Brian Launches His New Project

Welcome to the panel where two bootstrap founders talk about building a better life and a better business. I'm Justin Jackson, the cofounder of transistor.fm.

I'm Brian Casel. I am building something brand new, and maybe I'll even reveal the name and the domain today. We'll see.

We're both chatting while it looks like the world is on fire. I was just sharing this with Brian before we got on here.

I must have been in a hole because I haven't heard about this until just now.

Yeah. We heard about in chat right away. So this is what I'm seeing. Spotify down, Google down, Google Cloud down, Google Meet, AWS, Discord. And then if you look at you got Cloudflare.

Some some kid. One one kid just brought it all down.

Some kid just pasting in commands from ChatGPT.

Yeah. One ChatGPT prompt went totally wrong.

But somehow Riverside is working. Somehow YouTube is working. It's like, yeah, this is this is wild. So, yeah, hopefully, we'll have lots of people join us live. We got Corey here. We got Emmett just joined.

Got got the the fellow Mets fan here, Emmett. We're we're rooting for the best team in baseball right now.

Dude. Tonight, my Edmonton Oilers are playing again. And sports are heartache. Like, sports is just heartache.

I okay. Let let's talk about this. This is just a random topic.

Yeah. Right?

I've really picked it back up. I've been a lifelong sports fan, especially in New York sports. But I put it down for, like, ten year ten, fifteen years there in in the early part of my career. Picked it back up probably in the last five or six years and especially lately. I think there are what I noticed is that there are a lot of, like, hardcore sports fans who follow everything, like, follow the the entire league, every player, all the ins and outs of it all.

It is kind of fun. I mean, as much as the what I don't like is I think the NHL playoffs are the hardest sport tournament in ever. It's it's four rounds. You have to win four games. It's like the series playoffs. They just drag on forever. Just goes forever. And it it can feel like you get through one series and you're like, that felt like the Stanley Cup playoffs, like the finals. But that wasn't the finals. That was just the round.

Yep. Yep.

I'm just nervously eating the whole time.

I mean, the the playoffs are this, and they happen right now at the same time, you know. It it just drags on for so long. And like, as much as I wanted to see the Knicks make it into the finals, they they made it to the Eastern Conference Finals. I was a little bit relieved when they when they got knocked out because I'm like, alright. I mean, I still actually watched, you know, some of the finals last night, but, like, it's just so many games, and it's like it's summer already.

I mean, I I would like I would like some relief from from these playoffs just from the agony of it all. It was really nice when I was in London at this podcast show because the Oilers games were on at, like, one in the morning. So then you just wake up the next day and you look at the highlights. You're like, okay. Win or lose. Yeah. It you're not, like, as invested.

I'm not a huge NHL fan, but I but I as a kid, I went to a lot of New York Islanders games.

Oh, sweet.

And I I loved seeing it live. Like that I I really think hockey is one of the best live sports.

I just I actually don't know. To me, every other sport feels slow. Like, hockey is so fast.

If you're used to hockey. Yeah. Definitely.

And Yeah. Like football is like, god, this takes forever. You know?

Football really is I mean, I know it gets, like, loud and exciting live. I've been to a few Giants games, but, like, football is really a TV sport. It's so much better on TV

Than live.

I think, especially with, yeah, especially with, like, the graphics. You see the line of scrimmage and all that. Like and, like, you because, like, based on where you're sitting at at an NFL game, you could be so far away from the action.

Yeah. Alright. That's our sports talk for this week. Let us know in the comments if you like the sports talk. We might do some more.

Let's hear it.

We're doing lots of exploratory work around video and HLS right now. The big challenges that we're facing right now is hosting and specifically bandwidth costs for video. Mhmm. There are a lot of people in the podcast ecosystem that think this is an impossible task. There's a lot of commentary that even YouTube can't make video streaming profitable at scale. Like, nobody really knows YouTube's numbers.

Yeah. I went deep into this with Clarity Flow. I we could get into it.

I mean, our friend of the show, Aaron Francis, has a great article on how they ended up doing it. And we're that's where most of us are leaning is basically using Cloudflare r two. Is that the way you went with Clarity Flow?

We are using all AWS infrastructure right now. But early on, like in the year of Zip Message, I spent a lot of time looking at mux.com. Mhmm.

Yeah. Yeah. Yep. And they

have a they they have really good looking like APIs for both streaming and recording and and stuff. But I did we did like a deep dive, like cost comparison analysis and like sort of like modeling out, like, what if our usage gets to this level or that level? What do the cost look like? And it still worked out that, like, just streaming and storing with with all AWS stuff works best for us. And the other thing is like so it would be much more complicated for you with, like Yeah.

Yeah.

Per month? And what's the cost to store it, to transcode it, to transcribe it, to stream it, to download it? And so, like, all those are are like a little bit of cost that add up. And, like, we get the question all the time about, like, like, customers will come in and say, like, what happens if I if I have, like, thousands of recorded minutes a month? Mhmm. And like our analysis of our actual users, even our most active users, like nobody even comes close to that.

Yeah.

Like in terms of like async video messaging. Because like they'll do a bunch of async video messaging, but then a lot of it is, like, text. A lot of it is just audio.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, our problem like, I could I won't show you live, but our if you look at how much bandwidth we're doing just with audio, it is beyond it is just so huge. And those are, you know, 50 megabyte to a 100 megabyte files. But as soon as we get into video and, you know, the nice thing about HLS is you can do it at different screen resolutions and you can you only pay for what you're sending in chunks.

That's pretty cool. So so you mean, like, if I if I'm, like, subscribed to any podcast and I want like, currently, I download the audio onto my device and then I listen to it when I'm ready. Yeah. But you're saying, like, I would not download the actual video? I would be sort of, like, streaming it off of your servers?

That's right. Yeah. In in small little chunks. So it gets chunked out. Yeah.

My mind goes to or my question goes to what is the market demand for this, and what is, like, the job to be done? Because it I mean, obviously, it sounds like a big technical lift to do this. Mhmm. What's the what's the fundamental problem that this is solving? And I I wonder because, like, the thing that I think about is I think that a typical, like, public facing podcast that's, like, discoverable, that that's, like, shareable, the object the the objection is just gonna be like, well, just put it on YouTube.

Mhmm.

It's it's gonna end up on YouTube anyway. But I think that The U the use case that's sort of interesting I don't know if this fits into, like, podcasting per se, but, like well, like, private podcasting. Right? Like, stuff that you just don't want to be public, but you do wanna share with some group of people or maybe like a group of a 100 people, like in your organization or in your community, but not public to the Internet and still have video. Like, that's interesting.

Yeah. So, I mean, I think there is an application in private podcasting to back up who's asking for this. Our customers are asking for it in the sense that they want to publish their podcast everywhere. And when they ask us about video, they'll say, hey, do you have video hosting video podcast hosting? We'll always say, well, what does that mean to you? And the response often is, well, I wanna distribute my video everywhere. Like,

YouTube I see. So, like, put it up on Transistor the video, and then have have Transistor zap it out to YouTube, Vimeo, wherever else.

That's right. I mean, we probably wouldn't syndicate it to Vimeo right now because they're not really a they've I think they've switched to kinda b to b. Yeah. Yeah.

I I'm just old school. I'm just trying to think of, like, all the different places where you would wanna put a video.

Yeah. I mean, eventually, like I said, in Pocket Casts, if you're listening to the audio version and then you hear, like, maybe there was just a moment where you heard me say, oh, let's look and see which apps are down. You might want to switch to the video version just to see that and then switch back. You might get home, and you might want to flip it to video and watch it on your TV. There is this is a a bit of a moonshot also in a sense, because I am, in a way, taking on the one of the strongest consumer behaviors and habits ever, which is YouTube.

It's interesting. I I I have a hard time wrapping my head around the use case and the market justification for this. But, like, I also think that you probably know a lot more about this than I do. And and we talked about this last time where, like, I'm I'm an old school podcast listener.

Mhmm.

Right? I don't know what the younger generations are doing necessarily, but I don't really hear anything from just from my use case, like, it it doesn't sound like it's solving the problems that I would want to solve. But and the other thing that I question just from the standpoint of, like, transistor the business, right, is like, yep. You you might be totally right that there is a market or there's a growing movement of of a younger generation who wants to receive content in that way.

Mhmm.

But are there businesses and content creators and podcast creators who are your customers who want to deliver that like

Yeah. They want it for sure. Like, the we get asked multiple times, sometimes multiple times per day if we do video podcast hosting. And for a long time, we were clarifying that. Like, what do you mean by that?

I know this isn't like quite what you're talking about, but like one job to be done or or use case to me is, like, the clips thing. Like, taking Mhmm. And you've been doing this for the panel podcast. Like, taking, like, a clip. Yep. Because that is how I actually consume podcasts on video. If I if I ever consume podcasts on video, I almost never watch an entire episode on on video. I'm watching their ten minute clip. Yeah. You know?

Yeah.

Yeah. It's interesting. And this is something that, like, I just find a total pain because I and I and this is why I rarely ever do it is like take a long form piece of video content that I've created and chop it up in for whatever. Mhmm. TikTok, which I've never posted to, or, like, YouTube shorts or, you know, reels or, like, all all these short form things.

Mhmm.

And, like and each platform has its own limits. Like, some of them are only one minute. And I think LinkedIn is like you you have up to fifteen minutes. Like, taking your long form podcast from Transistor and automatically saying, like, here are three clips based on the most interesting parts of your transcript. Mhmm. Already clipped them. They're ready to go. Just click this button, and you can disseminate them out to

Yeah.

Your you know?

That stuff is all possible. I mean, that would be quite a bit further downstream. Mhmm. I and I I wanna be clear. Like, Transistor is a profitable company.

The other interesting angle maybe you can think about there is like you are sort of charting some new grounds, new territory in the podcasting space that this, you know, h t c HTC?

HLS. HLS. Yeah.

I don't know what I'm maybe there's some technology there that you can figure out and deploy for Transistor and sell to other

Mhmm.

Podcasting companies, you know, like and like be be like the start start to become more of like an infrastructure provider for like, not only podcasting companies, but like even like any SaaS that's offering any sort of, like, media recording, streaming, messaging, delivery, like, this could be the way to tap into that network of content. It's like using your using your, like, API for this or whatever it is. You know?

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Just looking at the the comments here from the the live viewers. One thing someone mentioned is Cloudflare Stream. And Cloudflare Stream is a great example of a product that is not priced appropriately for our use case. It would be so expensive to use, in this case, Cloudflare Stream, which is built for this use case, but nobody I know uses it. Like, Aaron didn't use it for their screencasting.com stuff. It's just not priced well.

I don't know how that that's a different service from Cloudflare, but I don't know how all their main services, like their domain stuff, the DNS, the the the page host, all that stuff is so is free and Mhmm. And great, and I just love it. I I I love Cloudflare so much, and I just can't believe I use so much of their services for free. It's insane.

And, unfortunately, they have a few things that are like so this is the article I was telling you by Aaron, delivering 15 terabytes of four k video with Cloudflare r two for $2.18. So this is where we're kind of headache. And again, video is hard. He compares it to like, the cost. Their monthly cost is $2.18 on Cloudflare.

I do wanna do maybe like a separate panel episode. We've already had some people on this show before who are big in in open source, but like, I it still sort of boggles my mind. I get, like, when there's, like, large companies who are sort of behind these tools, but I don't understand the indie I'm so appreciative of these, like, smaller indie developers who put amazing things out to the world open source. Mhmm. But I just don't know how they sustain it unless they have some business model that makes sense with it.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We're gonna try to make some donations. We were talking about in our team meeting today. Like, we gotta we gotta actually, you know, put our money where our mouth is on some of these and actually donate to these projects.

Yep. Yep.

Anyway, there's Zach is wondering what my after our last panel when Adam was talking, if I've changed my mind about AI. But let's switch to you. What's going on in in your world? What are you thinking about working on? What's what's the secret project?

Yeah. I mean, it's okay. So of all, I had my I think, like, hit video on my YouTube channel Nice. This week. It's up to, like, something like 35,000 views. And it was like I dropped the same day as our podcast episode last week, and I just released a follow-up video to it today. It's about building with AI. Like And and so like that's Oh, there it is.

34,000 views.

Yeah. I think my subscribers went up by like 2,000 just in the past week off of this. You know, like, the game with YouTube is so interesting how it's like I I like, I knew I wasn't really maximizing the opportunity on YouTube this year even though I've been publishing so much there. I've so focused on the instrumental components product Yeah. Showing showing that and building it and shipping it.

Yeah. The the helping any helping blank gain leverage might be a bit too corporate. But I know. You're directionally there. You're directionally there. Sorry. Give it give it to us again so we can listen.

Helping us gain leverage in this age of building with AI.

Us as in devs?

Build builders. Okay. So software designers, developers, people building software at the professional level. So you're not a hobbyist. In terms of my okay. My target market Yeah. For this new business that I'm working on now.

That you're about to reveal.

Sure. Okay. I don't have a website for it. So I'll I'll give you the domain in a but there's nothing nothing there. Yeah. It's it's aimed at what I'm calling builders. Okay. Professional builders. So you are a I I think there there are probably two sides of this market or two flavors of this market. Right?

Yes. Yeah. I felt this a lot. Like, after our conversation last week, I was inspired enough that I was like, okay. I'm gonna set aside two hours to jump into one of these. Mhmm. Didn't happen. I'm I'm busy. I I've got too it's too much to I don't have time to tinker.

On that same point, so I I just booked a coaching engagement that I I talked last week about the guy who reached out. Yeah. So we so we just booked that. I'm actually gonna be doing it next week. So he and his team are paying me to work with his developers and just look over their shoulder, watch them work, offer them tips. Hey, maybe we can consider, you know, building things this way or using this tool or or whatever that might be. Right?

So I could see that being very useful, by the way. Just that someone looking over your shoulder and going, okay. Hey. Like Have

you tried it this way? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The interesting pain point that I think that this is solving is like if you think about a developer who's like employed at a SaaS company, they are not being paid to go tinker and explore and play around with the newest tools. They're being paid to ship this week's feature that they have to ship. Mhmm. Right? So they are, like, correctly not. Like, they're they're doing a good job at their at what they're being paid to do.

Yeah. Yeah. So just for me to kind of wrap up what I just heard, you put this idea out into the world. You had some people approach you and say, we our team wants that right now.

The interesting thing is I didn't even put it out to the world. Oh, are just approaching you. Yeah.

So which a good sign. Because like I said, I thought I think this is perfect for you because in my mind, you've been that guy for a long time, like early versions of ChatGPT, and you were like, people need to be using this. So someone approached you, said, hey, can you help my team do this? You're doing that engagement partly to get some money right now, but mostly for learning to set up kind of this next business, which will be around these pain points?

The name that I settled on for this new business is gonna be Builder Methods. I I got buildermethods.com. You can go there. There's nothing there yet.

I'm gonna go run there right now.

My my goal my goal for this week or next week is to get some sort of early landing page up on that domain. Here let me just give you what I think is gonna be the rollout over the next month. Okay. But next couple months. I want you to poke holes in this.

Okay.

Okay. So I think that my top priority right now with Builder Methods is to launch something on buildermethods.com. Mhmm. There has to be like an e like, this whole business is gonna be about growing the email list.

Yes.

Well, two two things. Like, growing the YouTube channel and the email list. The YouTube channel is the top of the funnel distribution for this. Like, I'm really trying to be, like, all in on that is the gonna be the the channel. Yeah.

Okay.

But I'm thinking about roughly every three months, I'm going to do a new workshop. Like a live workshop. Yeah. I think the one will probably be free, but I'll start to charge for these. Like a low dollar amount to come to the come to the next live workshop.

Yeah.

Maybe in between, like during those three months, people can opt in to to see a recording of of the of the current workshop. Yep. But that's the main email lead magnet to get lots of people onto the email list, and this is like growing the leads. The the reason why I think it's good to do an like a new or a fresh workshop every two or three months is because this space keeps changing and updating. Yeah.

Yep.

On the weekly cadence, I'm I'm creating and publishing new YouTube videos, and that is based on it. Like, I need a good two or three days every week at least of just tinkering and playing around. Right? Yeah. So like this this video that I dropped today is all about the background agents feature in Cursor, which is new. It took me probably two days of playing with the feature and then two days of recording and then rerecording the video Yeah. To to get a good a solid take on this.

That is how how are you feeling about that part? Like, the everything you've said so far sounds good to me. The the big question mark in my head is like, man, that sounds like a lot of energy, lot of time.

It's tough. And I I I think that I need to be improving over time is the efficiency.

Mhmm.

Right? So, like, my efficiency at taking an idea for a YouTube video and getting it into a a recordable state Mhmm. And then an editable state, Like, that's taking me hours now. That that needs to cut down. And I think that's gonna that efficiency will will come through it's a muscle.

Yeah. And

I had to you know? So then I did like a take where I just did like a simpler demo.

Yeah. You

know? And so like things like that, I'm just gonna get better and better at to to increase the speed. Yeah. Same with the editing workflow. I'm using Descript right now. I I have some complaints about it, but there are some things that can get faster.

Mhmm. This is actually something I think people do not realize how much time it takes to produce video. Video is just unbelievable. Even like, I'm pretty good at a standard video for me is I just hit record. I have kind of in my head what I want to talk about.

Yeah. Editing, dude. I I I did I had a I was working with an editor for the part of this year, and he he ended up taking a full time job somewhere. And that was really great because I do have an easy setup here to just flip the camera on, get my raw recording into Dropbox, and I can give it to him. Yeah. So like most of the videos that I published earlier this year were edited by him. Yeah. And that was fantastic. It was like less than an hour of my time. I'm done.

Right? Yeah. Yeah.

There's a lot of that kind of garbage right now. And I'm I'm like this video that that did well last week, I got, like, 200 comments on it. Mhmm. I think that there are a lot of, like, professionals who are, like, finally some like, someone who's who's given some, like, real talk about building with AI.

I'm curious. Did you have you looked at the analytics for it yet? Like, how did people find it?

I haven't dug into it too much. I I know that most of the videos come through the algorithm. You know?

Because the I edited just a piece of our conversation with Adam and published it on my channel. And I was I mean, it's always just interesting to see where things come from where things come, like how people find it. And this one was YouTube recommendations. 66.6% of views came from YouTube home. So just getting recommended on the homepage. Yep. And then up next was 20%. Everything else, like, send it to my email list. That's somewhere down here. I sent it to you know? And

and actually interesting thing about that, like, I think that I I've I've done, like, a lot of, like, research into how to grow on YouTube. Yeah. And I think it's actually, like, not like, I actually try not to promote my YouTube videos outside of you like, I don't tweet them very much. I don't put them on on Blue Sky. Occasionally, I'll send it to my newsletter. But I think the thing to be careful of there is that, like, it could be a negative signal to YouTube's algorithm

if

the views are coming from elsewhere. Yeah. Because what because what YouTube's algorithm really wants is they want to know that people are discovering it organically and they are sticking with it and watching. Like, if you can get that watch time in other words, make it interesting enough so that they don't press stop and go away.

Yeah.

If people are watching long enough because they discovered it through the algorithm, that's then YouTube wants to keep promoting that.

Know? Interesting. Because the the traditional wisdom was always like you wanna at some point, I heard the algorithm liked it when there was initial wave of interest and watch time.

But you I

think I think they do right.

Like Like, they do wanna see that early action. But, like, their algorithm sends people who they think are perfectly aligned with this topic.

Mhmm.

You know? So they wanna make sure that, like, okay, we found the product market fit for this video. Yep. That's why I'm so excited about YouTube in general as a as a platform

Yeah.

For marketing. You know?

I I do think there's lots of opportunity here still for this is gonna sound so funny because but I think in terms of if like if anyone out there's looking for a job, I'm not necessarily saying I would hire you for this. But I think there is an opportunity for for video editors that can edit quickly with with YouTube in mind.

I feel like Descript is trying to be this, and I'm using them. They've gotten good. They're it's not there yet. Like, it's pretty slow and clunky. It's still a little bit over complicated than it should be. Mhmm. But it's pretty cool now how I can they have a tool where I can, like, automatically cut out bad takes. Yeah. You know? So I often say lines, like, three or four times.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So just to leave this, I do think there's lots we could talk about in the future.

That's what I do too.

Record it in ScreenFlow, and then the video's on my machine. I don't have to take an SD card out and put it in, and it's just videos on my machine.

Same. Yep.

That part after that, which is, like, structuring it so there's some sort of hook. And, you know, it's almost like I wish I could just have a producer come and look at all the video and then say, okay, Justin, you need to record one more bit just to bring people in.

My process keeps changing on this. I keep what what I'm finding now is that I'm removing layers from my process and just going bare bones to, like, most essential pieces. Right? Yeah. I the the technical setup, mine is exactly the same as you. I've got a big light right here.

Yeah.

Got my camera, Cam Link. Now I'm recording directly into Descript, but I I used to record directly into ScreenFlow. The only reason I I use Descript instead of ScreenFlow is because they have the script based editing.

Mhmm.

If as as soon as ScreenFlow adds that, like, I'm switching back to ScreenFlow. Yeah. Right. But I don't think they are. That's the technical setup. But I now focus on I I I spend a lot of time, like, planning the topic. Mhmm. And what the title and the thumbnail are gonna be before I even record. It I and I think that's the key strategy on YouTube is, like, think about how you're gonna package this thing before you even create it. And I'm using some AI, so I'll I'll I'll have like the raw idea.

and that's the part that's have have you been using before we leave this, I I'm just in this mode as well. Have you been using the YouTube thumbnail tester?

No. I probably should.

Oh, dude. You gotta use

I because I yeah. I just kind of only have time to create the one thumbnail. I do I like, I'll I'll snap a photo of myself in in the same shirt that I wore for the recording and same same lighting and everything. And then lately, I've been using Pixelmator Pro to just, you know, whip up a a thumbnail image. Yeah.

Like Yeah.

You know, I have that concept beforehand.

Yeah. That, I think, is key. A good, some homework for you and me and everybody else is go watch some of Steven Robles' videos, r o b l e s. He's just a master at setting up that intro in a way and and, structuring his videos in a way that hooks the user, the viewer, and brings them in.

The other thing I've been meaning to do, I haven't gotten around to it, is just go back to older videos and update the thumbnail.

Yeah. You

know? That works really well. And I know that I have a few videos from my two, three months ago. Like, have one on Ruby on Rails on AI. Right? And that's still one of my best performing videos now. It's like three or four months old.

It's still getting views.

Yeah. And it's got like a really crappy thumbnail. Like, what like, what if I actually improved the thumbnail? It'd probably do even better, you know.

The I've now gotten in the habit of doing those tests every time. It's just basically if you haven't seen it at home for the listener, it's just a AB tester. And so for this last video, I tested it's always three variations. Usually, my and I just make these in Canva. So my my thumbnail is probably not that good. I've made the one was a big winner. It was like 54%.

People want more Adam. More

Adam. But I also think it was the headline forced to use AI. So I took something he said, which was I forced myself to use AI. And this is a trick Aaron Francis taught me. It was just like, the less words in the title, the better. And the more it kind of like opens up a curiosity loop, the better. And so it was just forced to use AI.

Does that automatically select the winner and use that going forward?

Yeah. Cool. Yeah. I found this very helpful. Just and this is the biggest winner I've ever had.

Yeah. I mean, it really I should I we we should just be creating like three thumbnails for every video. Yeah. Just, you know

And like I said, this is my approach in Canva as I just create three separate pages, and I just pull in images, and then I'm just like it's it's pretty simple. I'm not doing anything crazy here. I try to always stick with this font, and that's it.

Love it. Okay. Alright. So here's

Let's talk about money. Gonna make money. Yeah.

Okay. My thought I I don't know what the ultimate ultimately, what the product line is gonna be from this thing. I'm trying to focus all the energy upfront on, like, grow the distribution channel, grow YouTube. Yeah. And grow the and grow the email list. And also learn from the market and figure out but I think that it'll probably end up being courses.

K.

And there can be a few different types of these. We could talk about that. And maybe sponsorships will will play an element in this. Mhmm. I would say short like, there's a short term, medium, long term. Right? So short term, like, right now is like coaching. Yep. And I think coaching can come in like one to one. It can be some team coaching.

I like that idea.

Yep. But I don't intend to do that for very long. Yep. I I don't wanna do that for very long. The courses, I think one flavor, probably medium term in the next couple of months, could be what are the most obvious, very self obvious, like, tightly scoped self serve courses that I can create. Like, maybe like an intro to using cursor or or mastering cursor or something like that. But like, you know, or like prompting for development, prompting techniques or I don't know.

Like, I

I don't know what they're gonna be, but like very very tightly focused things. Couple $100 each. So like not very expensive. Like, oh, oh, I'm really interested in that specific topic right now. Let me grab that off the shelf and and do it. Yeah. That could be like a medium term thing. I think ultimately, most of these businesses end up making their way toward, a cohort based flagship course. Right? Where, like, roughly three times a year, I'm running a three month program.

Mhmm.

And it's a 4 figure price tag to get in on that, and you're joining a cohort of other members and and myself. And, like, together, we're we're we're building something or or we're, like, we're upping our development game over the next two, three months. Yeah. Right? And we're in a private group, and it's it's live and and async, but you're joining the spring cohort.

Yeah. Yeah. Can I just pause here and say one thing I like about both of these ideas is they both can leverage Clarity Flow? So Yep. In idea number one, you're the coach. And Clarity Flow is async video messaging and just messaging and payments and other things for coaches. And then the idea, which is some sort of course and then moving to a cohort based course that might be async and live, that's a really great way for you to use your own software.

I expect I will. I I I use Clarity Flow every single day anyway with people. So I'm not I'm not necessarily I I I don't see it as a requirement to, like, integrate these businesses. I I I don't feel, absolutely tied to we must use Clarity Flow for everything, but I do happen to use Clarity Flow for most of these types of things. I expect I will be using it, you know.

So sorry. Do you think long term long term a cohort based course is maybe the thought or a mix of that and sponsorship?

Yeah. I mean, I it remains to be seen how how in how interested I am in that sort of rhythm. I'm historically very, very async. I don't like doing things live. I don't like having a lot of meetings.

Yeah.

But maybe I can grow to like this sort of thing. I and I I, again, I think the subject matter of this is, like, like with when I was doing the productized course over ten years ago, I created that course, and then I sold it for, like, five years. Mhmm. You know? I did maybe a few improvements to it here and there over those years, but, like, it was like set it and forget it for a long time.

of time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. I mean, part of and unfortunately, the beginning of any idea, you're in the fog of war, and you don't really know, as you explore the map, like what's going to reveal itself. So, for example, you might publish a YouTube video every week on how to build with AI. And you might get right away a massive email list. It could happen. And then right away, it might be like, you know what? The best model for this is sponsorship. There's tons of AI companies.

Yeah. And that's the other you know, it's funny enough. Like, literally today, I got the email. Somebody just emailed me randomly because that that video went crazy last week. So they are they're from an AI tool. They're like a plug in for Versus Code. And they're like, hey, like, we'd love to do a collaboration with you. Can you do a video about, like, how this compares to Cursor? Yeah. Frank, honestly, what I told him, I was like, look, I plan to do sponsorships maybe later this year.

Yeah.

A a thing that can happen.

Know? How often do you think you'll do the email newsletter?

That's a that's another good question. My my idea, this is totally up in the up in the air, is like, my thought was to do a once a month newsletter. I just don't I won't have the bandwidth to do a weekly thing unless it was a little bit more automated. But I like the idea of somehow carving out the time once a month to say to to to really write like this, I think, is the most important idea that I'm thinking about this month.

I I'm still I could be wrong. I'm still kind of feeling like this needs to be a weekly email. And it's only because it's so in today's environment more than ever. Yeah. It's this is kind of like the whole discussion Ian and Aaron were having over at Mostly Technical, which is so many people didn't realize that Aaron was releasing a new course.

Well, I think that people will still receive more emails through my email systems, like the automated

Okay.

Like drip campaign. So once you get into the once you attend a live workshop or once you get into the email list somehow, I'll have campaigns set up in Kit to to nurture you and to sell you on the product that you haven't bought yet. Like, that's that's the vision for like, that's that's why these types of businesses grow their email lists is like Mhmm. Okay. Like, get into the free or the low cost workshop and you'll be upsold on on the cohort program next time it comes around.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And and then also, having, like, a like a a lineup, a product lineup of, like, oh, you're interested in cursor? We have a cursor course. Mhmm. Oh, you're interested in Claude code? Take our Claude code course. Yeah. Right? So, like, so we can and and I can have, like, surveys where I'm tagging people and, oh, you you expressed interest in Rails with AI. So maybe, you know, we have specialized products and and courses that you can trigger with automated email campaigns through that.

In in terms of a subscriber magnet, I think another thing you could suggest I think workshops is a good thing to test. Another thing that I'm kind of thinking about is just, again, what's the problem that a lot of us are having? Which is just like, I've got to make the time to just jump in to one of these things and do a crash course on it. And I think a like five email or three email sequence, which is like, here's your three day crash course. I'll send you an email each day.

Really like that. Yeah. Totally. I had a productized crash course that was my go to lead magnet for years.

Yeah.

I I like that. And, like, maybe an idea for that could be shift your mindset around, like, starting to have, like, an AI for building with AI mindset coming from a hand coding mindset. And that's something that can be a little bit more timeless, and it could last a year or two years or more. Like, I can create it, and it's just about mindset. It's not specific to any tool right now. You know?

Can I give you another idea I just had? This might be dumb. But what do what do you call those those documents you create at to set up the LLM? Like, it's like a project it it's an Yeah.

Like a PRD, the project department. Yep.

PRD generator? Like, is that a thing that could be a thing? Because

Yeah. There there I think there's some tools to do that. Also also people are now offering cursor rules as, like, offerings.

Yeah.

You know, like like, swipe my cursor rules.

Yeah. That and, like see, I know you you and Adam were talking about PRDs and cursor rules and all this stuff. And I was like, okay. And then I, like, watched Ryan Carson's video, and then I went into the GitHub project. And then I was like, okay, I'm done.

I think the key is to have multiple lead magnets and just develop them over time. Alright. I I gotta get your your take on one last piece of this.

One more thing.

And that is start starting another podcast.

Jeremy. My my my Laravel friend Jeremy, who I always see at LaraCon. I I'm not gonna see you this summer, Jeremy, I don't think, unfortunately, but he just commented, do you guys not have enough podcasts? No.

We we clearly don't. Gotta do we gotta do another one. And alright. So this is one that I really wanna do. I have no idea when I'm gonna have the time to do it.

Yeah. Time is the key.

But, like, as like, I think I'll probably just call it, like, the Builder Methods podcast. It's it's gonna be a a thing for this business. Here's what I wanna do. I want to hop on call like, video calls with guests. Show me how you are currently working.

What's What is

Derek Rimer doing over I gotta ask him. I gotta I gotta ask him. I gotta record it. I gotta put it on a podcast. Yeah. You know?

I don't think that one thing I'd say, as much as I'm a podcast person, that doesn't sound like a podcast to me. That just sounds like a supplement to your existing YouTube channel. Like, I'm gonna do video.

That was gonna be one of my questions.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't think it's a podcast.

So I I wanna do that. Like, I wanna have, like, a a series where I'm just always at, like, show me show me your work, show me your show me your screen, show me what you're working on. Like like, oh, that was an interesting shortcut. Or, oh, you you'd have an interesting approach to prompting or using agents. Yeah.

I mean, I love this idea because I think, like, that little segment I edited up of Adam talking about how he's using AI, I think it did well because I think a lot of people were curious about how he's using AI. And Mhmm. I think it would be fascinating. I mean, I would love to know how Derek Rimer is using AI. That what was interesting about that conversation that we had last week was I got to listen to two smart people who are both very opinionated, you and Adam, basically say this is how we're using it.

I do think that there is a I was saying earlier how there's like a couple different flavors of my target audience for this. Yeah. I do wanna keep it focused on like you're the you're a professional. And and a professional can mean a lot of things. It can mean you're a founder. It can mean that you work for a company. Or it could it could also mean like you're pretty junior. Mhmm. And I think that that that's the other flavor of and I'm seeing this in some of the some of the responses like

Yep.

I think that there are people who are vibe coding. They're not trying to vibe code to, like, whip up an MVP that they can go sell and hack together. Mhmm. And, like, they're trying to, like, make a career in software development.

Yep.

And if you're trying to get into this industry right now or grow in this Or maybe you started in this industry only five years ago. Yep. Just before AI came through. So you haven't gained years of experience yet. But you can't just keep going down the train of like, oh, I'm going to be a JavaScript writing expert. That's not going to help you anymore. You need to be an expert in building with Cursor.

See, this is what Dave Junta called out last episode was how how to be if you and Adam are saying the best way to use AI as developers is you have to develop expertise, How are we gonna get all of these junior developers who can't get a job to develop expertise? Like, there's a big gap there.

But there's there is an interesting thing there because it's I'm I'm definitely not saying you don't need to know anything about software development. Like, you can just vibe code your way to professionalism. Like, no. Yeah. You know?

Yeah. One kind of opinionated response to that is I do think you've just identified two streams, like the experienced developer who's been programming for two decades that now needs to figure this out. And then that junior developer that's like just getting started. Those do feel like two audiences for me. Mhmm.

I think it's interesting because it's the other the other channel so like this this client that I have next week who who hired me to coach his team. Yeah. It's like the person making the buying decision is the founder or the CEO or the manager. Yeah. But he wants me to coach the junior employees.

Okay. I'm surprised he has a team of juniors. It feels like nobody's hiring juniors.

The way that he described it was like, they're not necessarily juniors, but they're not he's he's not competing with Google for, like, the best software talent out there. Like, he's a bootstrapped SaaS, and and he actually prioritized developers who really know his product space really well. They like, they know that customer base, but they're not, like, the the greatest you know, they're not the most competitive software developers.

Yeah. This is one of those things that at the beginning of a project, it's the curse, and it's the great thing is that you get to test out different approaches. Because maybe there's a big market, for example, of junior developers. Like one pain point I'm picking up with junior developers is they're saying, I wish ChatGPT didn't exist because I can't go through the school of hard knocks to actually get that fundament. I can just be lazy with everything.

Yeah. I mean, I I I yeah. I I I've been thinking of like, how can I help I I really think that the the the wave and the opportunity is in the more experienced people getting up to speed?

Mhmm. That's how I feel too. But there

is this idea of like, how can I help you read vibe code? Like, you know, like like, you don't really know anything about how stuff gets built, but but, like, maybe I can teach you how, like, the how to how the dots actually connect behind the scenes.

I don't know.

Yeah. But but I I must say, you know, I've been sort of on the search for the last, like, two years for, like, what is my next business gonna be? This one feels like the time that I feel like I'm actually timing something really right.

Yeah.

Everything else, I actually felt like my timing is off. Instrumental components feels like the timing was off on that. And, like, other ideas that I had over the last year or two had some ideas for, like, SaaS products, like, maybe I'll do. And, alright. Like, it just seems like a grind, like an uphill grind to, like, go find a customer and market and and weasel my way in and Yeah.

I think so too. Like I said, I think this topic, like building with AI is perfect for you because you've been talking about it for years. When most of the world was skeptical, You were the one person in my earbuds saying, no, I think this is actually gonna be a big deal. And every time I put out a, you know, a skeptical post, you were like, well, maybe think about it this way or whatever. So I think you already have this reputation, which is why unprompted that person approached you.

like, this is it's it's like half not like, I'm still I don't even have a website to promote yet, you know? Yeah. The what was I gonna say?

Yeah. You do builder methods dot Yeah.

I I gotta I gotta update and and get that get that going. Like, I I was thinking today, like, okay. I I think I think the very low hanging fruit lead magnet that I could possibly do is a live workshop. I'm gonna announce it. It's gonna be some date in in in, like, July after my trip.

Personally, it feels I'm kinda leaning towards just because I know there's so many existing software companies and software teams and agencies with experienced developers with, like, businesses that are working, but they're stressed about this. They're thinking about it, and they have money. And so it feels like that approach, which is like Brian could come in and say, well, here's a bunch of things you you might not even know about cursor rules or whatever. Like, I'm just gonna help you set up all that stuff. I'm gonna look at, like, what do most of your developers code in?

The guy who hired me for for next week, you know, he's like I I see it much like you're like a golf trainer. Like, you're just, like, observing the swing, giving some tips. Mhmm. It remains to be seen, like, how effective I can actually be on, like, a live call. Because I do think that with this kind of stuff, it's a lot of like, okay, here's a tip or a new workflow for you to consider.

I think that's gonna be the value. Cause we've already exposed, like, if selling a product is saying, you're here, there's an obstacle here, and you don't know how to get over that obstacle to the thing that you want. The obstacle in in front of experienced developers and teams is like, we're already we've we've been doing something one way for two decades. We've just been coding things by hand, looking up answers on Stack Overflow. And now you're saying we need to change completely.

And you'll appreciate it.

And you'll appreciate it. I feel like people needs people kinda need someone to be doing that for them.

Like, the other thing about like how I think about topics right now, and I think filling a niche is like Like the video I dropped today is called how to crush your backlog using background agents and cursor. I The thing that I find most interesting about topics like this is like, why should I care about this thing? What is like, it's I don't wanna be the guy who's just saying like, hey, you all need to be building with AI because that's the new way of doing it. Like, that's not good enough. There has to be a reason.

Yeah.

There has to be an incentive for you and your team to actually change up the way that you build stuff. Yeah. Because you like, there has to be a payoff. You have to be doing getting some speed benefits Yeah. Or product benefits or whatever that might be. Right? So, like, Cursor just dropped this new background agents feature. Codecs like OpenAI's Codecs is essentially the same thing. Both of them are background agents.

Right? Yeah.

Like Unlike Claude Code, unlike normal cursor where you're working directly, like, the foreground with the agent, these are like, give it a task, go get a coffee, and it's gonna keep working. Right? Yeah. But, like, why is that actually interesting? Right? It's like alright. Cool. But, like, it's to me, it's like about your backlog. Yeah. Like, you have this backlog of of things that you need to ship or bugs that you need to fix.

And I think as you pay attention and observe what people are saying, as you observe them kind of struggling out loud, I think you're gonna get the clues to a lot of that stuff. Like, what's the Yeah. That's why coaching, I think, early on can be so helpful because then you're actually observing the dynamics. Yeah. And if you could do that with a few different teams, I think you would be able to see it's it's maybe there's different jobs to be done with different teams, you know?

Yeah. Like, I have one developer on Clarity Flow, and, like, literally, like, half of her time is fixing bugs and the other half is building the next feature. Right? Like, imagine if she's only building the next feature. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And I there's lots of opportunities in here too. One thing in the chat I wanted to call out, I think this was Dustin. I might be wrong. Sorry. But they said a good course or Oh, yeah. Sorry. Ryan said DevOps for Vibe coders. I think it would be really good.

And then there was a big, like, no code movement.

And then there was a big no code movement. And the problem with both of those, incidentally, is that you just like, I'm still getting Dependabot security vulnerability warnings for projects I built ages ago. Mhmm. And anybody that's been around software for a long time knows, like, that's what kills you. Like, you've still got this thing running on some Heroku machine, or I got a bill for like $500 because somebody had discovered this opening on AWS and was just like hammering it trying to like, those are the real problems is Yeah.

One thing that sort of makes me nervous about that this is that, like, I I don't consider myself, like, like, a a a really great, like, all around I am I am full stack. I can build full stack design development front end, back end applications. Yep. But I definitely don't know everything there is to know. Certainly not across the board on different tech stacks and programming languages.

you know Yeah.

Ruby or or like a database course or like JavaScript. Know?

I mean, that's why I think this is your sweet spot.

Yeah. It's it is kind of cool, especially now that I have a little bit of revenue through this and doing some coaching stuff where it's like, actually, I feel like I'm my new job now is to stay on top of

this.

Yeah. And to build like demo apps and tinker around and spend a day or two just playing with this stuff so so that I can make the next YouTube video so that I can coach someone on this or develop course material. Like, it's actually kinda cool to feel like, alright. Now now I feel justified in being able to go out and play around with these tools. Yeah.

Yeah. Like I said, I love this idea. Let's wind down. But everyone should go to buildermethods.com. By the time this episode is published, it

Just just keep hitting refresh.

Keep hitting refresh, everybody.

And and eventually, there will be something there.

Also, next week, I think we're gonna try to record live again. Is that right? June 19, 12:15PM Pacific. Show up for that. I want to thank all the people I think we should do some shout outs at the end of the episodes for people who show up live.

Oh, Aaron Francis was in there. Emmett.

We had Emmett. Ryan Hefner.

Emmett was in there. Ryan Hefner.

Yeah. Anyone else we missed there? Michael Cooper. There's a

solid crew in here. Andrew Askins.

Cool. Ariel. Ariel? Yeah. Thanks for showing up. And, Tony as well.

Yeah. We're we're talking paradiddles. I've I've been doing drum drum lessons. I I I got a drummy

Oh, is that what a drum is a paradiddle, drum thing?

Yeah. Like a like a drum Rooty.

Okay. Okay. I missed that. I didn't know what he was talking about. Thanks, everyone, for showing up. We'll see you next week live.

Later, folks.

Bye.