It could be different things. So we've done sponsored videos. Mhmm. We've done we've also just had them sponsored a video, but had them just do an honest review of all the platforms. So this video is sponsored by Transistor, but I'm just doing an honest review of all the platforms and they'll review them all.
Justin Jackson:There is sometimes I mean, there's a broad umbrella of these things called under the umbrella of UGC, user generated content. And so there's UGC people that do this full time where they will just make videos on different topics either for your channel or for their own channel or a mix of both. But the the key, I found, is to be searching YouTube and Instagram and TikTok, and whatever is kind of organically getting traction already, I've been trying to reach out to those creators and saying, hey, wondering if we can do some sort of deal. It could be a sponsored video. It could be you just make us a video for our social media accounts every month.
Justin Jackson:It could be a mix of both. And we've had some good success with that. Of all the kind of sponsored content we've done and I've sponsored some folks that have big channels and all that stuff. The best performing like where we actually get customers in the door that say, oh yeah, I saw you on this creator's YouTube. Just looking for what's already organically getting traction and then sponsoring that person, as opposed to sponsoring a newsletter that comes knocking on your door, or even like a popular YouTuber and they do an ad for you in the middle of their video.
Justin Jackson:It's better, I think, to just find the folks that are already getting traction and partner with them.
John Rudolph Drexler:When I was experimenting with I did a little experiment last year with ads for my game. Just so partly just because I was like, I've never really learned this. I would love to just learn everything just to learn and give it a shot. Yeah. And one of the things that was so interesting to learn was that a lot of people were saying the most successful ads right now are you do that, but then you have, you know, whatever is the agreement.
John Rudolph Drexler:Part of the agreement is like we own this video afterwards and we can use Yeah. We can reuse it in ads. And so then I just have an ad that's like the twenty second splashy version of influencer saying isn't transistor so cool? That those are frequently now the best performing ads.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. And I've had sponsored videos that were 5,000 that did not perform very well. And I've had sponsored videos where the creator's rate was $500 a video that did a lot better. So there's a mix of what people are charging out there. And the best, I think, is to find somebody that seems like kinda early on but they're getting traction, sponsor a few pieces of their content, and if it's working, just say, hey, we're gonna do this every month.
Justin Jackson:What's your retainer? And they get some certainty around it. Right? And there can be also And you can also lock
Daniel Coulbourne:in a price on the way up.
Justin Jackson:That's right. You lock in the price. That's right. For the certainty, they'll be loyal to you especially if you found them early on. Those kind of creators are looking for partners.
John Rudolph Drexler:Yeah. I was gonna ask where does Product Hunt fit into this nowadays?
Justin Jackson:Yeah. I think you still wanna launch everywhere. A launch is still worth doing for a couple reasons. One, building up anticipation is actually your most potent phase of marketing because you're building up hype for this thing that is not yet realized. Right?
Justin Jackson:And so, if people are interested in your journey, if people are interested if people are just looking for a solution right now but they can't get it yet, you can get them on a waiting list, you can keep updating them on your progress, you can tell the story behind it, you can be expanding your footprint before you've officially launched, and then when you do a launch, you have this waiting list, whether it's 20 people, 50 people, or 1,000 people who are on your side, who have been following the journey and are waiting for you to do the thing. And then the Product Hunt launch becomes the Adam unit of the launch. It's like, is it really important? No. Is it gonna drive tons and tons of sign ups?
Justin Jackson:No. But it becomes this official milestone and it just also helps to have all of the people who've been following the journey and or beta testing and or early access users show up in one place, help you celebrate the official launch. There's a big splash which tends to have ripple effects over the internet that are sometimes hard to track, so What might happen is you have an early access user that's just been a big fan, they love using it, you finally you're dripping out updates to them, gets to product launch day, they show up and give you a nice testimonial and review, but then they're they also are like, Man, I'm gonna help these guys out. I'm gonna share this on Twitter. And so now, because you have this atomic unit of Product Hunt launch in the same way that having the atomic unit of a Kickstarter launch just gives it some heft.
Justin Jackson:A Kickstarter launch has this it's a vessel, it's a pre existing container in society's brain, and so it's like, Oh, John's doing a Kickstarter launch. I should support that. I should tell people about that. I should spread the news. I should leave a nice comment.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. So I think it's still worth doing. A lot of people say don't do it, but I would launch on Indie Hackers. I would launch everywhere. I would find all of the things and make a big deal about it, get partner with the people on the waiting list and early access users to say, Hey, we need your help.
Justin Jackson:They wanna be a part of it. And then you can also use all of that content for testimonials. So I'll grab comments from Product Hunt, comments from Trustpilot, etc, put them on our homepage. Yeah, so I would absolutely do it. Transistors John and I started working together January 2018.
Justin Jackson:We opened up early access probably March 2018, and then we officially launched the first version on Product Hunt and everywhere else, 08/02/2018. So that whole time, we were just building up a waiting list, generating anticipation like, oh, there's something new coming. There's something new coming from John and Justin, there's something new coming to the podcasting space. They've got some opinions. We were sharing those.
Justin Jackson:I was appearing on podcasts. And it's potent because it's just like anticipating anything. Right? Like, once you see the new Batman movie, it's kinda like a letdown. But the build up to it is probably even more fun.
Justin Jackson:Like, oh, I can't believe you know? Like, if they did if Jim Henson did another Ninja Turtles movie, I the anticipation phase for me would be that would be all of it. I'd be talking about it. I'd be, like, signing up for all the trailers and all the drops and everything. Like, that's the fun part.
Justin Jackson:And then, you know, if I get disappointed once I see the movie, whatever, but the anticipation phase is so important.
John Rudolph Drexler:Yeah. Makes sense. The
Daniel Coulbourne:app We did build a little bit of a list early. I don't know I don't know how big that actually was, our, like, pre launch Kapow list.
John Rudolph Drexler:Yeah. We didn't we I don't know that we ever really, like, properly pushed it out there. So I don't think it's much. Mhmm. Because we it was it was just an application that you couldn't register in for a long for, like, years, basically.
Justin Jackson:Yeah.
John Rudolph Drexler:And we never really pushed it out there. And now it's a thing that it is like, you can pay us and use it right now.
Justin Jackson:Do have people do you have people using it already?
John Rudolph Drexler:Yeah. Yeah. Okay. We have a everybody who is we work with a lot of freelancers. So we had a deal with them, which was just like, if you're a freelancer with us, you can you have a you get grandfathered in.
John Rudolph Drexler:Yeah. And you can just like invoice us through the app. So like they're using it. And then we have a paying user, which is nice. And he immediately hit us with a bunch of complicated problems.
John Rudolph Drexler:You
Justin Jackson:have have one paying user right now?
John Rudolph Drexler:Yeah. Mhmm. Yeah. Do you do when you say launch everywhere and launch on all these different platforms, are you doing that on one day or are you metering those out?
Justin Jackson:Mostly one day. It can be that week. I think on the Product Hunt launch day, it was like k. So we scheduled the Product Hunt launch, then I scheduled the email to tell everyone that, you know, when it was happening. I think you can even pre get people to leave comments and stuff so there's already some discussion before it officially launches.
Justin Jackson:And then I think I also posted on it on Indie Hackers about it. And then yeah. Throughout the rest of that week, I started, you know, just spreading the word again. Like, oh, hey, transistors officially launched. We had a great launch yesterday.
Justin Jackson:Here's what people are saying. Here's the reviews. All those kinds of things. So, yeah, you can have a launch week, I think.
John Rudolph Drexler:Yeah. Makes sense.
Justin Jackson:The one thing that this website is missing right now there's a few things. You need some human faces on here, for sure. The nothing in all my experience with marketing and everything, nothing converts better than having a human face on the right side of the screen. I've tested it multiple times. I've done you know, there's been large scale AB tests done on it.
Justin Jackson:Human faces just convert better.
Daniel Coulbourne:You think like you think like in the hero above the fold type of
Justin Jackson:if you look at if you look at Transistor's homepage
Daniel Coulbourne:Mhmm.
Justin Jackson:Mhmm. This is one of our customers. And before this, at certain points, we had a text only hero kind of like you have. It converts way better. I just think, especially for a new product, and right now, everybody's looking for human.
Justin Jackson:And so having a human in your hero, I think, can help a lot. It might not be necessary. But for sure, having human like, when I scroll down, run your agency without chaos, I don't wanna see this next thing, this video thing. Actually, didn't even know that was a video. What I wanna see is the is your team.
Justin Jackson:Like, our team runs on Tidy. And have human faces, whatever it is, four or five, six of you, or this team runs on Tidy and it's a group of people. It's just seeing a real team and people can start to picture themselves like, Oh yeah, that kinda looks like my team. There's something so powerful about that. And then as you scroll down the page, should also see human faces next to testimonials.
Justin Jackson:And then, I would even have at the bottom of the homepage another section that that's something like, who is this? Like, who's running this thing? Mhmm. And have your guys' faces there like, hey, we're Dan and John.
Daniel Coulbourne:We do this. Yeah.
John Rudolph Drexler:But Yeah. I think it's an opportunity to to maybe even in the first section to to to I mean, not in a long winded way, but to tell the story a little bit just to say, this is a team who runs on this thing because we've run a successful agency for the last few years and these all problems that we experienced for Sand.
Justin Jackson:Yes. Yeah. Think about what people's apprehensions are right now. I've never heard of this tidy thing. What is this?
Justin Jackson:Is this real? Is this some 13 year old that vibe coded this unlovable? Is this some scam? The big one for me now is I get pitches all the time now from new products. And in my head, I'm like, you're not gonna be around in three months.
John Rudolph Drexler:Right. Is there gonna be support?
Justin Jackson:That's right. So the web page is your opportunity to tell the story and get people to trust you. Hey, we're Thunk. We've been around this long. Daniel's been doing this kind of work for this long.
Justin Jackson:John's been doing this kind of work for this long. We are veterans. We are experts. You can trust us. We've been around for a while.
Justin Jackson:Here's our team. This is what they look like. Or here's a team that uses Tidy. This is what they look like. And then, in addition to having that on the homepage, also having an About page where and we do this on the Transistor about page too, if you go to transistor.fmabout.
Justin Jackson:We have a picture of the team. And we are six people: John, Justin, Helen, Jason, Josh, Michael. That's the Transistor story so far, and then there's more photos from our history. Just helping people connect with us as humans, helping people trust us, and people have really responded to that. And I think even more so now that it's like, is this real?
Justin Jackson:Is this just someone's Clodbot running this thing? That putting some real human faces on there and even some older photographs, like I have some older photographs of John and I when we first met and stuff, it's just like, these look authentic, these look legit, this looks like a real company, real people. I like them. I trust them. And that's one of the questions people are asking.
Justin Jackson:Do I like these people? Do I trust them? Are they gonna be around for a while? Who are they? And we answer those questions.
John Rudolph Drexler:And we do have embarrassing pictures of us together when we were 18.
Daniel Coulbourne:Yeah. From 18 to to now.
Justin Jackson:That I mean, that's what you and you might wanna play around with it like maybe the 18 year old pictures aren't the right ones. But having something authentic, I think, that people resonate with and go, oh, this is awesome. I can trust these guys.
John Rudolph Drexler:What I do think, the story there is solid. It is a story that makes and addresses that exact thing, which is just like
Daniel Coulbourne:And I'm thinking even about, like, all of the feature copy that we have. Like, I'm kind of thinking about, like, reworking all of that feature copy to be, experience based. Right? Where it's like, hey, we've been screwed out of $50 before. And that's why we designed our billing system in such a way that it's really hard to get screwed out of $50.
Daniel Coulbourne:Yeah. You know?
Justin Jackson:Like That kind of content kills it right now. Yeah. Especially again because people are looking for authentic human voices. So, the more authentic you can be, the more human you can be, the more people will trust you. It's why people for a while, everyone was typing Google searches that were like, best stereo reviews space Reddit.
Justin Jackson:Right? Mhmm. Because they want the real human stuff. And everything's been overrun. The content everybody's looking at, the company stuff people are looking at, the products.
Justin Jackson:I think everyone's like, is this fake? Is this AI? So you have an opportunity to pierce through that noise Mhmm. And be authentic.
Daniel Coulbourne:John, we gotta write a blog post about all the times we've gotten screwed out of money.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. Yes.
John Rudolph Drexler:Like It's funny because
Daniel Coulbourne:What I learned getting screwed out of $50 twice.
John Rudolph Drexler:Yeah. Well, and the thing that I It's funny when you were talking about like being super opinionated and and like showing like, hey, we do this in a different way and it's a better way to do it. Part of it is like we've recently have like restructured a bunch of things where we, you know, we basically have turned this thing into like almost a zero risk agency. Like we refuse to take financial risk on our clients. And so like we get paid upfront for things now, and we just have restructured things in a way that it's like, if you're unwilling to play ball on that, that's fine.
John Rudolph Drexler:We're just not, we're not willing to take financial risk on you. And so it's like the zero risk agency is like, you that's, there's a bunch of concepts in there that are like things that we've had to come through come to, you know, through our mistakes.
Justin Jackson:I would even experiment with that as a headline for the app. Build a zero risk agency. Mhmm. There's something about it where you can kinda own that space, you know.
Daniel Coulbourne:And that is like why we bill ours too.
John Rudolph Drexler:Yeah. Yes.
Daniel Coulbourne:Right? Like every all of our opinions are based on like we're extremely conservative and like don't like to get Yeah. Ahead of our schemes.
John Rudolph Drexler:Well, also like we It relates to this whole thing that I always have, which is that project based billing is a bet that either you or the client is going to lose. And so it's like kicking off a relationship with a super fraught bet and someone you know someone's gonna lose the bet.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. And to me that almost gets more to the main thing. Like, the closer you can get to the vein of what's the main thing, so like, you've everyone's had that situation where you go to get blood and they just kinda miss the vein. It's like, oh, it's not really producing and they gotta poke it again. You wanna poke it right in the vein of like, what's the main thing that's driving agencies to wanna buy another piece of software.
Justin Jackson:And run your agency without the chaos. It's just a little too it's not quite there. It's getting closer to the vein, but build a zero risk agency or even stop getting screwed. All these kind of feelings that are that's why people go and look for software. At some point they're going, like fuck it.
Justin Jackson:Today's the day. I've had it. Like I'm today's the day I'm gonna start the podcast. I'm gonna figure out how the hell you do it. Right?
Justin Jackson:Like that's what happens. That's how people make decisions.
Daniel Coulbourne:We could even like lean on the like, you know, like eighty percent of agency owners quit in the first three years. Like, well, you know, all like these stats exist. Right?
Justin Jackson:Yes. Get
Daniel Coulbourne:into And we could like tell that story like
Justin Jackson:Get into the get into the the main vein. And I would experiment with a headline that's like build a zero risk agency because I think that's also just a term you could own. Mhmm. Sparktoro is a marketing app that's doing something similar. They're trying to own the term zero click marketing, which is all around this idea that you don't get clicks from Twitter and Google and all this other stuff anymore.
Justin Jackson:So you need a new approach to marketing that's zero click marketing. And it's basically about building a reputation in all these places. You might not be getting the clicks from Google, but your presence in Google, the way you show up there helps you build a reputation. I think you guys could own this zero risk agency piece, and that would make me sign up. Right?
Justin Jackson:Run your agency without cash, sure. That could be any app, but build a zero risk agency? Tell me more. What does that mean? You know?
Justin Jackson:Mhmm. And then each feature becomes that thing. So yeah. Your team logs hours. You see everything.
Justin Jackson:I wouldn't even put that at the top.
Daniel Coulbourne:No. That's an opportunity to just talk about hourly billing. But I I like yeah.
Justin Jackson:I would lead with this idea of like, you know yeah. We've all been there. We've been we've lost big contracts. We haven't gotten paid. Now, here's how this product and our methodology and philosophy here's how you win with us.
Justin Jackson:Software plus philosophy methodology is kinda like the golden And you can do it in project management. Right? You can actually be opinionated and put a stake in the sand. And it's better for you because if people want a generic tool, they're gonna go to Notion. But you're saying, no, this isn't a generic tool.
Justin Jackson:This is built around real experience and it solves for these problems that actually create an emotional response. You guys have way more of an opportunity to tap into the real emotions that agency owners are facing right now. And I mean, goddamn, everybody's scared right now. This is another reason I think there's so much opportunity right now. My friend Brian Castle has built a whole membership and YouTube presence.
Justin Jackson:He when he told me he was launching a YouTube channel, was like, no way, dude. He's not very charismatic. And it's just this time he speaks to older developers that are freaked out about AI. They're so highly motivated to look for answers, like, help me understand Claude code in a way that's not from these 20 year old thread boys on Twitter. Like I want a real mature adult to tell me what to do here.
Justin Jackson:And agency owners are absolutely feeling the same thing. Right. Even if, you know, a lot of people you said at LariCon, lot of people were like agencies were like, yeah, things are okay. In the back of their mind, everybody's like, things are okay, but what are we gonna do about this? You know?
Justin Jackson:And you've got a really good lane there to speak to agency owners and say, Listen, we understand. We know it's scary right now. And it was scary before. It was hard enough before. You were losing money on contracts, you had people over billing, you had all these problems.
Justin Jackson:Well, we built software that solves the old problems, and we're also gonna be here with you when you face the new stuff. And that might be stuff in the product, but it's also going to be the way you show up in blog posts and YouTube videos and everything else. Just being like, hey, we get it, and the best way to weather the storm is to have great fundamentals. How do you have great fundamentals? You build a zero risk agency.
Justin Jackson:I'm gonna show you how you do it. The first thing you're gonna need is Tidy. Tidy helps you do this and this and this. Alright. Sign up.
Justin Jackson:Let's get going. And you create this thing that people aspirationally want, because they're like, like we're doing everything in Notion right now, but it doesn't give us all this. It doesn't give us this solution. You know?
Daniel Coulbourne:Yeah. It's so crazy how quickly this that's this is the thing that's like a little bit magical about talking to people who actually understand marketing because I I'm, like, so fundamentally stupid about marketing that, like, like, as soon as you, like, zero in on this, like, zero risk agency thing, I'm like, oh, yeah. That's, like, so stupidly obvious that, like, I can't believe I didn't, like, zero in on that already. Yeah. But, like, I would have looked at this landing page for a thousand years and not found that, like, very clear message at the center of it.
Daniel Coulbourne:You know?
Justin Jackson:Yeah. And that might not be what ends up working, but it's gonna be something
Daniel Coulbourne:like It it is, like, so genuinely connected to how we operate. And, like, if I were to actually tell the story of Thunk and, like, why it works and how John and I both think about it, it's, like, very, like well, I sure don't want to like bet super heavily on everything going perfectly.
John Rudolph Drexler:Yeah. Well, it's funny. It how I have such a hard time even taking my own advice with I mean, because like when building stuff, we're constantly talking about what problem are we solving. But then it's so easy because I in the same way, I have not worked it's one of the big holes in my experience and skills is that I have not worked with a great marketer, and I am not naturally good at it. Yeah.
John Rudolph Drexler:And so then I turn around and someone goes, well, what did you build? I'm like, well, here, let me describe what it does. And it's like, No. No. No.
John Rudolph Drexler:Keep talking about the problem. Like, this thing was designed in response to five big scary problems. Talk about those five big scary problems.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. Absolutely. What moves the needle for you like, what gets you to click on a hacker news article is the same vein that you wanna get with your landing page. Like it's something to grab people, something that's emotional, something I mean, you could even have that as your headline. Build a zero risk agency.
Justin Jackson:But instead of see all the features, you could just say, learn more about building a zero risk agency. And then that's just your manifesto. And then you want a tool that's built for this framework. Like, have you bought in? Have I sold you on the vision?
Justin Jackson:Have I sold you on the dream? Okay. Well, tidy's the thing that helps you do it. Right? You've bought into the philosophy, now here's the tool that helps you implement that philosophy.
Justin Jackson:And I think, yeah, I think it has the potential to be great, especially right now because And, like the risks are so high for agencies right now.
Daniel Coulbourne:Yeah. And even just as, like, thunk positioning, I think it's pretty strong. Right? Like, I, like, I do think that, like, one of, you know, one of our positions as thunk is just like we, like, actually, like, think very carefully about problems. Mhmm.
Daniel Coulbourne:You know? Like and, like Yep. Obviously, that means that we think a lot about our problems. Right? Like and our problems are, like, the most considered problems you can imagine because we're just like we're just over here considering them all the time.
Daniel Coulbourne:And, of course, that that's the thing that, like, led us to build the software. Yeah. But, also, I do think that there's just, like just as an agency, there's some credibility and, like, hey. Like, these guys, like, think very carefully about their own systems, their own problems, their own sort of approach to how they wanna work. Mhmm.
Daniel Coulbourne:And obviously they're gonna give that same sort of like care and attention to our problems as their clients. Know?
Justin Jackson:Yeah. Yeah. The other encouragement for you is that developers can absolutely learn marketing skills. Like Adam Wavin is in many ways a better marketer than me. And that's one reason he killed it with talent.
Justin Jackson:You can learn these skills. It is absolutely within your reach to learn them. And I'd be happy to come back whenever you want. I'll be on time next time. To just help you iterate on this because a lot of it is just keeping it front and center enough that you're thinking about it.
Justin Jackson:And then you just have to put something into practice every day. It's just like, okay, today I'm gonna write the manifesto for zero risk marketing, and we're gonna put it on the Tidy website, and we're gonna link to it above the fold, and we're just gonna see what happens. And maybe I'll take a risk and get somebody to submit it to Hacker News, and maybe I'll take a risk and message three friends and say I just submitted this thing to hacker News / newest, can you go there and give me a little boost? Like, just start putting some things in place.
John Rudolph Drexler:Yeah.
Justin Jackson:Unfortunately, I gotta run because
Daniel Coulbourne:No. Thank you. This is great.
John Rudolph Drexler:Daniel, when you said care and attention, I thought you said Karen attention. And I was like, I don't think I don't know if that's the kind of attention that we actually want on this. Justin, thank you so much for being here.
Justin Jackson:Thanks so much, guys. I'll I'll leave my window open here so it uploads.
John Rudolph Drexler:I can't wait to copy the transcript and make to dos.
Justin Jackson:Alright. Seriously, message me anytime about any of this Thanks,
Daniel Coulbourne:Justin. Thanks, buddy. It's so much good stuff to say. I
John Rudolph Drexler:there's a lot. I'm going to take the entire transcript, copy straight into Claude and say I need to dos.
Daniel Coulbourne:He's yeah.
John Rudolph Drexler:He's good.
Daniel Coulbourne:He has such, like, clarity of thinking about it. It's crazy.
John Rudolph Drexler:These Canadians, man. It's that glacier water.