Reactor

Mark's streak app isn't done, but his attempt to build longer streaks of consecutive livestreaming days is paying off. He's published 5 videos within a week and its effect on his YouTube traffic has been remarkable. The rolling 28-day numbers are as follows: views +77%, watch time +75% and reach +109%. It hasn't translated into more money (yet), but that's not surprising given that YouTube views are high up in the Alchemist Camp sales funnel. Justin's still making gradual progress on refactoring his Roblox game, Slider. He's added more instrumentation, gotten some expert advice and planned out some changes to the We also talked about the equal pay for remote work topic that's been trending, the scalability of membership sites, Mark's Black Friday, and the psychology of pricing. Today's Topics include: Livestreaming Analytics-driven game dev Remote work Scalability of membership sites Black Friday Pricing Mentioned Phoenix Igniter Matteo DNC pocast Trends.vc Mark's goals for next time Stream at least 3 days Do the Black Friday email campaign Start the new ebook Justin's goals for next time Create "the player shaker" for Roblox Video version here Comment at https://reactor.am/podcasts/37 On Apple Podcasts at https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/reactor/id1500109358 Recorded on 2020-11-18

The results of Mark's livestreaming are in! It's taken some focus and effort, but it's greatly increased his production per hour of work. The quality of the screencasts is slightly worse, but his YouTube views are up by 50%, watch time is up 83% and he's picked up 11 Twitter followers. Justin has continued working with Chris, the Roblox dev he mentioned meeting last episode, and it's been productive. He's changed the way Justin approaches the entire game. He's now taking a much more analytics-driven approach to increase player retention at every subsection of the game. A key part of this is looking at each player's success to failure ratio at each portion of race tracks. We finished the talk with an extended discussion about livestreaming, working in public generally, why it's hard not to be self-conscious and how there can still be a big upside. Today's Topics include: Livestreaming Analytics-driven game dev Roblox Matteo Working in public Livestreaming Mentioned Phoenix Igniter Matteo DNC pocast Twitch Studio Mark's goals for next time Finish the streak app Livestream for 5 consecutive days Justin's goals for next time Run a CTR experiment on Slider (and do the dev to prepare for it) Video version here Comment at https://reactor.am/podcasts/36 On Apple Podcasts at https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/reactor/id1500109358 Recorded on 2020-11-04

Justin has met another interesting character in the Roblox dev space. He's released about 100 games, has interned at Roblox itself and has over a million monthly players on his own games. He's been checking out Slider and giving Justin some advice—primarily to make the game less linear. Mark has also been inspired by a game dev on YouTube gotten some useful takeaways from him. His name is "The Cherno" and uses livestreams as a way to create graphics engine development screencasts for his audience. He records very long livestreams, gets what he wants to screencast figured out and then does them live in just a couple or usually in a single take! The quality of his screencasts dropped when he started doing this, but the recent ones are very good. Justin also went on Startups for the Rest of Us for an interview, Starlink has some very eyebrow-raising clauses in its TOS and the NTD is getting strong. Today's Topics include: Roblox dev Making non-linear games Recording screencasts during livestreams No code Self-driving cars Jurisdiction in space Mentioned Heyhi Replayhero Alchemist Camp The AI Podcast with Lex Fridman The Cherno Mark's goals for next time Record 4 screencasts Livestream or otherwise build in public every day Justin's goals for next time Work out the game mechanic changes for Slider Video version on YouTube Comment at https://reactor.am/podcasts/35 On Apple Podcasts at https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/reactor/id1500109358

Justin was up until after 2am working on his Roblox game and implemented area locking so that players need various keys to access tracks. He's also been meeting some other developer dads. Mark got bogged down in planning out videos and coming up with ideas for drawings to support them. As a result, he's got a lot of plans but no videos :/ Friend of the show, Matteo had a successful product hunt launch for Heyhi! In other news, Apple has just announced a new iPhone with lots of cameras. Also, Sidecar has started requiring 2nd factor authentication on both the Mac and iPad sides before it works (even when the two are joined by a USB cable. Finally, US time zones are really, really strange. Do not handle them yourself unless handling them is "what you do". Today's Topics include: Roblox dev Roblox's margins and upcoming IPO Sidecar Roblox Mentioned Planet Milo - Roblox Channel Heyhi Roblox will IPO No Starch Press NIST Mark's goals for next time Record 4 screencasts Continue studying from the No Starch books Justin's goals for next time Create a locking mechanism for a "grand finale" round in Slider Get the orb challenges working. Video version at https://youtu.be/YYunEPknwgg Comment at https://reactor.am/podcasts/34 On Apple Podcasts at https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/reactor/id1500109358 Recorded on 2020-10-14

Justin's been following the election news closely, and the president's covid case in particular. In contrast, the issue dominating Mark's social circle and former co-workers has been H1-B visa changes. In his opinion the effects of the new regulations raising the minimum salary will be fairly nuanced and minor. The minimum salary requirements are going up, but not to nearly the level they initially were (adjusted for inflation). The number of applications in the lottery will probably decrease total number won't change. Most importantly, and unfortunately, H1-B holder's residence permission will still be tied to their employer. tldr; small win for skilled applicants and the largest tech companies, and a huge loss for low-end outsourcers who were flooding the system. Using WASM feels like living in the future to Mark, but Roblox development feels nostalgic to Justin... because it's rapidly developing and booming. Having been around computers and the web as they've exploded over the past few decades, rapid change itself is nostalgic! Speaking of Roblox dev, Justin's never done this kind of of dev work before but has gone from zero to a playable and mostly "finished" graphical game. Of course with this kind of thing there's a lot of work to polish a game until it's profitable, but it's looking really good for such a new project. Justin says this is a counter-intuitive market where it's better for a bootstrapper to build the actual thing instead of selling picks and shovels. Sometimes the best language updates don't add much in terms of syntax or functionality. They just make things faster and improve the tooling. Today's Topics include: Presidential covid H1-B visa changes and who wins and loses Humble Bundle WASM Roblox Micropayments Mentioned H1-B discussion on HN Programming Web Assembly with Rust Shanda Heyhi Elixir 1.11 Mark's goals for next time Record 4 screencasts Do a full-day fast Justin's goals for next time Get Slider built to where levels are unlockable (with in-game keys) Resume the trampoline workouts Video version at https://youtu.be/tUYd6xTWLjU Comment at https://reactor.am/podcasts/33 On Apple Podcasts at https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/reactor/id1500109358 Recorded on 2020-10-07

The weather has been fantastic in Taiwan as it always is around Halloween, but Mark's been really feeling the pressure to meet the requirements to renew his entrepreneur visa. He suspects that the easiest route will be to earn enough to hire three employees, or possibly to to set up a local company and spend a required amount. . Justin thinks the best bet to hit that goal is to work hard on his starter kit—Phoenix Igniter. Nugget's star pupil, Mateo, made his first sale on his project Heyhi! This is great news for Justin since he's been looking for the right case study. It could start with how he heard about Nugget, how he went through the lessons, started building experiments and finally profitable apps. Justin has basically boiled down the lessons from Nugget into a single sentence: "Hyper iterate on the product, talk to people and make what they need". Alex Hillman and Daniel Vassallo had an interesting debate on Indie Hackers about the value of an email audience vs a Twitter audience. We thought they both made a strong case, but leaned towards email for long-term safety if nothing else. Justin explained quite a bit more about how strange and interesting the Roblox dev environment is. Multiple devs and builders can all work on a game simultaneously and see the effects of each other's efforts in real time. It also wraps up client-server communication in a way that reminds Mark of 2013-era Meteor.js with Mini-mongo available in the browser's dev tools. The competition in Roblox dev is intense and it's fairly alien for a web dev, but Justin's got some big goals. Today's Topics include: Poor quality election debates Mark's visa renewal requirements Nugget's star Black Friday and Humble Bundle Roblox development Mentioned [Recursive Quality Factor] Julia Evan's Zines Heyhi Kutty Tailwind Components Render Twitter Audience vs Email Audience Phoenix Igniter Alchemist Camp Nugget Academy Mark's goals for next time Record 4 screencasts Awesome October Hold off on Phoenix Igniter Justin's goals for next time Keep working on the Roblox game Exercise 15 minutes a day Video version at https://youtu.be/TRNv3XsI0hs Comment at https://reactor.am/podcasts/32 On Apple Podcasts at https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/reactor/id1500109358 Recorded on 2020-09-30

California is burning, and Justin's got cousins were in the evacuation zone. So, they, their kids and their pets are all staying with him and it's a crowded house for a bit. That affected Justin's plan to use the trampoline daily but he's made good progress on Slider. Mark got three premium screencasts and one free one published, did a bit of work on the Alchemist Camp site itself, and finally got some work done on Phoenix Igniter! He also survived a fairly persistent spammer attack. It's unclear what their goal was, but they created hundreds of accounts in a short periods of time. Many had odd usernames, such as URLs or a concatenation of obvious spam terms, but those names aren't visible to other users. Mark had to deal with it in real-time, harden the signup process enough to deter them and then do a bit of research to make sure the next bots have an even harder time. Mark loves the new iPad & pencil! It's completely replaced his Wacom tablet and he's been doing some drawing drills and even putting a few sketches into his YT videos. He's also gotten back into using it to generate ideas about different topics daily (see link to "Altucher Idea Muscle"). One thing that's come out of this is a lot of offerings he could add to Alchemist Camp. Nugget Bootcamp's stats have worked out to very round numbers. Out of 330 people who started, 30 finished. Of them, 3 bought. So it's about a 10% conversion from starting to finishing the mini-course and about 10% of those who finish buy the full course. The next step is to get feedback from successful students and add testimonials throughout the course. Today's Topics include: Fire Spammers iPads Idea generation Subscriptions vs One-off sales Freemium as marketing The content treadmill Successful Nuggeteers Mentioned California fires Invisible Capcha Procreate app Altucher Idea Muscle Alchemist Camp Nugget Academy Mark's goals for next time Get 5 screencasts recorded Justin's goals for next time Make a DB abstraction for the Roblox game (Slider) Video version at https://youtu.be/kuePKu5jwCc Comment at https://reactor.am/podcasts/31 Recorded on 2020-09-23

Justin is energized with his conversation with the other Justin on Techzing earlier in the week. What it takes for an entrepreneur to succeed as an entrepreneur, even in a limited sense, is so situational and poly-causal. It's very difficult to make a consistent, timeless framework. Justin is looking for a way to boil it down to first principles, but Mark is skeptical about the return on effort for people learning from them. Mark's new microphone is here and so far the results have been good! He managed to do a decent length run completely fasted this week and is going to try to keep the diet in check and continue intermittent fasting. He got some work done on an easter egg in Alchemist Camp, but still hasn't gotten back to Igniter. The mic is making it easier to record screencasts efficiently though, since it blocks out most background noises. People are getting through the Nugget bootcamp, but very, very few are signing up for the paid course afterwards. It's difficult to tell if it's due to how they found and chose to sign up, but it's somewhat surprising that people finishing a free course would be less likely to sign up than those who were pitched straight from email. Gitlab's second reduction of CI/CD minutes is starting to bother Mark. The first reduction wasn't onerous at all, but now he's a bit concerned, especially for any projects written in Rust that have longer compile times. For now, it's okay, but even needing to worry about whether or not to delay a deployment is enough that he's starting to look for other options. We also discussed some of the historical hate JavaScript has gotten, its subsequent popularity and the limits of what makes sense for a someone working on a solo project. Today's Topics include: First principles Email conversions Deployment JavaScript Balancing proper vs quick engineering JavaScript Crowded markets Selling ideas Mentioned TechZing Ep. 333 Zero to One First Principles FireCI The Kingdom of Nouns Formidable Labs Alchemist Camp Nugget Academy Mark's goals for next time Record screencasts for both a free series on Ecto and a paid one on Absinthe Investigate a billing edge case for customers sign up multiple times Work on Phoenix Igniter Justin's goals for next time Exercise on the trampoline 5 days Keep building out the sever-side of the Roblox game Keep Tweeting about Nugget Video version at https://youtu.be/0r-TWq3EUnw Comment at https://reactor.am/podcasts/30 On Apple Podcasts at https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/reactor/id1500109358 Recorded on 2020-09-09

Mark "went" to Microconf's first remote conference. There were a number of technical issues, but he was fantatically lucky in terms of who he met during the breaks. The very first person he talked to, Richard, lives in Pasadena and knows Justin! He also met someone running a large Elixir meetup and one of the founders of Elixir Drips, the OG screencast that started the niche Alchemist Camp currently occupies! Justin extended the launch of his bootcamp to his entire email list and is already seeing over 100 people going through the 7-day course. He's offering the premium version of the entrepreneur academy to people who complete it but none have bitten so far. The next step will be to share it on HN to get more people in the funnel and make A/B testing possible. In related news, Mark has realized that the median result of writing a blog post on Questing Log and submitting it to HN is hitting the front page and getting to #2. We talked a bit about post titles, submission times and user accounts. There was an interesting discussion between Alex Hillman and Justin Jackson on Twitter about how important it is or isn't for an entrepreneur to build an audience. Mark mentioned it, and as a result Justin jumped onto Twitter after the show and ended up recording an impromptu TechZing interview with Justin Jackson! We discussed podcasting mics in depth! Hat tip to Ben Orenstein and Pat Flynn for their suggestions and hopefully you'll be able to hear the difference soon! Probably not on Spotify though, at least not in a very listenable version... Today's Topics include: Microconf remote Successfully submitting to Hacker News How important audience is or isn't Amazon Podcasting mics Spotify for podcasters Experience points Interviewing Microphones Ben Orenstein's recommended mic: ATR2100 Justin's anti-recommended mic Mark's old mic: Yeti Nano Mark's new mic: Samson Q2U Mentioned Discussion on audience: Justin Jackson Discussion on audience: Alex Hillman TechZing Ep. 333 Questing Log Nugget Academy Mark's goals for next time Use the mic and record, record record! Follow up with the new Microconf connections Upgrade Phoenix Igniter to v1.5 (lower priority) Justin's goals for next time Focus primarily on making Slider (a Roblox game) Jump on the trampoline for 15 minutes a day No dairy for a week Add more people to the Nugget bootcamp funnel Video version at https://youtu.be/q6cs2BCah_c Comment at https://reactor.am/podcasts/29 On Apple Podcasts at https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/reactor/id1500109358 Recorded on 2020-09-02

We've finally got intro music for our show! In classic Justin Vincent style, he chose one of the old songs from his Irish rock band days and added some new sounds to it. His son Jack, sang the high parts and his wife Georgie did the voice intro. The added sound effects came from Justin's game dev library. The soft launch of the Nugget Bootcamp has gone fairly well. Just over 6% of everyone who tried, it went through all seven modules. This is better than expected, given how most of the traffic came from unqualified leads on a Facebook group. Mark's done well on goals this past couple of weeks. He's (mostly) stuck to the diet and dropped another 2cm from the waist, and is at nearly $4k revenue for the month! Though Alchemist Camp's true MRR has grown, this month was particularly good due to a number of yearly signups and renewals. An interesting blog post came up that looked at the top 50 YC startups (by valuation) and what back-end languages they used initially. It was shockingly dominated by Ruby. 70% of the YC startups had a single initial primary back-end language. Those who primarily used Ruby represented 52% of the total valuation, those primarily using Python contributed 17% and no other language passed 3%. Some of the companies near the top of the list are relatively young, too. Justin is buying a trampoline. Today's Topics include: The origin of our intro music Mark's progress on diet & MRR Stats from the Nugget bootcamp Motivation Music albums Slider (Justin's Roblox game) Trampolines Mentioned You never forget your first dime YC's top 50 valuations + initial back-end languages Income School The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level The House of Air Nugget Academy Mark's goals for next time Keep on the IF plan Get two videos published on Alchemist Camp Upgrade Phoenix Igniter to v1.5 (lower priority) Justin's goals for next time Get 5 interviews done for Nugget Announce the Bootcamp to the 6k email list Bounce on the trampoline Video version at https://youtu.be/CEwiqEX19_I Comment at https://reactor.am/podcasts/28 On Apple Podcasts at https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/reactor/id1500109358 Recorded on 2020-08-26

Mark's #1 goal of working on Phoenix Igniter has been elusive. Structured procrastination hasn't exactly been the plan, but he's been working on just about every other goal instead—recording videos for Alchemist Camp, writing blog posts and interview prep, and more. It turns out that being an "international candidate" means a surprise interview added before the onsite he thought he'd been accepted for. He's completed the extra interview but is uncertain about how well it went. Again, the algorithm side wasn't too challenging but he was a bit rusty with JS's standard library. Justin, despite an explicit goal not too, has gone even deeper into the world of Roblox game development. He's now learned how to create jump pads that players can bounce onto and off of. The game's physics engine is unrealistic in a few ways for playability reasons, but that makes it a bit more complex to create things players can bounce on. Great news! People are starting to create accounts and comment on previous episodes at Reactor.am! So far, most of them know one of us. One of them, Mark's German friend from his digital nomad days, is even competing with Justin in a very indirect way in the task management / productivity space. Today's Topics include: Interview prep Roblox physics How blood glucose monitors work The importance of commenters in motivating podcasters, bloggers or video creators Indirect competition in a huge market Old Techzing guests became billionaires Our intro music The Matthew Effect The joy and peril of listening to yourself at 2x Procrastination Mentioned AlvinBlox on YT How to stop procrastinating using the Fogg Behavior Model The Willpower Instinct Nugget Academy Phoenix Igniter Mark's goals for next time Pay attention to what he's thinking and feeling when he tries to work on Igniter Start pro series on Absinthe GraphQL 1 hour per day on studying Justin's goals for next time Get Nugget Bootcamp live and ready for testing Give Mark mailer creds for Reactor.am Get a prototype version of a scoring system for Roblox Video version at https://youtu.be/Ijh-J--L1n0 Comment at https://reactor.am/podcasts/26 Recorded on 2020-08-12

Mark's Absinthe GraphQL tutorial series is started and people are retweeting it! Justin has LAUNCHED the bootcamp! Mark's new blog post is at #2 on HN! Things are moving! Justin's been looking at how Nugget users go through the educational content, and how many continue from each step to the next. He's been getting positive feedback, but it's always a challenge to optimize a lesson and decrease dropoff at each step. Microconf is going to be remote this year, which means Mark will actually be able to attend it finally! Today's Topics include: Soft-launching Nugget Bootcamp Blog posts on HN Watching users go through educational content Credibility and case studies Adam Wathan's weight loss Intermittent fasting Slider (Justin's Roblox game) Mark's dislike of buying videos Mentioned My best SEO tactic so far (on HN) Laravel Spark Jumpstart Rails Adam Wathan's weight loss Octalysis Gamification Framework Nugget Academy Phoenix Igniter Microconf Remote Mark's goals for next time 3 days of fasting 2 videos for Alchemist Camp 1 commit to Phoenix Igniter Justin's goals for next time "Possibly" get testimonial videos for Nugget Do a Nugget Mastermind 1 day of fasting Video version at https://youtu.be/unIQKk-nKGM Comment at https://reactor.am/podcasts/27 Recorded on 2020-08-12

Show 25: Too many jobs Justin's been doing a lot of performance work at the day job. He's been doing some strategic caching and optimizing of queries and has managed to drain a job queue from over 42,000 items, down to about 10. The problem may not be fully solved, though. Mark failed to hit his primary goal, but he did a bunch of other stuff, including Manning's Rust in Motion which was an explicit goal not to get too sucked into. He also had quite the HN adventure, submitting a post that quickly got to #2 and then flagged off of the site. After a few revisions to make it a bit more personal and re-posting it, it went up to #2 again and did much better the second time. Also, the Facebook interview went well and they've invited him to a "virtual onsite" interview. A fairly successful indie hacker who runs a site called Semicolon and Sons strongly recommended Rob Walling's book, Start Small, Stay Small to Mark, and its lessons on out-sourcing in particular. Mark never read it, but did see a lot of similar advice in 4HWW around the same time and Justin's had a great experience with outsourcing work on his upcoming Roblox game. If you're coding everything on the back-end for it anyway, is it better just do all life-cycle emails from a transactional email service? Justin's considering moving all of Nugget's marketing off of Drip and just using Mailgun for everything. Speaking of email software, Noah Kagan has been promoting a new service called Send Fox. It may be worth keeping an eye on, given his success with his SumoMe suite of list-building tools. Mentioned Web apps aren't tech. They're "tech" John Carmack's BAFTA speech Semicolon and Sons Start Small, Stay Small Nugget Academy Alchemist Camp Justin's goals for next time Work on Nugget Eat 90% vegan Keep blood sugar in check Mark's goals for next time Work on Phoenix Igniter (double dog for reals this time) Blog Publish the already recorded screencasts Video version at https://youtu.be/6GUXIgFd_4M Comment at https://reactor.am/podcasts/25 Recorded on 2020-08-05

Justin is keen to hear about how Mark's technical interview at Facebook went yesterday. In a lot of ways it was less stressful than he'd expected based on his previous experiences. It seemed to have gone but they haven't given any feedback yet. There are still more steps in the process and he'll also have to find out if their remote policy is global or if he'd be required to leave his pandemic free residence in Taiwan and head back to the US. Justin shrugged off his primary goal of working on his Nugget business and instead has gone even deeper into the world of Roblox. The development of his new game is well under way, and his 6 year-old is giving feedback. Interestingly, when he plays Roblox, his in-game communication is all with speech to text tools. Nugget is still slowly moving along though. One of the members Justin has been helping settled on a new product, had a successful launch on HN and is now revenue positive! Mark got some interesting feedback from an Elixir learner on Alchemist Camp—"Don't give so much away for free!". This question around how best to do a freemium service is a tough one. Making more premium tutorials leads to more users choosing to pay, but the more tutorials are free, the faster the total audience grows. Justin's advice was simple—create a super premium tier for businesses and price it at $99/month. Mentioned AlvinBlox on YT Tiny Pilot on HN Daniel Vassallo on Twitter Nugget Academy Alchemist Camp Justin's goals for next time Work on Nugget login pathways Intermittent fasting (no food past 3pm) Mark's goals for next time Work on Phoenix Igniter Work on top of the funnel for Alchemist Camp Don't get too sucked into the Rust in Motion course Video version at https://youtu.be/OSOXl72iiH4 Comment at https://reactor.am/podcasts/24 Recorded on 2020-07-29

Justin's at grandma's house this weekend, enjoying a spacious backyard with a barbecue grill, but despite his hopes, it's not nearly big enough to grow enough maple trees for a steady syrup supply. Nonetheless summer is here and the yard is a nice change from LA lock-down. Mark's been doing a little bit of algorithm study for interview prep. Justin's not a fan of that kind of interview since it's so far away from what kinds of work people do on the job. Mark agrees, but seen it useful at one old job which was flooded with applicants who couldn't fizzbuzz. Not by modulo, not by nested loops and not by a big while loop with multiple counters! Please go to Reactor.am and leave comments on the episodes if you feel so inclined! How much has YC changed? One former founder on twitter feels they've lost their soul. He loved the tight network and personal attention from people like PG and Jessica Livingston. Now, the batches are huge and attracting a different sort of person (see link below). We know nothing about YC internally, but it reminds Mark of what he saw happen at his old coding school. When he was a student, the founders were putting everything they had into making sure he and his classmates succeeded. Later batches were larger, students were more risk adverse and more credentialed. Justin's come up with a name for his Roblox game and is now putting together sound effects and music for it. He's got an outline for the game map done and is now starting to work on getting the polish on the center part of it up to a release-quality level. Mark's been thinking about different kinds of content he can make for Alchemist Camp to help the top of the funnel. The full-on screencasts are what people pay for. However he could write four technical tutorials in the time it takes to make a single screencast. Non-technical writing is even faster and more easily shared, but also less valued. What's the idea balance? Mentioned Fizzbuzz The Only Reason My App Worked Was Due to a Slow Database We can't send email more than 500 miles Y Combinator has lost its soul: A YC founder's perspective Questing Log Nugget Academy Alchemist Camp Justin's goals for next time Focus on the Roblox game Work on Nugget login pathways Mark's goals for next time 2 screencasts Algo prep Five UI components for Phoenix Igniter Video version at https://youtu.be/3Y6YfZFV_Qw Comment at https://reactor.am/podcasts/23 On Apple Podcasts at https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/reactor/id1500109358 Recorded on 2020-07-22

VS Code updates that break a key part of your editor workflow suck! Previously, opening and closing the integrated terminal was cmd + backtick, and Mark used to hit it constantly to switch back and forth between code and the terminal. In VS Code's monthly update, they silently changed that shortcut to switch between multiple VS Code windows. The result is constant frustration from hitting the shortcut out of habit and disrupting the recording of screencasts. Justin's wife has been intermittent fasting and has lost a lot of weight! Amazingly, she's only eating in the mornings rather than the evenings like most intermittent fasters. Justin's gonna give it a try. Mark's been thinking about an idea from an old TechZing episode—enthusiasm half-life. The people he's known who have tackled something difficult like learning Chinese or starting a business have fallen into one of two groups. Most people seem to start off full of enthusiasm, like a cannon ball shooting into the sky and then gradually lose motivation and crash into the ground. A few people have their own fuel and just put in a regular half hour or hour per day for years, but they're not the norm. The key for the majority was making meaningful progress before hitting their enthusiasm half-life. Getting to a win of some kind or another often brings more motivation! Justin is still working on getting more prospective female entrepreneurs to join Nugget (his training site / community). He's also considering opening up its slack group to free users as well as premium members. More discussion and more people sharing entrepreneurial ideas, advice and success stories is probably good for everyone. Justin has also hired a recent to start building a Roblox game! After digging into the development environment and getting a feel for what was possible and what the learning curve would be like, he impressed with the Flash-like development experience, the built-in Lua scripting, the assets and everything available. Making a simple game was easy! It was seriously tempted to build a commercial game himself, but thought better of adding yet another time commitment of that sort. Mentioned Roblox Studio Roboduel Lua programming language PEG.js Reactor.am Nugget Academy Alchemist Camp Phoenix Igniter Justin's goals for next time Stop eating at 2pm every day Refactor Nugget, open up the Slack, etc Mark's goals for next time Focus on the top of the line audience growth Create a backlog of topics for easy one-off tutorials Work on Igniter docs 5/7 good diet days Video version at https://youtu.be/eFksdBvVxyA Comment at https://reactor.am/podcasts/22 Recorded on 2020-07-15

The site for this podcast is live at last, so Justin has a link to tweet! The screencasts Mark has been making about making the site with Phoenix LiveView LiveView is nearing an end as well. All that's left is a tiny bit of recording and then editing a few videos. After 15+ videos of a single series, it's going to be great to switch things up and teach a new topic. Justin's been working hard to try to get an even male/female balance in solo entrepreneur academy, Nugget. He's started revising the copy in earlier lessons and has gotten some helpful feedback on it from his sister. He's revised the copy for his first three lessons to make them a bit more engaging and has a plan for most of the remainder of the lessons. Another idea she mentioned was that Nugget is applicable to info product makers, not just coders! Mark has been very inspired this week, first from his buddy Liam's 30th birthday party and then from rereading a very old book by Gary V. The book was actually a more interesting read that in would have been a decade ago, because he wrote almost exactly the plan he executed on over the next several years. Nothing was as inspired as Justin and Mark's (mostly settled) differences about how to design a podcast listing page!!! Justin wants a page that drives users towards commenting and Mark wants an information fire-hose interface, not just for this podcast but for every site he frequently uses. Finally, we talked a bit about coding interviews, how unlike most programming work they are and why Mark is still grateful for them. Mentioned Hustle Jet Double your freelancing Crush It (2009) Reactor.am Nugget Academy Alchemist Camp Phoenix Igniter Justin's goals for next time Get the Nugget Bootcamp reviewed Finish revising the 4th-8th lessons Mark's goals for next time Publish 3 screencasts Dip back into JavaScript for an hour a day Improve the Igniter docs Good diet 6/7 days Comment at https://reactor.am/podcasts/21 Video version at https://youtu.be/W653wtuVW8E On Apple Podcasts at https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/reactor/id1500109358 Recorded on 2020-07-08

Not even an ill-timed decision to update to Ubuntu 20.04 update could stop Reactor.am from going up tonight! It did require Mark retyping a tedious four-word command, but thanks to his pile of Ruby & shell scripts, that was the entirety of the cost. However, Justin still won't add intro music to the show until 10 people email hosts@reactor.am and ask for it. Justin's got Nugget ready for review, but it's been surprisingly tough to get it reviewed! Mark invited three relatively successful boostrappers he knows, but no bites yet. On the good side, Justin's gotten a couple of positive reviews through his network. Mark's gotten two more videos recorded but still not edited or published. Phoenix Igniter hasn't gone as well, though. He's had a harder time setting aside time to work on it due to the fact that there's no front-end setup that would satisfy everyone. Many customers want a fairly vanilla back-end MVC app with "JavaScript sprinkles", many others want a fully separated SPA and still others are excited about going all-in with LiveView. The 4th of July is coming up and this is a leap year in the Chinese lunisolar calendar! That means lots of big meals in a short time for Mark, but not quite at the level of the epic feat he pulled off a decade back in which he managed to partake in a Dragon Boat feast in Taipei, a Canada Day BBQ in Toronto and then a 4th of July in Boulder. Justin has gone DEEP into the economics of Roblox and has started messing with Roblox Studio and seeing what it would take to make a game his son Jack would enjoy. He's keeping a lid on the details for now, but a side-side-SIDE-SIDE project may be underway. Mentioned Reactor.am Nugget Academy Alchemist Camp Phoenix Igniter Chris Oliver's GoRails Justin's goals for next time Get the Nugget Bootcamp out to the world Get out for a "proper" walk each day Mark's goals for next time Stay on point for diet 5 days this week Work on Phoenix Igniter Reactor.am is already "done" Video version at https://youtu.be/Kpnwr8xL3Kk On Apple Podcasts at https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/reactor/id1500109358 Recorded on 2020-07-01 Comment at https://reactor.am/podcasts/20

Life is going well for Mark! Thanks to cleaning out his air conditioner, the appartment is now a cool 26 degrees Celsius instead of the 33 degrees it was last week! Rather than endure that furnace, he spent most afternoons last week at coffee shops. He can't take his Mac mini, monitor and ergonomic keyboard to them, but he did take his Kindle and ended up reading three full books. He also hit his health goals and a new milestone for Alchemist Camp subscribers! Justin has gathered half a million carrots in his son's video game, but his automation efforts haven't been entirely wasted. He's been inspired by in game success and has started automating parts of his wife's online business and created a self-serve version of her course for therapists. It's generated seven sales at $499 so far. He's also been tweaking a few things in the Nugget bootcamp based on what he's seen of from one of the students progress so far. Along a similar line, Mark's been very gradually automating a free intro email course he offers his email subscribers. It's still a mostly manual process but the part that accounts for 90% of Mark's manual effort is automated. Justin talks a bit about the struggles of juggling contracting, entrepreneurial work and being at home with a young kid during Covid. Mark gives Justin an on-screen tour of Reactor's stats, both in terms of Podcast listens and YouTube and then Justin show the current state of the Nugget bootcamp. Mark is a huge fan of the atmosphere added by the old school 8-track cassette tape on each page that play "Justin's bootleg notes" when you click on them. He wants the Justin's unreleased Speak product that powers it for his own site... but Justin's a bit hesitant about digging too far into opening it up to the outside world for a while. Mark sees it as a powerful tool for increasing conversions but Justin sees it potential business but one that would be better with funding behind it. (25m to 39m) Mentioned Speak Reactor.am Nugget Academy Alchemist Camp Justin's goals for next time Finish editing Nugget Bootcamp Get six entrepreneurs to review it Create a survey for it Set up an email account for this podcast Mark's goals for next time Publish the screencast/walk-through he recorded Deploy Reactor stay on point for diet every day except his friend's upcoming b-day party Video version at https://youtu.be/8ZpimVlL-8E On Apple Podcasts at https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/reactor/id1500109358 recorded on 2020-06-24

Mark's sleep has been suffering from the summer heat and 100% humidity of living on a semi-tropical island, but it's still been a productive week... The Reactor site is ready to launch! It took more than a screencast's worth of code to implement sessions, auth, email resets, permissions, etc, so he tried doing something different. Instead of showing himself type in every line of code as in his normal screencasts, Mark tried doing a "walk-through", where the code is already written and he goes over it and explains it to the viewer. It was much easier than making the 3-4 screencasts it would have taken to cover the same material, so it will be interesting to see how the audience responds to it. Justin has pushed the boundaries of virtual carrot farming still further and set up highly optimized vertical farms so he can generate 65,000 carrots per night in his son's video game. There was a game update that complicated things a bit, but his virtual carrot farming operation is simply too powerful to stop. The Nugget Bootcamp is ready for review! It's been a bit difficult to keep the lessons short enough to fit into just seven pages, but Justin is happy with the work so far. He's been adding voice recordings to each page, using Speak, and it's a huge improvement. Feedback from some founders who have taken a look at it so far has also been good. The plan is to release all of the new bootcamp for free, and keep the existing paid material as a followup for the most motivated and successful segment of the free bootcamp learners. It's always a trade-off between reach and protecting the value of the paid product when doing freemium, but Justin's not too worried since his main goal is to reach a larger and more diverse group of potential founders. With the site for this podcast done, Justin's going to set up an email account for the hosts and Mark will deploy it sometime this week. Mentioned Duck Duck Go Gabriel Weinberg Brennan Dunn's ConvertKit course Fizzle Reactor.am Nugget Academy Alchemist Camp Justin's goals for next time Finish editing Nugget Bootcamp Get six entrepreneurs to review it Create a survey for it Set up an email account for this podcast Mark's goals for next time Copypasta from last week :( Joint goal 20 YouTube subscribers Video version at: https://youtu.be/SHmn1oERZWU recorded on 2020-06-17

Justin has made some progress with his Nugget bootcamp but much more importantly he has become a Robux Millionaire. The secret is playing games with your five year-old and then setting up auto-clickers to harvest in-game resources. The Reactor site is really close to ready to deploy. It's 99.9% there. Mark has completely failed on his diet goal. He only managed to stick to it four out of seven days instead of six of seven. Justin talks about just how big of a deal traffic is. It's like a resource you can use to mould and shape a business from. His number 1 advice for someone starting out is to learn how to build an audience. That ability leads to all kinds of opportunities and speeds up learning. Don't worry who it is at first, just learn how to build an audience 

Mark can't disagree as the very most successful indiehacking friend he's ever known did it on the back of a very popular nutrition site monetized on the back of humble Google ads. One of the most useful tactics he's found so far is to notice when things are hard to Google and create content that answers the question better. Google often picks up the better content. We also discussed a bit about top of the funnel strategies—producing more content, blog posts on broader topics, making YT clips of longer videos, and jumping into new tech that's still pre-1.0. Mentioned Is it Keto? How to be a capitalist without any capital Kinesis Advantage 2 Kinesis Freestyle Edge Ergodox EZ Reactor.am Nugget Academy Alchemist Camp Justin's goals for next time Get the Nugget bootcamp ready for review Mark's goals for next time No junk food for 5 of the next 7 days Launch the Reactor site Publish a screencast Read 1 chapter a day of tech books Joint goal 20 YouTube subscribers recorded on 2020-06-03 Video version at: https://youtu.be/FQjs-dXbltA

Mark had a great b-day party with his friends at a 熱少. Very unlike the situation where Justin lives in California, there were no masks, no social distancing and instead friendly old Taiwanese men at the restaurant joining in to offer happy birthday cheers. It was hard not to think about the gulf of effectiveness between Taiwan's handling of the epidemic and the US's. We don't like to bore anyone with politics, but delved into it for 12 minutes following realization of how different our situations were. We talked about the epidemic, protests of police violence, health care, taxes and infrastructure. Back to tech topics, we talked about the promise of web assembly, coding in WASM directly vs using Rust bindgen and how it could get adoption not just in browsers but also IoT. Justin's still working on his bootcamp and working out a "level up" game for new founders—first get traffic, then find the right people and finally learn how to help them, make an appropriate product and sell it. Which is easier to work on if you only have small chunks of time, code or written content? We disagree. But, our podcast traffic is growing... even though Mark still hasn't deployed to the site. He has started making some short clip videos from our discussions and sharing them on YT with some success. Mentioned Programming WebAssembly with Rust Reactor.am Nugget Academy Alchemist Camp Justin's goals for next time Get the Nugget bootcamp ready for review Mark's goals for next time No junk food for 6 of the next 7 days Publish two videos for Alchemist Camp Get some version of Reactor.am launched Video version at: https://youtu.be/vDjYmbGou2k
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/reactor/id1500109358 Comment at https://reactor.am/podcasts/16 recorded on 2020-06-03

Mark's week has been fantastic! Somehow, launching a 2nd product—Phoenix Igniter—seems to have had a great growth effect on his screencast business. He's also discovered a very much unexpected growth benefit to making Stripe revenue public on Indie Hackers. In general IH hasn't been a great use of time for Mark, probably due to his niche tech stack and its relatively shallow focus on engineering. HN, on the other hand has been helping his business even when he's just commenting for fun. Justin's products are broad enough to do well on both. Mark saw a Rust tutorial he really liked on HN. Justin's curious why Rust is so interesting to him, and what makes it useful in general. Mark's a big fan and sees it as an especially powerful tool for an Elixir dev to have in his or her toolkit. Justin's week has been brutal. Between a bit too much to drink, a lack of sleep and getting even more into his son's game, it's been a poor week for hitting goals in the real world. Within the video game, though, he's done a substantial amount of engineering! He's been setting up a fully automated system for collecting, smelting and storing virtual ore. Mentioned Command line apps in Rust Skyblock Factorio Indie Hackers Thinking in Bets, by Annie Duke Nugget Academy Phoenix Igniter Alchemist Camp Justin's goals for next time No alcohol Sleep at least 6 hours per night Mark's goals for next time Run two times Publish two screencasts for Alchemist Camp Try to get two episodes of this podcast edited and published Continue procrastinating on launching reactor.am 
 Recorded on 2020-05-20
 Video version at: https://youtu.be/vDjYmbGou2k Comment at https://reactor.am/podcasts/16

Justin's been agonizing over the writing of the new Nugget Bootcamp material, but Mark's week has been great! Well, aside from a concerning injury related to a previous muscle tear he suffered pushing a stuck SUV in the mountains of central Taiwan... On the good side, Mark's Phoenix Igniter is launched! Justin is impressed with the sales so far, but Mark is a bit more reserved about it. Justin's diet is on point, and he's been doing hill sprints!!! No wonder the blood sugar readings have been great! Unlike the temporarily incapacitated Mark, Justin is getting after it. Due to his son Jack, Justin has become more and more drawn into the world of gaming and in particular Roblox. Just as one would expect in the internet, he quickly encountered some "killer" player types as soon as he logged into a server, but he's beginning to level up. (20m) Mark goes into a bit of a rant about his struggles with his old startup, video chat and being reliant on a platform at 30m. Mentioned Roblox Bartle Player Types) Does Not Compute podcast Nugget Academy Phoenix Igniter Recorded on 2020-05-13 Video version at: https://youtu.be/xQnQNJ0kvVc

Justin has been going deep on his bootcamp for new founders and pouring over two decades of notes from his own startups and those he's mentored. The most common failure mode that he's identified is founders biting off more than they can manage for their first projects. Mark was no exception with his businesses or even software projects. Devs tend to do the same, often attempting an ambitious game as one of their first projects! Mark shows the site to host this podcast running locally and shows off the coolest revenue graph—going from zero to one sale for Phoenix Igniter! He's also finished setting up a Gitlab integration for it and a nice VuePress site for its docs. He's been getting a lot of new YouTube subscribers but not much revenue recently. Justin has also been playing a LOT of video games with his five year-old son. This has lead to thoughts about founders as video game players who gradually level up, gain skills and become capable of taking on larger challenges. Mark's goal for next time (54:33) Planning a way to hit yearly revenue target imposed by his new visa Justin's goal for next time Launch the course Mentioned Nugget Academy Phoenix Igniter Video version at: https://youtu.be/LlNOkjbJGZA

Mark is now only about a week away from having both residency and a health card! On the biz side, revenue from Alchemist Camp is flat, basically where it was two months ago, but YouTube views and subscribers are way up. He's given his paying subscribers access to Phoenix Igniter as a bonus perk and has been getting some great feedback so far. Justin has also made some big progress. He's kept his glucose levels in range and has started doing hill sprints! On the biz side, Taskflow is now somewhat usable for project management, hooked up to a DB and has some new screens built out. He's also "accidentally" made a sale for his Nugget academy and is now working on a streamlined bootcamp version of the course. Mental Model: Gresham's Law (26:58) Mark's goals for next time (31:19) Make a first few sales of Phoenix Igniter Justin's goals for next time (33:38) Make the Taskflow data editable from the condensed view screen Get the Nugget bootcamp ready to share with experts and get their feedback Keep blood sugar 70% in range Mentioned Alchemist Camp Nugget Academy Taskflow (coming soon!) Phoenix Igniter Video version at: https://youtu.be/Av3hH7607yI

Mark cleared the final hurdle in his path to once again gain residency in Taiwan! The last month has been full of unusual challenges and he feels a renewed energy now that they're cleared. Alchemist Camp has simultaneously had its best growth ever in terms of email subscriptions, YouTube watch time and site usage and a slight revenue decrease. Justin suspects this could be due to the pandemic, but on the other hand it could be due to the fact that the recent tutorials have all been free. Mark also took a page from Justin's book and used the power of structured procrastination to launch a starter kit product while procrastinating on the analytics product. It's called Phoenix Igniter and Justin loves the branding. Speaking of structured procrastination, Justin has been working on Taskflow but hit a particularly annoying screen to design. As a result, he designed a new "bootcamp" version of Nugget! After that, the next step in launching it to his main list, drove him back to finishing the screen on Taskflow. He got the original task done AND a new product design done for a different product. Justin has reached some clarity about the ways in which his business pursuits are altruistic and in which ways they're profit-driven. He's also realized something interesting about his earlier customers versus the more recent ones. At first people were primarily looking to Nugget for community and interaction with him. More recent customers have been much more transactional and utility-driven. Goals discussion is at 30:10. Mental Model: Comparative Advantage Mark's goals for next time Create 8 Tailwind CSS components for Phoenix Igniter Record at least 1 video for Alchemist Camp Get to the government office to submit all his paperwork Justin's goals for next time Do the 7 minute workout with the family Finish the mind map Get 5 people into a new Nugget batch Mentioned Alchemist Camp Nugget Academy Taskflow (coming soon!) StatWatch Phoenix Igniter Video version at: https://youtu.be/A6cmboBvf1c

Everything is terrible for Justin, except that he's got a nice fireplace and enough logs to get through the snowy mountain weather. Mark's made great progress on dealing with all the immigration / banking hassles and the struggle is nearly over. Mark's surpassed his goals, publishing four videos, building out more of the podcast site, gaining YT followers more quickly than normal and even getting in 5 workouts during the week. On the down side, only free usage of Alchemist Camp is growing. Paid usage has basically stayed flat and some new subscribers have been buying a single month's subscription, downloading everything they can and then cancelling. See the Reactor site at 6m. Talk on Stripe's new subscription scheduling features and subscription vs one-off lifetime memberships at 17m. Justin hasn't been feeling working on Taskflow, so the power of structured procrastination lead him to creating a new landing module and new offer for Nugget! Justin shares a business analysis framework he's been using in consulting. This part is better on YouTube! (25:35) Nathan Barry's rules (53:26) Teach everything you know Create every day Work in public Mark's goals for next time (1:03:27) Release two videos Make more user-friendly cancellation flow 2 workouts, 2 runs Justin's goals for next time (1:03:27) Do the 7 minute workout with the family Finish the mind map Get 5 people into a new Nugget batch Mentioned Alchemist Camp Nugget Academy Taskflow (coming soon!) ConvertKit Video version at: https://youtu.be/PEpelGW96HE

recorded on 2020-4-01 The mad scramble isn't over. Mark's bank closed his account, due to no action of his own. That sucks since he's halfway across the world during a pandemic. It was a rough couple of weeks, but ultimately he prevailed. The bank opened him a new account, reopened the debit card he had with him and connected the two. Justin's blood sugar has been in range and he's finished the "now" screen for Taskflow as well as the "next task" UI. Between that, the day job he's just generally been crushing it for the past couple of weeks, from the comfort of his mountain home. Diet part is at 19m and Taskflow demo at 23m. Justin's also considering launching a new Nugget batch. He's thinking that it might make sense to drop the prices due to the pandemic. There's also a question of how to make a "low-res" intro to help new students get a quicker overview before digging into the details of any part of the course. Pricing discussion starts at 40m. Mark's thinking about branching out a bit further from Elixir and making videos about other topics that would also serve the same audience and Justin was very bullish about the idea. It probably wasn't optimal to make videos about Tailwind that assumed Elixir + Phoenix knowledge of its viewers. A few videos higher in the funnel that can bring new people to the channel is probably a good idea. Goals discussion starts at 51m Mark's goals for next time 2 workouts, 2 runs Record a screencast for AC and work through some Vue School lessons. Justin's goals for next time Get blood sugar reading down to 7.1 Create "Add task" functionality in Taskflow Video version at: https://youtu.be/QxCra7EaPQc

Due to a sudden change in local immigration rules, Mark has to scramble to either get a resident visa or find a new place to live. He's made surprisingly good progress in the past couple of days. Justin's "chop diet" has pushed his blood sugar even more into range and it's looking clear that this is the best diabetes controlling diet he's found in years of searching. Progress is going well with Task Flow as well. Justin has a few interesting links from HN. One involves an interesting use of 3D printing to help with the current crisis, but Mark is looking forward to the day when teenagers are "pirating" burritos by downloading and then printing them. (38m) Discussion an other podcasts, media and contrarians at 44m. Mental Model Black Swans (27m) Goals (49m) Mark's goals for next time Focus on getting an entrepreneur visa Create a fallback plan in case goal 1 fails Justin's goals for next time Keep blood sugar in range for 90% of the time Complete the "now" screen for Taskflow Create an expanded view a medium view and compact view for Taskflow Video version at: https://youtu.be/QI51QFSo_7A

Recorded on 2020-03-11 Justin has made a breakthrough! After years of effort, he's finally found a way to keep his blood sugar low with a diet he can sustain. Mark is cautiously optimistic but wants to see a few more weeks of data. (21:50) Mark talks about consumer surplus and his thoughts about the patio11 / Ben Ornstein camp of "charge more" vs the Adam Wathan approach of selling $1000+ products for $150. Both strategies can be very successful, but which works better when? (41:55) Justin created his own utility-based CSS framework with which to build his new app, Taskflow... because that's what he does. It's a little bit inspired by Tailwind. (52:45)
 Goals discussion at 1:00:50 Mental Model Consumer surplus Justin's goals for next time Stick to the new eating plan that's working Get the rest of the UI stuff done Mark's goals for next time Create marketing Continue creating podcast site More git study Implement notifications on Alchemist Camp Video version is at: https://youtu.be/PYhB6a12rMg

Justin has a work-related trip to Denver coming up and Mark is getting tired of being under the CDC order to wear a mask. He estimates there's a 95% chance the virus will not be contained and 45+ states will have outbreaks. 
Mark didn't get the analytics site launched, but he hit his other big goal of starting the email automation done and did some fasting. Justin didn't make it out swimming but made some good progreess and some decisions about Taskflow. (27:00)
 Since he already has a sizeable audience, he doesn't really need to follow his own advice for entrepreneurs in the Nugget Academy. He can skip several of the steps and move a bit faster. The details of Taskflow are a bit complex to work through. Productivity strategies are a big portion of the tool, and different strategies have different "ingredients". Power users can custimize quite a bit. For example, one user pursing a "quick wins" strategy might make small task size 5x more of a prioritzation factor than the financial impact of completing it. Another user might make it a 10x more important factor. (33:40) Justin's reasoning about why it's valuable to get to a new "layer" of a large market (36:20) One additional constraint is that this will be a freemium app used by many, many users if things go well and Justin wants to avoid external job queues as much as possible. It's probably going to have to be a SPA eventually, too. This week's mental model is borrowed from Alan Kay's "The power of simplicity" talk, and we had a good discussion on the trade-offs of building your own widgets versus using other people's. (1:07:12) Goals discussion at 1:11:02 and 1:22:01 Mental Model: Blue plane, red plane Justin's goals for next time Go swimming twice Get some help with an algorithm for weighting tasks in Taskflow Finish mockups for most of the major areas of Taskflow Mark's goals for next time No exercise except pushups at home but do some intermittent fasting Flip the switch on email automation for Alchemist Camp Continue building the site for Reactor and screencasting it Launch analytics app???? (not a realistic goal at this point) Mentioned TailwindCSS: https://tailwindcss.com Leroy Jenkins: https://youtu.be/mLyOj_QD4a4 Explorable Explanations: https://explorabl.es 4D Toys: https://4dtoys.com Alan Kay, The Power of Simplicity: https://youtu.be/NdSD07U5uBs?t=912 Video version is at: https://youtu.be/PiwcsTcQihY

Upon returning from Japan, Mark was ordered by the CDC to wear a mask when in public for the next 14 days, which completely derailed his running plans. He managed to get three screencasts recorded, surpassing the goal of two, though. 

Justin got quite a few mockups for Taskflow finished, despite having a crushing week at work. The progress was a bit surprising and starting at 14 minutes into the episode Justin shares his mindmapping and planning tool and we do a long deep-dive on what he's building and go over the mockups.

About 95% of the discussion can be followed just through audio, but it's definitely worth seeing the video! Mental model (starting at 56:19) Exported Skillsets Justin's goals for next time - Go swimming twice - Get some help with an algorithm for weighting tasks in Taskflow - Finish mockups for most of the major areas of Taskflow Mark's goals for next time - No exercise except pushups at home but do some intermittent fasting - Flip the switch on email automation for Alchemist Camp - Continue building the site for Reactor and screencasting it - Launch analytics app???? (not a realistic goal at this point) Mentioned - Moqups: https://app.moqups.com/ - TailwindCSS: https://tailwindcss.com - The Education of Millionaires: It's not what you think and it's not too late http://www.ellsberg.com/the-education-of-millionaires Video version is at: https://youtu.be/zbgHOwO1BIk

Video version is at: https://youtu.be/9Z3tJVUdo-k Mark's made good progress on his goals and has mostly built the MVP for the site for this podcast and has made two tutorials for Alchemist Camp out of the work so far. Unfortunately, he didn't have any time to work on his analytics project and though he finished the whole Laravel series on git, it was a bit too basic. Justin's attempts at lowering blood sugar haven't gone so well, but on the good side, he's making progress towards his project management tool and has a fairly novel idea of making task management strategies a top-level primitive in his app—choosing a different strategy would re-rank tasks based on the strategy the user currently wants to use. He's also settled on a working name of "Taskflow". DHH has been talking about Lambda School quite a bit and Mark thinks it's interesting. On one hand, he's pretty bullish on bootcamps and education outside of universities and there are real disadvantages to putting most people through the same credentialed system. On the other hand DHH, had some points about how much of an indictment on the US system it was that economically disadvantaged people were interested in 30k loans for a 9 month online course to begin with.

Justin's been reading about the weirdness of colors and human perception, but he's never heard of "the dress" that broke the internet in 2015! Mental model: Small bricks vs giant slabs Justin's goals for next time: Make some mock-ups for Taskflow Mark's goals for next time: Screencast two more episodes from Reactor's code Don't let the exercise routine get too derailed by a visit to Japan Mentioned: Create your world podcast: https://anchor.fm/create-your-world ezSQL: https://github.com/ezSQL/ezsql DHH on Lambda School: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJyflVOQF_w&t=1s That dress: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dress Color vision: https://www.aao.org/eye-health/tips-prevention/how-humans-see-in-color The Dip: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dip Video version at: https://youtu.be/9Z3tJVUdo-k

This episode Justin and Mark start rough with shape for the show. Crystallization is happening! Since Mark wants to know how Justin gets traffic to Speak, or any of his projects, that becomes the mastermind portion of the show. Mark talks about his old AS3 flash games he made when he was learning to program, Unity, and a mental model Mark borrowed from experience playing racing games as a child. Justin's thinking about how Mark's "Engines vs Power-ups" model could have helped Nugget's initial format and the power of blogging. We discussed Tim Ferriss's blog post on the downsides of fame, Bill Murray's response and how the article relates to the idea of "Luck Surface Area". Finally, we talked about Mark's progress building the site (and making screencasts out of the process) and our goals for next week.

The original show plan: an update on progress from last week a masterminding segment news and ideas on their minds goals for next week. Mentioned Whimsical: https://whimsical.com/ Dr. Jason Feng's blog about fasting: https://www.dietdoctor.com/intermittent-fasting/guides Justin's project Speak: https://speakhq.co Mark's ancient flash games: https://www.kongregate.com/games/Xiaoma Unity engine: https://unity.com/ Reasons Not to Become Famous: https://tim.blog/2020/02/02/reasons-to-not-become-famous/ Engines vs Power-ups: https://alchemist.camp/learning-machine/engines-powerups Laracasts: https://laracasts.com Tower (git client): https://www.git-tower.com/mac Video version is at: https://youtu.be/AXYNSUvigpU

Video version is at: https://youtu.be/euTFeerH8us This episode Mark goes over his basic signup flow for new customers. One goal is to give users an incentive to sign up and another is to get more information to segment new signups and suggest appropriate lessons for them. Aside from improving the signup flow, he's also looking at ways to get more people to the site to begin with and experiments that might help existing customers get more out of it. Should he open source a ConvertKit API wrapper library? Would that move the needle at all? Justin suggests creating a "seed group" of customers who are more involved in Alchemist Camp and creating a chat group for them, not integrated into the site, but something like Slack, Discord or even IRC. On Justin's side, it was a busy week at the day job but he also took a look at the top of his customer discovery funnel and realized his blog is in need of a refresh. In the process of trying to decide what to work on, a new idea emerged. Justin is seriously considering making a productivity app to solve his problem. It's tentative name is Task Flow. Mark was Gobsmacked that Justin is taking on a side-side-SIDE project (along with raising a kid and a CTO job), but Justin makes the case that all three products are synergistic. Mental model: Progressive Rendering Mind Mapping Software: Whimsical: https://whimsical.com MindNode: https://mindnode.com Also mentioned: Alchemist Camp: https://alchemist.camp Justin's blog: https://justinvincent.com Speak: https://speakhq.co Traction book: https://medium.com/@yegg/the-19-channels-you-can-use-to-get-traction-93c762d19339 Glossary hig·gle·dy-pig·gle·dy /ˌhiɡəldēˈpiɡəldē/ adverb · adjective adverb: higgledy-piggledy; adjective: higgledy-piggledy in confusion or disorder.

This show is an experiment. It's part podcast and part mastermind video chat. (Video version at: https://youtu.be/rrz3h7z1-rw) Justin Vincent is a cohost of the Techzing podcast, runs the Nugget Academy for entrepreneurs and has bootstrapped many, many products. He's also working on a product called Speak and possibly another side-side project. Mark runs Alchemist Camp, a site with tutorials and screencasts that teach the Elixir programming language. He's working on making a starter kit for Elixir web apps using Phoenix Framework and an analytics service. Links The Nugget Academy: https://nugget.one Alchemist Camp: https://alchemist.camp Techzing: https://techzinglive.com