Build Your SaaS

Reverse engineering success

Show Notes

Late-summer update! This week on the program, we bring you a super spicy interview that Justin did on the TechZing podcast.

Want to reply to something we said?

Thanks to our monthly supporters:

Thanks to our monthly supporters
  • Pascal from sharpen.page
  • Rewardful.com
  • Greg Park
  • Mitchell Davis from RecruitKit.com.au
  • Marcel Fahle, wearebold.af
  • Bill Condo (@mavrck)
  • Ward from MemberSpace.com
  • Evandro Sasse
  • Austin Loveless
  • Michael Sitver
  • Dan Buda
  • Colin Gray
  • Dave Giunta

Want to start a podcast on Transistor? Justin has a special coupon for you: get 15% off your first year of hosting: transistor.fm/justin
★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Creators & Guests

Host
Justin Jackson
Co-founder of Transistor.fm
Editor
Chris Enns
Owner of Lemon Productions
Guest
Justin Vincent
Dad, indie founder, podcaster, CTO

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.

Jon:

Hey, everyone. Welcome to Build Your SaaS. This is the behind the scenes story of building a web app in 2020. I'm John Buda, a software engineer.

Justin:

And I'm Justin Jackson. I do product and marketing follow along as we continue to build transistor dot FM. From 2018, 2020, and beyond.

Jon:

It's September. Something that you don't know how that happened. Yeah. Time is time is, a funny thing.

Justin:

We're gonna keep this one light even though you and I both have a little bit of existential dread about November. Yeah.

Jon:

I don't know why what's happening in November, Justin.

Justin:

Yeah. So we're not gonna talk about it. Although I think, people should be aware of it and should be thinking about it and making the right choice. But, I wanted to instead of recording a full episode today, I thought we would just play this interview I just did with Justin Vincent over at the Tech Zing podcast. That this podcast has been going forever.

Justin:

It's it's kind of one of the original Bootstrapper podcasters. This is episode 333 that I recorded with Justin. Long time. We're we're at 116. So we we bow to him and his how long he's been going.

Justin:

But, yeah, this was a fun one. We were kind of debating. He he saw something I tweeted and, he messaged me in the Slack channel and we started a little debate and then said, he said, hey, we should talk about this on my podcast sometime. And I said, let's just do it right now. And we were able to kinda carry that energy from this debate right into the podcast Alright.

Justin:

Which I think people enjoy. So let's, yeah. Let's play that right now. Cool.

Speaker 3:

Ladies and gentlemen, who listened to this texting show, I I am very proud to present, that I am having an interview with Justin Jackson, who I am a huge fan of. And it this is an impromptu interview and, super exciting, that this happened. Hey, Justin. Hey.

Justin:

I love this kind this is actually my favorite kind of interview where it happens when I don't have to schedule things. I really don't like scheduling things in my calendar.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. I know the feeling.

Justin:

And so, like, one of the reasons I started a business is so that I I wouldn't have to have anything in my calendar. Now this is at odds with I really like being on podcasts. And, you know, by if you wanna be in a podcast, usually, you have to put something in your calendar. So, yeah, it was fun that we were just chatting on on Slack, and then we could just say, hey. Well, what what we both have microphones.

Speaker 3:

Let's just do it.

Justin:

We're both clearly on the Internet right now.

Speaker 3:

Well, you know, I mean, just just to give the listeners a little bit of background, for me, you you're a very fascinating character because, you have been sort of slowly and, I wouldn't say oh, not slowly, but just growing in in, what's the word, presence.

Justin:

There's so many words you can put in there. Infamy. Like

Speaker 3:

yeah. Infamy. Exactly. That's fair. Like, I it was, like, 3 years ago or even 4 years ago that someone said to me, hey.

Speaker 3:

You know? Like because I I put out stuff. I write stuff. I say stuff. And people sort of saying to me, you Justin Jackson said that.

Speaker 3:

You know? You you he said that. And the first time was with the product founder, Fit Stuff. I sort of was really thinking about that, And, a couple of people pointed me to your product founder Fit Posts. And it's like, yeah.

Speaker 3:

We think in we think along similar lines.

Justin:

1 and that especially, I think there's some things that I've written that I think I've changed my mind on.

Speaker 3:

Mhmm.

Justin:

But product founder fit, market founder fit, those two things, even more I think than product, product market fit. Product market fit still seems somewhat, I wanna say it it seems somewhat hazy. But I think most folks will have a better sense of whether they are a good fit for a market than, you know, trying to somehow discern if their product has product market fit. Product market fit, I think, just means you're you're making money, and the business is growing. Like, you feel good about the business.

Justin:

Hey. Do you have product market fit? If you feel good about the business, then the answer is yes. If you feel bad about the business, the answer is no. But knowing if you're a good fit for you know, I had someone ask me if I would be a cofounder on a gambling product, and I just knew right away.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. That's it's not gonna work.

Justin:

Gonna be a bad fit for me. And then I think founder product fit is a little bit more loose, but it's is the product going to give you what you want out of life?

Speaker 3:

Exactly. It's it's it's connected with everything that you wanna do, and that has a huge implication on whether you're even gonna be bothered to do it Yeah. To work on it in the first place.

Justin:

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Which is where it it giving advice on this kind of stuff, especially in tweets or in podcasts or really in any form blog post even is tricky because the there are there are layers that make up any success. And so and in our culture, we really, the the the format that works is you almost have to give people one slice at a time.

Justin:

So it's like, okay. Well, I'm just gonna talk to you about the founder market fit slice. And so you tweet about that. And then invariably, you get somebody in your replies. Like, it says, oh, wait a second.

Justin:

What about, you know, the importance of the market? It's like, well, yes. Yes. And there's the importance of the market. Well, what about your experience in a given industry?

Justin:

Yes. That's also important. Well, what about all of your privilege that you bring to the table? Yes. That also matters.

Justin:

You know, all of these things add up. And and I think people lately have been trying to I still don't know what I feel about this. It'd be interesting to get your take, but it it the people have started talking a lot more about luck. Like, how much of us of startup success is luck?

Speaker 3:

Oh, okay. Yeah.

Justin:

And I and I had a like, I asked this on Twitter the other day, and people were saying somebody were saying a 150%. It's like, okay. Well, you've some people were saying a 100%, 60%, 50%. And it's it's very difficult to quantify any success in those terms. 1, because success is not a fixed, it's not a fixed place that you get to.

Justin:

It's like Transistor is doing very well. That's that's, the podcast hosting platform that I run. But we're we're we're doing well now, but, you know, wait 5 years and we may no longer be a, quote, unquote, success. And so what brought us here? How much of that was luck?

Justin:

Well, certainly, me being born in Canada helped a lot. And, certainly, John being born in the United States helped a lot. Certainly, there's other characteristics, like probably being male helped all those things. But my my sense, and maybe I'm wrong, but my sense is most of the luck is is kind of where you were born and when you were born. And after that, I think luck has less of of an impact than we think.

Justin:

Now the things that are set in motion by where you're born and, you know, what time you're born certainly matter a lot. But after that, like, 2 kids born in June 1980 in Alberta have you know, it seems relative, relatively amount the same amounts of luck to me, but I don't know. What what's your take on on that piece?

Speaker 3:

Well, might so I've just just been writing this, this boot camp and really thinking this through. So I had it had originally had the startup academy, which, like, had a 100 lessons, and I was trying to distill that down into just 7 lessons. And a a couple of things that Rob Walling and that you have said, I think, are very pivotal in this discussion, and it's about context. It's about stair stepping. It's about who you are.

Speaker 3:

It's about where you've come from. So Mhmm. So the luck, I think, if if you wanna call it luck, in your case, is that you've you've been on this journey right from when you first were interested happened to, wanting to start building business online, and you happened to start blogging, and then Amy always said, you kinda need to focus your blog, and then you started building businesses and confident. And then you thought, you know, I'm looking for a bigger thing. I'm going to level up.

Speaker 3:

I'm going to go for a SaaS app type thing. And so it's just this winding journey of serendipity, but it's everything builds on everything. And it's it's all that that got you to where you are. So if you wanna call that luck, that's

Justin:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it is important having this concept of luck.

Justin:

I'm I'm just trying to figure out how like, can you quantify luck? You're like, how much luck do I have? Like, what is the measure of luck, and what is the measure of how much I had and how much I had yesterday versus how much I have today versus you know, it's this is why I think unraveling success is is challenging. And I think I'm particularly interested at now because at this point of my life, I think that the market you choose determines the ceiling for your success.

Speaker 3:

Can I make a point?

Justin:

Yeah.

Speaker 3:

This this this that viewpoint, the problem that I've got with what you just said is it makes it makes the assertion that you're just a product, that you're not a person, a founder with 50 years of life. Mhmm. So your ceiling is your current market because that's where you're at currently as a founder, but you're gonna go on to another product. You know? So it's a level up game.

Speaker 3:

So you get you do really well in that market, and then you move to a different if you look at Rob Walling right now, I mean, he's not really focusing on something like Drip. He's now focusing on something that's bigger for him.

Justin:

Obviously, there's an interplay here, but I was just listening to the Zapier interview that you folks did.

Speaker 3:

Okay.

Justin:

I can't remember when that was. And he had looked at doing a product similar to Gumroad. And his comment was the the market just didn't seem to have enough momentum in it for what he wanted to do. So he he saw that as kind of like, oh, that'd be a nice lifestyle business. Mhmm.

Justin:

But he wanted something bigger. And the way to level up was not necessarily, anything that changed in him. It was literally him just saying pivoting from one market, which was, you know, the the creative digital seller market, which was growing but had not yet hit its kinda zeitgeist. Mhmm. Or this, API mixer idea, which from his vantage point had more there was more built up energy in that market.

Justin:

The same way that, you know, the the Colorado River at some points has way more energy flowing than a small little stream in, you know, in the country somewhere. The potential energy of the river is what carries you, and it's certainly, you know, your your skill as a kayaker or whatever you're you're doing to to ride the the the water matters. But it's even the the best kayaker in the world can't really get going on a small little stream. Right? And even the worst kayaker, depending on how rough the water is, but the worst kayaker in the world could probably get going pretty good on a a river that has some some good flow.

Justin:

And to me, that's the point is it almost in a way and, again, there's tension between these ideas because some of it does rely on how good the founder is. But on the other hand, you almost wanna say yes, and maybe the founder does not matter as much as we think.

Speaker 3:

Okay. So you could you could be a founder, and you could be the guy who created the pixel the $1,000,000 home page, you know, selling pixels, and you could be that lucky guy who did that. Mhmm. But also, you could be a entrepreneur who spends 10 years not quite. You know, if you even if you do go into a great market, like, are you actually gonna do anything?

Speaker 3:

Are you gonna do the work? Like so there's there's a big there's a big hurdle to get over just just doing it.

Justin:

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Just Getting in the kayak. It's it's true.

Justin:

In some ways, all of us, especially in the bootstrapping community, because it's been so much more important for us to figure this out. Like, you you can be a venture backed startup founder and succeed without ever creating a profitable profitable business.

Speaker 3:

Oh, yes. I know several.

Justin:

Right? Like, it's like Who

Speaker 3:

who raised 100 and 100 of millions? Yeah. You could I mean made it

Justin:

Look look at Kevin Rose. What what success did he really have? Like like, Digg was kind of a failure, but then through Digg, he met Zuckerberg. He invested in Facebook. He made I'm guessing he's made most of his money off Facebook.

Justin:

And now he you know, he's an investor and a podcaster and other things. But he was he's been able to become very wealthy, very well known, have all sorts of status. But in terms of business, and and some people would say he's a great entrepreneur. I like him. I'm a fan of him as a media personality.

Justin:

Yeah. But in terms of a business person, is that is that a successful business person? But with bootstrappers, we've had to figure this out right away. And and so we're always trying to kind of go after this question of, like, what is it? And I think it's important for us to ask it even even and I feel like we're circling closer and closer, which is the market.

Justin:

It's the market that that, is the magnet that creates most of the energy. Now, yeah, you have to be put yourself in a place, like, you have to be willing to drag that canoe to the riverbed, push it in, get in. It certainly helps if you've been canoeing your whole life. It certainly helps if you have good equipment. It certainly helps, like, if you were born closer to the river.

Justin:

Right? All of those things help. But if if if you drag that canoe to a tiny little stream and you say, well, now I've found a stream, and this one's just gonna have to do. Like, I'm any stream will do. I'm just gonna jump in here.

Justin:

And that's what I I worry about is I feel like, especially in my past, I found some ideas and I thought, oh, here's a little bit of water. This is it. I'm in. Like and it wasn't until I because I launched so many things and I worked for multiple SaaS companies, I was able to feel, like get a feel for, like, what does momentum in a market feel like? You know, I I work for a project management, software company, and it was just like, man, this market is slow.

Justin:

It's like a river full of cement. You know? It it's just like the the the incumbents suck up all of the oxygen out of the room, and, it's very, very difficult to get moving here. And then I had, you know, I released a book called marketing for developers, and that just moved way faster. I was like, woah.

Justin:

Woah. This is interesting. But then I met Adam Wavin. He reads marketing for developers and reaches out to me and says, hey. I'm about to launch my own book.

Justin:

I Wondering if you can help me, and I gave him some advice. And then in his 1st month, he did more revenue than I'd done all year.

Speaker 3:

He he he done so well. People love his stuff.

Justin:

Yes. Now is it is it we then we have to we have to we have to try to reverse engineer it.

Speaker 3:

Right.

Justin:

My sense That's

Speaker 3:

my big point.

Justin:

My sense is that, certainly, Adam has some skill. Certainly, Taylor Otwell has some skill. But what they really happened upon is a great market. A hungry market, a a a market with with pent up demand. Taylor Otwell created Laravel, which is the the most popular programming framework on the planet as far as I can tell.

Justin:

And it's for PHP developers. And you think, well, why why would that work? Well, there's there might be a 125,000,000 PHP developers in the world, and they've been ignored for years. They work on all sorts of legacy applications for big businesses like banks and, you know, lean search agencies and insurance companies. And they want their lives to be better, and they were always treated as kind of the illegitimate bastard son.

Justin:

You know, Rails got all the attention and, and all the cool stuff and all the cool conferences. And so Taylor comes along and releases this framework for PHP developers. And, you know, lo and behold, it starts to get a lot of traction. He releases his first SaaS app, Laravel Forge at a conference, his own Laracon conference, and he gets a 1,000 customers in a month. And he's done $10,000,000 worth of revenue since, he launched forge.

Justin:

That's unbelievable, as really a 2 or 3 person team. Now, again, I think Taylor's quite impressive, but he he's by his own admission, he's not a very good programmer. By his own admission, he doesn't care at all about marketing or, you know, like, he doesn't know any of the tricks. He doesn't know he doesn't really pay attention. Doesn't look at analytics.

Justin:

So what's the difference? And to me, it's like a 125,000,000 developers. Like, let's just say that even on average, they're each getting paid $25,000 a year in salary around the world. Like, that's 1,000,000,000 of 1,000,000,000 of dollars being spent on PHP just on salaries, not including tools or education or, you know, servers or anything like that. It's just a massive market.

Justin:

And, in comparison, maybe Taylor's revenue looks small. $10,000,000. Wow. You could that that's, you know, that's a 1,000,000,000 1,000,000,000 and 1,000,000,000 of dollars in that market, and you're only getting 10,000,000. But for a boots a bootstrap, company, it's it's quite successful.

Justin:

And so that's what woke me up to this idea that the market determines most of your growth. And then I just saw other people echoing that back to me, like, Sahil from Gumroad. Like, I was just listening to Indie Hackers, and, the guy that's created Coderpad Codepad, he that the the last 10 seconds of that interview is just him saying, it's the market you target.

Speaker 3:

Just just to give, listeners a little bit of context of why we're talking about this. The reason why we're even talking in the first place is because, of a post that Justin, put on Twitter just saying that, you know, audience you know, there's there's this there's this theory that you you grow an audience, and then you talk to your audience, then you find out what they want. And, Justin's sort of saying that isn't really the be all and end all of it. And so we I wouldn't say we're we're disagreeing. We're just having we're just having a discussion about it.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. That that's what this is about.

Justin:

Yeah. I think I think it was a good I think it was a good theory because it can be true, especially with info products and communities and books and paid newsletters. In those situations, your audience, the audience that you build matters a lot. Right? Like, Seth Godin has an audience.

Justin:

And so, you know, he builds the audience through a lifetime of work, through blogging every day. And whenever he releases something new, there's an audience there that wants to hear it. Derek Sivers just released those books and made $250 or something. And it's like, okay. Well, that makes sense because Sivers has an audience.

Justin:

You know? But the, I think, with especially software and especially SaaS and especially Bootstrap SaaS, it is it is not necessarily, needed to build an audience first. Like, Ruben Gamez has built a really successful SaaS business and doesn't care about building an audience at all. He would prefer to be anonymous on the Internet.

Speaker 3:

Just need to put a put a put just a slight just different viewpoint on that. So, like so audience, in my mind, is essentially traffic. So what like, an audience is getting people to your site. So Ruben Gama is, there's really 3 three main ways you can build traffic. 1's through SEO, you know.

Speaker 3:

1's through PPC, you can pay for it. Another one is through content marketing. So Ruben has been very, very good at one of those methods. And I think that I think it's very difficult to be successful without understanding at least one. You gotta start somewhere.

Speaker 3:

Right? So he he I mean, I've had a lot of conversations with him about it, but he capitalized on SEO so well. And that is essentially why he's and he's he just doubled down on that. I mean, tripled down, 10 x down. I mean, he's

Justin:

But you can be really good at SEO and still not have a successful software product. Like, the like, the he was he so he he he happened on a good on a good channel, on a market with a good channel. Like, every market has characteristics. So, you know, the the podcasting market has its own distribution channels that work really well. The, the digital signature market has its own channels that work really well and its own characteristics.

Justin:

And this is why I keep using I I know I I I like using, metaphors. But the idea of surfing, of paddling out and waiting for a good wave, and being able to recognize the shape of a good wave, and then choose it strategically, paddle out, and try to ride it is to me, feels way more like business than anything else. Whereas the build your own audience approach is almost like you're you're trying to build an artificial wave. You know? You're you're trying to to create your own velocity, whereas the surfer is tapping into an energy, a wave, that already exists.

Justin:

Momentum that already exists. And I I know that the the semantics of this, like, Arvid Call was saying this to, we're getting into the territory where terms like audience, market, and problem are being defined in often diverging ways. And I said, you know, I to me, in our context, at least the way I see it used is audience largely means a group of people who have assembled to follow someone on Twitter, a blog, a podcast, a newsletter. Its key characteristic is that it's attached to a person. Like, I'm in Jerry Seinfeld's audience.

Justin:

That to and if you look up the dictionary definition, that that tracks, I think, best with that definition. You have an audience. You have followers. You have people that are going to show up for your show. But a market is different.

Justin:

You know? The diamond market in the world is $3,000,000,000. That's a market. Right? It has its own momentum and its own, like, people today woke up and went to jewelry stores or jewelry websites all around the world and bought probably, I don't know, 20, 30, $40,000,000 worth of diamonds.

Justin:

Like, that happened today. And tomorrow, that'll happen again. And the next day, that'll happen again. That's a market, and that's momentum in a market. And I think that's it feels like we should be new entrepreneurs should be paying attention to and you could learn this by building an audience.

Justin:

But what I'm trying to at to when I give advice now, I'm saying, learn how to paddle. Like, learn how to paddle out into water. Learn the fundamentals of surfing. Try out some smaller waves. Learn to recognize what makes a good wave, and, you know, build all those fundamentals so when the right wave comes, then you can ride it.

Justin:

Yeah. I I but it's going to be the quality of the wave that's going to determine ultimately the ride you have. If you if you just take any wave that comes, you may be disappointed, if the wave's too flat or too small or, you know, whatever.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. I mean, to speaking to this, idea of, like, you know, a lot of people building an audience and market, an entrepreneur who I've been talking with recently, Michael Lynch, he built a site called Is It Keto. So, it was a great SEO play, and, you know, I think he he gets, like, 20,000 uniques a week, to his to his is a keto search engine. People seeing, is is food keto or not? And he's found it's super difficult to monetize that audience.

Speaker 3:

So he's sort of had this wave, he's had this market, and you sort of can't deny that there is a market of keto. It's been it's been super difficult. But through having his blog and through growing his audience, because he also does retrospectives and he does a lot of stuff on Hacker News, he was ultimately able to do the traditional thing. Like, basically, he scratched his own itch, and he did find a really interesting product to sell to his audience. So he's like a counterexample, which is why I feel like this whole thing is quite nuanced.

Speaker 3:

So he's he he had a huge amount of traffic, couldn't work out how to monetize it, but also had another traffic that he that was his own sort of audience that he was growing. And what he saw what what he built was, a little USB thing that you plug into a computer, and it lets you control it. It lets you change the BIOS.

Justin:

I I I don't think that's a counterexample at all.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. Okay.

Justin:

I think I think he's sitting in the water. Yeah. And all of a sudden, this massive wave comes along, and he's like, that looks great. He gets on it. Not all massive waves are great to ride.

Justin:

Some of them, end right away. Some of them are just too steep. Some of them you know, there's

Speaker 3:

Oh, I like that.

Justin:

All sorts of characteristics of the wave. Yeah. So he tried to ride that first one. He said, mm-mm. Not that one.

Justin:

I'm not gonna try to ride that kind of wave again. And then as he's but he learned. And maybe it's because he's sitting along with some other surfers. And, you know, Janet, the surfer says, you know, I tried riding this kind of wave the other day, and it was, you know, it was great. And he picked up on some of that and then went out and tried to ride the next thing.

Justin:

We do find things in the midst of doing things. I think doing things is not a bad idea. The the the challenge is is that we have so much expectation wrapped up often in everything we try. I mean, I love running Transistor. It gives me all sorts of purpose.

Justin:

It gives me, you know. But, ultimately, the thing I want is a good life. And so I set off on this journey, not necessarily to run a podcast hosting platform. I set off on this journey because I wanna be able to wake up whenever I wanna wake up. I wanna be able to live where I wanna live.

Justin:

I wanna be able to take a whole day off and go mountain biking with my kids. And that dream, the pursuit of that dream means that, you know, every wave that comes along, we're like, is this the one? Is this the one that's gonna bring me to the promised land? And we can get so attached to it. We're so desperate for that good life that, you know, the something comes along and we're like, this is it.

Justin:

You know? And I've had that experience multiple times. As a way of illustrating this, I, you know, I've been building this audience forever. I'd and had had pretty good success with this book called Marketing for Developers and this community called Mega Maker. And I'm like, okay.

Justin:

I gotta watch something else. And it seemed like what people wanted was more marketing advice for me. And so I thought, okay. I'm gonna create this thing called Tiny Marketing Wins. I launched it as a free thing initially.

Justin:

It was top of Product Hunt. And the the what I was observing was people saying I would pay for this. And I said, well, let's test that out. And I did a a a launch, and it was the best launch I'd ever done in my life. I think I made, like, $36,000 in a day or something.

Justin:

Ultimately, that proved to be a false positive. These folks were people in my audience. They're fans. They and it was it's awesome having fans.

Speaker 3:

Wanted to buy from you.

Justin:

They wanted to buy from me. They were just excited about buying from me, and I could not replicate it. It could not it it I could not make it into any sort of flywheel that would be a sustainable business. And, and I tried. It was a subscription product, and people signed up for the annual plans.

Justin:

But when we got to the next year, I could just tell that this was not going to work. Like, people had signed up originally because they were excited about me, and they're excited about being in the audience, and they're but it it didn't have legs. And so that was the hardest day of my life. Not the hardest day of my life, I shouldn't say that. It was a very hard day because I just knew when I woke up that day, all of these successful charges had gone through.

Justin:

I made another $36,000. And I'd made money all along the way, but, you know, this was good the big renewal day. And I'm like, I just know I gotta refund all this. Like, this business is just not gonna work. And I went through went through on Stripe and, like, refunded every single one.

Justin:

There's, like, refund, refund, refund.

Speaker 3:

That's a lot. 36,000. Yeah. Okay.

Justin:

I mean Something like that. It was it was painful.

Speaker 3:

I've done that. I've done that, but not not 36,000 worth. But I've definitely gone through that experience and have backed out with a a shitload of money, but not nothing like that. That's that's a lot.

Justin:

And I was just so in retrospect, I was so desperate for it to succeed partly because I'd invested a lot of time in it. And by this point, you know, by the next year, I really needed that 36,000. Like, I was like, this is this is going to, pay a lot of bills for me. And so I'm holding on to this idea that I'm trying to ride this wave that is clearly not gonna work. But I'm trying to make it work, and I'm doing it expertly.

Justin:

I'm I'm using every, all my marketing tricks, all the the skills and relationships and network. Everything that, you know, I've brought to Transistor, I'm doing that all those same things on tiny tiny marketing wins. It's not working. And, you know, some folks will say to me somewhat cynically, like, once you've built an audience, people get cynical. And they'll say, well, it's easy for you.

Justin:

You've got a bunch of people on Twitter and a bunch people on your email list, and people know you. And the the truth is that it does help. But unless the market is right, unless you've really hit on a category that is in demand and has demonstrated demand, it doesn't matter how good you are at anything. It doesn't matter how good of a programmer you are, how good of a marketer you are, how good of a business person you are, how good of a networker you are. It doesn't matter.

Justin:

And I've got a lot of split tests to show that that's true, in the sense that, you know, I've I've I've applied the same amount of effort and skill and and, you know, audience or to some products and seen how that affected it and then applied it to others and seen how that was affected. And it's just and everybody has this experience. Like, Adam Lavin got super excited about making t shirts for his podcast, Full Stack Radio. So, you know, he invests all this time and money developing these t shirts. And it's just like it just ended up being a big pain in the ass that didn't didn't and that's Adam Wadden, the great Adam Wadden that, you know, everything he touches turns to gold.

Justin:

Well, that's not true. Tailwind, which is, you know, the current project that's wildly popular, that that grew out of a failed SaaS attempt. You know? And none of us can even what we can't even we don't even remember the name of this failed SaaS product he released. So, yes, Adam has lots of skill.

Justin:

He also has lots of connections. He also has, a disposition, I think, that helps him a lot. He's willing to ask for help. He I I think he messages people more than anybody I know. But it's the market.

Justin:

It's the market that gave him the that that swept him up.

Speaker 3:

Was that his was that his first was that market his first product?

Justin:

His first product, I think, was way back in the day was plugins for, like, audio software.

Speaker 3:

Okay. So what I'm saying is I think we're I think we're saying the same thing. I don't think we're disagreeing.

Justin:

I think, if anything, we're we're we're

Speaker 3:

really agreeing. But what but what I'm saying is and the because I think maybe our communities are slightly different. The Norge community, for whatever reason, I have attracted thousands of people who don't wanna do who who who are wantrepreneurs. They're not they're not doing something. They're not they're not getting started.

Speaker 3:

So what I'm saying is is the very first thing that you need to do, even before picking a great market, is just start doing stuff and start practicing and get on the surfboard and just start surfing waves. And I personally don't care if you surf a good wave or a bad wave for those 1st year for the 1st year or the 1st couple of years because you're kinda learning by surfing on waves. Now Mhmm. Once you've been surfing for a couple of years, yes, then I'm thinking it's really good. Now you may be a super, super, you know, smart person who can surf the best possible wave in that 1st month.

Speaker 3:

But I I worry that people will get so stressed about picking the right wave that they won't be learning the foundation. That that's where I'm coming from here.

Justin:

Yeah. No. I agree with that for sure. But I also don't want people to you know, there's some folks listening right now that are in their forties, fifties, and sixties.

Speaker 3:

And Like me.

Justin:

They they they have industry experience. Right? And industry experience you know, I I had folks coming to me say, hey, can you please teach me how to build an audience? I can just tell, like I said, well, I can teach it to you. I can work with you on it, but it's a long slog.

Justin:

Like, I've been doing it since 2,008. And, you know, by some measures, I'm not not even that good at it. Like, Steve Shoger, who's Adam's partner, you know, he was he's been able to build a much larger audience than I have in a far shorter time. And it's just like anything else. Like, it helps if you have a a fair amount of charisma.

Justin:

It helps if you're pretty good on media, like podcasts and videos and blogs. And there are some people in their forties, fifties, and sixties that don't need to do that because they have enough experience. What they need to learn is the skill of observing the waves they've are they've been watching their entire life. Mhmm. And they just need to be able to recognize opportunities.

Justin:

They haven't looked at things this way yet, but they could.

Speaker 3:

Mhmm.

Justin:

And to me, that's the skill is, like, being able to observe. And you you will probably find it or notice it while you're in the midst of doing something else. So, certainly, you gotta do something. Keep working. Keep going to the job.

Justin:

Keep trying to meet new people. Keep getting into interesting conversations. But I think to tell everybody they need to build an audience is probably not right, especially because for 40, 50, 60, 70 year old folks, it it just might be too much work. They're competing against, you know, like, in the PHP community, you're competing against Caleb Porzio, who's, like, super smart and has lots of time to create screen casts and, you know, work on stuff. It's it's just gonna be tough to and I'm not saying it's impossible.

Justin:

And if you're a super charismatic 70 year old, maybe you should do it. But for some folks, I think it's just going to be observing learning to observe the characteristics of a market. And as you're, you know, doing your daily work like, I have a friend here in Vernon who is doing, consulting work for ages in ecommerce. He's just building sites, going to work every day, building sites. And then eventually he notices that people want Shopify sites, so he starts building Shopify sites.

Justin:

And then after a while, he's like, I just keep people keep asking me to build this Instagram integration. And I keep doing it custom. It's Instagram is growing like crazy. Shopify is growing like crazy. Maybe I should just build a SaaS that does this.

Justin:

And he did it, and it's been a great, SaaS business for him. You know? So and he he has no audience. He's and he's terrible at marketing. Like, he's he's not good at it.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. The word audience is terrible in this in this discussion. I hate the word audience because I'd I'm I don't mean that. So that's so weird. You know, even in this discussion, it's not really on parity because I'm not talking about what you mean by audience.

Speaker 3:

Yes. I'm talking about people.

Justin:

Yes. Yes. But but even people, like, there's this idea also of, is, like, okay, amass a group of people. Like, like, corral a group of people or gain the interest of a group of people using a lead magnet or something, then reach out to them and find out what they want and then build it. And, I mean, I used to you can Okay.

Justin:

I've got blog I've got blog posts where I talk about that. I don't I I think I've changed my mind on that because I think that's way more difficult to corral a group of people or entice a group of people with a lead magnet or whatever, and then send them a survey or even to do a 100 customer phone calls. Very, very difficult as opposed to just looking for demonstrated demand. And to me, demonstrated demand is every morning I wake up and I go down to this coffee shop here, ratio, and there's a lineup up out the door. I wake up the next day, there's a lineup up the door.

Justin:

There's demonstrated demand for expensive, kinda, hipster coffee in this town. And to the point, actually, where I think I could probably start another shop, and there would still be enough demand that I could still do okay as well. In the same way that if you show up at the beach and somebody is selling ice cream and they've got a massive line, you could literally set up an ice cream stand right beside them selling the exact same ice cream. And if there's enough demand, you will still do you will do great as well. Right?

Justin:

It's it's it's looking for patterns of demonstrated demand.

Gavin:

Yep.

Justin:

And and as opposed to, like, you know, at least in the way it was presented to me, which which was, you know, you you build up a newsletter list, and then you get to know these people. And then you you know, as you're getting to know these people, you eventually kind of figure out what they want through surveys or customer interviews or whatever, and then you build that. And that to that's it's just not, it's just not enough it's not a big enough movement. And I think there's also this idea and people disagree with me. I could be wrong.

Justin:

But I there's this idea of, like like, Kevin Kelly's got this idea of 1,000 true fans. Seth Godin's got this idea of minimum viable audience. And, I mean, there's nuance to what they're saying, but I the the way it's presented often in the commons is, like, oh, I just need the the smallest audience possible or the smallest market possible. Or, you know, there's this famous Merlin Mann, presentation at South by Southwest with Jon Gruber, where they're like, don't make a podcast about Star Wars. Make a podcast about that one Jawa in that one scene.

Justin:

And I just I I think it it's led people to believe that, like like, these tiny little niche markets will give them, you know, enough fuel in the tank to have a really good business. And I I I just haven't seen it because and it it this could be confirmation bias, but my friends that are doing well are all in big fast moving markets. Even even, like, to make $1,000,000 every year. They're they're carving out these tiny percentage points off these massive markets, or relatively big anyway.

Speaker 3:

Well, I mean, I 100% agree with that. I mean, there's like, that that is a to me, that is just completely logical. And you wrote a fantastic blog post about it, and you quoted a texting podcast, where I was speaking with more with the guys from Morroware and, you know yeah. And it was tough for them. I mean, it was super tough for them to build this tiny, tiny niche product.

Speaker 3:

Yeah.

Justin:

Yeah. And by the way, I got a lot of hate for that post, because people thought I was, like, flogging more aware. And the the point was not to take anything away from their success. They built an incredible business. By any measure, it's it's awesome.

Justin:

They employ all these people. They've got, you know, great lives. They can, pay themselves great salaries, but they're on record on your show. Yeah. You say, would you do this again?

Speaker 3:

And they're like, no. I pick a bigger market.

Justin:

And so I'm like, well, I it's not to take anything away from their success. But if you had someone go down a certain path, you know, and, you know, you met up with them later and said, hey. Should I go down that path? And they say, oh, no. No.

Justin:

No. No. Take a different path. It's like, okay. Well, just listen to them and take a different path.

Justin:

Right?

Speaker 3:

There's so much freaking nuance to building businesses. This is the this is the thing. Like, I don't know. When I when I meet a new a new person who comes into the Nugget community, I can almost tell within a split second, you know, is something gonna happen for them? It's just it it it's it's I hate to say it, but it is about the person.

Speaker 3:

It's about the person. It's and then it's it's a whole, the whole way everything comes together. It's the person. It's the market. It's how they do it.

Speaker 3:

It's how they execute it. It's it really is alchemy. It truly is alchemy. And Yes.

Justin:

And yeah. And it does matter. Like, the you know, if you hear Taylor Otwell's story, it's like he's setting out on a journey to make a better life for him and his family. He's sitting in this tiny apartment with his wife. He got married super young.

Justin:

They have a brand new baby. They're in, you know, this tiny apartment. He doesn't even own his own computer. He's working for he's doing some programming for a trucking company or something in Little Rock. And he sets out on this journey.

Justin:

I've got to make her I've got to make our lives better. And I think a lot of us can identify with that. Right? A lot of us set off on this journey, when we have kids. You know, this is we want our lives to be better.

Justin:

And, certainly, that, you know, that helps. You know, you you're you're working towards something. You're putting yourself on a collision course with luck, hopefully. You're at least getting out into the water. If you just stay home and play video games all day, like you said, you're you're you're probably not gonna become a great surfer.

Justin:

To get to become a great surfer, you gotta show up. You've gotta be intimidated by all the other surfers. You've got to, you know, buy a board and then find out that it's a bad board. You've got to take some lessons. You've gotta wipe out a ton of times.

Justin:

Mhmm. And if you're willing to show up I mean, this is why I like James Clear stuff, in atomic habits because, and this when I was, I got massively depressed in 2016, 17. And this line saved me, which is every action you take is a vote for the kind of person you want to become. And this idea that, you know, even when I didn't feel like it like, when I didn't feel like I was a very good dad, it's like, okay. Well, I could wake up and I could just do, like, one little vote, like, make the kids waffles.

Justin:

It's like, okay. Well, there's one vote. And the thing about action, about taking action, is it reinforces this identity you wanna have for yourself. So when I make waffles for my kids, all of a sudden I become the kind of dad who makes waffles for their kids. Right?

Justin:

And it definitely it it helps every single day to go, okay. I'm gonna do this. And it's the same for business. You know? We're taking these little actions every day.

Justin:

So 2,008, I switched careers into software. I'm 28 years old, already feeling like the oldest guy in my team, working from the ground level up at customer support. And I start this blog. Like, here's Justin's blog. Here's a little vote for the kind of person I want to become.

Justin:

And, you know, if I'd stopped there, I don't yeah. I wouldn't be here right now. But, yeah, the next day, I I posted another blog post, and it does build on itself. Yeah. I think we do agree here.

Speaker 3:

I guess Exactly. That's my point. That's my point. I'm saying we we a 100% agree. I completely agree with you, but I'm just saying that my my fear is my my worry is a lot of people, listen to you.

Speaker 3:

You're very, very super respected. And so so when you, put something out like that, which is completely correct advice, it's correct advice for people who are, like, a level 3. They've they've gone through getting started. They've gone through the the wave analogy. Like, they've they've surfed a bunch of waves, and and now they're ready for the right wave.

Speaker 3:

-Yeah. -So but the problem is is if you tell if you tell people who are just starting out to look for the right wave, that's sort of like telling people to build a unicorn, Because they're looking for the right wave, and they're not really focusing on actually what they probably need to be doing, which is how do I work with customers, how do I do draft, you know, this that basic stuff. Now I but I a 100% agree with you. Does does that make sense? We we are kind of agreeing.

Justin:

I think and the way I, like, presented it in this this article, if you if you look justinjackson.casurfing Yeah. The the the the the beginning stage is gaining relevant skills, understanding the market, making connections, observing demand. And you might have to do that. That's, like, the fundamentals. Right?

Justin:

What's interesting to me, though, especially I mean, of my cohort, I'm the oldest. It took me the longest to find something that worked, and I'm the least successful. Now I'm happy where I'm I am. I'm super thankful every day. But what's interesting to me, especially when I'm giving advice to other people, is, you know, what's the difference between Nathan Barry and me?

Justin:

Well, part of it is he got into the water earlier. You know, he was a homeschooled kid. He graduated early. He started working for an agency, I think, when he was still in his teens. You know, he's practicing some of these fundamentals early.

Justin:

And, you know, the same the same goes with Adam Wadden and Taylor Otwell. And it's like, what did they do different? And some of it is luck. But because they were the ones that woke me up to this idea of just quit quit treading water with this tiny marketing wins garbage. Like, you're just treading water.

Justin:

There are way bigger waves. And they were just showing me and they it's like, you know, we've all heard of the glass ceiling. The glass ceiling is this idea that you can see above you, like, the potential that exists above you, but you can't get to it. But I was experiencing something different. I was experiencing the shrouded ceiling.

Justin:

I can't see the potential. I couldn't see the potential. I just thought that this little wave I was riding was it. Like, that was it for me. And they opened my eyes partly because I could see their revenue numbers, and I was just like, what?

Justin:

Like, woah. This is this is next level. So what's the difference between what's the difference between Adam Wadden and me? Now, again, the that first part's important, but I I think it could be easy for folks to get stuck in the same way that I was stuck in this one gear. I'm in 1st gear, and I I just want them to understand that, you know, in the same way that if you grew up in a small town, like I did, like, the richest people were farmers and lawyers and real estate agents.

Justin:

If that's all I ever knew if I didn't know that, no, there's markets out there that are insane. And, you know, now we've got at least we have people being transparent about it. Like Adam Wadden, I think, has been pretty public about, you know, how much money, Tailwind UI has made. It's like it's way more success it's it's it's incredibly successful. And the lesson I'm trying to learn from that and that I think I learned was, wow, the market that I choose really matters.

Justin:

And so I can practice wherever I want. I need to gain these fundamental skills, but I gotta make sure I don't get stuck there. I've gotta make sure that I understand that there's a bigger world out there. And I think this is even more important when we talk about privilege and we talk about diversity and things like this. Because, you know, I'm a white male in Canada who happened to get to know some other white males in tech.

Justin:

And, what I've been trying to do lately is share the story outside of my circle. I was on the I was on the phone with, a fellow the other day, and I said to him, you know, like, I talked to, like, Adam and Ben Orenstein and, you know, all these people that are kinda in my group. We talk all the time. Like, we're messaging each other every day. He's like, what?

Justin:

He's like, I I just thought you were all doing that by yourselves. Like, you're just working by yourselves, Like, figuring all this out by your like, solopreneur. Like, that's what and and people can have these images the same way. You know, I had these these images of Rob Walling and Mike Taber when I'm listening to Startups for the Rest of Us back in 2008 in my Honda Fit driving an hour to work. I had these these pictures of, like, oh, this must be what they're doing.

Justin:

You know? I'm I'm, like, I'm I'm creating this this vision in my head that still was completely incorrect. And I think for people to have an understanding of, like, let's blow the ceiling off this. Let's blow the glass ceiling off. Let's blow the shrouded ceiling off.

Justin:

Let's show them that, that there's an enormous potential. And, and it doesn't have to be, you know like, there's there's bigger markets than, you know, than farming and real estate and law.

Speaker 3:

That's my I wanna say that that's my favorite thing about your your work, your blog posts and all the things that you've put out that I've seen, is you have been intentional. A lot of people leave a lot of things to miracle functions, to black boxes. They just sort of hope for the best in certain different ways. You've been intentional along every vector, you know. Mhmm.

Speaker 3:

So intentional on the product fit, intentional on the market fit. Now your now your intentionality has moved towards thinking about, okay, what market am I in? And I I really like that. And I think that that's that's a big problem that a lot of people have is they just they rely on black boxes and miracle functions and just sort of hope for the best in these different areas. They don't dive deep.

Justin:

The the advantage for me is that it just everything came difficult and, and took a long time. And and, again, even then with all the privilege of, you know, I got my first computer in 1985. I've I've used computers consistently since 1985. I have so much privilege. But even for me to figure it out, it took all this time.

Justin:

And, maybe and maybe I'm wrong. But I I feel like I've seen a lot of I've I feel like I've seen a lot of the sides of this box. And, you know, we do see this every once in a while. Someone gets lucky their first time dropping in on a wave, and they ride it and they go, wow. Just gotta do what I did.

Justin:

Mhmm. And I'm always like, okay. Well, let's see how you do the next time around. Right? And we've also seen that, you know, quote, unquote, experienced founders who had a big success out of the gate and then went to launch startup number 2.

Justin:

And, wow. That they weren't able to replicate the magic. They didn't understand what gave them that success in the first place. And, I'm not willing to give all of that up to luck. I think that the, you know, the same way that, a farmer can you know, even with the weather and everything else, good luck, bad luck.

Justin:

A farmer can get reason reasonable good reasonably good yields every year because they've been doing it forever, and and they've got all sorts of skills, and they know how to read the weather, and they know how to like, we need to be doing that with markets. And, I think it's possible to at least, give our give ourselves more surface area for luck to happen. And market choosing the right market, I think, is the biggest part of that. But I think there's other things like practicing, gaining skills, building a network is massive. Like, building a network in all the interviews I've done, I'm surprised by how many people say, oh, yeah.

Justin:

Then I met this person. And then they were, like, oh, well, you should do it this way. And then I went back and did it that way. And, like, you know, it's often the people we know that create these next jumps for us to get to.

Speaker 3:

So is that one of the most important things? Like like, if if you would set I said, well, obviously, we've heard the market advice. But if you if you were talking to, someone who was just starting out, who was a entrepreneur, they weren't they weren't out the gate yet, what would you what would you say?

Justin:

I think I said, at one point, be known for something, And which in some ways is it's like that maybe I'm going back to the build your audience thing. But, you know, be known for something. Oh, I said make waves. That's what it was. Be known for something.

Justin:

Speak up. Share your thoughts. Run experiments, and publish the results. Don't be obnoxious, but have the courage to challenge the status quo. Craft your own point of view.

Justin:

And this was, I mean, I think I tweeted that after somebody had asked me to, look at their resume or something. And I was, like, looking at their resume, and I'm just thinking, like

Speaker 3:

Just look like everything else?

Justin:

Yeah. Like, what would actually make you hire somebody? And we know, like, a huge percentage of hires end up being, like, who you know and who knows you. And a huge part of having this business serendipity is who you know and who knows you. Like, today, I needed to figure out why Google is not indexing Transistors podcast feeds.

Justin:

I couldn't figure it out. We have all of the old feeds are working, but customers sign up, create new podcasts. And for some reason, Google's not indexing them. And Google's got this black box where there's no way to submit a podcast. They just they just crawl it automatically.

Justin:

And so I asked on Twitter. I asked I I DM'd a bunch of people. And I'm getting no responses. And then I emailed a person, and he's like, oh, yeah. And he cc'd me.

Justin:

Here's the person who's in charge of Google Podcast. You guys can meet each other. And and, I mean, part of that's tenacity, but part of that is who I know and who knows me. And, that's a good way to solve problems in business. It's a good way to get ahead.

Justin:

So, yeah, I think if I was giving advice, it helps to make connections. It helps to be known for something. It helps to, like, Ruben Gammas, I don't think has a huge, like, Twitter following, but a lot of people know him. He's built up a reputation.

Speaker 3:

He's built

Justin:

up a reputation. If you're in SaaS and you want SEO advice, who do you go to? You go to Reuben. So the that you wanna be the kind of person that people go to when they need help or go to when they're starting something new and they look for a cofounder. And that does take time.

Justin:

That's like something that you cultivate over time. And, again, with the farming analogy, I I just said it's like, you know, that's like fertilizer you put on the soil. And that kind of determines, you know, what you can grow there. And so you just keep adding fertilizer to the soil. You just keep making you know, doing the best you can.

Justin:

And then hopefully, you can grow something in that over time.

Speaker 3:

If I had imagined how this podcast was gonna go, it would not be like this. Normally, normally, we we go through the history of someone. Yeah.

Justin:

This is way better.

Speaker 3:

This this feels like part like part 1 of a 10 part, series or something, but this is very, very interesting. Like, I I think people have got, like like, a splash of water in the face from listening to this show. Like, this is Justin Jackson. This is this is who he is.

Justin:

Well, I'm glad that we had some sort of rapport before because the I mean, most of my shows that I make are, like, the first half is terrible. Almost consistently, the first half is terrible. And, it was nice that we could we we were literally having kinda, like, this hot conversation. And so, like, the mics were already hot. We just had to, like, turn them on and then jump into it.

Justin:

I think it's I think it's better. I'm I'm trying to think of how I can replicate this in my own shows.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. It's very cool. I mean, like, there's obviously not enough time to go into your full history and how you got to where you were, but I don't know. I'm just I'm just excited for the stuff you're doing. And so but maybe let's just talk a little bit more about Transystem.

Speaker 3:

If you could just give, like, a because people a lot of people listen to this show might not know your story. So if you just give, like, a quick overview of, like, trans what you're working on now and and how the kind of success that you're seeing and and how that came about.

Justin:

Sure. So, 2017, I was super depressed. And I was talking to my friend, John Buda, who I'd met, earlier in 2014. We'd built a few things together. And we're just sharing our lives.

Justin:

You know, I'm like, I'm looking for a new project. I guess I'm I was starting to come out of my depression, And I was feeling like I can tackle something new, but I've been learning all this stuff about the market. And, John was like John had built the original version of Simplecast. And so he's like, hey, I'm building a new podcasting platform, but just for my employer. And I said, oh, I said, maybe this is something we could work on together.

Justin:

And I thought about it. And I was like, thinking about the market and thinking about how it had changed. Like, I was noticing, like, every week in the New York Times, there's a new piece on podcasting. And then we had Serial happen, and Gimlet happen, and startup podcast happen. And then Basecamp restarts their show and invests, I'm guessing, you know, at least 200, $250 a year on hiring a couple people to run the show full time.

Justin:

CodePen has a show. Everybody has a show. And then I thought, how many people do I know that could, like, transfer their podcast to a platform if I was working on it? And my list was, like, 20 people. And so I pitched John on this idea of us doing it.

Justin:

And, he'd been burnt before, so it took him a while to

Speaker 3:

to It's a good movie.

Justin:

Yeah. In in in, like, the fantasy retelling of this, he, like, begs me to join him. But, really, I was like, John, we gotta do this.

Speaker 3:

That's good.

Justin:

And then, yeah, 2018, we early 2018, we've signed the documents in January 2018 and, launched it mostly to my network initially.

Speaker 3:

What documents did you sign?

Justin:

He'd already incorporated it with Stripe. And so we signed, like, post incorporation, documents, which, I I said I wouldn't I didn't wanna do it unless I had 50% ownership. And, so we agreed to that. And so we both have 5050. So it was like assigning shares and things like that.

Speaker 3:

So just so it wasn't like you made some sort of agreement. You just it's just the business documents. Got it?

Justin:

Yeah. Business documents. Yeah. Yeah. And we we also had a a questionnaire that we asked.

Justin:

Like, I think I found it somewhere, like, questions to ask a potential cofounder. Nice. And it it had helped that we had a friendship. It had helped that we had shared, you know, some personal things with each other. It had helped that we'd built a few things together in the past.

Justin:

And I, like, I knew or at least I had a very good sense that us together was like peanut butter and jelly. That us together was like Voltron. Like, it just it's like he is such a good product person. He is such a good developer, full stack. He's the mythical full stack.

Justin:

And I am just pumped up, ready to go. Like, I'm I'm I'm just open the gate, and I'll run. And, so, yeah, once we convinced once I convinced him to do that, then, yeah, I was ready to run. And

Speaker 3:

You had a I just wanna just sorry for interrupting your own story, but you you had I've I've listened to one of your shows because you did you did a podcast about building the podcast business, which is which is great. In one of your shows, and you were already showing a certain level of traction and a certain level of success, but you were stressed and depressed and, like, I don't this isn't what I'm expecting. And I'm trying to understand how did you get to that place.

Justin:

Yeah. So, like, we launched and I was, like, excited. And then, you know, the biggest the hardest part about bootstrapping is that you either you you, you either go broke or you get broken. So, you know, the the stress of being in the almost, but not yet of, like, we're almost there. Like, we've built this thing.

Justin:

We have paying customers. And I remember this one point, we're about to launch officially August 2, 2018. We have $750 in MRR. And I'm like, okay. We'll probably double that when we launch.

Justin:

And then thinking, how long is this gonna take? Like, $1500 a month in MRR. That's not gonna help.

Speaker 3:

The SaaS ramp of death.

Justin:

Yes. Yes. And, and although oh, man. You gotta have me back to talk about SAS ramp of death because I actually I the problem with the SAS ramp of death is that in that talk, Gail Goodman, who's quite brilliant, but she was just in a different time and place, and it's a it's a public company. Our SaaS ramp is way faster than that.

Justin:

I I almost feel like it's the, it's like the I don't know. The sat bootstrapped elastic of death. Like, you could only get stretched so far before the elastic breaks, and you're just trying to figure out how long can you hold on and have the elastic not break before you get some, you know, some margin and some comfort back in your life. And so it's just like you're just holding on just like, oh, I hope this doesn't break. And that's the part I was at.

Justin:

I was like, financially, all my revenue was coming from Mega Maker and marketing for developers. And I'm just like, how long can I hold on? And John had the reverse problem. He's going to work every day and coming back tired and trying to code on this on the evenings and weekends, and it's mentally taxing for him. You're either broke or you're broken.

Justin:

Those are the 2 those are the 2 risks.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. So true.

Justin:

And so that's when if you listen to the podcast, I start flailing. I'm, like, looking at doing a crowdfunding campaign through Republic. I'm, like, talking to Ernest. I'm talking to Tiny Seed. I'm, you know, I I'm I'm just looking for some sort of pressure relief valve for this thing.

Justin:

And in retrospect, I'm so glad we didn't do any of those things. But in the midst of it, when you're in the midst of it and you can't see where, you know, where does this end up? What helped is I did have all these contacts that I was that, you know, so I'm I got on the phone with Josh Pigford at BearMetrics, and he looked at my numbers. And he said, listen. I look at numbers all day.

Justin:

Your numbers look very good. And the numbers are your numbers right now are low, but your trajectory is very good. And so, you know, if you can hold on, it's probably worth holding on. And Jason Cohen at WP Engine said, you know, right now you're whatever we were. We're 6 months in or whatever, or a year in or I don't know what it was.

Justin:

But, and he said, if in by 2 years, if you're not at, you know, 10 k MRR per founder, I would look at maybe stopping it. But right now, he said your trajectory looks good. And, yeah. So that was helpful in getting a reality check-in in saying, okay. It's worth continuing.

Justin:

And, then I mean, our trajectory from there is just like it just kept growing and growing. And then I think in it's like by month 12, we had kind of exhausted my audience. We'd kind of exhausted the launch spike that you get. And then everything was kinda going down. And then August, we found some channels that really started working for us.

Justin:

And then since then, it's been, you know, really steady growth. And,

Speaker 3:

that's awesome.

Justin:

Again, the momentum was in the market. And the the key was figuring out how how are we going to ride this wave and make it sustainable. And, you know, there's certainly a lot of things we did all along that helped that, you know, the all the gradually and then suddenly. It's kinda like all building up all that potential energy and then it it explodes. And if you look at our numbers, like, the number of trials is like launch and then trials go down and then traction.

Justin:

It's just like it goes up and then it just keeps going up.

Speaker 3:

Are you are you talking revenue now? Can you are you doing public figures, or have you gone past that point?

Justin:

We're not doing public figures anymore. But Yeah. I can say we are, I won't say when, and I won't say by how much, but we're a 7 figure a year business now.

Speaker 3:

It's fantastic. You know, just you were talking about Jason Cohen there. Just wanna bust another myth here because this I think we're this is about myth busting. That's what this whole show is about. So one of the one of the things that we everyone talks about is customer development, you know, and how important customer development is and that kind of thing.

Speaker 3:

Well, when Jay when Jason Cohen, who we've interviewed and I've spoken to a couple of times, when he when he first started coming up with the the idea for WP, he interviewed me, a customer interview, and he was like, okay, I've got this idea. It's WordPress. I could do hosting. And I basically said to him, that is the worst fucking idea I've ever heard in my life. That you're never gonna make any money with that.

Speaker 3:

And that is exactly like, that's the problem with all of this advice, you know, all of these different ideas and strategies, like and he did he did exactly what I would have done. I don't care what I don't care what that person says. I think it's a good idea. I'm just gonna do it anyway. You know what I mean?

Speaker 3:

And he nailed it.

Justin:

Yeah. I mean, that's that's the thing. Like, you can meet with someone, and they can say that wave looks bad. I wouldn't ride that way. Yeah.

Justin:

And you're like, oh, I don't know. I think that's a good one.

Speaker 3:

Exactly.

Justin:

And, you know, this is where our skill and and, you know, learning to read the waves and all that other stuff comes in. And and, hopefully, getting some good early signs. Like, he might have talked to you, and then the next 5 people he talked to, you all wrote him a check.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. Right. Exactly. Yeah. But, yeah, I don't know how to end this show.

Speaker 3:

I mean, I don't know where it started, and I don't know how to end it.

Justin:

It's great. I I really enjoyed it. I'm glad we could I'm glad we could chat. I'm I'm happy to do it anytime, especially if we can do it like this. Just, like, ping me and Slack.

Justin:

You. Yeah. Hey. Let's let's chat. And, Yeah.

Justin:

I like I said, I'm a big fan of the show. I I've listened to a lot of your interviews, and, they've been certainly helpful for me. And you've been doing this a long time.

Speaker 3:

We have. We have

Justin:

This is like one of the original bootstrap shows.

Speaker 3:

Oh, we we have been on a tiny little wave. We've been surfing our tiny little wave with our 2,000 people for 10 years.

Justin:

That's that's good for bootstrapping.

Speaker 3:

I know people are, like, so sick of carrying this this show, but you know?

Justin:

I mean, that's example. Like, the in the Bootstrap community, the the the potential audience size really is limited. Like, I was trying to think about, like, someone who's truly just like a bootstrap thought leader. What's the size of their audience? It's like, okay.

Justin:

Jason Fried, but does he really count? It's like like, you know, Rob Walling doesn't have a ton of followers, like, in the big scheme of things. It's like Oh, if

Speaker 3:

you compare him to what's his name? Gary v

Justin:

Gary v?

Speaker 3:

Yeah. Gary v. Yeah. Exactly.

Justin:

Yeah. Yeah. It's like and build your sass, our show, which is you know, I think is great show and we get lots of good feedback from. I think we have, like, 1700 regular subscribers or something like that.

Speaker 3:

Okay.

Justin:

You know, it's just Yeah. Is it some some some waves are small, but but potent.

Speaker 3:

Well, that's right. Yeah. I mean, we we have a lot of influencers who listen to our shows, so that that does make a difference. You know? Like, even Rob Rob Walling, for example, is one person who listens to our show.

Justin:

And yeah. Exactly. The I think that's the beauty of podcasting is that I mean, I would do this interview right here with you even if nobody was listening. I think the conversation alone is worth it. And then the added benefit is that right now, there's people out there who, you know, are are with us or against us even better.

Justin:

And are, you know, are really engaging with what we're saying. That I mean, that's amazing to me. That's that's the beauty of that's why I love podcasting in some ways. It's like, I'm a kid from Stony Plain, Alberta. I started this little podcast called Product People in 2012 and met, like, most of my online friends through that show.

Speaker 3:

It is the best way of networking. It really is. I definitely agree with that. Yeah. It's such a great way to network.

Speaker 3:

Well, Justin, thank you so much for for coming on the show, in this impromptu way, and it's been awesome to talk to you. Thank you. I I guess I guess Jason Roberts isn't here, so I will say that's a wrap.

Justin:

Thanks for having me. Me. And we're back. Hope folks enjoyed that. Definitely go check out the Tech Zing podcast, and maybe let Justin know on Twitter or on his website that you would listened.

Justin:

Yeah. It's a great show. Highly recommended, if you're looking for other shows to add to your queue. John Buda. Guess what happened to Patreon?

Justin:

They're they're a $1,000,000,000 company now, apparently.

Jon:

What does that even mean?

Justin:

Yeah. It's

Jon:

They're they're worth a $1,000,000,000 somewhere on a piece of paper.

Justin:

Yeah. Right? How much of this world is just an invented reality?

Jon:

I don't know. Probably a lot of it.

Justin:

Yeah. Most of human existence is just like, we've made all of this up.

Jon:

I mean, it might it it might even be a simulation for all we know.

Justin:

Yeah. So I mean, exactly. There's there's so many possibilities. But if this were a simulation I was trying to figure out ways to break the simulation. Like, yeah.

Speaker 3:

I

Jon:

don't know. Wasn't wasn't patron almost bankrupt not too long ago.

Justin:

Yeah. Yeah. I think they got it.

Jon:

So like what I don't, I'm just confused about how this works.

Justin:

Yeah. But we still have some fine folks who support us on Patreon. And, Yeah. Why don't you read out those names?

Jon:

Yeah. We do. Dad, thanks to everyone as always for supporting us. We have a new supporter, Helmut Earl. I'm not I don't know if I'm pronouncing that right.

Justin:

But Helmet Irel?

Jon:

Irel, I r l e.

Justin:

Yeah. I think that I I think it's Helmet IRL.

Speaker 3:

Okay. Alright.

Justin:

Helmet, if you're out there, let us know.

Jon:

Yeah. Let us know. We have Colt Borg, Mark Binder, Anton Zoran, Bill Condo, Sofia Cantero, Chris Willow, Mason Hensley, Borja Solaire, Ward Sandler, Travis Fisher, Matt Buckley, Russell Brown, Evandro Sassy, Noah Praill, Robert Simplicio, Colin Gray, Josh Smith, Brian Ray, Shane Smith, Allison Loveless, Michael Sitfer, Paul Jarvis, and Jack Ellis, my brother Dan Buddha, Darby Frey, Samori Augusto, Dave Young, Brad from Canada, Mike Walker, Adam Devander, Dave Giunta.

Justin:

The original from the beginning. The the the the the thing that sustains us and this show from 2018 to 2020 and beyond, Dave Junta.

Jon:

That's great.

Justin:

Thanks. Thanks, Dave. Without you, we wouldn't do the show. Once

Jon:

Dave Thanks, Dave.

Justin:

Cancels his Patreon, we're gonna be like, show's over.

Jon:

It's canceled. Yeah. No pressure, Dave. And finally, Kyle Fox from get rewardful.com.

Justin:

Thanks everyone. We will see you next time we

Jon:

record.