Build Your SaaS

A lot of business owners have a hard time sleeping; what can be done about it?

Show Notes

Sleep. We never get enough:
  • Justin consistently wakes up between 2am-4am and can’t get back to sleep.
  • Jon woke up at 4am. Often reports bad sleeps.
  • Justin asked on Twitter and got tips:
    • Josh Pigford, Baremetrics, says: “CBD oil. Previously I was a very "active" sleeper...talking, getting up, etc. It'd also take me upwards of 30 minutes to get to sleep and I'd regularly wake up in the middle of the night and not be able to get back to sleep. Haven't had any of those issues since using CBD oil.”
    • Scott Bolinger:
      • no caffeine after 10am
      • no work after dinner
      • non-fiction books only at bedtime
      • dark lighting in house hours before bed
      • same schedule every night
      • don’t use alcohol to fall asleep (it’s a sedative, not a sleep inducer)
      • weed blocks REM sleep 
      • I know you’re not drinking, but alcohol and marijuana affect REM sleep.
    • Steven Kovar: "A-Z gratitude" routine. Name something you're grateful for that starts with the letter A. Move on to B. Etc. Never gotten past K.”
    • Wailin Wong, Basecamp: “One small thing that's really helped me is getting a sleep mask (Alaska Bear brand). Temperature of room and limiting blue light exposure.”
    • Resource: Matt Walker, Why We Sleep
      • Regularity: go to bed at the same time, and wake up at the same time.
      • Light: in the last hour before bed, switch off half the lights, no screens
      • Keep it cool: your brain needs to drop its temperature by 2-3 degrees to sleep. The cold pads might work. Warm bath before sleep helps too.
      • Siesta in the afternoon

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Show notes:

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Creators & Guests

Host
Jon Buda
Co-founder of Transistor.fm
Host
Justin Jackson
Co-founder of Transistor.fm
Editor
Chris Enns
Owner of Lemon Productions

What is Build Your SaaS?

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Jason:

I wanna say thanks to our sponsor, ActiveCampaign. Their platform helps you to create more than just broadcast email. You can send each lead the right message, turn them into a customer, and then educate them. Sign up at active campaign dot com / build your SaaS. With that URL, you get a 2nd month free, a free migration, and 2 free one on ones.

Jon:

Hey, everyone. Welcome to build your SaaS. This is the behind the scenes story of building a web app in 2019. I'm John Buda, a software engineer.

Jason:

And I'm Justin Jackson, and I've been up since 2:30 AM.

Jon:

Why are you up so early? Because I was also up early.

Jason:

Yeah. So I wanted to talk about this. You said you were up since when?

Jon:

I probably woke up at 4, 4:30.

Jason:

Okay. Is this a common thing? Because, 1, I've been in our Slack, we have a daily check-in channel.

Jon:

Yep.

Jason:

And I actually like it. It's kinda like one of you kind of say, hey, here's what I'm thinking about working on today. But we also kinda use it as a place to say how we're feeling.

Jon:

Mhmm.

Jason:

And frequently, it seems that you and I both report having crappy sleeps.

Jon:

It has happened a number of times.

Jason:

Is this a a new thing for you or what?

Jon:

It's I say it's it's happened a little more recently lately. I have a feeling even though I ran yesterday, I I have a feeling it's because I've been working out less since I since I did that race. Yeah. Possibly drinking more caffeine. Yeah.

Jon:

And drinking some alcohol again.

Jason:

Does the more caffeine do you think the more cap because people who follow me know I drink a ton of caffeine.

Jon:

Right.

Jason:

I I try not to drink it after noon, and I definitely try to drink not drink it after, let's say, 3 o'clock. But do you think like, let's say I had a bunch of caffeine at 2. Would that cause me to wake up at, like, 3 AM the next morning?

Jon:

I don't know. I will say the times I've quit caffeine Mhmm. For about a month or so, I did sleep really well. But I really enjoy caffeine.

Jason:

Yeah.

Jon:

I I don't know. I have a feeling that maybe you wake up at 2:30 because your body is, like, craving caffeine. Maybe you drink so much that your body is is, like, physically needs it.

Jason:

Do do you think that's what it is?

Jon:

I don't know. Maybe. I mean, I I know for me with alcohol anyway, if I drink anything too late at night, I will wake up around 3 or 4. And not that I have to use the bathroom or anything. I just the alcohol, I think, wears off, and I think I just wake up, and I can't go back to sleep.

Jason:

And it it doesn't matter

Jon:

it doesn't really matter how much I drink either. It's just

Jason:

Well, see, now I've been doing this research. I I asked on Twitter. I have a pretty good Twitter thread going here, actually. I couldn't believe how many people replied. So I asked this at 6:10 AM after I'd been up obviously for 4 hours.

Jason:

Folks who have substantially improved the quality of your sleep, what worked? And I said, I'm specifically interested in night routines, changes in habits, environment fixes, sleep products that work. And then I said related. And this is the one that got the most replies. My biggest problem generally isn't going to bed, but rather waking up at 2 AM to 3 AM and not being able to fall back asleep.

Jason:

Yeah. And one of the things about alcohol is, so this guy, Matt Walker, is, like, he's the author of Why We Sleep. I think I'm gonna read this book. Have you read this?

Jon:

I think I have it. He replied?

Jason:

No. Oh. He didn't reply, but people kept referencing it.

Jon:

I think I have it and never read it.

Jason:

And so he has these things about alcohol. And it's a sedative, not a sleep inducer. So people often use it to fall asleep, but it doesn't help you get into REM sleep.

Jon:

Right.

Jason:

Same goes for weed.

Jon:

Okay.

Jason:

It blocks your REM sleep. But CBD, there's quite a few people in my replies that said CBD oil really helped them. Doesn't look like there's been any clinical trials, but maybe because it reduces anxiety. So let's just go back to you and I for a sec. What when you wake up, why can't you go back to sleep?

Jon:

I don't really know. I'm not particularly thinking of anything. I I'm not I don't think it's, like, an active mind situation.

Jason:

Okay. I'm

Jon:

not necessarily stressed out of anything or worried. Yeah. And, like, I you know, I woke up at 4:30. I don't feel bad right now.

Jason:

But You seem great. Like compared to me, like, I just feel like I'm I'm like I can feel it in your head, you know, in your head when you feel

Jon:

And I went to bed around 11. So I didn't get a lot of sleep.

Jason:

Yeah. That's about the same as I got.

Jon:

And I laid there for a while, like, an hour. I don't think I dozed off, but I when it happens, I don't really know. I usually just get up and start doing stuff.

Jason:

Interesting. So you could be you could be in this, because they've said that, you know, the hunter gatherers or whatever, they think that our natural kind of biological pattern was to sleep for 6 and a half hours.

Jon:

Mhmm.

Jason:

Wake up in the middle of the night, do a bunch of stuff, and then go back to sleep. Right. Or, sleep, you know, just 6 and a half hours and then have a siesta. Yeah.

Jon:

I have read that. I mean, I you know, artificial light certainly plays a role in that because if we were hunter gatherers, we'd be going to bed at 8 o'clock at night because there's no light. We can't do anything.

Jason:

Yeah. And up here in Canada, you just be sleeping all the time. Like, it's it gets so dark here in the winter. Yeah. And I've yeah.

Jason:

I have heard that sunlight helps. Like, if you're if you're exposed to sunlight during the day, you will be more naturally sleepy.

Jon:

Mhmm.

Jason:

Interesting. See, my problem is I can if I wake up at, like, this morning, 2 AM, woke up, and and and by the part of the problem is our dog. Our dog keeps waking me up. That that's kind of what usually causes me to wake up. Yeah.

Jon:

I didn't see in your replies. I didn't see anything about getting rid of your dog.

Jason:

Yeah. Get rid of this family dog. I don't know what we're gonna do because it's, like, it doesn't the dog doesn't wake up anybody except for me. And

Jon:

Do you do you sleep with earplugs?

Jason:

Maybe I should.

Jon:

I do that. I You you sleep with earplugs? Yeah. I usually do. Even if it's just me, like, if it's just me.

Jon:

If I'm on, like, a trip with someone, I'll still wear them. If it's just me, I'll still wear it. Like, it Yeah.

Jason:

Yeah. That might help to to make sure I keep sleeping. Because that's part of the problem is half my problem is I wake up, and so something is causing me to wake up. I gotta deal with that. The second problem that I've never been able to fix, and I've had this basically my whole life, is I get up, like, I I wake up, and then my brain starts thinking.

Jason:

And I was thinking about, like, for example, this office here. I kinda wanna take this over and turn it into a studio. And so I was thinking about all the different ways I could modify this office. And then my mind goes to, there's this house for sale a couple blocks over that has a swimming pool, and I was like, oh, that'd be cool to turn that into a studio. And I just keep go keep going.

Jason:

It's almost like my mind gets so excited about all of these ideas.

Jon:

Did you fall asleep thinking about that stuff?

Jason:

No. No. It it it's just like my brain has it stored up and, like, these little surprises.

Jon:

He just boots up in the middle of the night and is like, well, let's start thinking about Yeah.

Jason:

The office. New package here's some new packages for you for you to deal with.

Jon:

Yeah. I I used to have that problem, I think. I don't for whatever reason, I can generally turn that stuff off.

Jason:

And just it might just be excitement. Like, I'll be thinking about Transistor, and I'll be thinking, oh, I can't wait till we can do this. And then I'll think, oh, I should start another podcast, and then I start thinking about all the podcast ideas I could

Jon:

Yeah.

Jason:

Start.

Jon:

Is it would it be beneficial to, like, write it down in the middle of the night as it comes up and then just leave it? And maybe that's a way of getting it out of your brain.

Jason:

I've heard that is helpful.

Jon:

But, again, that's that's like a habit you have to get into. I think it's probably hard.

Jason:

Yeah. I've tried a lot of those things, and I think part of it is, you know and sometimes things work and, like, sometimes writing it out works. Sometimes listening to that sleep with me podcast works. Sometimes, getting up and just, like, having a glass of milk and, just reading for a bit, sometimes that works. Sometimes meditating.

Jason:

These are all things that people have suggested to me, but there's also a lot of times where I'm just, like, I'm so frustrated. And I would literally pay it, like if I could just pay if if there was a button that I had to pay a $100 and it just knocked me out, I would do that. It's so I can see how people get addicted to sleep pills because, like

Jon:

Yeah.

Jason:

When you're up at 4 in the morning, you're just like, please just turn this brain off.

Jon:

But then if you took a sleeping pill at 4 in the morning, you'd be a a zombie at when you woke up if you woke up.

Jason:

Have you ever taken sleeping pills? I've never taken one.

Jon:

I mean, I've taken melatonin, and I've taken Yeah. Like, Tylenol PM or something, but nothing Yeah. Nothing like prescription. I don't.

Jason:

Yeah.

Jon:

I don't wanna get into that stuff.

Jason:

Yeah. I've heard that's bad.

Jon:

I I don't have a problem falling asleep anymore. It sounds like you don't either. I usually read I'm usually reading Do

Jason:

you read on do you read on a Kindle or

Jon:

I read on a Kindle. Yeah. And

Jason:

See, I I I might try to do that.

Jon:

The backlight doesn't like, it's backlit, but it's not it's not harsh.

Jason:

In the white?

Jon:

Yeah. It's, okay. Yeah. But it's like it it's if all the other lights are off, you can still turn the brightness of that screen down to where it's, like, it's not really bright. It's not phone it's not phone bright for sure.

Jon:

Yeah. And I usually read fix I I guess it doesn't really matter, but I get sleepy within, like, 10 minutes.

Jason:

Okay. Can you give me a couple good fiction books to read?

Jon:

I've been reading Dune, finally.

Jason:

Dune? Okay.

Jon:

It's a long one.

Jason:

Is it better than the David Bowie movie? Is that Dune?

Jon:

No. You're thinking of, sting Sting is in it?

Jason:

Oh, Sting. Sting is in Dune. Yeah.

Jon:

I haven't watched that one yet, and I've been told not to. Okay. Because it will ruin the book. It it's not good, apparently. Okay.

Jon:

It's a lot it's a long book. Dune,

Jason:

what's a quick what's something a quick fantasy read that will get me back into fiction and, but won't last forever? And and listener, if you've got some ideas, send them to To you

Jon:

and Joyce.

Jason:

Me as well.

Jon:

Science fiction?

Jason:

Yeah. I think I could get into some science fiction.

Jon:

Man, off the top of my head, I would have to look.

Jason:

The last fiction book I read was, what it's when the there's, like, a moon colony. It's told from the female protagonist's perspective.

Jon:

Oh, yeah. The the same author that wrote the other book. Ready player 1? About Mars.

Jason:

Is that right? Is it No. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You're right.

Jason:

It's the the Mars person.

Jon:

Yeah. Artemis? Is that what it was?

Jason:

Artemis. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I like that one.

Jason:

That was good.

Jon:

Okay. Yeah. I I can send you a few. I'll put them in the notes. Yes.

Jon:

I can't think of them right off the top of my head.

Jason:

I'm I'm trying to make a plan. I'm basically I'm gonna buy a bunch of stuff. That's my first I'm gonna buy a sleep mask. Yeah. I'm gonna buy some CBD oil.

Jason:

I'm gonna maybe get a Kindle.

Jon:

Okay.

Jason:

Because part of the problem is, like, I'm either on my phone, which everyone tells me is really bad. Yeah. So I try to get off the phone. And I've also heard my my reading light is above my shoulder. And there's a bunch of people that say, like, having an overhead light like that with paper books is really not great.

Jason:

And quite a few folks said Kindle was better. So I think if I, like, force myself to just have, like, a Kindle and that's it in my bedroom.

Jon:

I I mean, I like paper books, but I also love the the ease of having a Kindle that you can take everywhere. And it you know, you can read a huge book and doesn't take up any more space. And it's and you can turn off the lights and you and read with it still at low light.

Jason:

Yeah. And that's the other thing is that, obviously like, I'm sleeping with my wife right next to me, and so if I have the light on, that's no good either. Yeah. Right? So she then it Right.

Jason:

Disrupts everything there.

Jon:

So you're, like, reading on your phone?

Jason:

Yeah. I'm often reading on my phone. Okay.

Jon:

No TV?

Jason:

No TV in our yeah. I I I rarely watch TV. Are you a big TV watcher these days?

Jon:

I watch TV. Yeah. But never never in the bedroom or anything. I don't I've never liked that.

Jason:

Anyway, I'm gonna I'm gonna try a bunch of these recommendations. The Twitter thread and all the replies, there's, like there might be a 100 replies to this. I'll I'll put that in the show notes that you can find saas.transistor.fm/ 78.

Jon:

Yeah. It's it seems like the big ones are go to bed at the same time regardless, exercise a few times a week. Mhmm. Don't drink caffeine or stop, like, really early in the day. Mhmm.

Jon:

Don't drink alcohol. Keep your room cool and make it dark.

Jason:

Yeah. I'm gonna I'm gonna try some of those things too. I'll report back next week, see if I I can I can figure this out?

Jon:

I mean, I'm a I'm a pretty light sleeper so the the ear plug thing really helps.

Jason:

So you just sleep with ear plugs all the time?

Jon:

Yeah. Usually.

Jason:

Yeah. Are they special earplugs? Or No.

Jon:

They're just like I get them at the drugstore. It's like a pack of 20. I use them for, you know, like, 5 days, and they kinda, like, wear out, and they lose their they're like the little foam ones. It's, like, just enough of a blocker from it. Yeah.

Jason:

Yeah. I should I should try that too. I'm gonna try I'm trying everything. Yeah. I'm gonna I'm just gonna go on a big experiment here.

Jon:

Yeah. It's, it's yeah. Having bad sleep is, like, is just such an annoying, frustrating thing.

Jason:

Well, yeah. Especially when you really like your work and you want your full brain

Jon:

Yeah.

Jason:

To be working. And it used to be one thing that has improved since we've started Transistor is it used to be I was just worried about business stuff all the time. But now, one, having a cofounder, like, having a partner that I can talk things out with during the day has helped a lot. It's just it's not on my mind. It's not rattling around in my head.

Jason:

And, 2, just the reliability of SaaS revenue is Yeah. A game changer when you're building a business. It's just it's so much nicer than laying up at night going, what what am I gonna launch next? How am I gonna get the next client?

Jon:

It it it

Jason:

that part used to keep me up a lot. It's nice that those things are are, helpful, but

Jon:

That's good. Yeah. Yeah. I used to yeah. High school, college, I used to not be able to fall asleep.

Jon:

I would just my mind would be thinking and worrying about all kinds of stuff, and it would lead to me just getting sick all the time. So I'm really Yeah. Really glad I got past that period of my life.

Jason:

What happened? You just grew out of it?

Jon:

Yeah. I think so. Well, I I also had some serious snoring breathing issues. Okay.

Jason:

I

Jon:

ended up having

Jason:

And how did

Jon:

you I had surgery.

Jason:

Okay. And that helped? Yeah. I had

Jon:

some mild to bad sleep apnea Yeah. Which is not healthy, and it really has terrible sleep and causes terrible sleep, and you're tired. And

Jason:

a few people recommended that stuff too. Like, some folks either said get the retainer.

Jon:

Yeah.

Jason:

And then there's some people that are taping their mouth shut. Have you seen that horror show?

Jon:

Oh my god. No.

Jason:

It's like that was like a common reply. It was people taping their mouths shut.

Jon:

I was like,

Jason:

they call it mouth taping. And then there's pictures of it. And I'm like, that that I don't know if I can do that.

Jon:

I mean, you're like, you're 2 you're arms and legs away from being kidnapped at that point.

Jason:

I'm gonna send you a picture of mouth taping. It is it is I

Jon:

don't think I could handle that. I I don't I don't like like, I was I had to go to the dentist recently a couple times, and they did some out some work on my teeth, but, like, I could really only breathe through my nose, and I was like, I couldn't it it doesn't feel pleasant. No. It feels like I'm not getting enough oxygen.

Jason:

Look at look at some of these pictures. Like, I just sent you one in Slack. But seriously, like

Jon:

Oh.

Jason:

If you if you if you Google mouth taping, I'm like, oh, man. That is

Jon:

no. No. So you'll draw the line there.

Jason:

I mean, I'll I'll no. I'll try anything. It does look like a horror show.

Jon:

Ask your wife to duct tape your mouth shut before bed.

Jason:

Yeah. Like, just this is while I'm sleeping. Just like like, look at these sleep tape. These are Breathe better sleep. I

Jon:

man, maybe I should try that tonight.

Jason:

Alright. Interesting. Let's move on. Yeah. And if folks have any sort of feedback on that, I'm all ears.

Jason:

Let's just take a break and, thank Honey Badger. Honey badger dot io. They do DevOps monitoring for web apps. So exception monitoring, uptime monitoring, check-in monitoring. If you have a web app, you need it.

Jason:

These folks have been super active in the Ruby on Rails community for a long time. You might have seen them giving out ice cream at your local conference. They've got the best swag ever. They sent me a shirt. I should get them to send you a shirt too.

Jason:

The shirt and the sticker and just amazing company, amazing product, honey badger dot I o. Start a free trial and let them know that tired Justin and slightly less tired John sent you. Let's do a quick update on what you've been working on. What what have you been working on? How's it been going?

Jon:

I have been, let's see, working on mainly this new feature we're building. Should we I we're talking about it?

Jason:

Let's just let let's just talk about it now. I I'm tired I'm tired of

Jon:

Yeah.

Jason:

Hiding it.

Jon:

I saw on Twitter some people were trying to make some guesses, and maybe we'll maybe we'll disappoint some folks. I don't know. But

Jason:

That was almost worse. It was people saying, oh, I'm so excited. I'm like, oh, shoot. Now

Jon:

Yeah. So we've been working on building out, additional functionality around private podcasting and the ability to have an RSS feed that is, let's say, unindexable or Mhmm. Well, private in that it won't show up in podcast directories, but also different than what we currently offer in that you can generate feeds for different subscribers. So, like, you can have a list of subscribers and they get their own feed and you can turn them on and off, add add new subscribers. So if you are a corporation, a company who wants a private podcast, you can easily set this up for your employees.

Jon:

Or if you're, I guess, you probably have some more examples of this. Like

Jason:

Yeah. There's been folks that are using it for employee onboarding. There's folks that are using it for training. There's folks that have professional organizations, and they need to keep in contact with them. Lots of CEOs wanna use it to communicate with their team.

Jason:

I've used these in the past for my books. So when I make the audiobook version, instead of, you know, having Audible distribute it, I just distribute it via podcast. People can add it to their podcast player that they already have. There's some people that are using it inside of membership sites. There are there's all sorts of every time, we get a new customer requesting it, there's a new use case I hadn't considered before.

Jon:

Yeah.

Jason:

And the one thing that they couldn't do before is, like, most private podcast feeds are just a, you know, a single authenticated URL that everybody shares. But if Nancy, you know, leaves the company and you don't want her to have access anymore, there was no way to remove access for her.

Jon:

Yeah. And and this we we talked about this a lit a little bit in the past, but this kind of came out of requests from our customers or potential customers who really wanted something like this, and we just didn't have anything to offer them and came to the point where we're, like, we should there's something here. We should really, really build this thing up.

Jason:

Yeah. Actually, the, I think I've mentioned this in the past, but we have an automated email that just sends to us when people cancel, and I manually reply to those. So just in Gmail, I just click the email address. I have a little text expander snippet, And the subject line will be didn't work for, and then the company name or didn't work for you. And I'll just say, hey.

Jason:

I noticed you canceled your Transistor account. We do podcast hosting and analytics. By the way, that reminding people what you do is one of the biggest mistakes I see people making in their emails. They don't remind people, hey. This is Transistor.

Jon:

Yeah.

Jason:

We do podcast hosting and analytics.

Jon:

Well, we also have gotten customers who have emailed us who from, who have replied to a receipt that they were charged for, and they're like, what is what are you? What do you do? We're like,

Jason:

that's quite common, especially in organizations when, you know, there's someone else paying the the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing.

Jon:

Uh-huh.

Jason:

And so then my second line will say, is there something about the platform that wasn't working for you? And this is when I got just yesterday. They said there's only 1, anonymous user per podcast link to access the the the private podcast. And it makes it extremely easy to share the private podcast with external users. It's too insecure for us right now.

Jason:

And this was a a company that wanted to use it, I'm guessing, for, you know, some sort of training or some sort of, employee news. So this has been cool, to work on this, to reply to this thing we saw over and over again. Do you wanna talk a little bit about because this has also given us an opportunity to think through onboarding and user flows a lot more. Like, we're doing this differently than we we really have been thinking about this whole experience kind of from the ground up. Like, what what does the whole process look like?

Jon:

Yeah. And and we're trying to do this within this 6 week cycle. Mhmm. So it's been, yeah, it's been interesting. I mean, we certainly thought a lot about onboarding.

Jon:

We haven't really I wouldn't say we've worked on it much yet. Like, the past 3 weeks, I, you know, I've just been building out the core functionality of this stuff so so that we can get it up on our staging server soon and so we can both test it out in, like, kind of a real world situation. Mhmm. You know, the ability to add a subscriber and and subscribe to a link from an email, the ability to track subscribers to see if they've listened yet, you know, turn off subscribers, things like that.

Jason:

I think the biggest change is that when you add a subscriber, they get an email. And the email says, hey. Welcome to this private podcast. Click here to add it to your podcast listening app. And they click on a link.

Jason:

It opens up a responsive web page.

Jon:

Mhmm.

Jason:

And we are testing out these I think they're called deep links, which allow folks to open for example, open this podcast in overcast. Open this podcast in pocket

Jon:

Or open this, basically, open this RSS feed. It's a little bit yeah. It's slightly different. They have these links for particular podcasts that are already in, let's say, Apple Podcasts or in the overcast directory.

Jason:

That's right.

Jon:

Yeah. Most of these apps also have a way for you to basically subscribe to an arbitrary RSS feed.

Jason:

Mhmm.

Jon:

So And Yeah. And most

Jason:

of them, not all of them, allow you to have some sort of authenticated

Jon:

Right. Right.

Jason:

Feed.

Jon:

So that the idea here is to try to make it as stupid simple for anyone who gets an email, who who becomes a subscriber to one of these private podcasts to go from getting the email to being subscribed in, you know, 1 or 2 clicks Mhmm. Without really having to do too much or necessarily enter a password or have to remember a password. So Yeah. So, I mean, we're all testing. It seems to be working well from our testing.

Jason:

We just started I started emailing a few folks that I know personally. Mostly testing Android phones because those are the ones we don't have access to. We can test

Jon:

Yeah.

Jason:

All the iOS stuff ourselves. But that's been interesting, for people to say, oh, you know what? That that button in the email wasn't clear. You know, can you change that? Because I didn't realize that was my next step.

Jon:

Okay.

Jason:

We've seen some folks say, like, adding, opening the link didn't work the first time. But then the second time, they were able to manually add this RSS feed to their podcast player. So that's been interesting. Now that we have this staging server, being able to test out stuff before we, you know, put it into the actual public web app. Yeah.

Jason:

And having all the ability there, like, having the ability to email and because sometimes in stating setups I've had in the past, you couldn't, like, send emails, for example.

Jon:

Oh, yeah.

Jason:

But having all of that functionality right there, it's I that's been really, really helpful.

Jon:

Yeah. It I feel like it's a it's a quick feedback loop. The way we've been doing this, let's say, we we started this thing out with our shaping call before the 6 weeks started, and we sort of just, like, brain dumped everything we thought we could do with private this private podcast stuff. Mhmm. There were a lot of unknowns.

Jon:

There were some things that we just couldn't do that were impossible. There's a there's a lot I think that will not be in this feature when we launch it. Mhmm. There's a lot of cool stuff we can do Yeah. That I think we'll just keep iterating on and adding.

Jason:

Specifically, after we've given real people the chance to use it.

Jon:

Right. Yeah. And, you know, the real because this real world usage might change where it goes. Mhmm. But I think we also have a number of ideas that we'd love to add.

Jon:

We just don't have time in the 6 weeks. And Yeah. It it's still a useful feature without them. But if we wanted to build those in, I think it would be one of those it it would end up being a feature where it just goes on and on and on. And by the time you know it, it's, like, December 1st, and we haven't launched anything.

Jon:

Or it's the end of the year, and now we're not gonna launch it till the new year. So I think Yeah. It's been really helpful to chat. We we talk every week.

Jason:

Yeah. We've been doing these other phone calls. And they've kinda turned into, like, okay. Do we have anything we want to specifically I think before I was like, what are we gonna talk about? Like, what's the but now we have this focus of what are the unknowns right now?

Jason:

So when we're in the cycle, we're mostly asking what are the unknowns? And that's helped focus me in those calls and to think, oh, yeah. We still don't know this. We still don't for example, what are how are we going to do pricing for this?

Jon:

Mhmm.

Jason:

And that instantly brings up this idea of, oh, yeah. We can't launch this unless we have pricing. And so it feels like we're we're dealing with that stuff earlier than we would have in the past.

Jon:

Right. It's not that, like, I am going to be tackling implementing the pricing for this, you know, this week. Mhmm. It's not necessarily gonna happen the week we talk about it, but at least we have it written down and decided on early so that one of us can tackle it whenever we can.

Jason:

Yeah. It's and it kind of bringing it up allows you to start kind of churning away on it in your mind

Jon:

Yeah.

Jason:

Which which has been, again, really helpful. Yeah. And so these we I'm we call them shaping calls, but they're not really shaping calls.

Jon:

These are, like, in cycle calls now.

Jason:

And the the shaping stuff where we decided, okay, what is the work going to look like before we start working on it? That was, again, really yeah. The helpful and just defining the contours of what does this look like, Where are we gonna go? Where are we not going to go?

Jon:

Yeah. So it's it's I think it's been going well. I mean, it's been a it's been a good experiment for us. I Mhmm. I think we'll probably end up this is my assumption.

Jon:

The last couple weeks or week and a half will probably be a lot of fine tuning and copywriting and just sort of, kind of, like, rethinking the whole flow from end to end and seeing where some some problems might be or some confusion might come up. That and and doing implementing the pricing, but I don't think that'll be too much. But I think once we have the core of it down and we feel confident that it's working, I think then we we can kinda revisit all of it as a whole and kind of rewrite it via copy and sort of

Jason:

I don't know. Yeah. Like yeah. Really kinda clean it up.

Jon:

Yeah. Yeah. Solidify like, kinda decide on some terminology for a few different things we have that might be confusing to people or yeah. Because we wanna, you know, we wanna launch this thing as, like, a finished, fully functional, like, easy to use feature. Mhmm.

Jason:

And and how do you think it's different than what people have done, like like, with sprints? Why is this different than doing a sprint?

Jon:

I think from my experience in the past, like, sprints have always been a couple weeks. But you're not ever launching anything at the end of the sprint. You are finishing part of something. There's still not necessarily a deadline for the bigger epic or feature that you're working

Jason:

on.

Jon:

It's just here's a bunch of stuff to do in 2 weeks. Let's see if we can finish it. We're not necessarily launching it. It's just that we're finishing Mhmm. Part of it.

Jon:

But I I feel like with this whole longer cycle, if we wanna call this a longer a 6 week sprint, that'd be great, but there's much more opportunity and space to, I don't know, do things in pieces, I I guess. But I don't know. We because we haven't we haven't finished yet, so it's hard to totally nail it down. But Mhmm. It feels like there's more of an opportunity to sort of experiment for a while and prototype and build it and refine it all in the same cycle.

Jason:

Yeah. It it feels more holistic to me. Yeah. Like, exactly that. Like, sprints were always like, okay.

Jason:

We've got this one week, and you're you're always encouraging the team members first to think very individually. Like, only break off what you can chew. And it's it's all the estimating is all left to the individual. Like, okay. Is this a one point project or a 2 point or, you know, and or small, medium, large if you're doing t shirt sizes.

Jon:

Right.

Jason:

And that so it's all up to this poor person that, you know, okay. I gotta decide what I can reasonably accomplish. So here's 4 tasks, and here they are sized. And here's, you know even if you have software that tracks it for you, it's like, here's what I think I can finish in this week. But you're not thinking about the whole experience for the user.

Jason:

Right. This is much more holistic. This is like, what are we actually going to ship? And we're not thinking in a 1 week sprint or a 2 week sprint. We're thinking 6 weeks.

Jason:

Like, this is 6 weeks for us to, like you said, prototype, experiment, build this up, try some things out. And then as we're kinda coming down the other side of the hill, say, okay. This is let's wrap this up. Let's clean it up. Let's get it ready for, prime time.

Jason:

Yep. And yeah. And and, again, thinking about your work and planning the contours of your work before you start the work is such it it seems so simple in retrospect, but it's it's just so helpful. Like, it I I wanna use this concept for everything now. Like, before we embark on something, it's like it's so helpful to just, like, have this preplanning time.

Jon:

Mhmm. Yeah. I I think we talked about it last week or maybe the week before about the marketing website and how we didn't do this for that, and it's just

Jason:

Mhmm. Just keeps going.

Jon:

Just keeps going because we didn't really think about what it needed to have necessarily before you started working on it.

Jason:

Exactly. Yeah. Talking about that though, because we discussed pricing for this, I I, started working on what our new pricing grid would look like. And, Adam Wadden has this CSS framework tailwind that I've been using for the marketing site. And he's gonna be releasing this new, basically, like a components directory.

Jason:

But they're gonna be really high quality premade components that Steve Shoger has designed. And so instead of, for example, me having to build a responsive table, which is a nightmare, They design it, so it looks great. And then, like Steve designs it. Adam turns it into code. And then you basically just can grab like, I just grabbed what he made, plopped it into our website, and it I mean, it needs to be cleaned up a little bit, but it basically just works.

Jason:

Like, right out of the gate, I had this responsive pricing grid that looks pretty good. I think that was also I'm when you're talking about prototyping, I really do need to see it like an HTML. Like, the first step is we you and I collaborated on a a Google Sheet where we were moving things around. And then once that felt pretty good, putting it actually on the website and going, okay. How does this feel?

Jason:

Like, you know, what what should we be doing to make things more clear? And and looking at it, like, how does this look on the phone? Okay. In that case, everyone's gonna see the this stuff first. And how does that differ when you're comparing plans, you know, when it's on desktop?

Jason:

So that was that was really, again, gratifying, I think, when you can figure out like, instead of hiring somebody to build or design this piece, which I think can be really complicated for a lot of businesses, having something prebuilt that I could just start from was so helpful.

Jon:

Yeah. That that's cool that they're they're doing that stuff. I've I've seen a few of their experiments or designs on Twitter. Yeah. And so that's all done with just basic, like, default tailwinds?

Jason:

Yeah. Yeah. And because if you're using all their classes, which we are, all you're just copying all you're doing is copying HTML. You're not copying any CSS. Mhmm.

Jason:

And so when you paste it in, it just it just works. It just just and and they're gonna have in this component directory, they're gonna have, like, you know, maybe 3 or 4 different pricing grids. And so if you wanna compare, you just swap out the HTML, and then all of a sudden you've got, you know, a different pricing grid. So I think it's gonna be really helpful, especially for me when I wanna move faster and not have to pull you off something on the back end. But it's like, okay.

Jason:

I need just this one component for this piece of the site. Like, get me unstuck.

Jon:

Right.

Jason:

And previously, what I was doing is when we were on WordPress, I was buying these beaver builder add ons, which were, like, you know, sometimes $80. You have to, like, buy this whole package, and you only want this one thing. So the to me, like, having something that can get me unstuck that's really high quality feels worth it. Yeah. And already, like, just being able to visualize this and go, okay, I can see how this is gonna look.

Jason:

And it it helps me feel out the feature too. Like, people are gonna see this. Is it gonna resonate right away?

Jon:

Right. Right. Yeah. And you already you already put it up on our testing site so that I can see it, which is great. I think that kinda goes back to our even working on the private podcasting stuff where we have sort of this very quick feedback loop where Mhmm.

Jon:

It's not me building something in isolation for 3 weeks. It's me building something in a couple days and then Mhmm. You know, pushing that up to GitHub and issuing a pull request, but also

Jason:

Yeah.

Jon:

Pushing that up to staging so that you can see it and get some feedback and actually use it. Yeah. I think that's that's that's really important. Otherwise, you know, I would yeah. If I don't if I don't give myself sort of a cutoff even for working on part of a feature like that, I would probably just keep spinning my wheels and trying to improve it or change it in some way that Mhmm.

Jon:

Might not

Jason:

really matter. Yeah. And and the frequency of the calls too and just being able to go, okay. Let's look at the analytics again. Like, let's look at the analytics again.

Jason:

Mhmm. You know, we've already looked at it before, but now we've chewed on it for a week. Okay. Here's the new thinking. Let's move these things around.

Jason:

Let's edit the HTML and just kind of play with it. And then you go away. You, you know, you, code the feature, and then it's up on staging that day, and I can look at it and go, okay. Well, I wonder if people would be confused by this label. And, oh, you know what?

Jason:

We're probably missing here is this or, hey, maybe we don't need that part. It it does feel way more collaborative as a whole. And, yeah, like you said, really quick feedback loops. I might go away and just, like, work on one piece. Like, I I was, like, working on how that that landing page might look for people when they get it on their phone.

Jason:

Right?

Jon:

Yeah.

Jason:

And then exploring deep links and, like, okay. How how are people doing this and trying to figure out what those look like? And then you found a bunch of them, and then we're testing them out. It's just like it just feels like things are happening quite fast in a way that it almost makes me scared of, like, I don't know how we would ever add anyone to this process Yeah. And make it work this fast.

Jason:

You know?

Jon:

Well, I yeah. I think it would certainly change.

Jason:

Mhmm.

Jon:

Or you'd almost have to have a separate group or 2 other people working on something else. Something like that. But, yeah, so far so far so good.

Jason:

And we're hoping to have it out on the end of the cycle is October 15th.

Jon:

Yeah. I doubt that's the day we'll actually launch it, but sometime in October.

Jason:

Yeah. So if you've been waiting for that, that is coming soon. If you've been not if you haven't signed up for Transistor yet, hopefully, in October, we've got something for you that will be, yeah, really cool. Especially for people who are in companies, organizations, that kind of thing.

Jon:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I I hope it's simple enough for people, but has enough functionality for what they need. I mean, I think, inevitably, we will get feedback from people when we launch it. How about where's this?

Jon:

How's this? And I think we just have to both of us have to, like, not take it as criticism, but just take it as feedback. And Mhmm. It's probably a lot of stuff we've thought about. But

Jason:

maybe next week, actually, we can talk a little bit more about how we're pricing this because there's some interesting considerations there. Of discussions around that. Alright. Let's, let's thank our patrons. I think we've got someone new here.

Jason:

Where's where's my list here? Yeah. John, why don't you thank those folks there?

Jon:

Yeah. Thanks, to everyone, for helping us out on Patreon. We have James Sowers Sowers?

Jason:

That's a good question. I I I would have said it was Sowers, but Okay. He can he can let us know. I know James. He's good.

Jon:

From you with user input dot I o. Travis Fisher, Matt Buckley from nice things dot I o, Russell Brown, Evander Sasse Sassy. I still don't know. What what what's the correct?

Jason:

I think it's Evander Sassy.

Jon:

Okay. Thanks, Evander. Pradyumna Schumbecker, Noah Praill, David Colgan, Robert Simplicio, Colin Gray from alici.com, Josh Smith, Ivan Kerkovic, Brian Ray, Miguel Pizarafita, Shane Smith, Austin Loveless, Simon Bennett, Corey Hanes, Michael Sitfer, Paul Jarvis, and Jack Ellis, Dan Buddha, my brother. Danbuda.com. Darby Frey, Samori Augusto, Dave Young, Brad from Canada, Sammy Shukert, Mike Walker, Adam Devander, Dave Junta.

Jon:

Junta? Kyle Fox from get rewardful dot com, and our sponsors this week, ActiveCampaign and Honey Badger.

Jason:

Alright, folks. Sleep well. We'll see you next week. Transistor.fm.