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This week, I’m joined by a man. A man named Chase Reeves. We’re going to talk about the business they’re building over there at Fizzle.co. Chase and I both like to talk, so this is a two-parter! This is part 1. Sponsors This show wouldn't be possible without these great sponsors. When you support them, you support the show! Are you creating an application that needs charts or a dashboard? FusionCharts is a JavaScript charting solution trusted by over 450,000 developers around the world. They have tons of interactive and animated charts with advanced features like tooltips, drill-down, chart export and zoom. Their charts also work across PCs, Macs, iPads, iPhones and Android devices. You can download a free-trial at: Go to fusioncharts.com Sprint.ly has been there from the beginning. Perfect for software teams of 3 or more people, Sprint.ly is the easiest way for managers and developers to track the software development process. You and your team can try Sprint.ly for free, go to www.sprint.ly. Use the code productpeopletv2013 to get 10% off! Notable quotes "There's a lot of drama and pasta in how you say JavaScript." "I was a self-taught, no lessons webby designer guy." "My first freelance gig was with Corbett Bar; by the time I was done his website, we were in partnership discussions." "That church background steeps you into existential questions: and these lead to creative endeavours. It also gives you lots of opportunities to be creative." "The tip is, be willing to be an apprentice underneath someone who's more advanced than you." "With partners: waste as much time as you can, just talking. Get on the phone and just talk." "There's something humanizing in just talking to someone; hearing their voice." "Do your creative stuff in the morning. In the afternoon do customer support, email, meetings." "Good for you Ryan!" Show notes Chase Reeves on Twitter Chase Reeves' blog Fizzle.co His old blog: Write to Mean Chase Reeves on Adam Clark's the Gently Madd Kevin Rose's conversation with Ryan Carson (Foundation)
Show Notes
This week, I’m joined by a man. A man named Chase Reeves. We’re going to talk about the business they’re building over there at Fizzle.co.
Chase and I both like to talk, so this is a two-parter! This is part 1.
Sponsors
This show wouldn’t be possible without these great sponsors. When you support them, you support the show!
Are you creating an application that needs charts or a dashboard? FusionCharts is a JavaScript charting solution trusted by over 450,000 developers around the world. They have tons of interactive and animated charts with advanced features like tooltips, drill-down, chart export and zoom. Their charts also work across PCs, Macs, iPads, iPhones and Android devices. You can download a free-trial at:
Go to fusioncharts.com
Sprint.ly has been there from the beginning. Perfect for software teams of 3 or more people, Sprint.ly is the easiest way for managers and developers to track the software development process. You and your team can try Sprint.ly for free, go to www.sprint.ly.
Use the code productpeopletv2013 to get 10% off!
Notable quotes
“There’s a lot of drama and pasta in how you say JavaScript.”
“I was a self-taught, no lessons webby designer guy.”
“My first freelance gig was with Corbett Bar; by the time I was done his website, we were in partnership discussions.”
“That church background steeps you into existential questions: and these lead to creative endeavours. It also gives you lots of opportunities to be creative.”
“The tip is, be willing to be an apprentice underneath someone who’s more advanced than you.”
“With partners: waste as much time as you can, just talking. Get on the phone and just talk.”
“There’s something humanizing in just talking to someone; hearing their voice.”
“Do your creative stuff in the morning. In the afternoon do customer support, email, meetings.”
“Good for you Ryan!”
Show notes
Chase Reeves on Adam Clark’s the Gently Madd
Kevin Rose’s conversation with Ryan Carson (Foundation)
Creators and Guests
What is Product People?
A podcast focused on great products and the people who make them
Hi. I'm Justin, and this is product people, the podcast focused on great products and the people who make them. And this week, I'm joined by a man, a man named Chase Reeves. We're going to talk about the business they're building over there at fizzle.co. But first, let me quickly thank our sponsors, www.sprint.ly.
Speaker 1:If you wanna bring transparency and sanity to your development process, you need Sprintly. It's agile project management that actually works. I switched from Pivotal Tracker to Sprintly years ago. And since I've done that, it it literally changed our company, the way we organize everything. Now instead of a disorganized backlog, I know exactly where each task sits and who's responsible.
Speaker 1:So you can try it for free, www.www.sprint.ly. And then after that, you get 10% off with this coupon code, productpeopleTV2013. Next up, are you creating an application that needs charts or dashboard? Fusion Charts is a JavaScript charting solution trusted by around the world. They have tons of interactive and animated charts with advanced features like tool tips, drill down, chart, export and zoom.
Speaker 1:And those charts, they work across PCs, Macs, iPads, iPhones, and even Android devices. You can download a free trial at go sorry, at fusioncharts.com. Hey, Chase.
Speaker 2:Hey. I love how you say JavaScript. I love
Speaker 1:it. JavaScript. What? Did I say it like a Canadian? You
Speaker 2:you're very dramatic. You're very there's a lot of drama and pasta in how you say JavaScript.
Speaker 1:Oh, man. Oh, man. You know, people have a hard time placing me because I'm I'm Canadian. I'm born in Canada. But my mom's from Ohio, and her family is kind of they're from all, like, Southern states all over the place.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And so I'm I'm like that's like the worst actually, to have like a southern American accent plus like a northern Canadian accent.
Speaker 2:Well, what I like about your your pasta is hay. What was that? Hay? I don't know. That was very poor.
Speaker 2:But you also say southern. Gosh. This is great. My wife's Canadian. We were talking before the show, and I I just I have very fond memories of living in Canada for a little while, and and my some of my closest friends ever are in Canada.
Speaker 2:And I just I just love the little the little idiosyncrasies of the Canucks. Now you're in Vernon right now right?
Speaker 1:Yeah Vernon BC. Which is beautiful. Oh yeah it's beautiful. Reckon anyone that ever visits Canada come to the Okanagan. Everyone kind of stops at Vancouver but
Speaker 2:I think you're thinking of Oconigan. Oconigan. It's the Oconigan Valley. But yeah, come
Speaker 1:on down here, it's beautiful. I always wanted to do like a big ski meet up sometime, like have a bunch of people go to Whistler or Revy or, you know, any of the great kind of resorts we have here and try to write it off as a like a product people meet up.
Speaker 2:That totally sounds like something you'd like to do. Yeah. That sounds right up your alley.
Speaker 1:Yes. So again. And I hear it's your anniversary today? It is. Happy anniversary.
Speaker 1:How many years?
Speaker 2:Eight years. Eight years of marital bliss. Gosh.
Speaker 1:Maybe we can even get into that a little bit later because
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:One of people's favorite interviews I've ever done was with Rob Walling where I just kind of tripped over this thing with how he communicates with his wife. Yeah. And people wrote back and said, woah, like that was so meaningful. Yeah. And I think it's because a lot of us are, you know, we have spouses or significant others and we're working away in the basement and there's some dynamics there.
Speaker 1:Right?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 1:So before we get into all that, let's let's just start with your story. How'd you get into this racket? This product
Speaker 2:racket? I was a, like, self taught no lessons webby designer guy. I just liked to, I don't know. I was thinking about it. I was looking at some, it's like we said, it's my anniversary today.
Speaker 2:And I was kind of looking back at some old, old blog posts from like right now, the website that is my like, you know sandbox blog is ice to the brim and there's some old stuff there but but like two versions back was a site called write to mean where I was like, you know, in 02/2005, like just writing things. But as a young guy, like not thinking as a writer, was like, oh, I'm a blogger. Look at me. I'm gonna blog some stuff. I'm gonna make an I'm blogging, but I had no idea.
Speaker 2:Like I was I was a Jesus y guy at the time. I was basically playing music at church and being a youth pastor for a living. But I liked writing and I liked kind of creating that emotional experience on the page with my readers, like both of them, both family members. So it's sort of easy inside jokes and things like that. Yeah.
Speaker 2:But I don't know. I I started fooling around with how to make my site look differently or how I wanted it to look based on other sites that I've seen and I just kinda like the rest is history. I eventually, you know, was working at media companies as project manager, as sales guy, as then I was at interactive agencies and was working as a project manager there and then again forced into sales guy position because I am kind of good at it, but it really doesn't live in me, the sales as much as like the, you know, this is called product people, right? Like, I realized in the years of being in startups and then creating stuff like, I'm to a fault, I am a product guy. Like I fall in like I had I was at a a company in Portland and the boss there, it was a very small company.
Speaker 2:I was basically like the boss's right hand guy and he's he's so smart. He's already made his nut multiple multiple times and older guy is just like kind of bored and so he started this company. And the the dude nailed it on the head and it stuck with me ever since. He's like, Chase, you are too smart to be a sales guy. Not not that don't let that blow up your head.
Speaker 2:What the problem is you fall in love with the technology. You fall in love with what the thing is and you don't know how to shut up and take the sale. And, since then I haven't allowed myself to be in any sales positions. I I do a lot of marketing and a lot of writing to the effect of like, here's this thing, here's what it's here's who it's for, here's what it does. But it's I kind of separate that from, you know, being on the phone in a sales sort of environment.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. And do you think people kind of figure you're a sales guy because you're you're kind of outgoing and you like to talk and you're enthusiastic? Is that where
Speaker 2:that's Yeah. It's kind of like, you know, in college like everybody plays guitar. Mhmm. It's like in in the business world, if you have any of those kinds of skills, they're like so hungry for like good not not in all the business world, right? Not in like Salesforce where they have like an industry of like having sales guys.
Speaker 2:But or or like Groupon or something like that, a very sales rich environment. In environments where like you are doing you're you're working with media, you're creating websites, you're you're doing stuff like that. There's a lot of techie engineering, design y types in that crew, and there's not that many who can, talk to the client, across the table about what this thing is for, why they need it, why it costs so much, etcetera, etcetera. Yeah. And I and I kinda I could grasp that.
Speaker 2:I I did know how to do that but but it was kind of wasting. It was soul sucking for lack of a better term. Yeah. For me to kinda do that. So anyway, so I started I started there and and eventually it was always bogging on the side, Finally got out on my own after working on a couple startups, learning what I needed to there and, I was like, okay, I'm just gonna design blogs for these people that I've gotten to know who have, you know, 200 to $500,000 a year businesses, but they're all like just based off of some old woo themes, the WordPress theme or something like that.
Speaker 2:I was like, yeah, I'm gonna create a brand for these people. I'm gonna go around, spend the next couple of years just working with that crew. And I knew them by name and I could I could hunt them down and target them instead of like just throwing up a web page and hoping someone lands on it. So I went for this real specific niche and I did the first site which was with a guy called Corbett Barr and that was redesigning thinktraffic.net. And then, by the time that was done, he wanted, we were we were in partnership conversations.
Speaker 2:I did a handful of other sites but but those were sort of on the side while we were creating what is now called Fizzle, which is our, you know, training environment for for people who wanna build their thing and and, like, are dreaming of sort of supporting themselves and not, not having a soul sucking, you know, cubicle job or something like that. That's what we do. That's what I do now for a living is I basically help entrepreneurs figure out stuff
Speaker 1:like this. Yeah. Now now there's a bunch of stuff. I could go a bunch of different ways here.
Speaker 2:I wanna go all
Speaker 1:ways.
Speaker 2:I could talk about partners. It's like Canada. Let's go all dressed.
Speaker 1:So we could talk about, you know, how do you get into a good partnership. We could talk about sales. We could talk about whether work experience is important before you start your own thing. I wanna take a tangent that I don't even know if any of our readers or my listeners are gonna care about it, but I'm interested in it. Because you mentioned this thing about church.
Speaker 1:And I used to be a churchy guy. And it seems like I keep noticing this thing that there's a lot of people that come out of evangelicalism Mhmm. That are creative people that see there there seems to be something kind of baked in there. Yeah. Where these people end up coming out and they've already had experience, you know, producing videos and making websites and giving speeches and all this kind of stuff.
Speaker 1:And I just wonder what do you think it is about that? Like what is it about
Speaker 2:I don't know. It's it's true. I've said I've I I I wondered the same thing. Actually, Adam Clark and I got into it on on his podcast a little bit. That is, the gently mad.
Speaker 2:And there's actually by by the way, for anybody more who else is interested in this GCC stuff, there's like a whole second episode of that that he was like, can't really publish this. But I'll put it on the website in case anybody clicks on it where we're just talking the GCC stuff. But there's some you're you're bang on Justin. There's something about it. And I think, I mean, from my own story, it was a couple things.
Speaker 2:Number one, it was you remember being an an evangelical like, it's about an emotional experience. Yeah. It's about an emotional experience sitting there. You wanna create that whether you're a musician or you're running the slides or creating the talker or whatever. And the so first of all, the sensitivity to that emotional experience, the desire for it.
Speaker 2:Second of all, and and again, you know, not making any value calls on whether that's good or bad, clearly it's it's anyways, not making any value calls there. Exactly. But then there's like the opportunity to like, yeah, you want to run the slides this day today? Okay, sure. I'll get to church a little bit early and do that and like that's where I got to I had been playing music for a long time and that's where I had an expression.
Speaker 2:I got to do that and girls would like me because of it and I was like fired up. Yeah. So gotta do that. What's that?
Speaker 1:I I I think the opportunity that's what I think about a lot because we're not we don't my family doesn't go to church now but I keep thinking about that. Like how many opportunities I had when I was a kid.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Like because people you just had so many opportunities to say you know, people would say we we need a video. And you could be a 12 year old kid and they would trust you with, you know, producing that thing. Yeah. So I wonder if that's a big part of it, just giving I
Speaker 2:totally do. And it's also don't forget like that these are people who are like kind of whether or not they're successful in it, there's we're steeping ourselves in like some thoughts about what matters, what you know, in some sort of existential questions.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right? So and I think those kinds of questions, what does it mean to be a human? Who am I? What am I here for? These lead towards creative endeavors.
Speaker 2:These these are where the cave paintings came from and things like that. You know, like, first of all, there was their very first tools we made. There was how do we club this animal over the head so that we can chew on it? There's the utility of of being alive. And then there's like, what does it mean to be alive?
Speaker 2:And I think that's what we start to see in the in the caveman drawing stuff. Right? Again, I'm not a smart guy on this, but we're people who who are seeing these having these experiences. Like, I I'm no longer Jesus and I are seeing other people, but, I had a lot of real experiences there and a lot of real shaping and defining moments. And I'm extremely grateful for what came out of that time or or who I am.
Speaker 2:I I see that all as being a big shaper in who I am today and the way I look at the world. And I have nothing but love for that even though, you know, I I like to kinda sleep around with with maybe, you know, Buddha. He's always got good drugs and stuff and and he watches cooler movies than Jesus. And but anyways, Jesus and I are seeing other people. And I just though I am I am still grateful for everything.
Speaker 2:Like, every once in while, we we'll we'll snuggle from time to time, you know, because I think there is something in being the kind of person or or being in an environment where you're brought into a community who is asking these questions and and, like, experiencing these whether or not the experiences are good or bad, but just, like, at least having these sorts of questions about who am I and what am I here you know?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. And I think a lot of people don't like, there's a few kind of notable entrepreneurs that came out of that whole environment. Kevin Rose is one. Is he really?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Ryan Carson is another.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah. Oh, you could see it on Kevin Rose's face now that you mention it. Yeah. Like He's so freaking wholesome.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Las Vegas evangelical. They they he has a great foundation interview where him and Ryan Carson talk about that.
Speaker 2:Oh, really?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So that's interesting. That's, you know, that that I I just thought that would be interesting to talk about. Now let's talk about I wanna talk about partnership.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I think about this a lot because I think naturally I'm a guy that really likes to do stuff alone. Yeah. And so what was it about working with Corbett that you kind of felt like you guys somehow got aligned and then walking in the same direction together. What how did that happen?
Speaker 2:Yeah. There's like I had a conversation with a guy called Charlie Gilkey a while ago, and he runs a site called Productive Flourishing. He lives in Portland, and I was there at the time. And and so I got I went out lunch with him. We knew some of the same people, but he this guy's real he's really, really bright.
Speaker 2:He's really smart. Like, I think he has more than one PhD. Like, not just like he he's he's got good people skills. Like, he's, like, bright, like, super intelligent. And he said something there that stuck with me.
Speaker 2:It was it was something about the to the it was something to the effect of, I would love to do something with those guys. I was talking about doing some of this, like, co op type project. He's like, I'd love to do something with that, they're all just such lone wolves. And and it just kinda stuck with me, not only be because of that wonderful speech in The Hangover where where Zach Alifianakis lone wolf grew grew by one. But what's this?
Speaker 2:Could it be? Yes. My lone wolf my lone wolf crew has grown by two, or something. I can't remember the things. I just I'm giggling just thinking about it.
Speaker 2:But, but that lone wolf feeling has always been where I've where I've been. I've always been a lone wolf. Whether or not I've labeled it as such and not that that it has any negative connotations. It's just like I would like to build it myself. Why?
Speaker 2:Because I feel like I can. And I like, I know that I can, and it's probably gonna be better if I just do it myself. Right? Mhmm. So when Corbett and I started working together on we did the little project of of designing redesigning Think Traffic.
Speaker 2:We were getting to know each other, like, in a personal sense and then nothing nothing creepy, but but we we we talked on the same level. Like, we met at a conference at the bar and I was ordering a Fernet and he knew what that was and and was like getting fired up and we started taking shots of Fernet together and
Speaker 1:And before you knew it you guys were in the same hot tub together.
Speaker 2:Next thing you know, did you know there are hot springs right outside of LA and you're not supposed to wear clothes in them. Anyways, we woke up a couple weekends later and got in touch with our wives and told them where we were, and had been. But we we got on on a personal level. Was like, this is interesting. And that was before we even started working on the on the website.
Speaker 2:Then, our wives got on on a personal level. They started to become friends and that was a big deal for me. And I mean, it just you know what it's like. I mean, partnerships. So partnerships are crazy, they're marriages, they're really hard and when you look at the statistics, I don't know, I I have a handful of friends who have had brutal partnerships blow up in their faces, really like horrible stories.
Speaker 2:But then you look at you know, the 37 signals guys, you look at you know, Fred Wilson and his partner, you look at yeah, I don't know, there's you see these these duos that are doing important things and they're doing it well. So what happened for me with Corbett is he clearly had his own frequencies of expertise and they were different than mine. He clearly had his voice and knew what he was good at and they were different than mine. And this is something that you see very clearly on our podcast And I just we just lucked out because there's three of us, it's Corbett and myself, and then our buddy Caleb, who's also working on fizzle and think traffic with us. He's a part of the crew.
Speaker 2:And we all just operate in different registers of the frequency spectrum. If you follow my drift there where where Caleb has his own like like sort of straight man personality, Corbett has a lot more like intelligence, and sort of and and just real life experience has been doing this stuff for a long time and I'm just this golden retriever who's just fired up about everything, super emotional about everything. And the way we bounce off one another just ends up being great. Well, that's the closest like thing I have to explaining why I felt like the partnership with Corbett would be a good thing and and not a and not blow up in our faces because and then and then you go through the negotiation of this stuff and it's harrowing. Like, here's this guy you're getting close kind of close with on a personal level.
Speaker 2:You're like basically in negotiations with you're you're you're thinking of marrying each other for the rest of your life. The dream is you're gonna marry each other for the rest of your life. Right? Yeah. And and you're gonna make great stuff and and you're gonna be like those two super rich guys in trading places and you're just gonna like make bets about like what you can do to poor people and things.
Speaker 2:Like, that's the dream. But but you also have all these stories where it just goes so horribly wrong and you know human nature, you know yourself, you could picture how this is gonna go and yet and yet you you can't think through all the variables enough. So, and one of the things my an old an old mentor said to me is like just expect that this is not going to work out. Expect that in five years you will not be doing this and plan accordingly. And hopefully everything's going great but if you expect that everything's gonna fall apart in five years without letting that sort of infiltrate your behavior now and make it such that you know, a marriage where you're like where you're expecting to be screwing other people in a few years like isn't gonna work out very well, you know.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Justin. So I don't know. These are all I'm kind of vent like hit a nerve here because it was it was really and then going through the negotiations was really, really harrowing and stressful. We've come through it and it was good. We're stronger and better now because of it.
Speaker 2:We really are. But man, that was like some vulnerable stuff because Corbett had built Think Traffic into a into a beast of a publishing site, basically. Really big audience. Lots of loyalty, a very large, very engaged audience. Right?
Speaker 2:It's this dream. But then he saw what I could bring to the equation. And and I guess one there's okay. There's one tip that I have here. Can I can I get in
Speaker 1:this Yeah? Yeah.
Speaker 2:The tip that I had was, it took me a long time. Like, I thought I was hot shit because because of lone wolf, because I knew I could go build all this stuff that we're talking about building together. I could go do it by myself. Just like Caleb just like Corbett could go build it all himself. You know?
Speaker 2:That's I had to let go of of that. And I had to kind of own and and retreat back into these frequencies that I knew I could do really, really well. I can be the heart and soul of this business. And I could and and Corbett could absolutely be the mind and intelligence of it. Right?
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And it I kind of had to pull back my tentacles from all of these exterior places. Like, I could create the website. Yes, I could write the content. Yes, I could create the business plan. Yes, I could create the unique value proposition or whatever, all this other bullshit that we do.
Speaker 2:Right? I knew I could do all of this stuff. But if I pulled myself back from that and became a little bit more of an apprentice of Corbett for a while because, you know, he built the thing so I'm starting at a much lower percent and investing over time. Right? Again, I'm the I'm the dumbest guy at math.
Speaker 2:I guarantee you of everyone listening to this right now, they're all at least smarter than me in math.
Speaker 1:And if you go to our website you can take the math quiz and see how you rank up against Chase Reeves.
Speaker 2:Exactly. So I'm looking at these, I'm trying to understand vesting and all this other stuff and I'm just like and I and I get it now I think maybe, I probably don't but but I just started trusting Corbett, you know, and just saying, okay. What you know, I I I've got to do my due diligence on this, but if I try to harrow down every single detail, that's because we're young and we don't have a whole lot of money on the table. And frankly, if I do this for five years and I learned everything that I learned through it and come out on the other side with nothing except for having five years of working with guys who are really, really smart and good at what they do and and experience building a business and doing all this stuff. If I get kind of Buddhist y about it and be like, can I be grateful for this stuff?
Speaker 2:Like, then then yes. Let's move forward to open hearts, fucking open hands, make something important. Let's make something we care about and and see how we how we can do it. Yeah. You know, because when you get really anxious about, like, protecting yourself and putting up those walls around the garden, it's like, I don't know, things just get shitty.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Well, I think, you know, if I'm honest, there's two kinds of things I think about here. One is I I've been in so when I was in my early twenties, I opened up a couple snowboard shops with a buddy. Sick, bro. And the the the problem that I ran into was I was not a very good partner because I was so used to doing things on my own is that I wasn't willing to slow it down and bring him into every decision.
Speaker 1:So, you know, like when you're by yourself, it's like you want to, you know, sign your shareholder agreement, you just do it, right? You just sign it away or if you need to launch something new or test something or
Speaker 2:Yeah. Totally.
Speaker 1:And the I I I really was not a very good you know, the relationship kind of suffered because I just kept going out and doing all these things and he was just, you know out of the loop and it ended up being you know not so good. Have you found that like you do have to really kind of hold yourself back in some cases and you know communicate and make sure everyone's on the same page? How how does that work out?
Speaker 2:Well, okay. So not that I find that we need to slow ourselves down very much. Like, we're at this really magical we we got our we lucked out right now. And our organization is very small. We're very nimble and we have we have, you know, we do what we need to to plan our sprints and do the thing.
Speaker 2:Right? So and beyond that, like, each one of us is is really smart at what they do, really good at what they do, and and we just innately trust each other for those things. Right? Mark my words, this might be a, you know, a point in the podcast to say, hey, in five years come back. Oh, that's what got you into trouble.
Speaker 2:I don't know. Right? But but in terms of communication, one of my things that I'm trying to do that I think is is important that I've learned is you gotta waste as much time as possible just talking and getting and and and verbally. Chat is great when you're doing the work and getting this up, but get on a Hangout. We go get on Google Hangout as as often as possible, and I just like to waste time doing that because things just things just grow and, like, a little snowball effects inside you feelings about where the business should be going or this, that, and the other.
Speaker 2:And you gotta have as many opportunities as possible for one of those things just to, like, fart out. Mhmm. Because because I think that's where problems can can occur. And, again, I'm not speaking a lot from experience here. I'm just kind of going off of what I think is probably a danger.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So when whenever we get a chance to talk, I and and and Corbett's, like, you know, texting me or whatever, like, hey. I'll be back at this time. You wanna get on the phone? Like, even though there's nothing really to talk about, like, I'll be like, yes.
Speaker 2:Let's absolutely do that. I have important things to discuss. And I don't have anything important to discuss. But and it's a it's it's it's inefficient. Right?
Speaker 2:You're not like being a good bootstrapping lean startup and making the most of every goddamn moment. But you you're you're going deep on one another. And I think, I don't know, the dream maybe the dream is sort of you you choose one another. The the dream partnership is you're as much into one another as you are into the business. And again, I I I mean, I'll wait till for Brad Feld to say that before I can quote it, but with any sort of fucking certainty.
Speaker 2:But but it's something that I think might be one of these like, you know, things that we take with us from our Jesus days of like going rich and and deep on the people and and, you know, not so much on the on the on the outcome. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, and if I look back at that first partnership, the the mistakes I really made were in isolation. Like, was just, you know, in my basement by myself working away at stuff. And I was like, well, should I wait till tomorrow morning to talk to, my buddy about this? Or like, nah, just keep going. And there's something humanizing even in what we're doing right now.
Speaker 1:There's something humanizing about hearing someone else's voice and just talking to them. And I think there is some a part of that that builds, trust, which is I I think ultimately what you need. Like, if I talked to to my partner at the time and said, you know, got on the phone with him, I would have got off that call and felt like, why can't, you know, make all these decisions without him? That would be an asshole thing to do. Right?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Totally. So I think that that I think that's a good point. That kinda humanizing part
Speaker 2:is important. When you had that the snowboard shop, was that before you had kids or was that early on or Yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean that was the worst possible because I was also working full time and had we had we had a couple kids at the time too.
Speaker 2:Okay. So I love it. I love it. It's like, no, we didn't just have one. We had two.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we had a couple kids. But I remember like, you know, early on, like when you're when you're hustling right now, right now I'm 31, eight years of marriage, got a four year old, fed a lot of shit happened the last couple of years like we're getting older, and we're getting better at like when I say we I mean my wife and I and I'm good I've gotten really good at knowing when the right time to work is for me and when I'm just not allowed to. If I was young and hungry and single, it would be really difficult to be in a partnership I think because I'd be working all hours of the night unless we both were, you know and I'd I dream of being some 22 year old kid at Y Combinator just like coming up with the next fucking I don't know some something that's not gonna make anyone money but I got that experience you know, I'm like bummer I wish I would have been able to have that you know but maybe I'd be smarter because I don't know just because it'd fun it'd like camp or some shit.
Speaker 2:Right? Yeah. Yeah. So, but we don't have I don't have that right now. Right?
Speaker 2:I check I clock in and I know I'm gonna get my solid four hours before lunch. Then I check out for lunch and I come back and then I go then I start handling email and support and you know basically just do dealing with dealing with things until the end of the day because I already did my writing. Already got my stuff done.
Speaker 1:So go back wait, just back up a bit there. So talk us through that. So in the morning, what's the morning for? What time do you start and is that like production time?
Speaker 2:Well, yeah. So for me, morning's always the best been the best time. I've always been an early morning guy. And then subsequently this past, the well, I guess it was it was two months ago that we had a pretty horrible personal tragedy and I needed to change my, morning schedule to kind of support my wife a bit. And so I hung out with my son in the morning until around 08:00 and then and then I got work that normally I was trying to get into the I work from home so I was just getting downstairs around six making the coffee and just getting after it because I love that.
Speaker 2:There's something really that I get about that vibe where it feels like nobody else is up. It feels like you're, you know, Rocky training for his fight with Apollo Creed and it's like the music and everything's coming to crescendo. Like, it feels great. But, so since then, I haven't been able to get back into the 06:00 thing just because our personal life has changed quite a bit. So what Cord and I are actually both doing and we're kind of experimenting with both doing this right now where basically there's no conversation until noon.
Speaker 2:You know, I started at I get in about 07:30 into my in front of my standing desk now. I'm trying to go full standing. Don't you know it? Because I care about my lower back. Yeah.
Speaker 2:But but, yeah, the goal is we work on something until twelve or or base basically around eleven. I find that, like, if you're really digging inside of you to write a thing and to put something out, you basically have three hour chunk maximum Mhmm. Of of serious written good stuff before you just you start it it it starts not producing as many good things on the other side. You're just digging into your well-being on the other side of, you know, 05:00 that night. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So that's what we're working on right now. It's just we make something that's publishable before lunch or we work on something that's going to be published before lunch, and then then we handle the fires. And we get a lot of sport requests. We get a lot of, inquiries about stuff, and we have a lot of things to kind of, you know, schedule with blog posts, this, and the other, all sorts of sort of editorial tasks, and administrative tasks that we then try to do towards the end of the day. And that's when most of our meetings are happening, that's when we're drinking Negronis and recording podcasts.
Speaker 1:And and what time do you usually clock out?
Speaker 2:Right at five. My son keeps coming in, like, all throughout the day. Dad, will you check and see if it's 05:00? And so and I I thought about yeah. I I had one time I tried to be super upset about these little interruptions because I know about the importance of flow and all of these things.
Speaker 2:But then I was like, oh, God. He is adorable. What a cool kid. God, he's a monster.
Speaker 1:And so how do you kind of manage that? Because I actually I could work from home but I choose not to. I rent an office downtown just because I just found Because
Speaker 2:you're in Vernon and it cost you about $11 a month to do shit.
Speaker 1:It's true. It's cheap. But but for me I just found like I just that I you know that having kids come in and you know and then you know if you're at home it's easier for you know other people in the family to say well I'm you know going out and doing this or can you fix the dishwasher.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah totally.
Speaker 1:So how do you manage that? Is it kind of like you're with the fam until eight and then you clock out for a good lunch with the fam and then you're going again until five? Are you pretty flexible with that stuff?
Speaker 2:I am. I have worked very hard to try to get my wife to really respect the eight to five zone as like sort of sacred space. And and that's that's daddy time. He's by himself. He's doing his thing.
Speaker 2:And throughout the day, I try to see them as little as possible. Suffice it to say, I will when I when I get to a place where we have the office, like I will I'm excited to work from an office. I'm excited to get up at 06:00 and clock out and not come home until five. And maybe that's some deficiency within my character. I'm willing to hear that, but I still really want that because I like I always like being in an office.
Speaker 2:I like being downtown somewhere or something like that. Vernon downtown sounds beautiful to me. Yeah. So best case scenario for me, we've got I've got a great workspace with the studio and it's easy for me to jump up, record a video because we do a lot of video stuff and all this other stuff. But right now, I'm in my house.
Speaker 2:I've got a room. I've got a bunch of lights I've gotta move around and things that it's like, it's a real big deal for us to do any one of these pieces of content that we're creating. So, it's a little bit of a tight spot, but it's it's fine. You know, for the most part, what has been key is getting my wife to understand that this isn't really important to me. This is really like my space.
Speaker 2:And of course, my son doesn't understand x. He's a monster and he only cares about himself, but he we're we try. Right?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Well, I think one thing I thought about a lot is this idea of I think everyone's different. But that idea of kind of working and getting into flow is important. But eventually, we do want to have kind of good lives with our families and stuff. And the one model that seems to work I'm just looking at guys like Ryan Carson is eventually working yourself into a four day work week if you can.
Speaker 1:And then giving your, you know, you can give your family one extra day a week as opposed to having, you know, a bunch of interruptions throughout.
Speaker 2:Yeah. The difference between Ryan and me is his family is adorable and they're great to be with. You know? That's the thing that Ryan will always have over me. And so he's so good for you, Ryan.
Speaker 2:Must be nice. In the meantime, I'm going to try I don't know. I I was actually just reading a post, a old old old post from 2009 about old old old. Yeah. Someone someone who's really old on yeah.
Speaker 2:But for me, it's like it's long time ago. It's early post stuff. And I was writing about like I'm such a shithead, I really like my work, I really really am so engaged and passionate about getting the office and doing the thing. Like all of my personal interest is in work and not and very little of it is in my family. And that was, you know, that was a little younger.
Speaker 2:That was like where whatever was however many again, not a math guy. So I was younger fucking whatever. I'm at that age where you do that shit. But but also I didn't know who I was going to be. I didn't know my career, and I didn't know I was kind of job hunting and figuring things out, and that was really that made our first year and a half of of having a baby, like, ridiculously dumb.
Speaker 2:Like I'm an idiot bad guy, trust me for that. But but I so I kind of feel for me back then like putting all that effort into it, and really working hard because still to this day like my favorite game in the world to play is build a business with Chase Reeves. Because it's just the funnest puzzle to put together to create an experience and make something meaningful to to do something that'll actually last versus, like, just another fucking website that you threw up or another client work or another this and the other. This is my this is like I really love this game. I really love doing this stuff, because it engages so much of me to a fault.
Speaker 2:Know, I I know that that over the next several years, it's gonna be more of like investing more and more in the family. That's what I've learned over the last couple years, you know, and so figuring out that balance because if you know, if I go, I'm sure I could make up some parable about if I go super hardcore into business stuff, the work starts to suffer and and just like if I go too hard into personal family stuff like those relationships start to suffer. I certainly know that to be the case. Yeah. You know?
Speaker 1:Well, you know you brought up something that I wanted to talk about anyway which is because you you mentioned that you just had a kid and you're out, you know, looking for work and stuff like that. And I wanted to talk a little bit about the struggle. You know, that struggle in the beginning, you know, whether you're like if you're unemployed and you have, you know, a wife and kid at home, there's a struggle of, I I gotta get work, I gotta get, you know, I gotta get some income in here. Yeah. And it's kinda like that when you start when you start a business.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Like at the beginning, you know, I I interview a lot of people and I talk to a lot of people. And it seems like some of those folks with a lot of experience that have been doing this for years and years and years. Mhmm. They've either forgotten about the struggle or maybe they didn't have it because they were young and they had no expenses.
Speaker 1:But you know, you've got a wife and a kid at the house. You got to pay for those gluten free crackers that you keep talking You know? Yeah. So tell me about that. Tell me about you're building fizzle right now.
Speaker 1:What's that like? Like, did you guys start from $0 a month and you're just kind of building it up from there?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So well, I see two things here. First of all is when I was like like a few years ago when I was young and trying to figure this out. And then there's the the what you just said with the Fizzle Building. What was it like to to to build that up or what is it like right now?
Speaker 2:So, I'm I'll I'll I'll address both of these one after the the other. Okay. So, the first of all, I mean, going back a few years to to watch myself try to figure out who I am and what I'm here for like I feel for that guy. I really do like that. This is part of the reason why I love the work that I do so much is because I've discovered so much about myself through it.
Speaker 2:I mean what what Jesus what I was trying to discover in the Jesus stuff, there was the same thing. Who am I? What am I here for? And I got a lot of a lot got a lot of it there. Same thing with, you know, the Enneagram and Myers Briggs and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:Right? Mhmm. I've always been kind of hungry for that stuff. Looking for insights about me, because I always just kinda I felt like I didn't really know who I was. I didn't or when I'd say something that felt like me or maybe I felt said too many things that I didn't know if it was me or not.
Speaker 2:Right? Yeah. I feel like for the upper middle class Bay Area kid growing up here,
Speaker 1:it's like, that's what the
Speaker 2:struggle is. And half the time you just, like, miss you just stop asking a question because drugs are so fun. Other times, you just, like, stop asking a question because, like, so clearly, this this is the path that set out for me to become an investment banker.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Here's the thing. Chase and I like to chat and so this episode got long. And so we're gonna break it up into two parts. This is part one.
Speaker 1:Come back next week for part two. We get into the struggle of starting a business or product and just those initial weeks and months and years, and what you can expect during that that period. So come back next week for part two with Chase. You can follow him on Twitter. He's chase underscore reeves.
Speaker 1:He's the guy holding the pineapple. You can follow me, Justin, on Twitter at m I Justin, and you can follow the show on Twitter as well at product people TV. If you like the show, give us a review in iTunes. This is easy as clicking five stars. Also, there's the ninth annual People's Podcast Awards.
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