217: Podcasting / SaaS / Work Life Balance - Justin Jackson
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No, we've never talked before. I think we'll be friends. I can tell. Welcome to Test and Code. This episode is brought to you by HelloPyTest, the new fastest way to learn PyTest, and by the Python Test community. Find out more at courses.pythontest.com. Are you familiar with this experience where people act like your friends that you've known forever because they've heard your voice a lot, but you're like, I don't know who this person is?

I mean, they usually, often people will say if they meet me or if they end up on a call that they've, if they've listened to my podcast,

my shows for a long time they'll say i feel like i know you i feel like but i've had the exact experience in reverse where i've listened to somebody for a long time and then i get to meet them or talk to them i'm like man i just feel like i know you because i've heard so many episodes or i've been on a journey with you throughout the you know the course of your podcast and

So yeah, I've definitely had that experience. Most of the time, it's pretty cool, actually, because...

There is at least a shared connection, regardless of which side you're on. Right? So if you meet somebody and you've been listening to their podcast, you know a lot about their story, a lot about their life. There's something you can at least talk about. And then it's really easy for that other person to inquire about your life, what interested them in the show. There's like stuff you can talk about.

So, but 99.9% of the time, I think it's been positive for me so far. Okay. Well, I just have like this feeling we're already friends, but I don't think you've ever talked to me before. No, we've never talked before. Okay. I think we'll be friends. I can tell. Well, so a lot of...

way back when so i've been podcasting for uh since like 2015 or something like that and before i got started you had a blog uh or a uh a series so i was listening to um oh what were those guys called uh the fizzle dudes so the fizzle yeah um yeah

So Chase and Chase and Corbett. Yeah. Yeah. And so they were they were not in Portland area at first. They were like other places, but they both at one point they were both in Portland. But I don't know if they still are. Anyway, Chase has moved on and I think Corbett's still there. OK.

But the I've moved on as well. I don't think I've kept up on their podcast, but there were it was very motivational. And then I started I think somehow through that, I don't know if you were on their podcast or what, but somehow I picked up following you. And I like actually was thinking about doing a podcast for like two years. Okay. And just didn't pull the trigger. And then.

And then what actually pushed me over was that series, a series you did. It was, must've been 2015 or 2014 of just this like five episodes, five or six episodes of, and they were short. They were like 10 minutes each or something of like, what do you have to do? Do you remember this of how to do a podcast? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I've done, what was this a video or a podcast series? Podcast series. Yeah. So I've done a couple. I had a show called,

I think I've done this on a few different podcasts. I had a show called Build and Launch where I did a mini series on launching a podcast. And then I think I did it again for the Mega Maker podcast, which was after that. And that's really cool that you found that. Yeah. The idea was to help people get started as quick as they could and yeah, to make the episodes really short.

That's interesting that the path people follow to, that's actually really fascinating hearing how folks kind of discover my work or become acquainted with me. Yeah.

And then, so one of the things you were recommending at the time was just even recorded on your iPhone. That's good enough to get started. And I didn't think so. I mean, I tried that, but the, the podcasting quality was, uh,

You know, it was one of those, I can't remember who said this, but the notion that your tastes are always like better than your abilities. Ira Glass, that's his famous quote on creativity. Okay.

your taste is going to far outstrip your actual ability. And it just takes lots and lots of repetition of making stuff that isn't quite up to your standard before you'll actually get up to your taste level. Well, the interesting thing, then one of the first questions I kind of wanted to talk to you about is just sort of, um,

Back in 2015, it really was kind of hard to, at least it was for me, to get the sound that I wanted in a podcast. But it seems a lot easier. Have you noticed this too? Is it easier to podcast now than it was, say, seven years ago or something? I think so. I mean, I remember when I started, it was just hard to find a microphone. Mm-hmm.

I ended up buying a Blue Yeti from Best Buy because that was the only thing available that I could just go out and buy. And now there's a couple really good kind of low-cost dynamic microphones like the Samson Q2U or the ATR2100. And then companies like Shure have put out

like the MV7, which is not just an XLR mic, but also a USB mic. So if you don't want to do... Right now, I have an audio interface that's running into my computer. But if you don't want to do all of that, like my business partner, John, he just has the MV7, plugs it into his laptop, and he's off to the races. So I think that part's gotten easier. There's still, to be honest, I've never...

loved the sound that I've gotten. There's an air conditioner that's always running here. It's always a game. It's like a cat and mouse game of getting what you want. Yeah. But overall, I think it's easier because there's more microphones and there's better quality, low-cost microphones. That alone makes it, I think, audio quality easier to achieve.

And then there's just so many more resources out there. Then I think I started podcasting in 2012 and there's some resources at the time, but everything has just gotten continued to evolve. And now there's, yeah, just more guides, more resources, more how to videos. Yeah. That stuff's gotten better. Yeah. So, I mean, what I started, I think I started with an ATR 2100.

And it was going right into my computer. I was getting frustrated with the weird noises in the room or something. So I got a power strip at that point for the noise gate part of it, but then tried to play with the... Well, I guess not a power strip, but one of those audio strips with the noise gate and whatever.

whatever oh you have like a dbx yeah yeah 286 or something exactly it was a dbx 286 because yeah i know the dude from dan benjamin i think recommended it uh yeah uh and uh yeah so i tried that and i'm like it's 100 bucks i'll try that um yeah but so it was such a complicated setup for a while and now uh what i've got uh this isn't like a plug for all this stuff but

yeah i got a fairly expensive mic but it was like 100 bucks or so that's not bad it's like they uh are a procaster or something and then uh and then it goes right into the wave xlr which is uh who does that i don't know um stream stream people i don't know but like it's a it's like a like a audio booster or something or what is it it's the same like there's uh

Some sort of audio interface. Yeah, it's an audio interface with a built-in noise gate and preamp. Perfect. And it's like, wow, this is...

better sound than just plug in a USB mic into my computer. But yeah, but it's totally small and easy now. And, you know, stream deck to turn on lights if I want to. So anyway, it's gotten a little easier, but I, and what's, what's funny is I've spent like thousands over the, maybe not thousands plural, but at least a thousand on audio equipment over the years. And my, my setup now is probably 200 bucks. Yeah.

Yeah. That's great. I should get those specs from you offline because I'm always interested in good setups that just work. I think that's the other advantage is that people find something that work and then they just share like, here's what I found. It works great. I just found this microphone arm here. And before everyone was recommending the Blue Compass,

And this arm here from Elgato is like a thousand times better. And I'm just like, I got to start recommending this. I don't know why everyone's recommending the other thing. Oh, interesting. Yeah. So I think the advantages that we're sharing are setups a lot more. People find something that work and they say, okay, you got to try this out. And it's also easier to order stuff, return it.

My wife just redesigned this video studio setup I'm in. It's gorgeous, by the way. Thank you. She did a great job. We've got all these classic radios behind me here, both transistor radios and tube radios. And this one here appeared in the, not this exact one, but this was in a James Bond movie. Sweet. This radio. Yeah.

And, uh, but the, what she found is you have to order a bunch of stuff and then return half of it. So you, you order stuff and then you return half of it when you, after you've tried it out. And I think that ability to try things out is, and return it if it's not working is, is, uh,

the other key, right? You just some voices work better with certain microphones. Some rooms respond different, you know, differently to different preamps. And, you know, you try it all out and then returning. That doesn't work. That's a good idea. I was I was always like terrible at this. It's one reason I asked for help from my wife because I knew she'd just be able to like she would just order it all, plan it out.

and do the research. And then whatever didn't work, she would just return. And so she ordered it all at one time.

We tried all sorts of things out and whatever didn't work, she just returned kind of all at once on one day. And that's a good way to do it. So, but I mean, for podcast audio, audio setups are so much simpler than video. That's the other, I think, benefit of podcasting is that you can, if you, if you have a USB microphone, you can get a, you know, a dongle for your iPhone and plug it right into your iPhone and have excellent sound.

And just record right onto your iPhone with a nice sounding microphone and publish from there. It's really easy to get started. The key is that when we started Transistor, I think they figured there was about 500,000 podcasts in the world. And now there's something like 4.5 million podcasts.

But my advice to new people starting out, as I said, the truth is that most of those podcasts aren't that good. That's the hard part is you need to have decent sounding equipment. You need to make it reasonably, make your sound as good as you can.

But after that, really what distinguishes one podcast from another and whether someone listens to a podcast is if it's good.

And what's good means, meaning, what I mean there is just it appeals to a certain audience. You've created something that's compelling enough that people will click play on your trailer, listen to 30 seconds and then say, you know what, I'm going to subscribe to this or I'm going to download a full episode. And then if you can get them to recommend it to a friend or you can get them to follow up and download another episode,

That's what really distinguishes one podcast from another. It's got to be good. It's got to be compelling. There's got to be something about it that people want to listen to. So I'm glad the first steps are easy. Like I got a microphone, plug it into my iPhone, and then it's like, okay, what are you going to do now? Now that you've got your setup and you're in the closet recording with all the clothes around you, so the sound's going to be fine.

How are you going to make this entertaining? So entertaining that someone recommends it to a friend. Oh my God. I have no idea. Well, there's some ways to figure out. I think the one thing I've always, I've tried to do is prompt listeners when they're listening and it could be as simple as something like, I used to do this all the time. I'd be in the middle of an episode. I'd be like, Hey folks, I just want to take a break right now. And,

Say if you are doing the dishes right now and listening to this podcast, can you just reach out to me on Twitter or by email? Say hey, it's me Al I'm in Tennessee and I'm listening to your podcast while I do the dishes I just want to hear from all the dishwashers out there and I get all these responses from people who were you know do listening to the podcast while they did the dishes and often

That was an easy way to get in contact with listeners. And then I would follow up with questions like, I'm curious, what makes you listen to the podcast? What brings you back? What first attracted you to the show? What's going on in your life that makes you listen to a particular episode or listen to the first episode?

I like that question of what's going on in your world that brought you to the podcast originally or today or whenever you listen, because it gives all this context of why people listen. There's certain shows I listen to on my way to work because I want them to inspire me to start thinking about business stuff. So the job to be done is...

inspire me on my way to work so that I have new marketing ideas or new business ideas or just energy that I can bring into my day. And there's other shows I listen to on my way home and their job is help me to wind down, help me to think about something other than work, help me to

just divert my attention, have a diversion, have some entertainment as I walk home. And by the time I'm home, I'm fully not thinking about work anymore. So figuring out why people are hiring your podcast instead of something else, I think is a good thing to do. And yeah, it's just asking people when they reach out or if you do happen to bump into somebody that listens.

I should do that. That's a great idea. I think more people should do it. Yeah. It's the one way to... It's also a way to... Because podcasting, it is hard to hear from people. Any signal you get is good signal. And people are listening for a reason. They're not just...

No one wakes up in the morning and says, well, I hope I listened to a boring show today. People want, they're trying to get something out of it. And sometimes the job is a lot of utility, like help me understand more about unit tests in Python so that I can do my job better. Well, that's a very specific job to be done.

And it makes sense, you know, why do that? Okay. So I'm going to talk for a bit so that you have a chance to drink your coffee if you want. But some of the people listening, I'm going to actually throw this out as a podcast episode. My podcast is normally around Python and software testing and incorporating testing with software.

so why would I have Justin Jackson on? And a lot of people in the Python community might not know who you are or might think that you're a football player. Um, yeah. Or a basketball player. There's our basketball player. Yeah. Yeah. My, the search engine optimization for Justin Jackson is, uh, not great, quite competitive. Uh, but okay. So, um, just, so I, I've been following Justin for a while. Um, uh, you, um,

What was that podcast again where you did a whole bunch of build and launch or something? Build and launch, yeah. Which just seemed like craziness. You were trying to do, what, 100 or 50 or one a week? I can't remember. Build and launch was launch something new every month. Okay, once a month. And then I started another podcast called Mega Maker where I was trying to do 100 things.

build a hundred or make a hundred things in a year. Okay. Which was fun to listen to. Did you make it to a hundred? Um, I made it to a hundred. Yeah. I think I, in retrospect, that was probably overkill. It's probably too many, but, uh, it was a fun challenge. So, and then, okay. So then, um, I'm listening to him for the, in the maker space and the, uh, the, the, the, the,

the business or the bootstrapping business kind of space. And very inspirational. I love it. Plus, I grew up in the Northwest and was a skater and a snowboarder and stuff. And you kind of have that vibe as well. Yeah. I love snowboarding. I'm not great at skateboarding, but...

I have one that I rip around on, but yes, definitely a complete tangent. I grew up in Eastern Washington and all the rich kids. So I was not one of the rich kids. Uh, but so often I was just like, I can, I can local hills and, and doing it. But there was a little place called North South. That was a little penny skeeble, uh, in Idaho that would go to once in a while, but all the rich kids always went up to BAMP. Um,

Oh, yeah. Have you ever snowboarded Banff? Is it good? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I've snowboarded Banff. Banff is good. I mean, I think the best mountains are in British Columbia, which is where I am now. Banff is a beautiful place. I grew up in Alberta, but I grew up in northern Alberta. So we're prairies.

And the mountain that we would drive to is Marmot Basin and Jasper. And so we'd get up on a Saturday morning at 4 a.m. and then drive four hours to Marmot Basin to ride that mountain. And then Banff was just a little too far, but I've ridden it a handful of times. It's a gorgeous mountain. And when it's good there, it's really good. And where are you normally riding now?

So now I live in Vernon, BC, which is in the Okanagan Valley, about four hours east of Vancouver. And we have kind of a series of mountains here. My local mountain Silver Star, it's about 25 minutes from my house. And then there's Revelstoke, which is about an hour and a half from me, which is the kind of the new...

I mean, some people call it the new Whistler. It's a pretty amazing place. And then just after Revelstoke is Golden and Kicking Horse. And then the other direction, there's Big White and some other places. So we're kind of... You got some nice snow around you. Yeah, we got... They call it the Powder Highway. If you ride all the resorts, you can like ride probably five or six resorts. And when the snow is good, it's like, yeah, just an amazing road trip. Yeah.

I might have to do some exercise and get my knees up to speed and try to do that at some point. Yeah. Revelstoke's great and Kicking Horse is great. If you get the chance to go, it's amazing. A couple of reasons why I wanted to have you on. One was just to finally talk to one of my heroes. Also, I'd like to encourage more

there are more Python podcasts coming on. When I started, there was only a few. Now there's quite a few, which is great. And I'd like to encourage more people to do that. And I'm going to start, I'm going to start another podcast, whether that's a good idea or not. Great idea. And so there's a few special things that I, so I thought I'd have you on to help promote transistor and,

and other things you're doing and ask you a few questions. So you're, I don't know if I had all of the summary of what you're up to now. Is it mostly transistor at FM? Yeah, we're full time on transistor. We started it in 2018, just me and my partner, John. We actually met through chase Reeves from fizzle. He introduced us. Okay. And yeah, we started working on it together in 2018 and,

We launched it August 1st, 2018. And by the following August, 2019, we were both full-time on it. So we've been full-time since then. And we now have three full-time employees in addition to us. So we're a little team of five people and it's our full-time gig. This is what we're doing these days. That's awesome. And by full-time, what does that mean to you personally? Like, are you 40 hours a week or? Uh,

I mean, we probably don't work. We probably work, yeah, about 30 to 40 hours a week. And depending on the week, some weeks it's more, some weeks it's less. We built the company to give us a better life. So the key for both John and I has been flexibility and freedom. And so if the snow is good...

I go snowboarding and I might take the whole morning off or the whole day off. And we've tried to build that in to the company. So we work hard. We do good product work. We really work hard to serve our customers. We have live chat that we try to answer as soon as we can.

But at the same time, we wanted to give folks the flexibility to take time off, to take care of themselves, to have some margin in their lives. And now that we have five people, it's like pretty good. We can kind of, you know, if one person's taking some time off, the other person can, you know, relax.

you know, cover for them. You have a podcast that covers sort of your, some of your transition through this, right? Yeah. We, right when we started working together, we signed our partnership docs and we just started recording a podcast together called build your SAS. Okay. And it's just about building and launching a software as a service company that

from when we had zero revenue and zero customers and we didn't know if this whole thing was going to work. And in many ways, feeling like...

This might be our last attempt at something like this. Just, I didn't know if I had another attempt in me. Yeah. So... And you were... So were both of you working at another... At other things? I was... Yeah, John was working full-time at Cards Against Humanity. And I was... I'd already gone independent. I had a...

paid community called Mega Maker and a course called Marketing for Developers that was like paying the bills. But before you went independent, you were at some point doing the side hustle thing. Yeah. I created the Marketing for Developers course while I was working for a startup in Portland and working full-time as a product manager there. And I'd been a product manager at other SaaS companies as well.

So yeah, I worked while I was working there. I built this course on the side. I'd already been doing podcasts and blogging and other things before that, building up an audience. And yeah, launched that in 2000.

And then it did well enough that I thought if I went full time on it, I could double it the next year. And so I did that in 2016. And yeah, that was kind of when I cut the cord with paid employment. That's nice. I guess. So one of the, I'm jumping ahead, but one of my questions around this, I'll just go ahead and ask now is as a side hustler myself, I got a full time job and I,

I it's like I'm collecting side project though. Um, a couple of podcasts or a couple of books, uh, doing, um, uh, what else I'm starting a SAS. So, um, I'm not going to like bug you about SAS questions. Um, but feel free. It's I'm, I'm, I'm happy to answer anything. Well, I guess one of the things is, uh, uh, is, uh,

Is SAS, S-A-A-S and S-A-S-S pronounced differently or just spelled differently? SAS is spelled, it's an acronym, so it's S-A-A-S. And in some ways, it's a terrible thing to name your podcast because it's, yeah, my kid's

try to describe this to their friends and their friends have no idea what they're talking about. But SaaS is actually a lot of people are searching for it now in podcast apps on YouTube and other things. So software is a service. Software is a service. Yep. Right. So is it too late to jump on the SaaS bandwagon? No, because SaaS isn't a market. I mean, people say there's a SaaS market, but

So you use SaaS as a delivery model to deliver a product to a specific market, a specific category. And the key with any, whether you're making a podcast or making a software product, the key is that you've identified something that people are already searching for. They're already searching for a solution. And if you are, if you can target

either a desire or a pain or something that has already motivated people to search out a solution. And you can do that again in a compelling way. So it's the same as recording a podcast. You're doing it in a way that compels them to try you out, to give you a shot, to seek you out. Then it's not too late because there's lots of opportunities.

And the other thing about most categories is that they're cyclical, right? So

We were talking about earlier, we were talking about Calendly versus SavvyCal. So Calendly was an existing product that reached its maturity phase. And in any category, when there's a big incumbent that's kind of reached their maturity phase, that's a good time to launch something new if there's kind of a window of opportunity. And

That's what Derek Reimer, the founder of SavvyCal observed. He's like, wow, a lot of people using Calendly. So there's a market, people are using it and paying for it. But there's some gaps, there's some product opportunities that people want Calendly to do that it's not doing well.

And there's also just when something, once something's kind of a bit older, people just naturally start to look for, you know, is there a fresh new solution or whatever? And one of the interesting things that you've brought up on, I don't know, one of the podcasts is that you don't have to have feature parody before you launch. No, as long as there's enough there that you can,

I mean, there's a couple of ways to kind of stair-step your way into it. For us, when we were inviting beta users, the idea was, "Hey, if you come and try Transistor in our beta phase, we will give you a lower price."

And so for people who are using other tools, they were like, okay, well, I can switch to Transistor, kind of grow with the product. And in exchange, I'll pay a lower price and get to give them feedback on the product that maybe the feature I really want will get built earlier. Yeah. So there's ways of doing it. And there's also just people get attracted to products for different reasons.

And a lot of it will depend on you as the founder. What kind of unique attributes, strengths, weaknesses, what advantages would you have personally over others?

competitors. And for John and I, it was that we were willing to share our story in a really transparent way. And so we had a lot of customers that came to us because they were attracted by the story. What was compelling? It was like, wow, this, I want to be a part of this journey and support these guys as they're building this product.

And so they were willing to switch to us even before, you know, we were at feature parody to some of the other products out there. We were, you know, slowly building it up, but they were willing to give us a shot because they were invested in the story. Yeah. And, you know, that's something that a bigger company, um, can't, can't do. Right. Uh, the other thing I think we've done from the beginning is, um,

like customer support. And I often joke, like people will say, sometimes on live chat, I'll get someone who says, why would I use Transistor when Anchor is free?

And I said, well, I'm one of the co-founders of Transistor and I'm pretty sure that the CEO of Spotify is not answering anchor support tickets right now. We really care about customers and we all do support. Even when I'm snowboarding, I'm on the chairlift answering customer support tickets. It's like one of the things I'm really passionate about

is helping people out as they're trying to figure out how to launch a podcast. And, you know, I'll go, even if it's not something about the product, if they want me to listen to an episode and give them some feedback, if they want me to look at their website and tell them how, how I, how to improve it, you know, to get more people finding their podcast on Google, I'm willing to

go the extra mile and help those folks. And that's a real competitive advantage that especially big incumbents won't do. And it's an easy one for... It's not easy, but it's an accessible one for most indie startups is that, yeah, the competition is often slow. Their support and customer service is not good.

And we can leverage our ability to be small and we can pivot if we need to. We can react to customer feedback faster.

And we can just care more. And I think that's served us really well. I put that to the test. I was listening to one of your episodes. You're talking with the person, I can't remember her name, the person you hired to do help with customer support. Helen. Yeah. Yeah.

And it was a great episode. And then I went back and listened to the previous one or the, that you said it was the second time she was on the episode podcast. So I went back and listened to the other one, but I did. So a lot of websites have these like chat things that you can like log into with you guys. It's one of you that's answering. Yeah, that's amazing. And I, and so I was like, okay, so what are the things, one of the things that I have that, so fireside has had, this is what I'm on right now.

And yeah, whatever. I probably shouldn't name names, but it's not a secret. That's who I'm hosting with. One of the things I love is the guest pages. And I was like, if I and, you know, one of the reasons why I'm considering there's a few reasons why I'm considering Transistor.

Um, and I'm probably going to pull the trigger and switch. There's a few reasons. One of them is, uh, the multiple podcasts because I want, uh, I want to do a new podcast, but I don't want testing code to go away. I want people to be able to still listen to it. Um, and I don't, and it seems kind of a lot to pay my normal monthly fee to just maintain it sitting there doing nothing. Um, uh, the other thing was like, these guest pages are great. Um,

And you guys have guest pages now. Um, yeah. Uh, and I was like, well, how is there an API or something? And I, so I hopped on, I don't know if you want me to air this or not, but I'm on the chat and said, how would I transition from fireside to transistor with all these guest pages and stuff? And, and I got somebody, uh, I think Helen responded and said, uh,

Um, well we could, if you could get it in a CSV file, we could probably help you out. Yeah. And I'm like, that's amazing. This is, this is pretty cool. I mean, uh, I, even if, even if I don't, even if it doesn't work out that there's a willingness to try to help, um, this is great.

The other one that really is that you, the other question I had was on the guest pages, is there a link for Mastodon? And apparently there's like a free form link that you can use or something that I could put in people's Mastodon accounts. Yeah. I think we've got to update that because we do have, let me just look here. On our website,

Social links, like the social links we provide for your website. So like find us on Twitter, Instagram. We have Mastodon there. Okay. But yeah, I think you're right. I think we need to add it to...

Oh, no, we have Mastodon there. It's already on there on the profile pages. And then there's at least a freeform link or something that I can add somebody's GitHub profile? Yep. Because that's something I've tried to do before that I've asked for years for Fireside to say, hey, can you get a GitHub link? And no, just crickets. And then also with Mastodon, they said maybe, but

but it's not there yet. And I think that

that needed to be something that, that was like turned on like right away. And I can't have been that hard. Um, um, and, uh, so, um, I guess kudos for you guys jumping on it, but also the, that customer service bit, I don't, I do not want to do that. I mean, you don't have to, that here's the thing there, there are multiple paths to, to success. Uh, and you know, uh, um,

I think I was definitely... My experience working for other SaaS applications had been, I just saw that it was a real differentiator if you had awesome customer service. And so

We've taken it seriously from the beginning. John and I have done it in the early days. I mean, early days before we'd even gone full time, I was spending way too much time answering support tickets and going the extra mile for people. I would do so much extra work for those early customers just because I knew it would be a differentiator. And so for us, it's been one of the ways we've found success. But there's other ways. I have friends who have

successful software companies who don't do live chat. But there has to be something. You have to be able to differentiate. And I think the nice thing about customer service is even if you don't have a feature built, you can... Let's say somebody said, hey, I need... At the beginning, it'd be like we had no way of manually updating a bunch of episodes. And they'd be like, I want to migrate, but I...

I need all these things changed." And I would be like, "Oh, don't worry. I'll take care of it." And I would just manually go through each episode and update that thing for them because I could. That's one way I could serve them. And if you get a customer, our LTV, lifetime value of a customer is on average is probably about a thousand bucks. And so

you put in a little effort at the beginning and you keep a customer for a long time, that's worth something. Plus they tell their friends, that's worth something. Plus they talk about, they leave a good review for you on one of the review sites. It's worth something. So there's other ways to win, but you have to find some sort of advantage. And to me, customer support is a good one because most folks aren't willing to do the work.

And if you are, you'll stand out immediately. Speaking of doing the work though. Okay. So one of the, uh,

I've got a few more podcast specific questions and then I want to ask about life, work life. If you've got time. Absolutely. Yeah. So you, you had in one of the earlier episodes I was listening to, you were mentioning like dynamic ad insertion is not being important, but now you guys have it. So is, is it a good thing or is it just something people ask for? I mean, the important thing,

can mean different things at different times. So one thing I often try to think about is, will this feature actually lead to more people signing up and staying on? And at the time when I initially said it, it just wasn't. And remember, markets are fluid. Pieces are already always moving around. And at the time, the

The reasons people were signing up was just most podcasts were people who were hobbyists or doing it on the side or doing it for a small little, their small business or what have you. And 99% of podcasters don't need dynamic ad insertion. There was also at the time, it was just a bigger feature than John and I could bite off as a two-person team.

But once Helen and then Jason joined, Jason was able to do a lot of that work for us and it was more possible. And then we said, okay, well, let's look at it. And maybe this is something we can add, especially once you've kind of gotten all the easy wins, the low hanging fruit. It's like, well, now to grow, it's a lot harder. And so now we're building features and we're getting kind of iterative gains from people

you know, in terms of people signing up and staying with us. But so let's say if I, on the new podcast, I'm starting, if I were to decide to go with a dynamic ad insertion instead of the traditional ads there forever, sort of a thing, I kind of have to build that into my pitch to my advertisers, right? Yeah. Most people who are actually doing ads are now selling people on a certain timeframe. So they'll say, Hey,

For example, a common way of doing it is saying you can buy ads on new episodes and those are more expensive, right? Because when an episode drops, there's a spike of downloads. And then there's a separate campaign for the back catalog. So people will...

schedule and a certain, uh, campaign for new episodes. And they get that for the first 30 days or 60 days or whatever. And then after that 60 days, it goes into the back catalog and then there, you know, folks are buying ads on the back catalog. So it gives you more inventory. Cool. So I can do that with your, with transistor. I can have, uh, uh, like,

The new episodes versus back catalog? Yeah. Different ads? Yeah. Yeah. You can schedule, you can have different campaigns running and you can schedule those campaigns. And then we have some basic rules to say, for example, one way of doing it is saying, okay, I'm going to apply this campaign to all of these

in the back catalog. And then I'm going to have another campaign that's like a default campaign that automatically gets applied to all new episodes for a certain timeframe. Yeah. And then you just adjust the campaign dates. So I think, I think it's kind of a cool idea even. So my thoughts were, even if you're not having external advertisers, if you've got your own thing that you're plugging, um,

Yeah. You might be able to do things like around Christmas time or something or whatever. I'm doing a promo, a sale price for this month. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's the reason I originally wanted to build it. Sometimes we build features because what pushes it over the edge in terms of something we'll build is like, this is something I'd like. And

I always wanted a way of being able to dynamically add announcements to every episode. And so we often will use it for announcements. Like I was in New York and,

I was traveling to New York for a conference and I just replaced all of the ads to say, hey, I'm going to be in New York during these dates. If you're going to be there, click on this form and let me know and maybe we can do a meetup. And so it was just super easy to say, here's, you know, I'm going to do a pre-roll and then I'm going to remind them again in the mid-roll and then

I do another reminder at the end. And just to be able to do that automatically with all my episodes was something I was like, ah, I've wanted this forever.

I think that's the most powerful way to use it. I think there's also a big opportunity in podcasters helping each other grow their shows. And so you could do an ad, like right now I'm running an ad on Build Your SaaS for some of our customers and just saying, hey, if you like our show, here's another show I think you'll really like. Oh, that's cool. And then promoting other people's shows. Yeah.

I think there's just some really cool things you can do there that other people, you know, that go beyond like selling ads. Now, last kind of topic of the question before I let you go. Work-life balance, especially with side hustle sort of stuff. I'm assuming that your family was on board with all of what you're up to. Were they? We might have to get other members of my family in here.

I think this is actually the hardest part that doesn't get talked about enough. And I've been doing this series on Build Your SaaS on bootstrapping with kids. And I've had different guests on that have all have a different point of view on this topic. I think there's some things I would recommend. So one, you have to be kind of

brutally honest about your life and how stable everything is. So as an example, in my early 20s, I was working a full-time job. And on the side, it had always been my dream since I was a teenager to have a snowboard skateboard shop. And so on the side with a friend, I opened a snowboard shop. It did not go well.

And it was really hard on my family once all the dust had settled. We had to eventually close it. There was a bunch of debt.

And at the time, my spouse's response was, hey, can you just not do anything else on the side for a while just so we could have some stability, build up some savings again, all those things. And I think that was wise. And we did that. I closed the shop in 2005 and I didn't really start anything new for quite a few years after that.

So I think being honest about stage of life, it's easier for me to start things now that my kids are older. I have four kids that are 13 to 20 than when they were babies. The baby phase, it's like no sleep. But it all depends. I know couples who make it work and

For them, there's enough margin and it can work, but you have to be brutally honest about where you're at. And I think the other thing is that the biggest risk when you're bootstrapping something new is that you'll burn out, right? That's one, or you'll run out of money.

Those are the two things, right? So if you're doing it on the side and you have a full-time job, you effectively have infinite runway, but the risk there is that you could burn out. It's just hard for most people consistently applying energy at work

And then going home and taking care of all your home stuff, trying to be a good partner, a good parent, a good friend, a good family member. And then once all that stuff is done, dedicating hours to a side project, that's a lot, right? And so I think you can do that for a while, but the biggest risk is that you'll burn out.

And so I think there's some things you need to consider there for sure. One of the things I want to address while we're talking about burnout is that especially with site, I mean, with work burnout, that's tough because you got, you're there, you're there all the time. Yeah. And I don't, I'm not,

I don't think I'm skilled enough to tell somebody how to deal with burnout at work. But burnout with side projects, I've gone through it. But I think it's fine to just take a pause. Like Test and Code just had like a, I don't know, four month break over the three month break or something like that, just because I needed a little bit more room in my life. Yeah. I think that's the point is that, and this is why you need to be, have good communication with your partner and,

good communication with your kids good uh i think i wish in retrospect i'd been going to therapy regularly as well because all of these things give you a perspective about how are we doing how are the gauges of our lives and to be open and and receptive enough to

to, you know, if your partner is saying, listen, you can't keep doing this to yourself. Like you're getting four hours of sleep. You're grumpy all the time because, you know, you're constantly thinking about this side thing you're trying to launch. And if they're saying, hey, we need to pause or we need to figure out something new or like that's a signal you should listen to. And for yourself, I think having especially a professional, like a therapist that is

you see regularly, who knows what you're up to. And I've had therapists who said, listen, like, Justin, you need a break. You can't keep doing this, right? You gotta, you gotta slow this down. And, um, yeah. And also even like, uh, I remember one time I went to, I've told the story before I went to the doctor and,

And I was just going through a hard time and feeling depressed. And my physician said, well, tell me what is going on in your life. And I'm like, well, I'm trying to do all this. I got all this responsibility trying to do this. And she said, how much alcohol are you consuming? And I said, well, not that much. Like,

After I put the kids to bed and I'm just totally burnt out, I do a couple shots of whiskey every night. And she said, okay, well... Maybe not do that. That's quite a bit of booze. And I had never had someone confront me about that. Yeah. And so she said, okay, well, my first prescription is I want you to stop drinking for a while.

And I said, okay, well, okay. And then the second thing she asked me is how much exercise I was getting. And at the time I was like riding my bike down to my office, which is downtown and riding my bike back. And she said, I want you to double that. So if that means riding up and down the hill twice, do that.

And the reason for the prescription was I was burning out. I wasn't being healthy. I was drinking too much alcohol. I wasn't getting enough exercise. And I needed to create space to take care of myself. So I think having professionals and family members and friends and accountability partners and other things in my life who could...

Keep me in check, you know, realign me when I got off track was important. And often it means, yeah, you got to take a break. Often it means you need to reevaluate is what I'm doing is doing more of what I'm doing actually going to get me more of what I want. And, you know, there's numerous times in my journey where I had people challenge me on that.

I had a business, like a course business. So after marketing for developers, I tried to launch a few more things. And I went to this retreat with a bunch of other entrepreneurs. And they just, we had a hot seat time where everyone was on the hot seat for a while and people could just really challenge you on how things were going.

And they said, it sounds like the business you're trying to run, like doing more of like spinning more plates or applying more effort or working harder is not going to get you more of what you want, which is more money, more margin, more freedom, more flexibility, less burnout, et cetera. And it was hard to hear that, but their encouragement helped me move on

from a bad idea or an idea that wasn't giving me more of what I wanted. And that created space for me to eventually get to Transistor, which is an idea that did give me more of what I wanted. I think all of that's important. I think there's a real risk for us to do damage to ourselves and our relationships if we're not careful. Yeah. And even so in the software world, there's a lot of people getting there with just

open source projects and they're not making any money off of it. I think paying attention to yourself is a good, I think that's a good place to wrap it up. Sounds good. I'm going to, I guess this was an hour long. Just thanks for being an inspiration for me, I guess. I'm happy to chat. These are all topics I'm passionate about. So yeah, this is one of the reasons I got into the podcast game is because I like doing this. Nice. Well, thank you.

Thanks for having me. Thank you for listening. And thank you to everyone who has supported the show through purchases of the courses, both Hello PyTest, the new fastest way to learn PyTest, and the complete PyTest course. If you'd like to really become an expert at PyTest, both are available at courses.pythontest.com. And there you can also join the Python test community. That's all for now. Now go out and test something.