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In this podcast episode, host Kevin Griffin interviews Lukas Hermann, the founder of StageTimer.io, a web-based countdown timer software for video production and event organization. Lukas discusses his journey from being a developer in a startup to creating StageTimer as a side project, driven by the desire to solve a simple problem he observed in the event production industry. Initially intended as a learning experience, StageTimer grew into a viable product, earning significant monthly recurring revenue. Lukas shares insights on the importance of customer feedback, the challenges of working full-time on a personal project, and his strategies for growth, including SEO and engaging directly with the community. Additionally, he touches on the impact of choosing practical problems to solve, the misconceptions about needing a sizeable social following for success, and the value of starting simple. The discussion also covers Lukas's experiences with previous projects, advice for developers looking to launch their products, and the plans for StageTimer.
00:00 Welcome to the Show: A Special Guest from Deutschland
00:54 The Language Barrier: Navigating Pronunciation and Cultural Differences
02:35 The Genesis of Stage Timer: From Idea to Initial Development
08:13 Launching and Growing Stage Timer: Strategies and Customer Feedback
18:45 SEO and Content Strategy: Targeting a Niche Audience
20:10 Adapting to Customer Needs: The Evolution of Stage Timer
23:26 The Journey from Side Project to Full-Time Passion
25:01 The Leap of Faith: Going All-In on Stage Timer
26:34 Navigating the Challenges of Full-Time Entrepreneurship
27:59 Building a Support Network and Finding Work-Life Balance
30:21 Expanding the Team and Planning for the Future
33:11 Learning from Failures and Embracing Minimalism
38:57 Advice for Aspiring Entrepreneurs and the Importance of Community
Lukas on Twitter: https://twitter.com/_lhermann
Lukas on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lukas-hermann/
Creators & Guests
Host
What is Multithreaded Income Podcast?
In the "Multithreaded Income Podcast," host Kevin Griffin navigates the nuanced landscape of generating multiple income streams as a technologist. Aimed at professionals who wish to diversify their revenue while maintaining a focus on technology, this podcast dives deep into unconventional strategies, untapped opportunities, and actionable advice.
It's time for the multi
threaded income podcast.
We're like insurance for a
turbulent tech landscape.
I'm your host, Kevin Griffin.
Join me as I chat with people all around
the industry who are using their skills
to build multiple threads of income.
Let us support you in your career
by joining our discord at mti.
to slash discord.
Now let's get started.
Kevin Griffin: Welcome back to the show.
Everyone.
I'm joined by a very special guest today.
Lucas Herrmann.
How are you today, Lucas?
Lukas Harmann: Hey, hey there.
Look, good.
Fine.
Fine.
I'm doing good.
Kevin Griffin: Uh, Lucas, you're joining
us from the other side of the world.
You're over in Deutschland,
Lukas Harmann: Correct.
Correct.
The southern part.
Kevin Griffin: I was telling you
a little bit before we jumped on.
I took three years of German in high
school and it's the only language I
feel Somewhat comfortable speaking.
Like I know enough of the mannerisms
and how to pronounce certain words that
it, I feel I'm not fluent, not fluent at
all, but I'm pretty sure I could go to
Germany, ask for a beer in the bathroom
and be perfectly, perfectly happy.
Lukas Harmann: I mean, your
pronunciation sounds good.
So, you know, you
retained, you retained it.
Kevin Griffin: We, so.
This is a random aside.
When I was in high school, my, uh,
German teacher was directly from Germany.
She, she was a immigrant and she
was teaching high school German.
And she was a, Dickler for pronunciation
and the, so when we were in German
class, we always had to, we had to
speak in German 100 percent of the time.
You didn't know how to say it.
You had to look it up and this is
before we had computers in our pockets.
So I had a dictionary and I was looking
up words and if you mispronounce it,
she made you repeat yourself a couple
dozen times before you got it right.
Lukas Harmann: my wife is from Brazil
and we moved here seven years ago
and she still has a bit of difficulty
pronouncing because, um, for some
reason, Germans are really particular
if you don't pronounce it right.
They sometimes.
don't make the effort to understand you.
Um, yeah, a bit sad for my, for
my culture, but that's how it is.
And, and she always had a trouble
with doing the R in the beginning.
And we have a very distinct R sound,
like Restmüll, Rathaus, right?
And if you don't do it right, Germans
can get a bit like confused and
not wanting to know what you say.
Kevin Griffin: I can understand,
uh, from being native English,
someone trying to speak English
as their second or third language.
, sometimes it's like, I'm pretty sure you
didn't say that word the correct way,
but we're usually polite enough to go,
Oh, I understand what you're saying.
, if you understand what
someone's trying to get through,
it's, , it's easy to go through.
But funny story.
, I had a friend.
And he sent me a medium article and we're
going to put this in the show notes.
And the article was titled, uh,
how to a simple countdown timer
website makes 10, 000 per month.
. I read this and I was just getting
the excited feelings because this is
what folks who listen to the podcast
are really kind of striving for.
They would love to have this product
that's producing income and the glorious
MRR, Monthly Reoccurring Revenue,
for something that you've built.
And I knew that This is the type of
talk that I want to have on the podcast.
So I reached out to a mutual friend or
acquaintance of ours, Justin Jackson,
and he said, I can hook you up, Kevin.
And he made all the connections.
And so Lucas is here and
he's chatting with us.
Lucas, uh, before we jump in, just
tell us a little bit about yourself
and then we'll dive into stage timer.
Lukas Harmann: Yeah.
You said my name, you
said where I come from.
I'm a 30, 34 years of age.
Um, we have been nicely settled here.
I'm married to a Brazilian,
as I already mentioned.
And, um, really a
developer in heart, right?
Like a kind of typical, the typical German
engineer mindset mixed with somebody who
is excited about software and computers.
I would, that's probably describing me.
Correct.
Kevin Griffin: Your current gig
as I'm aware is stage timer.
io.
Uh, tell us a little bit about
what stage timers function is.
Lukas Harmann: I'm the, I'm the founder.
We started three years ago with this.
And what it does is if you think
of, um, of a TED talk, right?
The person standing on stage
has this screen in front of them
with a red countdown number.
Now we're not building that exact
product that they use, but we're
building a product like this, right?
And it is used by many, many people that
do video production or event organization.
And they would have their kind of overview
of the event with them on their computer.
They're sitting, you know, backstage
or with, with the tech technical staff.
And when they click a button.
Somewhere at the stage, a
countdown timer starts counting.
It says, you know, what's up
currently, they can send some messages.
If you know, you want them to hold the
microphone a bit closer to their mouth
or, or they need to, you know, step a
little bit more into the light, then they
can kind of flash this on the screen.
Uh, that's the kind of software
that, that, that we are building.
Kevin Griffin: Gotcha.
Now, where did the idea for
a stage timer come from?
Lukas Harmann: So this is
a really interesting story.
Um, I was always fascinated
as, as a developer of.
Kind of building my own product,
especially when I, when I became
employed in a startup, you kind of
get this product feeling a little bit.
And I saw on, on Twitter, many other
people building not a traditional like
Silicon Valley, uh, venture funded way
that, that you have known until then,
but bootstrapping it, just starting it.
launching it themselves,
earning their first revenue.
And it was really attractive to me.
So I was looking for ideas.
I had this long list on my cell phone.
Whenever I came across an
idea, I just wrote it down.
Oh, I could build this.
I could build that right in.
And one day I was at a friend's kind of,
he has a studio set up and there's one
person in one room standing in front of a
green screen and talking into the camera.
And he's sitting in the other room,
uh, doing the recording, switching,
switching the video and, and, and, um,
before the, the recording started, he
would get up and I was there unrelated.
He asked me something about service and
networking and he would like jump up,
run into this other room, click on a.
On an old computer that he had sitting
there with like a timer software, clicked
start, ran back into his side room and
everything else was remote controlled.
I thought, surely there must
be a better solution, right?
As a web developer, I thought this
is such an easy problem to solve.
Surely.
Um, if I search, uh, in Google
immediately, I will find something where
I can remote control a timer through the,
through my browser into the interface.
And I didn't, I didn't find
anything that can do that.
I only found like old software that
you, that you download and it looks
like it's written in, in Windows 98.
So I,
Kevin Griffin: year.
Lukas Harmann: yeah, it was, so
I put it on my, on my list and
then I kind of revisit this idea,
I want to build my own product.
And I literally from that list, what
I look through, what can I build?
What can I build?
And he is amazing thing.
This could all be great, but I thought,
you know, let me turn this around.
I I'm a developer.
I know how to develop a software.
I have literally, I've
never dealt with customers.
I have never integrated payment solutions.
I've never even.
Build my own user authentication
flow, like all these, there's all
these unknowns that I have, if I
want to build my first product.
Let me just pick the simplest idea on
this list as a, as a training ground.
So that's the one I picked.
I thought like timer synchronized
through the browser, you
know, how, how hard can it be?
That's where the idea come from.
And, um, I coded it up, right.
And basically in a weekend, as one
does, when you're employed, you do your,
your own side projects in the weekend.
I put it online.
Um, on some kind of hosting, you
know, free hosting, Netlify site.
Um, and I shared it.
I was like, okay, so, but
now what do I do with it?
Right.
I went back to my, to my friend and
he, but his computer was too old.
So it literally didn't run on
this computer because whatever,
you know, Firefox, this and
this version that doesn't run
any modern, uh, uh, JavaScript.
So I was like, okay, give up on that.
Like, where do I, where do I put
this that the people know about it?
So I go, I go on Reddit and I'm looking
for subreddits and it's like, you go
on Reddit and you find all these, it's
crazy what communities exist, but,
but if you need to find a specific
subgroup, it's ridiculously hard
to, I think, where, where do people
live that need this kind of thing?
So I find this reading search engine
almost, um, that somebody built
on That gave me like a network of
which subreddits are connected.
And I find ones called, um,
professional, not professional
AV, uh, something broadcasting,
forgot the name, commercial AV.
Kevin Griffin: I
Lukas Harmann: Sounds good.
Post it there.
Say, Hey, I built this tool.
Um, put it online.
What do you think?
People visit it and give me surprisingly
good feedback for Reddit, right?
Reddit, you feel like it's this kind of
toxic, you know, everybody's trolling you.
Everybody's just like ripping you apart.
Like, but they didn't, they, they
really, they were super helpful.
Like, ah, I've, I've been
looking for this for ages.
It's exactly what I need.
Can, you know, can you add this
feature, that feature, this feature?
Um, and that was really the moment when I
thought, wait, there may be, there may be
more than, than, than I thought at first.
Kevin Griffin: think that's
really important to finding those
watering holes, uh, for where
different customers might exist.
And yeah, you're right.
A lot of Reddit is really toxic.
And at the moment you drop anything
that's self promotion or here's a
thing I built, go take a look at it.
Reddit will, a lot of
Reddit will just attack you.
And I'm thankful that you found
a group that was willing to
give you constrictive feedback.
Lukas Harmann: I mean, specifically
subreddits like, uh, like small, small
business, entrepreneurship, startups.
There, there's so many people
just self promoting themselves.
They cannot.
They immediately kick you and
they immediately block you.
And I immediately made a big, big board
around and said, I want to go to the
people that would use my tool, not
people that would, you know, be excited
about making money from the internet.
Uh, and I think this was the kind
of saving grace because what I
found out is that if you make a tool
that is not for the prime developer
community, as To be very fair.
Most people build tools for,
for, for other developers.
If you don't build tools for other
developers, you, you find that
they're really underserved, right?
Like we, we, we are such developers.
There's a solution for everything.
There's two solutions, three solutions.
But then you go to, to, um, an
area like, um, A audio visual, uh,
live, uh, not live stream, more
like live video production, right.
Which is much more, uh, commercial.
And suddenly they really appreciate
any solution that you built for them.
Kevin Griffin: And it It seems
like you just happened to be at
the right place at the right time.
Someone had the problem that you were
thinking about solving and you were
able to solve it for that one person.
And then if one person has that
problem, it's very likely that
hundreds of thousands of people
have the exact same problem.
Um, that is, that is really cool.
Were you working a regular full time job
while you were kicking off stage timer?
What were you doing for, I
don't know, money at that time?
Lukas Harmann: I was full time a
front end developer in a startup.
Kevin Griffin: And so you kick off stage
timer, you start getting some feedback.
What's it look like to
monetizing stage timer?
Was that something you did right
from the beginning or did you
have sort of a free period and
then start charging for it later?
Lukas Harmann: Right.
I think so.
Again, different to many people that
kind of set off with this thought, I'm
going to make money on the internet.
I told myself, I'm going to figure
out how to build a product first.
So it was free.
It was online.
It was ugly.
Um, it was used, which was
probably the most important.
I saw that people came back.
Um, and I, and I started really building
the features people asked for first.
I didn't, I didn't think
primarily of monetization.
I wanted to build something that's
useful, um, with the thought, you know,
eventually I'm going to get to that.
So I'm going to, I'm, I'm building
a user like user signup flow so
people can kind of save their work.
Um, I'm building different features and
then I think, and maybe I have to clarify,
I never thought this would make money.
I never even lost like a.
Uh, like, you know, like, yeah,
people use it, but a timer,
come on, who pays for a timer?
Right.
That's, what's my thought.
Every iPhone has a timer.
Um, but I, I implement a payment
method, not so much because I think
people will pay money, but because
I wanted to understand how it works.
What are the options out there?
How do you integrate it into your system?
How does this look like?
And then the next, I thought the next
project, you know, and it's easier.
So I do this, I think of like
some pro features that I could,
uh, include at the same time.
So it would make sense.
You know, you don't want to, you
don't want to have freemium and then
put on website, Hey, here's a premium
feature and you can pay for it.
Um, and then the funny thing is, night
I deployed this payment integration,
which was eight months after, you know,
that first free ugly version, posted on,
on Twitter to my, what, 300 followers
and I get a purchase right away.
Like I could, I couldn't believe it.
I couldn't believe my eyes.
Like how, who would pay money for this?
And I reached out to the person
like, yeah, he, he saw it on this
original Reddit post has been
using it ever since he lost kind
of engaging with new software.
And he, he kind of half.
Purchase it because you found it
useful and the other half because you
wanted to encourage me building it.
So the, the classic early adopter,
um, and I think this making your first
dollar online, uh, with a product that,
like somebody coming to your website
and giving your money, it's such a,
a, a motivational boost to keep going.
It's incredible.
Kevin Griffin: I've been through a
couple startups and that first dollar,
that first notification from stripe or
whatever payment processor you're using,
uh, it says you've made however much
money like that is the most exciting.
Feeling in the world, even if it's
your 1 that you've made in the entire
month, like that is the most exciting.
You said something and I want to
come back and reiterate, you said you
only had about 300 some followers.
At the time that you
launched the stage timer.
And I think there's this conception
out there that the, a lot of these
successful companies are the people who
have tens of thousands of followers.
They have these big bases that they
promote to, and then the, the money
comes in, but you didn't have that.
You're probably where a lot of people are.
You're kind of proving the point
that you don't need this massive
social following to launch a product
and be successful with a product.
Lukas Harmann: I think it is a
common misconceptions if I can
just, it's a common misconception.
People think that they need a lot of
Twitter followers and then they can
launch something and then, you know, it
gets number one on product hunt and then
this, when they get their customers,
but it's wrong, you want to learn
something that's useful and specifically
these followers, they're usually.
Like, who are they?
They are other developers.
They're your marketers, whoever, hustlers.
Um, and they, as I said before, they
already have every, every problem,
mostly solved, it's hard to get like a
standout problem for them, but if you
look in other industries in, in, in
these people that are not on Twitter,
that maybe only find their stuff on
Google, if you, if you find a problem
that they are looking for, it's, it's
this, you know, this blue ocean, this.
It may be a small group, but
the group is big enough to
support one developer easily.
Kevin Griffin: Did most of your initial
customers come from say that Reddit
group or your personal Twitter, uh, where
eventually you built up to a decent MRR.
Where did those initial
customers come from?
Lukas Harmann: Yeah.
So Reddit, you cannot
stress too much, right?
You cannot like post every, every week.
You can, I posted once more, six
months later, kind of a follow up
post, but then I did not anymore.
Um, in fact, most of us, most of
the people came through Google.
And through word of mouth, it
was, it's basically a 50 50
split or was as of last year.
And just last week, I talked to a customer
that, that uses our tool every day.
And I asked him, if you look
for a tool like mine, where
do you, where do you even go?
What do you do?
And they told me, Yeah, I
am sometimes on Facebook.
I'm sometimes on LinkedIn.
I sometimes go to trade show,
but really if I have a specific
technical problem, I go on Google.
Until I find a solution and
that's all I needed to know.
Kevin Griffin: So how does that change
your strategy for, or make up your
strategy for marketing stage timer?
Are you devoting a lot of time to SEO
and trying to get those Google hits?
Lukas Harmann: Yes.
So from the beginning we
said we do SEO marketing.
We write, um, articles we write.
For me, I also thought I write
a really good documentation.
And I believe that because my customers
are very technical people, not technical
in the sense of developers, but
technical, like they use hardware, they
use cameras, they use video mixers.
They do speak a technical language.
If I can.
Right.
Articles that are not like
the typical sale fluff, right?
The, how, you know, how, how do you, how
do you get your, your page on whatever
off of front end, but I'm, I'm actually
writing articles like how do you use your,
you know, a timer software together with
your, um, with your hardware video mixer.
And I do like step by step and
explain what are the possibilities
and how to use the HTTP requests
and how to use like browser embeds.
And even though these articles get
comparatively few hits, right, we
have search volumes of maybe a hundred
people per month these are so like
technically specific how to guides.
Almost all of these people that
come to these website, to these
pages have such a high intent.
They really want to solve
this particular problem.
And often end up staying
and, and purchasing.
Kevin Griffin: How has the product
changed or adapted since your original
version to where you are today?
Because I imagine with audiovisual
people, they're used to a very
specific way of doing things.
And, you know, As a developer coming
into these different environments and
situations, we often have to learn
how the job is done and then adapt
the software to help help the job.
So how has stage timer changed?
If any, from the original version you've
written to what it is today, based
off the feedback from your customers,
Lukas Harmann: Yeah.
So honestly, I think it is a, is a
blessing that I was not part of the video
production industry and came out, came in
as an outsider, essentially, which I think
is also encouraging to your listeners.
Like you don't have to be
an expert in the domain.
I know people say that,
but I don't believe it.
Um, what I believe is what you need
to do is listen to the people, listen
to your customers, listen to users.
And they gave us plenty of feedback.
And of course we had to separate
the noise from the, from the signal.
once we decide this is kind of our scope
and we understand more and more, how
do people actually use our software?
How do they, uh, what kind of
problems specifically do they use?
That's when we started kind of to
really focus on the right features.
Implement it in the right way.
And I think that made all the difference.
Like coming back to the same
customer we talked to, it was
such a enlightened moment.
I asked him, uh, what kind
of feature are you missing?
What is like, what is bad
about our software, right?
What, what do I need to change?
And they say, yeah, um, I actually asked
that question to our director yesterday
because he apparently also uses our
software on a, on a regular basis.
And he gave me this answer.
He said.
You know, I really have some requests, but
I'm almost afraid of saying them because
your software is so easy and intuitive.
I don't want to change it.
And, um, of course they gave me some,
some, some requests, but I found
this so, so interesting because.
The whole time that I've built a
software, I thought, I don't want,
I don't want to be another Excel.
I don't want to be another like
functional piece of software
that has buttons everywhere.
It's just to get the job done.
I want, I want to get a job done, but
in a way that is easy to pick up for the
first customer, as easy as it is for the
ones that uses it for two years already.
And by him saying this is kind
of confirmed that men I've worked
two years, three years, right?
Uh, on this tool.
With this intent of making it easy to use.
And here he is kind of
confirming that to me.
Without knowing that, that
I wanted it all along.
So it's just this moment.
And I think if you really listen
to your customers and if you have
a good hand for building an, uh, a
good product, um, you can come as
an outsider and you can come without
any community, uh, any like community
following and, and get into a niche.
Kevin Griffin: how long did it take
from the, the moment you started
monetizing stage timer to Eventually,
uh, I guess quitting your full time job.
So as you work in full time as a,
as a well web developer, you said,
Lukas Harmann: Yeah,
Kevin Griffin: assuming you're
not doing that anymore, you
you're all in on stage timer.
When did that, when'd you hit that goal
of not needing the full time job anymore?
Lukas Harmann: correct.
So, I said already that it took
eight, eight months, right?
Because I worked in the evening,
I worked in the weekend to even
implement a payment system.
It took another eight months to grow
it to 1000 euros per month in revenue.
Uh, and then it went a little bit faster.
Um, but it took me, I think we reached
like four to five, uh, three to 4k.
Of revenue per month.
Um, when I kind of got a bit
bored in my old job, right?
I mean, you, you mentioned it before
the show started, like this, this
developer, you know, you, you sit
in a, in a company, you kind of know
in your heart of hearts that, that,
that you are basically producing.
Three times of value of what
you actually paid, right?
Kind of deep down, you know, um, and
I was kind of disillusioned with that.
And, and didn't, didn't like the kind
of task rapid style that we had going
at that time, um, and looked around for
another job and like another chopper
for came, but then they discontinued
their product after three months.
And then my wife encouraged me
and said, Hey, you know what?
You do such a great job with
this, with this project of yours.
Why don't you try it full time?
So we took a little
bit of a leap of faith.
Uh, at, I would say, I think it was
4, 000, uh, euros per month, which
was not quite enough to sustain us
to, to support our, our lifestyle.
Um, but with a bit of savings and a bit
of a grit and a bit of let's, let's spend
some months in Asia and save some money.
It worked out.
Kevin Griffin: Oh, so
change your location.
So you lower your cost of living.
, I've heard that from a lot
of folks, uh, done that.
Cause that's a difficult thing to do in
the States is taking that leap of faith.
Cause there's so many little
things like healthcare.
It was so many people rely on their
full time job for healthcare that.
Taking the leap of faith
to, to go work full time.
You just have to give all that up.
You haven't added the expense and it's
just overall more difficult unless
you have a spouse or a partner who
is able to cover all those details.
So it's really exciting to hear that
your, your goal was much lower than what
a lot of people's might be, but it's all
doable and it sounds like when you were
able to go full time on stage timer.
Was that really just a
hundred percent of your day?
Just stage timer all the time.
Lukas Harmann: I mean, yeah, I
think something that's a bit under,
like when you go full time, right.
You, you lose this.
This structure that an office, even
if you're remote, that an office
job gives you having, having been
freelancing before already, I knew
that it's, it's going to be hard.
This aspect of being alone, being
just by yourself, having to do
your own schedule is, is not easy.
Um, so I immediately actively tried,
you know, where do I know people,
where can I get in contact with people?
Where can I have some kind of
structure, even if it's not
people that work directly with me?
Just some, some, some support structure
around, around working as a developer.
And I was really fortunate because
in this, um, industry of video, um,
professionals, I found a discord server.
They invited me.
I made, I made friends with the owner who
also was building a tool at that time.
And, and we, Uh, ended up having
regular, um, Talks over discord,
having regular zoom calls to, to
exchange, you know, what we're doing.
And nowadays he's even my co
founder in another project
that we are building together.
So something like this, I would say it's
really pivotal when you make the step.
Kevin Griffin: Yeah.
And that's a good point.
Something I wanted to pivot to was
just the, the life work balance.
And I think you already covered it.
It's when you're by yourself, it's
really difficult to maintain that
structure that a full time job gives you.
You're you're, you have certain
expectations that you have to hit.
You have a team that's
holding you accountable.
And when it's just you, you have to
hold yourself accountable or find
someone to hold you accountable.
Lukas Harmann: But happens a lot.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's that people get
into some burnout, right?
So they, they go work for
themselves and you work a lot.
You work a lot.
You put all, you know, your, what
you're used to use from your job.
And then in the evening you
still work, hustle for yourself.
Now you're hustling for yourself
the whole time until late at
night, even in the weekend.
Don't take a break.
It goes well for two years.
Uh, but after two years, your buddy will
eventually say, I can't do it anymore.
Um, and what you don't realize
is that at your job, you have
these water cooler moments, right?
You get up from your chair, you go
talk to your colleagues, even in, in
you have to meetings, you know, even
in Slack, you can kind of get this.
Um, the lazy moments you talk,
you work by yourself, you don't
have that you're like full, full
concentration all the time, everything.
Um, and either you,
you learn very quickly.
Okay.
I have to specifically take breaks.
You know, your mind cannot do much
more than six hours of concentration.
It's just not in it.
And if you do that three, four, four
days in a row, you need a break.
a longer break.
And if you do too much on a day,
you just need to have a break.
But what do we do?
We are developers.
We, we code on our free time,
you know, it's, it's terrible.
So you have to learn how
to, to balance that out.
Um, funnily enough, what I do
nowadays is I play with Lego.
I, I, I,
Kevin Griffin: There you go.
Lukas Harmann: it's amazing.
I buy myself a Lego set.
Um, and I, and I constructed and,
you know, constructed over three
evenings and I, I've, it's awesome.
And then I found this, this website
called re brickable and then they give
you alternative instructions for the
same parts that come in a Lego set.
So you can just re disassemble it
and then build your next thing.
Kevin Griffin: That's such a great way
to use your time and to, to reset there.
There are a lot of worse
ways to reset your time.
Lucas, how big is the stage timer team?
Is it still just yourself or do you
have, uh, employees or contractors?
Lukas Harmann: Yeah.
Pretty soon.
My wife joined me.
She was the solution with her job.
And I said, why don't you do help me?
I need somebody for customer
service and marketing.
And if you're willing to learn that,
I'm like, let's do it together.
And she happy to join me.
She doesn't do it full time anymore.
She has her own, um, web store
at the site, but she does all
of the customer service and most
of the marketing that we do.
Cool.
Cool.
Kevin Griffin: That's good to have.
And you get to work with your
partner and that's always nice.
Lukas Harmann: super helpful, super nice.
And I'm, I'm really, uh, blessed to
have such a, such an arrangement.
Um, and then we have worked with
like contractors on and off, right?
Uh, there's a project let's invest some
money and it's, it serves somebody.
Um, but just now, um, I would say
we have reached kind of the finances
that allow us to hire quote unquote,
I can't, I can't hire easily because
I don't have the legal team yet,
but I at least can get a contractor.
Kevin Griffin: What's the next
position that you would want
to bring on to help you with?
Lukas Harmann: developer.
I'm looking for another developer, uh,
partly because I don't want to be the only
one that is there if the server goes down.
Right.
Uh, and also just the, the
backlog gets longer and longer.
And then, you know, to all the
projects, three years also, you
need to do a upkeep, you know,
housekeeping updates, bug fixing.
Um, You need to scale the infrastructure.
Obviously not, you cannot know everything,
you know, I'm not a super senior engineer
that has done all of these things before.
Um, so I really need help there.
And then you, you are the founder, right?
I'm the founder.
There's just other things
that steal your time.
There's, you know, incoming, let's,
let's make a partnership here.
Let's do this, answer emails, you know,
talk to your customers, understand where
the product needs to go in, in one year.
Yeah.
Anyway, you get the point.
Kevin Griffin: Well, I guess
anyone listening to the podcast,
if you're looking for, we're
pushing for freelancers, side gigs.
That's how I've done.
If someone in our community wants to
reach out, what's the stage timers stack.
Lukas Harmann: Um, I'm doing.
I'm doing a Vue.
js and then a Node backend and then a
Kevin Griffin: there you go.
Lukas Harmann: with some, you
know, user authentication stuff.
Kevin Griffin: anyone out there
listening, if you're looking for
something on the side, let's go
talk to Lucas and get him some help.
So maybe you never know someone
out there might be listening and
this is right up their alley.
Lukas Harmann: Yeah.
Could be.
Kevin Griffin: We've been talking
about SageTimer for quite a bit.
Let's talk about just a
couple little other things.
What did you do before stage timer?
Were there any projects that you
were working on that just didn't
take off that I hate to use the word
failure, but just failed completely?
Lukas Harmann: Yeah.
So it's kind of the myth, right?
The, the overnight success myth.
Um, I did, I did do stuff before, right?
I started when I was young doing
kind of websites, the typical
WordPress, everybody was a WordPress
developer at one time in their life.
Um, But I did a plenty of, of, uh,
freelancing when I was studying
and then even had the plan of
building a, um, a startup together
with two friends from Germany here
and we, we classic way, right?
We look for funding.
Um, we had a gigantic vision of like
computer edit, uh, translation services.
Um, however, the, relationship between
us founders turned sour and I think
there was also like a significant
lack of understanding how to
actually get a product to the market.
Both of this combined, I would say let's,
let's do some very bitter experiences.
Turned out that, you know, one of the
co founders was kind of kicked out.
Um, I don't want to say that
I'm completely guiltless there.
And then, and then the other one
kind of left for the U S and I was
kind of left footing the bill for the
entire thing and had to figure it out.
And it was not a nice experience.
It taught me a lot of what it means, how
to trust people and in what capacity and,
um, How to be careful, uh, with the team
you choose, with the partners you choose.
Um, so it, it is, it was a
very painful failure actually.
Um, also very costly, however, you know,
as every failure goes, you look back and
you say, okay, what, what went wrong?
What did I do wrong?
And you learn from it.
And very practical example.
One thing that I decided to do with my.
startup project, um, I literally
just rejected almost all processes.
I said, let me do everything like.
As, as messy as possible, as long as
possible, because the more structure I
introduced in the beginning, the more
I will just be slow and slow and slow.
So if I can just do the bare
minimum, the thing that just to get
it done and force myself, because
I'm like a German engineer, right?
We want to do everything perfect.
So I forced myself like,
no, I have to get it done.
And then later make it better when
I have the time and the resources.
Um, it helped me immensely to get
this off the ground and helped me,
uh, that didn't always work perfectly,
but more often than not, it really
helped me to get, move things forward.
Yeah.
Kevin Griffin: that's a good point.
The, we talk a lot about the
minimal viable product and sometimes
that's not going to be pretty.
It needs to be good enough to, to
do what it needs to do and see if
we get those initial customers and.
And assuming you didn't make the classic
blunder where you say as a developer,
I'll go back and fix this later.
And you never go back and fix it.
Did you go back and fix
your, your processes?
Did you clean up your code?
Did you make it prettier
Lukas Harmann: Oh yeah.
I mean, yeah.
I have worked long enough
in the startup, right?
You know that, that you have to
kind of, some degree of budget
has to go into refactoring into,
to, to, to cleaning up old mess.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Definitely.
Kevin Griffin: What's next is stage timer.
The thing you're going to concentrate
most on for the next couple of
years, or do you have other things
that you'd like to start doing?
Lukas Harmann: Well, I mean, in the,
in the spirit of the, the name of
the podcast, I had multi threaded it.
I did start a second tool together with
this friend that I mentioned before, a
co founder, which is in the same space.
It's in the event video production
space, a very similar product in
fact, but a bit different in focus.
And my thought was always,
you know, I want to have, you
know, from the beginning, Stage
Sound was for me, just a test.
It's just a training ground.
So I thought I need, I need some
kind of second source of income.
Um, also I have no clue how
big is the total addressable
market off stage timer, right?
It could be that we, that we,
um, kind of plateau at around a
million dollars in revenue per year.
And it could be that we go all
the way to 10 or even higher.
We don't quite know.
And it's very hard to, to tell.
To estimate because there's
no comparable product.
Um, so one thing, right?
And then I always in the back of my mind,
I had this kind of master plan, right?
I, I do my first, my first product
is going to help me just to have
enough to, to sustain my lifestyle.
And then from that money that comes in
as, you know, quote unquote, passive
income, passive enough that, that
I can kind of choose my own time.
I can build the next product that
will hopefully get me to a, to a You
know, like the 10 million evaluation.
And then with that, maybe I can
do something bigger, something
that, that needs a serious amount
of money and investment to do, um,
you know, this dream of, of really
developing nice and cool products.
Um, I'm at a first step still, right.
I'm still working on StageTimer now
more than ever, um, because it has
grown much more than I ever expected.
Kevin Griffin: What recommendation
would you have for someone who's
out there listening that has a
notebook full of ideas and they want
to start executing on something?
What, what would you
recommend to that person?
Lukas Harmann: Yeah.
Right.
Like the question is what,
what, what tool do you choose?
What, what solution do you choose?
And I think it's not a bad idea to
just choose the simplest one because
complex ones are complex to explain.
And may, you know, may not be understood.
And then in the end,
there may be a failure.
Anyway, you need a bit of luck.
So if you just use the simplest
one, it's easy to explain.
So you already have this out of the way.
And then it's easy for you to
build because you probably have
only like five or six unknowns
instead of 20 that will help you.
And I think that the first product will
teach you so much, like just trying to
market your first product as a developer
will teach you so much about, about
market, about products, about startups,
that it's much easier to make a better
educated guess for your second one.
Kevin Griffin: Hey, that's great advice.
And I kind of want to go back
to what you were saying earlier
is find the watering holes.
So try to find those
niche Reddit groups where.
People hang out and don't
try to market the developers.
And we, I've talked about
this numerous times.
Developers are a horrible market to talk
to, and not just for the reason of that.
There's so many tools that solve
so many different problems.
Developers in particular are just
allergic to any sort of cold marketing.
And, uh, In order to get your
product across to him, you have to,
you have to think outside the box,
you have to be creative about it.
So not saying that's impossible.
It's just hard to do.
Lukas Harmann: And there's another,
there's another funny mental
block we have as developers.
We, we work as freelancers
for, uh, in another startup.
We see their problems.
We, we find them boring because they're
like product, other industry problems.
We look at our own problems.
We found them interesting.
They're all solved.
Nobody wants to pay money for them.
That's what we built.
Um, instead if we, if we would just
go, you know, open our eyes in the
startup that we are in, in the, in
the freelancing shop that we are,
it's like, Hey, what does this person
that is not a developer, why do they
spend five hours on this one task?
Why the heck can I not make it
easier and then make it, making it
easier and then find out that there's
like B2B customers that are happy.
They're literally happy to
find your tool and use it.
And then you think of your tool.
This is not, you know, if I would
show this to another developer,
this is, they would criticize
it and then, or to a designer.
And then you show it to this person
and they are like, this is so much
easier than any Anything else I've
ever used, and I'm so thankful.
Like this kind of customer, they're
out there and they're everywhere.
You just have to find their
problems and solve them for them.
Kevin Griffin: Lucas, anything
that we haven't talked about
that we should probably bring
up before the podcast wraps up
Lukas Harmann: I think we got it covered.
Um, I can, if you want to, if
you want to check out, I have
a blog called lucasherman.
com.
Um, where I sometimes post a
bit, you know, long form, what
I'm doing, I'm on Twitter.
I'm quite active.
I try to, to, to share really
authentic stuff that's happening,
uh, underscore L Herman.
Um, yeah.
To plug my stuff.
Kevin Griffin: and we'll put, I'll put
links to all that in the show notes.
But Lucas, I really appreciate
you coming on the show with me.
It's been a pleasure chatting with
you about stage timer and just the,
it's a true success story of just
taking a, taking an idea and running
with it and then find some success.
And I hope this is inspirational to
anyone out there that's listening.
And thank you again, Lucas,
for hanging out with us
Lukas Harmann: Thanks.
Thanks so much for having me.
Kevin Griffin: and everyone else.
Thank you for listening to the
multi threaded income podcast.
We'll see you again next week.
You've been listening to the
multi threaded income podcast.
I really hope that this podcast
has been useful for you.
If it has, please take a moment to leave a
review wherever you get your podcast from.
And don't forget the
conversation doesn't stop here.
Join us on our discord at mti.
to slash discord.
I've been your host Kevin Griffin
and we'll see you next week.
Cha ching!