and we're back. You first. I'm doing

good. It's been Ah, it's been a week. You know, I I've been on vacation for Ah, little while Last week it was kind of I left on a Wednesday and came back on a Wednesday, so it felt really strange because I had these, like to half weeks where I was the first part. I was like packing for a vacation and then unpacking from vacation and just like catching up on things and said this week was like my first full week back. But it was also the holiday weekend. So I feel like just and before the vacation, like I was rails calm for a week and that was like two days travelling to get there and stuff. So I just feel like just overwhelmed of e mails and all kinds of stuff. So this week's been weird trying to be like Okay, now I got to get back into work mode. I have to figure out where the hell I left told these projects before it left. You know,

there's like a lot of just loose ends that kind of happened and stuff, and so it's been, Ah, it's been a strange week to get back into things. Have you been

I've been okay? Yeah, I always I always kind of struggle taking a lot of time off, too, because it's like it's not even time off. It's just time doing something other than, like most of that was not off, right like you were actually doing stuff. But you did have vacation. So it's like, I mean, some of that, like, you come back to it and it's just this vacation

was genuinely away from the computer, like I didn't do any work except for maybe a couple e mails. Just like the whole time. I didn't write any code. I was out and I went to Aspen for a week. Um, sewer, like we flew into Denver and rented a Jeep and then drove out. And, ah, it was nasty weather. It is. It was like, you know, the thing was like it is the weird off season, so it's not winter where you go skiing and things. But it's also not summer there.

And so, like all the restaurants are closed for the off season, there's like, not a whole lot to do. Um, you know places are open, but we went because the girlfriend wanted to go to your the art museum. Um, and CIA, Her favorite artists like, ah, she had passed away So that a post human it's showing of her work. And so we went to go see that and just, like, enjoy the mountains. And it was a great,

like we went and hiked and I drove around all there, but all the crazy things like we get there and we're like, Oh, crap. Independence pass is closed for weather. Um, you know, like all these things, they're not opened for the summary that you couldn't even go up like Pikes Peak because it was closed because it was snowing at the top or whatever. Like, you know, we couldn't go to a lot of the things that we had hoped you would be able to do out there, but that also I made us just kind of have a nice relaxing thing because we were like, Well, we can't do a whole lot. So it's just like hang out and just,

you know, relax. Instead of going run around and going hiking and doing all these things we couldn't and so just forced us to slow down, which I thought was kind of nice. Yeah, I know for sure is good. But now I'm, like, you know, I've been inching closer to getting these few of these projects done. And I'm, like, back, and I'm like, Oh, my God,

I got to get to work. I got to get these done. I can't believe Maze over, like, today's the last day of May. Yeah, just halfway through the year. And I'm like, What the hell have accomplished? Feels crazy And the big thing waas that. Ah, last, um, last Saturday I turned 30 which was kind of a big, you know, big milestone.

I feel like, Yeah, I Happy birth. Happy belated birthday. Yeah, thanks. I feel like so. So I've been working on a block post and we can talk about this a little bit. Um, I don't know if I don't know if I'm gonna have time to finish this or not. I want to write more. Um, but, like, I feel like a lot of people set up goals, as as kids are just younger people signals for by the time I'm 30 I want to be a millionaire something.

And I I had sent you a draft of this like article that I wrote. I couldn't It didn't come out quite right how I wanted it. But like, the point of it was like I had personally kind of felt that way where I'm like, Look, if I like, you know, don't let my ego get in the way and I go build stuff. It's not unreasonable to be a millionaire by 30. And I had never, um I'd never really thought. I mean, the money is just, like, kind of the gold, because it's an easy thing to to set us a target into measure,

but like, it was never really about the money. You know, it was like I don't have the freedom of what I imagine A millionaire, uh, could have, But then a CZ you learn in life like a $1,000,000 for an individual's quite a bit of money, but a $1,000,000 for business is basically nothing like, you know, if you hire one employee, they're gonna cost you six figures a year. You know, even if they cost, you know, 75 k, a salary wise,

we're gonna offer them benefits and, you know, office space or whatever Equipment, computers and you name it like it is very easy for every employee in your company to cost you six figures or way more than that. Um, and it's wanting to see that perspective, like overtime. Like is a kid. You're like $1,000,000 his leg. I'll never be able to spend that, you know, And then you get into business. You're like a $1,000,000 will last me, like, two years at most. If I only have a couple employees at a start up,

you know, it's not. It is not that much money, Um, and so like, overtime. My perspective on a $1,000,000. What that meant, like changed. And I realized, like Michael was always like, I want the freedom of having money in the bank so that I don't have to work for someone else, and I've, like, achieved that was it was cool to like, have this retrospective and be like actually like,

I have worked for myself for, like, the past six years, almost the entire time, of course. But like you did work on whatever I want. And ah, you know, if I see something that I want to exist in the world. I can go carve out time and just go do it like no one stopping me from doing that. And that's pretty amazing. So but there was Ah, nice. Nice conclusion, Thio. You know, turning 30.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's I mean, you're you're definitely you definitely have something that's, like, very awesome, right? Like you get to basically choose and probably a lot of times doesn't feel that way. Like maybe you kind of put yourself into certain situations or whatever, but like, toe have that, like freedom and flexibility to kind of pick and choose things is is pretty also. I mean, already, as like, software developers,

we already kind of have a lot of benefits already live, like being able thio, freelance and work from anywhere. And just a lot of perks that you get from just being in the field alone on then. On top of that, you have the whole, you know, business, side of things to that kind of make things even better. Um, yeah, it's It's for me. It's Zo E. I mean, I think Yeah, when I was a kid,

I definitely You know who doesn't want to be a millionaire? But I think for me, the biggest thing is just having that freedom that you talked about and just being able to I'm kind of I kind of referred. Referred to it as, like financial independence, right? Like, yeah, as as an individual, you don't need a $1,000,000 for financial independence like most people would like. Let's say like here in a big city like you probably need, like, 1/4 of that for financial independence. It's not like you need a $1,000,000 or even half a $1,000,000. For for that, the tricky part.

Been something that I I think it was, um I forgot who it was, but somebody was talking about how you have remote work is great, but flexible work is like the next thing. And that's interesting. Yeah. Fi on flexible work. So flexible, flexible work the way I forget who was talking about this on Twitter. I gotta find it. But in the show notes. But basically what he was talking about was, you know, somebody who works at you know, like Facebook, for example makes you know.

Yeah, you know, six figures makes maybe, I don't know, like, $200,000. Let's say, um, you know, But they're expected to work, you know, 50 to 60 hours a week. Right. Um, if you had flexible work, like,

could you get away with working part time and maybe make half about doing good to make, like, make? Maybe you make half of that and you get you get another 40 hours back into your week, Um, and then you get to, you know, do stuff on your own. You got to, you know, spend time with your family. You got to you explore your own business ideas, whatever that is, you know? And that's actually been something that I've been thinking quite a bit about this. I mean,

it's been over the last year. I've been thinking a lot about it, but especially this last couple of weeks, I didn't really trying to see, like, what's what's the least that I can make, which is kind of it's kind of funny. It's like how what is the least amount of money that I can make doing freelance. Then you know you then trying to, like, go get a job and work full time hours and all that. And I've been kind of pushing that that boundary a little bit like I started earlier this year by, like, taking on a project that required, like, I don't know.

I think it's like, you know, four days a week and, um, you know, that's you know, And it has, like, a limited like time frame and all that. And so I thought, OK, this is kind of just kind of cool. But now I'm kind of curious, like maybe a maybe, actually, like,

try and see if I could do half of that, Um, you know, or something like that to kind of see it just to get some of that time back to myself, right? Because what I want to do is I want to focus on my own things long term. And, you know, I'm not. I'm not necessarily sure, like, you know how far I could go, but I mean, I seem to be doing fine, but I've been doing this last year, so I'm

still doing it, man, This this guy, my brain run running again. So when I think of that blood post that I was writing like there was. I didn't have, like, super clear mind or like goal of what I was writing. I was just kind of brain dumping some feelings, and there was a piece in there that I couldn't articulate properly. But it was exactly about the flexible work. There was a point when I wasn't making, you know, like a whole lot of money on go rails that I hit that point of flexible work where I had a period of time where I made I don't know how much money it was. It was not a great salary, but I could work one day a week, and I did,

and I just like I didn't do anything for the other four days a week, I would work me one day I would record a screen cast and teach something that I already knew. So I didn't have to learn anything I didn't have to put time into that could sit down, record a video, publish it, sell it and be done and make a full salary on that. And I was like, This is incredible, Like I have four days a week. Okay, I can do whatever the heck I want and it was amazing. Um, and that's kind of like what you're talking about, like the flexible work is something where you can like in theory, if you can figure out how to most profitably make enough money to live on comfortably on. And that could be,

you know, depends on where you live. Like here It could be, I don't know, 60 k a year something. Let's say, Ah, that is like not that hard to achieve, especially fear, like consulting for companies in Silicon Valley or something like if you were working remotely where the company is headquartered in an expensive place in the world. To them, 60 k is gonna be like, Wow, this guy's really cheap. But to me here would be like, Oh,

it's a decent amount of money like That's what I made at working at a university at our out of college and like that was a better paying job than a lot of the other entry level programming jobs around here. And, like I could effectively make that by doing very little work and then have just all this free time to let go do hobbies or go figure out what I want to do that with the rest of my life or whatever, and I think that's really awesome. And it's kind of in a sense, maybe it's like somewhat with the like. Nomad people talk about where they're like I can work anywhere in the world, and it's funny to see those people to you because, like, I never quite I never felt aligned with their, um, outlook on the world about like being a digital nomad and blah blah, blah. I I just didn't quite. I don't travel like that. But,

um, it is funny to see them now, also getting to a point of like they're burned out on traveling. And they just want to pick a place to stay for months or three months or something and just work in one place. Because the the like, day to day of like which Coe working space or which coffee shops goingto have decent life. I ah, you know, it becomes just a like it's fun at first, but then it's like just an absolute bear. When you want to actually sit down and get real work done, you need the consistency and quality of your space and ah you know that is them kind of going towards that? Flexible, um, work in A in a sense, but it's for freedom.

Location, but not time. Look at, like time freedom. Um, and it's neat to see, like you can optimize for one or the other. I'm sure there's many other things you could've optimized for two, but there's, like so much of this starting to take off like lots of people were talking about it and there's lots of ways to do it. I really like

that. Yeah, my big thing is time. Like I I see time as my absolute most valuable resource. And if I can, you know, like, you know, I have a family, you know, like I have. I have a wife and two kids and, you know, I have, you know, responsibility basically, to make sure that they're that they're taking care of and all that.

But at the same time, like I have these ambitions to do things that I'm in A. It is a position of privilege that I get to actually, you know, make a, you know, a decent amount of money writing software. It's not like, you know, I've I don't have to like cut lawns or anything like that, right? Thio Duelist. I'm sitting at a desk, but at the same time it Whoa, what I'm trying to say there is, like,

you know where we got to take this like and not take it for granted, right? Like we have the ability to kind of do this, that it's not like a like we only have the choice to work full time. We do have options. Like if If it's something that, like over the over the years, I've always kind of felt like I had to go get a job. I had to go work full time, had to work with the right team. I had worked on the right product. And really what? It turns out that I was after waas, um, flexibility, my eventually at any job that I have ever gone thio.

I've always ended up feeling like I'm there for too long. I want to break. I want to take three weeks and not not do what I'm doing right now. And freelancing lets me do that. Like I can freelance on a project work for six weeks or two months, whatever it is, and then I just take some time off and that's I love that I love being able to, like, take some time off, work on either my own stuff or take like a week to just kind of, too, and, you know, multiple times a year it's not like I have to work the in all 52 weeks out of the year. I can, you know,

on and it's it's not like I just want to sit down like play video. You see that, right? Like I'm trying to, like, build other things so that I can essentially and I have to go into an office or right, get a quote unquote real job, right? Um, yeah,

it's interesting. Like this relates to another point that I was, like, thinking of when I was writing this block post ah, last weekend, and it was like the kind of kind of the idea of like what I didn't realize when I said, Ah, goal to be a millionaire was like, I imagine just having, you know, a lot of money in the bank, and that was that was it? I was like, I have to worry about money from now on and so on. Ah, like all these other thoughts team from that. But like,

the rial thing that you want is sort of this, like safety net. And if you have I don't know if you have three year, five million or something, you can invest all of that and then hopefully make ah full salary on your capital gains and stuff every year. So hopefully good enough returns that you could make a salary in, You know, the profits of investing that. But like, I didn't realize that I could also build a product that makes reliably every month, you know, x thousands of dollars. And then I could just have that for hopefully ever, which is kind of amazing to, you know, like,

you may not have the big chunk of money in the bank, but that's also a scary thing to have that big chunk of money in the bank because, like you're whittling away at it every month, it's getting smaller every month until you die, you know, because you're spending part of that toe live. Whereas if you build up something that makes you money every month, you know exactly how much you could spend every month because you know how much is coming in. That is like a ah thing where it makes the decision of like, Jonah went by a Lamborghini. You know, I have an extra two or 3000 month that is just like spending money. You can and you know that you can budget for it because you can see that's kind of amazing, Like I wouldn't recommend it. It's not probably the best use of your money, but you know,

it is an interesting thing that I never could have imagined early on, when I was like imagining my goals and setting goals like, I actually much prefer this over having a pile of money that is getting smaller all the time because I will worry about that. What I like much better is a you know, consistent revenue every month that is getting slightly larger every month. It is unlikely to go away like that is super cool. So I'm kind of watching that pile of money hopefully build up instead of watching it gets smaller and I feel much more well. It's less worrying in that direction, which I think is awesome, like I never thought of that until I, like, experienced it. But that is like a very cool benefit of building a product.

Yeah, Yeah, definitely having that recurring It is. It is. It's like a, uh it's that safety net that you're talking about. You know, you can you can afford you some wiggle room. You know, I'm still I'm not considering Lambros or anything like that. I'm still, uh I'm still I'm still, like, trying to get to the point where I can consistently buy groceries with the products that I have. Um, but, you know, able

to you can just start with I wanna make 10 bucks a month, 100 bucks a month, 1000 bucks month, 10,000 month. You know, you just ratchet up your expectations when they hit one of those goals, so it doesn't feel at first it feels like making 10,000 month on a product is ridiculous. That seems super hard. But if you look at it and you're like, how do we get some new person to give me $10 a month, is it? You know, and you keep collecting those people, and all of a sudden you've got 10 and you're making 100 a month and you're like, Cool. This is like pretty close to groceries every month. This is awesome, you know?

Yeah, that's that's the That's the dream just to keep keep chipping away at it. That's actually for me. That's the fun part. That's something that I've been really trying to learn and get better. It's become very clear to me that I I got to get better at, um, you know, essentially, you know, I'm thinking I got to get better like sales and kind of getting not just sales like I'm not talking about, like, trying to, like, get more, um, you know,

uh, customers and all that. But I'm talking more along the lines of, like, marketing and getting eyeballs on a product. Um, which is tricky, because if you go out in front of a bunch of people and be like, hey, take a look at my product, um, then it kind of comes across as kind of annoying, like you're being pitched to, and nobody likes that on DSO. Something that's becoming really apparent to me is that I got to get good at building an audience and getting um, you know,

not Not just in audience, Like just to, like, cycle like, because I can go on by 1000 emails right now for like, five bucks, right? But like, I really want to get, like, an engaging in engaging audience and one of the ways I that I kind of see you know, something that happened earlier this year. I think I've talked about it. One of the previous episodes is, you know, for Elsie We had somebody on Twitter reach out to us who is not a customer but just happens to follow Joe and she She reached out to her and basically said,

Hey, you know, like, I've I love what you're doing with Elsie. It's not something I currently need, but I'd love for you like I love the introduce you to, ah, couple of people who run a company that might get a use out of this right, because they managed genetic counselors like all over the country, and, you know, their licenses all over the country. And so it's it's kind of it was just like a stranger on the Internet who noticed what Joe was doing writing about genetics, building a product and decided to make an introduction. Those introductions actually led to a couple of meetings that were really exciting and kind of have sparked some ideas for us as far as where we want to clc going and like, you know,

it kind of has had an impact on kind of the road map. And that happened because somebody, it's like I said, a stranger on the Internet reached out and you know, it's it's It's something that wouldn't have happened if she if Joe wasn't like putting stuff out there and putting herself out and engaging with, um with people in being a part of the community that she's, you know, hoping to serve right and like, To me, that seems like like I want. I want to get better at that right? Like how do How do I get better at that? And one of the ways I think I'm starting to realize is writing and just getting better at writing, you know, you talked about already in a post. Um and I think it's it's one of those things for me that I feel that if I can get better at this and I could get and I combine that with,

like, my documenting right, which is one of the reasons we started this podcast. Um, you know, it's just like another. It's another channel for people to tune in to write some people like podcasts. Some people don't listen to want to listen to an hour of, you know, two people talking. Some people would rather just read, like, a short little block post. Or maybe they want to subscribed to a newsletter. And so I think for like, the rest of the year, I really want to try to, like, hone in on this and get get

better at it. Cool. Yeah, I like that. I, uh I mean, that was kind of where I originally started with stuff. Like, I had a policy that I gave myself. That was like, Look, if it takes me more than a couple hours to google the solution to some coding problem, I'm going to when I do figure it out right a block post. Because if it wasn't easy for me to find, then surely someone else is going to struggle with this is well, so you know, here it is.

E started doing that in getting traffic and like that was just me kind of contributing back to the community in a way that I saw, like clearly no one's out. There's not enough content about this. So I'm going Thio, you know, um, make my contribution and it is effectively, what eventually led to go rails and stuff like my current business. Like pretty amazing, Um and yeah, there's been so many things of, like, just go rails in general like someone will message me about. Hey, I'm like working on this product. Could you help me with this and that?

And even if it doesn't, If I can't, you know, do consulting for them. Maybe I can do a screen cast that helps them and helps everybody else and whatever. There's just so many like things that start to crop up, the more content you produce. So if you're writing block posts, are, you know, doing podcasts or whatever, then people reach out and you just have to publish, publish, publish, and it doesn't really matter what you're doing. If it's you know,

hell, it could be Snapchat or something, and I could work for you. Or, you know, maybe you could be an instagram uh, model. You know, you never know, man, You might get a pivot to be an instagram model.

I might need to be. Yeah, it's so funny, Instagram. It's cause I really want to, like, try toe um you know, I want I want to go through these, like, different like channels. Right, Like instagram is an idea that I've been thinking about doing. And I started kind of going on there and trying to post something for business time. Which, by the way, if you're not following at business time on Instagram, you should be,

um I have, like, five poster that it's been nothing But Anyways, it's funny because, like like like the hashtag like entrepreneurship or anything to do with, like, entrepreneurship on Instagram is immediately like you. Just if you search for it on Instagram, you just see a bunch of like, beautiful people, like posting themselves in their faces, talking about entrepreneurship and some of the content is Yeah, it's pretty good, you know, But it's like man like this is like, this is like,

Are you guys actually building and selling stuff or, like, you know, building businesses or you just like an instagram like person who's just name is not instagram in getting likes like, Are you selling likes? Are you something or building a business like I don't know, It just seems really weird. And I don't I don't really want to, Like, I want to feel like I wanna be using instagram to my advantage because it's a huge platform, right? But like at the same time, I don't wantto be that. Yeah,

It's like those people that sell their info products like you. No, pay me 1500 bucks and I'll show you how to start your business and like, yeah, just that kind of, like shady stuff where they're not really They're just, like, selling get with great rich quick schemes or something similar to that. That's like, not very useful to people that you want to build stuff that actually helps people. You don't want to be this, like, motivational person or whatever. Like, yeah, I'm the same way. Like I I I want to build.

I wanna I don't know. I I at the end of the day went to build software that helps people like, um, I don't like an intercom or ah, slack or something like that, where it's a software product that ah, you know, people pay for and use it work and it helps them, you know, grow their business. I really wantto get away from the content selling content. I don't like doing. I like making content, but I don't like making money off of it like like go rails does where people pay me for it because I feel like at the end of the day, ideally, I wish I could give away all of this for free,

you know, so that people could get full advantage of that. Like the people who can't afford to pay for it are probably the ones that could make. It could make the most difference for so, you know, it is kind of not the right business model for it, but it works for now, and hopefully in the future I can pivot away from it. But the hard part was always like I have to charge money for it cause I can't continue making me is because there's so much work and ah, now I'm like I make enough money from it is hard for me to go change the business model, Because if I sacrifice that revenue, I don't I can't pay rent and stuff anymore. So I have to replace this income with some other income so that I kind of have to do twice as much work to shift it away. And it is it has gone from I went from the flexible, you know, ours and things that I had Ah,

a few years ago to now, Like I'm super busy doing to podcasts. I have three products and jump start, which you're gonna dive into here in a bit, Um, in our updates. Ah, but like, yeah, I just have, like, too many commitments now, and hopefully one of these. A lot of this is kind of trying to find one product that just takes off away more than everything else has in order to go focus on that so that, like if you find the one business that's really profitable, then you get enough money and to go and hire more people to help you build an even better product for people.

But there's like different different businesses like a go rails, has very low margins and does not make a whole lot of money And so it's not something I can heavily reinvest into. I can't go higher, five more teachers and, you know, published five times. The content is just People are willing to pay for it in the current way or business model. So kind of trying to find, like, long term, like a better, I guess, business in in some sense that, uh, is one that could be a lot more profitable. That allows me to go, you know, build a whole lot, are invested a lot more back into and just grow it.

Yeah, it's it's It's funny because, like, um, you know, one of one of the reasons I think that, you know, we started this podcast was to get, like, that dynamic between, like, somebody who's ahead, right? Like you. You're in a position where you're starting to feel like you have a lot of commitments like you're trying to like, maybe mix things up and change things, and I'm I'm still in a position where I'm trying to get,

like, still working my way into this right, and it's funny toe like contrast that because it's something that I feel I get a lot of value just being aware of this stuff that you're going through now. There's there's not a whole lot that Aiken do tow like, you know, take action on like some of this stuff. But it's I feel a good thing to be aware of because when like when things start to build up, I feel like it's, Ah, it's you sort of have just to be aware of that. And I feel like that might help solve a lot of issues and avoiding a lot of headaches down the road.

It's kind of like you're not you're not sure what the problems with ah an approach will be like when you imagine it because you haven't done it yet. And so seeing someone else who has gone down that path and what they're problems end up being, you can then say, Oh, this is interesting. I want to choose to build mine, you know differently or take that into account because like that person started, it wasn't aware that was gonna be an issue. And now look what you know. They struggle with this or that or whatever, like building education stuff. I don't think I would recommend, you know, don't build a screen cast site or don't build like a membership site where you're selling content. It doesn't seem like it's a very sustainable thing. And most of the businesses around Don't Survivor. They never get very big.

Um, and I know that I've gotten a lot larger than some of the other ones, and I'm like, I feel like, very lucky to have gotten this far, But it's like there's very few that have gotten further than I have, and that's not a good thing. Like there's not a whole lot of potential going down this path going going further. So you know, it's it's interesting to see that. But at the end of the day, to like when I was starting this, I'd never built a product before. I had no experience. I just, like,

needed to do something and learn it, you know? And so, like, I'm very happy that I'm in this position now because it's a whole different life than I waas. You know, six years ago when I started like this is amazing to have these problems through still our problems. But, um, I'm not consulting anymore, like I got to do kind of what whatever I want within a certain, well, you know, amount of constraints. But it allows me to be like I'm further down the path and now I can, like, have more leverage to go try something else and do do it again on a different product or something.

So it's very cool. You've upgraded your problems, you know, it's it's the same. I felt the same way with when I left my job. You know, like what? My last job that I had was a corporate job, you know, getting a very steady salary. And, you know, that has a set of issues, right? Everyone has issues at their job. But when you decide to go when I decided to go freelance, I treated those problems for another set of problems.

But they just they and they happen to be for me upgrades. I wanted to deal with the freelance and, you know, entrepreneurship, uh, problems rather than deal with the full time job problems. Then at some point, you know, when you did the same thing you went from, you know this. You know the starting out problems, too. Now you're taking on other projects and you're trying to do a lot of different things, and now you have a whole set of other problems. And so for me, I feel like a long as my problems are upgrading,

I'm having good shape, you know, as long as you know, there are problems that are that are productive, that they're, you know, things that I'm interested in solving. Um, Then I feel like you know, I'm on the right path. Um, for me Now, you know, the thing I really want to focus on, like I mentioned earlier, is trying to put myself out there a little bit more,

um, and tryingto, you know, build up an audience and really participate, like in in the community more. And it's something that I have a hard time with because I'm not like, yeah, like, I'm on Twitter and I'm on like, instagram and stuff and I share things, but I'm not. It's like it's like it's like surface stuff, right? If I start to, like, right and share,

like journaling, for example, and start publishing certain things like I feel very like I feel uneasy about it, to be honest, because I'm sharing things like it doesn't that to me like s O. Over the last couple of weeks, I've been writing things just because, like, hey, I'm like, thinking about starting up like a website in a bog and kind of putting it out there. Let me read a few articles. First, let me write a couple of things first, and I have a few things over the last few weeks that I've kind of written, um before I worked on my website or anything like that,

I just decided to do this to, like, test test the Waters. And I'm reading some of this stuff and I'm like, You know what? Like, I'm not as comfortable sharing this as much as I thought I was like when I was starting out, and I still feel like I need to do it, but at this, But I'm kind of nervous about it because, like, what happens if, like, I don't know, I have all these things that run through my head, right?

Like what happens if, like, people like if, like if I share this with people and, like they're just, you know, let the insults come in or what it's like. Nobody cares. Like that's even worse, right? like, if no to respond at all to anything I'm saying, Um, but it's it's just kind of funny, because I'm already kind of doing that with this podcast, right?

Like I'm already doing that and deposit the like. The feedback that I've gotten from this pod pet podcast has been great. Like I've heard from people that I haven't spoken to in years who say, Hey, I listen to you on on business time and I love the podcast is really great, you know, like hearing those updates. Its you know, you inspired me to do this or that, and it's been like, largely positive. Um, in fact, I don't think I've gotten a single negative. That's not a challenge to the Internet, by the way.

I think I've got a negative feedback yet. Um, but you know, it's like one of those things were like, I kind of feel like it's like journaling and sharing at least like the you know, it's a it's like you're making yourself vulnerable, you know, Um, and it's something that I'm just been thinking a lot about lately and just how comfortable I am. I sharing a lot of this stuff and you know? Yeah,

that was one of the things I was struggling with. Trying to write that block post this past weekend was like, I don't even come off is due she like, I'm talking about the like, lucky and privileged state that I am in. And that's like I just want Thio inspire people like I would love to have known this stuff 10 years ago when I was, like, in college first learning about startups like I wish I never really had gone into reading too much about why Combinator and all this stuff because that is like you're selling your company to these investors. They're turning your business into something that, like is not yours anymore. You have to go generate huge returns you're doing like you're encouraged to do shady stuff like uber and just doing doing things that are like, Well, it's currently Technically, it's illegal, but like we're just going to keep doing this until we get in trouble and then fighting with layers. Above all I like, I just don't like I don't appreciate that what it's turned into,

and I wish that I had known that like I wish I would have put my time into, like, just go build stuff to help other people that you're like, you know, working with like if it's other students like in there struggling with certain things like Go bill, go right by post, like helping explain this better than the teacher did, or better than the book dead like You will be surprised. You know what that can lead into. And I just didn't I had always seen it from the other perspective, like that's what people were talking about, was was these, like funded startups and, like there was a little bit of that with base camp talking about like you don't need to raise money and blah blah blah. They always felt like the exception, and now it's shifted again to like this is possible.

There are people making millions of dollars a year by themselves. Love Peter Levels just posted that he had his 1st $83,000 a month month, and that is special because 83,000 month every month for years. A $1,000,000 ear like that is amazing, and it's like him he has he faced for 1 $320 month server Um and everybody in programming in technology is like, What the hell is wrong with you? Like one server? That's ridiculous. Like you need redundancy and you need to pay for AWS and have all these service is and you're not doing. See, I like continuous deployments and all this lake technology crap. And he's like, Look, guys, I'm making a 1,000,000 a year doing this, and it's kind of amazing to see because you're like,

actually, it can be that simple if you choose Thio. As you know, engineers and stuff, we choose to make things complicated because that's that We kind of feel that way is like, this is a, um, I don't know, like a source of pride in our jobs. Like if you're a beginner program or you can't do anything complicated and then if you're an intermediate programmer, you're like trying to do more complex things that your goal, and then when you're actually an expert or a master, you're trying to do things as simple as possible, like the beginner would. D'oh! Right?

Just accomplished more with that, and ah, you know, it's cool to see that like effectively he is doing that. But my struggle, like trying to share my story was always like, Oh, boy, I'm gonna sound like complete douchebag like I'm talking about this. You know, I don't make anywhere near that much money, but that he does. But it's like I just want people to know that there's there's other levels of success there. Like if you're making 100,000 year from your own software business that you built, that's amazing. Like that could be perfect.

You don't miss it. That's not success. If you live in San Francisco because you're not gonna be health, afford stuff. But, you know, if you live in if you live where I live, like in ST Louis or a smaller city or anything like that, then my that's a lot of money. And I have the freedom. I don't have to go into an office like do whatever I want, and it's just like E. I want to show that there's other options out there, and I just need to remember that when I'm riding and you know like that hopefully sets the correct tone. But when you're riding stuff, you know they're imagining who you are and what you look like and stuff,

and it's it's Ah, I don't know. It's tough, like you feel very vulnerable talking about these things. And I feel like it's easier on the podcast to scare the stuff because you can hear our voices are tones and things that can be a lot harder to come across and in writing.

Yeah, you know, it's it's funny, too, because, like I was saying earlier, like, I've been kind of writing over the last couple of weeks just to, like, get a or a sense of it like the type of stuff I want to share And one of the common patterns that I've noticed across these things, these, like, Little Post that I've been reading is that they're short and I kind of like that because they're mostly me speaking like I write very much like I talk, which is, I don't know, it's probably not a good thing,

but like a lot of bums and you're writing.

There are so many others in my writing and like and a lot of likes like like like like, uh, but, uh, you know, I'm mostly I mostly feel like when I dot like I try to write like a post that was kind of long and it felt very instructional. And I finished reading it, writing it and like I was reading it afterwards and I just felt like, Man, I just sound like such a like do sh like I don't wanna I don't wanna, like, post this ever, And then I kind of mix it up. I broke that one article into, like, a bunch of, like,

a couple of different ones, and and I changed it from, like, instructional toe, like, instead of saying like, you know, you should do this or that I just started, like, writing as if, like the lesson that I learned from my perspective and more of a documenting, um, you know, tone. So I kind of feel like that's to me. Feels a lot better than,

like trying to, like, tell people how they should behave or act and Maur like this is what I did. And, you know, hopefully people find that useful people like in this podcast, like have, like, shared their stories with me, and you don't have, like, reached out to us on Twitter, and that's been a lot of fun and for me, that's like one of the things I really want to get good at is just participating in the community. And, you know,

it's It's like, You know how dowe I like how how I don't like, like, just be like a, um like like a participant that, like, just wants to share and, you know, essentially talked with other people who are maybe in a similar place, right? Like I know you probably you probably a lot of thoughts on this, too recently, But, you know, for me, it's it's more about just finding a group of people that I can chat with about this stuff because I got you on this podcast and we talked throughout the week,

you know, whatever. But like, if I can hear more stories about what works for other people, I feel like I can not only like, it's a target. I don't wanna be distracted by it. But at the same time, I want to hear, like what other people are up to you, and maybe get ideas from those you know from them. And maybe, you know, I can help and contribute back, you know, So it zits more along those lines.

Yeah, I've always felt like, um, getting more involved or something in the hackers because that seems to be a really good community of of other people starting or trying to start businesses There is, like, a tough, um, you know, kind of piece of that where it's like you needs people who there's a lot of entrepreneurs or people who like I wanna have a business. I don't want to do any of the work for it. Um, and like, you know, there's a group of people who were actually hustling that you want to make sure you filter that down to you, but, um, yeah,

I agree. Like, this is kind of the reason we started. The podcast was just thio just to document our process An hour like how it's going and everything. Like, I think it will be. You don't if nobody ever listen to this. I think listening to it myself in 20 years will be fascinating to be like Boy, I was dumb life. I got lucky, but I was dumb. I wasn't doing anything useful on you know, it'll be fascinating to like look back at that. But like, you know This is still gonna be stuff that super valuable to someone who isn't as far along as I am and you're already were. We both did consulting,

but there's so many people in full time jobs that have never done that. And that's their like exit, because you're kind of lucky and consulting that it's, Ah, it's 1/2 step away from a full time job. You still can work full time for a company, But you're self employed, you know. So like, you still can get the benefits of, like, a job by consulting and then free up some flexibility. Whether it's to you now, work from home and you can sneak in some time here and there to work on your own product or not. But like consulting seems to be a very good transition for many people. So like that we're both kind of already down that path.

And so someone who is completely new, like in college or something, is like we may be already too far along from that, and they might learn something from someone who's like talking about consulting every day to make the jump or whatever. But yeah, it is. It is awesome. Thio share more, so I can't wait to start reading some of these posts. How long do you think it'll be till you have them up online?

Yeah, I'm I'm thinking about getting I think it's probably either next week or the week after I've got a I've been actually decided. I, like, get away from using WordPress. And, um so I have I do have, like, a personal site. WordPress. It has, like nothing on it. Um, and I logged into it recently to, like, try it out and like to like, you know,

start writing on it and it's changed a lot. I like earlier in my career I used to build were press websites and holy smokes like WordPress has like, it looks it feels totally different. And it's really, really slow. Um really? Yeah.

You know, I really wrote it all. Why didn't react and stuff

yet? And I've been pretty disappointed with, like, the editor, like I just really wanted, like a simple editor, and it just seems like it's gotten complicated. And so I just decided to go with something that's a little more technical. I guess it's just Jekyll likes to static site generator. I get to write more marked down, which is all I need. I don't need anything complicated. Um, so I'm gonna just put, like, a really simple site together, probably over the weekend,

and start to kind of put some stuff out there. Uh, hopefully next week. Well, what kind of school about that? I'll be sure to plug that next week.

Yeah, maybe this is a good time for us to dive into Royal like weekly updates as we wrap up this episode. So you've been working on your block, which hopefully I don't get published next week. What else you got?

Yeah. So that's what I've been mostly working on. Just trying to get that out the door. I've been running a couple of I've been writing. So that's one of the things I've been trying to do a lot more this week and just start to kind of get it. Get into this habit of writing even, like, short, like, you know, short little little things they don't like. Just I would say, like maybe trying to, like, have something be like, maybe like, five tweets worth of content,

right? So that it's not like so I don't feel like overwhelmed and writing it every day. Um, I really want a CZ little It's possible, while still

it is you make set the bar low enough that you will not skip

it. Yeah, And it's something that I actually learned from the book that I mentioned before called the centralism, um, which talks about, like writing, writing, just enough to leave you wanting more so that the next day you have more like you have motivation to right? And so you don't feel like overwhelmed with, like, wanting to write like your first day. You started journaling, right? You maybe you write like a whole brain dump of stuff, and then the next day, I kind of feel like you have to do the same thing. And so I just intentionally this time decided that he really tried to,

like, break this down. I saw myself going down that path, and I started feeling overwhelmed and not wanting to do it. Um, so that's that's been kind of the thing I've been really trying to do. I've been thinking a lot about lately of starting a, uh, like like a business time newsletter to because I know a lot of people like those, and so, um, just exploring a bunch of, like, area around content. And that's been mostly my week. Um,

here, you still working on that one tool for freelancers that you were talking about?

What I am is a matter of fact. I I've things have really slow down on that since I started this freelance project, because, you know, I got likes to keep on, but I actually kind of feel like it's been ah, a bit of a bit of a blessing because, um, you know, from another podcast that I listened to, I came across this book called The Mom Test, and I've been going through that, and it's been really insightful for me, Like, t kind of think man, I really should be learning more about the audience and the community that this freelance, uh,

product is gonna do, right? So, like, for me, I, uh, you know, I really feel like I kind of needed a step back and make some better. Um, you know, approach it in a different way. Not not Start with coding and start building the thing, but rather start by talking to people and asking the right types of questions. Um,

yeah, This isn't like they talk about in that, but I listen, that episode of law order product actually, this morning it was, and ah, the thing that strikes me really is like, you want your friends and a lot of people just want to be nice and they're kind of nice by default. And so, like, they're gonna be like, Oh, yeah, that sounds cool life. But I might use that lovable line like it's it's effectively like asking your mom if she would use your your product there like she's proud of you. And of course you would say yes. And like the thing they were talking about is like,

you just need to ask more about, like So what do you do? How do you manage your job? Like like just asking these open ended questions that are about how they work, Not anything about your product or how you imagine things or whatever, just like just understand how they currently operate and that will give you more insight into, um, you know what you should can and should build. And most people can't imagine things like New products or whatever. And I know the inter gum intercom guys asked Jason freed for advice on pricing. And they were talking about one time about like people. You can't ask people how much something is worth because they don't know why they spend $50 on, you know, blank like they have no idea like that. They do it. But it's like,

very impulsive sometimes. And you just like can't. So you're just gonna throw a number out there and, like they charged $50 a month for intercom when it started. And you know, it works like you'll quickly know if no one buys it, that it's that it's, ah, too high. And if it is, if people are buying it like crazy, then you know, maybe it's too low like that. You just have to kind of guess, um on some of those things. But like you,

more importantly, needed that sort of open ended thing because you can't like for go rails. One of my problems is customers canceling, and you can't ask them like why did you cancel the all of youse to be like, Well, I didn't have time, and it's not necessarily that they didn't have time. It's that I didn't give them anything useful, um, or that they thought would be useful or they didn't see it as being useful in the future or something. So, like there's more detail to all that. Maybe they're not doing much rails. They're doing more Java script or whatever. It's just hard to actually directly ask people those questions. Yeah,

absolutely. Yeah, I actually right after I listen to the art of product. I got that that audiobook, Um and so, yeah, I listened to those When I go on my walks and it's been it's been it's been pretty good. I haven't finished it yet, so I won't dive too deep into like its contents or anything. But yeah, it seems like a really good, and it's short to it. I'm just started it, but it's I think it's like a three hour boat, like an audible. So it's it seems like it's gonna be a quick read

for sure. Cool. All right, I'm gonna pick that up and read it as well. I'm excited.

Yemen. What have you been doing this last week?

Oh, mostly, um, I've been Well, someone quick thing was I joined a little mastermind group when we had Our first meeting is three people reach own businesses or, like we're trying. Thio and ah just sat for an hour and 1/2 and introduced ourselves in what are like primary struggle waas. And it was just like a cool, um, thing, if people aren't familiar like a mastermind is just getting like business owners together, Um, or you know, any group of people. But just to have a safe place to talk about, like, how do I deal with these problems?

And everybody is not going to judge and just genuinely, like, try and help us best as they can. Um, it's like if you're CEO of business, you don't have any piers except for other CEO of other businesses. So, like you can't go and confess all your problems. D'oh! You know your customer support person and ask for their help. Like you really need advice from someone else who was also in your role. Um, and a lot of times it's a business owner. There's no one health, you know, maybe a co founder.

But, like even then, sometimes if you have struggles with your cofounders or don't see eye to eye on something, then you have to go talk to someone outside of your business. And so that was kind of the goal of the mastermind. Better 1st 1 I went really well. I'm curious to see you know how long at all or how well it'll go in the future. The other guys are in consulting companies right now, and it's not necessarily to Ah like I don't know if some of that knowledge will be is applicability to my stuff selling products or not. So what kind of see how it goes over over time? But we're gonna sit down every two weeks, just have an hour long conversation about stuff. Uh, and then the other thing I've been doing is that that product I've talked about for a while now in the podcast Jump start pro. Um, I've been building out last week and this week basically building out the check out process.

You can actually buy it, going through fixing more bugs and then building out the sales pages and stuff. So I have, like, the whole payment process and the download and like, you know, once you buy the product, how did. How did you get started using it and whatever and, um, has been using what's cool about this is like it's a template. Do you could buy to go build your business? So I am using the template to sell the template, which is pretty great because I gotta experience of using it myself, emerging and updates and those sorts of things. And it's been very nice to be able to have the experience of a customer of the product as the developer of the product.

So have enjoyed that. I think it's given me some good inside on rough edges and in things I spent. I was up late last night working on Cem Cem bugs and in things. But, um, in the next, I'm hoping by Tuesday that I will have enough stuff like I'm going to try and go work on the pricing page and some of the marketing stuff. We've gotto just a landing page right now with an email sign up form, Um, and so I'm going to be switching that, of course, to more of a sales page that is like here is what it is. Here's what it does. I'm gonna record a video this weekend of like walking through it, Um, and then hopefully go to record a bunch more little videos on individual features and a bit more in depth.

Um, so it's pretty exciting. Ah, and this is like I started this last August as a side project, and it's kind of evolved down into, like, a full time job for myself, which has been kind of rough because I already have effectively a full time job with these other two products. But, um, it is almost done almost ready to ship. And people have been asking about it like Jason asked about it on the last podcast, which was exciting, like when people are like asking me like, Hey, when the hell is this going to release?

That is a good sign. So I'm hoping that sales go well at the beginning. But, you know, I haven't done a whole lot of good marketing hyping it up, but we'll see you. Um, I wanted more like do ah thing. Once it's officially released, I'm like, more concerned about getting it ready, and what I might do is just do a soft launch on Tuesday like publish it. But then work up. Ah, like news, e mails to the newsletter and that sort of thing once it's ready or something.

So, yeah, we're not entirely sure, but the a few people that have bought it so far, um, I don't think a lot of them have been using it too much, but I haven't heard anything for a little while, so it's not like there's been a lot of bugs or something. So that's good. Um, so we'll see. Um, I just I know that I need to do a better job of building up the hype, launching something new like this, and, ah,

that would be kind of a determining factor of, um you know how great the sales go at the very beginning. But most of doing this kind of long run. So I'm hoping not to have, like, a big sales at the very beginning and just have them trickle off. Um, I really kind of want to continue promoting this for I don't know in the next few years, Hopefully. So, um, I'm not as worried about making a big lunch like courses usually do, but I probably should, so

Yeah, I, um Yeah, I'm looking forward to hear, Like how that goes down? Because I think like, it's it's It's one of those there's there's other products up there, right that, like in like, the Peach P Community, I think, uh, but what?

To calm. Ah, terrible spark, right?

Right. And, um, I find those things really interesting because, like, it's a product like on top of a product, that it's like a like it's almost like productivity thing where, like, you have something like rails. It makes it really fast for you to build application. And on top of that, you got something else that makes it even faster. So the like, the value proposition. I think it's pretty huge, like here. You're gonna need all these like things anyways,

right? Like, yeah, I have something that's up and and going, and it's that's a pretty cool, huh? Pretty cool thing, man. Um,

yeah. One experiment I think I'm gonna do is like So this is gonna be a base template of like, an open ended. Ah, by this and then go create whatever. Heck, whatever the heck you want, whatever business you imagine, you can build it off of this. But I also think it be interesting to sell Sim pre tailored version. So, like if you wanted to start your own screen cast business, you could buy a special version of this that are behind that set up interest, you know, And then maybe, like here's on Airbnb knockoff or whatever, like will build something very simple.

That's that's kind of like that, or I don't know, you know, everything. It could be interesting to say, like, here's an e commerce store. So if you wanted to basic, you know sales page for your products Here you go. Here's a little shopping cart or something. Yeah, this morning now could be interesting to sell a few versions of it as well and just show people hunting howto build stuff like that. So even even if I don't sell those, I thought about like, be cool just to have some videos walking you through, how I would approach it with the jumpstart pro template,

Um, just to teach you how to do it so you know, to encourage more people to buy it or something that could be a good additional thing. But then I was like, Why wouldn't I just also go sell those. Like, if I've already done the work, I could just go sell that to the thing. Might be just like maintaining those other versions might be much work. So, uh, we'll see.

Yeah, well, I know you know where we're getting getting. Ah, little over an hour here, but, um, real quickly. I wanted right before we started recording, Jason Freed Shared. Ah, link on. Ah, YouTube. Arlington or something? Um, talk.

It was Ah, Siri's called. I teach my wife sales. Uh, by Josh A. Braun. Uh, he he basically has, like, 30 something videos on him. Just like like, they're really short. They're like, they range beating, like, one minute in,

like, six minutes. And he just basically talks about, like, things that happen. Ah, and how he liked He basically teaches some very, like, very cool. Like sales things. Um, it was I think those are worth checking out. I've gone through, like, maybe like four or five of them right now, and they're pretty good. They're really short. So it's It's pretty nice. I'll put those in the show notes.

Yeah. Just before recorded, I watched that one on the selling lapel Otan bike. And I thought that was really good one, too. So, yeah, definitely include those in the notes. Yeah, for sure. Well, we should probably wrap it up. I'm going to start plugging our business time dot transistor dot FM website. So you go find us there or on iTunes and give us a review if you liked it, Um, and you can find me on Twitter at e X C i d. Three and David. You are?

I am David V. II on Twitter. Um, yeah, I would definitely appreciate the reviews, Uh, even hit us up on Twitter. I'd love to hear from you guys and other people

to see if you're working on anything cool or you have questions or whatever. Just messages on Twitter or ah, you know, if you find our email or whatever is most convenient for you, we'd love to hear from

you. Sounds good. Yeah, I'd love it. All right. I guess I'll just I'll talk to you next week.

Talk

to you, then. See you.