Welcome back everybody. Another episode of Bootstrapped Web is Friday, the Sun is out, it's the last week of school, next week's lesson, last week of school for our kids. It's almost a week and a half left for my kids. We're garing up and they'll be hanging around here for a week doing nothing and then they've got a couple weeks of day camp for our trip. Cool, cool, cool. Yeah, we're looking forward to that. So short week this week, felt very shudder, I didn't know what day was.
The entire week. Yeah, I forgot that Monday was, so yeah, like Tuesday on, everything was off by a day. Yes, but let's talk about what we got done, what are we working on, what are we doing with ourselves here? First, how's your back brother? Dude, going on. Yeah, I've been having just tremendous pain in the lower back for the last, it's going on like six or seven weeks now and so now I'm like taking action and actually learning about this. So your tweet too. But the chair, like you're
right to, oh yeah, yeah, change things. So I went to the doctor and everything and so now I'm going to physical therapy a couple times a week. You know, here's the thing that I want to talk about. And some of this is probably going to sound like super obvious, like, yeah, yeah, we know all that. But I feel like it needs to be said because like at least for me personally, I needed to be educated a little bit and and reminded of why certain
physical things are important. I'm in, I'm 41 years old, right? And I've been in, I've been in pretty, like just very good health, like most of my adult life and physical health. I've been totally fine. And even in the past, I'd say year and a half, two years, I started to get really healthy. I lost a bunch of weight and got in shape and I was working out regularly for a year. And then still this year, I started to get like physical issue after physical
issue. Some sickness, but then mostly like, like just body pains. And then I've last seven weeks or so I've had this back pain. Usually these these back spasms happen and then they go away after two, three days, I pull a muscle here, I stretch, you know, it's like getting old, like, whatever, like that. Starting to get used to that at this age. But this just set in and it and it did not leave. And then it just kept getting worse and worse. And
I'm like, what the hell is going on? And look, it's like stupid, obvious, but I feel like we need to talk about it. I sit in a chair so many hours every single day for my adult life, that takes a huge toll on our bodies. I know that most people listening do the same.
Yeah, we have like standing desks and stuff. And even if we do, you know, exercise routines like like I've been doing and I've played sports and stuff like that, still like, you know, five, six, seven hours a day sitting at a desk or even standing for multiple hours in the same spot, that takes a huge toll on our back and body, especially if you're transitioning from like your thirties into your forties. Like no matter, no matter how fit you are, that
kind of occupation that this career takes a toll on your body, you know. And for me, it's sort of like set in very quickly. Like my back was pretty cool. And then literally like one week it started hurting and then it just didn't stop hurting, you know. So now you're learning about it and taking some action. So the thing that I learned is, and again, this is one of those things that probably a lot of people are like, yeah, we know that. I didn't really know this. How can you
ignore it until you can't? Yeah, but I didn't know. I actually didn't know the connection between like the hamstrings and your back. Okay. When I have, when I have back pains, I'm not thinking about like my hamstrings and my legs, but it is actually lack of flexibility in the legs and the hamstrings and the glutes that like impacts pain in your lower back. And that's a direct, that is an absolute direct result from like sitting in a chair for
hours a day for years on end, you know. Because like, because when, because it results in those in your hamstrings, just becoming weak and inflexible. And then your back over compensates for that whenever you're like getting up or whenever you're doing things. Yeah. So I'm unaware of anything that you're talking about. So, so, you know, I've always
done like light stretches. I've done a bit of yoga here and there more as like an exercise thing and just to prevent injury when it comes to sports and when it comes to, you know, working out. But I never thought about the importance of like doing like deep dedicated stretching on a regular basis as a as a back pain prevention thing. So, so now like with the PT and I'm reading books about it and YouTube and like, like now like the, the focus
of my daily workouts is like stretching and especially hamstring stretching. And just in after a couple of days of this, like I'm already noticing an improvement in the back pain. So it's, it's kind of amazing. It's kind of amazing to me like how, just even just a few days of this, it's having an impact and like how, how much like I just wasn't educated on like the connection between the legs and the back and sitting all the time.
So, I feel like I needed to do like a public service announcement in this. Yeah, I know that so many of us are probably around our age and we're sitting so much like we got to be we got to be up on this. So I started googling and I stumbled into this Tim Ferris video from years ago and then he referenced this guy, this like Polish weightlifting champion Jay. Oh, yeah. Greg Orrick, he has a book that I just ordered. I started reading called
The Happy Body. And it's like this like textbook on like on stretching routines and flexibility and posture and strength training. And so I'm, I'm really getting into this and kind of taking it seriously and learning a lot. And it's I mean, I really, I recommend this thing called The Happy Body. You should check it out. And yeah. So there you go. Very interesting. Makes me want a new chair, first of all. And yet to try to stay, stay
aware of the sitting issue. I have a standing desk. When I worked in an office full of people, I would go at one point I went like a good 12 months without a chair at all. Just the entire time. And I loved it. Working from home, I find myself sitting almost all. Yeah. Maybe once a week, I'll remember, Hey, let me stand up. Let me, you know, like put on some music or something, but not as much. I do take a good 30 minute walk almost every
day. So that's helpful. Same here. I keep the workout. But man, it's that's a good thing to keep mind. I always keep in mind my, my grandfather two things. First, it lived to 106. So whatever he did worked. Yeah. It comes to health. And when you would ask him, wow, 100 six. My thoughts are really pretty wild. Like 1909 to 2015. Like incredible. No joke. Not my jeans. Unfortunately, he adopted my dad. Okay. My jeans are like a cancer and heart
attack. Right. Same here. Yep. But number one, vegetarian his entire life. Oh, yeah. His entire life, the whole thing. He did eat eggs. I think that was like his hack around it. Just horrible. And secondly, he was outdoors. He was like, I was outdoors for almost my entire life. Working outdoors, physical work in the sun. Just eating well, just healthy, just a healthy, active life. And we are so privileged to do what we do for living. But
it is not an active life. Yeah. It's not. Yeah. My brother owns a farm. Okay. And he, he's like ripped because he's like out his whole life. Like he's he's working outside, like hard labor, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. Well, look, we got to we got to get to work and we got to retire and we got to get outside. That's right. That's right. That's right. I, you know, I, I loved reading about my, my backyard
office and I like your backyard office. It looks nice. I love my backyard. We've got a great spot back here. And, and so every year, this time of year, like from spring through the summer, I spend most mornings out there working, working out there. But I've had a, you know, we have like these lounge chairs that I usually sit on. But that was just wreaking havoc on my back, especially this year. So, so I invested in some, a new chair that I
could use at the, at the table outside. And then like I, I lifted up the, the MacBook. So it's like eye level and rigged up this whole like keyboard setup. And yeah, got to make it work. Cool. I like it. We are about to, you know, get a table for our new deck. So I'm a might, I might follow your lead and see if I can get a little setup out there. Nice. Oh, all right. Well, busy week. Yes, sir. Yeah. I, you know, I'm, I'm still
getting used to this. There's a lot of context switching between like consulting work and product work. But I, I sort of like it in a way. I could talk a bit about like the, I've been thinking this week about like consulting as a bootstrapping strategy. And, but that's one thing on my mind. And then I've got like this clarity flow sprint that's starting to take shape. Some, some things I'm working on there. What, what, what, what do you got going
on over there? So we are getting pretty close to publishing this website or our domain drama has ended. Hallelujah. Ascore.com. I hope I never interact with your service ever again. It was like it did become comical at one point. It was literally every touch point. Every touch form was like that doesn't make any sense. How am I supposed to know what to do from here? And then the last, the last straw, the last few straws was at some point.
I just get an email saying your transaction is closed. Like, okay. Well, uh, we don't close to you mean, yeah, what does close mean? You mean you sent our money over to the seller, but we don't have the domain. And they're like, Oh, well, now that we have the domain, the, the, you know, transactions close, my guys, you are fundamentally misunderstanding. Why are you sure service? I don't want to give the money until I have the asset. So this is
not how it works. Once they have the asset, then they send the money. Okay. Fine. I'm, I'm learning along the way. So then I say, okay, transfer the domain. I'm like, we can't. It's locked at go daddy. Guys, so then we get killing me. Kill me. Kill me. Kill me. Kill the domain. I know people get sick. This is kind of funny. We finally get the domain. It's, it's moved over to our, you know, our registrar, halluia. We go to set up Gmail accounts, you
know, G suite. Like you can't, there's already a G suite attached to it. Like go off. Oh my God. But then we got it done. And now we have, we have new emails. And we have the domain that we want. And we're almost ready to publish the site. So that's good. And yeah, this, so this week was, was copywriting and trying to identify the benefits and the features that we want to put out there. I had a bit of a tricky situation. Maybe I should just
talk about this. It was an uncomfortable situation overall. And maybe, maybe sharing it is helpful. Let's hear it. So we have, we have a design team that we work with that are awesome. And the design that we were working on, I thought was good. But it was missing this, this added element of that, that one of the designers who was on vacation, he, he just brings that little extra touch of, of style that, that's his own that I personally
really like. And I got into this very strange situation. That design was on vacation. And I didn't know how to, how to approach this. You know, it's uncomfortable. They're both great. We've worked with them for literally years and years. And I didn't know how to say, can, can, can we get him to just like put an eye on this, you know, and just like bring it up that, that, that, that, give it the, give it the magic sauce. Yes. And what
I decided was that this is a professional setting. And I need to be able to speak my mind regardless of the personal. And I just said, I'm sorry if this is offensive. But I, I want to go that next level to bring in his style that I personally really like. And I hope I didn't do much damage to the relationship. But I felt like I would regret not saying it. Yeah. You're kind of tricky, right? It's like, he's like, freelancers that you love
to work with. I mean, they work with our team. They worked. They're having to work this a lot. We dealt with this a lot at audience. We had 20 writers on staff. And, and, and we would, you know, it got to be really tricky. You want, so we would assign a writer to each client. And that would be like their dedicated writer. Okay. But eventually that writer like moves on leaves audience. And then we have to like reassign another or the writers take
a vacation. We have to assign someone else. Right. And, and then, and then we would get into like issues where like the client would like want to hand pick their writer from our team. Or they don't like the, the new one that was assigned. But like we, we have to manage writers availability and, and all this different stuff. And like, that was a really, really tricky situation. And then, and then yeah, we, all the time we would deal with feedback. Like,
I just don't like it. Like, yeah, it's correct. But I don't like it. Make it better. You know, yes, which is not, you know, that's a difficult feedback to turn useful. But I think the combination of what the first designer did to get the site to where it is. And then, then the other one to come in and just get that little extra bit of, of styling. I think I'm going to be very happy about. I'm already really happy. Yesterday was the first day that
he worked on it. And now I think it's kind of where it needs to be. You know, the, the only way to describe it is that like first, like split second impression before you even read the words on the page, just looking at it. Because you, you showed me the previous version. And I looked at it and it was like, yeah, it's clean. It, it does the job. It, it, it, it communicates what you need to communicate. It's not terrible. I was, so that was
okay. And then to this morning, you, you just sent me a, a small screen job of, of the hero. And I was like, Oh, yep. That's like, it was like instant like, Oh, this is so much better. Yes. It's funny. It's a funny combination. Maybe, maybe in some ways, the process worked out in an ideal way because the first designer had to start with a blank page. And that,
that's really, really hard. Yeah. And the other one came in and was like, Oh, let me take all of this existing content with the structure, with the hero and then the feature section and the middle thing. And, and then let me just basically focus entirely on how do I just like make this look cooler, basically, without having to think through, does this make sense here? What do we need to do if you want to do a CTA at the bottom? What does that mean?
Yeah. So hopefully it just worked out the right way. I'm happy I did it. It's, I think it is always easier for anyone working on anything to edit an existing document than to start with a blank page. Yes. And, you know, I get into this a little bit in my consulting work. I find that, you know, upfront, we talk about like the scope of what we're going to work on. It's typically a UI interface. I'm building something out with talent and
an HTML and everything. And, you know, I'll list out like what, what I'm going to be working on and like the scope more for like from the proposal standpoint. Like this is what I'm building and these things I'm not building. It's not included, right? So as long as we're clear on that, I don't want to spend too much time like just talking about what I'm going
to build theoretically and describing this and this and that feature. It's just so much faster and easier for me to like, let me build out version one and get in front of you and then we can pick it apart. And that's just a much more efficient, efficient workflow. You know, the sooner you can get a version one on the page, the better it is for everyone I think. Yeah. I mean, I do the same thing. You know, one of my employees basically knows
my style now. And I'll say one of the most important parts of the week was coming up with our, our CTA and our process for launch, right? The product isn't ready to take people on, especially not in a self-serve way. But we want to launch the website. You know, one should not wait up for the other. So we have to think through, well, okay, what do we do in it? You know, we're going to do a wait list. That's like our, so it's like, do you
call it an early access? You call it a wait list. And then we want to do the right thing, which is to sell the benefits of the wait list or the early access. So what I said was Sam, just get it, let's just get a document together and just list out 10 benefits of early access programs. And then then we have a call. We have a conversation about that. And that is infinitely easier than looking at a blank document together and saying, so
what are the benefits of an early access? Right? Yeah. If you have someone on your team go and spend an hour basically looking around, I mean, we found this great article with Heat and Shaw about early access program. You know, just kind of do the research basically. And then come to the manager or the person to level up and say instead of what should we do about this, it's, here's a document here. Here's an hour's worth of work and ideas.
Now let's get some feedback and get the conversation going. Hi, I'm trying to think, you know, because I know you're, you're thinking through what is, what are you doing for early access? Mm hmm. I'm trying to think about how I think about this today. I think there's a lot of things that we just see so many other startups do that like everyone just does like, all the other, I guess this is what all SaaS startups do for this or that. Yeah. It's like,
I used to best practice this. You know, and I'm finding a time and time again that like so much of that is like, this, that doesn't apply to most SaaS. And for some reason, everyone seems to think that's the way to do it. And I think that this applies to so many different categories, whether it's SEO or page design or product design or onboarding whatever it might be. Mm hmm. Yeah. I think this is free trials. Yeah. All these, all these
different things. Yeah. People just want to know what I'm like. What am I supposed to do? Yeah. People, what am I, what is that company do? Let's just do that. You know. So with early access, I think I kind of think that like it, it works to call it early access and to, and to promote the benefits of joining the wait list. Mm hmm. Only if, only if the product is designed to be like, let's build up some hype and some viral and shareability of like
this product existing. Like if you want this to like go do really well on product hunt. And like if there's going to be lots of us kind of scammering to be the first one to get our hands on the betas that we can use it and then talk about it and tweet about it. That's where like early access and like wait lists. Like the, the excitement over getting in on the early access. That's, that's where there's
value there. Sure. But I think on the other hand, maybe, maybe in most cases, like for me, if I'm launch, if I'm putting myself in your shoes in this type of product that is being sold to small businesses who probably aren't tweeting about product very much, then then I don't really, I don't know that even labeling it early access or pre-launch
or beta or any of that is helpful. I don't think it is. I think that the, I think what I would want to be learning is what is it like to be on a sales call for this product with the target customer? How does that conversation go? How can I get myself into real, like as real as possible sales conversation? Like make them think that the product is available now, even though it's not. Just make them think that. Get on a sales call with them and
start to hear what are the, what are their requirements? What are, what are the questions they're asking? What are, what are their must have features? How, what would it look like to close this sale if this product existed? Yes. That's what I want to be learning. Okay, so now we're arguing and it makes me very happy. Okay, so here I'll, I'll, I'll, not push back, but I'll clarify my thinking on it. So there is something magical to companies
and products that are able to build that hype around a waitlist. Like I think that's magic. If you can do that, that is incredible. If you can get 10,000 people to join for your new credit card or something, I think that's amazing. I don't know how to do that. And I don't, yeah, but I also think that that kind of thing, it depends on what type of product it is.
That's right. If it's like a consumer product, like, even pro-sumer, even like, like tech people like us, like we talk about our big products, but like, here's the debit card that you, you know, creates, like, gives you Bitcoin or whatever. Okay, cool. So that's not what we're going for. So I agree with you that the goal of launching the website before the product is fully ready is to get feedback that there are ancillary benefits like testimonials
and whatever else, more social proof, that sort of thing. But I agree with you, the goal is to have a conversation with the real prospect and hear from them. So we had two choices. And really it's centered around the CTA. The CTA option one is son of a demo. Yeah, get on a call, talk to us, whatever you want to, whatever verbager using the call to action is set up a time to talk. Yep. And I agree that is the goal. Now here's, here's option
two. Option two is lower the hurdle to interaction. So setting up a demo with a calendar link and a time to talk is a pretty high hurdle. You can lower that significantly with an email field. Basically get notified when it's ready, wait list, early access, however you want to phrase it, but that's that lower hurdle action. Okay. Now the, I think the thing that convinced me to go with option two is that you're not, you're doing two things. You're
getting two benefits. The one benefit that you're getting is it's a much lower hurdle and more people are able to ostensibly a higher portion of traffic will convert because it's a lower hurdle. Just put your email address in because you're interested. The pool of people who are willing to put their email address in is large in the pool of people
who are willing to sign up for a demo. Okay. The second benefit of that, which isn't really a benefit, it's like the absence of a, of a pain is you don't rule out the ability to sign up a demo. So all we're going to do when we collect the email address, the first email that we sent to them saying you're on the way list will have a link if you want to talk. Here's a way to schedule a demo. So I think we're getting the best of both
worlds. I think the, I hear you, but I think that the challenge of that, of just the wording of it, of calling it early access, like, yeah, maybe an email is lower barrier than, like, yes, it, like just entering an email address instead of like scheduling a demo call is definitely lower barrier to entry. I agree with you there. But, but I think if you're telling people that it's an early access or, or a waiting list for a product that doesn't
exist yet, you're going to attract the wrong people. Because like, the small business owner, the actual buyer for this product, they, they, they, they, they're probably going to look at that like, that's a, that's a negative that, that, that this product is so new, that, that it's so new that, that it's early access. It's not even ready yet. I'm going to be a beta, like, small business owners don't want to be beta testers. Yes. Yes. It's, it's
really like going after early adopter tech forward. Small business. And it is the thing that I found the other thing that I found in the past by using that verbiage of like early access is, is that it does attract the, the, the earliest of early adopters. The curious. The curious. So, so it starts to attract, in your case, it will attract competitors
to just poke around and make you think that their customers when they're not. But it also brings in these people who are like, they're, maybe they're consultants to small businesses. They're white, that they want to be white label partners. Yes. And, and honestly, that's a bunch of noise. Like, yeah, you might get a good partner here and partnership here and
there. But like, for the most part, especially early on in my experience, people coming, coming into the list, participating in a survey, participating in a, quote unquote, sales call. But really, they just want to take your app and wrap it into their own thing and sell it to their own clients. That's a bunch of noise. And they're going to give you all these feature requests that your end customer doesn't really care about, you know, and they can
send you down rabbit holes. That's the, that's the thing that I would want to put caution on. Like, it, to me, it's, yeah, put just, just an email, make it like, just sign up here, you know, keep it vague. And, and then on the other side, like, you know, all right, they're, one step into the funnel. Maybe the next step is to have them get on a call. And then, right. It's like, thank you for your interest set up a time to talk type of thing. So we,
we have their email address, but it's not an account. Okay. No, fair enough. I mean, that's what I'm doing when we're done with this podcast, what we're, what we're meeting on is to finalize the CTA approach. So because the most important thing is, is, is the conversations that you get into. Yes. And, and who they're with and what you can learn about, to me, I, I just want to find out like, what does it take to sell this product? True. And what are
they care about? And what questions are they asking? How much are they willing to pay? I had a good conversation with our product manager. And she came to me and basically said, uh, is there anything that you need us to prioritize for your sales conversations? And I was like, absolutely not. Do whatever you're going to do, where, where wherever we are
on the product and engineering should have no bearing on those conversations. Those people who want to see it that early, wherever we currently are, that's what we'll show them. Yeah. And we'll get the feedback. So maybe, maybe, I mean, I, as we would be approaching those, I would be a person, those calls the same way I would like the difference between having the product ready versus not having it ready. I'm mostly going to be approaching
those calls the same way. I'm going to be asking them a lot of questions about like, what, what's, what do you need? Like, why do you need it? What are you looking for? What, what are their options have you considered? You know, um, yeah, I don't, I don't care if I don't have an admin to show them. I don't, none of that matters. It'll just change along the way over the next few weeks. And then, and then what will be better for every conversation
that we have? Absolutely. Yeah, man. All right. Well, the goal is to publish on like Tuesday, Wednesday. So I'll definitely need about it. And I will, I think you and I over the next few weeks, we're going to have, we're going to have some more debates around building public because building this in public, I see almost no benefit. Yeah. It's just to talk to potential competitors and friends on Twitter. None of the customers are going to be like, oh, look
at the height that he's building around this. Like, you know, not just another thing that sort of, I don't know where it originated, but it came up this week. There, I guess there's some sort of like Twitter, stupid Twitter debate over building public that that popped up. I saw a few people tweeting about it. What, I think I wrote one tweet that, um, for me, the thing, the thing that always bothered me about quote unquote, build in public is how
it became known as this like marketing strategy. Like to me, it's never been a marketing strategy. Like to me, building in public is just like us doing this podcast is building in public to me. Like we're just sharing this for marketing. We would tweet about it more. Yeah. Um, and to me, it's like for the fun of it and, and sharing the craft and sharing our approach
to building our businesses. And this is how I want to look to me. We are so incredibly lucky to be in an industry where so many of us are openly sharing the ins and outs of what we're working on, how we work on it, our craft, our decision process, our strategies and just being incredibly, incredibly open. Like 99% of other industries do not share
the way that we do. Um, and that to me is like building in public that it's a, it's a huge benefit that we have of just doing what we do for people sharing, you know, um, and then, you know, of course, like it gets wrapped up and like sharing revenue graphs and then that attracts eyeballs and tweets and likes and emails and then that, then I guess it does sort of turn into a marketing strategy. But to me, that's never, that's never been
the point. It's just like I, I learn from watching how other people build. And so I, and
I also just like to share stuff and get feedback on it. Um, and so like that's why, uh, that, that to me is building public, you know, um, and it always bothered me that like people like us who do build in public and share just for the hell of it because we actually enjoy doing it, uh, we get kind of wrapped into this wave of stupid BIP marketing strategy that like, and then there's like debates over whether or not you should, you should be building
in public. Like to me, like, yeah, share. Like it's helpful for all of us to just do it, you know, uh, yes, I, I'm sure I remember, you know, and then there's strategic considerations like, yeah, you don't want to share stuff that you don't want your, your, your direct competitors to see fine. But like, don't, don't not build in public because some folks on Twitter are saying like, that's the uncooled thing to do anymore, you know. Yes. I think
it was Adam Wath in that, that wrote a tweet that I felt compelled to respond to. Yeah. Um, me too. I think he responded to some other debates that were going on. Right. He was just kind of talking out into the air because the conversation was just happening out there. What he wrote was that building public was never a thing to focus on. The thing that works
is teaching because it establishes authority. Building public only works if your customers are the same people who are interested in things that you're learning to build in their products. Like, okay, if you're teaching directly to your potential customers, that directly marketing building in public authenticity and, um, yeah, like that's very direct. What I think people got carried away with was how awesome it feels to, you know, to brag when
things are going well. People give you great feedback and they love you. At least, you know, that's what they publicly say. And it feels really good. And when you tell people that it keeps growing, it does give a sense of momentum. And that people get intoxicated by and, and build in public like the, the most, the base form of it is just bragging in
public. And it generates more envy than it does authority other than, hey, they're succeeding therefore they must be good smart, you know, have the right idea of the product good, all this other stuff. That's where that's where I have recoiled over the years on the building public. I think I do too. I like, especially the ones like the posts that are just very braggie and just like you're, you're literally just saying like what your MRR
level is like, how is that helped? Right. Yeah, that's me. And, but also to me, like, that's not even to me, that's not built in public. People will call that build in public. But we've been building in public way before all that shit started. And like, that's just bragging, you know, yes, yes, yes. Okay. But like, but to me, there are plenty of folks who actually build things and share their work in public, you know, like their, their decision
process, just questioning things in public. Like, what's the best way to do this? Or what if I, what if I did this, like throwing it out there? Like, yeah, we are, we are a public industry. And like, what I, what I wrote in response to Adam was, you know, it always bothered me that that build in public became a marketing strategy. And to me, this is the thing, like, we are lucky to work in this industry that openly shares. And like, just think about
how much harder this all would be if nobody shared their work. If we were all in one of the many other industries where like literally the, think about this. Like if, if the only way to learn how to do what we do was to go to school for it, or to read a textbook, or go work in some big company where you hopefully, you know, ingest some of the experience
of others. Yeah. Think about if there were no podcasts and there were no real time people tweeting or YouTube and sharing how they are building stuff or going on interviews and sharing the story of how they built a startup. Like, think about if we were in an industry where none of that was public. I mean, yeah, of course, there's textbooks. And of course, there's like courses in industry and university classes you could take, but all that stuff
is outdated and it's super dense. And you're not going to learn. You're not going to learn how to really build stuff. You know, I like it. I like it. Yeah. But I think what you're getting at with, with your product here is, so you're, you're a little hesitant to like share the nitty gritty because you do have a hyper competitive space that you're operating in. It's pre hyper competitive. But it will be hyper competitive. It is really
counterproductive to talk too much about it publicly. Yesterday, a 16 Z has great content overall. But they have been writing up these like thesis around individual AI categories. And yesterday, they came out with their AI voice agent thesis. I was like, Oh, damn, obviously, I got to read that. And, you know, they make one of those, what are those called? Like the matrix that shows the logos of where companies live in the market. And
there's one for local services, local businesses. And it's, it's not crowded. And I know all the companies in it from all the research of the last few weeks. And nothing there is like really impressive. So I look at that. I'm like, that thing's going to get filled
up. And if you, if you read their thesis and then you look at that graphic, effectively, what their thesis says is that that specific segment is going to get crowded because it's unlikely that a very, very horizontal product is going to satisfy everyone because there are just different needs. Right. So because of that, this verticalization will proliferate for a while. And, you know, that that category in particular has a ton of verticals. If
you just think of every type of local business, there are many individual types. So I look at that and I'm going to shut my mouth. And if things are, if you don't hear much from me, and I stop doing this podcast, I mean, things are going really well. Yeah. Yeah. I'm actually just looking at the graphic now. So yeah, see like the interview you, you know, if things boom, I'll just just be, you know, me asking a lot of questions.
I feel like you're, I feel like your phase of the product startup thing is like more exciting than the mine right now. Well, you know, I haven't hit reality yet. I'm selling in the planning phases. Yeah. But I think this also goes back to what we were just talking about
with like the, with the early access stuff, right? Like, like, building public is not necessarily going to, again, if you're thinking about it like a marketing strategy, it's not the way to get in front of your end customers who are going to be the ideal candidates for phone calls, you know, yes. That's right. And I, what I really like about that is it definitely takes out any like, any need for like the founder being out there and like talking
about it all the time. Like this, just, it's just not. Yeah. Yes. I can see events and in-person events and other things and, you know, maybe podcasts and that type of thing, but it's just not not a big element of it. It's like how effective is your funnel is really what it sounds like? How effective is your distribution, your partnership, your visibility, your SEO, your, you know, your Instagram ads? Like, that's, that's everything. Yeah. Yeah,
for sure. What do you got going on? Um, I've got, I've got, you know, I'm spending a good at least half of my week. Now, every week working with, uh, I, I take on about two clients at a time where I'm doing, um, you know, UI work on, on their SaaS businesses. And, um, I've been doing this for several months now. And, uh, you know, so I'm like reintroducing the balance between consulting and working on my products business. I went many years
there, like, like a lot of years where I was not doing any consulting. And now I'm sort of like cycling back to it. I've talked about that. Um, so, you know, I, I'm in this split, uh, split mindset or split, uh, like, like logistically every week, I'm literally splitting my time. A few days a week, I'm focused on these client projects that are not my own businesses
projects. And then the other days of the week, I'm, you know, turning, turning my focus back to clarity flow, um, or I'm hacking on some, some seeds of other new product ideas. And I'm starting to really reflect on like, um, you know, you were just talking about like the, the landscape of, of like, you know, AI products. And I'm, I'm thinking about
like the landscape of like startup, uh, approaches, right? Okay. And I feel like there's been, at least in my view, from, from, from where I sit or in my feeds or whatever, we've sort of gotten away from what it means to be a true bootstrapper, self-funded and consulting and actually, like actively doing products businesses while doing consulting work with clients.
I think that there are so, so, so many people who are in that boat, but there's, but there are not a lot of people like talking about the strategic approach to balancing the two. Okay. Um, why? Okay. So like, most people think of consulting is like, look, that's just a way to pay the bills. That's all right. That's all it is. That's all it's good for. That's less than. And the goal is really this efficient process. Yeah. But there's also,
but there's also like, I, I did it. I put out a tweet this week because I was thinking about it. Like, it's not, like, yeah, of course, consulting, it, it's, it helps with cashflow. It helps pay the bills, of course. But there are other benefits to it. Um, all right. Number one is, uh, you're putting in more reps. So in my, in my case, I do UI product work
on other SaaS products. And so that's literally putting in more and more reps, like my craft of designing interfaces and user experience and working with talent and Alpine JS and stimulus and rails. Um, uh, I'm, I'm getting exposure to more and more projects. And in, in my case, when I do consulting work, I'm still starting these projects fresh, like I, I'm giving
them like a new fresh components library that they can then take back to their teams. Um, so I, again and again, now I'm starting up fresh code bases and I'm building the same things over and over again, like my, my dropdowns component, my models component, my, um, stimulus controller for this, my stimulus controller for that, my Alpine component for this, the way that I, you know, style with, with talent, like these, so I'm using the same patterns
over and over again. Um, but every time I'm doing it a little bit better, I'm learning more, you know, better tricks. I'm improving my design chops. So like, it's like sharpening the tools. I'm sharpening, but I'm also literally building things or taking things that I've built in the past and sharpening those, like the components. And these are literally
things that I can take right back into my own products. You know, um, not only my skills, but like literally coded components that I can, that I can use to speed up and improve my product workflow. I mean, the other thing about it is that like, it, it, it freshens my approach. So like, if I'm working with a client and in most cases, I'm, I'm new to,
like the project is new to me. So, so it has that new project energy. It has like, like, yeah, I want to really dig in and do a good job here because I, I, I create a, like, I really care about the craft of designing a really great user experience and, and interface. And, and it's even super refreshing for me to do that on somebody else's product, rather than the one that I've been grinding on for years. Like I start to lose that, that new
project energy in, in my own project. So getting to do that on a, on a new project kind of it's, you know, the sports analogy, like, like getting it, and like the NBA playoffs, like you, you step up your game a little bit because it matters more. It's that same sort of feeling, right? Like, like, uh, it's got to be perfect. It's got to be like, I don't
know. So, so it's like a chance to sharpen all the things, sharpen the components because I have that new energy and then I can take what I've sharpened and bring it back into my own products. So like, literally one, one of the things that I spend about, like, about one day a week right now, I talked about how I'm starting to, um, explore new product ideas. I did sort of pause the actual starting of new products, but I'm still laying the ground
work for starting new products in the near future. Um, and I'm talking about like small seeds of ideas. Mm hmm. But part of the reason why starting up a new product is such a huge lift is because there's so much other shit that you got to do besides actually designing
the product. It's like, for me, it's like, you know, rails new, right? It's, you're, you're starting up a new app and you're laying out all the groundwork and all the, all the scaffolding of, of everything that you need, the layouts, the authentication, the, all of it, like the admin dashboard mostly figured out at least, you know, so there are a few months. Now it's a few days. Well, it's not exactly that. Of course, there are all these like
popular starter app rainworks that you can just buy out the shelf. And I've used a bunch of them in the past. And what I found is that they end up, even, even as nice as many of them are, they end up adding a lot more bloat to your, to your app than you want. In the end of having to rip a lot of stuff out and recode things and it becomes slower and, and it's actually not ideal to, to me, in my experience, it's actually better to
build everything from scratch, put together my preferred components for each thing. Um, and, and I know exactly what I put in there. I know exactly what I chose not to put in there. And I know how everything works. I can customize everything the way that I want. But every time I start a new app, I'm still doing all that again. So, so now I've, I've started to build out my own starter app framework. Okay. I was going to say at some point,
you, you kind of get to a place where you're better off using your stuff. Yeah. And in the past few years, having, when I was focused only on a single app, you know, clarity flow, it, it did not make sense for me to build out my own starter framework because I was only working on one app. I wasn't doing lots of client projects. I wasn't trying lots of seeds of new ideas. But now that I've, I've done several new Rails apps just in the
last few months for, for clients. Um, and I'm building a lot of these same components again. So, so now I'm like, look, I can, I should be, uh, building and maintaining my own starter framework, pulling the best pieces from all these different projects. And this, and then it's like, you know, taking, taking that and, and so now any future client
projects I do, I'm, I literally like, cut my time in half. That's, that's optimal. And I can still give, uh, incredible value to clients because it's like the best of the best is, is there. Um, and I'm building out my own framework that like, I've got several product ideas, little tiny tools that, um, that I even started building here in there
because I, I just need them for my own use. But now I can go right to building the tool, the feature with my framework already figured out, you know, um, that's kind of exciting. But it's, you know, just like the last point on this though, like, like, this is about like strategically using consulting as a bootstrapper is, it gives me the freedom to take
my time. Like, I'm not on a timeline. I can, I can take these weeks and I can spend just a day or two, like, I am actively spending like, you know, two, at least two weekdays a week, like working on my own stuff, whether it's Clarity Flow or, or a new product. Um, so, so I'm not getting completely booked up with, with client work like, you know, by design.
Yeah. Um, but I have the freedom and flexibility now financially to sustain this as long as I want to go and slow as I want to go, you know, and, and I'm not like rushing to find like a, a product or a growth strategy that's going to, that's going to nail the, the runway target by some date, you know, that's, that's the big benefit of bootstrapping and being
purely self-funded. Um, you know, and, you know, it's just something that like, I don't think that a lot of people talk about a lot of people don't, a lot of people like to hide the fact that they're consulting and they only talk about their startup or people focus so heavily on like getting funded and going all in on a single product idea and not being profitable for however long that takes. And, um, I think that's a, that's a great approach
for so many companies. Um, but for a lot of us out here, it's, you got it, you got to make it work. But I think it's important to think strategically about like, use your consulting for more than just cash, use it to actually power your products business. You can do both. It's, it's okay. And you should, you know, yeah. I like your point on, on being able to be patient because, uh, being rushed and jumping into the wrong product
idea feels like a small mistake. That's, that's gonna be a disaster. It can be, yes. You spend six months on the wrong thing. That is a disaster compared to making a small mistake. You said it, man. I mean, I've seen it myself. Um, the, these little product decisions that, and there are so many fundamental ones early on when in terms of like choosing a market, choosing the product, um, to me at this, for, from where I sit for, for me personally
now, it's, it's, it's not even about trying to find the next quote unquote startup. Like I'm not looking to start up another company. I'm, but I am interested in, um, a continuing to hack on clarity. Well, we, I've got a very active growth, uh, sprint going on there,
um, but I'm also not convinced that that's going to, uh, accelerate, uh, growth. I think it will, and incrementally, but it's, but, um, I also think I need to be open to, uh, trying little seeds of other ideas just to, just to either just build them and see where they go, um, but just to grow that grow, grow the portfolio. Cause, um, you know, so, but again, I could just take my time and wait around until something really, uh, really important
I think hits, you know, and then go for it. Yeah. Well, you're, you're convinced enough to actually commit. Oh, yes. You know, I have, if we talk about that for a second, if you think back a few months, I definitely approach this and talked about, uh, you know, we've got runway, we can run with a few ideas. And even if we, I think I remember talking
about a four month window, right? Start on day one, two months in, you have some form of an MVP, be out in the market for two months, and then evaluate should we continue or not? I have to say now that we're in it, I'm, I, I ignore that reality. I might revisit
it. Uh, but I'm, that's not how I'm thinking now. I'm committed. Uh, I want to make this work, you know, and, and, and feel optimistic about it and, and thinking longer term, I'm definitely not in the seat right now thinking, well, let's see how this goes for the next, you know, 12 weeks or something. Yeah. Every once in a while, when I jump out of my seat
and I view it more objectively, I realize, oh, we're five weeks in. We're, we're kind of directly on track for exactly that to have a product out in the market roughly eight weeks after we started. So maybe that's like the, the owner operator to, you know, seats, or two points of view. Uh, but on the day to day, my like emotional state is that of the
operator. And I'm going to make it work. I don't, I don't care about like this very objective view and unemotional like ever, I hop into that from time to time, usually around the time I do my boring tasks of let's look at the accounting, let's look at this thing. Let's make sure the, you know, the transactions are categorized properly. Let's make sure payroll is good. It's almost like when I'm in that mindset, I step out and I'm not the
emotional operator. Uh, but we're five weeks in and I'm like, I can't wait to get to market. I want to do that with a partner with this company and I'm going to do this thing. And this is my advertising plan. And we're going to do self serve. And so it is a bit of two minds, but it's 95% the emotional operator. We're going to, this is going to be amazing and huge and let's go, go, go. That's, you know, I, I definitely fall into the same thing.
I, I caught myself doing it last week. Um, I think in your case, it makes sense. We're in, we're in two very different, uh, realities, I think. But, um, but in my case, like I started down this down the path of like, like, I thought what I thought was like, I'm just kind of hacking on a, on a small idea. I'm going to, I'm going to pass it around. Then I found myself like spending all these hours designing a landing page and getting really excited
about it. Like, oh, this, this is going to be so much better. And then I thought it was going to be. And then, uh, and then I was like, wait a minute, wait a minute. I, I caught myself trying to picture that like, like I'm starting a whole new company. When, when I'm really all, all it is is an idea that could go nowhere. It could, yeah, it could be us something super small. Um, I don't know. The hardwares you need both. You need, you
need to be like, this is just a thing that you're going to throw out there. Uh, and then be delusionaly optimistic about about it working. Yeah. It is funny. You, you can't build in a cold manner saying, well, this is week two. And I'm just going to do these tasks
and then reevaluate. It doesn't, it doesn't work. You kind of have to do. I am finding that again, like, um, I think, you know, if I think about it, like again, have just having the consulting work is giving me a little bit of a, like a forcing function to slow myself down. Cause I, I, because naturally I'm exactly like you, like if I'm working on something, I'm going to go. I'm excited. You know, um, and I get like, like, like, you, like, you're
doing a few days and then you're doing something else. Like evaluating, like, as if you were a client, how would you think about it? I have obligations to the clients that have hired me to do work. And I'm always going to ship on time. I never miss that. Of course, is some, some space, some distance from the project. Yeah. Like I know literally every week. I, again, I work with, uh, two clients at a time and I know where I'm at in these
engagements. Like one, one is like a three week engagement. Another one is like an eight week. And like, I know what I need to be shipping in these time frames. And so, and then you boil that down to week by week. So, so every week. So typically right now, like Monday usually looks like a clarity flow day. I'm catching up and setting up my team for what they're working on for the week. And then like Tuesday, Wednesday into Thursday. I'm mostly focused on the
client projects. And then by mid day, Thursday, I'm like, that's when like my freedom opens up like like Thursday lunchtime into like today, Friday, and maybe bleeds into the weekend a little bit is like my free time to this week. I happen to be working mostly on clarity flow, but like this, this could be anything. This could be my, my product framework. It could be exploring new product ideas. It's doing this podcast. You know, um, and so like,
now I know that I have these like time boxes. And I can only get XYZ done in these time frames, you know, you get to think about it in advance of actually jumping in. Yeah. With clarity flow, also like the benefit is like, I've got cat and my developer working every day of the week. You know, so most of my thing is like giving them directions and making sure that they have a queue of things to do while while I'm doing other stuff.
So like productivity wise, we're still we're still shipping a lot of stuff. Nothing has really changed there. It's just, um, yeah. But right now, like my, my personal project happens to be some, some, some reworking. You know, on the marketing side with clarity flow, I'm not going to get into the details and some of the product stuff that we have coming up there. But like, um, the theme of what I'm doing is like, uh, simplifying and
just removing the bullshit. Like, uh, we do have a great product. We have a lot of customers who really love it. We're just going to present that like focus on the product and why customers like it and how you can use it. And that, that was the idea in investing in cat and customer success. Now we need to make the website really reflect that. And, um, and the whole experience. And so I'm got a little bit of energy working in that direction.
Cool. I'm curious how you do that. When I look at the site that we're building now is pretty as it is, whatever the glaring glaring omission is proof of people, you know, we don't have a product yet. So that is on the top of my list around changes to make as soon as possible. I hope that early access period few weeks, uh, because realistically, you know, realistically, we don't, we're not able to take on self serve accounts for four weeks.
So really the goal should be between now and then to add decent social proof to the site and to our ourselves, our experience, all of that. Yeah. I know we've been recording a while here, but I did want to ask you about like where you're at actually like on the product. Like, yeah, what's, do you have like a prototype that you guys are playing with internally? Like, we have a prototype that we call and talk to all the time. Uh, we
have been working on a demo video that shows the core functionality. And that is, I mean, it's, it's in video format, but it's an audio file, right? It's got some things on the screen to show, but it's an audio conversation of someone calling and talking to the AI agent. So again, I know, I don't know how much you want to share. But like, in terms of like use cases, is there like a specific like, is it like scheduling
an appointment or is it like, uh, yeah, that's the core. Yeah. The core is reading. Uh, so conversation, reading calendar availability and writing calendar appointments. Okay. Right. Right. Someone calls and says, can someone come out, uh, this week, the AI agent has to understand, okay, who is this person? What are they talking about? What business are they calling? What parameters are necessary to keep in mind for this business hours of operation,
all these other things. And then the core functionality is great. Let's set up an appointment. Thursday at 11 a.m. No, 11 a.m. doesn't work. How's 1 p.m? Okay. 1 p.m. is good. Is this the right phone number send confirmation text? Yes. Great. You're on the calendar. Do you have any more questions? Great. Thank you very much. Hang up. Right. That is the core core use case. So that is, or if you think about this as b to b to c, that's the b to c part.
That is the most important thing to show with the b to b audience that yes, this is good enough for you to be comfortable enough to send phone calls to it. Yeah. So that's part one on the product front and the part two is, well, then you need someone to create an account, get set up, get onboarded, set this thing up. We can actually answer their questions.
Yes. So right now where we are, is we focus a lot on the b to c part, like which parameters, which voice provider, which transcriber, which LLM model is really interesting effectively living out our thesis, which is the LLMs are good. They're not perfect. And there are tradeoffs. So 3.5 turbo is awesome in some ways, not so awesome in other ways. Then you go to 40 and it's great in some ways, but it's bad in the ways that, you know, turbo was
good. So all these tradeoffs and the good thing that I'm taking away from it is that we are in the position that we hope to be in, which is cheering on the LLM providers to come out with the next model and for it to be better. Remember how I talked about if you're, if you're in a position where you're worried about the next model being better because
it might kill your business, that is a bad spot to be in. We are not. We're in the right spot, which is cheering them on saying, yes, make this faster, make this better, make this more connected, make this more end to end. So now the flip side of that is we're just going to have to sit and wait for them for it to get better. There's only so much we
can do for it to get better. So you do a lot of work to make it better. And then they release it and make it better and all the work that you did to make it better just goes away. It does seem like it does seem like the basics should be good more than good enough now, like with 4.0, right? Like they're not good enough. Like the ability to take an
appointment. I mean, I could see where like in my mind, it would be like it could do the basic task of like discussing with you your availability and choosing a time on the calendar and setting the appointment and then firing that event into Google calendar or whatever. But then like, but then it's like, oh, but, but what about this weird question about my house or my business or whatever? And then I feel like it should be like like
fall back to like, oh, that's a good question. I'm going to note it down and we'll get back to you later about that and like, and just pass that on to the business. Okay. So what I want to point out is that you just did the same thing that I did also. And you glossed over, oh, well, you can talk to and create a appointment calendar appointment, good, move on. That thing. That's a lot, a lot, a lot easier said than done, right?
Yes. That thing that you just jumped over is a function call or call function. And if you're working with a regular software, you can make that almost 100% reliable. You know, I mean, when I click this button, send this API call and it gets there, right? Like that's almost 100% reliable. And these things, it's 80% reliable. 80% is not
good enough. And so if you're going to move forward, acknowledging that it's going to only be 80% reliable, you need to think about your own database and keeping things there. And then having a worker run and check to see if it matches the function call work, is it matching what we have in our database versus what they have in their appointment schedule?
And if not, then you got to run it again. So all these things that will eventually be near 100% and that's let's say 4.5 comes out or 5.0 comes out all the work that we're doing now to get the 80% figuring that out will just be washed away in a relevant and that's just the cost of due business. And this is still the thing I'm, and yeah, this is still the thing that I am looking for from AI in my use of it. Like I use, I use
co-pilot and stuff and coding and stuff like that. And I'll go to chat GPT to work out some creative work with it. But there's still like the chaining together of tasks. Like, okay, like there's a project that we need to do in clarity flow where we need to take a bunch of these doctors, like 75 docs in one system, we need to like copy and paste them into a different system. Okay. And I thought about hiring a VA for that. I think I'm going
to have cat do it. And there's a little bit of like thought work that goes like, there's a lot of copy and pasting. And then like 10% of it is like analytical thought. I think what will you do? Figure about work. And yeah, like it seems like it's a dead simple task for someone like me to do. It's easy enough to instruct a VA to do it. Why do we not have the tools yet to instruct an AI to do this? I feel like we should. But
it doesn't seem like we quite have that yet. In some ways, yes. In some ways, no, then the reliability is an issue. So there's there is a lot more to do. Right. There's no question that there's full on magic in the ability for this thing to take in very, very large amounts of information and then be basically queried in this very like thoughtful way. Right. Let me the use case that you just talked about is ridiculously good to go in there and
be like, here's my headline. Give me five more suggestions. Yeah. If it's a it's a very good question. Like single task orient like, yeah, like help me write content with this one page. And yes, you and me, like you, the AI and me, we are just focused on this one
page of content. We can do that. But even with coding, like just yesterday, I was stuck on a problem and I and I use I go back and forth between VS code and now now I'm using Ruby Mine, which both of these are supposed to have the AI have access to your entire code base theoretically. So it should theoretically be like, if I'm working in this one controller, it should be able to go find the relevant model and the definition over in these other
files. Like most of the time, it does not it's not that good, even though they advertise it to be like. And so yesterday, I had to feed it like four or five different code documents to give it the full context of the problem that I'm trying to figure out. And even then it only I gave it five documents. It only read to them. Like, you know, it's it's not it's not perfect yet when it comes like multi not multi tasking, but like taking multiple
pieces and putting them together. Yeah, I mean production apps, the stuff that we are used to paying for and the level of expectation that goes with that, there is work to be done absolutely. And so being early is a great benefit. And also I expect a decent amount of pain on the way. The other thing that I'm hoping for in like future models is like, if I like what I want to do with AI is like, I want to talk to it like I'm a creative
director. And then it's going to go and then it's a and the AI is essentially like the junior designer or the junior developer. And go through and make all and so if I'm looking at a design document and I just I just want to tell it like tighten it up in these areas and we want to make it a little bit cleaner and brighter and find ways to do that in like
20 different places throughout this document. Like go do that. And instead like it can't or like on a on a on a web page, you know, yeah, you could do like a find and replace for this string and replace it with that string. But you know, find all the all the places and tweak them in this or that way and do that in 20 different spots across this project.
Go. Yeah. Like it can't go do that. And it's not it's it's a sink in a way. It doesn't require immediate response to be perfect, which in a lot of you know, a lot of other apps that we're used to, that's what's required. What's required is immediate response right now. Give me the correct answer action function API call response, whatever. That's just the mean that's software right in the modern internet. Yeah. And this is this new thing
that's being worked out. Yeah. Yeah. It is exciting though. It's just like teen seeing the next especially how fast the next models are coming out. So yeah. That's fun. So hopefully that's how we talk next week. I have an admin that you I can create an account for and we're starting to put that the basically the front end of the admin connected to the backend and the API calls and all this other stuff along with you know, the actual B2C
component of it working reliably when you call it. Love it. Yes. That'll be a big deal when I get when I'm comfortable enough publishing a phone number that you can just call it and the amount of money we're going to spend on that. Yes. That's that that'll be a good sign. I think that's a few weeks. Yeah. Yeah. For sure, man. Cool. All right. Enjoy the Friday. Thanks everyone for listening. Have a great weekend. Later folks.