[00:00:00] Justin: 80% of all businesses fail. What are the characteristics of the people that succeed? One thing you can see is that the people who succeed have just been.
[00:00:10] Nathan: My guest today is Justin Jackson, co-founder of Transistor fm, a podcast hosting platform that now hosts over 30,000 podcasts and is generating millions in revenue per year.
[00:00:20] But before that, who is a prolific creator?
[00:00:22] Justin: If you have a personal brand, use your personal brand. If you have a newsletter list on your own, if you have a following on a social network, like use every advantage. You need every advantage. We were one, one of the first people that were able to distribute podcasts to Spotify.
[00:00:36] How did that happen? We were doing a podcast, an engineer at Spotify was listening. DM us saved us so much time and money.
[00:00:42] Nathan: Mm-hmm.
[00:00:43] Justin: A lot of creators should be thinking about that, especially if they wanna start a software business.
[00:00:47] Nathan: How do you make the most of it? What are the things to do that make a big difference?
[00:00:52] Justin: Every person I've interviewed that has gone on to do something exceptional, when they talk about the pivotal moments of their journey where they really leveled up, it was always because of. As creators and as founders of independent businesses, this is the way that we hold the tension between us and the big platforms because it gives us power.
[00:01:17] Nathan: So Justin, you have this idea that I've heard you talk about of how business is like surfing. Yeah. And I want you to get into that because it touches on these ideas of market selection and timing and like being in the game for a long time that I think are really important.
[00:01:31] Justin: Yeah. It's kind of like, um, for anyone to, like starting a company is a lot of work, takes a lot of energy.
[00:01:38] You're making a bet that might not pay off. And so I, I keep thinking about how can you increase your chances? Some people think you can't increase your chances at all. Like you just gotta keep throwing spaghetti up against the wall and then like it's pure luck or something. It's pure luck or whatever.
[00:01:52] Nathan: Yeah.
[00:01:52] Justin: And so yeah, if we talk about like luck surface area or whatever, like what are some ways that you can increase the chances of a success? I think it's kind of like surfing. So, uh, a surfer who catches a good wave has showed up at that beach every day. They're just, they've learned to watch the water.
[00:02:11] They've learned what time to get up, what time to get there. Uh, they've built relationships with all the other surfers, and when the good wave comes, they're ready for it. And they know that it's worth, worth it to expend all that energy to paddle out.
[00:02:28] Nathan: Right.
[00:02:28] Justin: And, uh, paddling is a lot of work.
[00:02:30] Nathan: Right.
[00:02:30] Justin: You expend a lot of energy and, and that's everybody you know, who wants to start a business, wants to surf a good wave.
[00:02:37] And then the wave is like the market. That's what carries you and your product and however big and strong the wave is, that's how long of, um, a trajectory you could have. Right?
[00:02:51] Nathan: Right.
[00:02:52] Justin: And so there's all of this in this metaphor that I love. It's like. Putting in the work to show up every day, be in these waters, be kind of soaking in an industry or a category.
[00:03:04] That's one element. And then learning to recognize what is a good opportunity, what does that look like? What is the size and shape of the wave? And, and then having enough fundamentals to be able to paddle out. Having the fitness to do that, compete against all the other surfers, right? And then actually ride this thing.
[00:03:26] And then realizing once you're on the wave, some of it's gonna be your skill. Some of it's gonna be whatever product you've created. Maybe that's the board. A lot of it is out of our hands. A lot of it's the market. And the market. The momentum and energy of the market is like a wave. That's what carries you.
[00:03:44] And I think the mistake a lot of people make is they, they're trying to create their own wave or they're surfing waves that are far too small. And so once you learn this, it's like, okay, what is kind of the right sized wave for me? What's kind of the, the right size and shape and everything? And once you can do that, I think you can increase your chances of having a good business.
[00:04:06] So there, yeah. There's so many things in there that make a difference because it addresses the, the topic of luck. Yeah.
[00:04:14] Nathan: Right. And there is, there's so much of that. And so we'll say like, oh, she just got lucky. Mm-hmm. But you're like, well, okay. Right place at the right time matters.
[00:04:25] Justin: Yeah.
[00:04:26] Nathan: The, the person standing on the beach going, I don't know, the waves look a little iffy today.
[00:04:30] Justin: Yeah.
[00:04:31] Nathan: Didn't have the opportunity to get lucky.
[00:04:32] Justin: Yeah.
[00:04:34] Nathan: And then, and there's another person there, which is like the bro who shows up one day. Right. And is trying to take advantage of. That surf spot or whatever, and they're just disadvantage every disadvantage. The whole, the
[00:04:44] whole rest of the market's kind of like, yeah, exactly.
[00:04:47] You don't know what the lineup is. You don't know any of that.
[00:04:49] Justin: And this is the part that, 'cause there's this other thing people always talk about is the failure rate of like, mm-hmm. You know, like 80% of all businesses fail. And, or sometimes I'll talk about something, I'll say, you know, here's an example of how you can increase your chances.
[00:05:05] And people will say, well, who'd that work for? And I'll say, well, it worked for Nathan and it worked for me and it worked for my friend Adam Wain. And they'll say, yeah, but that's like you, the outliers. You're outliers, right? And my whole point with with entrepreneurship is you want to look at the outliers.
[00:05:21] Survivorship bias in entrepreneurship is what you want. You wanna look at the survivors, copy those because it's unlike anything else. Because anybody can start a business. There's only gonna be a few that succeed. So if that's true, then what are the characteristics of the people that succeed?
[00:05:39] Mm-hmm.
[00:05:39] Justin: And one thing you can, you can see is that the people who succeed have just been showing up at a surf spot forever.
[00:05:47] Mm-hmm. So like, you were a creator. You were using other email newsletter platforms, you were talking to other creators, you saw the struggles that people were having, um, and then you saw an opportunity. Right. And you had, you know, built up all of the connections and everything else to like actually do that.
[00:06:05] Right. Um, and it's the same, you know, almost every success I've ever seen is like that. It's all people who have put in the work, who've showed up at the surf spot every, every day. Right. Who maybe surfed a little, a, a few smaller waves at first and then built themselves up to the wave that they caught and, and tried tons of waves that didn't work out.
[00:06:25] Mm-hmm.
[00:06:27] Justin: We also have, we don't have unlimited, um, we only have so much energy, right? We only have so many resources. And if that's true, and you don't want to be in this massive group that is starting a business but not creating a better life, and you wanna be in this group that did it and succeeded. Yeah, I think these are the kinds of things you wanna be thinking about.
[00:06:50] Like what markets, what categories, what opportunities am I uniquely, uh, kind of prepared for? And I might have a unique advantage in it, right? And I think if. Like with transistor, if I hadn't been in podcasting for all those years, and if I had, like, I was in every podcasting forum, I was in, uh, Google plus circles.
[00:07:13] Yeah. For podcasting.
[00:07:15] Nathan: I bet a bunch of people listening are like, have, don't even know what that is.
[00:07:18] Justin: Don't even know that.
[00:07:19] Nathan: We don't even need to explain it because it's not relevant anymore, but like exactly existed.
[00:07:23] Justin: And, but being in the water, kind of like, you know, sitting on my board waiting for the opportunities.
[00:07:30] Um, and I'm, I'm in, in different spots. Like there's other places I could have gone, but I could see the wave of opportunity with podcasting coming. Mm-hmm. I could see every week the New York Times is, is publishing a new editorial and podcasting. I can see serial showing up. I can listen to my friends like you and other people that are like, well, I'm starting a show.
[00:07:51] I'm starting a show. Oh, I have a show. I have three shows. I'm like, man, there is something building here that is unlike. Previous five years of podcasting. Right. Um, and what, and you only kind of get that if you're in the water on the, you know, on the shore kind of waiting for the right opportunity to come.
[00:08:11] Nathan: Yeah. 'cause you're watching this build over time. Like I was talking to my friend, uh, Ben Greenfield Yeah. Who's in the fitness space, and someone's like, Ben, you've been podcasting for a while. Right. And he goes, yeah. Uh, 17 years. And like, he has generally been podcasting continually for 17 years. When you had to hand edit your XML file Yeah.
[00:08:29] To like get all this in there. And like, I remember, you know, 10, 15 years ago, people saying like, oh, podcasting is saturated, or, or whatever else. But if you're really watching it and paying attention, you're like, wait a second. It's, yeah. It's double how big it was a year ago or two years ago, but like, still super, super tiny.
[00:08:50] Yeah. Then you see the, you know, these inflection points. And I, I think that, you know, serial and some of these others, like really ramping up is a big moment.
[00:08:58] Justin: Yeah. And I think to like, right si like to think about markets, um, like the size of a market matters. Mm-hmm. The size of a wave matters when you're surfing it.
[00:09:08] And so podcasting as an opportunity, I don't think enough creators and business people think about, uh, the size of the opportunity. 'cause no matter what, you're just gonna be shaving like a percentage point off that market. So I think at one point I tried to estimate convert kits. Yeah. I'm, uh, sorry, kits, uh, uh, market share.
[00:09:27] I'm so curious about this stuff. Like what percentage of the market, you know, it depends on how you define the market. It depends how you define the market. I'll say this is like a total money being spent in this market, so how much of that are we gonna get?
[00:09:39] Nathan: Mm-hmm.
[00:09:40] Justin: And I don't know, like, do you think kits is 3%?
[00:09:44] Nathan: Well, so one thing that I, uh, talk about. If you go email marketing as a whole Yeah. Because a lot of markets are winner take all or winner take most. Yeah. Where someone has 80%. Yeah. And the next 10 companies fight over the remaining 20%. Yeah. And then there's even a long tail behind that. Uh, something that I told the team is MailChimp's revenue at the time of sale was right about 1 billion.
[00:10:08] Justin: Yeah.
[00:10:08] Nathan: A RR, they're the biggest. Yeah. There's other players, uh, I think now Klaviyo sits, you know, in the e-commerce space it's around four or 500 million. Yeah. Campaign monitors, like 250 million. Yeah. Um, and there's a lot down from there. Yeah. I tell the team like, we're 45 million in revenue, which wild success.
[00:10:26] Yeah. I was trying to get to like 20 K in R so that I could, you know, like me and a developer and we could, you know, all of that. Yeah. So I'm thrilled. But the thing to point out to the team is we are not 45% of MailChimp's revenue. Yeah. We are 4.5%. And you're like, so market size. That's quite large.
[00:10:46] I think I estimated you might be around 3.5% or something like that of email market share.
[00:10:52] Yeah. Uh, yeah, we're under 2%. So, and this is, this is why I think creators versus, yeah, but this is why I think this is so important is that you have, when you're thinking about a market, so here's Nathan, here's Justin. How much of this market could I, in my wildest dreams, even think about getting? Mm-hmm.
[00:11:13] Justin: Well, it's likely when you start, and it's likely, even if you build an incredible business the way you have, that you're only gonna get a, some percentage of the market. Yeah. And so the, the total size of the market does matter to a certain extent. Like, if it's really, really tiny, then you're gonna have to get a, a bigger percentage of that, um, to build a meaningful business.
[00:11:34] To build a meaningful business. And so, like the podcast hosting market, I think is maybe 150 million total, the whole podcast market. Is like everything, advertising, you know, you got big players like Spotify and Apple Podcasts and everyone. The total podcasting market maybe outside of YouTube is I think 5 billion globally, including all the sponsorships and ad spend.
[00:11:55] Everything, everything that includes like, uh, people making money on Patreon and everything.
[00:12:01] That's tiny. And then, and then you're saying you're playing within podcast hosting? Yeah. Which is 150 million.
[00:12:06] Yeah. So that's gonna create an upper bound. So still, uh, I, I had a sense of this when we got in, I had a sense like, okay, is this big enough to build a meaningful business?
[00:12:17] And for John and I were like, yeah. Like mm-hmm. If we can get this thing to a million or 2 million or 3 million in revenue, yeah, that would be incredible. And, um, you know, that would put us in the top 10 of podcast hosting platforms. Mm-hmm. And, uh, we've been able to achieve a lot of that. But you have to, this is, you wanna be thinking about this now?
[00:12:41] Um, as you're evaluating waves of opportunity, right? How big is that wave? How hard is it? How competitive is that wave?
[00:12:49] Nathan: There are some, like some markets that are not that big and are ultra competitive and you're like, uh, I run into that where I look at someone, I'm like, you are working so insanely hard.
[00:13:00] Yeah. Or not that big of an opportunity. Yes. And if you were to go play somewhere else,
[00:13:04] Justin: yeah. I mean, a lot of like Main Street businesses are like this. Yeah. It's like you're really, like, if you open a clothing store, I had a snowboard shop, uh, in my early twenties. It's like, am I, who am I competing against?
[00:13:15] Well, I'm competing against the other snowboard shops in my area. Mm-hmm. But then I'm also competing against every, like Burton selling direct to consumers and everything. Right. So we had to work incredibly hard, like way harder than I'm working now. And, uh, for way less results. For way less results and, and the, the amount of sophistication and everything.
[00:13:39] Right. So I think not enough people. Um, think about the size and the shape and the dynamics of the opportunity before they jump in the water.
[00:13:49] Nathan: Right. Do I even wanna surf this beach? Do I even want to be here? Yeah. Right. There was, uh, not to go too far on the surfing analogy, but like, uh, there was a time that I was surfing in Mexico.
[00:13:59] I'm not a good surfer. Yeah. But this particular break had, you know, as the surface instructor's telling you like, Hey, at the end one, don't write it all the way into the shore. Yeah. And two, when you fall, like, fall, like flat on your back and try to spread out. And you're like, why? And they're like, well, there's a bunch of coral and you really don't wanna like, land on it or step on it.
[00:14:20] Yeah. And you're like, and I, I don't wanna surf here. Like, take me back to San Diego or something where there's like crazy long flat beaches and Yeah. You know, all of that. And I just think that there's markets where Yeah. You're like, I just don't, don't get in there. That's right. Don't, don't play that game.
[00:14:35] Yeah. Either because it's not a good fit for you. Yeah. Or. Uh, there's just places that are, are going to be much easier to play. Yeah. But you can only know that Yeah. By like trying it and getting in if you're hanging out. Yeah. Yeah. If you're hanging out there. Yeah. Another area that I want to go to is this idea of SaaS and personal brands.
[00:14:54] Hmm. Yeah. I have had, I guess, different times, like my personal brand has played a different role in kit's marketing and all of that. Mm-hmm. Over time. Right. Very early on, uh, you know, I had my personal brand. Yeah. I had courses, you know, I was doing all that. Very similar to you. Yeah. And then I, you know, I'd say that was like 90% of the attention and then ConvertKit at the time was 10%.
[00:15:21] Justin: Mm-hmm.
[00:15:22] Nathan: Like, it sort of changed. Then there was a middle period where I, like ConvertKit's brand was way bigger mm-hmm. Than my brand. Yeah. And I actually, I. Like, like went much more behind the scenes. Yeah. You
[00:15:34] Justin: pulled back a bit
[00:15:35] Nathan: and elevated other people within the company and all of that. Yeah. Now we have all those other people making content and doing all this amazing stuff, but I've made a very deliberate effort the last 18 months.
[00:15:46] Justin: Yeah. To build my personal brand. 'cause I believe in that so much. Yeah. You and I come from, uh, similar like bootstrap software circles where Yeah. I, I mean it's a big point of debate. Yeah. Like a lot of people, personal brand or not, a lot of people say it doesn't matter. And I remember kind of believing them and I've revised my opinion on it.
[00:16:05] Uh, like folks like, uh, Tyler Rinus would call me out on it. I would say, I would kind of parrot what everyone else was saying. Like, I'd be like, well, personal brand doesn't matter in software. And then Tyler would be like, I don't know. Like, I think it matters. Yeah. And the more I've paid attention, the more I'm realized.
[00:16:24] I think in my case it's mattered a lot. So every. Customer that signs up for transistor gets a welcome email from me saying, you know, what brought you here? Uh, why did you sign up? How did you hear about us? And so I get this drip of responses every day. Mm-hmm. Which over time kind of brings me, uh, this aggregate data.
[00:16:50] Right. It's qualitative data at scale. That's right. The interesting thing is about 15 to 20% of the people who reply say, Justin, I've been signed up for your newsletter for 10 years, like your personal newsletter. Justin, I remember you interviewing this person on this podcast, Justin, I remember reading a blog post you wrote five years ago.
[00:17:13] And it could be like, I've been watching, you know, your journey for a long time. We're sitting in a meeting with my boss. My boss says We need to start a podcast. And I put up my hand and say, I've got the place for you to go. Right. And then they sign up for transistor. By the way, this also helped us in so many ways.
[00:17:29] Like, um, we were one, one of the first people that were able to distribute podcasts to Spotify. How did that happen? We were doing a podcast and an engineer at Spotify was listening, dmd us, and said, uh, again, like, I've been following Justin's journey forever on your podcast. I can get you the inside
[00:17:49] Nathan: path
[00:17:50] Justin: path to be able to have access to a, a new API or submission process or whatever this happened at.
[00:17:54] We had like, uh, we were trying to figure out bandwidth costs, talked about it publicly. There's a person at A CDN that said, well, there's this kind of backdoor you can go through and I can help you, like saved us so much time and money.
[00:18:08] Nathan: Mm-hmm.
[00:18:09] Justin: So it's had a huge impact on transistor. My personal brand, again, like surfing waves is hard.
[00:18:17] Business is hard. You need to stack every advantage you have, right? Like if you have rich parents use their money, you know, like do that. If you have a personal brand, use your personal brand. If you have a newsletter list on your own, if you have a following on a social network, like use every advantage.
[00:18:36] You need every advantage. Um, because most people who start a business don't win. Mm-hmm. Right? So if you want to build a meaningful business, you gotta do everything you can. And I think for people like me, this is where you have to qualify it for people like me and maybe people like you, brand, personal brand, and your personal following, and writing a newsletter, a personal newsletter for whatever it is now, 15, 20 years, uh, writing a blog for whatever it is, 15, 20 years actually matters because you're stacking all of these advantages, all of this surface area for of luck.
[00:19:15] For, for, uh, that makes it more likely that people are going to remember you interact with you, all this stuff. And so, yeah. I think a lot of creators should be thinking about that, especially if they wanna start, um, a software business.
[00:19:29] Nathan: Well, I think there's probably two camps of people who have a personal brand who end up in software.
[00:19:36] Hmm.
[00:19:36] Nathan: Either they go big on the creator side first. Yeah. And then they're saying, I have a huge amount of attention. How do I direct that to something that will build me more equity or enterprise value? Yeah. And then there's the other side of I'm getting into software or this other side of it. Yeah. And maybe I need to build a personal brand.
[00:19:56] You and I have been in software for longer than we've been creators. Yeah. Right. Working in the industry in some way. Yeah. And we built those skill sets, uh, alongside it. Yeah. But I, I, I think that everyone, everyone thinking about software should have an audience in some way. Even if it's the basics of writing a monthly investor update, that's actually not to investors, it's to your like friends and advisors.
[00:20:22] Yeah. Or it's this idea of a minimum viable brand where you get like two or three podcast episodes. You've got, like, it just helps everything that you're doing. When people say, I got this cold email from this guy Justin, I don't know what he is about, but I Googled him and then his stuff is cool. Yeah. And yeah, I'll take the call.
[00:20:36] Sure. Yes.
[00:20:37] Justin: Yeah. That makes it, it makes a huge difference with everything. Like you have so many problems to solve.
[00:20:42] Mm-hmm.
[00:20:43] Justin: It's like, again, vendors and, uh, how are we going to navigate this thing? You know, you need partners, you need friends, you need all these things. Right. I, I will say, I think for creators that are thinking about getting into software, I know some people haven't had a good experience with co-founders.
[00:21:00] I've had a very good experience with my co-founder, John. Mm-hmm. He is, I've described it as. We're like, Voltron, like, you know, we come together and the the sum is better than the parts. I, I couldn't have done it without him, and I don't think he could have done it without me. Right. So he is an incredible builder.
[00:21:20] He's an incredible software engineer, uh, full stack engineer, great at building product, um, but had never started a podcast before.
[00:21:28] Mm-hmm.
[00:21:29] Justin: Uh, had started a podcast hosting platform before. Uh, so I mean, again, if, if we're talking about leveraging every advantage you have, well, if you have someone else who also has their own stack of advantages, right?
[00:21:43] You're just, if you can imagine this like high watermark and it's like, well, I got us to here, but then with John's stuff stacked on top, right? We got here, it just makes it so much more likely that you're going to succeed. Mm-hmm. And it's more difficult. Like, we are very different people. And so the navigating that is tricky, right?
[00:22:06] Mm-hmm. Um, like my favorite story about that is like, when at a conference, my favorite thing at a conference is to be like holding court with a circle of people. I've watched you do it many times. I, I just love that. And I'm watching John's there and he's just like, slowly kind of like, I can see his battery going down.
[00:22:25] Yeah. You can tell he's ready to Yeah. Sneak off. And he is like, kind of like, Hey, can we go? I'm like, I mean, I'm having a good time. Sure. Uh, you know, if it's time for bed, let's go. So we went back to the Airbnb, and then as soon as we got back to the Airbnb, he wanted to make some tea and like have a talk.
[00:22:40] Just him and I, and, uh, I realized like, actually one-on-one interactions are very draining for me.
[00:22:47] Nathan: So you're, you're like, no, I need an audience. I need,
[00:22:51] Justin: so these dynamics are tricky to, to, uh, navigate, but man, I love them.
[00:22:57] Nathan: Mm-hmm.
[00:22:58] Justin: I couldn't have
[00:22:58] Nathan: done it without him. By what would, what would you think about selecting a co-founder?
[00:23:03] Like we're speaking to a creator who's saying, Hey, I have this software idea, it's a good fit for my audience.
[00:23:08] Justin: Yeah. I think this is another case where you gotta be in the water on the beach. I, I, I met John in 2014, so four years before mm-hmm. We did transistor together and hung out with him every year.
[00:23:20] Uh, I would be going to craft and commerce, I would be going to events, meeting people.
[00:23:27] Nathan: Right.
[00:23:27] Justin: Uh, go to some programming events like go to Alarcon or A Rails World or something. Yeah. And, um, see build relationships over years. And then when you're ready, when you're like, you know what, I've got this insight that nobody else has.
[00:23:43] Like I've, I've realized in my category, you know, my type of person, my market, there's this opportunity. Who am I gonna pair up with? Oh. I remember, you know this person over here. Right. And then you can pitch them on it. Um,
[00:23:58] Nathan: and then you're not also trying to pitch a partnership with the first developer that you've met and you like, which is a statistically is going to be a terrible That's right.
[00:24:08] Yeah. And then you're gonna end up at the story of like, yeah, I had this technical co-founder. They didn't work out well at all. Yeah. And it's like you never had a technical co-founder. You had Yes. An engineer that had no business working in a startup. They should have been at a me like medium company.
[00:24:22] Justin: Yeah. This dynamic falls prey to the same math that we described before, which is a lot of people say, well, so many of you know, co-founder relationships break up or whatever. Like of course, like it's not that hard to start a partnership. People can do that. It's easy. You say you wanna partner on this thing.
[00:24:38] Uh, so the denominator is gonna be very large number. And if you wanna be one of the people that make it right, you just gotta increase your chances. And I think that's building relationship, uh, good relationship with a bunch of people. Then approaching people one-on-one saying, Hey, I got this idea. Uh, I mean, John didn't wanna do it with me originally.
[00:24:59] I to convince him it was like he thought about it. He'd been burned by a partner before Uhhuh. And so, um, but that the reason he could trust me is 'cause we'd spent so much time together.
[00:25:12] Nathan: I think the other thing is a trap that creators can fall into is thinking like, oh, the product is easy and I'm going and I have huge amounts of distribution.
[00:25:21] Mm-hmm. And so really I'm bringing like 90% to this. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And, uh, you know, you just build the thing. Yeah. Because they're used to a sales cycle, maybe from a course or an ebook Yeah. Or something else. That can be an impulse buy. Yeah. But like, moving my entire email list to Kit or, you know, like, let me get off of whatever podcast platform I'm using and move to transistor.
[00:25:45] Yeah. Like, there's a lot more to it than that. Yeah. And so it's not like. I dunno. I sent an email to my list and then thousands of people signed up and we're on from there. It's like you have to, as a creator, you have to expect you are going to promote this thing like crazy mm-hmm. For years. Yeah. To get traction before it starts to compound.
[00:26:02] This
[00:26:03] Justin: is another, another thing like industry advice. They're like never do a 50 50 partnership and maybe legally that's a, it is a bad idea. Right. John and I were 50 50. I was just like, I could not see a world where we had, we just needed equal incentives. Mm-hmm. It's like, I've got 50% of this thing, you've got 50% of this thing.
[00:26:23] And John was the first partner that I, that I connected with where I felt like I was like running the way I normally run and he was right there beside me. Hmm.
[00:26:34] Nathan: Yeah.
[00:26:34] Justin: And I think it was partly because of our relationship. I think it's partly because we are uniquely talented in very different ways, and I think it's because of our, our incentives were 50 50.
[00:26:45] And again, maybe I, I'm sure there's stories on either side, but Right. I at least wanna be one example of I think a 50 50 that's worked out really well. There's downsides, there's times where it's like we're struggling. Mm-hmm.
[00:26:57] Nathan: But, um, I think 50 50 with a couple of advisors or mentors mm-hmm. Where you both really respect.
[00:27:05] Yeah. And so you're basically like, Hey, we know we're going to get into Yeah. A big dispute. Yeah. First you should do the pre-mortem. Yeah. You should write out, all right, we're gonna get into a 50 50 partnership. Yeah. Here's all the way this fails. Oh. We actually have the same skillset in these categories.
[00:27:20] Like, we don't compliment each other. Yeah. Or, you know, our personalities are gonna clash. Okay. You know, so you list out the pre-mortem, which is all the things that could happen. Yeah. Um, and then from there you go into, okay. If or when this comes up, how would we address it? Yeah. And then this becomes a document that you keep, we still have ours.
[00:27:39] Yeah.
[00:27:39] Justin: Yeah. With a bunch of hard questions. It is, yeah.
[00:27:41] Nathan: Well, is there an example of one that you had to wrestle with? It's
[00:27:44] Justin: like, uh, one question was, uh, can either of us fire the other person and why would that happen?
[00:27:49] Nathan: Mm-hmm.
[00:27:50] Justin: Um, we just went through a big thing over the summers, like, what if either one of us dies?
[00:27:54] Right. Uh, John doesn't have kids. I have kids. I have like, I had this anxiety about who's gonna take care of my family. Mm-hmm. And so we had to have this like, honest conversation about, like, John, I, I just wanna know that if I pass away that someone's gonna take care of the kids. And so, um, yeah, those are some of the big ones that you, you talk about.
[00:28:17] It's, uh, it can get serious. It's like, it is, it's not like a marriage, but there it has, it's that level of
[00:28:24] Nathan: commitment. Now one of these things that I've seen go, go wrong a few times. Mm-hmm. 50 50 partnership is the face of the company. Yeah. Because it gets into, it's partially playing the strengths. Yeah.
[00:28:37] But then ego comes into play. Yeah. There's a project that I invested in. I won't say what, uh, someone could probably figure it out based on some of this. You want me to start guessing? Yeah, exactly. I've only made like 11 investments total. So two co-founders. Yeah. Uh, equal partners. And then they had a handful of outside investors Yeah.
[00:28:58] Myself. And it went well. They had some strong personalities, so there's some clashes, but that was all expected. Yeah. But then one of them became the face of it in a huge way. Yeah. Like national, international press coverage, all of that. Oh wow. And watching like that was amazing for the business. Yeah, exactly what we were hoping for.
[00:29:18] All of this stuff. Yeah. The content creation stepped up all all of this stuff. Yeah. And the other co-founder. Became very jealous. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And it caused, so like that was the point. It eventually broke up for other reasons. Yeah. And myself and a few other people and, and the co-founder that stayed, ended up buying out the other, the other co-founder.
[00:29:38] But you could, if I could point back to like, where did this go wrong? I mean, I had this conversation with John. I was like,
[00:29:46] Justin: I'm just out there doing my thing and, and people will think it's entirely your company. People think it's entirely my company. I mean, I, I always try to bring him up. Yeah. Because I wanna, I, he's, when,
[00:29:56] Nathan: when John and I built this, when,
[00:29:57] Justin: you know, yeah, he's crucial for the company, but I said, man, is this bug you that I'm kind of the face of the brand?
[00:30:04] And he's like, no, dude. He's like, I don't wanna do any of this. You know, like, and it's the same, like we go to a conference or whatever and I'm, it's that same dynamics there. I'm happy to just be out in the fray and just. In my element, and he's happy to go back to his room and have a nap, or go for a jog or whatever.
[00:30:23] So I think it's a good discussion to have. Mm-hmm. That might be one of those questions you ask is like, what if one of us becomes more famous or becomes the base of the brand, how would that make you feel? Yep. And it might also have to do with, I don't know if age plays into this, like, I would've been fine if John was the face of the brand, you know?
[00:30:40] Um, I, I could have also chilled out as well. So we, we started transistor, I was 38 and John was 37. Okay. So, you know, the average age of our company, now we have six people. It was like 42 or something like that. We're we're old companies. I've noticed the average agent kit, like gradually creep up as I've gotten.
[00:31:00] Oh, I'd love to talk about that. Actually. I think that's one of our challenges. I, I wanna bring in more young people. Mm-hmm. I did this project over the summer where I hired a junior developer that was just looking for a job and just to build a personal project for me. So with my own money, hugely.
[00:31:17] Inspiring. Like, I got so much energy, this, uh, kid named Ferdinand in his twenties, and it's just so different than working with people in their forties, in their late thirties. It is like nothing wrong with older people either. Right. But there's something about that young energy that maybe a lot of bootstrap companies are missing.
[00:31:36] It's like, this is like, this is it. You know? Like we need to get some young, and people are, uh, criticizing Apple for this right now. I don't know if you saw, I haven't seen Gruber's post. They're saying like the, the board is like all in their sixties. The executive team is all in, you know, fifties and sixties.
[00:31:54] Right. Is this why Apple keeps fumbling the ball? Mm-hmm. Now like with their AI initiatives,
[00:32:01] Nathan: all that. Yeah. You
[00:32:01] Justin: need some young, and, and their perspective is so interesting. Like, I wrote this blog post about how I'm getting older and my brain just isn't what it used to be. I don't have the same raw firepower as I used to.
[00:32:13] People got really upset about it. I sometimes I think I talk about things and I don't realize that it's gonna upset people. Like someone's gonna take it very personally. Yeah. This is one of my favorite things about having a KIT newsletter now that I'm not depending on for like new product launches, I can just write what I want to.
[00:32:30] But seeing this younger person work, and I think this is something creators can do, anybody, it's just their perspective and their energy and their, their capacity is just so much greater and it was so fun and inspiring to like be working alongside 'em and just be kind of like channeling this energy, you know?
[00:32:50] Nathan: Yeah. Um, and to go back to the surfing analogy, you're like right there in the water and they're like, oh, and this wave 'cause, and you're like, not that wave. Yeah.
[00:32:56] Justin: That one. That's right. That's right. That's right. And maybe it's a wave I couldn't get to by myself, but it's like, this guy's got energy. Like, just go man.
[00:33:04] Uh, so I, yeah, I think that's really fun. I think more people should be doing that. I think something
[00:33:08] Nathan: that we, uh, a pro and a con of how we do it at Kit is. We used to hire lots of, uh, you know, young, inexperienced people. Mm-hmm. Like myself. 'cause that was who we can afford. Who we could recruit Yeah. And work all of that.
[00:33:23] Now we, we hire very experienced, very mm-hmm. Smart people who are, you know, well into their careers Yeah. Pay super well and all of that. Um, which has huge advantages. Oh yeah. Like people, you know, week one they're like, okay, so here's how we're gonna change all of this. And you're like,
[00:33:39] Justin: yeah,
[00:33:40] Nathan: ye
[00:33:40] Justin: yes. Yeah.
[00:33:41] That's the best I've ever seen. You need both. I think it needs to be balanced. Yeah. And if you're too far one way it doesn't work If you're too far the other way, it doesn't work. But, um, that there's also just something about, um, people not knowing. Mm-hmm. And asking questions. There were so many times where he was like, well, why don't we do it this way?
[00:34:01] And I have some rote answer in my brain about like, oh, well this is why we do this,
[00:34:05] this, but there's a few times I was like. Actually, let's just do it your way. I just wanna see how that turns out. Let's, uh, question these old assumptions we've had, you know? And, um, yeah. So I'm thinking about that, like, how can we bring in more young people?
[00:34:19] Yeah. Um, hire more junior people. I think that's pretty important for business. One thing I'm trying to figure out
[00:34:26] Nathan: Yeah. Is how this relates to ai. Oh man. Because something that I'm noticing is, I, I think the AI is going to, if a career is a ladder Yeah. And there's a, a bunch of different ladders, John, I've heard you got
[00:34:39] Justin: a post about this.
[00:34:43] Nathan: Yeah. It's something I'm thinking about a lot. But if AI takes out all of the bottom rungs mm-hmm. Of the ladders. Yeah. Right. Because it's not replacing the incredible interior designer who is world class at what they do. Yeah. But if you're like, how do I style this room? And you take a photo and upload it to, it'll be like, there you go.
[00:35:01] And you're like, that's pretty good. Yeah. Um. I think in, in programming, in design, in, oh man, in all of these categories and I'm trying to figure out like short term maybe that's great 'cause productivity increases or all of that, but long term, like what if only like world class people who are the complete outliers are able to like jump the four missing rungs of the ladder and actually get up this career.
[00:35:28] And in, in 10 years, do we actually have any
[00:35:30] Justin: Yeah, I mean I think, I think about this all the time. I have four kids, uh, 15, 17, 19, and 22. Okay. And uh, so if they're watching or any young people are watching, this is what I would say is the rules are still the same, which is when you get hired to do something, so you're starting your career, your job is to solve the boss's problems.
[00:35:56] And even in that example you just gave, so you can take the picture, it can suggest a bunch of stuff. Who's gonna source that stuff, right? Who's gonna find where you can get it? Who's gonna get it shipped? Who's gonna get it set up? Who's gonna solve all of the problems that crop up in the real world, right?
[00:36:12] Uh, and that is where I think a young person with a bunch of energy who's hungry, can really excel, is just show up. And you don't really know yet. You're not experienced enough yet to really know what to do. Just watch the boss and then say, I can do that. So it's like your boss takes a picture and is like, man, how am I gonna get all these plants?
[00:36:40] I'll do it.
[00:36:40] Nathan: Yeah,
[00:36:42] Justin: just pull up your old, your Honda Civic hatchback or whatever, and get it done. Deliver the result. Deliver the result. And this is the, I mean, right now I. If someone showed up at my house today and said, do you need your dishwasher fixed? I would say, yes, come on in. I will pay you. Whatever.
[00:37:01] Right, right. There's not, there's not that many people doing work. Mm-hmm. And, um, if you're, if you show an, your ability to do that and you can pitch people on this that you don't even work for, just like other creators that you respect, anybody, go to a conference and, uh, wait by the shipping door and watch, you know, your favorite creator coming in to set up their booth or whatever.
[00:37:26] Hey, can I help you move this stuff in? Like, just show up and solve their problems in a tangible way. I think that's gonna be a big opportunity. I am worried about it though. I think there is some concern, um, in terms of the problem, but talking about AI right now is people always assume that I'm talking about forever.
[00:37:48] So I'll, I'll say something like I, I'm about to say, and people are like, well, just give it time. Sure. I think in the next few years, I still don't think AI can build a good software product, not end to end. Yeah. There are so many decisions you gotta make along the way and just prompting into a thing and getting an output, you're gonna realize really quickly that there are a bunch of connection points.
[00:38:13] There are a bunch of things you need to do to join these together, both in code and more importantly in user experience. Yeah. And then even like, there's a whole DevOps side to this that people don't think about. I think if you're a DevOps company or a service company, you're gonna have a, a really good business because people are going to be getting all of these dependency errors and like, who's gonna keep doing all that stuff?
[00:38:35] Nathan: Well, especially the creator who's like, uh, AI is making software development so much easier. Yeah. There, and I'm the biggest advocate for prototyping stuff with ai. Yeah, you do it. Go. I'm doing it all the time and I love it, but. Then if the creator has distribution. Yeah. And so they're like, so I got this thing working.
[00:38:52] We got 10 beta users that went well. So then I sent it to my email list of a hundred thousand people and it all fell apart. Yeah. Any DevOps person is gonna go, well, yeah. Yeah. We gotta prepare for that. And, but like that whole side of things has not been built up yet.
[00:39:07] Justin: I think the encouraging thing for creators, this is a Tyler King quote, he does less annoying CRM.
[00:39:13] Mm-hmm. He says the building was never the hardest part. The hardest part was distribution.
[00:39:19] Nathan: Yeah.
[00:39:20] Justin: So I think you've talked about this for a long time, and it's, it's correct. Distribution is the hardest problem. And in an AI world where everybody's churning out these crappy little apps, it's gonna be even more important, right?
[00:39:34] Like, who can actually connect with a customer and do it in a way that maintains the trust that's been built up? Do it in a way that delivers on the promise. Mm-hmm. Creators know about this. They know if I deliver something that isn't up to snuff, I'm gonna get a bunch of refund requests or whatever. Uh, so creators are in great opportunity.
[00:39:55] I have a great, are really well positioned right in this AI world because they've got distribution. That's the hardest part. Um, and yeah, on the building side, it's, again, I think it's gonna be hard on junior developers, but if I was a junior developer, what I'm not seeing as I'm seeing a lot of kids who go to Comp Psci and get their degree, what I'm not seeing is them going, I'll do whatever it takes.
[00:40:19] You need someone on the customer success team. That's how I started, I started customer success. Right. I, and I think that's the, like, just start wherever you can start and you're just solving problems. That's all you're doing.
[00:40:31] Nathan: Since we're talking about distribution, let's go back to being the face of the company.
[00:40:34] Yeah. And like, let's get practical. Yeah. What does it look like? Let's say we've got. Two founders. Yeah. One's, uh, maybe much more on the business side. One's much more on the product and engineering side. Yeah. And either you've gotten just, we've gotten to 20 KMRR. Yeah. And distribution has worked in some way.
[00:40:53] We've got growth. We're growing, you know, I don't know, a few thousand dollars of net new MRRA month. Yeah. And we hear this of like, there should be a face to the company. Yeah. What, what do you think goes into that? Where both deciding how you should do that, how you breathe personality into it? I mean, naturally
[00:41:10] Justin: for us it just happened organically.
[00:41:12] 'cause I was just that person. Yeah. So it was pretty clear who it would be, but like the, even the steps to take. Yeah. I mean I think, uh, if you're building a software product, I think the face of the company should be answering customer support for the first little bit. I think that's one of the best ways.
[00:41:27] You just get so connected to real people and. If you're talking about being the face of the company, people remember the customer success people that helped them. And so it was like instantly like, oh, Justin helped me out with this. And that was my joke at first. People would be like, what's the difference between hosting with you or hosting with Spotify?
[00:41:45] I said, well, Daniel Eck isn't answering your customer support request right now. I am.
[00:41:50] Nathan: Yeah.
[00:41:50] Justin: Um, and so I think that's one thing I just like, for us, it's just looked like the things I'm naturally excited about doing. Mm-hmm. You know, I like making videos and so I'm making YouTube videos. I like writing email newsletters, so I'm doing that.
[00:42:05] I like writing blog posts, so I'm doing that. I like giving talks, so I'm doing that. So we just kind of built it on top of what we're already doing and I think that's, if you're the face of the company, I can, I think that's kinda what you're doing. You're just getting out all the time. And I'm starting conversations in our industry all the time, so I.
[00:42:25] I'll get curious and I'll be like, how big is our industry? Right. I think all the estimates are incorrect. They're all over the place. Nobody's publishing their numbers. I'm gonna start an open source project where I estimate the size of the industry and then I'm gonna talk about it. And you know, all of a sudden I'm in the news a bunch, you know, it's Justin Jackson from Transistors doing this thing and it, so it's kinda like the meme that you can just do things.
[00:42:48] You can just do things. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. That's a, you know, Aaron Francis, that's like, you can just do things and uh, the face of the company is kind of doing that.
[00:42:57] Nathan: They're just in an authentic way, I think, uh, because you're following a curiosity. You didn't say, you know, what would be a good marketing strategy for us?
[00:43:04] Yeah. It'd be a great marketing strategy if we were the ones to figure out what is the size of the podcast industry. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, but instead you went the other way and you said, I'm curious about this. I want to know. I think these are all wrong. Yeah. And so you can even just put out a question
[00:43:18] Justin: that's like my biggest pet peeve about.
[00:43:21] Anybody like I I, most podcasts with CEOs are boring. It's like you're, you're just talking in corporate speak. You're not a real person. I've always wanted to, you know, be authentic. I want to, uh, I want to reveal as much as I can. I mean, there's a lot that people don't see.
[00:43:41] Nathan: Yep.
[00:43:41] Justin: But the 20% that I can share authentically in a real way, I'm gonna share that stuff.
[00:43:49] Um, if, if, I think, I mean, it gets me in trouble too, but the, the, the benefit of it is when I'm being authentic. Uh, people recognize it, I think. I hope. And then when they're making decisions, they'll say, you know, I feel like I can trust this company. I think they've been real. You know, and then that culture just permeates through the organization.
[00:44:13] So, like Helen and Michael are two customer success people. We answer live chat all day. This is something I got from you guys. Mm-hmm. From, uh, from Spencer at Podia. Like this is something that I just saw work and, um, they are just as excited about serving people in a real way. Michael said, would it be okay if in your welcome email if you just said you can book a zoom call with Michael?
[00:44:38] I said, dude, like we get a lot like hundreds of signups in a month. Like you might like, I wanna do it. And so any price plan that signs up can book a call with Michael. And he is half British, half Australian. He is got this great, he's just ray of sunshine. I'm at this conference in Chicago podcast movement.
[00:44:56] Three or four people walk up to me, say, I had a call with Michael. It was incredible. Mm-hmm. Like it totally changed my day. He was so helpful. They are never gonna forget that. And, um, being the face of the company is kind of like that. You're investing in things that don't scale.
[00:45:12] Mm-hmm.
[00:45:13] Justin: Uh, it doesn't always have to be, you have to massive YouTube channel.
[00:45:16] It could just be showing up and then also having other people show up. And people don't forget that they're, they're like, man, I, he actually took the time to care. I'll still respond to welcome emails. I'll be I'll like, go and check out their show. Say, Hey, I just listened to it. I love this part. Hey, maybe think about this again.
[00:45:34] Uh, Daniel, Daniel X's not doing that. You know, like, it, it's just something you can do when you're smaller. And, um, and then they recognize like, wow, this guy's like the face of the company, but he's also helping Right me out. There's a practical side to it. Yeah. And
[00:45:48] Nathan: then that increases the, the perceived value of that person being the one to help you.
[00:45:53] Yeah.
[00:45:53] Justin: Yeah. I'll finish that off by saying. If you're the face of the company and you're trying to be the brand and you're trying to talk. So part of it is just like, okay, did I get, you know, do more people know about transistor? That's one thing, but there's this long tail of just treating people well that pays dividends that aren't, don't show up in your analytics.
[00:46:12] So like you really cared for this one person and you, you were even like, I don't even care if you sign up for my product. Like I'm just gonna help you out. Yeah. That pays dividends for decades and I've seen it now because we've been around long enough that we can see these people come back. You know, I think it's underrated as a strategy, just like caring for people one-on-one care for people when you're doing a big talk too, but it's that authentic, genuine, I actually care about you as a person, as a creator, and I'm gonna help you accomplish what you're trying to do.
[00:46:47] People don't forget about it, they talk about it, they tell their friends, and that's always the best marketing.
[00:46:53] Nathan: I like it. Okay. So we talked about building a brand as a creator and, and how you need to stack every advantage. Mm-hmm. Every possible advantage you can get, a personal brand is a huge advantage.
[00:47:04] Yeah. And so if you have that, like how do you make the most of it? What are the things to do that make a big difference? 'cause I think I see people on one hand, they build their brand and they kind of use it. Mm. And then there's people who say like, oh, I'm gonna breathe my brand all the way through everything that we're doing.
[00:47:23] Interesting.
[00:47:24] Justin: Okay. Well, let me think through this. I mean, I try to make everything personal. So when we send out email newsletters from John and Justin mm-hmm. Um, I'm writing most of the blog posts for transistor still. Uh, we get the majority of our business through content, so blog posts, newsletters, podcasts, YouTube.
[00:47:47] And almost like 90% of that content is coming from me personally. Right. I can do that right now. And I think, yeah. So a lot of it is just like, you actually gotta make stuff. You actually gotta keep rating stuff and putting stuff out there. It's kind of like, uh, if you see someone disappear from a social network for a while, it's like, what happened to, you know, I haven't heard from that person.
[00:48:12] And forever it's like, you gotta keep showing up, you gotta keep, you know, uh, publishing stuff.
[00:48:18] Nathan: So I think a continually publishing mm-hmm. Is one way. Mm-hmm. So many listeners of the show are going to say like, okay, I have the audience. Yeah. What do I do with it? You know, I think the thing that I would do is I would talk about the journey of building the company.
[00:48:33] Mm-hmm. As much as the marketing or sales of why you should buy it and maybe more. Mm-hmm. I think that'd be an easy trap to fall into of saying, like, as an example, let's say that you had a very popular course on podcast hosting. Mm-hmm. Or sorry, on, on creating a hit podcast. Yeah. And everyone looked to you as the person for how do we create a hit podcast?
[00:48:52] Yeah. And so you're like, oh, I'm going to then create the podcast hosting platform that I can sell. Yeah. I think most people in that position, they're so used to being perceived as the expert on the pedestal at the top of the mountain, whatever, that they're going to be like, here's why Transistor is the best.
[00:49:08] Yeah. Here's all of this. And I think it was actually more effective marketing. Yeah. Is to say, here's what we learned. Building transistor. Yes. Here's the problem I was trying to solve, and here here's the, which, this is all the stuff that you do. Yeah. I just think that someone who hasn't grown up through this world Yeah.
[00:49:26] Is going to approach it as the expert rather than the person on the journey. Yes. I'm sure the journey is what I'm saying.
[00:49:32] Justin: Yeah. Yeah. Because that's being authentic is kind of what resonates. So when we're building transistor, you know, I've been on the web forever, since like, I was there when the web was born in 93, but I started live streaming.
[00:49:49] Um, I decided to build the transistor marketing site by myself. Mm-hmm. Uh, just from scratch. And I would show up on these live streams. And even though I've been on the web forever, I'm a fairly decent web developer. I was just honest about my limitations, what I wasn't good at, what I was struggling with, and I would just show up.
[00:50:12] Almost every day. Like I just hit like stream and, Hey, everybody, like today I'm trying to figure out Tailwind CSS. Right? Like, I don't know how to do this. And then I was able to bring on my friends like Adam Vin, right? And, but I'm still fully leaning into, I'm trying not to be too much, like pretend to be someone I'm not.
[00:50:36] Mm-hmm. So Adam is like watching me, like, I have no, no keyboard shortcuts. I'm like dragging my mouse up and like click it. You could
[00:50:42] Nathan: see him like start twitching and he is like, and we just shared it all. He was just
[00:50:45] Justin: like,
[00:50:46] Nathan: oh my gosh.
[00:50:47] Justin: Like,
[00:50:48] Nathan: he's like, if I could get you to do one thing, he'd be like, just please never used the mouse for this one.
[00:50:53] Justin: That's right. I, I also brought on, because I was building this all in Laravel and that's why I brought Taylor Atwell the founder around. And I just remember him like just having this huge sigh. He just like. Oh man, this is gonna be rough just watching Justin use the mouse. But it was all authentic and it was me saying, I don't know how to do this.
[00:51:13] I'm gonna ask the people that do, right? I'm gonna be open to the audience. Hey, if you've got suggestions on how I'm doing this, I would take people through our whole onboarding process. Like, okay, everybody, today I'm gonna pretend I'm a brand new user and I'm gonna do everything. I'm gonna sign up for an account, I'm gonna use my credit card, everything.
[00:51:30] And I want you folks in the comments to just tell me what you see and when you let yourself be open like that, it's actually a huge relief. I think a lot of people like hold it tight. Like, no, I gotta make, make everything seem like it's okay. And like I know what I'm doing. And when you can kind of let that go and just be like, I'm just gonna be honest and open to whatever comes here.
[00:51:52] It's like if you have an idea, if you have a critique, let me know. If you see something that I'm not seeing, let me know if. But I think that's one way that people could do that in a, in a way that's authentic. And again, if, what's the, what's the other alternative? You could be one of these boring CEOs that has a podcast that no one listens to, because no one wants to hear that stuff.
[00:52:15] They want to hear real human beings. Like if you want to hear a fake human being, you can use that Google, LLM to make a fake podcast. And if you listen to those, it's like, it's just So now it's the gimmick. You're like, it's just nothing. Yeah. What resonates with people, as soon as I've shared this before, like you being honest about going to therapy mm-hmm.
[00:52:38] Had a huge impact on me and uh, was the reason that I ended up going to therapy. So you shared that. That's awesome. Once in an interview, that vulnerability has stuck in my head forever. It's what I remember, right? Like you, you've probably taught me dozens of things. I've probably seen lots of your talks.
[00:53:01] Yeah. I've, I've bought your books on design. I don't remember any of that. I remember these vulnerable moments, right. Where Nathan was real. And, uh, I think we can do that as creators. As founders. That's what resonates, that's like the most powerful marketing if you're gonna be the face of the brand. That's what's powerful is that you just show up as a human being.
[00:53:22] I'm not trying to pretend to be anything. I'm not. I mean, a little bit, I I, there's a version of me
[00:53:27] Nathan: you're playing like Yeah, there's that. I'm, everything's a little larger than life on the internet.
[00:53:31] Justin: Yeah. But it's a better version of myself. But the, um, I'm still trying to show up in an authentic way. In the midst of that,
[00:53:39] Nathan: I'm thinking about your example of coding, the, you know, building the marketing site live.
[00:53:44] Yeah. Two things stood out to me on it. One is the personal brand that you've built over the last. More than a decade. Yeah. I'm realizing you've been a kick customer since September, 2013. Yeah. So
[00:53:59] Justin: started blogging in 2008 probably. Yeah. But I had an email newsletter before that, so, yeah.
[00:54:05] Nathan: Yeah. So you've been been around for a long time.
[00:54:07] Yeah. But that has allowed you to build these relationships with all these people. 'cause you're talking about, I'm building on these platforms and you casually mentioned you and so I had on the founders of, you know, tailwind and Laravel, it's everything. Right? And you're like, oh yeah. 'cause they're just friends of mine.
[00:54:24] Of course.
[00:54:25] Justin: It's everything. And how do you build those relationships? You just gotta go get in the water. Right? You got go to at all
[00:54:30] Nathan: the events you're at. Go
[00:54:31] Justin: to Craft and Commerce. Go to these, I met these people. Like I met Adam, he was just reading my blog and he just dmd me. And um, same with Taylor Twell.
[00:54:41] Same with all of the people I know. Right. And this is actually, you know, I've been interviewing people, uh, like I met you through my podcast. Mm-hmm. Every person I've interviewed that has gone on to do something exceptional when they talk about the pivotal moments of their journey where they really leveled up, it was always because of a person.
[00:55:02] Mm-hmm. So like you've told the story about Heat and Shaw
[00:55:05] Nathan: Yeah.
[00:55:06] Justin: A lot. That interaction created this moment, this pivotal moment that allowed you to go to the next level with Yeah. There was hate
[00:55:13] Nathan: in telling me to either shut down the business or double down on it. Yeah. And that, you know, changes the trajectory of everything.
[00:55:19] Justin: And so you can't have those moments unless you've set yourself up to have those collisions mm-hmm. With other people. And so you can't do this by just being in your basement all the time. Mm-hmm. You can do it by having a podcast and interviewing people. That was like the first step. And then once you, like, build relationships online, uh, when people start inviting you to stuff.
[00:55:41] You gotta show up, right? Uh, chase Reeves, uh, who's a mutual friend of ours, invited me forever. He said, you gotta come. Like, he, he'd gone to MicroCon before me. He'd gone to this xo XO festival that ended up being really meaningful for me. And he kept saying, you gotta come, you gotta come, you gotta come.
[00:55:59] And then I didn't have a lot of money at the time. I was like working for the software company. I've got four kids. I didn't want to ask them to pay for it. But then that NMX trip came up. I dunno if you remember that New media expo? Yes. And Chase DM me and he's like, dude, you gotta come. I said, I can't do it.
[00:56:19] Like, he's like, well, what if we set up a cot in our room? Him and Caleb were sharing a room. Yeah. What if you set up a cot, you can sleep on that.
[00:56:26] I'm like, okay, I can do it. So I flew to Vegas. That was like, I think I met you there for the first time. Yeah. There are still connections I made there. Like, how long ago was that?
[00:56:37] 10 years, I don't know how long. Yeah, probably 10 or 11. There's still connections I made there. Like I became much better friends with Chase with you. Like we'd all had online relationships, but once you meet people in person, that's like another level. And then when you're doing a live stream and you're like, you know who I should call right now, I should call the president of the United States.
[00:56:57] That's like calling Adam Wain and saying, can you help me? You know, it's equivalent. And when people say, how do you know all these people? It's like, well, when I met Adam, nobody knew who he was either. We were just all, you know, uh, starting out at the same time.
[00:57:13] Nathan: And now he leads Tailwind, which is the most popular web framework.
[00:57:16] And yeah. If you ask an LLM to write any frontend code for you, that's right. It, it will reach for Tailwind and it'll chase that. That's
[00:57:23] Justin: right. And one of the most incredible in, uh, independent businesses. Mm-hmm. I, I think the other thing that helped me, um, that helped me level up was being around. Folks like you, like I was really following you.
[00:57:35] Like, that was like, Nathan launched a course and I was like, okay, I'm gonna try launching a course. Mm-hmm. And then Nathan switched to sas and I remember thinking like, Nathan, why are you giving up this great course business?
[00:57:48] Nathan: Right?
[00:57:49] Justin: Yeah.
[00:57:49] Nathan: I made $250,000 in a year off of courses and then I, I didn't make $250,000 a year in a, in a single year, again for a long time.
[00:57:57] Justin: But again, it shows the power of friendship and 'cause that had a big impact on me was you saying, well, here's the reasons I've decided to start the software company and they just happened to resonate with me too. Mm-hmm. And, um, then, you know, I did it, and it was funny. I was in a mastermind with Paul Jarvis, and then pretty soon Paul started fathoming, you know?
[00:58:16] Right. These relationships kind of, um, often the people you hang out with will propel you. Right. And it's another reason to get out of your house, outta your basement. Actually meet people. And this can be anything. Like my wife signed us up one time for a Ruby on Rails meetup in Vegas. Okay. Just a local meetup.
[00:58:37] And we just got some cheap tickets to Vegas and flew in. 'cause she wanted to learn Ruby on Rails. So I said I'd come to, and we met people there that I still are like Pivotal people in the industry. It was just a local meetup and they're like, what do, what are you doing here? Good for this whatcha doing here?
[00:58:55] And it was cheap. It was like, you know, maybe a couple hundred bucks to do the whole thing. But we set ourselves up for these collisions. Right. Build relationships that, you know, have paid dividends for a long time.
[00:59:07] Nathan: Something else that you said as you were talking about the website building process that resonated was you being so vulnerable about what you were learning, so open about what you're learning in the process.
[00:59:18] Mm-hmm And I don't think I do that with Kit to the same extent that I used to. Yeah. And I don't think I've talked about publicly like. The, the three big initiatives that I'm trying to work on within the product. Right. I'm trying to build out an app store, and here's the hard things about it. I'm trying to build our creator network.
[00:59:32] Yeah. And I'm trying to improve onboarding and activation. Like Yeah. I could absolutely do the livestream. Yeah, dude. Like walk through our onboarding flow and be like, all right, you know what's good about that
[00:59:43] Justin: is people gossip. And gossip is actually good in this case. Like, hey, I saw Nathan talk about the difficulties he's having with the app store.
[00:59:50] It's like kind of gossiping, right? Yeah. But it's, there's this good part about it where it's like, uh, I actually think sometimes gossip is healthy. There's a negative kind, but there's this other kind of gossip where just industry talk or people talking, it's like, Hey, I heard Nathan's like trying to figure this out.
[01:00:07] You know? I think you achieve this a certain, to a certain extent with the, the brand relaunch. Like, yeah, yeah, we, this is gonna be tough for that. Yep. Here's what we're going through. Um. And people gossip. Like people are like, is this gonna work? You know, is, are they like doing this the right way? All of that can be good.
[01:00:24] There's a negative side to it too, but all of that can be good. And um, the people who are going to appreciate it are the creators and founders who are your target market. Right? They're like, wow, okay. He showed us how he did that, you know? Um, I'm paying attention.
[01:00:41] Nathan: Well, I remember another mutual friend of, of ours, Ian Lansman.
[01:00:45] Yeah. Uh, was like, dude, he posted a comment somewhere like, dude, when's the next episode of the rebrand coming out? And I was like, you pay attention to this too. Like, this is amazing. You know, and I've had so many people reach out who have thought about a rebrand or that sort of thing, and to be able to point back to the artifacts, like, Hey, we documented, here's everything we know about it.
[01:01:00] Yeah. That's been a huge thing.
[01:01:02] Justin: There's another type of creator, like there's the type of creator that just tries to build the biggest audience. Mm-hmm. I think I am, you know, I would love to have a bigger audience, but. I think I'm more in this category. And I think there's another category that's even narrower, and I think they're both underrated, which is, you know, my first podcast was product people.
[01:01:22] Mm-hmm. I don't think we ever got more than, I don't know, two or 3000 downloads per episode. The right people were listening though. Mm-hmm. So when we're talking about building a network and building friendships, it was like, first of all, it enabled me, it opened up the door to meeting you and to meeting a bunch of other people, but then the people who were listening was Eaton Shaw.
[01:01:42] And he would message me with his own, uh, Ruben Gamma. Yeah. These people that have become advisors in my life. Uh, and I think it's underrated as a strategy. Like there's a type of creator that's this. Like, I want to, you know, build something great. And that might mean I need to have the biggest distribution channel right.
[01:02:03] Possible that I build. But it could also be like, if I just reach these people, if Ian Landsman iss listening. That has a value all of its own. Right. And, um, you know, my email list, I think has been like 7,000 forever. And it's just kind of like, this is where I get to, I get to 7,000 people on my email list.
[01:02:25] I get to, you know, a certain amount of traffic every year, and now I'm in my forties and I'm kind of just like, this is perfect.
[01:02:34] Mm-hmm.
[01:02:35] Justin: Is it still, um, you know, helping me, is it helping me achieve my goals? Absolutely. Because I know sometimes I'll publish a newsletter and, you know, someone like you will reply mm-hmm.
[01:02:46] Or someone like, you know, will reply or someone like Marie Poin will reply. And as long as those people are like still there and listening, I'm getting, you're doing the right thing. All the value I need. So if you're the kind of person who would just build a big audience, that's great. And if you can, that's great.
[01:03:01] But there's also this like, you know, uh, I've been having an email newsletter forever. I've got 7,000 people on there. It's fine, you know? Yeah. It's, it's serving its purpose.
[01:03:11] Nathan: And there, there's this idea that I wanna write about more that I'm kind of developing of an audience versus a crowd.
[01:03:17] Justin: Mm.
[01:03:18] Nathan: Yeah.
[01:03:19] Because an audience is what you're describing of the right people paying attention. Yeah. Whereas a crowd is anyone. Yeah. And I think an audience is the people who are in your corner. Yeah. In there. If you were to be mulling over something, they'd, they'd reply not with like a Well, good luck with that, but, but you know, like a couple paragraphs of Yeah.
[01:03:38] Here's more about it. Like, the audience is rooting for you. The crowd is like, yeah, entertain me. Yeah. If you crash and burn, that's fine. 'cause I'll be entertained. If you succeed, that's fine too. Yeah. You know, and so, playing with this difference, this is what worries me about
[01:03:53] Justin: centralized algorithmic platforms.
[01:03:56] Mm-hmm. Um, YouTube's recommendation algorithm does not really care about the creator or helping the creator build Right. Cares about watch out an audience, they'll switch. Whoever is there, right? Yep. And, uh, I worry about that. I worry about, um, I think this is the advantage of it's, it, there's no surprise that every meaningful bootstrapped independent software business has been built on open standard.
[01:04:26] So you're built on an op, a bunch of open standards. S-M-T-P-T-C-P, ip, htt P Yeah. Transistors built on R-S-S-X-M-L and also HTT P Yep. V ccp, ip. These are, these, these, the forgotten heroes of innovation, the power of the whole internet. They power the whole internet and think about how much actual dollar, how many dollars TCP IP has created.
[01:04:53] We're all talking about, like, what's the new innovation I feel like should
[01:04:56] Nathan: explained really quickly what t ccp, IP is it at a high level?
[01:04:58] Justin: Just it, it's just like these are the, this is how we communicate on the internet. Mm-hmm. It's, it, it describes and, uh, enables bits to flow right through the internet.
[01:05:09] And, uh, HTT P is another way. It powers the whole web, but then app stores use it. It's like it's, these are the channels that, um, you know, the modern web uses, but, and they're really old. Some of them date back to the seventies and even before that, and they've created so much value. And all you read about in the press is like, like Web3 and like ai, we can't get away from ai.
[01:05:36] Like this is the new thing. It's creating all this value. SMTP, look how much that value that's been created. SMTP is what
[01:05:43] Nathan: power email for,
[01:05:44] Justin: that's what powers email. Yeah. Still to this day, the reason I think, uh. Creator should care is if you are using YouTube or TikTok or Instagram or whatever. I think you've been saying this forever.
[01:05:58] You gotta have an open standard, uh, like it's a counterpart to it. Counterpart, email, newsletter, podcast, website, blog, RSS, like these are the things that are your bedrock. So Sure. Attract people from over there. Yeah. But this is gonna get harder, I think if we're talking about making predictions. Uh, if you, if you watch TikTok, people might follow one or two people, but most of it is just like, entertain me, entertain me.
[01:06:31] Whatever face comes in front of me that can entertain me. It's, that's it. Mm-hmm. And the idea of like someone actually following you and then actually like maybe going to your newsletter and then maybe buying a product from you is it's getting harder and harder over there. This stuff over here is, um, it's never gonna give you the same distribution in terms of like being able to volume track new people.
[01:06:56] But it's so important, and I, I want people to know about it, even to have these keywords in their heads, like open standards, open source, the open web. Mm-hmm. This is our refuge as creators and as founders of independent businesses. This is, uh, the way that we hold the tension between us and the big platforms because it gives us power.
[01:07:19] So you take away my YouTube channel, well, I've still got my SS feed. Mm-hmm. And yeah, my SS feed is, has less followers or subscribers, but these are the real ones. You know, if I, if I keep publishing on here, um, they're gonna keep supporting what I'm doing. Whereas if this goes away, there's just another person that's ready to fill your spot.
[01:07:40] You need both. We've always done. Creators have always done arbitrage with the bigger platforms. Like that's the tension of our world. But like, give some credit to the Real Champions, which is these old crusty web standards and they power everything that they power, everything. MailChimp, you know, that big exit that they had, it's because of open standards.
[01:08:07] Mm-hmm. Facebook would've not been possible without PHP, without Linux, without all of these things that have been built for free mm-hmm. That we can take advantage of. And, uh, any creator that's publishing anything on the internet is using them every day because the centralized platforms use them as well.
[01:08:27] And, uh, I mean, you've been saying this too, but I just wanna reiterate like Yes, go out there. I'm on YouTube too. I'm bringing them to my podcast. Our S speed. Yeah, I'm on YouTube too. I'm getting them to sign up for my email newsletter. Uh, I'm getting them to follow my blog. And these are the real ones that are gonna keep following my work no matter what happens to the, to the platform.
[01:08:48] Nathan: Yeah. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. The last thing that I wanna talk about a little bit is the mindset shifts that you've had over the years. Yeah. We've talked about a few of them already, but, uh, as you've been, you know, a content creator and then building, you know, a multimillion dollar SaaS company and all of that and watching this for a long time, are there any other mindset shifts that have come into play that you think are important to share?
[01:09:11] Justin: One interesting one is like, my job at Transistor is to show up every day and just push the rock a little bit further down the path. Mm-hmm. And so I think people think, especially with marketing and growth, like there's just gonna be like one thing you do and sometimes that happens. Like you, you push a snowball down a hill and it builds momentum and stuff.
[01:09:31] Nathan: Yeah.
[01:09:32] Justin: I've been talking a lot about, um. If we can compare, like pushing a snowball down a hill and it slowly building momentum over time and building up more and more, you know, uh, impact Yep. Versus a slot machine. And I think with marketing, I often treated things like a slot machine. Like, okay, like Facebook ads, here we go.
[01:09:52] And it's like disappointing. The things that have been like truly impactful are these things where I'm just like pushing the snowball one day at a time and then eventually it builds momentum, um, and it rolls down the hill and then I gotta push another snowball. You know, like that's kind of the work.
[01:10:10] And I'm happy to do it every day, just show up and go, what meaningful push forward could I do? But it's small, it's incremental. Uh, if you look at transistors like, uh, where we get our customers in Slack every day, we're basically, our goal is to get like 20 signups a day. Mm-hmm. And on average we'll convert about 75 to 80% of those to paid.
[01:10:37] Okay.
[01:10:37] So we have this, we know what the funnel is, right? But that you think about 20 people a day. I like try to imagine like just, who are those people? It's just like 20 people at home taking out their wallet, taking out their credit card, typing it in for a 14 day free trial. Like that's, wow. Like there's people doing that.
[01:10:57] Where are they coming from? It's like I did an a MA on Reddit five years ago that still brings people in. I, you know, convinced this partner to put us in their blog post. Mm-hmm. That still brings people in. It's like two or three people coming from each one of these channels every day. And that was just me waking up going, okay, what meaningful progress could I make today?
[01:11:20] You know, it reminds
[01:11:21] me of Amy Hoy's blog from years ago. Stacking the bricks. Yeah. You just, just putting one step. Yeah. Time. Then you build, you know, whatever massive thing that you're trying to build, but it's just one brick at a time.
[01:11:31] Another thing I've been thinking about a lot is, uh, just getting older.
[01:11:36] So I'm, I'm turning 45 this year, which in the software startup world is ancient, you know, and seeing both the challenges and the value of being older, uh, I think there's a lot of people, um, you know, creators or people thinking about starting something new that are in their forties, their fifties, and their sixties.
[01:11:58] And I think if you stack your advantages in the right way, there's a big opportunity for you. Uh, but you can't do it the same way that someone who's in their twenties and thirties would, and just acknowledging our differences has been interesting to me. I, I just don't have the same gas in the tank that I did when I was in my twenties and thirties.
[01:12:20] And so to acknowledge, I think founders especially don't like to acknowledge like maybe we're human. Maybe things are changing, you know? Um, even like the things I get anxious about, like, you know, I don't know, like how much longer are people gonna wanna see my face on video is just a practical thing, you know?
[01:12:43] Um, and, but to acknowledge it and be like, okay, but what advantages have I gained as someone who's in their forties and will be in my fifties? And then it might mean partnering up with someone again who's like super young, right? And has more gas in the tank. But I'm being way more honest about like, who I am, what my limitations are.
[01:13:05] Yeah, I still wanna be pushed too, but, um. It's also on the, on the other side of it, it's okay to say, okay, I'm not in my twenties anymore. I can't play that. Last night I, at this conference, I went to three parties. I shouldn't have done that. I'm just too old for it. Yeah. You know, I was like yelling at people.
[01:13:23] I, I couldn't hear anything. I should just gone home and gone to bed, you know? And, um, yeah. I think acknowledging that has been, has been good for
[01:13:33] Nathan: me. Well, I think it's, yeah, that thoughtfulness, the intentionality and then the like transparency and vulnerability that you've built the business with all the way along Yeah.
[01:13:43] Has allowed you to build relationships that have made a huge impact. Yeah, it's consistent for a long time. You have this reputation that, you know, I think allows you to, whenever you're saying, Hey, I'm launching this thing, or I have this question. Yeah. People wanna come alongside you. Uh, it's part of the reason that despite, or, uh, in addition to great software that I've been a customer of Transistor for Yes, thank you.
[01:14:03] A long time. Almost since we launched. Yeah. You know, right in there, uh, kit runs all of our podcasts on transistor. Anyone listening should go and do the same. Yeah. Uh, if someone has a, a podcast on another platform, do you have some, some ways to talk? You can migrate
[01:14:17] Justin: it really easy. Uh, Michael, even do a Zoom call with you and, and help you onboard.
[01:14:22] Nathan: You, you get that like ray of sunshine in your life.
[01:14:24] Justin: That ray of sunshine, it's actually really easy. Again, these open standards. Yeah. You can like migrate your podcast, redirect your old feed, all the apps, pick it up. It's actually way easier than people think. And it's portable. Yeah. It's like an email list is portable.
[01:14:38] RSS feed. Is portable, uh, unlike these other platforms, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:14:43] Nathan: That's important. Well, where should people go if they want to listen to you on a podcast? Check out any content that you're creating.
[01:14:50] Justin: Uh, I have a new podcast with, uh, our friend Brian Castle. Uh, nice. We do a podcast called the Panel where we invite, uh, one or two people on and we have kind of a panel discussion about building a business, uh, being a founder, all that kinda stuff.
[01:15:04] So I'm really excited about that. I'm still blogging and sending my newsletter from Justin jackson.ca.
[01:15:11] Nathan: Sounds good. Thanks so much for coming on.
[01:15:12] Justin: This is awesome. Thanks for having me.
[01:15:14] Nathan: If you enjoyed this episode, go to YouTube and search the Nathan Berry Show. Then hit subscribe and make sure to like the video and drop a comment.
[01:15:22] I'd love to hear what some of your favorite parts of the video were, and also just who else do you think we should have on the show? Thank you so much for listening.