The constant feature release cycle

Justin:
00:00
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Jon:
00:25
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.

Justin:
00:34
And I'm Justin Jackson. I do product and marketing. Follow along as we build transistor dotfm. How's it going, man? Good.

Jon:
00:46
Pretty good. How are you?

Justin:
00:47
You, get some exercise today?

Jon:
00:50
A little bit.

Justin:
00:51
Yeah. What'd you do? Yeah.

Jon:
00:53
I went for a run. Okay.

Justin:
00:57
What what's a little run for you?

Jon:
01:00
Like, 4 miles.

Justin:
01:01
Four miles.

Jon:
01:02
Yeah. I don't that's

Justin:
01:04
Four miles to Kilometers for all of our

Jon:
01:09
5 5 k? No.

Justin:
01:10
No. 6.4. Okay. That's pretty good run. Because, like, a 10 k run, that's that's a that's a that's a long run for me.

Jon:
01:21
That's, like, yeah. That's, like, a 6 mile run, I think.

Justin:
01:24
Yeah. 6.2 to be exact. So okay. That's so a nice little run. And do you feel prepared for the triathlon that's coming up?

Jon:
01:37
I don't know. Yeah. I mean, at this point, there's nothing else I can do. Mhmm.

Justin:
01:42
Yeah.

Jon:
01:43
So, yes, I'm ready.

Justin:
01:44
What what's your objective? Like, do you wanna win?

Jon:
01:48
No. No. There's an oh, I'm not, no, I'm not really, like, competing. I mean, I'm competing, I think, against myself, although I've never done it, so I don't know what to expect. But, mostly, it's just the challenge of doing it.

Justin:
02:01
Yeah.

Jon:
02:02
But, also, it's it's a nice area of of Michigan. I think the course will be, like, nice. Okay. Just, like, ride around and run around in.

Justin:
02:12
Yeah. So this isn't, like, punishment for you. This is, like, fun.

Jon:
02:16
Yeah. No. It's not. It's I mean, it'll be punishing, I think. Yeah.

Jon:
02:18
I think it'll probably hurt a lot at the end. I don't but I like I said, I don't really know what to expect because I've never done it.

Justin:
02:26
Isn't triathlon the one where if you don't get a good enough time in a certain event, they just disqualify you? Like, if you if you don't swim fast enough?

Jon:
02:35
I think there's cutoff times. Yeah. Yeah. Because they don't yeah. They can't because then they can't allow you to finish the whole because if the whole race is slow, then they have to, like, close off the roads and all this other stuff.

Jon:
02:47
Like, they don't want you to finish in the dark probably.

Justin:
02:49
Gotcha. Okay. That makes sense. Yeah. Sweet.

Jon:
02:54
Yeah. It'll be, it'll be interesting.

Justin:
02:56
Well, I I hope you do great.

Jon:
02:58
Thanks.

Justin:
03:00
Now in terms of, the product business, what have you been thinking about lately?

Jon:
03:04
I mean, we get a lot of support requests, and some of them are certainly you know, how how do I do this? I I need help with this thing, this feature of transistor. Mhmm. You know, general confusion or maybe it's an actual bug and something's broken and we have to go and fix it. But we also get a lot of, hey, I see you do this.

Jon:
03:25
I would love it if if it did this as well. Yeah. And I think a lot of times it's after we launch something or or, like, release something new, and people use it and they're like, oh, it'd be great if it did this. Did you think about this or what about this? I feel like you kinda have to fight against, like, wanting to do all those things because some of them are great ideas.

Jon:
03:50
It's just that you can't really fit it into the current cycle. Mhmm. Or or we have thought about it, and it's somewhere in some list of things we might wanna do eventually. Mhmm. But I I think I'm just wondering if every software business deals with that sort of cycle of we built this thing.

Jon:
04:09
It doesn't do everything. It does what we built it to do. Mhmm. We had some opinions about it and left things out on purpose.

Justin:
04:18
Yeah.

Jon:
04:18
Versus, like, we're gonna spend a bunch of time to build everything under the sun to make this thing totally configurable to do every possible option that you could ever think of.

Justin:
04:28
I mean, I feel that too. Which is I think why some of this base camp religion appeals to us so much. Because they have such strong they they just seem to be so they have these opinions that are so strong in terms of what they're going to focus on and what they're not going to focus on.

Jon:
04:51
And I think, you know, I think we've seen this with bugs. It are, like, areas of the the app that are problematic that we

Justin:
04:59
see

Jon:
05:00
pop up. We sort of, you know, make a note of of these things that that reoccur Mhmm. That we should have fixed or just, like, cut out, just, like, remove it. I'm, like, speaking about YouTube. Yeah.

Justin:
05:14
Yeah. Which is so painful because so there are people that really enjoy that feature.

Jon:
05:20
I know. It is it is nice. I mean, it's I when it works, it it works great. It's just sometimes can be a little finicky. Yeah.

Jon:
05:30
But then I think we also you know, we've seen trends with people requesting something that we don't have that we will eventually turn into something that we do have Mhmm. Which is gonna be our our next cycle of work. Yeah. So, like, I don't wanna just ignore the customers entirely. Mhmm.

Jon:
05:50
But but it's like every day we keep saying, oh, yeah. It's a good idea. We've maybe we've thought about that. We don't have a timeline for it. Eventually, we'll do it.

Justin:
05:57
Yeah. But

Jon:
05:58
may but maybe not.

Justin:
05:59
Yeah. I mean, it really is, warning. Here's a Justin metaphor coming up. It really is like a a garden tending to a garden. And so, you know, you're you're working on your garden, and then you go over and, you know, you give your neighbor some cucumbers.

Justin:
06:17
And they go, oh, this is great. Hey. Do you have any carrots? And you go, you know what? I didn't plant carrots this year.

Justin:
06:24
Maybe I'll do that next year. Yeah. And, you know, definitely I mean, with a garden, there's constant weeding. There's constant and there's a a yearly cycle of this year, we're going to plant corn, beans, but we're not gonna plant cabbage because that was a pain in the ass. Right?

Jon:
06:42
Right. Yeah.

Justin:
06:44
And then you plant all that stuff, and then, you know, lo and behold, everyone wants cabbage. Like, oh, shoot.

Jon:
06:50
But But then your neighbor from a year ago comes back and says, hey. Where are those carrots you said you're gonna plant?

Justin:
06:58
It's a really confrontational neighbor in this metaphor. Hey. Where are those carrots? Man, I've got an our neighbor, Mike, he, like, gives us a cucumber almost every single day. It's just an old retired guy.

Justin:
07:17
Like, we hear this knock in the door. We open it, and there's this old retired guy holding a huge cucumber. It always feels a little bit awkward taking it. Like, oh.

Jon:
07:32
It's a pretty, it's a pretty funny mental image.

Justin:
07:35
We probably can't get out of this, but I think we can get better at saying no and and learning how to say no, learning how to say we're not going to do that or we're not gonna do that now.

Jon:
07:50
Yeah. Yeah. We have no we have no plans at the moment.

Justin:
07:53
Yeah. We have no plans at the moment or even, sometimes that can be a little confrontational. Like, hey, do you got any carrots? Hey, I've got no plans at the moment to plant any carrots, but I'll let you know if that you know? But what I've been trying to do lately because I think people just wanna know they want a little bit of transparency.

Justin:
08:16
And so what I've said is, hey, we we've got our next cycle planned, where we're gonna be working on, you know, something. And after that, we'll consider what we work on next. And so there's this idea of, like, yeah, we could consider this idea in the future, but it's always going to compete at the betting table to use the base camp terminology. It's always gonna compete at the betting table for what we have the appetite for. We have also seen that sometimes waiting, even though I want to build some of the stuff right away, but sometimes I want to build some of this stuff right away wrongly.

Jon:
08:58
Right.

Justin:
08:58
I'm it it's not it shouldn't get built. And that anxiety you feel when someone's like, hey. This competitor's got this. Are you gonna implement that? And you go, well,

Jon:
09:13
maybe. If I could do it in a day

Justin:
09:15
But even then maybe not.

Jon:
09:18
Right.

Justin:
09:18
When we've waited, we've seen how some of these things play out. You know, the thing that everybody's had to have it was kinda like my parents were like this growing up. I'd be like, dad, I want a hyper color t shirt. And he'd be like, well, why don't you just wait? I'd be like, dad, everybody has one.

Justin:
09:37
Like, I need one. And, you know, you wait a couple weeks, and then all of a sudden, you know, those hypercolor shirts aren't so popular anymore.

Jon:
09:46
Right.

Justin:
09:47
Right?

Jon:
09:51
I haven't thought about those in a long time. I had one of those. Got butter on it, and it stained and never got out.

Justin:
09:59
The The hypercolor, like, it works for a little while. And it was also kind of funny in that the the whole idea was that people would touch your shirt with their sweaty hands, and then their hand print would show up on your shirt.

Jon:
10:13
It was a little weird.

Justin:
10:17
So, you know, it's hard to tell sometimes. Is this gonna be the next hypercolor, or is this going to be something that lasts?

Jon:
10:24
Yeah. I mean yeah. Going back to our YouTube feature, which we just built, I think, with I don't know if anyone necessarily would have requested it. I don't think that came. I I don't know if I

Justin:
10:36
It did come from some customers that were asking for

Jon:
10:39
it. Yeah. I honestly don't remember. But But

Justin:
10:41
it is a very it's it is kind of, wouldn't it be cool if feature. Right. And, again, I have had some customers say, this is the main reason I went with you. So for sure, sometimes there's gonna be a thing that people go, I I need this thing. I know from my friends, like Spencer Fry at Podia.

Justin:
11:07
He removed this feature that I used all the time in Podia, which was, the ability to book a time slot in your calendar and charge for it, like a a consulting call.

Jon:
11:21
Mhmm.

Justin:
11:21
I use that all the time. And I'm sure there was other users that liked it too, but he made the hard decision to remove it from the app. And I'm sure it ticked off some users, but maybe it was only 1% of the users. Right. And he was willing to do that because he felt like it would make the product better.

Jon:
11:45
Yeah. Or it required a lot of hand holding and support, maybe.

Justin:
11:50
He was just he was thinking about the the the app long term, and he's like, we can't we're not going to be able to maintain this over the long haul. So let's just pull off the band aid now, get rid of

Jon:
12:05
it. Alright.

Justin:
12:06
So I yeah. I I mean, this it is really hard, especially once you get into it and people are requesting stuff, and you have to you have to make these decisions. Your these weighted

Jon:
12:18
Yeah. Yeah. It's tough.

Justin:
12:20
I do think when you're working on software, it is like tending to a garden. You it we're going to be, you know, weeding it. We're going to be making decisions about what we plant next as long as we're running it. And I think one of the things we wanna ask and maybe this transitions into what I wanted to talk about, which is, are we still enjoying the journey? So I was listening to the 100th episode of the Art of Product podcast.

Jon:
12:48
Uh-huh.

Justin:
12:49
And, he was catching up with some folks, and he has this he he mentions Jason Cohen and something Jason Cohen said on his blog.

Speaker 3:
12:59
So one thing I wanna thank you for, actually, is you have a post, on your blog, and the gist is sort of you're doing a good job if you're enjoying the journey. And so you talked about making sure like, checking in and making sure you're having a good time. And so we actually added this to our retro questions that we do most weeks. And so, like, how can we enjoy the journey more? Like, how are we feeling?

Speaker 3:
13:18
Are we struggling with anything? How can we have, like, more fun with this? So I think that's been useful for us, and I wanted to thank you for that that idea.

Justin:
13:25
Jason says, you know, you're doing a good job if you're enjoying the journey. And yeah. What do you think about that? Are we still enjoying the journey? Are you in are you enjoying the journey right now?

Jon:
13:38
Yeah. I'm I'm enjoying the journey. I mean, there's certainly days where I need to take a break. Wake up a little grumpy. But, yeah, I mean, overall, yeah, it's I mean, it would be a shame if I didn't considering, you know, we both just went full time on this recently.

Justin:
13:58
Yeah. It would be

Jon:
14:00
it would be kind of a kind of a shame if if this soon in, we're like, this is the worst.

Justin:
14:06
Yeah.

Jon:
14:08
No. I mean, it's there's definitely still some adjustment, but, overall, I I still enjoy it. I mean, obviously, the positives definitely outweigh any any negatives or annoyances that come with it.

Justin:
14:21
Mhmm. What what is, tooth questions there. What makes you grumpy right now?

Jon:
14:28
Well, sometimes if it's I mean, has it's related just if I didn't sleep well, obviously. I don't know. I I think I can sometimes, feel like I didn't get enough done

Justin:
14:39
Mhmm.

Jon:
14:39
In a particular day or something's taking too long. I'm, like, stuck on something or I'm trying to do too many things at once, and it just I sometimes it can just affect my my mood for a couple days Mhmm. Until I sort of finish one thing, and I'm like, alright. This is fine.

Justin:
14:56
Yeah. Yeah. And the second thing was what what's been difficult for you in terms of adjusting to this new kind of life?

Jon:
15:09
I think it's just that the the schedule is so open and so free form. Yeah. Some days I'll start later and, like, I don't know, feel bad about it. It's I think it's just an overall adjustment, I think, of the schedule itself or lack of schedule and combined with just working with, I think, the less humans. Mhmm.

Jon:
15:31
There's definitely, like, a human component to it that is still an adjustment.

Justin:
15:36
Like, you're used to going into an office and seeing all these folks?

Jon:
15:39
Yeah. Yeah. Seeing all these folks, you just, like, randomly talk to you and even if they're not working for the same company necessarily. But yeah.

Justin:
15:45
Yeah. Has that new office helped a bit?

Jon:
15:48
A bit. It's fairly empty. Some some days, but I think that'll change.

Justin:
15:53
Yeah. I can see that being an adjustment of every day you're going into an office, and you're seeing the same people. And especially the cards office. I mean, even on the weekends when I was there, it was always kind of bumping. Like, there's people making stuff and people brewing coffee and

Jon:
16:09
Yeah. Coming in and out recording podcasts or there was an art studio you could make stuff in. Yeah. It was so that's yeah. I think that's that's most of it.

Justin:
16:17
I think that's a good question that, Ben mentioned that with Tupelo, the 3 partners are asking that question in there. They do these retrospectives where which is how could we enjoy the journey more? And I think one of the answers to that is is to just talk about it more.

Jon:
16:38
Mhmm.

Justin:
16:38
Which is, like, oh, man. You know, yesterday, I decided to work from home because I thought I was well, first of all, I need to take care of my kids. And so that flexibility was nice, But, I was hoping to work from home and then take them mountain biking. And it ended up raining. And so I was kind of spending the whole day in this in between zone of, I'm gonna be doing some work, but eventually, I'm gonna go.

Justin:
17:05
But then I didn't go. And so then I'm just at home. And also ever since New York, I've had a really hard time sleeping. And so I I've been kind of off and on, and my my schedule's messed up. And yesterday was a bad day for me.

Justin:
17:19
I and there's just a few things I've learned over time. Partly, I think, by talking about it. When I work from home, I don't have a good day.

Jon:
17:29
Mhmm.

Justin:
17:30
It's the it's the, like, the I I get really annoyed at my kids because, you know, they're like dad's home, and so they're asking me questions. I don't have a good work set up there. I'm usually sitting at the kitchen table. And at my office, I have a standing desk, and I'm standing all day. And I, you know, I feel good.

Jon:
17:45
Yeah. It's hard to focus. It's just hard to focus, I think. And then you feel like you don't get anything done.

Justin:
17:50
Yeah. Yes. Because it's the wrong context.

Jon:
17:54
Mhmm.

Justin:
17:55
And I think one way I could enjoy the journey more is for me to be more honest with myself about, like, hey. Am I even getting anything done today? Or am I going and checking our support and answering some things, and then going to Reddit, and then going to Twitter. And then I know I'm, like, really when I'm ping ponging between Reddit, Twitter, LinkedIn Yeah. Like, it's like, I'm going to LinkedIn now just to look for some sort of, like, so what am I doing?

Jon:
18:26
I guess, at that point, do you just, like, hang it up for the day and go, I'm gonna go just do something else.

Justin:
18:32
Well, I think that's because I didn't enjoy yesterday. Yeah. And it's I'd I I was basically just penalizing myself. Right? I'm just I'm I'm I'm making myself suffer because I feel like I should be working all day.

Justin:
18:49
It was dumb. I should have just done something else.

Jon:
18:52
Yeah. Yeah. I've definitely definitely had days like that. And then it's the end of the day, and you're like, well, I didn't I didn't do something else, but I also didn't do much work.

Justin:
19:01
Yeah. So, like What's the point? So I think that'd be a good question for us to to to talk about. Let's pause here. I have another thought related to this, but let's pause here and talk about ActiveCampaign.

Justin:
19:17
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Justin:
19:44
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Justin:
20:02
So related to what we were just talking about, I think one benefit we've had that I'm really thankful for is that this has felt fun for me from the beginning, mostly because we got traction quickly. Yeah. I think if we were working on this for months years, and it was like trying to squeeze, you know, lemon juice out of a lemon that had already been squeezed 3 or 4 times. I I think that would be hard. And I'm thankful that we did do some homework, and we chose a market that seemed to be growing, that seemed to have some some things happening in it.

Justin:
20:53
We chose a market that we had experience in. And all of that added up. Of course, there's no guarantees, but all of that added up to being in this place where it's like, of course, this is fun because and I'm sure some listeners are thinking this right now. Well, of course, you're having fun because it's making money.

Jon:
21:14
Right.

Justin:
21:14
Right?

Jon:
21:15
That definitely yeah. It would I think it would certainly be a different story if it wasn't if it wasn't making money. I mean, it it kind of ties into, like it is part of the fun of it is that we have customers that use it and love it and get a lot out of it. And and even, you know, even doing this show, which is separate, but still part of it is is rewarding in its own right because we get feedback from people that, like, the things that we talk about have really impacted them in a in a positive way.

Justin:
21:48
Yeah. And it's all kind of part of it. Right? Again, I think I think we would do this show even if nobody was listening because it's been so helpful. But it is encouraging and it is more fun when stuff is happening.

Justin:
22:05
And I my talk from Laracon just went live. And this is part of what I talked about, which was this feeling of being in my mid thirties and watching all of these other people around me, my peers, kind of get success. And it just felt like I was pushing this big rock uphill, and nothing was really happening for me. And it resonated with a lot of people. I I've never had that many people come up to me after a talk.

Justin:
22:40
And I think it was because they resonated with this idea of, yeah, it's not very fun when you're working on something and you're putting everything you've got into something and it's just not happening. And I've been thinking about that idea a lot because on one hand, I don't think life is just a straight hockey stick. Like, you don't just, you know, you don't just get to, like, start something and have it succeed automatically just because you started it? No. But on the other hand, it seems like all of the successful entrepreneurs and founders that I follow and again, maybe this is this is, survival bias.

Justin:
23:29
But, like, folks like Richard Branson will say, you know, I'll try something new. But if it doesn't feel right, I just stop doing it. They have an eject button that I think is faster than, you know, the way that we might eject. Right. I think we allow ourselves or at least I'll speak for myself.

Justin:
23:52
I I've allowed myself to suffer for way longer than I should have. And sometimes that's just because you gotta you gotta pay the bills, and so you're just grinding and just, you know, working really hard and putting more energy into something than you should. Like, you're squeezing the lemon just because you need whatever comes out of it? I I would. Anyone who's listening I I think there's something there.

Justin:
24:20
And I know it's not easy to hear, so I I don't know what to I don't. But do you know what I'm saying?

Jon:
24:28
I yeah. I know what you're saying. I don't know if I could say it differently.

Justin:
24:36
I I just think that's important that people evaluate what they're doing. And if if it isn't like, Jason Cohen is saying that for a reason. If you're not having fun, you know, maybe it's not worth doing because you it's so hard. Like, Steve Jobs says this. Like, if you're if you don't really like what you're doing, stop doing it because being an entrepreneur or being a product person is so hard.

Justin:
25:02
If you don't enjoy the process, then you're just going you're not going to survive. Right?

Jon:
25:07
Right. Yeah. I think yeah. If if you're doing it and and really not enjoying it, I think that can really wear a person down.

Justin:
25:15
Exactly. And I you know, Steve Steve is saying it's hard. But on the other hand, Apple had traction. Right? Like, if if he was working on something and just nobody was using Apple products, I think that would have been harder.

Jon:
25:35
Right.

Justin:
25:36
And I, I, I think all of these things kind of play into it. And so anyway, worth thinking about. Let's move on to, something we also talked about last week. Summer Slow Down.

Jon:
25:51
Did It seems like a it sounds like a wrestling, like, the the WrestleMania summer slowdown.

Justin:
25:57
The summer

Jon:
25:58
Summer slam down. Summer

Justin:
26:01
Summer Slowdown. It's like slow motion wrestling.

Jon:
26:05
Yeah.

Justin:
26:11
Every every, I wanna say every episode, but that's not how wrestling works. Every match is like 4 days long.

Jon:
26:18
Right.

Justin:
26:18
It's super slow. The summer sass slowdown, which is something we talked about last week. Right? We said, our growth had slowed down here in August.

Jon:
26:31
Yeah. And this is our first, like, real full summer. Mhmm. Because we launched in late summer late middle summer. Yeah.

Jon:
26:41
And, obviously, it was just I mean, it was gonna grow. Well, that wasn't a given, but

Justin:
26:47
Yeah.

Jon:
26:47
It was growing. It was growing well, and we didn't have anything to compare it to. So

Justin:
26:52
Yeah. We we got the we we doubled MRR, basically. So we grew by 50% that first

Jon:
26:57
Yeah.

Justin:
26:58
That first month. So, yeah, we're down, what does this say? We're down 35% compared to July.

Jon:
27:08
Yep.

Justin:
27:09
In terms of growth, again, not in terms of revenue. We're up in terms

Jon:
27:13
of revenue, but growth is is. It has slowed down.

Justin:
27:17
Yes.

Jon:
27:18
Yeah. So is it I mean, it I think we're we're hearing that it is a thing.

Justin:
27:22
Mhmm.

Jon:
27:23
But is there, like, any evidence of why?

Justin:
27:28
I think it is because of those things we mentioned before, which is just people are on vacation. People are not in full I mean, even us. We're we're putting big projects off until September. So people might have been talking about, hey. Let's start that podcast.

Justin:
27:45
And then it's like, well Yeah. Are we really really ready for this? Like, you're gone 2 weeks. And how are we gonna have a weekly podcast if you got

Jon:
27:51
Let's go to the lake instead.

Justin:
27:53
Yeah. Let's go to the lake. But this is definitely a thing. I've I've actually been looking in my inbox and I'm getting tons of, SaaS companies emailing me with, like, 30% off annual deals. So and it there's an uptick in these.

Jon:
28:11
Okay.

Justin:
28:11
So it's a pattern of I think a lot of SaaS companies right now are they're in a slow period as well. And they're like, we wanna hit our numbers, and so they're trying to juice it a little bit. Yeah. I think I think this is a thing. This one company has a 30% off pro yearly plan.

Justin:
28:34
Expires in 24 hours. You know? Like if you if you upgrade to annual plan an annual plan on Transistor, you get 2 months free. Not everyone knows that.

Jon:
28:53
It's a

Justin:
28:53
good deal. So if you wanna start a podcast, now's the time. There's also a blog post from Nathan Barry, where he was just kinda giving an update. And, he was saying, you know, they've actually been growing a bit faster in the summer this year. But historically, he says the summer is really slow for ConvertKit.

Justin:
29:18
So I think it's sometimes it's just nice knowing okay. It's not just us. There's also a a tweet from, Josh Anderton who said, any other SaaS companies seeing that revenue generally drops in the summer? I thought it was just me. So

Jon:
29:36
Alright. Yeah. It's good to know. We're not alone in that.

Justin:
29:39
To know. Good to know.

Jon:
29:40
And also and also good to remember for next summer when we either want to have promotions

Justin:
29:47
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Or

Jon:
29:48
just remember that it's okay to, like, take a break. I mean, I that's the thing. It's, like, just because sales slowed down, does it mean it's okay to for us to slow down, or does it mean that we have to ramp up our marketing or just try something different for those months, which I guess is what the people doing the promotions are trying to do?

Justin:
30:07
These are good questions. My my friend, Paul Jarvis, he stops doing a lot of his regular stuff in the summer. So he has a really popular email newsletter, and he never misses a Sunday. But in the summer, he'll say, hey. I'm taking a break.

Justin:
30:24
So during the regular year, he never misses a Sunday. Every Sunday, you're gonna get a newsletter from Paul. But in the summer, I'm taking a break. He also has a podcast. He has a couple podcasts.

Justin:
30:36
He pauses them all in the summer. And it's not because he's not working. He still keeps working, But he wants to minimize his obligations and do more traveling, have time to think, have time to explore different ideas, maybe do some really deep work. Like, he's redoing, one of his courses right now. He's rerecording all the videos for it.

Justin:
31:02
Him and Jack Ellis are coming out with a new version of Fathoms. They're working on that. So there is something about the the, you know, the the seasonality of that that maybe, and I've I've been terrible at this, about saying, okay. For the summer, I'm gonna slow down. Instead, I'm just caught in that in between we talked about, which is what

Jon:
31:19
Right. Checking Reddit instead and being like, oh, this doesn't work.

Justin:
31:22
Yeah. This

Jon:
31:25
Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's a good a good reminder for next summer.

Justin:
31:28
Yes. I think that's something we wanna flag is you know, why don't we just plan on summer is less obligations, maybe less podcast recording, or may Let's put that

Jon:
31:40
in the calendar right now, July 1st. Slow down.

Justin:
31:43
July 1st. Slow down. Let's yeah. Let's do that. And listener, you can do this too.

Justin:
31:48
I'm just gonna fast forward

Jon:
31:49
to out. Refer to episode 72.

Justin:
31:52
Yeah. July 1, 2020. That's a weird idea. So July 1, 2020 will be Canada Day. But on the second, July 2nd, I'll say, slow down.

Justin:
32:05
I'm gonna invite you to this, event, John.

Jon:
32:11
We'll see how much of a dumpster fire the world is in in July 2020.

Justin:
32:14
Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

Jon:
32:16
Where it'll be.

Justin:
32:19
Actually and, you know what I think we really need to do is the previous week on the, 25th, I'm gonna put a different event called prepare to slow down. Right?

Jon:
32:34
Okay.

Justin:
32:34
That's the thing. We need to we need to do that. Actually, while we're on this, while we're on this, I think we should also do this for December. December 23rd. No.

Justin:
32:49
Maybe even before that. I think December 16th, we should have a prepare to slow down.

Jon:
32:57
Yeah. Right. And then a slowdown through, like, the New Year. Yeah. I know a lot of design design agencies do that.

Jon:
33:06
They just sort of, like, shut down for, like, 2 weeks because there's just no there's no work to do.

Justin:
33:11
Mhmm.

Jon:
33:12
I don't I don't know if it's unique to them in particular, but I've noticed that from friends that either work there or own their own design agencies.

Justin:
33:22
Yeah. Yeah. If it's and if it's in the calendar, I mean, we could even we could slow down from the 19th until the second if we wanted to. I mean, we haven't really defined what slowdown means, but I think part of what it means is we're not recording new podcast episodes. We're not working on anything major.

Justin:
33:44
We are if we want, we're not going to the office.

Jon:
33:47
We're Yeah. We might we might be just researching or experimenting or

Justin:
33:54
Reading a book. Yeah. I I I picked up the the Disney biography again. I I made it about halfway through. And just reading about someone that's completely out of our industry and just looking at all the mistakes he made and thinking about them and all of the problems.

Justin:
34:12
Like one thing I'm seeing right now is all of the problems he had because he hired so many people And contrasting that with you and I, I can just see, like, wow. You really do need to consider whether you wanna grow because it adds all of this other stuff. You know?

Jon:
34:30
Yeah. It's a whole another layer of complexity and management and

Justin:
34:34
But it's refreshing to get outside of your regular routine and be exposed to stuff like that.

Jon:
34:44
Right.

Justin:
34:46
Let's end with this, because this has been on our doc forever, and I would love to hear what our listeners have to say. Are enterprise customers worth it? I can't remember if we've talked about this. Have we?

Jon:
34:57
No. I don't think so. I think it's been sitting in our notes for a while.

Justin:
34:59
I mentioned this on Twitter, and I got a DM from Des Traynor, who's the founder of Intercom. And he, he mentioned that I might want to think more deeply about this. But I what what I was tweeting was, you know okay. Here's the story. I had a conference call with a really impressive, well respected organization, And there's a part of me that would love to have them on transistor as a customer.

Justin:
35:25
It would mean multiple accounts. It would mean multiple podcasts. But at the end of the call, I ended up recommending them to a competitor. And the reason was I just started to get the wrong feeling. Like, they had all these requirements that would be difficult to build and support.

Justin:
35:43
They had all of this due diligence we would have had to do. Right. Actually, we're going through something with another corporation right now where we have to sign all this stuff. And I keep thinking, like, they're signing up for a year, this customer. But a year with us at the $99 plan is, like, $1,000 or something.

Jon:
36:03
Right.

Justin:
36:04
And I'm just like, man, as soon as I have to sign 3 documents with multiple revisions per document

Jon:
36:11
Yeah.

Justin:
36:12
Is it worth it? Right.

Jon:
36:13
I mean, what's yeah. What's your time worth in that in that respect?

Justin:
36:16
And so, you know, just thinking, these customers generally require enterprise levels of security, support, features, procurement. And I'm just wondering, like, man, I wonder if it's worth it.

Jon:
36:28
Yeah. Well, I mean, maybe that's we don't really have an enterprise plan that

Justin:
36:34
Yeah.

Jon:
36:35
Guarantees any of that. Yeah.

Justin:
36:38
Or even makes it worthwhile. So maybe that's the other part.

Jon:
36:41
Right. Right. Right. Like, we

Justin:
36:42
have a competitor that charges $500,000 a year for an account.

Jon:
36:49
That's absurd to me.

Justin:
36:50
Yeah. I mean, which is why I think folks like, I mean, Ben Orenstein's mentioned this because Tupelo sells a lot of kind of, team plans where you get multiple seats, and he's like, the money's pretty good. You know? Yeah. And, again, intercom, I think, makes a lot of revenue.

Justin:
37:11
We've seen from Slack's, IPO filings that they they're it's like, where does all their revenue come from? How how come Slack doesn't listen to my feedback? I'm on this important 2 person team Right. That's free. How come they're not listening?

Jon:
37:27
It's being subsidized by corporation mega corporation c.

Justin:
37:31
Corporate America. Yeah. Although, we are we're a c corp. We're we're a part of corporate America.

Jon:
37:39
Yeah. We are.

Justin:
37:41
We're just not we're not bit like, I think, like, Microsoft is a big customer of theirs. You know, they had a big list of all the big companies that pay them tons of money. And I think part of the idea is, yeah, you know, some of the difficulty increases. But

Jon:
38:00
Yeah. The money I'd say, generally, it's probably worth it if you have if you don't have to make too many, concessions and yeah. Or, like, custom changes. Mhmm. Mhmm.

Jon:
38:15
And you have maybe a a plan that's priced appropriately to, like, deal with the initial amount of work to get them on board.

Justin:
38:25
Yeah. And maybe if you're still having fun.

Jon:
38:30
Right.

Justin:
38:31
If if you're if you're like, I have a a another friend who has a web agency, and his full time job is filling out RFPs. Doesn't sound like fun to me. No. I don't know. I've I don't I don't think I want that.

Justin:
38:43
So anyway, listener, I would love to hear what you have to say. Reach out to us and let us know if you've been positively impacted or negatively by serving enterprise customers. Talking about our favorite listeners, John, why don't you thank our Patreon supporters?

Jon:
39:03
Alright. Thanks as always to our supporters. We have Evandro Sassy. Sassy.

Justin:
39:11
Sassy? Could be. Sassy? Could be.

Jon:
39:16
Pradyumna Schembecker?

Justin:
39:18
Yeah. He actually reached out, and he said, you said his name well perfectly.

Jon:
39:24
Cool.

Justin:
39:24
So I just call him PD, but you can PD. Yeah.

Jon:
39:30
Ben, Noah Pral, David Colgan, Robert Simplicio, Colin Gray from alitu.com, Josh Smith, Ivan Kerkovic, Brian Ray, Miguel Pedraffita, Shane Smith, Austin Loveless, Simon Bennett, Corey Hanes, Michael Sittver, Paul Jarvis, and Jack Ellis, Dan Buddha?

Justin:
39:54
Dan Buddha dot com. Oh, yeah. Let me check out I gotta visit every once in a while to see if Dan's put anything new here. Oh, this is a little bit new.

Jon:
40:01
Yeah. I'm not sure he has. He's still look he's he's still looking for, he's still looking for some coding jobs

Justin:
40:06
down Austin, Texas. Reshaped danboota.com. Yeah. What what are you waiting for? He he's a bass player in a very amateur Metallica cover band.

Justin:
40:15
That for that reason alone, you should be hiring him. What's wrong with you people? Danbudda.com.

Jon:
40:24
Our friend Darby Frey, Samori Augusto, Dave Young, Brad from Canada, Sammy Schuichert, Dan Erickson, Mike Walker, Adam Devander, Dave Junta.

Justin:
40:35
Junta.

Jon:
40:37
Kylefox@getrewardful.com, and our sponsors this week, ProfitWell and active active campaign.

Justin:
40:44
Thanks, everyone, and we will see you next week.