Lessons from 128 Episodes of Searching

Speaker A: Hey, Josh.

Speaker B: Hey, Nate. How you doing this week?

Speaker A: I'm doing well. Uh, it's fall up here in Canada and the leaves are all changing colors. It's almost, uh, Canadian Thanksgiving, so I've got a whole weekend of eating, lots of food to look forward to. So, uh, yeah, things are.

Speaker B: Well, nice. Nice. Doesn't sound too bad.

Speaker A: Yeah. How are things with you?

Speaker B: Yeah, uh, school's kicked off. I feel like we're over the hump of the, uh, initial kids back in school. Chaos, schedule changes, all of that. Yeah. Into the swing of things of fall sports with the kids and I don't know, lots of. Lots of business stuff. I'm focusing on no home projects other than the lawnmower that broke mid. Mid. Uh, Mid m. Mo. So that's at the shop right now. So. But yeah, other than that, pretty good. Getting in a groove, I'd say.

Speaker A: Nice. Nice. Yeah, I got a. You know, another solid month in before Christmas hits and all. Everything goes off the rails again.

Speaker B: Yeah, pretty much.

Speaker A: I'm glad to hear that.

Speaker B: Cool. So I don't remember the last time we recorded. It might have been maybe a month ago.

Speaker A: Yeah, a couple weeks ago.

Speaker B: Right. Um, as listeners have probably noticed, you know, over time, if you've been with us since the beginning, not sure how many there are, you are. Except, you know, me and Nate right here. Um, yeah, we've changed our cadences over time. I think in the beginning it was every week. Is that.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Yeah, for a while.

Speaker B: And sometimes we did batches. We did like record a couple and then released them every week. I don't know, I think we did that almost for like a year, I would say. And then, um, got to like a two week cadence pretty consistently. And then if you probably noticed, maybe over the last six months or so, we sometimes skip ones and it's. It's no longer like you. The. There's. As a listener, you probably don't have a regular. Oh, it's searching for SAS Wednesday. Is it Wednesdays we usually release.

Speaker A: Yes, yes, Wednesdays.

Speaker B: So kind of continuing that trend, I think we're. Nate and I've come to a decision that we're gonna go on a bit of a hiatus.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, it's. It's sad because we've had a lot of fun talking about this stuff, you know, every week or every other week. And, uh, a lot of good chats and yeah, life is just getting busy and, uh, we're having trouble keeping up with things, uh, to be able to keep recording with any Regularity. And so, yeah, we'd like to, uh, we're going to take a break for a bit and, uh, yeah, maybe we'll be back. Maybe we won't. We'll, uh, we'll kind of. Kind of see where things go. But, uh, I think today's a great day to be, you know, thinking about how. How things have gone over the last number of years.

Speaker B: Right. So today we're going to probably chat a little bit down the memory lane and. And this maybe recap the, you know, why we even started this, which if I think about it, makes a lot of sense why we're kind of going on a hiatus now. But over the course of this episode, we also wanted to talk about just kind of other three. Three lessons learned. I asked Nate about if you could kind of think of a few before the recording. And so we'll kind of talk a bit about that too.

Speaker A: Yeah. So the day of looking back, and I'm just going to look up and see when did we first start recording this? Because it's been a while, but go ahead.

Speaker B: So, as I recall. And again, revisionist history. Right. So I'm not going to go back and look specifically, but I do remember why we started. Right. So the beginning it was. We definitely took inspiration from some friends at the pod that had a podcast that I also think is no longer running. But it was. It was between, uh, Colleen and Michelle, who had a podcast where it was interesting because they had. They were in different places in the journey oftentimes a lot of these ride along SaaS. Podcasts oftentimes have people in the same place. So it's sort of, uh, maybe workshopping or different things. But this one we kind of. Because I was talking to Nate a lot on the side about trying to help him with his SaaS. You know, I think even in the beginning we had an intro. It was like something along the lines of, you know, just learning from us in between. But Nate. Nate's kind of on this journey and I'm further ahead, but I'm trying to like, help him find his path type of thing. So, uh, I think that that was a bit one of the big kind of core reasons to even have these conversations. In addition to. I had interest in podcasts because we were listening to them all the time. And, uh, both of us are big podcast listening nerds. So having our own one, a reason to talk, a reason to try out this medium and try to improve on speaking into a mic and things like that were kind of some of my. Some of My goals as well.

Speaker A: Yeah, and I think we, we, we got those. We, we had lots of chats where you were giving advice and, you know, kind of helping me along the way. And we also, yeah, got to keep up as friends, which was really nice too. And I think also maybe one of the goals that you had at the beginning too is just to have a knowledge base available for people that want to listen in and, and glean some things from m. The discussions that we have. And I think we also did that too. We've got 128 episodes up there now and lots, uh, of different topics in there that you can search through and the descriptions have some details in there too. So I think we, I think we did get those goals.

Speaker B: Right. Right. And so I think one of the more important ones. And Nate, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but one of the things is like, Nate's not really searching for SaaS anymore at this point in time. So it doesn't mean he does not have interest. It just means I think life has happened to you in terms of, you know, priorities and other things that are important to you at this stage in life and, and other other things that are taking up large chunks of your, your time and attention. So SaaS has kind of been a little bit more on the back burner and it kind of always was this side thing never went, I think like, fully, fully on, like, hey, I'm turning off everything else. I'm not, you know, working any other, you know, consulting or jobs or anything like that. So, um, it's always been kind of this spare time thing. But I think pret. Previously you had a, a decent chunk you could commit to that. And I think a lot of that might be getting, getting ah, having other priorities ahead of you.

Speaker A: No, and that's, that's exactly it. Consulting has kind of exploded on me and yeah, just I don't have the amount of free time and the free headspace to be able to give it the, the proper time that it should. You know, when I was feeling, I was feeling kind of guilty, I'm like, oh, we have a podcast recording. But I haven't really, you know, done enough to really have anything to talk about. And so I was like, okay, this is just, you know, we need to put this on pause and you know, give it, give it some time. I'm sure it'll come back. I'm sure it'll be a, uh, you know, another time where things slow down again and be able to get back to that.

Speaker B: And it's hard as we both have families. Referral rock did get started technically after I had kids. But also, I'll be honest, I was not searching as long. Right. So in phase of trying to get traction, trying to get paid customers, trying to get something that could, you know, replace. Replace your. Your current consulting income. Mine came at a different time and place and got to that quicker to where this was the only thing. Right. So that searching period and that searching window which I think is different for everyone and there's you know, personality based things, there's what's going on in the market, there's technology shifts, there's all kinds of reasons and it's sort of um, a mixed bag so to speak of if someone finds that you know, or not and how many reps they put in and all those all. Lots of different factors. Which actually alludes to kind of one of my lessons that I was actually wrote down as well. But. But anyway you read some comments.

Speaker A: Yeah. Like I, I think, I think you're right. It. It has been something I've been searching for for a long time and actually I've kind of questioned that a bit too. Right. Of just um. I've been looking for so long like is there, you know, am I doing something wrong? Is there like um, something with the approach or something like that or is it just one of those things that you know, you're looking for a diamond in the. The mine and you know you're mining all over the place but you just happened. Haven't, haven't. Haven't happened across one yet. I uh, don't know.

Speaker B: I mean I don't think as. I mean there's all those factors. Right. So uh, at least if we go into that. Because that was probably one of my. If I wrote that when I wrote down on lessons learned is there's no exact formula.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: As much as we've tried to. As much of engineers. As much as like people say there are frameworks. Yes. Those can increase your odds. Um, and change your order of operations. So you're spending more time in certain areas. You know, I m. Think even the last projects. And we'll kind of walk maybe through those in a. In a minute. But this latest project Nate was working on. I don't think you've actually even coded anything yet.

Speaker A: No, I haven't. It's amazing.

Speaker B: Yes. So yeah. Which is interesting because you go from this, this, you know, you hear advice that says like get a version out there, MVP and all that type of stuff and you know we kind of this last run at um, at Nate, searching for SaaS, we kind of took. We're taking a different approach, which I still like that approach. And maybe when we pick it up again, we'll kind of retread some of those steps. But, but yeah, I think there's no exact formula. Uh, there's timing involved, there's luck involved, there's personal life priorities like we talked about with families and things like that. Because, um, if you did this and you didn't have a family or early on in your career, could you have done it and had more, more spare time? You know, less, less, less time commitments and you have a day job and you're like spending your nights and weekends, like throwing spaghetti against the wall, trying to search for your. Trying to find your sass. Right? And then these shifts, as we know, as you're seeing one now, like change over time. Right. Like alignment. Alignment with your different priorities. And um, yeah, I think those are some of the big, the big shifts that happen and are not like, you know, you're learning a lot, a lot along the way in different areas. You've learned about sales, you've learned about marketing. All these other different areas that I think are the broad skill sets you need to, to hopefully crack the nut. But then some people just get lucky. Some people, it just happens like their first shot. Then hopefully you're not listening to their advice because more, more them finding it probably more was like timing and luck, which is fine. Not discrediting that other work involved either.

Speaker A: Yeah, but I think you're so right about that. Like that there isn't an exact formula because we have tried, boy, like, we've tried a number of different things. I remember, you know, you were giving me projects of things to research and you know, kind of using that as a way to narrow things down and some of these other kind of formulas. Right. And I think you're, you're bang on there. Like it's not, it's not something that's just like clear cut. Yeah, you're right. There's definitely things that, that help. And I think especially with this last one, I've really noticed the amount of effort I've put in has seemed to have. Be a lot more higher leverage than some of the other one. I think that's a great, great lesson.

Speaker B: So, um. Yeah, okay, well, let's go into kind of. Maybe we'll. We'll start with the first one. So why don't, why don't we start there? So let's talk a bit about, I guess when we first started the podcast, you had status list, but was. I don't remember what format was it in? Was it more of that initial idea of trying to do like, monitor all, all kinds of other backend API services or. I don't remember the exact time.

Speaker A: Yeah, I don't recall the exact timing either. But there was a phase where I was to kind of be an aggregator. So we'll aggregate all of your, um, the systems you rely on and then use that as a way to also give you extra benefit on your, your uptime monitoring. And then, yeah, we went through all of the marketing kind of things with status list too. You know, writing SEO and uh, some paid ads and different things like that. Um, but I think it was always kind of a, it was often a back burner kind of project. It was. We would kind of pick it up for a little while and then we'd kind of leave it alone. Um, um, and we'd look for other things. So I think it was.

Speaker B: It still exists. So it's still out there.

Speaker A: Oh, it does. I, I am still amazed by that, that project. I, the amount of code I put into. I probably spent two weeks coding that and you know, it still just sends me a nice little check every month. And I'm very thankful for that.

Speaker B: So what was that, what was the second project?

Speaker A: So then I think we got into the scanning one, the scanning of hardware stores and selling the price data.

Speaker B: That was one of the ones I forgot.

Speaker A: And so that was a lot of coding, uh, and a lot of, you know, browser bot detection avoidance, you know, and all of that kind of stuff. I had a lot of fun coding that project. Trying to sell that project, though, was horrible. Like, I went to people and they said, yes, we would be, we would love to buy this. And then when I went to actually go and ask for a check, then nothing would happen. And I must have, I went through a lot of contacts on that one. And yeah, that was, that was something.

Speaker B: And I think that was also because, like, a lot of you are consulting work and your other relationships and business connections are, have been in that world, right? In this sort of like carbon construction space and things like that. It felt like, okay, I have a, I have a, I have an audience or I have partnerships, I have people I could talk to about this and this, this is a problem that they've talked about a bit. And then as you, um, kind of dug into it and then built the, the first version, and maybe that's what also proved to them. We're like, actually this isn't that big a deal, right? Like, even if someone says, oh, I will do this. Oh, yeah, that's such a big pain point. If I had that, that'd be amazing. But humans are fickle, and humans are weird because they can't predict the future very well. None of us can. And you go in there and then you're like, actually doing it. You're like, oh, yeah, actually never thought about that, but it's really not that important to me. Or I'm not willing to make all the changes necessary. Is that really worth the ROI of tweaking these little prices for this thing and, um, sending out another person with more stickers into the hardware store to update these that often?

Speaker A: Yeah. And I think that really got to like my coming into building these projects. I've always thought, well, like, I should tell them how they should run this part of their business better because I, you know, I have an insight. And so they, they should, you know, this would be good for them, and I can explain to them why. And I, uh, think as I've gone on, I've realized more and more that, like, I'm not going to be able to change people, really. And maybe I could if I had a lot of time and money, but that going to where people are at and trying to understand the problems that they perceive that they have and trying to work on those, I think it is a much better use of time than trying to, you know, make these, these next kind of improvements that require, like a whole shift change.

Speaker B: That's interesting because I almost take it in two different ways. One, because it's something I've thought a lot about with referral rock and some of the directions we're going lately. Actually, it's a little bit of both. Right. So, like, yes, there's sort of the. I'm already doing this thing and can I make. Can I make it better or. You don't have to worry as much about change management. Right. They're already going this path and it's like, oh, I can do. You're trying to get to X. I could just get you a bus ride there and you get there faster. It's like, oh, okay, right. But then the other one is like, uh, maybe this. Now I'm getting to weird Josh analogy phase. But, but, like, there's this idea of this plane and you can fly and it's like, oh, I don't. I don't know about that. But that.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Uh, so there is still that 10x1 that is selling them a whole system and selling them a whole new approach and mentality. And there are people that are going to buy into the whole system. And you're like, oh, so that means I no longer have to buy shoes and walk and get tires and all this thing anymore, and I can get there quickly. And it's like, oh, yeah, like, for the right person, I want the whole airport system. Like, I want that whole thing. But that's a different sell. It's a different game. But it's also like more of a, uh. You're gonna have to buy into a whole new practice and a whole new mentality, but only if it's that important to you. And maybe that's a N bar of being like, is the juice worth the squeeze? Is the pain big enough? Is the ROI big enough, um, to do those things? And that's where I think it's hard to get into that little mix is like, are these small iterations? Like, am I willing to do that? Is that worth it? And M most, it's like, is it at the end of it, is it worth it? But with a big enough 10x thing, it might be for certain people, not everyone, but yeah, but for the right person and just saying, okay, cool, you're bought in and you paid for the thing. Now here's the system out of the box. You do 1, 2, and 3, and now we can get you there.

Speaker A: M. Yeah, I think you're right. And just trying not to be, like, too far down the jet plane side of things, I think is like, I've tended that way except for a status list. I really want the opposite on that. Like, here, let me give you a very small incremental improvement on other uptime.

Speaker B: And some of these, what we've learned is like, what are the right projects for, like, indie bootstrap SaaS? Right. Like, those are. Those are just part of those. Part of those things I think we started. Started to learn and hone into as well, because there's just general ideation, general, like, trying to find customer research and find it. Trying to find customer problems. And then also, like, does this make sense? What are the other motions going to be involved? Right. So, okay, so what was after. What was the name of that one anyway?

Speaker A: That's called Product Sonar. Yeah. Yeah. And so we tried to do a couple pivots off of that too. We even had an episode called Josh Tries to convince Nate to Pivot. And so then, yeah, we. We tried to do some things around. Yeah. Like, is there a different market for this? Same data that kind of thing and eventually then we kind of, I kind of gave up on that and then we went towards uh, Chrome plugins for testing.

Speaker B: Okay. Yep.

Speaker A: So that was the whole um, you know, ways to help testers do a better job. Give them in context hints, give them as they're going along. Um, yeah, basically give them helpful information and make it easy to do their job. Yeah.

Speaker B: So what was that? What hap. What happened with that one in terms of like you had people sort of using some of that. Like some of it. You had some people using it. I think you, you definitely kind of um, got yourself a little more embedded in the QA and manual testing communities. But like what was.

Speaker A: Yeah, so that one was interesting because it was easy to get in touch with people. People were very willing to talk and it was easy to get into that community, at least for myself, just because being a software person you kind of have a bit of, a bit of authority there.

Speaker B: And I feel like it's an underserved like who's talking to oh yeah, QA people. Right. And almost like. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: But then uh. Yeah, I think really the problem with that one was that the testers a didn't want their job to be under attack. They felt that, you know, any sort of automation was going to like make them not useful anymore. And so there's already the, the push against automation and then uh, they already

Speaker B: had this fear and anxiety around, around the robots taking over.

Speaker A: Exactly. And then there was also just their unwillingness to pay. They, they don't have a large budget for these things. You know, maybe companies do, but the companies, they were really just buying the, the large, large altogether kind of systems.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Yep. And uh, they weren't too interested in buying you know, a little one off tool that you know, their testers didn't even maybe want to pay for themselves. So. Yeah, but that was also a fun adventure of just getting into a community and uh, figuring out how to be part of that. I really did enjoy that aspect of it. Just you know, to serve people and be there for them and uh, felt like I could really help them. So. Yeah.

Speaker B: Okay. Um, and then there was a bit of a pivot and I don't remember if test, Testing Taxi was the original of the, of the browser, you know, browser, Chrome plugin, like testing assistant type of thing or. I know you kind of always were thinking about that and during the course of this, this is when the earlier rises of AI started I think coming about and you were uh, kind of kicking the tires around more like automated roving Rover, Rover testing types of things.

Speaker A: Yeah, I built an incredible amount of code for that and boy that was, that was a lot of fun. But man, it's so sad that it's just all garbage code now. Uh, but it was, yeah, we're in the early time of ChatGPT and that sort of thing and I used to chat GPT actually quite, quite a bit to help do that roving, uh, sort of control and command, uh, sort of thing like a lot like the uh, what we have now with that, those agents doing browser stuff, um, or even the, the uh, desktop stuff. Um, so it was basically that before that was available. Yeah, just trying to kind of take testing, taxi the extension and try to go down the AI automation route because basically I realized like these people are afraid of the automation, but what if I just become the automation? There's a whole crowd of people that likes the automation so maybe I can be the simple automation for people who don't know how to code. And there definitely was other products in that category. So there, there did seem to be something there. And looking back, like I probably could have made something of that if I really just went at it and only did that and tried to get big. But yeah, that's not really the kind of market I'd like to be in. I don't want to be in, in uh, you know, hyper growth startup land. I'd want to do something that I can, can manage myself.

Speaker B: Right. Yeah, like there could have potentially been an opportunity but it also would have been like you, you would have to go, have to go all in on it in terms of your time and whatnot. Like it could have been, oh hey, I'm, you know, I'm starting out this path and now maybe if we did see the path of like more of these agentic brow thing things and it's like let me make an, you know, open source type of thing and, and like all of a sudden get, get more attraction in those areas and maybe it's like, or you know, it becomes the mongodb of uh, of this like people that want to do, you know, build their own or you know, fork off of this or that type of thing and you would get, you know, and then you have a AI company walks along and be like, hey can I just sponsor this or can I buy the project and buy you essentially. Right? There could have been you know, in different, you know, different thing but again the risk profile is different. Right? It's like, yeah, it's not why you built it. You don't want to be like, you're not a, uh, 22 year old with something to prove and like, just like, I just want to code my. Code my mark on the world. You might want that, but it's not. You don't have the time to do that stuff.

Speaker A: No. And I want to, I want to be able to serve and tend my little garden of people. I don't want to make a mass market or something like that because I think if we've, if we've seen with the uh, like even playwright AI Player has some AI stuff and I kind of saw a bit of that coming already at that point before it was out. And same with like the, the model changes and stuff like that. There was just such large step changes that I realized really quickly I'm, I was building on top of things that were moving far faster than I was willing to keep up with. Like I would have if I, if I had raised money and hired, you know, 50 people, then I probably could have made a go of that. But that was fun. That was fun.

Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. And then that leads us to where we are today. Right, right.

Speaker A: And then that's on to the uh, tool for the support people in manufacturing. So yeah, just done a lot of research and uh, outreach for that. And uh, no code.

Speaker B: No code. Concentrated much more on the marketing and sales side and getting to customers before you even coded it. Which I think was probably, if anything a knee jerk reaction to probably way too much code on testing Taxi.

Speaker A: Yeah. And I think it's the right call. I think you had good advice on that. Just if I think through like that's always been. My pitfall is like, I can code like incredible things but I can't market it to save my life. And I think that's. Yeah, that's the bottleneck. And so I think I got to figure that out. And it was good too because I think there wasn't strong enough uptick on, on that, that uh, offering yet. I think maybe with some massaging maybe there would be something there. But yeah, it's not, it's not ready for that yet.

Speaker B: I also probably just. It was it one. One of the things I've been thinking about too, um, that I wrote down to that actually talk about on one of these episodes, which is sort of like, I like this, I like this general idea of uh, is it something on someone's like to do list? Um. Right. Like maybe it's not. Not on the top of the list or any one of those is great. But like if it's on the list, but it's just like, especially if it's one that's maybe things are on the list that they're going to do themselves. But if it's something on the list that's just like, I know I should be doing this. I know this can be better. Like, so there is a, there's already a, like you don't have to convince them that this is a good thing, but now all of a sudden you serve it up on a platter, right? It's just like, oh, I know, eating protein is good for me, right? Like, but then all of a sudden you come in and being like, okay, you know, you don't have to cook it, you don't have to. It's like, it's like right here. I know it's in the bottom of your list. Maybe you're not eating enough protein every day. But if I put in front of you and make it look like your favorite food and I can, you know, with that, and it's like, yeah, you don't have to convince them over the hump that that's a good thing. Right? The difference between that and being like, oh, I wish this was easier, but that, wish that was easier. It's sort of a, it's, it's a tough phallus. It's like it's a trap potentially. Because it could be good, but it could also just be like, oh, now that, like we said with the hardware thing, like, mhm. Oh, now that it is like actually do I even really need it? Like it was kind of more of an idea and someone just kind of ran with my idea. But they validate. And then actually once I started using it, I'm like, yeah, I don't even use it that much. It just sits here on the desk.

Speaker A: Yeah, but I think you're right though that what should I, what should I be doing? Or what do I know I should be doing? I think those are, that be a really good way to find ideas. Like, I think next time if I need to find more ideas, I, I would like to think that I would go to managers and just ask them that kind of question. Um, and just try and group things together. Because I think I found like I, I've often tried to search for ideas by, well, like is there some insight here or is there some new tech here or there? And I think there's probably something to that. But I think where really you get the. Someone says take my money is when you're talking to someone with the ability to pay and they have a problem that you can solve. And so I think you go to them first, I think might be a, uh, faster way.

Speaker B: Right. And then you're using technology and other ways to creatively make yourself more distinct than.

Speaker A: For sure, yeah.

Speaker B: Like the existing, you know, solution. So it's like to a manager it might be like, oh, yeah, my team needs more training and whatever and you know, maybe something as simple as, uh, that and, and, and you know, training in AI and stuff like. But I haven't had time to look, I know I should be doing it, but if you walked in the door and it's like, hey, I could train your team. I can, you know, I can come and do an on site and I can do this. I have this method and I have this thing and it's just like, oh, yeah, like I've been mean. I just haven't even had time to search. I don't even know where to search yet. And you just walked into the front door with that on a platter and all of a sudden it's like, yeah, okay, yeah.

Speaker A: You wouldn't believe how many times my consulting clients ask me for things that I say, like, there's a really good solution for that already and it exists right over here. Let me tell you about it. And so if you, yeah, if you come across one of those that is, you know, not popular enough and you just out market them, like, you totally could do that.

Speaker B: Okay, so go ahead onto other lessons maybe. Um, so I think we've talked a bit, a few about, uh, we've talked about a few of them already. But you know, one of the ones I had was of course that. No exact formula. So that was one of those we chatted about. So how about you? What are, what are some, some of the key lessons?

Speaker A: Yeah, so I think my first one is, uh, maybe the most relevant, like from my last, the most recent project kind of brought it out and we've talked about this a bunch already on this episode of just that. Talking to people, I think is the hard part. And that's, I think, where the rubber meets the road. Like it's people that are going to buy the thing. It's not landing pages necessarily, like the landing pages are helpful, but I think, you know, start with the people and focus on them and what they talk about and care about. And then you can, you know, build up the marketing assets afterwards or even build up the product and the feature set. I think that I've often tried to live in my little silo and make ideas about it and not, uh, get out there and really see what people have to say about things.

Speaker B: Yeah, I like that. It's like kind of starting at the one on one before you get to one to many or one to some. Right. And how can you really lean into that? And I think one of the other ones that I kind of was at least trying to coach you on before, which is like, don't, don't like, do the one on ones and then just wait for. You're basically waiting for enough signal to just jump to the next one. And it's like, that might be there, but let's hold on a little longer. Let's hold on to do a few more do, do do more in that. In that phase and maybe even in the. The next one to one to some. Um, and it's just like, okay, how long can you hold here before, like, you know, just. You're. Instead of just going to the grocery store hungry type of analogy, it's just like, I'm just gonna eat the thing and I'm done. It's like, no, no, no, let's. The whole idea is to gain more confidence in this phase or in this area. And what you need is more sample within that and not just be in a rush to say first is the first one. It's like, I think we used that analogy in the past, like dating versus, like, this is the first person likes me back, I'm gonna marry them. It's like, yeah, right. Hold on. Yes, that can be the end game. But also, let's be sure about that, right?

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. And I think that really gets to like, for myself. I just, I. I don't tend towards reaching out to people. That's. That's a hard thing for me. And I think, yeah, you just have to put in the time and realize that it's a process and be okay with that. I think that's. I think I've learned a lot with that.

Speaker B: Let's see.

Speaker A: Did you have more?

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, other ones were probably on this. It goes back to the. One of the source reasons of the. The podcast muscle. Right. So I don't know if I've. If I do have less ums and ahs and things like that, but with the prevalence of software like this, you can easily click a button and eliminate like those types of things for podcasting. So.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, but I do feel like it has helped me think about content and structure and also that there's a lot in between. Even if you come into an episode like this with three bullet points and just having A nice fluid conversation about it. It doesn't mean you have to. You know, I don't think we were ever of the thinking we needed to script everything. Mhm. But I think it made me think a lot about Evergreen like content creation. Right. So we had a nice through line with what we're talking about and it's kind of natural, as we've talked about this, that through line is, is fading. Right. And it doesn't mean it can't come back. It just means it's, it's. It's not and it's not there. We change formats to kind of realign on some things over the course of the years. Right. Which, which took more energy and time. But I think I learned a lot about that. Which made definitely affects how I think about like marketing content, how I think about just, just uh, like organizing thoughts with a through line and things like that.

Speaker A: Yeah, no, I think you're right. And it's been really nice to get used to public speaking in a way when you're on here. You know, you feel a little bit under the microscope and Yeah. I think just trying to think through how we present our thoughts on the fly. Uh, which is kind of interesting. I listen. I remember with the first couple episodes listening to myself as a way to try and learn and it's so painful to listen to yourself talk and like the things you say.

Speaker B: I still can't do that or I still have not. Like I know people can and I know it's probably not a bad practice also. Honestly. Yeah. Now with the AI stuff, probably could just plug in the transcripts and just pull more out of the things and ask it, ask it critiques versus doing your own, uh, your own self evaluation. Which can be challenging and time consuming.

Speaker A: Yeah. But I think hearing the tone and stuff can be helpful. Like I only did it for the first, I think 10 episodes or something like that.

Speaker B: But yeah.

Speaker A: Yeah. That has been a journey. I had another lesson which was to do things that are both fun and a good business idea because I think there were some where I, I just did things that were fun and yeah. You know, there was maybe a rough business idea there, but mostly I just wanted to code the idea. I thought it was so cool. And the other being like just to. Just to go for the business idea and kind of have no heart in it. And I think that having the mix of those is really important just to just for sustainability. Right. Like if there's no business idea there, it's going to fizzle out anyways because I don't have infinite free time. But also if it's not fun, then it's, it's also, yeah, kind of. It drains you. It's not something that's life giving. And so I think that, uh, that was a good learning for me because

Speaker B: I do, I do remember prompting you before. I think m. Before. I don't know if it was before product sonar or I think it. I was in between sonar and the product or the, the hardware scanning one and the testing taxi one. There's probably an episode in there somewhere that has it. But it was, it was along those lines of like, well, what do you enjoy doing? Because I even, I even was like, aren't you basically getting tired of coding and not, um, like, because that would bother me. And at that point for me I was like, yeah, I'm doing more of like, what can I pre. Validate ahead? And you're like, I don't mind. It doesn't bother me. Like at that point in time, I remember you're distinctly just like, yeah, it doesn't bother me to waste. Waste energy. And it's just, you know, it would be throwaway. But then after that last run it was like, okay, yeah, maybe, maybe now and like, uh, amount of time and energy and before it was probably like, almost like this seems really cool and can I create an excuse to do it that feels legitimate, that maybe has an end business result?

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: But I think you're right. And trying to like hold the line on and maybe not be in a rush and trying to find that, that in between.

Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. And yeah, sometimes it takes a little bit of time to learn these things. Do you have another one?

Speaker B: Uh, I mean, it goes down to another thematic one we've talked about, but it was. I wrote down, um, alignment importance similar, um, but it kind of go. Goes throughout and again finding that like, you know what you want to spend your time on and if you can, if you can double up, triple up, like on, um, different things that, that give you that energy and also accomplish these, these things. Right. I think those can be. Those can be really powerful. And. Which also alludes to kind of the, as we've talked about the, the hiatus we're going on and where we're really no longer kind of in that alignment phase with each other. And that's okay, right? Like that's, that's just part of what we're doing. Right. Like, I think my stuff was being fed by your energy of trying to search for SaaS. Right. Because I could pop on and tell you what I think and be a coach and not have any real skin in the game, but just kind of be solicited advice, but also just like help, try, try to best help you and, and kind of uh, push back on you and kind of, you know, coach. I do enjoy, you know, coaching and helping people as well that, that want to be, you know, helped and coached.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So with your sort of like fading of that also kind of. Obviously I always have other, other things going on, but I, I needed very little prep and for you as well, because that was where your energy was going. So we had good alignment for a long time on that.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Maybe it'll come back or who knows?

Speaker A: Oh, and I have to say, Josh, I really, I really appreciate that like the, the amount of time you've, you've put into coaching me and um, just the. Yeah, your willingness to, to share your experience and stuff like that, that's meant a lot to me over the years and um. Yeah, I can't thank you enough for that and I'm just really, really grateful for that.

Speaker B: All right, well, I've gotten a lot out of it as well, so.

Speaker A: Good.

Speaker B: Uh, yeah, and we still haven't met in person. We've almost done it a couple times with different.

Speaker A: Well, next, next summer I am m coming to Virginia. So are you sure we can. I'm sure we can arrange something.

Speaker B: Yeah, definitely. That'll be cool. All right. Any others? Hey, this is about our normal wrap up time. So uh, anything else you want to say before we go on hiatus?

Speaker A: I think I've said it all. You?

Speaker B: Uh, no, I think I've said it all and repeated myself throughout many episodes.

Speaker A: Some of us need the repetition, so we get it. There you go.

Speaker B: So anyway, so yeah, we'll uh, hope to talk to you all another day and I don't know, you don't actually have to kill us off your feed. We might pop in here maybe, who knows, but maybe not. No promises, but, uh, Nate and I are definitely still keep plenty of contact with each other, so no worries on that.

Speaker A: Yeah. Well, so long for now.

Speaker B: All right, so long for now.

Speaker A: Hey, thanks for joining us today. If you want to chat with us, we're on Twitter. I'm NateBosher and Josh Islogic. If you're a new listener, uh, check out some of our Most popular episodes. Episode 52, 7 years to 22,rr and zombie startups or episode 30. Review sites are a necessary evil and hacks to get around them. Thanks again.