Build Your SaaS

Some unpopular opinions on bootstrapping

Show Notes

Justin is interviewed by Noah and Ben from the Product Journey podcast:
  • Should you build an audience first?
  • Why finding the right market is the first filter you should use on your idea.
  • Justin also shares some stuff he's changed his mind about this past year.

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Creators & Guests

Host
Justin Jackson
Co-founder of Transistor.fm
Guest
Ben Mann
Founder Setup.app
Editor
Chris Enns
Owner of Lemon Productions
Guest
Noah Bragg
Founder of Potion

What is Build Your SaaS?

Interested in building your own SaaS company? Follow the journey of Transistor.fm as they bootstrap a podcast hosting startup.

Helen:

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Helen:

Hello and welcome to Build Your SaaS. This is the behind the scenes story of building a web app in 2019. I'm Justin Jackson and, my partner John Buda isn't here this week. And what I thought I'd do instead is share with you this interview. I was on the Product Journey podcast episode 14 and I talked about some things I've changed my mind about over the past year.

Helen:

You know, since the beginning of 20 19, there's been a a bunch of things that I've I've learned, basically. And, I think I talked about most of them on this episode. So here is most of my conversation with Noah and Ben over at Product

Speaker 2:

Journey. So we got a we got a couple of questions about audience, and,

Helen:

I

Jon:

have a I

Speaker 2:

think I have a pretty interesting one, that is what what makes a good audience, and do you think that you should, like do you think you you have to be part of your audience? Like, do you do you have to feel comfortable among the people?

Helen:

I've actually changed my tune a little bit on this. I think now if you're starting a business, the market is the most important thing. The market you choose. And when I say market, I don't mean market as in just a identifiable group of people. I'm talking about a group of people that buys x.

Helen:

So the diamond market last year was 4,500,000,000 or something like that. To me, that's a market. It's a market where you can see people in motion, preferably buying something. But sometimes it's just people in motion doing something. And everything kind of hinges on that, which market you are in.

Helen:

So as an example, Taylor Otwell is the founder of Laravel, which is the most popular PHP programming framework in the world. He has a huge audience. If you look at his audience, quote, unquote, on Twitter, he's got, I don't know, hundreds of thousands of followers. Let's let's just check because, he has, okay, he has 82,000 followers on Twitter. So for a lot of people, that would be a big audience.

Helen:

And if you go to Laracon, you see he's got 800 people in the audience. Right? And he has, you know, tons of people buying his stuff. He has millions of people using Laravel. But all of that is in the context of a bigger market.

Helen:

It's hard to count the number of programmers in the world, but let's just say a reasonable estimate is that there's 5,000,000 PHP programmers in the world.

Speaker 2:

Mhmm.

Helen:

Would you agree with that, Ben?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Definitely. Uh-huh. Actually, you know, I've actually used Laravel for a couple of projects.

Helen:

Okay. There you go. And so 5,000,000 PHP programmers in the world. Let's just say let's just take one element of that market, not including all the tools they buy, not including, you know, everything else that you need to be a programmer. Let's just think about salary.

Helen:

And these are these are just guesses. But let's say on average, an average PHP programmer in the world makes $25,000 a year. Well, 25,000 times 5,000,000 is a 125,000,000,000, I think. That's a $125,000,000,000 being spent on salaries for PHP developers alone. That's a massive market.

Helen:

It's not just a big group of people, but it's also a big group of people who where there's some sort of economic activity being generated. I think it's why products in the Laravel community often have a magnified impact compared to other things. So, you know, I have a course called marketing for developers that did pretty good.

Speaker 2:

Mhmm.

Helen:

But that's like, if you take all of the developers in the world, and then you ask how many of those developers wanna learn marketing? It's a much smaller slice. Right?

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Helen:

How many developers in the world are PHP developers that want, to make their jobs better? Well, that's probably 5,000,000. Mhmm. And so you you can compare results, and you can see that kinda everything hinges on the market. How big the market is, how big your audience can be within that market, and then all the multiples all kind of depend on that.

Helen:

So how much money is being spent in that market already and how much of that can you carve off for yourself? You know, Taylor, presumably, he's only carved off a little bit of the PHP market. Like, there's still other frameworks. There's still programmers that don't know about or use Laravel. So you still got plenty of room to grow as well.

Helen:

But even then, like, Taylor Otwell as a solo person has sold $10,000,000 worth of software to PHP developers. Yeah. That's pretty crazy. That's insane. And he just recently took on employees.

Helen:

So, you know, there's funded startups in San Francisco right now that have 1,000,000 of dollars in funding, staff of 50 people, and they haven't sold $10,000,000 worth of software. I think the market Yeah. That you're in determines everything. When you have what Corey Gwynn calls demonstrated demand, so you can actually see the demand, that's kind of what you're looking for. You're looking for people in motion, a large group of people in motion who are where there's economic activity being generated from whatever they're doing.

Speaker 4:

So, yeah, so you would basically say start out with the market, try to find a market that you wanna work in, and then start building audience in around that. Like, don't worry as much about, do you feel comfortable, in that audience or, yeah, those kind of things?

Helen:

I mean, this is where it gets tricky. This is why business is so hard because you have to you apply all of these filters to get to Right. Where you wanna go. So it's like, it's not it can't it's not enough to just be in a good market. You actually have to be interested in that market.

Helen:

You have to, you know, have good founder market fit. You know, you have to then be able to identify some sort of need in that market. Then you have to actually execute on some things and, you know, make some make some sort of connection. I don't think you have to naturally necessarily build an audience, but you get a lot of leverage from who you know and who knows you. Who you know is just making connections.

Helen:

We've we're making connections right now. Now the 3 of us know each other. And, even the fact that we've been on a phone call makes it a lot easier for me to ask a favor of you in the future or for you to ask a favor of me. That's networking. That's who you know.

Helen:

Who knows you is the audience effect. And, that you I mean, that could be very helpful, but there are people who who have built businesses without doing that. Ruben Gammes is a good example of someone who's just built a software business almost purely on search engine results and optimizing search engine results. So I I think it's one of the levers you can use without any sort of human connection. It's very difficult.

Helen:

So you have to Mhmm. You do have to connect with other human beings. And I get this is why it's helpful to be interested in the market you're in. Sometimes it can almost even that can be enough. Like, I'm really interested in the Laravel community.

Helen:

I'm not really a Laravel developer, but I've spoken at their conference three times. I really like the people. You know, I would say I'm part of the community even though I I'm not like a power user of Laravel. And Yeah. Mhmm.

Helen:

There has to be something that draws you to that market. There has to be something that keeps you there. And you're get probably going to need some sort of connection with some key people in that market to make it work. And it you know, how you get there is kind of the individual journey. I'm I'm almost 40 now.

Helen:

It's it's very difficult to say, you know, what are the 10 steps that brought you to Transistor? Because it's like layer on layer on layer of my life going back to when I was a kid. And so all of those steps up till now lead me to where I'm at now. I think you can optimize for some of those things, like, where you point yourself in life has a big determination of where you'll end up. Right?

Helen:

I think the the connections you make matter a lot. I think what you put out into the world matters a lot. So, you know, podcasting, blogging, public speaking, but even just anything, not, open source projects. Anything you put out into the world can help. But in terms of, like, adding all those up and going, okay, what what really matters?

Helen:

A lot harder to to figure that out.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. I think that's a pretty interesting point because when we started out with a podcast, I think we were both, like, on the track of we should build an audience. And we just it's kind of like we're shifting shifting away from that a little bit. Mhmm. Mhmm.

Speaker 2:

And just recently came across this tweet from Jane Portman and, I think, Rob Walling, Jane Portman from Eusolist, who were also talking about that, like, how they didn't really need an audience. And that basically just it it just fits very well to what you just said, I guess. Mhmm. And there's one more thing that I would like to, like, like, get your opinion on because you're probably familiar with, Derek Rymer and what happened with Level. Right?

Helen:

Mhmm.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. It's kind of like do you feel like having an audience might not all might not always be not necessary, but also maybe, like, lead to false positives?

Jon:

Mhmm.

Helen:

Oh, definitely. Yeah. Again, it can be really helpful too. There's to say that my audience didn't help in launching Transistor would be disingenuous. Like, that it definitely helped.

Helen:

It still helps. But there is a risk because what you're looking for is you're looking for some sort of momentum. Right? And when you launch something, you're trying to gauge what kind of response is this getting. So when Apple releases the new iPhone, how many people are lined up outside of the Apple Store?

Helen:

Right? Apple actually can fall prey to this because they've got all these mega fans, right, that are gonna line up day 1 no matter what. So you could see these huge lineups, and you could go, oh, wow. Like, the new iPhone's a big success. But unless the rest of the world shows up, then it's not going to be a success.

Helen:

Right?

Speaker 2:

So Yeah. That's a pretty good analogy.

Helen:

Yeah. Lineups on day 1. I mean, they are helpful. You know, like, I've launched things. I think still to this day, my best launch ever was, for this I was doing this online series on product marketing.

Helen:

And, like, the first couple weeks, tons of people showed up. And when I started asking them, what were you what are you hoping to achieve, you know, out of this? What brought you here? They said, oh, I'm just a big fan. I just get everything that you put out.

Helen:

And that's nice, but it became really clear in the coming months that no one else cared. That's the disadvantage of having an audience. When people are really kind of invested in your journey, they're gonna show up no matter what. They're gonna show up just because they have a personal connection to you. Ultimately, if you're gonna run a business, you need people who are gonna show up, and then more people who are gonna show up, and then more people who are gonna show up.

Helen:

Right? And and this is actually why I I think the market you choose matters so much. And what I've gotten into some public disagreements with people who could be right. I mean, they these are my friends and people I respect. But the idea of going after a small niche is just you're limiting yourself to, let's say, a pool of 5,000, 10000 people.

Helen:

Well, that's like going to a little tiny stream and trying to, like, scoop up a little bit of water from a tiny stream. As opposed to going after a big massive market in motion, that's like going to a rushing river and just putting your cup in the river and just, like, scooping out a yeah. Sure. You might be able to fill up your cup just, you know, at a small little stream, but the rushing river has so much water. It's it's it's a lot easier for a solo bootstrapper to just, you know, put their cup in the river and then scoop up a bunch of water.

Helen:

And I think sometimes this idea of niche leads people to the wrong places. They're just looking for these tiny streams that no one else has ever discovered before. And they say, well, we gotta avoid the big rivers because everyone knows about those. Yeah. But it's a lot easier to get your cup in a big river and and scoop out some water than to find this tiny little thing that nobody knows exists.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. And the injured cup is bigger than the river. Exactly.

Speaker 4:

Yeah. I think I wonder if where the kind of disagreement that you have with people about that idea really just comes from, like, the end goal with what people wanna do with their business. Mhmm. Because, basically, where I hear kind of what you're saying, I guess, the opposite of what you say in that, you know, find a niche market. The ad the advice that I I've typically seen that from is places like Y Combinator or or startups that are really trying to do, like, a go big or go home kind of business.

Speaker 4:

Mhmm. Like, I think a good example is, Peter Thiel, the the cofounder of PayPal, his book 0 to 1. I don't know if you've heard of that or have read it. But, I mean, that's almost his whole thing is basically go for the new markets. Like, that's where you can make really, you can there's a lot of opportunity to make a huge business and, you know, that's kind of like what, you know, PayPal, Facebook, some of those giant companies now did.

Speaker 4:

Mhmm.

Speaker 2:

Well so,

Speaker 4:

yeah, if you're if people that are saying that kind of advice are venture capitalists or, you know, people that that's their goal, then I I could see that making sense. But, like, you know, for bootstrappers, I think that has been very dangerous.

Gavin:

Mhmm.

Helen:

And

Speaker 4:

so maybe I don't know. I'm just wondering. Maybe that's where the disconnect is

Helen:

Because the way that you are currently doing your thing kind of informs your bias. The way that you've achieved success in the past informs your bias. I mean, I said things at 20 years old that I don't believe anymore. I said things at 30 years old that I don't believe anymore. And so a lot of this is just, you know, what where we're at and what's working for us right now.

Helen:

I mean, I was on Twitter. This guy, Evan Golden, was saying, you can stretch the definition pretty wide. It's always easy to justify, you know, people are spending money. Oh, what did he say? He said people are spending money on tacos everywhere, so this could justify me in opening a taco stand featuring dirt flavored tacos.

Helen:

There's lots of evidence people wanted tacos. And Evan's a friend of mine, but these are the kind of arguments I get into on Twitter.

Speaker 4:

Mhmm. Yeah.

Helen:

But I think, unfortunately, that's exactly what I do wanna do is I want to say, is there any evidence in this market of demonstrated demand? That's just a great word from Corey Gwynn. And so PayPal let's take PayPal as an example. What was what was the market for what PayPal was doing before PayPal existed? Well, it was massive.

Helen:

The the the the Western Union, like, bank transfer like,

Gavin:

you

Helen:

know, money transfer market, people trying to pay for things with credit cards online, but having to go through their credit card processors. And there's all sorts of friction, but there's tons of evidence that there's 1,000,000,000 of dollars being spent in that market already. And so it's not like PayPal invented anything. Sure. They they created a new way of doing those things, but they didn't create the market.

Helen:

They were riding a wave that already existed. They just saw the wave coming, and they built a better surfboard that, you know, enabled them to ride further than anyone else had at the time. And this is what I'm talking about. It's really and in some ways, what Evan is saying is, like, I am I'm stretching the definition to say, is there any sort of prior or existing demonstrated demand for this thing? And I think you could see that in almost every major product launch.

Helen:

The iPhone before the iPhone was the BlackBerry and the Palm, and, you know, you can keep going back and back and back. Right? There's Mhmm. There's demonstrated demand for these things. Even if you look at I can remember as a kid looking in catalogs wanting to buy a portable television.

Helen:

Right? From RadioShack or whatever. There was demand for portable televisions that were battery operated. They never worked very well, but there was demonstrated demand for that thing. Well, a big part of the iPhone is just a portable television.

Helen:

Right? That's at least that's how my kids use it. That's like Netflix all day long.

Speaker 4:

Yeah. Definitely now.

Helen:

So I I think the point is to look for some sort of demonstrated demand and and to think, is this a market in motion? Is there evidence that people are doing something about this right now?

Speaker 4:

Yeah. So the the market is kinda being defined as, like, a problem to be solved or, like, a job to be done rather than I don't know. Maybe how, like, marketers sometimes think about markets as almost I feel like they can kinda put it into a box of, like, a specific solution or a specific, area in that way. So, yeah, really focusing from what you're saying, it sounds like, yeah, really focusing on the problem that needs to be solved. Is that a big market of people, you know, want that?

Speaker 4:

You know? Mhmm.

Helen:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You yes. Exactly.

Helen:

That that's that's exactly what I'm talking about. The the there's lots you you can see this with, if you go into product hunt and you find I run into this all the time, products that are no longer around. There's all these, like, dead startups.

Speaker 4:

Oh, yeah.

Helen:

And in almost every case, there just wasn't enough demonstrated demand for that thing. They were good ideas. They kind of made sense logically. But if you looked at it and go, okay. But who's doing something about this right now?

Helen:

That's really what's most interesting about Derek Reimer's story is that once he started talking to the people on his waiting list and asking, okay. What are you doing about this problem right now? Yeah. And often their response was, well, nothing. We haven't done anything.

Helen:

What? You haven't searched on Google for an answer? No. You haven't searched the Slack extension store? No.

Helen:

That that's a bad sign. If people aren't even willing to do something free, which is just search for a solution, how are you gonna convince them to jump over all of these hurdles and actually take out their credit card out of their wallet and pay you for something? This is another thing I've maybe had a hard time to articulate is it takes so much momentum to get someone to take out their credit card that you've gotta be sure that what you're proposing is something that they really, really want. And, really, the only way to to figure that out, the only way to see that clearly is are they doing something about it right now? And is there enough of these people on mass doing this doing something about it right now?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. I love that piece of advice. I actually thought that it's I I think it was actually you who said that, like, you should go to Twitter and just search search if people are typing something like, I don't know, like, maybe even using the their grammar example. Like, search in Twitter for switching away from Slack or switch away from Slack and see how many results you actually find. And there are a couple I did there for fun.

Speaker 2:

So yeah.

Helen:

And, I mean, that's just step 1. Right? Because it's it's pretty low friction to tweet, your disappointment with something. But at least that's something. And then, you know, you would actually want to talk with folks and ask them questions like, okay.

Helen:

Well, what caused you to switch? How long did you think about switching before it happened? What what did you have to do internally in your team to make that switch happen? And that's where you're gonna get a lot of answers. It's one reason I I worked for a project management software startup.

Helen:

And what I didn't know before I joined is how hard it is to get people to switch project management software. And it's remarkably difficult because everybody has an opinion on the team. Right? The developers want one thing. The marketing folks want one another thing.

Helen:

The CTO wants one thing. Like, it goes around and around. And so you have to convince not just one person, but 10, 20 people to to make this decision. And then the the other kind of bad sign so despite how difficult it is to get people to switch, people do switch all the time. And that's also a bad sign because they don't just switch once and then they're satisfied.

Helen:

They switch. They try Trello, and then they're like, nope. This didn't work. And then they try Basecamp, and then they're like, oh, that doesn't work. And then they try JIRA.

Helen:

Like, they all end up in JIRA. Right? That's how it works.

Speaker 4:

Yeah.

Helen:

You know, when you actually get into those real discussions with people about what does the actual process look like, Even, you know, a market like project management, it has its own, its its own minefield. Right? Like, there's you there's pros and cons. And, I think for bootstrappers, it's a lot harder. It's why we've seen, you know, Basecamp got in early and so they've done okay.

Helen:

But really besides Basecamp, everybody else is venture funded Because you Mhmm. It just costs so much money. And if you get on their list, like, people they will Jira will call you. They will like, they've got salespeople that wanna onboard you. Right?

Helen:

Because they know the only way to push this through the whole funnel is to have a lot of kind of concerted effort doing it. So a lot of these decisions depend on whether or not you're bootstrapping, whether or not you're bootstrapping as a solo founder. Because some of these ideas and markets are just harder to reach as a bootstrapper or a solo founder. Just going to take a quick break and tell you about Clubhouse. If you are not using Clubhouse to manage your software project, you should try it especially because they've now announced that Clubhouse is free for teams of up to 10 people forever.

Helen:

You just sign up at clubhouse.iobuild, and you will get free project management software for you and your team as long as that team is under 10 people. If you have a team larger than 10 people, it's still an incredible value. We've been using it for transistor from the beginning. Clubhouse.i0/build. Alright.

Helen:

Back to the show.

Speaker 4:

With that, like, in mind and, you know, starting with the market, I guess and maybe some ways, what sounds like what you'd say is basically start with the market filter. Like, that's the first filter that you wanna put on of how to, basically choose what problem you're gonna solve, how you're gonna do it. Like, it seems like, you know, you start talking to customers, you start talking to users, it takes a while before you can really know what's the right approach, what's the right solution to actually build. What do you do if that solution ends up being something that isn't something that a bootstrapper can do? Or it's or it's or or maybe it's a solution that doesn't use your strengths.

Speaker 4:

Mhmm. You know, as a as a founder, it doesn't use your skills, your abilities. So how do you handle that when, I guess, starting with the market? Mhmm. Because yeah.

Speaker 4:

I mean, I guess it in some ways, it kinda goes back to there's just all these filters, and in some ways, all these things have to align, which is obviously very hard.

Helen:

Yeah. This is another unpopular tweet of mine, but my it is just and I had to I had to admit this before I had any success. But what you kinda have to admit in some way on one side is we're not all gonna make it. And a lot of people don't like hearing that. But Mhmm.

Helen:

We're not all gonna make it. That there's no way that every single aspiring entrepreneur in the world can apply all of these filters and come out on the other side. And by the way, even if you come out on the other side and, you know, like, I have a business now that's doing pretty well, it could disappear tomorrow. Every day I wake up going, well, maybe today's the day it disappears. Right?

Helen:

Because markets change, and they can change really fast. Like, there's nothing really romantic about starting a business. It's just there there's all sorts of things that have to align for it to work, and a lot of us aren't gonna make it. That that so so you have to hold you have to hold that on one side. Well, at the same time, on the other side, these things are intention.

Helen:

On the other side, you have to be super optimistic that you're going to make it, and that you're just gonna keep trying. Because the other thing I've seen anecdotally, I don't know if this is scientific, but the people who keep trying, who keep working at it, who keep pushing that ball forward, many of them do make it. And so there's a there's a little bit of how long can you last, how long can you try.

Speaker 2:

Mhmm.

Helen:

It's why a lot of successful entrepreneurs actually tend to be statistically older. Because by that point in your life, you've had a bunch of industry experience. So you know what an industry is. You know you've got connections in that industry. You've seen the pain points.

Helen:

You've seen how they spend money. You you know, there's all of this accrued experience that ends up being helpful. Time is kind of what allows you to keep pushing. Right? So it's not saying you shouldn't try in your twenties, but because you could.

Helen:

It could all align. Right? My friend Nathan Barry is not even 30 yet and has already achieved more as a founder than a lot of folks. I think we you have to have this idea of, well, it might not happen, but I'm gonna try. And this might be a 10 year project or this might be a 20 year project.

Helen:

You almost have to be okay with that. Like, this just might take time for everything to align. And the whole time, I'm going to have to be working as if this will eventually work out. And not just doing the same thing, putting yourself in new circles, getting outside of your comfort zone. I've described this before as, is it, command and conquer that uses fog of war where you're just on a map and everything's dark and you're exploring it?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Yeah.

Helen:

So if you think about that as a metaphor, like, when you start out, you're just in that map, and all you can see is around you. Right? And as you explore more of the map, more and more parts become illuminated. And And every once in a while, you'll end up in a spot of the map where things just happen. Right?

Helen:

Like, you get a bunch of bounty or you run into a bunch of enemies or whatever. It's kind of like that. Like, you you're walking around. For me, for example, I was walking around and I just happened to run into Adam Wabin, who I had no idea who he was or anything about him, but he ended up being quite an influential person in the Laravel community. That was just me wandering around the map.

Helen:

And hit him wandering around the map too, and then as, meeting each other. And once once I could see like, I've learned tons about a lot of my thoughts about, like, choosing a market first have been because of the influence of the Laravel community. And looking at Taylor and Adam Wadden and Steve Shoger and Jeffrey Way build these crazy businesses. Because in my little world before I met them, this is the way things were done. People like us do things like this.

Helen:

And then I got over into that area of the map, and it was like this whole new world opened up that I'd never seen before. And without that world opening up, I don't think I would have well, I I don't think a lot of things would have happened. And so there's clearly, you have to kind of be always doing things, trying things, getting out of your comfort zone, meeting new people. And I think the advice I would give my kids is just to explore as much of the map as you can as early as you can. Yeah.

Helen:

Because the the more exploration you do I I think I stayed too local too long. You know, I grew up in a small little farming town in Alberta. And then the big city was Edmonton. And I just spent too much time there. You know, like, the first time I flew into New York, I was like, holy shit.

Helen:

Like, there's a lot of people here. There's a lot of money here. There's a lot of businesses here that I've never even imagined before. And it kind of expanded my whole world view. And unless you're doing that work to kind of walk around the map and discover news new areas, I think it'll be harder to, you know, to to find those markets, to find those ideas.

Speaker 4:

Yeah. So, I wanna go back a little bit to something you said, you know, kinda talking about how, basically, this this might not work for all of us, and it's very hard. And, yeah, we all might not make it through, and that's just kind of the the truth of it. So, like, how do you and I'm just curious about your situation. Like, how do you go to your wife with that and get her on board for this whole journey of what we're trying to do?

Speaker 4:

Because so that's I'm just curious because that's definitely something I know me and my wife struggle with, a lot just with with my last thing, and, like, it is hard. So it's like it's, you know, you it's not just you going on this journey. You're bringing your whole family with you.

Helen:

Yeah. Again, you probably don't wanna look at the statistics. The statistics are pretty bad.

Speaker 4:

Just don't look.

Speaker 2:

So this podcast has to be titled unpopular opinions, unpopular opinions,

Helen:

and jokes. I mean, it's just like, if you want the reality, the reality is not good statistically. I think all entrepreneurs have this feeling that maybe they can do it better than the next guy. And because statistically, you know, millions of people start businesses, but those people are in all sorts of different places, have all sorts of different leverage, have all sorts of different privilege. You know, there's there's all these factors that go into, you know, why a person becomes a success or not.

Helen:

And I think every entrepreneur feels like they've got some secret sauce that'll make them better than the next guy.

Speaker 4:

Oh, yeah.

Helen:

But in my early twenties, I started a couple retail shops that ended up losing a lot of money. And that was hard to recover from as a family. And so Mhmm. That that is just part of it. Like, if you're gonna be on that so that was almost 20 years ago.

Helen:

Yes. So now I'm at a place where, you know, maybe I've learned enough lessons, and I've made enough connections that things are happening. But that's a long journey. That's 10, 20 years of of, work. And so yeah.

Helen:

I mean, I think that's something you gotta consider with kind of with everything. I I don't think you should kill yourself in the process. I think I think I worked probably too hard a lot of those years when I didn't need to. It's just wasted cycles trying to make something happen, you know. You're you're it's far better for you to book a ticket to a conference that you've never been to than to work 60, 70, 80 hours a week.

Helen:

At least for me, the the biggest jumps forward have been because I met somebody outside of my circle. I met John Buddha, the my cofounder in 2014 at this kinda experimental technology art design festival called XOXO. And, you know, I wasn't gonna go initially. I had to kinda push myself to get out of the house and and actually go. I don't think there's any easy answers there.

Helen:

I think you can stair step your way up. You can, do something small on the side and then see if that evolves into something bigger and then something bigger and then something bigger. Nathan Barry just wrote a piece on this that I don't fully like or agree with, but, maybe I don't like it just because it's the hard truth. He talks about a series of ladders. And, you know, the first ladder is just like trading time for money, and then you kinda work up that ladder.

Helen:

Right? You can work yourself up from Yeah. Making minimum wage up to making more money per hour. But then you go to the next ladder, which has higher earning potential, but it's harder. It's just like, okay.

Helen:

Now you've got to you're trading time for money, but it's it's more on your terms, like consulting. And so then you work your way up that that level. And then there's another ladder. And, you know, these keep going. And the difficulty with each ladder goes up, but your your potential in his case, he he's just talking about income earning potential.

Helen:

Your income earning potential goes up as well. And it is a little bit of a stair step. Right? Like, you're moving your way up here, and then you're like, oh, well, there's opportunity over here. So then you might take a few steps back to start here and then build yourself up here.

Helen:

And then you look at the next ladder, you go. There's more opportunity over there. So then you go back down and then work your way up. Yeah. That's all possible.

Helen:

Definitely helps if you have, in terms of, like, having a a decent life, it helps if you have a lot more cash saved up. The more cash you have saved up, the less stress you have, But that's not always possible either. Right? So the only way I can think of to alleviate the stress is to have very low cost of living and or a lot of money saved up. Yeah.

Helen:

Money that you can risk that you wouldn't feel bad about losing. So and you can even hear this in John and I's podcast. Was working for Cards Against Humanity when we started this. And he also had more money saved up than I I did. And so my stress level when we weren't quite yet full time yet was a lot higher.

Helen:

I'm just like, oh god. Like, do we gotta take investment? Do we gotta try to add 3 or 4 more things on top of this to make this work? You can see how, like, desperation affects your actions. And a lot of businesses you'll see do this.

Helen:

Like, one thing's not working quite enough, so then they add another thing to hopefully bring up in more income, and that's not quite bringing enough. So they add another thing, and they just keep adding more and more stuff and more and more stress to their lives. But, yeah, for for John Yeah. CZ, he's got no dependents. And, his cost of living's low, and he had a bunch of money saved up.

Helen:

It's like for him Yeah. This isn't That's easy. This isn't make it or break it. It's like, no. I can just if this doesn't work

Speaker 4:

Yeah.

Helen:

I'm fine. So that if you wanna make it easier, I think lower your expenses and save a bunch of money or get someone to give you a bunch of money. Or rob a bank. Or rob a bank or whatever.

Speaker 4:

It goes easier out.

Helen:

I mean, this is why privilege plays such a big part in business. Like, some people do. They they get a they have a big trust fund, and they get a bunch of money. It does help.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. I agree. Yeah.

Speaker 4:

Yeah. That makes sense. So maybe as a last question we could end with maybe you've heard, the How I Built This podcast. They always end with an interesting question, which is so for you, I'm just interested in hearing as well. Like, with Transistor, like, where you guys gotten so far, how much do you think of that was luck, and how much of it was, you know, you and John's skill and talents and hard work?

Helen:

It's definitely the accumulation of a lifetime of experience. I think your attitude matters a lot in that. Right? Like, are you gonna keep going out and trying things? Are you gonna keep going out and trying to push the envelope?

Helen:

Are you gonna keep going out and put things out in public? Are you gonna go out and meet people? Like, if you were gonna split test my life and you put one Justin in his room and he never leaves and all he does is play Sonic the Hedgehog forever. And then you have another version where he's, like, always going out and trying to figure things out and trying to build things and trying to write and trying to meet this person. And for sure, in that AB test, you know, Justin b, wins.

Helen:

There's I don't think it's that's a it's not too difficult to see that. So, yeah, there's a lot of luck in where I was born. The influence of luck starts to go down a lot. The influence of blind luck, like, just, like, where you were born, like, what year and country and location and parents you were born to. After that part, you make your most of your luck just by whatever attitude you have every day.

Jon:

Mhmm.

Helen:

There's still some privilege that comes with where you were born, but most of that kind of built in luck has already happened by the time you were born.

Speaker 4:

Cool. Well, thanks, Justin, for coming on. That was a good conversation. Very helpful for both of us and hopefully I'm sure for our listeners as well.

Helen:

Bum you out too much.

Speaker 4:

No. I mean, sometimes you need a little of that. Get you back back to the truth.

Helen:

Thanks everyone for listening today. Just want to thank our supporters on Patreon. We have Ward from memberspace.com, Eric Lima, James Sours, Travis Fisher, Matt Buckley, Russell Brown, Evander Sassy, Pradyuma Schembeccher, Noah Pral, David Colgan, Robert Simplicio, Colin Gray, Josh Smith, Ivan Kerkovic, Brian Ray, Shane Smith, Austin Loveless, Simon Bennett, Michael Sitber, Paul Jarvis, and Jack Ellis over at Fathom. Dan Buddha, danbudda.com, Darby Frey, Samori Augusto, Dave Young, Brad from Canada, Sammy Schuichert, Mike Walker, Adam Duvander, Dave Junta, Kyle Fox at GetRewardful, and our sponsors this week, Postmark and Clubhouse. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next week.