So, Hey, how's it going?
Hey Alan, how's it going? I know.
Where we call me? Need more practice at this,
yeah, I know we need to start recording automatically. I should turn that on. So it starts recording from the beginning and we don't have to worry about it. And so it captures, it, captures everything from the beginning.
So yeah, last time you were having issues with this this session re auto recording right off my recordings, at least anyway,
Yeah. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to spend any time working on this, on the product itself because I've been working on, you know,
doing the actual other
stuff. Yeah. So actually, that's one of the things I want to talk to you about today. So yeah, one of the things that I wanted to talk to you about is this idea that I have to force myself to spend more time working on marketing, you know, related items. So,
Yes.
so I'm thinking about splitting my time somehow in, half the time working on the product itself, and half the time working on marketing related stuff.
Yeah. I know I know the feeling well, it's, it's really difficult to balance these, right. Because it's a, you think, well, I can't get my marketing stuff done until I've sorted this for the product, because then it's not right. Or it's changing. And then when you spend too much time on the marketing side, you're like, oh my God, the product hasn't changed in two weeks. So you feel like, yeah, it's, it's a tricky balance to get
yeah, yeah, exactly.
that'll change over time as well. I mean, I think at least for the stuff like landing page and stuff, or at least the basic marketing material, yet once you've hit a certain point, you'll be like, okay, I can step away from that. Then I guess, bouncing between the two, rather than trying to split your week, half And half is going to be probably more keep your sanity in the long run, right?
Yes. Yes. And that's, that's the tricky part. So considering that at least for myself, Don't do well with, and probably most people don't do well with context switching, Right. So it's a, it's a real productivity killer to be switching context all the time. So I, I'm more productive when I'm, when I can focus large blocks of time, you know, working on, on something.
So even if it's a coding session, right, I, I do better if I have a, at least a couple of hours to dedicate to coding as opposed to, you know, just an hour or half an hour here and there, I can't really get anywhere.
So hard to, yeah, you can't get anywhere. in that amount of time. I mean, this is what makes it so hard. This, you know, this idea of trying to, you know, do client work, I'll do other work, you know, working on multiple projects and things. It's, it's great. In theory, it just, it's really hard to do in real life. you I think I'm the only same way to do it is to make sure that.
Block out a certain amounts of your time to say, okay, I am going to be spending three hours tomorrow evening to work on a thing and not trying to think, well, I'll just squeeze this in at the end of doing this. It's just like, it's no good for you. Productivity sucks. And also I think it just makes you feel more anxious about it as well, because you feel everything's like piling up rather than being able to think I made significant progress on this. Right.
You feel that you're just constantly fighting things as opposed to, getting
Yeah. Yeah. And so taking that into account, I've been thinking about maybe splitting my time in a way that is like maybe a week, you know, a whole week I dedicate to coding dedicated to the product itself and then another week, dedicated to marketing related stuff. And so go back and forth between that, a week, coding a week marketing
As I say, you'll probably find a certain changes happen at certain times of the product as well. Right. You'll hit a point where it's like, okay, I need to spend the next two or three weeks focusing on development because marketing is looking after itself an hour and I can shift focus. But yeah, I think something like that
Yeah, because part of, part of the marketing is also, you know, social media, social media posts and, and stuff like that. That can be sort of automated. If I, if I spend, let's say a week creating not the whole, not the entire time doing that, but as part of that week of work on marketing, I could, Create some, posts or, you know, some Twitter, posts that I can schedule and, and, you know, stack them up. And so the following week, when I'm working on coding, then, then those can be, you know,
Stuff still active, even though you're not actively
yeah, exactly. So it's like dripping those those,
Not just disappeared off the face of the planet for a few weeks. Right. Just cause you're
yeah. Yeah. So something like that find ways to automate and still be doing something in that front while focusing on coding and focusing on the product.
And of course, then you've got the point when you actually, when we actually start having more customers who are going to start having more support requests, then. That's another constant, which is going to be in the mix always. I mean, that's not something you can put off for a week. Right.
Yes, exactly.
I think leaving space in the future, you know, shed your brain schedule for that as well as it's. Yeah. That's
Yeah. So, yeah, regardless of whether I'm working on the product itself or the other things that I need to work on I would have to be focusing on, on support for sure.
No. So far, so far you, with the users that you've got how's the support been ha as in how many support requests have you been getting? Is it like a few occasionally
far I haven't gotten any, any support requests I only got one for, Backup recordings then they
Oh yeah. right.
Because
Cause it's manual at the moment. Isn't it? You have to request
yeah, they have to request them from me And then, so I can retrieve them And send them to them. So I got one of those requests early on because it was an issue, but that's been fixed. So I haven't gotten any more requests like that.
And that's something you can at least to a point automate in the future as well. Right. So that's, that's something that. you can just tackle when it's, when it becomes something that will take up a significant part of your time. It's like, okay, now it's time to automate it. Right. Rather than wasting time
Yes. And and then I got another, it wasn't really a support request. One more, more feedback or, you know, just something that, happened with the app you know, they submitted a, a message, you know, just indicating what had happened. Kind of a little, glitch something I need to look into. So it kind of is a support request, but it's not it's it was like a one-off kind of
it is a one at very, exactly. It's not, not the type of thing. So this is something that again, I've only got, you know, this handful of like beta users at the moment. And this is, this actually comes into something I was going to mention today as well, is this the expectations of my Japanese users are quite different from the expectations. I'll lose the the patterns I'm seeing from all the first few Japanese users of Japanese users versus non Japanese users is quite different.
And there's, there's definitely this aspect of like tell me what to do. Versus, let me figure it out for myself. So I'm kind of seeing this repeatedly is rather than for instance some of my BT users in the UK like just give me a log in. Let, let me poke around, let me work it out. And the difference here with the users are like, what can we through it? Show me how to use it. Show me not just how to use it perhaps, but how I should be using it.
And that's something that's, I guess it's a change of mindset that I think I've got to make is I think for the longest time. And I think all of the products I've built myself, as opposed to, for clients who are part of another company, I like this idea of, I guess something like the original delicious or flicker or the, the, the old school web applications where they were like, we've built a thing. It's does things, there's features, there's things like tags and things, and you figure it out.
It's the, there isn't a prescribed way of doing it. It's, it's just, it does things. And then over time, people will find patterns. There's a lot of human hacking of making it work the way they want it to. And I guess my product design tendency is to think of things like that as well is to think things in that way. It's like, okay, if I add this feature, then it could be used in these five different ways and I'll let people figure it out and, you know, work out what works best.
And the thing that's a difference of most web applications that I'm finding today, which are now as I've, I'm kind of more aware of this and I'm looking a little bit more critical about their onboarding and the way the interfaces are constructed and the word yeah. The way they're designed and the copy they use. And say the onboarding particularly they like use do this, use this, like this, and that's it.
And that's really difficult for, I guess, for me internally to feel like I have the confidence to do that. Right. I mean, I have, in my mind, a, an ideal usage pattern of how the application would is used best, both from experience and from designing it in a particular way, but I've been very, very hesitant. Telling people to use it like that, just because I'm like, well, who am I? Who am I to tell you how to run your business?
You know, so I can advise, but I don't feel that, you know, I, I'm not going to storm in there and say, okay, you need to do this and you need to do that. And don't do that. So the product is, is almost like a light touch it onwards probably too late to touch in telling you what to do or how to use it. And, and I'm now rethinking that just because they, everybody I've spoke to is using it in a different way. All of the B2 users tend to be used in a different, and that's fine. That's good.
But at the same time, they're also like, am I doing it wrong? And I'm like, there is no wrong. And they're like that you're, you're using it differently. And I'm like, yes, but that doesn't mean it's wrong. It's just that what fits with your business and, and that's causing anxiety for my users. Because there feel like, ah, I, I, I feel that I'm doing it wrong. I don't know what you want me to do here, so I'm not going to do anything because I don't know what I should be doing.
And I'm like, okay, that's, that's thrown me a little bit. So with that in mind, I'm trying to address it in both my marketing onboarding of my marketing materials. Just so it sets the tone for why you should be using this, not just what it does, but this is the problem. I guess this is a marketing and product design thing to consider right from a marketing aspect.
You know, we the almost like recommended, you know, the, the, the known this is how we should do it is stating the problem that somebody has and how this application will help make your life better by doing these. Rather than just saying it does this have at it. So I'm trying to rethink the like the pitch as to make it clearer as to what not just what the problem is. It does that already, but how that our product will solve it.
In what specific way it's like by doing this, you will have this outcome be much more clear about what I expect you to do if you use this product. I think that'll set the expectations going in a little more. But then as part of the onboarding be very basically have a stronger hand with telling people what to do next. Like, you should do this at this time, and this is when you'll do it next. So be much more opinionated in how I expect people to use it. And I, it makes me nervous.
It makes me kind of makes me feel anxious because I'm like, you know, They don't want to do It like
Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. It makes me wonder how other products handle that and how the Japanese culture deals with other software. Because if you know, a couple of products come to mind, like notion, for example, where you can do so much and it's so, you know
The classic do everything's right. Yeah. And at least the, of the modern
yeah. you can, do everything and anything in different ways. However you want, you know, it's designed for you to, to, to do it. However you, However works best for you
think what they do well is. They address very specific use cases within that though. So, I mean, they have like a ton of different landing pages depending on where you're coming from. So, you know, if you're, if they do a promoted tweet for you know, project managers, you end up at a landing page that talks to project managers and says, this is, this is how, what notion does. And these are the things you can do with it. And I think I've done, it used to another few.
I've been trying around lots of different products like this and almost this like template idea of you're coming in you, know, what's your primary role? Tweaks the onboarding to make it work for you So It suggests use cases. It suggests templates. It almost is like a private, you, know, onboarding service for your job. So they have tons of use case examples of, you know, if you're a, a product designer, this is the templates you might work for you.
If this, if you're a developer, then these are the ways you can use this. Both in the, the images they use, the language they use it it's, it's quite intimidating when you think about, oh my God,
well, yeah. And,
this?
and they have the resources to do, to do that.
the resources to do
And as an indie maker, it's not possible to compete at that level. So you have to figure out another way that you can do it, you know, at a. At a scale that works for you or that works for us, you know? Cause I may come across the same problem too.
Well, I mean, it's almost like, you know? fusion cust as well to the point where it works great as a, you know, two person three person podcast. If you then think of people like in a business context while I want to do a weekly business you know, like a. manager podcast is just me using it. Well, I don't have guests that none of your, All of your UI is designed for a having more than one people share, fueling a meeting, doing a a recording and then posting it, to something else.
It's, it's very designed around this aspect of like a guest having guests on your podcast rate. So you for you've already kind of, Decided that's your, it's not a niche, but that's your focus, right? That's your, your audience. And I guess that the, I guess this is part of the. Again, the recommended practices of doings, a, an indie product rate is picking a very targeted audience and talking directly to them. And it's, you know, it's this thing that will, who's your audience home, everybody.
And that's just impossible to cope with. Right. So I think it's, I guess I have to just be more targeted with that right. Be much more conscious of who I'm speaking to, at least at this stage, it's like, look at my list of people that are, that are already on my waiting list that are already Beta using the app and find that common trait between them or at least the majority bucket that I can put them in and then start to talk towards that.
Right. I mean, I've already made the conscious decision of, you know, looking at smaller companies. So avoiding the, you know, the big mega co-ops and even though, right, exactly. Even though, as I said, Like the bank advisor, the, a lot of the people I've spoken to in Japan are like, don't talk to small businesses. They've got no time for this talk to a bigger corporations who will have got time and money to try things out. But I'm, I can't do that.
Yeah.
not at this stage. I don't have the resources to be able to cope with talking to Toyota. Right.
Yeah,
That's going to take a little bit of my time to do that. Right. So I think, you know, looking at the small you know, 10 to 15 person companies makes much more sense at this stage for me. So I guess optimizing my, copy that the way, Yeah, just the entire experience optimizing for that is something I need to do a little bit more of, I guess, a lot more of,
yeah, yeah, yeah.
but I mean, you, you mentioned Japanese companies versus others. I mean, this is a problem, not a problem. It's a difference between just generally software and how it's used here, or at least not how it's used, but how people use it and how they see it as fitting into their, their job. And it's very much this idea of it's it's this is, these are the tasks, these are the instructions for doing this, do that. And that's it.
And also, I mean, Japan has a, a much stronger history of being mobile first as well. So especially with desktop software, I mean, I, I, grew up with a computer since the age of like seven or eight. Okay. There were eight bit things that didn't do anything. But we've always had computers in my house, everybody. I know all of my friends. Computers in their house. And that's not a common thing that, that, isn't a historically strong thing in Japan. People didn't have a home computer out.
Of course, that's very generalizing. There's obviously a home computer market, but it wasn't as widely commoditized in the way it was in least in the UK. and I think in the U S as well. So the seems to be a little bit more hesitancy about trying things in software, as in, you know, you had a, you open up a new application, you, you just click on everything, right? So it was this do, what does this do is that there's no fear about breaking it. There's more curiosity about where's its limits.
What can I do with this? What, what, how can I use this for what I want. Whereas here, it feels like, again, I'm speaking very generally and only from the BT users that I've been talking with having used it and watching them and talking to them is like, what, what, what do I press? And it's like, well, what, what do you think you should practice? And I like, tell me where to press, you know, how do I use this? Which button do I click on it?
It's it feels a lot more like to tell me how to use this tool as opposed to give me a hammer and I'll make it
Yeah.
So that needs to be part of my onboarding experience
Yeah. And I think we've talked about, In the past, I think we talked about the use of video that you, I think you wanted to implement more video and integrate it into the app itself. So it, it, it serves as, On the spot kind of help for
Right. You know, what's really funny about this. It's like, so, you know, on my New check-in page. I think it's called your plans at the moment, which I'm in the process of changing. I'll mentioned that as well. Th there's a normal, not a quarter of the screen, but it's a big chunk of the bottom right-hand corner of, the screen is like a video box saying basically play here for an intro. Right.
I spoken to two people who now who didn't see it, It's on their screen, but I think we've got so blind to pop-ups and sidebars and boxes and inline things. It's like, they almost, they literally blank that out. I'm like th there was two people and they were using the same company in that, like, and they're like, he's like, well, I didn't know what to do here and there. The lady's like, there's a big video on the screen. Did you watch that? And it's like, what video?
It's the big box with a play button on it. And he's like, I never noticed that. And I'm like, whoa, hold on.
It's like video of the gorilla in the middle of the room and no one's
Right, right, exactly. Completely. I was like, hold on what
wow, interesting.
I think this idea of like, doing like a modal based welcome is I need to
Yeah. Blast it on, on their faces.
full screen. Like watch this, I'll skip it right. As opposed to like I, you know, I was like, well, if I just put it there on the screen, they can hide it and it's done, but if they want to play it and they're like, I didn't notice that.
Yeah. it's going to have to be a modal that auto opens and auto plays the video. So you don't have to click on anything.
Exactly.
yeah, those are all interesting challenges that we have to figure out.
Yes. And th this as a side to that as well I'm just realizing the, the, language of some of my, Things like plans and check-ins again, I know what they mean. That doesn't mean my users do. Right. So I'm trying to consistentcefi My language make more consistent the language throughout my application. So I'm trying to, I I'm re almost removing this. I use plans a lot and that throws people just because everyone is like, what's a plan. And I say, well, it's the plan? Checking has lots of plans.
And they're like, I thought I'd plan. I thought a check-in was a plan then I'm like,
Oh
So it's yeah, I'm, I'm rewording that. And I'm also changing the New check-in page. I'm not gonna use it. So it's not my plans anymore. It's then create new check-in page two. Right now it opens multiple form fields because the expectation is it's like, well, you went to your plans in there, and that is throwing people because a I used the word save as well next to each form field. And the idea is, again, it different people have different experiences, but a save button saves a page.
Doesn't save a thing on a page. Right. So I'm changing that to add and they won't auto open you click on add new planned I forgot the trying different textbooks and new plan click on that. And it opens a form field to add it hit return so rather than popping up too many form fields, because again, people think of a web form as being. Still a thing that gets submitted as a page rather than being an in-line thing.
And I think that's also maybe a downside of using more traditional form looking elements rather than a more custom if you use a, an spa SAS product, it, they don't tend to style things in a traditional web way. As in it doesn't have a, the, with slight border shadow, a, you know, an inline form field it'll have a, something that looks more application as a form field. And people disassociate that from being a web.
Again, it depends on the user's experience, but someone who's coming from, you know, knowing what a web application is and its limits, they assume that it's like, well, if I click save, that's going to save the page. And it's like, no, it's just adding that item. Right. And it's like, oh, well it looks like a form. It is, but
yeah, yeah,
this is me losing, learning UX in real time.
yeah, I can see that. I can see that. And it makes me think about my UI for adding guests to a schedule session where there's just an add button that, adds a new row to add a new guest. And there's just a one save button that saves the whole thing.
And it's like, does that, by adding that, does that save it or does, do I need to click save after adding.
Yeah, yeah,
And this is where, yeah, the copy I need to is on the page. It's much more clearer about our it's much more obvious what's happening. Not like it doesn't leave any ambiguity because again, there's the, the main, it's been interesting that it just I've had some very good direct, Feedback about, like, I don't understand this, this isn't clear to me, what does that. button do and say, okay, this is what I need. This is the, and these aren't like, educators.
These are like, you know, core users who I expect to be selling to, you know, it's so this is, is really, Helping just make that experience much better. So it's, it's been super, but yeah, you can see me learning how to do a user interface design in real time.
It's it's, it's unbelievable how, how, difficult It is to address all these different aspects and, and make it clear for everyone because everyone has a different background and a different perspective and they see things differently and it's, it's, it's, really hard. It's, it's, that's why it's feel of its own, you know, user experience, user
and that's why there's usually a team
Yeah.
right?
And we're just one person doing it all.
Yes.
So it is challenging, but
But I mean, it's super, I mean, the, the massive benefit of this as, you know, just the it's how I learn best, right. Is by doing it and finding and failing. Right. it's I won't make that mistake again. You know, it's just every bit of learning. Just make sure next time you do it better. And it's funny now it's I think I tweeted this the other day. I been working on this redesigned rework of the new check-in. and because that's what I'm using in development here.
And so I'm used to seeing that now it's constantly being tweaked. It's just looking better day by day. And then I opened production with the client and I'm like, oh my God. It's like, it looks so like old now, I guess that because I'm used to it looking so much better seeing what the production users are using is, oh, that's you okay. I need to get this done. But at the same time, like two weeks ago, three weeks ago, that looked fine to me. Right?
yeah, yeah.
It's just this, you know, like it is a massive learning,
that's it, that's the way it is. That's the way it is. You, you have something and you know, you come back later and look at it and it's like, ah, yeah, it's not, it's not the most ideal maybe. And and then you've gotten feedback And, you, you see things differently.
Speaking of that yeah. Saw your new landing page for Fusioncast
oh, thank you. Yeah, you saw it.
That's very nice. Yeah, No, it looks nice. It's cool.
Yeah. Thank you. I don't know how I feel about It yet. I didn't want to go the route of training something that's you know that, that looks just like everything else out there. I wanted to do something unique and different and, and that's why I had created something. Totally different before with a landing page that was designed based inspired by the 1950s, you know, radio, radio era.
just looks awesome. It really does
Thank you.
but I understand your yeah. Needs to do something a little bit more, more traditional.
yeah. Yeah. It was hard to carry, carry that design. Yeah, It was hard to carry that design through all the way, you know, it was great for just that one page, but to do it all like that, and maybe it is maybe I can pull it off later on or, you know, hire a designer to help me out to create that brand and create that look and feel. But I think. You know, being honest with myself, I think I hit a limit there, you know, with my creativity you know, my design skills are not that, that Advanced.
so So I, you know, I, I'm like, I'm just gonna stop there. And I, I can't, you know, one, I can't spend the time, You know, doing that. It takes me a lot longer because it's not my, my core strength. And so I decided to kill that design and go with something a little more traditional keep it really simple and not spend too much time, you, know,
it's you, you can focus on the actual content, much easier with this right now. I noticed the, even though the, the other one looked wicked, you almost skim the text because it is it's designed heavy as opposed to content heavy. Right. Whereas this is just content. I mean, it, I say simply styled, but it it, it looks good, but it's all about the content, everything that the content is you know what it says, the features it does are front and center. There's no, no distractions. Right.
so I think in that way, that can probably help you, you know, get that, that correct, because you'll focus on that rather than making it look.
Yeah. Yeah. And I already got some feedback from some folks and it's good feedback. So I'm going to go back and, you know revisit certain things. Plus there's a ton of stuff that is not there that I'm planning to do. I just want it to get something simple out there and, and just, you know, have decent, good to go so that I can get back to focusing on the product. Cause I as of now, I haven't been working on the product itself for about three weeks now.
And so I I really need to get back to that because I've been focusing on, on the website and I just wanted to create a strong foundation. So it's built on Statamic 3 and Tailwind CSS. And so I wanted to have the blog, component. I wanted to have Way to edit and, and you know, make changes easily for myself. And.
the worst thing is, you know, so I'm using, It wasn't intended to be a long-term thing, but I'm using Umso, which was, we used to be called London which is a, basically a launch page tool. It's basically a website editor plus it's got like email lists and blogs and things like that. And it's, I think it's like $30 a month and you get like three sites for it. So as a pre, Creation thing, it was like, okay, you know, No waiting list type thing. They can integrate with MailChimp And all the rest.
So I use that as a, like a placeholder and it, but it's become more than that because, So my wife's been working on the Japanese side, so she's been adding like guides for these beauty users, how to use things. Because we, we feel that we need that like a bit more tutorial level led things. And so just being able to say, okay, go on, work on the site and, and it looks good. It makes a huge difference. Not having to mess with your tools all the time. Right. So I can appreciate that.
At least you've, now you've got a thing that works and you can edit and you're not, don't have to fiddle with it. Right.
yeah. Yeah, And it started me. Statamic 3 is awesome. I really
Is it. good?
Yeah. I love Statamic. It's, it's built for developers really, you know, so it's super flexible. You can do a lot of things with it. and you can customize it. Behave and work the way you you know, wanted it the way it works best for you. So I wanted that foundation. And so I kept the design super simple. I still need to drop a video on top of the homepage. You know, I'm going to record a quick demo. Just haven't had time to record it the way I want it. I want it to get?
a good camera to capture really nice. You know,
a good excuse anyway, right?
HD video and actually I just got it today in the mail.
Nice. What'd he get?
it's a logitech Brio. it's a 4k
cool.
HD camera. It's It's really good. It's supposed to be good. So I just got it in the mail today, so I haven't really tried It yet, but I haven't even opened the box yet, but I want to record this video and then put her on the homepage and, A ton of other stuff that I, that I have in mind to add to the website, but it will be little by little. And so for now it's just
But so it can be incremental improvements now. It's not like you've, you've got the baseline done and you can, you can now start to focus on improving the content.
Yup. Yup.
I haven't, I've never used to something because I don't have any experience with like Laravel or any like modern PHP, you know, my, my first webapp was PHP, but that was a long
long time ago, the old days of a obscure PHP.
like, well, It's like the, a levels.io all of my applications are pretty much one PHP file when it works.
Yeah,
It's like, it was like, it was like, it was adventurous when you had the second PHP file for you
yeah. Yeah. I remember those days That's that's when I started that's the way it was and it was all, it was all procedural. No object oriented.
No, I don't think he even existed in PHP back then. There was, he had no objects or,
Yeah. So no modern PHP development has come a long way.
I've heard so many good things about it. Yeah. A lot of holes and yeah. And, And, stomach as well. I mean, I love the documentation and the homepage and it's just like, they really get that like spot on.
Oh yeah.
it's a, it, I, I don't even know anything about the product, but I want to use this. This is cool.
Jack McDade it he's one of the co-founders he's the he's super talented designer and he, has a really good, way of designing and also, Also has a good sense of humor. So you can see, you can see that all throughout in the documentation and everything he creates. There's a sense of humor. Applied it to everything. And yeah, it's, I've met. I met him in person 2019 for the Laravel conference Laracon in the.
Yeah
and so I met him and
conferences in person.
yeah, it's, you know, right before the pandemic
days.
right before the pandemic is the, it's the last one that happened. The 2020 got canceled. Of course. So yeah, I met him in person and really cool guy. Yeah. And Yeah, so that's, what's going on with the
Do you have a, do you have plans for cause your email list is probably reasonably large now or at
you know,
insignificant.
it, you know, it's not, it's not that large and that's one of the reasons that I need to focus on marketing and I'm planning to do this, you know, a split schedule kind of thing, because they need to focus more on that. I haven't been promoting it as much as I should have. So my, my mailing list is not that large.
So Yeah. That's and that's one of the reasons I wanted, I wanted this website to be, kind of like the way it is now, so that I can feel more confident about pointing people there and promoting the product
I part of, part of this I'm not going to say rebrand, but change to a more simpler style makes it easier to maintain consistency going forward. Right. As well. I think if you, your other landing page, it looked great, but that also is like, you kind of almost have to commit to that, right? Full-time no. So not just the landing page, but you almost need to start about how does your application fit with that?
How do your emails, You know, your welcome mails, you want to try to make, look within that same kind of branding, right? So, so that's a big commitment.
yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's, it's too much for me. So
least at this stage. yeah, for sure.
I've been, I've been trying to think more in terms of, You know, what's what. what. works best for me as an indie maker, solo founder. I have to,
He said just be realistic.
yeah, exactly. Be realistic with myself. what can I what are my limitations and, and, and what can I do with the resources that I have? You know, I can't be designing these extravagant website and spending all that time. I don't, I can't do that. So just keep it simple later on, you know, that'll be time, you know, the right time will come later. Hopefully, you know, once I have more resources and I can hire a designer and then, you know, it'll be a lot easier to do that kind of stuff.
So for now, simplicity, minimalism is what works.
Well, it just means that it's sustainable and maintainable and right.
Yeah.
You're not just going to spend all your time tweaking emails because they need to look right.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's about it, I
This is why all my interfaces are like blue,
yeah,
blue, up level. It's like, well, I can't choose a wrong color there. Everything's just shades of blue. I'll tailwind, indigo. Pretty much
yeah. There you go.
like, well, how bad can I make it? Look?
Yeah. Yeah. I think. that's about it on my end. The only other thing is now we have, We've successfully launched our podcast, at least with the trailer, Just the trailer,
Bye.
Folks listening to this later on, Will be kind of all news by then, but
Yeah,
it is new to us right now.
Yeah. Thank you for right. Yeah. Good, good work. that out.
Yeah, I was able to put that together and publish it. So it's, it's out there now.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think, I've picked up by everything apart from Google podcasts maybe.
Yeah, I think, I think I'd already picked it up.
Oh really? Okay.
I think so. I haven't checked, but it's a good thing that we have that now, so that when the first actual episode is published you know, it goes, goes straight through and doesn't it doesn't we don't have to wait for,
Right. Cause otherwise you'd be like, it's a new episode, but you can't listen to it because it's not an apple yet. So at least now everything's set up and it'll just kind of flow through. Right.
Yeah. And I've been doing editing on the, on, on the episodes that we recorded. And that's one of the things I wanted to talk to you about actually. So I think that's the last thing on my end. It's it's the, the recording editing, I, I think there, there needs to be some editing done in all the sessions that we recorded my goal, or I was hoping that we wouldn't have to re you know, do a lot of editing, but because it takes so long.
But At some point we'll have to figure out if there's a way we can outsource the editing, you know, Or, or we get better at recording so that we don't have to edit anything.
about to say, I hopefully you'll find that the later ones require less editing. Right. I think we've gotten a little bit better about being aware of what we're doing.
yeah,
I hope
yeah, exactly. And, and in the, in the spirit of transparency, I wanted to talk about this and let it be part of the podcast and for others to listen. Cause you know, it could be
educational show.
educational thing. Yeah, exactly. So one thing that I've noticed as I'm doing editing is that we tend to talk over each other sometimes, you know? and so when that happens, it sounds really bad on the podcast. So I'm having to edit things out and kind of like choose which one of us is saying the main thing. So, So, that way that stays. And then if, if the other one was trying to say, something and then it stops, then that gets cut out.
So going through that and so that's something that we can improve, you know try not to talk over each other. And the other thing is I've noticed with myself, That I speak very slowly. I'm like, oh man, like I sound super slow. Like, cause I guess I tend to find the right words, you know, before I speak. And I kind of like maybe overthink what I'm saying and I don't want to say the wrong thing. So I kind of take pauses and, and especially the first and maybe you're Right?
Maybe it's part of, part of it is that it's the first episodes where, you know, we don't know, what we're doing. we don't have, we don't have that much experience. So I found myself pausing a lot. And so I'm trying to, you know, edit that out and and hopefully as we progress, we get better and more comfortable with talking and
Have you tried using a descript?
no, I haven't, no, I haven't. I know that they have a lot of crazy features for editing and stuff.
The biggest thing. So when I did just a short video for my presentation, I did adult plan just being able to edit the audio as if it was text, just being, looking at it and thinking that paragraph, I can delete that and just hitting, delete that word, delete that it's like so useful. to do that in, in, an audio editor would have just been a nightmare. So yeah, it, that might speed things up a little bit. Obviously we've got latency against us as well, which doesn't help.
But so it's funny, you mentioned like speaking speed because you're when I listened to the trailer like I speak a lot quicker than Mario. I was like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you're like, blah, blah, blah. like, okay, either we need to meet somewhere in the middle. Right.
Yeah, exactly. So, I mean, one of the things they say is that when, when you're I've heard this in the context of conference, speaking for example, right. When you're speaking to an audience one of the things that happens is if you're nervous, you speak faster because you're nervous. So you speak a lot faster kind of thing, or, you know, and so they always say you know, speak slower than what you normally do or what you think you should be speaking,
Almost to the point where it feels uncomfortable. So when I did I've done public speaking, like three or four times now, reasonably large conferences. I remember the one I enjoyed the most. I got to the point where I was, I felt completely wrong to be speaking this slowly, but it was also the one which people responded to the best. People came up to me after, as I said, it was really good. I'm like, did I not like sound weird?
I was like, just to the point where it feels like to myself, I'm walking through mud or, something. I guess that's just the change from my usual speaking pattern. To me, it felt like really, but a bit it seemed to work. So, yeah, I guess that's just my, you know,
Yeah.
my problem,
So for me, it's the opposite. I need to speed up a little, you need to slow down a little and we'll meet in the middle of somewhere.
As, although it's funny because I listened to podcasts with overcast to you, probably the same rate. And they use their smart speed plus listen to things at about 1.3, 1.4 times anyway.
the same.
right. So I think one of the most weirdest things for me is John Gruber, On, you know, daring fireball guy if listening to his podcasts on normal speed by accident. Cause I, I think I played in, on a web sometime rather than listening to it in overcast. And I'm like, is he okay? Sounds like, something's wrong.
it sounds so slow.
yeah, I was like something, something, some problem I'm like, oh no, it's just, I'm used to listening to everything. Kind of like so sped.
Oh yeah. I totally experienced the same thing. Totally. Yeah. I've done that before and it's like, oh yeah, Yeah. Even the music of some podcasts you know, like if I listened to it and then the sped up, you know, way that I normally do
becomes normal, right?
that becomes normal, It sounds great. And then I listened to it in the north, in the, you know, normal speed and it's like, whoa. So slow. Like, it sounds horrible.
Yep.
Yeah. It's it's, it's weird.
But I, Yeah. so I think if we just try to be a little bit more conscious of again, this is probably me mode of waiting till everything's finished before. Yeah. Making my point. It's like, yeah. Try to just try to hold back Ellen,
Yeah, but it's, not just, you it's me too. It's not just you it's, it's both of us, but it comes with practice, right. With experience. We'll get better at that. You know, it's our first recording, so we're, we're still learning this thing and
a disclaimer at the beginning. Cause say, w we're still figuring this out.
yeah. Right.
But I think even just as we're speaking now, Even for the last few episodes we've recorded they, they do seem a little bit more structured and paste maybe. So hopefully that's something we can keep improving on. So hopefully people will bear with us long enough that
Yeah.
very quits on. the first episode at the heels of this rubbish.
We can only hope. Right. So,
I guess it's just one of those things of just, yeah. just, compounding experience and quality over time. Right. You know, we're never gonna, you're not going to get things right on the first pass, so just keep working
yup. Yup. Let's just keep at it. Practice makes perfect. So we'll keep chipping away at it. Yeah. I think that's it on my end. So anything else you want to share
yeah. W one, one nice thing was, I got approved for Paddle, Payments. Yeah. So they were, when I first spoke to them a few months back, they're like, yeah, come back when you're finished. I'm like, okay, that's nice. We're for products who have actually been finished building, I'm like, oh, okay. Thanks that. So it was, it was a slight burn, but so I mailed them the other day. I'm like, so I'm ready now. Cause it's going to take time to integrate that anyway.
And I just, I don't want to be at the point where I'm like, okay, now I can go. And now I've got to go and way and build in payments. So I wanted to at least get that moving. And So they were like okay, can you you know, explain your product. So I did that. And then that they. Strange, strange to me worded email. That was like, it sounds like your product has human interaction. Does it? And I'm like, yeah, of course it does everything.
I'm like everything requires human interaction it's and they were like, okay, so we can't use it because you're not allowed to have human based services on Paddle. There has to be automated software. Like we, I sell software and they use it. They meant me. Not them. I read it as humans, as in my users, they mean humans as in me. So you're not allowed to sell like a consulting
like a productized service or, you know, something like that.
So it has to be software that is like, self-service effectively either an application or a subscription service or something. It has to be not involve me to So I'm like, oh no, no, no, no. That's because they were like, well, in that case, you can't use it. Here's a link to our, Service policy. And I'm like, oh no, I there's. No, there's no humans involved in making this service.
yeah. Yeah. that. makes sense. But that's a poorly worded question. Sounds like the.
it's one of those things. If you read their terms of S if they read, if you read the document that they sent afterwards beforehand, it makes sense because it literally use uses the same words, you know, human led interactions or something. But when that's out of context, in an email, it reads completely differently. And it's like, what do you mean you? Of course it uses humans.
Yeah. I mean, it's not just some bot
Well, your reaction was
the
same. Your reaction was the same as mine. Of course it is right.
Yeah. Yeah. That makes no sense. Yeah.
When we cleared that up, they said, could you send through a a video of your product being used? So actually just sent them a link to my onboarding, like video that's embedded right now. And three days later, which was yesterday, they came back and said, great, you're fine. You can do it. You need to send just legal stuff now. So I'm like, so that's good.
Awesome. Congratulations.
now. Thank you. So I've got no excuse not to charge people now, right? I guess,
There you go. Congrats. Yeah, you gotta get up with that payment page up.
well, at least I can write it now I can build the page. So they have a sun box thing. So I'm going to just play around with that. And that also means I've got to think about pricing, which is I've been putting off for way too long as well. So,
Oh, nice. So, they, they do have a sandbox kind of like Stripe as a sandbox. Oh, okay. Cool.
So, I mean, I chose pebble over cause I noticed like Stripe now have they're launching attacks, Stripe tax and things. The biggest thing for me is the fact that I'm selling immediately off the bat to three countries.
At least that's, you know, my, the beta users and hopefully people who will pay they're already in three countries and that means three different sets of sales tax and the, the U S has particular you've then got multiple states to deal with So I'd be looking at like having to do five sets of tax Filings, even a sales tax filings, even on day one, as long as all the beta users end up paying. Right. Which is like I don't want to deal with that. That's not, and I don't want to get it wrong either.
So a and Stripe also doesn't strike tax. Doesn't want doesn't support Japan in its initial version. It will do. I'm sure. I'm sure it. will. And plus they don't file for you. They just tell you what to do. So
They don't have that component yet, but apparently they're working on it.
yeah, yeah, yeah. So this initial version will be like, you need to file this document, click here in order to go to the thing in order to file it. So whereas Paddle is like, because they're the merchant of record. They effectively sell the product for you. I think same as Outseta. Right. They S I think oh, no. Cause that connects to Stripe. Doesn't it?
it connects a Stripe. Yeah. They don't they don't, it doesn't work the same way they connect to Stripe. And I think there's a way to specify the tax that you want to collect, but, you have to Do it yourself. Yeah.
that was one thing that I'm just that, especially since I'm dealing with, you know, Japanese tax authorities, which is not my area of expertise, I'm like not messing around
Yeah.
or use somebody who knows what they're doing.
Overall, how, how was the process of getting approved with, with paddle for you?
I mean, apart from that slight misunderstanding, it was, it was straightforward. They would just like, explain what it does. Why you why you need this effectively? Why, what does your product do? What, Yeah, they're basically just said explain what your product does And how it's used. So I just wrote a few paragraphs about that, sent them the video and it's all fine.
Oh, so you, you recorded a video to like explaining your product. Cool. Cool. Yeah. I considered Paddle a way back before I decided to go with Outseta, but I still, I still don't know which way I want to go. I haven't really integrated Outseta yet fully into my product. I'm only using a couple of their couple of their services, you know, cause they have they cover billing payments and you know, all the others some other stuff and I haven't fully integrated much really.
So I don't know because I suspect I'll have a similar issue if, you know, given the nature of the product, people can be, you know, anywhere in the world. Connecting and using fusion cast. So I I don't know what I'm going to do about that, cause that that's a, that's a problem.
It's a concern, isn't it? I mean, I know this, I'm sure a lot of these early products don't handle tax very well or at all right. It's kind of almost like brushed under the carpet and I'm not going to do that
yeah,
out of all the decisions I'm going to make. that's not something I'm going to do. Especially since I, say I'm, I'm located in somewhere that I'm not, you know, I don't know. Well with regards to how these things work, so I'm not going to get that wrong.
yeah, yeah,
So one reason that so Outseta requires you have to use their authentication stuff, right? Oh, you have to link into their CRM in order to build people. Correct.
I don't think you have to use their authentication.
Okay.
Because I have my own authentication and I can still from what I understand, I can still integrate billing And payments.
Right,
I still haven't done it like I was saying, but I don't So I don't know exactly, but if I remember correctly, One of the co-founders did a demo with me way back. And I remember, I think I asked that question, you know, if I have my own authentication, can I still use billing and payments? And he said, yes. So if I remember correctly, so but again, I haven't gone full in with Outseta so I'm still thinking about it.
The only thing that scared me about Paddle is, is some posts that I read of some horror stories of them dropping the product without notice and,
Yeah. Yeah.
and.
I've read those two. And those were, yeah, my immediate like, Is this good? This, this sounds scary, but In all of those cases, they do seem to be, there seems to be an after story as well. It's not like that was it. It's like they, they respond to them after a few days and things get fixed. And they, they do seem pretty quick at responding to even the onboarding, the onboarding, the application emails, they seem pretty quick about responding to all those.
So I'm hoping that there's no problems, but yeah, that was my, my, only, Hesitancy there was, this seems to be some horror stories, but there seems to be horror stories, regarding every single product on the internet. So
Yeah,
I'm like gotta take everything with at least a, an understanding that you're only seeing one side of it. Right.
yeah. Yeah. So if you're using paddle then does that mean you don't need to integrate with Stripe? Does it work? Had they have their own.
Yes. Correct. So the other thing, as well as it handles, I mean, I guess like Stripe, it handles invoicing. The, you can have multiple price plans. It does the tax based on where the buyer is. It just handles everything for you like that. They, the only differences. Yeah. It's not your merchant accounts. So things come through on the credit card with like Paddle and then your name of your company.
Oh, I see.
so there is a, I'm used to it cause I use a few services that use it. So it it's, I'm kind of used to using it as a, an end user and it's, it's absolutely fine. Yeah. I mean, it's seems the API is pretty straightforward and no big surprises there, so yeah, I think it should be okay.
nice, Maybe I'll give it a try. I don't know.
So it did that, their fees, their fees are a little bit higher than if you were just going for straight Stripe. Obviously because they're offering more they're not just taking the payment, but as I say for me, it was just this peace of mind that I know that the right sales taxes are going to get taken and paid
Yeah.
by me. That's just one thing I don't want to get on the wrong side of,
Yeah. And I guess it also depends on how long it takes for Stripe to catch up to that and offer that service, you know?
I mean this w I mean, you can export from Paddle that doesn't seem to be any limitations with you moving, You know, exporting your customers. Obviously, I think they'd probably have to resubmit their payment information, I assume. But you're not, you know, you're not tied into it forever. You could just keep those as old users and onboard new users into Stripe or something if you wanted to change later. So it's not like. Not an impossible thing to undo.
But at this stage it just seemed to be the thing which suited my need the most,
Yeah. Yeah. All right. Cool. Well, thanks for sharing that.
let you know? how it goes when I onboard it, when I've done three a year, the sandbox stuff.
Yeah. you'll be the Guinea pig.
Yeah,
All right. Anything else you want to share?
And that's me all done.
All right. I think that's it for me too. Should we wrap it up?
Let's wrap it up
All right. Most for the show have notes.
Were we supposed to like sell a mattress or something as well?
I know, right? we'll close it off with Justin Jackson's. This podcast is hosted, not toasted on Transistor.fm
I love the cause I was playing with you know, you, you, submit it to everything, just going through the interface and things. It's a really well thought out product. Right.
It is.
very cool.
It is. it's. It's. I love it. Love it.
can't imagine doing it any other way. Just having seen that it's like all the analytics, they just submitting everything, just managing the whole processes like that. They've really done. Well. It's very cool. I'm really happy to see it succeeding as well.
yeah, and it's a pretty large product, because it. has so many different areas. You know, it's got analytics, the hosting side, the embeddable player, the distribution, the websites, you know, the custom websites for your, for your podcast, that they host themselves, All these different areas. It's, it's crazy. It's
It's surprising. Yeah. When you start going through it yellow. Oh my God. This is like really comprehensive, really thought of everything.
Yeah. And for a two people team is it's just really incredible that all they've been able to accomplish. So, congrats to them and, Props to them for achieving that. It's it's great. I love using it. I love the product.
Yeah, absolutely.
I recommend that every, every time I get an opportunity, someone asks about hosting a podcast. I always recommend transistor.
absolutely
So yeah, we didn't get paid to say all this, by the way. We're just big fans,
absolutely
disclosure. All right. All right. Alan. I'll see you in two weeks and we'll, we'll, be in touch online.
and upwards. Talk to you later.
All right. Take care.
Cheers, man.