August 16, 2022 • 35 mins
It's the fourth anniversary of Transistor's public launch! This is part 2 of "Jon and Justin answer your questions."
- (00:37) - When did you start paying yourself how much you wanted to make?
- (01:34) - Any broad advice for startups?
- (11:38) - How did you decide on your tech stack?
- (14:16) - How did you prioritize features?
- (15:49) - Were you embarrased by the first version you shipped?
- (17:48) - How did you decide on pricing?
- (21:07) - How would you have found employees without your network?
- (27:25) - Do you have more or less freedom or stress in your lives?
What should we talk about next?
- Twitter: @buildyoursaas, @mijustin, @jonbuda, @jsonpearl, and @helenryles
- Leave a review/comment on Podchaser; it's like Reddit, but for podcasts.
- Email us: support@transistor.fm
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- Jason Charnes
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Chris (00:12):
Hey. Welcome to Build Your SaaS, a podcast about
building a web business in 2022.I've I've heard the intro many
times. I should know it by now.I'm not John or Justin.
I'm Chris, the podcast editor.And just here to tell you that
you're back for part 2 of Johnand Justin's answer all the
questions about their business.Transistor.fm. I won't waste any
(00:34):
more of your time with myrambling and babbling, and let's
just get right into thequestions.
Justin (00:39):
Corey Haynes, another great transistor customer, says,
when did you start payingyourself what you actually
wanted to make or what you setout to make? I think he's
saying. Yeah. That was probably2020, I'm guessing. Probably.
Jon (00:56):
Know what
Justin (00:56):
your answer would be. I mean, we had stages of this. And
I think when we started, we saidkind of baseline for us was to
each make a 100,000 a year. Butthe the actual goal for me
personally was probably, like, Iwould like to be making at least
$250,000 a year. And, yeah, Ican't remember when we hit that,
(01:19):
but I
Jon (01:19):
don't either. It was probably sometime in 2020.
Justin (01:23):
Yeah. I think it was sometime in 2020. Nathan Barry
says, so impressed with whatyou've done in 4 years. Thanks,
Nathan. That's great.
Nathan Barry from ConvertKit,another Transistor customer.
Brian Ray says a lot of successstories aren't helpful because
of survivorship buyer bias, anda lot of answers about success
start with it depends. But afterthese years, as you've met more
(01:46):
and more bootstrappers who havefound success, are there a few
pieces of advice that you trulybelieve stand up to the harshest
of critiques and are more likelyto apply broadly to a wide
audience? Thoughts, John?
Jon (01:59):
I don't know. I'm not really in touch with the
bootstrapping community thatmuch, to be honest. So
Justin (02:06):
I mean, this is my thing. I just love this part.
The the, choose a good market,choose a good category is and
within that advice is choose acategory. You know, you have
some sort of expertise in. Youhave, you understand the
customer.
(02:26):
You hopefully know a bunch ofthose customers. There's enough
momentum in that market to giveyou the growth that you want.
You, you know, that so muchdepends on the market. And then,
really, it's everything elsewe've said, which is the life
that you cultivate up to thatpoint is really going to make a
(02:46):
big difference. Yep.
The people you meet, the skillsyou build, the experiences you
have. You know, John has becomevery good at building product,
and then it's because, you know,I didn't have to walk with him
all through all those yearswhere you were just working
freelance and then working forother companies, you know, like,
(03:06):
they got to, you you got totrain yourself through all those
times.
Jon (03:12):
Yeah.
Justin (03:12):
And then I just got this current version
Jon (03:14):
of you. It's exactly. Yeah.
Justin (03:16):
It's pretty good.
Jon (03:16):
I knew what I didn't like working on. I figured that out.
I knew what type kind of peopleI didn't like working with.
Justin (03:22):
Whatever age you are, whatever stage of life you're
in, make these, microinvestments in yourself as you
go along. And it's those thingsthat are going to help you when
it's time to actually build acompany. So get out and meet
some people, go to events, go,build some skills, build some
(03:44):
things and put them out inpublic, go work in a bunch of
industries.
Jon (03:47):
Yeah. I would say like, all
Justin (03:49):
of those things help.
Jon (03:50):
Don't, yeah. Don't do things you don't necessarily
wanna do. Like, don't, don'tbecome manager if you don't want
to, if you're sort of just likeforced into it. Like, if you
don't wanna be a manager, thendon't be a manager. Like, it's
not for everyone.
Justin (04:01):
Yeah.
Jon (04:02):
If you wanna just build things and code and be, you
know, work your way up that sortof career path instead of
becoming a manager becausethat's what you think you're
supposed to do? Like, don't Ijust try to avoid that.
Justin (04:14):
Yes. Yeah. Business ideas are drawn from the a
trying to disparage anybody. Butif you're looking at your life
and you're feeling like, oh, Ijust don't have any good ideas
for a business or good I I can'tsee any good opportunities. The
(04:35):
answer is just at whatever ageyou are, you just need to go out
and have more experiences
Jon (04:41):
Yeah.
Justin (04:41):
And, shake things up a bit, get curious, go to a
conference that you'reinterested in, but you would
have normally not gone to, Gotake a class. These are all of
the things you you once told mea story about you going and
working with a baker. Yep. Like,you were just interested in
baking bread. Yeah.
(05:02):
And you just
Jon (05:03):
I'm trying to
Justin (05:04):
think the story there?
Jon (05:05):
I'm trying to even think, like, how I got into bread. I
don't know. I got interested inbread for some reason. Like,
this was before the wholepandemic, like, everyone's
baking sourdough. I honestlydon't remember why I got into it
or what led me there, but I didand I got super interested in it
and I was like, I would like tostart making bread.
Yeah. And the more I got intoit, I was like, oh, I found all
(05:27):
these, I don't know, blogs andlike YouTube things about bread.
I tried to make some, and it wasa disaster, and then I just out
of the blue, I think I saw achef that runs a restaurant
group in Chicago who also runswho also owns the bakery. He
posted something online aboutlike, oh, we're hiring bakers at
(05:51):
public and quality breads, whichis in Chicago. And so I emailed
the I emailed the guy, the headbaker, and there's a young guy
named Greg.
And I was like, hey, can I I'mlike, I'm just interested in,
like, learning how to makebread? And can I just come in
and work for free? He's like,Oh, yeah. That's a thing you do
(06:12):
in the restaurant industry. Youcan go stage and just show up
and they'll let you work forfree and they'll teach you
stuff.
Yeah. And he's like, yeah, comehere at, Saturday, 8 in the
morning. And I was like,alright. And I thought I was
just gonna go there, like, talkto him. And he's like, alright.
So there's an apron in thebasement, and, we're gonna we're
(06:32):
gonna get
Jason (06:32):
to work.
Jon (06:32):
And I'm like, what? That, like, hadn't eaten that day. And
I just showed up and worked,like, an entire, like, 8 hour
day with this guy. I wasstarving and not ready for this
at all. And then I did it once aweekend for a couple months, and
it was great.
Justin (06:46):
I just love that story.
Jon (06:48):
It was great. I mean, I learned a ton. Like, I don't you
know, you just
Justin (06:51):
But what I love about that story is it it shows you it
it's a perfect example of howyou can cultivate these types of
experiences. Like, just to becurious, to reach out, to take a
rest, to and this is all whileyou're working full time as a
software developer.
Jon (07:09):
Uh-huh.
Justin (07:10):
Yeah. And and so you just did this on the side, and
you now have a much greaterunderstanding of how to make
good bread, but you alsounderstand the restaurant
industry. You've got insightsabout the restaurant industry.
You know some people in therestaurant industry now. That's
how you cultivate this life thatcan then produce opportunities
(07:32):
is by kinda doing things likethat.
Jon (07:34):
Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. I I would encourage anyone to do it.
I mean, with anything, really.
It doesn't have to be arestaurant or bread or probably
there's probably tons of waysyou could do that.
Justin (07:42):
Yeah. Totally. Yeah. I've I've just like, another
trick I've done is I've signedup for a meetup. Like, I've gone
on to meetup.com or whatever andsigned up for search for cheap
flights to different cities, andthen just chosen a meetup in
another city that I wanted to goto.
And the great thing about thatis you show up at this meetup
(08:05):
group where there's a group ofpeople already who know each
other, and they're like, who areyou? Where are you from? And
they're like, well, I flew infrom Canada to come to this
thing, and they're like, what?Like and, you know, this is like
I did this in Vegas one time,and the tickets were cheap. It
was like, whatever.
$95 flight to Vegas. But I gotthis experience of meeting all
(08:27):
these people and connecting withthe with people on a topic I
didn't know about. Yeah. And,
Jon (08:34):
it's That was cool.
Justin (08:35):
It was really cool.
Jon (08:35):
And that's why. Yeah. I I used to go I used to go to a lot
of design conferences.
Justin (08:41):
Yes.
Jon (08:42):
Because I was interest I was, you know, mostly a
developer, but, like, I wasreally interested in design. And
I was going to, like, you know,like graphic design conferences.
They were fascinating. I'd meetlike the most amazing people.
Justin (08:53):
Yes.
Jon (08:54):
And they were like, oh, you're a developer and you're
here? I'm like, yeah, it's likesuper interesting. And like,
you're all probably more fun tohang out with than most of the
other people at otherconferences. And like Yeah. I
you know, you just like youabsorb yourself and surround
yourself in these communitiesand you just you just absorb
information and, like, you'reprobably gonna get better at
(09:16):
design even if that's not yourmain your main role, like, just
by being around it.
Justin (09:22):
Yeah. This characteristic actually is one
characteristic I found withsuccessful founders is people
who cultivate this kind of lifeand curiosity Yeah. Often do
eventually start companies thatwork out. It's not a guarantee,
but, Kyle Fox is very similar.And his trick was also he would
(09:45):
start events.
So he got really he's a softwaredeveloper, but he got really
into, type and typefaces.
Jon (09:51):
Mhmm.
Justin (09:51):
And so him and a friend just started a conference all
about type. And, you know, whata great way to meet people that
way. You know? All of a sudden,he's able to bring in the
world's best typeface designers
Jon (10:05):
Yeah.
Justin (10:06):
To one place and meet them. And, you know, and it was
he was able to learn all of thisstuff about, you know, type and
typefaces just from runningthese events.
Jon (10:15):
I mean, ultimately, that's why I ended up at XOXO and met
you is because it seemed like asuper interesting place to go
with interesting people. Yeah.Yeah. And I wasn't I wasn't
always the most outgoingextroverted person. I'm still
not, but, like, it's somethingyou can work on.
Justin (10:33):
Yeah. Yeah. And you can practice even just going to
local meetups and, under andjust, yeah, meeting people,
taking a risk, putting yourselfout there.
Jon (10:44):
I mean, for a lot of people, meeting people is
meeting new people isterrifying.
Justin (10:47):
Yes. So what's your advice for people who find that
terrifying?
Jon (10:51):
You just gotta try it. Just, like, go and say hi. You
know? Like Yeah. I don't know.
Yeah. Just say hi. Try to talkabout something in it doesn't
even have to be about, like, thetopic that, you know, what
wherever you're at is about,but, like Yeah. You know, find
some common thread to talkabout. And
Justin (11:09):
Yeah. And I think it also helps to have a good
wingman or a wing person, likechase Reeves introduced me to so
many people. Yeah. And, youknow, that having that person
there, and honestly, I met himin a way that's was not
introverted, but he read one ofmy articles. It wasn't like, you
(11:32):
know, we'd met in the other way.
He read one of my articles andreached out. So there's all
sorts of ways you can createthese connections. Let's do a
few more, and we'll get Chris tosplit these up however he'd
like. Lars Huback says, we'dlove to hear about some of the
technical sides of developingthe product. How did you decide
on the tech stack?
Did you develop everythingyourselves? How about hosting
and billing? Did you outsourcesome of the work design UI? And
(11:55):
if yes, how did you do it? Howdid you prioritize features?
Jon (11:58):
That's a lot.
Justin (12:00):
So bit by bit, how'd you choose the tech stack?
Jon (12:05):
I chose Ruby on Rails because that's what I knew, and
that's what I was comfortablewith, and I knew I could be
productive in it. I mean, at thetime I started it, there's
certainly, like, the trend wasmoving towards, like, building
react front ends against an API,and that just didn't interest
me. I I it would have taken toolong for me to learn it, and I
(12:29):
probably would have not enjoyedit because I was just I just
like the way Rails is puttogether. That's how we that's
how I chose it. I think it was agood choice.
I mean, it could have beenLaravel. I'd known PHP better,
but
Justin (12:43):
Yeah.
Jon (12:44):
Went with Rails.
Justin (12:45):
I think any any full stack, web framework, Laravel,
Django
Jon (12:51):
Yeah.
Justin (12:52):
Rails, it's all it's all fine. I I still I still think
those are those old webframeworks are still amazing
choices for building in theSaaS. They're just so good.
Jon (13:05):
Did we develop everything ourselves? I mean, yes and no.
Like, you know, the app isobviously it's custom built, but
within that, we're using allsorts of open source libraries
that are helping out. We're, youknow, using Tailwind CSS for,
(13:26):
you know, helping build out thedesign. We used to use something
else.
I didn't wanna custom build CSS.I just wanted to, like, be able
to build an interface quicklythat looks pretty good.
Justin (13:36):
And we we hired we do we we've hired people at different
times to contractors. I thinkthat's been a good way. Like,
the logo and, the transistorlogo and stuff is somebody you
hired to
Jon (13:48):
Yeah. To build The website has been you've hired people to
help out with the actual, like,
Justin (13:54):
marketing website. Yeah. And even when when I decided to
rebuild the website myself, Idefinitely got a lot of help.
Like, it was me, but I wasbuilding it in public, and I
was, like, cons I I mean, thetransistor website probably has
30 people that helped withdifferent things over the over
the span of building it. Sothere's lots of ways to get, you
(14:17):
know, other people to help.
And how did we prioritizefeatures? We've almost always
prioritized features based onour sense of what customers
want. And that's not always likewhat they tell us in in chat.
It's it's observing people andsaying, you know what? I think
this is something that, youknow, customers actually want in
(14:42):
terms of, I mean, the badges isactually a great example is
nobody said told us they wantedbadges.
We just saw them constantlytweeting their stats, like, hey.
My podcast just hit 1,000downloads. And so we're like,
people want this. And we wereable to prioritize that. We also
(15:03):
I mean, prioritizing features.
We have a small team. We knowwe're not gonna be able to build
everything. We discuss a lot ofideas, but most of them just go
into a document and just staythere. And
Jon (15:15):
Yeah. There's a lot of stuff that's just forgotten
about. But if it comes back up,it's a good indication that it's
probably something we wannabuild. And I think we also
prioritize, like, within theteam, like, what what do you
what do you think is gonna befun for you to work on? Like,
what are you excited about?
And then that can help bubblethings up to the top of the
list.
Justin (15:33):
Yeah. And you you can really that's the fun thing
about being at this stage is youcan really do that when you're,
once you've hit a certain amountof revenue and margin, you can
kind of prioritize things thatare more fun, which you really
do need. Yeah.
Jon (15:49):
Yeah. Absolutely.
Justin (15:50):
David Thompson does the adage, if you're not embarrassed
by the first version, youshipped too late, still hold. I
think the best response to thisis Jason Cohen's, simple lovable
product, article. I will try topost that in the show notes.
Yeah. So he goes he has thisarticle called I hate MVPs.
(16:13):
So do your customers make it SLCinstead, which is simple,
lovable, and complete. Our firstversion of Transistor had those
elements. It was simple. It waslovable. Like, we had elements
of it that made it, even, like,from the beginning, more
attractive than a lot of ourcustomers, better designed, more
(16:36):
personable.
Jon (16:37):
It didn't work it didn't work on mobile phones, though,
at all. Like, the design did notwork.
Justin (16:41):
That's right. So there were things that didn't work at
the beginning, but we didn'tneed mobile for 99% of the use
cases. Right?
Jon (16:51):
Yep.
Justin (16:51):
And it was complete in that we could go to people who
had a podcast somewhere else andsay, hey. I know you're on
Libsyn, or I know you're onBuzzsprout, or I know you're on
Simplecast or whatever. Wouldyou switch to Transistor? And
they were able to look at ourfeatures when we demoed it and
say, oh, yeah. This has got,like, 90% of what I need, and,
(17:14):
they signed up.
So simple, lovable, complete,that is, better than the MVP. I
don't think you wanna beembarrassed by the first version
that you put into customer'shands. You wanna feel good about
it. You wanna feel like, yeah,this is actually worth switching
to. You know?
And, if you can't pull that off,then either collaborate with
(17:37):
people that allow you to pullthat off or, work on your own
skills or whatever. But, yeah,you want the first version to
feel good, to be simple,lovable, complete. How did you
decide on pricing? We've done anumber of episodes on that.
Really, we talked to a lot ofpeople, and we surveyed our
(17:59):
category.
So if you go back to thepodcast, you can see we talked
to Nathan Barry, Rob Walling,Patrick Campbell, ProfitWell. We
had an episode where we debated.I debated pricing with Ben
Orenstein and Jordan Goll, Ibelieve. And then we also looked
at our category and just whatpeople are charging, and we
(18:23):
looked for an opportunity wherewe could stand out from the
competition. And one of that'swhere we came up with this idea
of unlimited podcasts for oneprice.
So if you had 3 shows onSimplecast, you could switch to
Transistor, all three shows toTransistor, and save money. And
that was our kind of our first,like, way of kind of pulling
(18:47):
people saying, hey. Why would Iswitch to Transistor? Well, if
you have more than 2 or 3 shows,it's a no brainer because you're
gonna save money.
Jon (18:55):
And that's that's not initially how we started either.
I mean, we when we had our our,like, beta tester user group,
they were charged per product.They were charged differently,
but with a huge discount. Yeah.And then before we launched, I
don't know when we decided, but,I'm thankful we switched pricing
(19:16):
structures for a number ofreasons, but, yeah, we switched.
We just, like, decided to do itbased on downloads and features
instead of per podcast, which Ithink worked out really well in
our favor.
Justin (19:33):
Yeah. Yeah. And it's worth going back to those
episodes because a lot of thatis pricing theory that we got
from all those people we talkedto, but, specifically, Patrick
Campbell, where he recommendedthat we that you you take your
the main kind of cost structurein your business. So for us, it
(19:53):
was bandwidth and hosting andall those things, but mostly
bandwidth, and charge based onthat. That's why it makes sense
to charge In Slack, it makessense to charge per seat because
the more people you have, themore your costs go up as the
software provider.
And, for email, it's like themore emails you send, the more
it costs you as a email serviceprovider. For us, the more
(20:17):
downloads that you do, the moreit costs us as a service
provider. So having that as ourpricing, what is what does
Patrick call it? It's like yourvalue metric. So make your value
metric match up with your maincost.
(20:38):
And it doesn't always have tomatch up with your main cost,
but you had to figure out avalue metric that makes sense
for your business and yourcategory. And, yeah, downloads
just work really well for us.And then this idea of, like,
well and you could start as manyshows as you want. So
previously, for a lot of ourcompetitors, the value metric
was every time you start a newshow, you gotta pay us again.
(20:58):
And we said, no.
Let's let people start as manyshows as they want and then pay
us based on usage. Pay us basedon how many listens or downloads
do you get. Super good. Alright.We're gonna finish up with a few
more.
Corey asks us about hiring. Howwould you have hired or found
your employees if you had nofollowing? What was your
selection process for your firstemployees? How to hire and work
(21:23):
with ambitious people and growteam while providing incentives
to stay in the company, do Ihire young and experienced and
train them? So I think what I'llsay we've already talked about
this, but I've been hiringpeople since I, probably since
2,005 or something.
In previous jobs, the best hiresI've made almost every single
(21:47):
time are people that I alreadyhad a relationship with, people
I already knew. And so maybethat won't doesn't work for
every company and everycategory, but for us, that's
really worked out well. Hey?Yep. Yeah.
I was
Jon (22:04):
I was thinking. It I mean, the the question itself is kind
of tough to answer because wedon't have, like, experience
growing teams, like huge teamsand Yeah. But, yeah, I would say
hire hire people you know andyou can work well with. Hire
hire experienced people atfirst. I mean, we haven't hired
(22:26):
anyone junior really, but Ithink that would be tough for a
small company like us.
Like Mhmm. We wanted to hireJason as developer because he
just has, like, a ton ofexperience in so many different
areas and has, you know, seenseen the problems that can come
up and knows how to knows how tofix things, knows how to
troubleshoot.
Justin (22:45):
And same with Helen. We hire hired her, but she'd
previously been with, Makerpad,ConvertKit. Like, she had all
and and also doing I think shewas in the I can't remember
who's health care industry,doing customer success, but she
had all of this experience somuch better. Yeah. Like, there's
(23:06):
just no training you need to do.
They they can literally hit theground running
Jon (23:12):
Yeah.
Justin (23:12):
And be high value contributors almost right away.
Jon (23:17):
Yeah. I I would say as far as, like, trying to keep
employees around, I mean, as werecord this, today is Justin's 1
year anniversary. Jason's.Jason. Jason's 1 year
anniversary today.
And Helen's been with us for,what, like, a year and a half? I
mean, full time.
Justin (23:32):
Yep. I mean,
Jon (23:34):
we've been generous with, like, time off and schedules and
flexible working. You know, wewere really generous last year
with, like, profit sharingbonuses, raises, I think have
been pretty good.
Justin (23:49):
Yeah.
Jon (23:50):
I think, generally, the the key is just to, like, you know,
recognize when your employeesare maybe not enjoying
themselves or hope that theyreach out to you or just ask how
they're doing. What maybe whatcan change and kind of allow
them to like build their workday around their lives instead
of the other way around. Mhmm.
Justin (24:11):
Yeah. There's a lot of times actually where you and I
make decisions, based on how wewere treated as employees. So,
like, it always bugged me thatat Christmas time, I never got a
bonus. And we've done so,typically, we've done bigger
bonuses at the end of the year,and it just also has this
(24:36):
benefit of being, like, aroundChristmas time, and it's just,
like, nice. And it was somethingthat bugged me.
It was, like, a reason I wantedto leave previous companies
because I was like, they nevergive me any bonuses. Like, it
kinda sucks.
Jon (24:51):
I yeah. I never got any. I knew how well they were doing.
Justin (24:54):
And it's why we're considering, like, how can we,
you know, share some of theownership with our employees,
either through stock options orsomething like that. So mining
your own experience as anemployee and just realizing,
like, what were the things thatmade me feel like, I another
thing that made me wanna leavewas I really wanted to work
(25:14):
remotely and have flexibility,and that wasn't allowed at a lot
of companies. So Yeah. I kind ofwanted to leave right away. I
think another thing that's beeninteresting is if people have
any sort of, you can't always,like, provide for this.
But if people, for example,wanna pay off they have a goal
(25:37):
or a pressure to pay off studentloans, let's say. If that's
something they wanna do andworking for you isn't helping
them get to that goal, they'realways gonna be looking for
something else.
Jon (25:49):
Yeah.
Justin (25:50):
They're always gonna be looking for to do a side hustle
or, you know, go and workanother job. Or if another job
comes along that pays better andgets them closer to that goal,
they're going to do that. Ifthey have a goal to move to a
different country and workremotely, but you only have a
local office, they're gonna keeptrying to get to that goal. And
(26:13):
so one way of, keeping peopleand, by the way, I don't know if
John and I are awesome at thisad either. Like, we're, you
know, we're trying to stay intouch with Helen and Jason and
and, you know, ask them whatthey're they're aiming for or
whatever.
But I think that is part of thekey is just figuring out what
(26:33):
are some of their longings, whatare some of the things they're
working on, what are some of thethings that are making them
restless.
Jon (26:44):
Yeah.
Justin (26:44):
You know? And, you know, John and I know what made us
restless when we were employees.Uh-huh. So, yeah, I think that's
worth thinking about and andproviding if you can, you can't
always, but if you can providefolks with the things that will
make them not restless, then mysense is they'll probably stay
(27:06):
longer. Could we have hired andfound our employees if we had no
following?
Sure. It's just aboutrelationship building. It's
about cultivating a lifetime ofexperiences and connections and
Jon (27:16):
Yeah.
Justin (27:16):
Working with different people. And, you know, it's,
that's how you find goodemployees. It's by knowing
people. So last one for MandyJones. Do you feel you have more
or less freedom and stress inyour lives than 4 years ago when
you started?
Jon (27:35):
I that's a pretty easy one to answer. Yeah. I have way less
stress and far more freedom.
Justin (27:41):
Doctor. Yes.
Jon (27:41):
Doctor. I mean, it, it, it's like, I can't even
overstate, like how much of apositive change it had on my
life. Yeah. So many differentways that I there's just a lot a
lot of different ways to countit. But, yeah, I mean, stress is
for work is, like, pretty muchnon nonexistent.
Mhmm. I mean, once in a while,something will break or there's
(28:03):
a bug, but it's like everyonecomes together to help fix it.
It's not, that's not evenstressful, really. Yeah. And I
mean, we've talked about this abunch, but like, yeah, just the
freedom to sort of build yourday how you want.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it'sincredible. Like, I wouldn't I
wouldn't trade that foranything.
Justin (28:19):
I think this is a great one to end on because it just
build your SaaS. What is buildyour SaaS? Like, it's really
build the life you want. Like,that that's really what we're
doing. Who I mean, if there wasanother way of doing this that
wasn't software that we enjoyed,then that would have been
equally as good.
You know what I
Jon (28:38):
mean? Right.
Justin (28:39):
Like, if if you and I could have gone into business
making bread and you just lovedit, and I just loved promoting
it, and we could have the lifewe wanted, we would we would
have done that. It was Right.From the beginning, we set off
on this journey with this inmind. How can we build a better
life? How can we have morefreedom?
(28:59):
How can we have less stress? Howcan we have a life with margin?
So that when stress does come upand none of us are immune from
the regular stresses of life andpeople's personal lives, there's
gonna be all sorts of thingsthat come along.
Jon (29:15):
Yeah.
Justin (29:15):
Right? The the idea though is if there's stress in
my personal life, it's not likeeverything's on fire. It's not
like my job at work isstressful, and my boss is being
a jerk, and I have to go to allthese meetings I don't like. And
I don't really like what I'mdoing, and I'm not being paid as
much as I want. And, you know,the big list, at least you don't
(29:38):
have to worry about that.
Yeah. And that is so refreshing.
Jon (29:43):
It's a huge change. I mean, I I've talked about this, I
think, with you and a lot ofother people, but, like, I don't
remember the last time I was,like, ended the day, and I was
angry
Justin (29:54):
Mhmm.
Jon (29:54):
About, you know, like, come home and you're, like, angry
about work and
Justin (29:58):
Mhmm.
Jon (29:59):
Oh, my day was terrible and so and so did this and this
happened. And Yeah. It justdoesn't happen. And it's kind of
amazing.
Justin (30:06):
We're so we're so lucky. Like, it's just I just feel so
lucky that we get to have this.And, again, we never know. Like,
life is not it things don'tthere could become a time where
transition becomes a lot morestressful. And the way I just
deal with that is I just enjoythe present every single day
when we have a good day at work,and we can enjoy this freedom,
(30:28):
and we can enjoy this lack ofstress and we can enjoy the
other rewards that come fromworking on something like this.
It's just like every day is Iappreciate it so much.
Jason (30:40):
Absolutely.
Justin (30:41):
I do think there's no surefire way to build a life
like this, but I do the theencouragement I have for people
is if you do want this to getjust continue making those micro
investments in your life,continue to cultivate a life
that may eventually leadsomewhere like this. It's not
(31:03):
gonna happen overnight. It's notgonna happen by looking for
ideas out of desperation. It'snot going to happen by just, you
know, throwing a bunch ofspaghetti against the wall and
seeing what sticks. Cultivate alife where you're investing in
skills, in relationships, inexperiences, in knowledge, in
curiosity, in connection.
(31:25):
And, eventually, hopefully, anopportunity will present itself,
and you can take advantage of itand build a better life. And
this is something I'm passionateabout, something John's
passionate about. For moreindies to succeed, more indie
software companies, more indiecompanies that could get to this
(31:48):
point. And, again, even if thisdoesn't last forever, to have
experienced, let's say, 3 yearsnow of just a really good life
is just an incredible feeling.
Jon (32:01):
Yeah. Well said.
Justin (32:04):
We wanna thank all of our customers, everybody that
has ever signed up for aTransistor account and used it
at any point. We are so thankfulfor you. We're thankful for your
encouragement, for, all of your,feedback, for sticking with us
even when, you know, we didn'thave exactly what you needed.
(32:27):
Just thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. There's somecustomers that have been with us
from the beginning, and we can'toverstate, like, just how
thankful we are to havecustomers and how pumped up we
get seeing you use the productand enjoy the product. So thanks
for that.
Jon (32:45):
Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. And to everyone who's listened to
this show for 4 plus years.Yeah.
I know we haven't recorded in along time together. Yeah. And
this seemed appropriate, butYeah. Yeah. We hoped you've,
enjoyed, I don't know, listeningto our journey and hopefully
you've learned something.
(33:06):
And I mean, we learned a lotdoing it too.
Justin (33:09):
Yeah. And that yeah. People encouraging us and
listening and encouraging us,and it's hard to under you just
can't overstate, like, howmeaningful that was and
continues to be. Like, when weget messages and responses and
people saying, hey. Thanks somuch, or, hey.
We're cheering for you, or, hey.Here's some advice or whatever.
(33:32):
It's been so incredible. And,yeah, maybe to close things off,
we should do our shout outs tothe people who have supported
us, some from the verybeginning.
Jon (33:43):
Yeah. And,
Justin (33:45):
we're just so thankful for these people. This is the
kind this is these supportershave become kind of our biggest
fans and the just the peoplethat have been with us from the
beginning. So, yeah, we're justso appreciative of everybody who
listens and everybody whosupported the show.
Jon (34:02):
Let's see who we got here. We have Jason Charnes, Mitchell
Davis from recruitkit.com.au,Marcel Falais from we are bold
dotaf, Alex Payne, Bill Kondo,Anton Zoran from prodcamp.com,
Harris Kenny from the intro toCRM podcast, Oleg Kulik, Ethan
(34:26):
Gunderson, Ward Sandler frommemberspace, Russell Brown from
Odivo dotcom, Noah Braille,Colin Gray, Austin Loveless,
Michael Sitfer, Paul Jarvis, andJack Ellis from Fathom. By the
way, thanks to Jack for healways helps me out with some
difficult dev problems, and andhe's the nicest guy ever. Yeah.
(34:49):
So thank you.
Thank you, Jack.
Justin (34:50):
Yeah.
Jon (34:52):
My brother, Dan Buddha, Darby Frey, Adam Devander, Dave
Junta. Junta. And Kyle Fox fromget reward for dot com.
Justin (35:03):
Thanks everyone. We appreciate you and we will
record another episode soon.
Jon (35:09):
Yeah, we should.
Hey. Welcome to Build Your SaaS, a podcast about
building a web business in 2022.I've I've heard the intro many
times. I should know it by now.I'm not John or Justin.
I'm Chris, the podcast editor.And just here to tell you that
you're back for part 2 of Johnand Justin's answer all the
questions about their business.Transistor.fm. I won't waste any
(00:34):
more of your time with myrambling and babbling, and let's
just get right into thequestions.
Justin (00:39):
Corey Haynes, another great transistor customer, says,
when did you start payingyourself what you actually
wanted to make or what you setout to make? I think he's
saying. Yeah. That was probably2020, I'm guessing. Probably.
Jon (00:56):
Know what
Justin (00:56):
your answer would be. I mean, we had stages of this. And
I think when we started, we saidkind of baseline for us was to
each make a 100,000 a year. Butthe the actual goal for me
personally was probably, like, Iwould like to be making at least
$250,000 a year. And, yeah, Ican't remember when we hit that,
(01:19):
but I
Jon (01:19):
don't either. It was probably sometime in 2020.
Justin (01:23):
Yeah. I think it was sometime in 2020. Nathan Barry
says, so impressed with whatyou've done in 4 years. Thanks,
Nathan. That's great.
Nathan Barry from ConvertKit,another Transistor customer.
Brian Ray says a lot of successstories aren't helpful because
of survivorship buyer bias, anda lot of answers about success
start with it depends. But afterthese years, as you've met more
(01:46):
and more bootstrappers who havefound success, are there a few
pieces of advice that you trulybelieve stand up to the harshest
of critiques and are more likelyto apply broadly to a wide
audience? Thoughts, John?
Jon (01:59):
I don't know. I'm not really in touch with the
bootstrapping community thatmuch, to be honest. So
Justin (02:06):
I mean, this is my thing. I just love this part.
The the, choose a good market,choose a good category is and
within that advice is choose acategory. You know, you have
some sort of expertise in. Youhave, you understand the
customer.
(02:26):
You hopefully know a bunch ofthose customers. There's enough
momentum in that market to giveyou the growth that you want.
You, you know, that so muchdepends on the market. And then,
really, it's everything elsewe've said, which is the life
that you cultivate up to thatpoint is really going to make a
(02:46):
big difference. Yep.
The people you meet, the skillsyou build, the experiences you
have. You know, John has becomevery good at building product,
and then it's because, you know,I didn't have to walk with him
all through all those yearswhere you were just working
freelance and then working forother companies, you know, like,
(03:06):
they got to, you you got totrain yourself through all those
times.
Jon (03:12):
Yeah.
Justin (03:12):
And then I just got this current version
Jon (03:14):
of you. It's exactly. Yeah.
Justin (03:16):
It's pretty good.
Jon (03:16):
I knew what I didn't like working on. I figured that out.
I knew what type kind of peopleI didn't like working with.
Justin (03:22):
Whatever age you are, whatever stage of life you're
in, make these, microinvestments in yourself as you
go along. And it's those thingsthat are going to help you when
it's time to actually build acompany. So get out and meet
some people, go to events, go,build some skills, build some
(03:44):
things and put them out inpublic, go work in a bunch of
industries.
Jon (03:47):
Yeah. I would say like, all
Justin (03:49):
of those things help.
Jon (03:50):
Don't, yeah. Don't do things you don't necessarily
wanna do. Like, don't, don'tbecome manager if you don't want
to, if you're sort of just likeforced into it. Like, if you
don't wanna be a manager, thendon't be a manager. Like, it's
not for everyone.
Justin (04:01):
Yeah.
Jon (04:02):
If you wanna just build things and code and be, you
know, work your way up that sortof career path instead of
becoming a manager becausethat's what you think you're
supposed to do? Like, don't Ijust try to avoid that.
Justin (04:14):
Yes. Yeah. Business ideas are drawn from the a
trying to disparage anybody. Butif you're looking at your life
and you're feeling like, oh, Ijust don't have any good ideas
for a business or good I I can'tsee any good opportunities. The
(04:35):
answer is just at whatever ageyou are, you just need to go out
and have more experiences
Jon (04:41):
Yeah.
Justin (04:41):
And, shake things up a bit, get curious, go to a
conference that you'reinterested in, but you would
have normally not gone to, Gotake a class. These are all of
the things you you once told mea story about you going and
working with a baker. Yep. Like,you were just interested in
baking bread. Yeah.
(05:02):
And you just
Jon (05:03):
I'm trying to
Justin (05:04):
think the story there?
Jon (05:05):
I'm trying to even think, like, how I got into bread. I
don't know. I got interested inbread for some reason. Like,
this was before the wholepandemic, like, everyone's
baking sourdough. I honestlydon't remember why I got into it
or what led me there, but I didand I got super interested in it
and I was like, I would like tostart making bread.
Yeah. And the more I got intoit, I was like, oh, I found all
(05:27):
these, I don't know, blogs andlike YouTube things about bread.
I tried to make some, and it wasa disaster, and then I just out
of the blue, I think I saw achef that runs a restaurant
group in Chicago who also runswho also owns the bakery. He
posted something online aboutlike, oh, we're hiring bakers at
(05:51):
public and quality breads, whichis in Chicago. And so I emailed
the I emailed the guy, the headbaker, and there's a young guy
named Greg.
And I was like, hey, can I I'mlike, I'm just interested in,
like, learning how to makebread? And can I just come in
and work for free? He's like,Oh, yeah. That's a thing you do
(06:12):
in the restaurant industry. Youcan go stage and just show up
and they'll let you work forfree and they'll teach you
stuff.
Yeah. And he's like, yeah, comehere at, Saturday, 8 in the
morning. And I was like,alright. And I thought I was
just gonna go there, like, talkto him. And he's like, alright.
So there's an apron in thebasement, and, we're gonna we're
(06:32):
gonna get
Jason (06:32):
to work.
Jon (06:32):
And I'm like, what? That, like, hadn't eaten that day. And
I just showed up and worked,like, an entire, like, 8 hour
day with this guy. I wasstarving and not ready for this
at all. And then I did it once aweekend for a couple months, and
it was great.
Justin (06:46):
I just love that story.
Jon (06:48):
It was great. I mean, I learned a ton. Like, I don't you
know, you just
Justin (06:51):
But what I love about that story is it it shows you it
it's a perfect example of howyou can cultivate these types of
experiences. Like, just to becurious, to reach out, to take a
rest, to and this is all whileyou're working full time as a
software developer.
Jon (07:09):
Uh-huh.
Justin (07:10):
Yeah. And and so you just did this on the side, and
you now have a much greaterunderstanding of how to make
good bread, but you alsounderstand the restaurant
industry. You've got insightsabout the restaurant industry.
You know some people in therestaurant industry now. That's
how you cultivate this life thatcan then produce opportunities
(07:32):
is by kinda doing things likethat.
Jon (07:34):
Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. I I would encourage anyone to do it.
I mean, with anything, really.
It doesn't have to be arestaurant or bread or probably
there's probably tons of waysyou could do that.
Justin (07:42):
Yeah. Totally. Yeah. I've I've just like, another
trick I've done is I've signedup for a meetup. Like, I've gone
on to meetup.com or whatever andsigned up for search for cheap
flights to different cities, andthen just chosen a meetup in
another city that I wanted to goto.
And the great thing about thatis you show up at this meetup
(08:05):
group where there's a group ofpeople already who know each
other, and they're like, who areyou? Where are you from? And
they're like, well, I flew infrom Canada to come to this
thing, and they're like, what?Like and, you know, this is like
I did this in Vegas one time,and the tickets were cheap. It
was like, whatever.
$95 flight to Vegas. But I gotthis experience of meeting all
(08:27):
these people and connecting withthe with people on a topic I
didn't know about. Yeah. And,
Jon (08:34):
it's That was cool.
Justin (08:35):
It was really cool.
Jon (08:35):
And that's why. Yeah. I I used to go I used to go to a lot
of design conferences.
Justin (08:41):
Yes.
Jon (08:42):
Because I was interest I was, you know, mostly a
developer, but, like, I wasreally interested in design. And
I was going to, like, you know,like graphic design conferences.
They were fascinating. I'd meetlike the most amazing people.
Justin (08:53):
Yes.
Jon (08:54):
And they were like, oh, you're a developer and you're
here? I'm like, yeah, it's likesuper interesting. And like,
you're all probably more fun tohang out with than most of the
other people at otherconferences. And like Yeah. I
you know, you just like youabsorb yourself and surround
yourself in these communitiesand you just you just absorb
information and, like, you'reprobably gonna get better at
(09:16):
design even if that's not yourmain your main role, like, just
by being around it.
Justin (09:22):
Yeah. This characteristic actually is one
characteristic I found withsuccessful founders is people
who cultivate this kind of lifeand curiosity Yeah. Often do
eventually start companies thatwork out. It's not a guarantee,
but, Kyle Fox is very similar.And his trick was also he would
(09:45):
start events.
So he got really he's a softwaredeveloper, but he got really
into, type and typefaces.
Jon (09:51):
Mhmm.
Justin (09:51):
And so him and a friend just started a conference all
about type. And, you know, whata great way to meet people that
way. You know? All of a sudden,he's able to bring in the
world's best typeface designers
Jon (10:05):
Yeah.
Justin (10:06):
To one place and meet them. And, you know, and it was
he was able to learn all of thisstuff about, you know, type and
typefaces just from runningthese events.
Jon (10:15):
I mean, ultimately, that's why I ended up at XOXO and met
you is because it seemed like asuper interesting place to go
with interesting people. Yeah.Yeah. And I wasn't I wasn't
always the most outgoingextroverted person. I'm still
not, but, like, it's somethingyou can work on.
Justin (10:33):
Yeah. Yeah. And you can practice even just going to
local meetups and, under andjust, yeah, meeting people,
taking a risk, putting yourselfout there.
Jon (10:44):
I mean, for a lot of people, meeting people is
meeting new people isterrifying.
Justin (10:47):
Yes. So what's your advice for people who find that
terrifying?
Jon (10:51):
You just gotta try it. Just, like, go and say hi. You
know? Like Yeah. I don't know.
Yeah. Just say hi. Try to talkabout something in it doesn't
even have to be about, like, thetopic that, you know, what
wherever you're at is about,but, like Yeah. You know, find
some common thread to talkabout. And
Justin (11:09):
Yeah. And I think it also helps to have a good
wingman or a wing person, likechase Reeves introduced me to so
many people. Yeah. And, youknow, that having that person
there, and honestly, I met himin a way that's was not
introverted, but he read one ofmy articles. It wasn't like, you
(11:32):
know, we'd met in the other way.
He read one of my articles andreached out. So there's all
sorts of ways you can createthese connections. Let's do a
few more, and we'll get Chris tosplit these up however he'd
like. Lars Huback says, we'dlove to hear about some of the
technical sides of developingthe product. How did you decide
on the tech stack?
Did you develop everythingyourselves? How about hosting
and billing? Did you outsourcesome of the work design UI? And
(11:55):
if yes, how did you do it? Howdid you prioritize features?
Jon (11:58):
That's a lot.
Justin (12:00):
So bit by bit, how'd you choose the tech stack?
Jon (12:05):
I chose Ruby on Rails because that's what I knew, and
that's what I was comfortablewith, and I knew I could be
productive in it. I mean, at thetime I started it, there's
certainly, like, the trend wasmoving towards, like, building
react front ends against an API,and that just didn't interest
me. I I it would have taken toolong for me to learn it, and I
(12:29):
probably would have not enjoyedit because I was just I just
like the way Rails is puttogether. That's how we that's
how I chose it. I think it was agood choice.
I mean, it could have beenLaravel. I'd known PHP better,
but
Justin (12:43):
Yeah.
Jon (12:44):
Went with Rails.
Justin (12:45):
I think any any full stack, web framework, Laravel,
Django
Jon (12:51):
Yeah.
Justin (12:52):
Rails, it's all it's all fine. I I still I still think
those are those old webframeworks are still amazing
choices for building in theSaaS. They're just so good.
Jon (13:05):
Did we develop everything ourselves? I mean, yes and no.
Like, you know, the app isobviously it's custom built, but
within that, we're using allsorts of open source libraries
that are helping out. We're, youknow, using Tailwind CSS for,
(13:26):
you know, helping build out thedesign. We used to use something
else.
I didn't wanna custom build CSS.I just wanted to, like, be able
to build an interface quicklythat looks pretty good.
Justin (13:36):
And we we hired we do we we've hired people at different
times to contractors. I thinkthat's been a good way. Like,
the logo and, the transistorlogo and stuff is somebody you
hired to
Jon (13:48):
Yeah. To build The website has been you've hired people to
help out with the actual, like,
Justin (13:54):
marketing website. Yeah. And even when when I decided to
rebuild the website myself, Idefinitely got a lot of help.
Like, it was me, but I wasbuilding it in public, and I
was, like, cons I I mean, thetransistor website probably has
30 people that helped withdifferent things over the over
the span of building it. Sothere's lots of ways to get, you
(14:17):
know, other people to help.
And how did we prioritizefeatures? We've almost always
prioritized features based onour sense of what customers
want. And that's not always likewhat they tell us in in chat.
It's it's observing people andsaying, you know what? I think
this is something that, youknow, customers actually want in
(14:42):
terms of, I mean, the badges isactually a great example is
nobody said told us they wantedbadges.
We just saw them constantlytweeting their stats, like, hey.
My podcast just hit 1,000downloads. And so we're like,
people want this. And we wereable to prioritize that. We also
(15:03):
I mean, prioritizing features.
We have a small team. We knowwe're not gonna be able to build
everything. We discuss a lot ofideas, but most of them just go
into a document and just staythere. And
Jon (15:15):
Yeah. There's a lot of stuff that's just forgotten
about. But if it comes back up,it's a good indication that it's
probably something we wannabuild. And I think we also
prioritize, like, within theteam, like, what what do you
what do you think is gonna befun for you to work on? Like,
what are you excited about?
And then that can help bubblethings up to the top of the
list.
Justin (15:33):
Yeah. And you you can really that's the fun thing
about being at this stage is youcan really do that when you're,
once you've hit a certain amountof revenue and margin, you can
kind of prioritize things thatare more fun, which you really
do need. Yeah.
Jon (15:49):
Yeah. Absolutely.
Justin (15:50):
David Thompson does the adage, if you're not embarrassed
by the first version, youshipped too late, still hold. I
think the best response to thisis Jason Cohen's, simple lovable
product, article. I will try topost that in the show notes.
Yeah. So he goes he has thisarticle called I hate MVPs.
(16:13):
So do your customers make it SLCinstead, which is simple,
lovable, and complete. Our firstversion of Transistor had those
elements. It was simple. It waslovable. Like, we had elements
of it that made it, even, like,from the beginning, more
attractive than a lot of ourcustomers, better designed, more
(16:36):
personable.
Jon (16:37):
It didn't work it didn't work on mobile phones, though,
at all. Like, the design did notwork.
Justin (16:41):
That's right. So there were things that didn't work at
the beginning, but we didn'tneed mobile for 99% of the use
cases. Right?
Jon (16:51):
Yep.
Justin (16:51):
And it was complete in that we could go to people who
had a podcast somewhere else andsay, hey. I know you're on
Libsyn, or I know you're onBuzzsprout, or I know you're on
Simplecast or whatever. Wouldyou switch to Transistor? And
they were able to look at ourfeatures when we demoed it and
say, oh, yeah. This has got,like, 90% of what I need, and,
(17:14):
they signed up.
So simple, lovable, complete,that is, better than the MVP. I
don't think you wanna beembarrassed by the first version
that you put into customer'shands. You wanna feel good about
it. You wanna feel like, yeah,this is actually worth switching
to. You know?
And, if you can't pull that off,then either collaborate with
(17:37):
people that allow you to pullthat off or, work on your own
skills or whatever. But, yeah,you want the first version to
feel good, to be simple,lovable, complete. How did you
decide on pricing? We've done anumber of episodes on that.
Really, we talked to a lot ofpeople, and we surveyed our
(17:59):
category.
So if you go back to thepodcast, you can see we talked
to Nathan Barry, Rob Walling,Patrick Campbell, ProfitWell. We
had an episode where we debated.I debated pricing with Ben
Orenstein and Jordan Goll, Ibelieve. And then we also looked
at our category and just whatpeople are charging, and we
(18:23):
looked for an opportunity wherewe could stand out from the
competition. And one of that'swhere we came up with this idea
of unlimited podcasts for oneprice.
So if you had 3 shows onSimplecast, you could switch to
Transistor, all three shows toTransistor, and save money. And
that was our kind of our first,like, way of kind of pulling
(18:47):
people saying, hey. Why would Iswitch to Transistor? Well, if
you have more than 2 or 3 shows,it's a no brainer because you're
gonna save money.
Jon (18:55):
And that's that's not initially how we started either.
I mean, we when we had our our,like, beta tester user group,
they were charged per product.They were charged differently,
but with a huge discount. Yeah.And then before we launched, I
don't know when we decided, but,I'm thankful we switched pricing
(19:16):
structures for a number ofreasons, but, yeah, we switched.
We just, like, decided to do itbased on downloads and features
instead of per podcast, which Ithink worked out really well in
our favor.
Justin (19:33):
Yeah. Yeah. And it's worth going back to those
episodes because a lot of thatis pricing theory that we got
from all those people we talkedto, but, specifically, Patrick
Campbell, where he recommendedthat we that you you take your
the main kind of cost structurein your business. So for us, it
(19:53):
was bandwidth and hosting andall those things, but mostly
bandwidth, and charge based onthat. That's why it makes sense
to charge In Slack, it makessense to charge per seat because
the more people you have, themore your costs go up as the
software provider.
And, for email, it's like themore emails you send, the more
it costs you as a email serviceprovider. For us, the more
(20:17):
downloads that you do, the moreit costs us as a service
provider. So having that as ourpricing, what is what does
Patrick call it? It's like yourvalue metric. So make your value
metric match up with your maincost.
(20:38):
And it doesn't always have tomatch up with your main cost,
but you had to figure out avalue metric that makes sense
for your business and yourcategory. And, yeah, downloads
just work really well for us.And then this idea of, like,
well and you could start as manyshows as you want. So
previously, for a lot of ourcompetitors, the value metric
was every time you start a newshow, you gotta pay us again.
(20:58):
And we said, no.
Let's let people start as manyshows as they want and then pay
us based on usage. Pay us basedon how many listens or downloads
do you get. Super good. Alright.We're gonna finish up with a few
more.
Corey asks us about hiring. Howwould you have hired or found
your employees if you had nofollowing? What was your
selection process for your firstemployees? How to hire and work
(21:23):
with ambitious people and growteam while providing incentives
to stay in the company, do Ihire young and experienced and
train them? So I think what I'llsay we've already talked about
this, but I've been hiringpeople since I, probably since
2,005 or something.
In previous jobs, the best hiresI've made almost every single
(21:47):
time are people that I alreadyhad a relationship with, people
I already knew. And so maybethat won't doesn't work for
every company and everycategory, but for us, that's
really worked out well. Hey?Yep. Yeah.
I was
Jon (22:04):
I was thinking. It I mean, the the question itself is kind
of tough to answer because wedon't have, like, experience
growing teams, like huge teamsand Yeah. But, yeah, I would say
hire hire people you know andyou can work well with. Hire
hire experienced people atfirst. I mean, we haven't hired
(22:26):
anyone junior really, but Ithink that would be tough for a
small company like us.
Like Mhmm. We wanted to hireJason as developer because he
just has, like, a ton ofexperience in so many different
areas and has, you know, seenseen the problems that can come
up and knows how to knows how tofix things, knows how to
troubleshoot.
Justin (22:45):
And same with Helen. We hire hired her, but she'd
previously been with, Makerpad,ConvertKit. Like, she had all
and and also doing I think shewas in the I can't remember
who's health care industry,doing customer success, but she
had all of this experience somuch better. Yeah. Like, there's
(23:06):
just no training you need to do.
They they can literally hit theground running
Jon (23:12):
Yeah.
Justin (23:12):
And be high value contributors almost right away.
Jon (23:17):
Yeah. I I would say as far as, like, trying to keep
employees around, I mean, as werecord this, today is Justin's 1
year anniversary. Jason's.Jason. Jason's 1 year
anniversary today.
And Helen's been with us for,what, like, a year and a half? I
mean, full time.
Justin (23:32):
Yep. I mean,
Jon (23:34):
we've been generous with, like, time off and schedules and
flexible working. You know, wewere really generous last year
with, like, profit sharingbonuses, raises, I think have
been pretty good.
Justin (23:49):
Yeah.
Jon (23:50):
I think, generally, the the key is just to, like, you know,
recognize when your employeesare maybe not enjoying
themselves or hope that theyreach out to you or just ask how
they're doing. What maybe whatcan change and kind of allow
them to like build their workday around their lives instead
of the other way around. Mhmm.
Justin (24:11):
Yeah. There's a lot of times actually where you and I
make decisions, based on how wewere treated as employees. So,
like, it always bugged me thatat Christmas time, I never got a
bonus. And we've done so,typically, we've done bigger
bonuses at the end of the year,and it just also has this
(24:36):
benefit of being, like, aroundChristmas time, and it's just,
like, nice. And it was somethingthat bugged me.
It was, like, a reason I wantedto leave previous companies
because I was like, they nevergive me any bonuses. Like, it
kinda sucks.
Jon (24:51):
I yeah. I never got any. I knew how well they were doing.
Justin (24:54):
And it's why we're considering, like, how can we,
you know, share some of theownership with our employees,
either through stock options orsomething like that. So mining
your own experience as anemployee and just realizing,
like, what were the things thatmade me feel like, I another
thing that made me wanna leavewas I really wanted to work
(25:14):
remotely and have flexibility,and that wasn't allowed at a lot
of companies. So Yeah. I kind ofwanted to leave right away. I
think another thing that's beeninteresting is if people have
any sort of, you can't always,like, provide for this.
But if people, for example,wanna pay off they have a goal
(25:37):
or a pressure to pay off studentloans, let's say. If that's
something they wanna do andworking for you isn't helping
them get to that goal, they'realways gonna be looking for
something else.
Jon (25:49):
Yeah.
Justin (25:50):
They're always gonna be looking for to do a side hustle
or, you know, go and workanother job. Or if another job
comes along that pays better andgets them closer to that goal,
they're going to do that. Ifthey have a goal to move to a
different country and workremotely, but you only have a
local office, they're gonna keeptrying to get to that goal. And
(26:13):
so one way of, keeping peopleand, by the way, I don't know if
John and I are awesome at thisad either. Like, we're, you
know, we're trying to stay intouch with Helen and Jason and
and, you know, ask them whatthey're they're aiming for or
whatever.
But I think that is part of thekey is just figuring out what
(26:33):
are some of their longings, whatare some of the things they're
working on, what are some of thethings that are making them
restless.
Jon (26:44):
Yeah.
Justin (26:44):
You know? And, you know, John and I know what made us
restless when we were employees.Uh-huh. So, yeah, I think that's
worth thinking about and andproviding if you can, you can't
always, but if you can providefolks with the things that will
make them not restless, then mysense is they'll probably stay
(27:06):
longer. Could we have hired andfound our employees if we had no
following?
Sure. It's just aboutrelationship building. It's
about cultivating a lifetime ofexperiences and connections and
Jon (27:16):
Yeah.
Justin (27:16):
Working with different people. And, you know, it's,
that's how you find goodemployees. It's by knowing
people. So last one for MandyJones. Do you feel you have more
or less freedom and stress inyour lives than 4 years ago when
you started?
Jon (27:35):
I that's a pretty easy one to answer. Yeah. I have way less
stress and far more freedom.
Justin (27:41):
Doctor. Yes.
Jon (27:41):
Doctor. I mean, it, it, it's like, I can't even
overstate, like how much of apositive change it had on my
life. Yeah. So many differentways that I there's just a lot a
lot of different ways to countit. But, yeah, I mean, stress is
for work is, like, pretty muchnon nonexistent.
Mhmm. I mean, once in a while,something will break or there's
(28:03):
a bug, but it's like everyonecomes together to help fix it.
It's not, that's not evenstressful, really. Yeah. And I
mean, we've talked about this abunch, but like, yeah, just the
freedom to sort of build yourday how you want.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it'sincredible. Like, I wouldn't I
wouldn't trade that foranything.
Justin (28:19):
I think this is a great one to end on because it just
build your SaaS. What is buildyour SaaS? Like, it's really
build the life you want. Like,that that's really what we're
doing. Who I mean, if there wasanother way of doing this that
wasn't software that we enjoyed,then that would have been
equally as good.
You know what I
Jon (28:38):
mean? Right.
Justin (28:39):
Like, if if you and I could have gone into business
making bread and you just lovedit, and I just loved promoting
it, and we could have the lifewe wanted, we would we would
have done that. It was Right.From the beginning, we set off
on this journey with this inmind. How can we build a better
life? How can we have morefreedom?
(28:59):
How can we have less stress? Howcan we have a life with margin?
So that when stress does come upand none of us are immune from
the regular stresses of life andpeople's personal lives, there's
gonna be all sorts of thingsthat come along.
Jon (29:15):
Yeah.
Justin (29:15):
Right? The the idea though is if there's stress in
my personal life, it's not likeeverything's on fire. It's not
like my job at work isstressful, and my boss is being
a jerk, and I have to go to allthese meetings I don't like. And
I don't really like what I'mdoing, and I'm not being paid as
much as I want. And, you know,the big list, at least you don't
(29:38):
have to worry about that.
Yeah. And that is so refreshing.
Jon (29:43):
It's a huge change. I mean, I I've talked about this, I
think, with you and a lot ofother people, but, like, I don't
remember the last time I was,like, ended the day, and I was
angry
Justin (29:54):
Mhmm.
Jon (29:54):
About, you know, like, come home and you're, like, angry
about work and
Justin (29:58):
Mhmm.
Jon (29:59):
Oh, my day was terrible and so and so did this and this
happened. And Yeah. It justdoesn't happen. And it's kind of
amazing.
Justin (30:06):
We're so we're so lucky. Like, it's just I just feel so
lucky that we get to have this.And, again, we never know. Like,
life is not it things don'tthere could become a time where
transition becomes a lot morestressful. And the way I just
deal with that is I just enjoythe present every single day
when we have a good day at work,and we can enjoy this freedom,
(30:28):
and we can enjoy this lack ofstress and we can enjoy the
other rewards that come fromworking on something like this.
It's just like every day is Iappreciate it so much.
Jason (30:40):
Absolutely.
Justin (30:41):
I do think there's no surefire way to build a life
like this, but I do the theencouragement I have for people
is if you do want this to getjust continue making those micro
investments in your life,continue to cultivate a life
that may eventually leadsomewhere like this. It's not
(31:03):
gonna happen overnight. It's notgonna happen by looking for
ideas out of desperation. It'snot going to happen by just, you
know, throwing a bunch ofspaghetti against the wall and
seeing what sticks. Cultivate alife where you're investing in
skills, in relationships, inexperiences, in knowledge, in
curiosity, in connection.
(31:25):
And, eventually, hopefully, anopportunity will present itself,
and you can take advantage of itand build a better life. And
this is something I'm passionateabout, something John's
passionate about. For moreindies to succeed, more indie
software companies, more indiecompanies that could get to this
(31:48):
point. And, again, even if thisdoesn't last forever, to have
experienced, let's say, 3 yearsnow of just a really good life
is just an incredible feeling.
Jon (32:01):
Yeah. Well said.
Justin (32:04):
We wanna thank all of our customers, everybody that
has ever signed up for aTransistor account and used it
at any point. We are so thankfulfor you. We're thankful for your
encouragement, for, all of your,feedback, for sticking with us
even when, you know, we didn'thave exactly what you needed.
(32:27):
Just thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. There's somecustomers that have been with us
from the beginning, and we can'toverstate, like, just how
thankful we are to havecustomers and how pumped up we
get seeing you use the productand enjoy the product. So thanks
for that.
Jon (32:45):
Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. And to everyone who's listened to
this show for 4 plus years.Yeah.
I know we haven't recorded in along time together. Yeah. And
this seemed appropriate, butYeah. Yeah. We hoped you've,
enjoyed, I don't know, listeningto our journey and hopefully
you've learned something.
(33:06):
And I mean, we learned a lotdoing it too.
Justin (33:09):
Yeah. And that yeah. People encouraging us and
listening and encouraging us,and it's hard to under you just
can't overstate, like, howmeaningful that was and
continues to be. Like, when weget messages and responses and
people saying, hey. Thanks somuch, or, hey.
We're cheering for you, or, hey.Here's some advice or whatever.
(33:32):
It's been so incredible. And,yeah, maybe to close things off,
we should do our shout outs tothe people who have supported
us, some from the verybeginning.
Jon (33:43):
Yeah. And,
Justin (33:45):
we're just so thankful for these people. This is the
kind this is these supportershave become kind of our biggest
fans and the just the peoplethat have been with us from the
beginning. So, yeah, we're justso appreciative of everybody who
listens and everybody whosupported the show.
Jon (34:02):
Let's see who we got here. We have Jason Charnes, Mitchell
Davis from recruitkit.com.au,Marcel Falais from we are bold
dotaf, Alex Payne, Bill Kondo,Anton Zoran from prodcamp.com,
Harris Kenny from the intro toCRM podcast, Oleg Kulik, Ethan
(34:26):
Gunderson, Ward Sandler frommemberspace, Russell Brown from
Odivo dotcom, Noah Braille,Colin Gray, Austin Loveless,
Michael Sitfer, Paul Jarvis, andJack Ellis from Fathom. By the
way, thanks to Jack for healways helps me out with some
difficult dev problems, and andhe's the nicest guy ever. Yeah.
(34:49):
So thank you.
Thank you, Jack.
Justin (34:50):
Yeah.
Jon (34:52):
My brother, Dan Buddha, Darby Frey, Adam Devander, Dave
Junta. Junta. And Kyle Fox fromget reward for dot com.
Justin (35:03):
Thanks everyone. We appreciate you and we will
record another episode soon.
Jon (35:09):
Yeah, we should.
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