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News includes episodes now available on YouTube, Parker Selbert's experience transitioning an app from the cloud to self-hosted, Gleam v1.6.0 release with context-aware features, José Valim's hot-take on Kubernetes vs. Elixir, and more! Show Notes online - http://podcast.thinkingelixir.com/230 (http://podcast.thinkingelixir.com/230) Elixir Community News https://www.youtube.com/@brainlid (https://www.youtube.com/@brainlid?utm_source=thinkingelixir&utm_medium=shownotes) – Our episodes are also being published to YouTube! https://peterullrich.com/a-bluesky-starter-guide-for-elixir-devs (https://peterullrich.com/a-bluesky-starter-guide-for-elixir-devs?utm_source=thinkingelixir&utm_medium=shownotes) – Peter Ullrich provides a blog post explaining how to move to Bluesky with Elixir and BEAM related starter packs. https://bsky.app/starter-pack/peterullrich.com/3l7d3wn6mdd2n (https://bsky.app/starter-pack/peterullrich.com/3l7d3wn6mdd2n?utm_source=thinkingelixir&utm_medium=shownotes) – Peter Ullrich's starter Bluesky pack. https://bsky.app/starter-pack/did:plc:owr7ds52hneavpi5nmchutmr/3l7czjlcejb2o (https://bsky.app/starter-pack/did:plc:owr7ds52hneavpi5nmchutmr/3l7czjlcejb2o?utm_source=thinkingelixir&utm_medium=shownotes) – Peter Solnica's Bluesky starter pack. https://bsky.app/starter-pack/did:plc:ktoqsa54yjvcp5yuoqeze4qi/3laeoggccnu2w (https://bsky.app/starter-pack/did:plc:ktoqsa54yjvcp5yuoqeze4qi/3laeoggccnu2w?utm_source=thinkingelixir&utm_medium=shownotes) – Ryan Winchester's Bluesky starter pack. https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:2hgt4vfh2jxuwf5zllcbed64/feed/aaaemobjvwlsq (https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:2hgt4vfh2jxuwf5zllcbed64/feed/aaaemobjvwlsq?utm_source=thinkingelixir&utm_medium=shownotes) – Elixir/Erlang feed on Bluesky. Peter's blog post guide explains how to use your domain for a Bluesky account name. https://x.com/josevalim/status/1857429507445018947 (https://x.com/josevalim/status/1857429507445018947?utm_source=thinkingelixir&utm_medium=shownotes) – José Valim shares a hot-take about Kubernetes vs Erlang/Elixir. https://x.com/josevalim/status/1857429868620755445 (https://x.com/josevalim/status/1857429868620755445?utm_source=thinkingelixir&utm_medium=shownotes) – José continues his thoughts on concurrency and Kubernetes. https://x.com/josevalim/status/1857728428125860221 (https://x.com/josevalim/status/1857728428125860221?utm_source=thinkingelixir&utm_medium=shownotes) – José clarifies his views on Kubernetes and fault-tolerance. https://dashbit.co/blog/kubernetes-and-the-erlang-vm-orchestration-on-the-large-and-the-small (https://dashbit.co/blog/kubernetes-and-the-erlang-vm-orchestration-on-the-large-and-the-small?utm_source=thinkingelixir&utm_medium=shownotes) – An exploration of Elixir (the BEAM) and Kubernetes on Dashbit blog. https://github.com/inertiajs/inertia-phoenix (https://github.com/inertiajs/inertia-phoenix?utm_source=thinkingelixir&utm_medium=shownotes) – SavvyCal is updating their Phoenix adapter with Inertia.js to 1.0, currently in beta. https://gleam.run/news/context-aware-compilation/ (https://gleam.run/news/context-aware-compilation/?utm_source=thinkingelixir&utm_medium=shownotes) – Gleam v1.6.0 release with features like context-aware errors and improved language server support. https://github.com/phoenixframework/phoenixliveview/pull/3514 (https://github.com/phoenixframework/phoenix_live_view/pull/3514?utm_source=thinkingelixir&utm_medium=shownotes) – LiveView consolidates interpolation syntax, offering a Mix option for migration. https://github.com/livebook-dev/vegaliteconvert/pull/1 (https://github.com/livebook-dev/vega_lite_convert/pull/1?utm_source=thinkingelixir&utm_medium=shownotes) – Livebook improvement enabling VegaLite graphics export via a Rust NIF. https://x.com/akoutmos/status/1857110114173325683 (https://x.com/akoutmos/status/1857110114173325683?utm_source=thinkingelixir&utm_medium=shownotes) – Details on the VegaLite conversion improvement in Livebook. https://x.com/sorentwo/status/1858185525313556855 (https://x.com/sorentwo/status/1858185525313556855?utm_source=thinkingelixir&utm_medium=shownotes) – Parker Selbert transitions an app from "the cloud" to self-hosted, sharing benefits. https://x.com/sorentwo/status/1858574539598291373 (https://x.com/sorentwo/status/1858574539598291373?utm_source=thinkingelixir&utm_medium=shownotes) – Parker's deployment script for transitioning to self-hosted. CodeBEAM Lite in NY recap, discussing conference size and experience. Do you have some Elixir news to share? Tell us at @ThinkingElixir (https://twitter.com/ThinkingElixir) or email at show@thinkingelixir.com (mailto:show@thinkingelixir.com) Find us online - Message the show - Bluesky (https://bsky.app/profile/thinkingelixir.com) - Message the show - X (https://x.com/ThinkingElixir) - Message the show on Fediverse - @ThinkingElixir@genserver.social (https://genserver.social/ThinkingElixir) - Email the show - show@thinkingelixir.com (mailto:show@thinkingelixir.com) - Mark Ericksen on X - @brainlid (https://x.com/brainlid) - Mark Ericksen on Bluesky - @brainlid.bsky.social (https://bsky.app/profile/brainlid.bsky.social) - Mark Ericksen on Fediverse - @brainlid@genserver.social (https://genserver.social/brainlid) - David Bernheisel on Bluesky - @david.bernheisel.com (https://bsky.app/profile/david.bernheisel.com) - David Bernheisel on Fediverse - @dbern@genserver.social (https://genserver.social/dbern)
In this episode, Simon delves into the tenant-finding process. He compares the real costs of self-managing tenant finding versus hiring an agent. Simon covers both cash expenses and time investment. Simon outlines tasks such as advertising, tenant inquiries, viewings, and referencing, providing a detailed breakdown of his time spent. Also learn about the tools and technology that help with self-managed tenant finding.. Episode links: * Episode 221 - more in-depth on self marketing for tenants (https://www.thebusinessofproperty.com/221). * OpenRent for advertising and referencing (https://www.openrent.co.uk/). * PaTMa for managing compliance and documentation (https://www.patma.co.uk/property-manager/). * Savvycal for scheduling viewings (https://savvycal.com/). * Or Cal.com (https://cal.com/) / Google Calendar appointment schedule (https://support.google.com/calendar/answer/10729749?hl=en). * Toggl for time tracking (https://toggl.com/). * Visum (https://www.visum.co.uk/letting). * Join our email newsletter (http://eepurl.com/icl-1f) for a free weekly property market report. * Find us on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRfrbvIJfodFK8tikisCjVw) or LinkedIn: Simon (https://www.linkedin.com/in/simonpither/). Subscribe to The Business of Property podcast on Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/73chI0Nqi9eRFUM7tkHc6r), iTunes (https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-business-of-property/id1495635728), and all podcast platforms (https://www.thebusinessofproperty.com/subscribe). Please leave a rating and review if you're enjoying the show. This podcast is produced in association with PaTMa (https://www.patma.co.uk/), the leading application for self managing landlords who want to save time and stay compliant. Easily track properties, tenancies, tenants, repairs, rent, mortgage payments and safety certificates. Get your FREE account today (https://www.patma.co.uk/).
In this episode, the panel chats with Derrick Reimer, co-founder of SavvyCal. They discuss the advantages of using Elixir for bootstrapped SaaS businesses and how Elixir's functional programming paradigm aligns with modern development practices. Derrick shares his journey from Rails to Elixir and explains why he prefers the clarity and explicitness of Elixir over other languages. @Derrickreimer on X https://savvycal.com We want to connect with you! Twitter: @BeamRadio1 Send us your questions via Twitter @BeamRadio1 #ProcessMailbox Keep up to date with our hosts on X @akoutmos @lawik @meryldakin @RedRapids @smdebenedetto @StevenNunez and on Mastodon @akoutmos@fosstodon.org @lawik@fosstodon.org @redrapids@genserver.social @steven@genserver.social Sponsored by Groxio (https://grox.io) and Underjord (https://underjord.io)
Today my guest is Dan Hardaker.Dan is the Director of Digital Design and co-owner at Proctor + Stevenson.P+S is one of the UK's longest-established full-service marketing agencies, offering business-to-business marketing strategy, branding and technology.Dan is one of the longest-serving employees there having been there for 11 years and 8 months.Clients include Panasonic, Epson & South West Water.But if this agency is such a well-established and more traditional agency, you might think thatthey are not stuck in their ways, stuffy and less forward thinking.Far from it - this agency is quick to adopt new technology and Dan is hyper aware of available tools and tech out there.Their new website, built on Webflow, and explorations of how to use Webflow more broadly with enterprise clients are helping to push the UK Webflow market forward. We'll get in to this more in today's episode.You might think life has always been pretty rosy for Dan if you look at him now with a formidable team, enterprise clients and beautiful office in the heart of Bristol.But as you may have guessed, there's been some fundamental fails to learn from to get here.The fails we'll talk about in today's episode are:1) Clear Communication2) Comprehensive Testing3) Due Diligence in HiringSAVVYCALSchedule like a Webflow boss - try SavvyCal here BONSAIStreamline your client process - check out Bonsai here!WEBFLAIL FREEBIESCheck out free Webflail resources here!Webflow 2024 Planner10 Step Process To Land Your First Webflow Clients: The Ultimate GuideLINKS FOR DAN
In this conversation, Ben and Derrick discuss the challenges of growing a business and the decision to target specific market segments. They explore the trade-offs between serving a broad audience and focusing on a niche market. They also discuss the technical choices and architectural decisions in building a product, with Derrick sharing his positive experience with Elixir and the Phoenix framework.LinksTuple.app (https://tuple.app) - The best app for pair programmingSavvyCal.com (https://savvycal.com) - The scheduling tool Derrick createdPhoenix (https://www.phoenixframework.org) - the Elixir framework SavvyCal is built onRails (https://rubyonrails.org) - the Ruby framework Ben worked withKey TakeawaysElixir and the Phoenix framework offer a maintainable and explicit approach to building applications.Functional programming paradigms can simplify code organization and improve maintainability. Object-oriented programming and functional programming have different approaches to code organization and maintainability.The active record pattern in Rails can lead to large and complex models, while the repository pattern in Phoenix provides a more modular and explicit approach.Open source contributions can be seen as a good faith contribution to the commons and can provide benefits such as status and marketing opportunities.Developers can improve their design skills by studying resources like the book 'Refactoring UI' and being introspective about user interfaces in their daily lives.Chapters(00:00) - Introduction and Background (02:12) - Savvy Cal and Horizontal Products (05:56) - Choosing Between Niche and Broad Audience (15:59) - Phoenix vs. Rails (22:20) - Object Oriented vs. Functional Programming (36:02) - The Motivations Behind Open Source Contributions (43:20) - Improving Design Skills as a Technical Person
Stuart and Simon share strategies for landlords on finding and selecting tenants for rental properties. They discuss the importance of preparing the property, taking quality photos, and writing effective listings. They explore options for advertising on rental portals and the benefits of self-managing the process versus using agents. The duo also talks about using automated emails to screen enquiries and the use of software to grade potential tenants. They share their approaches to scheduling viewings and the selection process, emphasizing the cost savings and relationship-building aspects of finding tenants independently. Join our email newsletter (http://eepurl.com/icl-1f) for extra, exclusive resources. Episode links: * OpenRent (https://www.openrent.co.uk/) * Visum (https://www.visum.co.uk/letting) * SavvyCal (https://savvycal.com/) * Cal.com (https://cal.com/) * Google Calendar appointment schedule (https://support.google.com/calendar/answer/10729749?hl=en) * Find us on Twitter (https://twitter.com/BizOfProperty), YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRfrbvIJfodFK8tikisCjVw) or LinkedIn: Stuart (https://www.linkedin.com/in/stuartlordan/), Simon (https://www.linkedin.com/in/simonpither/). Subscribe to The Business of Property podcast on Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/73chI0Nqi9eRFUM7tkHc6r), iTunes (https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-business-of-property/id1495635728), and all podcast platforms (https://www.thebusinessofproperty.com/subscribe). Join our email newsletter (http://eepurl.com/icl-1f) for extra, exclusive resources. Please leave us a rating and review if you're enjoying the show. This podcast is produced in association with PaTMa (https://www.patma.co.uk/), the leading application for self managing landlords who want to save time and stay compliant. Easily track properties, tenancies, tenants, repairs, rent, mortgage payments and safety certificates. Get your FREE account today (https://www.patma.co.uk/).
Jane Portman, CEO & Co-Founder of Userlist, discusses how they repositioned themselves from a customer messaging platform to a more established email service provider (ESP) category tailored specifically for SaaS businesses. In this interview, she shares insights on how they acquired their first set of customers, how they use content marketing to drive leads, and how their repositioning has helped them, among other topics.The interview covers the following topics:How Userlist helps B2B SaaS companies with email automationHow they acquired logos like SavvyCal and Transistor fm as customersHow they used personal branding to acquire their first few customers and why it doesn't scaleHow most of their top-of-funnel leads come from inbound leads via content marketingWhat their sales cycle looks like and why customers switch from their competitorsThe backstory of their repositioningTeam, funding, and vision.
Something that we know from the State of Business Podcasting Report is that the vast majority of business podcasts post their episodes to YouTube, and most do live-action videos. One of the reasons?YouTube has a powerful and effective discovery algorithm - something that no audio-based platform has been able to replicate.Podcasts can now be found, in most countries, as a part of YouTube Music, and they are currently testing the ability to upload podcasts via RSS feed. Now that YouTube is starting to add real podcast muscle to its platform, as a company podcaster, you would be remiss not to use it.Happily, there are many video experts who are extremely generous with their knowledge and insight. One of them, Angela Hollowell, is the creator of Honey and Hustle, a video-first podcast and founder of Rootful Media, a digital media production company focused on photography, video production, and digital content creation for purpose-driven visual storytelling.In this episode, Angela gives a closer look into the preparation and workflow differences between an audio and video podcast. She also shares systems that you can apply to your own workflow and the different apps that you can use to streamline the process.Aside from the potential increase in profits, video podcasting has other unique benefits that it can give you and your business. If you're interested in that, definitely don't miss this episode.Listen to our conversation below, or continue reading the blog post!Tune in to the full episode to learn about:Reasons why you might want to do a video podcastThe differences in the preparation, production, and the recording processSystems and technology that you can use to streamline the processThe ways your video podcast can support your businessHow your podcast can impact new shows or business ideasThe hidden benefits and opportunities of video podcastingDon't forget to join us for our free monthly strategy calls on the third Thursday of every month!YouTube vs audio podcasts: A peak into the differencesDoing a video podcast might mean more work and resources spent, but the potential benefits can make it a worthwhile endeavor. Not to say that audio is inferior, as always, it depends on your goals and current capacity.Want to see if a YouTube podcast is for you? Continue reading!YouTube podcasts are easier to findYouTube has a powerful and effective discovery algorithm. This is something that no audio-based platform has been able to replicate or even really come close to yet. This, combined with its engaging nature, larger audience, and effective search engine makes Google's video platform a podcasting powerhouse.Optimal organizationAnother thing to keep in mind is the power of YouTube channels for organizing your content and creating a convenient experience for your viewers.Their playlists are the mechanism. This is done on YouTube, and they are basically categories of content that creators can make on their channel. For example, organizing all of their episodes or all of their reviews, or all highlights into a single playlist. That can make it easy for people to navigate and consume a whole bunch of your content, one right after the other.The visual aspect makes it more compellingWith YouTube podcasts, you get to know a person beyond their voice. You see their mannerisms, the way they present themselves, and how comfortable they are. You get to see what their face looks like when they're thinking, amused, or when they're being clever.This is not to say the audio doesn't matter. It definitely does. If you're solely a person that likes to gain information, absolutely, audio podcasts are the way to go. But for people who like to gain information, but also like to gain inspiration and a deeper sense of engagement, video podcasts win.Which is easier?People would think audio would be easier, but when Angela started podcasting, she was still a filmmaker and was already doing video professionally for clients. And so for her, doing a video podcast was just a natural extension of the work that I was already doing.If you're already in a visual field or comfortable with being on camera, always consider a video podcast!Do guests find video podcasts harder?According to Angela, not really. She's pretty straight up in saying that it is a video podcast. When recording in person, she gives out tips like:“I'll be giving you a lav mic. It's going to clip onto your clothes. So try not to wear anything that makes too much noise. So like really long dangly earrings, dangly necklaces.”Try to prep people, have systems in place, and always send them reminders. It's also your duty to help your guest make sure that they show up at their best on camera.The systems and apps that you can useThere are certain tasks in your business that you do repeatedly all the time. And if you're doing it repeatedly, there's a chance that you can automate those steps so that instead of you spending time writing the same email 20,000 times, you can be doing something else. Something else that makes you money.SavvyCal - for automated scHere are some of the tools that Angela uses:hedulingZapier - make your apps talk to each other and create a robust automated systemAirtable - for episode guidesTypefully - social media schedulingBONUS: Angela's tips for a great video interviewHow to give guests a unique experienceYou don't want guests to feel like they're regurgitating answers from previous interviews with other people. You want them to feel like this is something that is unique to them and that is unique to their story.The best videos happen in pre-production. 90% of a good interview happens in the planning phase. So definitely allot time for good preparation and good research. Find out which questions have been asked before and .look for different angles The other half is knowing when and how to be vulnerable and how to share stories of your own that leave space for people to feel comfortable in whatever capacity, sharing stories that are similar.How to make a guest comfortableFor Angela, she always asks people a fact-based question first.How did the business get started?Why this business? Why this lane?Why do you do this specifically?When you start off asking someone you don't know that well, something that's a little more emotionally based might not get them to open up as much. They're probably not going to be as comfortable, and it's going to set the tone for the rest of the interview.The benefits beyond profitAngela noticed that linking her podcast to her email signature would make people reach out to her. They have seen an episode with someone they love, trust, or worked with in the past, which prompts them to engage.Just by the power of positive association, she was getting this unofficial co-sign for people who are reaching out to her for work and inquiries, which helped the video and photography production side of her business.Key Quotes“You're going to have a different guest every episode, but you are the only constant. So the people that are listening to this also kind of want to feel like they know you as well, and they know certain parts of your story.” - Angela Hollowell“A lot of friction comes from miscommunication or just a lack of communication. That comes from not treating podcasting like a business and not understanding that your guest experience if you are doing an interview-based podcast, is just as important as a listener experience.” - Angela HollowellResourcesOne Stone Creative | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook | InstagramMake sure to check out our free Monthly Strategy Calls!About Angela HollowellAngela is the founder of Rootful Media, a digital media production company focused on photography, video production, and digital content creation for purpose-driven visual storytelling. Rootful Media is driven to create and share stories with diversity, inclusion, compassion, and sustainability at their core. Angela is also the host of the video podcasts Honey & Hustle and Creative Architects by Castos. Through storytelling interviews, she talks with founders and creators about their personal journeys as entrepreneurs and experiences in the creator economy.Through documentary photography and filmmaking, she works to create a digital space highlighting the unique lifestyle, challenges, and moments in the American South and beyond. From the food we eat to the land we live on, our culture is heavily intertwined with our history and our humanity. As a storyteller and human rights advocate, Angela weaves together the narratives of individuals, nonprofits, and organizations from script to screen to amplify the voices of people in our communities.Twitter | LinkedIn | YouTubeRelated Episodes and Media:Video Podcasts: Reflections and DecisionsThe Video Advantage for SEO with Atiba De SouzaShould Company Podcasts be Company Vlogs? An Audio vs. Video ShowdownPFBCon 2023We're starting to get ready for this year's Podcasting for Business Conference, and we're currently looking for speakers! Go to PFBCon.com and click on “Become a Speaker” to share your idea! It's happening this November, all online.
Ep. 165 - In this two-fold episode, Chris sits down with Derrick Reimer, a full stack software developer and indie SaaS founder. They dive into Derrick's latest project, SavvyCal, and uncover the secrets to building successful software and saving time in your business. Throughout the conversation, Derrick shares about his Founder's journey and why he created SavvyCal, as well as his previous experiences and process for product development with building renowned platforms like Drip and Codetree. You'll also learn the unique features that set SavvyCal apart from other software platforms and discover how SavvyCal could be the missing piece in saving you valuable time, potentially freeing up hours upon hours every week.
Ep. 165 - In this two-fold episode, Chris sits down with Derrick Reimer, a full stack software developer and indie SaaS founder. They dive into Derrick's latest project, SavvyCal, and uncover the secrets to building successful software and saving time in your business. Throughout the conversation, Derrick shares about his Founder's journey and why he created SavvyCal, as well as his previous experiences and process for product development with building renowned platforms like Drip and Codetree. You'll also learn the unique features that set SavvyCal apart from other software platforms and discover how SavvyCal could be the missing piece in saving you valuable time, potentially freeing up hours upon hours every week.
In episode 666, Rob Walling chats with fan favorite Derrick Reimer, the founder of SavvyCal, as they answer listener questions. They cover topics ranging from idea validation in competitive spaces to book recommendations to development strategies for non-technical founders. Episode Sponsor: Find your perfect developer or a team at Lemon.io/startupsThe competition for incredible engineers and developers has never been more fierce. Lemon.io helps you cut through the noise and find great talent through its network of engineers in Europe and Latin America.They take care of the vetting, interviewing, and testing of candidates to make sure that you are working with someone who can hit the ground running.When it comes to hiring, the time it takes to write your job description, list the position, review resumes, schedule interviews, and make an offer can take weeks, if not months. With Lemon.io, you can cut down on a lot of that time by tapping into their wide network...Read more... »Click the icon below to listen.
In this episode, we are joined by Corey Haines, the founder of Swipe Files and cofounder of SwipeWell. He shares their journey toward entrepreneurship, including the challenges they faced and how they found their passion in the world of tech and marketing. Corey Haines has been the head of marketing at companies like Baremetrics and SavvyCal as well as consulting with dozens of startups. He's currently writing a book on SaaS marketing called "Founding Marketing" that will be released in 2024.He also discussed the importance of having a media personality within a company's senior leadership team, treating content like a product, and building individual thought leaders. The conversation provides insights into the world of programmatic SEO and its potential challenges and opportunities for building a successful SaaS company. They discuss their approach to time management, content creation, and programmatic SEO, as well as the importance of treating content like a product and marketing like a media company.Topics:Programmatic SEO Marketing Enneagram Three Strengths and Weaknesses Managing Time and EnergyWorking on what's excitingThe Difficulty of Content Creation Building momentum for Swipe Well.Programmatic SEO StrategiesProgrammatic SEO and Generative AITechnical Foundations for Programmatic SEO Programmatic SEO VS Marketing Like a Media CompanyContent as the Cornerstone of MarketingBuilding Trust through Media PersonalitiesThe Risks of Building Social Thought LeadersRetention and Incentivization The Modern Environment of Media Companies Journey to self-discovery Show LinksVisit Swipe Files and SwipeWellConnect with Corey Haines on LinkedIn and TwitterConnect with Alex Birkett on LinkedIn and TwitterConnect with Omniscient Digital on LinkedIn or TwitterPast guests on The Long Game podcast include: Morgan Brown (Shopify), Ryan Law (Animalz), Dan Shure (Evolving SEO), Kaleigh Moore (freelancer), Eric Siu (Clickflow), Peep Laja (CXL), Chelsea Castle (Chili Piper), Tracey Wallace (Klaviyo), Tim Soulo (Ahrefs), Ryan McReady (Reforge), and many more.Some interviews you might enjoy and learn from:Actionable Tips and Secrets to SEO Strategy with Dan Shure (Evolving SEO)Building Competitive Marketing Content with Sam Chapman (Aprimo)How to Build the Right Data Workflow with Blake Burch (Shipyard)Data-Driven Thought Leadership with Alicia Johnston (Sprout Social)Purpose-Driven Leadership & Building a Content Team with Ty Magnin (UiPath)Also, check out our Kitchen Side series where we take you behind the scenes to see how the sausage is made at our agency:Blue Ocean vs Red Ocean SEOShould You Hire Writers or Subject Matter Experts?How Do Growth and Content Overlap?Connect with Omniscient Digital on social:Twitter: @beomniscientLinkedin: Be OmniscientListen to more episodes of The Long Game podcast here: https://beomniscient.com/podcast/
In episode 652, Rob Walling answers more listener questions with Derrick Reimer, the founder of SavvyCal. They cover topics from the most important superpower for developers to the best resources for learning how to code and should you ever mix no-code with code. Topics we cover: 2:03 - The most important superpower for developers 11:39 - Combining no-code with code 20:31- Should you take a $5k angel investment? 25:30 - How to do outreach for initial idea validation calls 29:09 - How should bootstrapped founders handle the Section 174 changes 33:50 - Best resources to learn how to code Links from the Show: Derrick Reimer (@derrickreimer) I Twitter Derrickreimer.com SavvyCal Episode 642 I The Pros and Cons of Building a No-Code MVP MicroConf Remote 6.0 TinySeed If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you'd like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We'd love to hear from...Read more... »Click the icon below to listen.
If you're trying to solve a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle, you can just try jamming pieces together. That could take you days or weeks. But, if you approach it with a framework or mental model (like starting off with the edges), you can increase your chances of success sooner rather than later.That's true for marketing too.Marketing mental models and frameworks give you the shortcut to success.That's where Corey Haines comes in. He's the Co-Founder of SwipeWell and has consulted and worked with dozens of startups, including SavvyCal, Riverside.fm, and Baremetrics.And he's a huge fan of mental models for marketers. He's even created a whole course about it!Today, we'll dig into one of his favorite mental models, Second Order Thinking, which will help you create more bulletproof Marketing plans… like New from the movie The Matrix.In this Marketing Powerups episode, you'll learn:What is the Second Order Thinking mental modelThree ways marketers can apply second-order thinking to their weekly and quarterly planningHow Corey applied the second order thinking to SwipeWell's embed featureWhy starting more side projects can help accelerate your marketing career
In episode 643, Rob Walling chats with fan favorite Derrick Reimer, the founder of SavvyCal, as they answer listener questions. They cover topics ranging from SaaS feature flags to communicating product needs to a technical founder and combating imposter syndrome. Episode Sponsor: Find your perfect developer or a team at Lemon.io/startupsThe competition for incredible engineers and developers has never been more fierce. Lemon.io helps you cut through the noise and find great talent through its network of engineers in Europe and Latin America.They take care of the vetting, interviewing, and testing of candidates to make sure that you are working with someone who can hit the ground running.When it comes to hiring, the time it takes to write your job description, list the position, review resumes, schedule interviews, and make an offer can take weeks, if not months. With Lemon.io, you can cut down on a lot of that time by tapping into their wide network of developers...Read more... »Click the icon below to listen.
From a business growth perspective, choosing the right SaaS pricing model and strategy is a must. Most business owners I have worked with treat it almost like an afterthought, but the reality is an effective pricing strategy is vital for business success. In this episode, I'm joined by Corey Haines, the creator of SwipeWell, Swipe Files, and Copywriting Prompts, to deconstruct SaaS pricing models and strategies. Corey is a a marketer, entrepreneur, podcaster, and investor. In addition to launching several SaaS businesses, he's consulted with dozens of startups on marketing and growth including SavvyCal, Evercast, Riverside.fm, and Holloway. He's also the host of the weekly Default Alive podcast, where he talks about his journey on bootstrapping his startups. Tune in to learn: The importance of SaaS pricing How to approach SaaS pricing when you're just starting out The most common SaaS pricing models How to choose the right SaaS pricing model for your business The different SaaS pricing strategies to keep in mind Productivity hacks for busy entrepreneurs ...and lots more. A must-listen episode for SaaS entrepreneurs and marketers out there. -=-=-=-=- Tools and resources discussed in the episode: SwipeWell - https://www.swipewell.app/ CoreyHaines.co - Learn more about our guest Corey Haines here - https://www.coreyhaines.co/ SaaS Pricing Models & Strategies Demystified (Corey Haines' blog post) - https://baremetrics.com/blog/saas-pricing-models Semrush - Get 1-month free trial to Semrush: https://www.99signals.com/go/semrush-pro-offer/ Ahrefs - https://ahrefs.com/ Recommended business books for entrepreneurs: The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick, Obviously Awesome by April Dunford, and Super Thinking by Gabriel Weinberg and Lauren McCann -=-=-=-=- BONUS RESOURCES + FREE DOWNLOADS If you're a fan of the podcast, here are some FREE online marketing resources from my blog, 99signals, to help you level up your marketing skills: The Ultimate Guide to Link Building (https://resources.99signals.com/link-building-ebook) - Learn 25 powerful strategies to build high quality backlinks, improve search engine rankings, and drive targeted traffic to your site. Top-rated articles at 99signals (https://www.99signals.com/best/) - This page contains a list of all the top-rated articles on my blog. It's a great place to get started if you're visiting 99signals for the first time. -=-=-=-=- Visit https://www.99signals.com for more insights on SEO, blogging, and marketing. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/sandeep-mallya/message
In episode 622, join Rob Walling and fan favorite Derrick Reimer, the founder of SavvyCal, as they discuss topics like balancing profitability versus growth and deciding which features to build and not. They chat about some specific features that Derek has decided to build, those he has not decided to build, and the thought process behind them.Topics we cover: 4:02 - Making product decisions 9:22 - Deciding on what features you are not going to build 19:12 - When to reply to debates on Twitter 27:42 - Twitter's newsletter feature 31:40 - Derrick's perspective on balancing profitability vs reinvesting in the business 43:10 - Is Rob scratching his maker itch by being an investor in companies through TinySeed, or is he missing building SaaS businesses? 46:29 - Should Rob join TikTok? Links from the Show: Derrick Reimer @derrickreimer I Twitter SavvyCal Applications for TinySeed's Fall 2022 SaaS Accelerators Are Now Open ...Read more... »Click the icon below to listen.
"When people are actively looking for a product like yours, and you're not marketing it, you are actually doing an act of disservice. You are starving them of something that they need, that they could use. By not marketing, you're putting a ceiling on your potential." – Corey Haines. Are you currently creating or marketing a product in the SaaS space? If so, you will love and learn so much from this week's episode with SaaS marketing expert Corey Haines. Corey is a marketer, entrepreneur, podcaster, investor, and soon to be an author who is on a mission to help people and their products, services, and content get the recognition that they truly deserve. Corey is the mastermind and creator behind the popular Swipe Files and has consulted with numerous start-ups on growth and marketing, including SavvyCal, Evercast and Holloway, to name but a few. Throughout this episode, Corey shares his go-to research methods, the importance of live customer experience feedback, marketing cheat codes, and reveals his three tried and true methods guaranteed to bring your first customers through the door. Key points throughout include: An introduction to Corey Haines. Obtaining Swipe Well's first customers and the creation of Swipe Files. Communicating with potential buyers on social media platforms.Dripping marketing: striking the right amount of marketing ahead of product launching. The key to mapping out appropriate marketing methods.Overcoming the fear of marketing. How avoiding marketing is an act of disservice. Methods for understanding your customer's needs. The power of asking why and the benefit of running polls.Navigating through career challenges and failures. Advertising conversion: does it really work?Corey's business book recommendations.Lessons to be learned from activating a landing page. Corey's advice on obtaining your first ten customers."You do need marketing. You have to treat it as an investment, something that's going to pay dividends later." - Corey Haines. COMING SOON! Join the waitlist to get your hands on Corey's forthcoming marketing handbook Founding Marketing HERE. We do not doubt that this book will feature on many guests' recommended lists in future First 10 podcast episodes. "Without promotion, something terrible happens. Nothing! – PT Barnum. Connect with Corey Haines:https://www.coreyhaines.co/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/corey-haines/ https://twitter.com/coreyhainesco https://www.swipefiles.com/ https://www.defaultalive.fm/ https://www.swipefiles.com/foundingmarketing Connect with First 10 Podcast host Conor McCarthy: https://www.first10podcast.comhttps://twitter.com/TheFirst10Podhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/comccart/ Resources:The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick
Tuple launched a new marketing experiment this week. Derrick is continuing work on migrating SavvyCal to new hosting infrastructure.
The Tuple team had their first filming session for the meta-documentary about their marketing experiments. Derrick is awaiting results from the latest SavvyCal funnel experiments.
Ben and Derrick catch up on all things Tuple (https://tuple.app/) and SavvyCal (https://savvycal.com/?via=drfgar). Ben recently raised prices for Tuple. Derrick is experimenting with major funnel changes for SavvyCal.
Derrick is launching a bunch of SavvyCal features this month, including a Close integration and meeting polls. Ben has had good experiences lately talking to customers.
In episode 604, Rob Walling talks with Derrick Reimer and gets the latest update on SavvyCal, how he makes product decisions, and they also share the best things they've bought for $100 and $1000 that have added much more value to their lives than the price point. Topics we cover: [4:50] Apple's influence on startup […]Click the icon below to listen.
Inspirational stories plus practical takeaways from the entrepreneurship world.Today's guest is Corey Haines who is a serial entrepreneur. He's the founder of both SwipeFiles and SwipeWell and other stealth startups. He's currently the Marketing Lead at SavvyCal, a disruptive calendar SaaS company. Corey is an expert in B2B SaaS marketing and has consulted for many other projects. Corey has two of his own podcasts, Default Alive and Everything is Marketing. We hope enjoy the episode and don't forget to share it with others. You can learn more at http//www.entrepreneurshandbook.co.Use Corey's discount code "ENTREPRENEURSHANDBOOK" on https://swipefiles.com for 50% off.Find out more about Corey: https://www.coreyhaines.co/Follow him on Twitter: https://twitter.com/coreyhainescoFollow him on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/corey-haines/SwipeFiles: https://www.swipefiles.com/SwipeWell: https://www.swipewell.app/SavvyCal: https://savvycal.com/onboardingDefault Alive: https://www.defaultalive.fm/
“The rules change, the opportunities change. And so you don't want to build your castle on a big plot of sand, right? You want to have a strong foundation. And ideally, you want everything to funnel back to an owned means of distribution.” - Corey HainesIn today's episode, we are joined by Corey Haines, the founder and creator of Swipe Files. In this episode, he will talk about the idea of marketing like a media company. It's his mission to help people with exceptional products, services, and content get the attention they deserve. He's "stair-stepping" his way to entrepreneurship, building a portfolio of small bets to optimize for autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Previously Head of Growth at Baremetrics and first marketing hire at Cordial. He consulted with dozens of startups on marketing and growth including SavvyCal, Evercast, and Riverside.fm, Holloway, Beamer, and Timetastic.Tune in now and learn more about how you can market like a media company!Watch this episode on YouTubeIn this conversation:Corey Haines:Corey's company, Swipe FilesCorey on Twitter: @coreyhainescoCorey's personal siteBrian Casel:Brian's company, ZipMessageBrian on Twitter: @casjamThanks to ZipMessageZipMessage (today's sponsor) is the video messaging tool that replaces live calls with asynchronous conversations. Use it for free or tune into the episode for an exclusive coupon for Open Threads listeners.Quotes:“Too many people kind of harp on this idea of like, oh, you got to focus, focus, and only do one thing and just hammer at that. But early on, you got to explore, you know, and you got to put a lot of stuff out there that people will start to know you.” - Brian Casel“The best marketing looks like building a media company or just like doing things as if you were a media company.” - Corey Haines“The rules change, the opportunities change. And so you don't want to build your castle on a big plot of sand, right? You want to have a strong foundation. And ideally, you want everything to funnel back to an owned means of distribution.” - Corey Haines
Ben and the Tuple team have hit a good shipping stride lately. Derrick and team are nearing completion on a few large SavvyCal initiatives. The guys reflect on MicroConf and the nature of dispensing advice.
What's up everyone! Today we have a super special guest on the show, this interview is more than 12 months in the making – You probably already follow him on Twitter – I've personally learned a bunch from him and know you're going to get a lot of value from our conversation today. Today we're joined by Corey Haines. He's a full time creator and the former head of Growth at Baremetrics. These days he keeps busy with many different things. He runs a weekly newsletter, And a growing marketing community, He also manages multiple podcasts, he wrote a few SaaS marketing courses, he built-sold-and bought back a marketing jobboard and he's a startup marketing consultant/advisor. Most importantly, Corey's all-round great dude with a world class beard.Corey, we're grateful to have you on the show – thanks for taking the time.September 2020, you quit your job at Baremetrics to become a full time creator. You wrote about this and described it like you strapped on a spacesuit, launched into space and your plan is to figure out where you want to go from there. How has the journey been 1.5 years later? Do you know where you're going yet?Yeah. Oh, man. The last year has been a whirlwind. I guess it's almost been like a year and a half now since I left. The North Star guiding goal has been to get into SaaS myself, start a SaaS company, maybe even a couple of products, and just have a small portfolio of bets and multiple things going on at once and see where they all kind of take me. I knew that doing that with a full time job is pretty hard, especially when I didn't want to step on your toes at Bearmetrics since we sold other SaaS startups. So I didn't want to build something that ended up competing with one of our customers. So I just kind of knew, like, that wasn't really an option for me. I didn't want to get another job and then start working on those side projects as well. But also, I wasn't really even close to building anything quite yet anyways. But I just wanted to kind of pull the trigger and jump and strap onto the rocketship, get into space. And then I could figure out where I was going from there. And on a personal level, very, very challenging. And like a lot of learning on hey, here's how to manage cash flow for all the different kinds of feasts and family cycles of freelancing and consulting. And just like knowing where to kind of find money and all the different revenue streams that you have when you're on your own, you don't have a paycheck really coming through the door. From a time management perspective, I've really learned how to be super ruthless with my time. I would say for the first four or five months I imagined once I left, I was like, I'm going to be free. I have so much time, I'm just going to get so much done. All these things are on my list. And then I didn't get anything done for like four months. I was like, what is happening? And because I had so many different meetings, so many admin things. I was busy doing emails, I was trying to chip away at small things here and there, but I was never really moving the ball forward in any one direction. And so I learned to be really ruthless. Now I do most of my meetings, like 95% of my meetings on Wednesdays. The rest of the week is completely wide open and I set what I want to get done, and I get those things done. And sometimes I work late, sometimes I work early. But you have to be really ruthless. It's been a great learning experience because really through the startups that I've worked for, consulting, advising, freelancing. Now I'm basically the marketing lead for Savvy Cal as well. So that's kind of helped bring back some stability in my life. And I see them all as just kind of practice rounds and getting in the reps and sets for learning how to build and grow a SaaS startup for when I want to do that for myself and for my own, especially the last year and a half, it's been like an invaluable learning lesson. Bootstrapping SaaS is really hard. You have to put yourself in the right position. Honestly, I wouldn't say that going the VC route is easier because I think raising money is really, really hard and it's a grind. And once you're on that track, there's a lot of expectations and it's a whole different game. But in the early days, it's easier because you have money, you pay yourself a paycheck. You hire the people to work with you. Bootstrapping is not easy. And so I would count this last year and a half as a part of my bootstrapping journey for building SaaS because it's all the work you have to do in order to be able to be financially stable, to put your time on something else completely without your whole world kind of exploding and going broke or, like, maxing out your credit cards. So I'm doing the best that I can, but I think I'm doing a pretty okay job so far. Multiple eggs in different basketsOne thing I want to ask about – you kind of mention the various different projects you're working on, like the idea of having multiple eggs in different baskets. What is the appeal of that for your personality? And how do you manage that as you're pushing these projects forward? I think that it's not necessarily, like, shiny object syndrome. I think that's what a lot of people conflate with having a lot of projects. You start one thing and then jump to the next one before you really kind of see the potential of it. I'm not really like that. It's more that I'm just mega impatient, and I just want to see all these things exist, and I want to do them and I'll do them all at once. My life is kind of, like, chaos sometimes. That's also why I leave four days out of the week completely wide open to get a lot of work-work done. I just want to see those things exist. I just want to work on them. I'm kind of a yes person and where I want to have my cake and eat it too. I just don't really like compromising and leaving something for later. So that's more the thought and the spirit behind multiple things. It's not really diversifying my income and multiple revenue streams and millionaires have seven sources of income. It's more just like, I want to work on all those things. I think they're fun. I want to see them exist, and I don't want to do them sequentially. I want to do them currently. What would it take to get you back in-houseSo, in-house, freelance, consultant, entrepreneur… Now you're getting a taste of all of them at the same time. Maybe someone in the audience right now is kind of thinking to themselves, I want to hire this Corey Haines guy that maybe this is not likely to happen… You possibly get a lot of offers to go back in-house. What would it take to get you back in-house? Or how would you design your ideal in-house role? Or scrap the question completely and tell me why the entrepreneur journey is the only way to go. Okay, well, I'll give you a Humans of Martech exclusive, because I haven't talked about this really anywhere else. So for last year, I've been working with someone who we were going to build SaaS together, and it's sort of like that was like the main thing. I'm putting most of my eggs in this basket. Long term, I want to work with this person. Then it turned out, his other businesses became too successful to really be able to step away from it even part time. So basically it came to a point where like, hey, we're good friends. We would love to do this, but it's just like not going to happen. It's just not realistic for this stage of our lives. That's a huge bummer because I was kind of just like, all right, well, do I go and find, like, a new technical co-founder or how do I even start to go about that? Is the last year just like a huge false start? Basically, do I go and get a job? Do I go try to do more freelancing or start an agency or something? I thought about this question fairly recently. I thought about it very seriously – going back in-house, to be honest. The first most appealing option would be to go full time with Savvy Cal with some sort of profit sharing or equity agreement on top of just a paycheck. Still, very early on, I had a feeling maybe I could make that work, but just not immediately. And so I was kind of like, well, I can't really think about that right now. And also I'm not going to freak out. I'm just going to let it sit there for a minute. If I really wanted to go work somewhere else, I think that it would be a very short list of companies. A company about to IPO or a unicorn, like a Stripe, or just a really impressive, interesting company that I knew was just going to be a moonshot and explode. And I'm still waiting for the day that Stripe IPOs so I can dump my whole life savings in there because it's just a massive success that they're holding out on all of us investors. Or I would want to jump in really early stage as basically a co-founder but first marketing hire at a really early startup that I think would be the next Stripe, essentially. I think that if I went back full time, it wouldn't be in a big corporate job. It wouldn't be like in a Series A or Series B, because you kind of, like, missed a lot of the work. And there's still the hardest part ahead of you. So I kind of want to jump in really early, get a good deal on equity and compensation, just be in it for the long haul, like the next ten years, and it's going to devote myself to this or like really late and have something that I knew was just like a Grand Slam. The work itself, honestly, doesn't matter a lot to me. I love product marketing, I love demand gen, I love copywriting, I love all the lifecycle stuff. Actually. I don't love Ops. Sorry, but I'm not an Ops person. So the role and responsibility and I don't need a team. Also, I could have a team. It's more just about what's the company, what's the stage or basically the opportunity of where the company's at. And would there be enough autonomy for me to do the things that would be enjoyable within my circle of competence? I didn't want to start an agency, and didn't really want to take on more clients. That would kind of feel like going backwards a little bit. So long story short, I found other sort of technical co-founders who are in this dating phase right now where it's kind of like we're building small things and we're going to see how we work together, not put a whole lot of stake into it or like, this is going to be the thing that we work on for the next five years. But I was like, hey, let's ship something and have some fun along the process. So that's where I'm at today and not for hire. Managing the stress of building your own thingThat's something that I've thought a lot about myself. I'm entrepreneurial too, one day I see myself starting something, but something I debate a lot is this idea of stress, the stress of being the person or one of the two people running things versus being a co-pilot, like being someone who is going along the rocket ship like you kind of mentioned with Stripe. How do you think about that? Is that something that sticks around? If I'm passionate enough about something that I'm building, the stress is going to be a positive stress. I don't know if you've heard this concept, but there's like good stress and bad stress. I think good stress is called eustress and then bad stress is distress. And for me, distress only comes when I feel like I'm doing a bad job of what I am doing. If I am doing a good job but isn't performing well, and I know that and that's sort of like not an acceptable outcome. So it's sort of like coming to something bad or if I just know that I'm letting myself down where my motivation is down, or like I'm not getting enough work done or don't have like, the energy levels that I have. In general, having high expectations, big goals, a lot of work in front of me, that's good stress and it's a lot of work, a lot to do. I look forward to it. I like it. I nerd out about SaaS marketing, and I'm generally not too worried about like, can I do this or will this work out? It seems to all make sense. As long as I do the best that I can. I'll just let the pieces fall where they may and generally they fall pretty well and it works out. That was true with SavvyCal. That was fairly true with Baremetrics. That was really true with Cordial. It's been true across all the other startups that I have worked with, and the advice that I give them, I can be a little bit more prescriptive now. I'm not too scared about being very particular and specific about the things I tell them to do. But yeah, stress isn't too bad for me personally. I think that the problems I might have that would be distressful later on is if a couple of these kinds of SaaS projects end up working out. And now I sort of have a good problem, which is that I have multiple things to work on at once. That won't necessarily be like a new thing for me because I've always been juggling a whole bunch of stuff. But I think I would have to figure out, how do I not let those things become a distress because I feel like I'm letting someone down or because I'm not giving the time and energy that is needed for this thing to really see the potential of it. So that's how I think about it. In-house skills to prepare you for full time creatorSomebody else sitting on the other side of this journey, thinking, I want to strap on a space suit. What skills do you think people should be focusing on in their in-house career? You're kind of earning your stripes, so to speak. What skills would you recommend people focus on to prepare themselves for a journey that you're taking? I think getting used to and knowing how to think through owning a project or even just a whole kind of area of responsibility. Like, all right, I'm tackling the blog, and I'm going to manage everything between writing or hiring writers or editing, publishing, promoting content. Just getting used to owning an area, whether that's content marketing or email marketing or demand gen, events, whatever, it's just having one lane area. I think what can happen early on is that you specialize and you're sort of like a contributor to an area of responsibility or some sort of channel. And that kind of leaves you off the hook because you're like, well, as long as I'm doing what's needed of me for this project, even if it doesn't work out, then, it's not in my hands, basically. And that's not really like a great thing to get used to. Getting ready for a creator journey, what you want to get used to is: all right, this is mine. I'm going to tackle this. I'm going to think through this end to end. I want to make sure that this is successful. To give you, like a little kind of snippet of this. Early on, I started as an intern at Cordial, and they started throwing stuff at me like, hey, we need to sponsor some events, do some research, figure out which events to sponsor, and then we have 500k to spend in the next couple of months. I was like, Holy, you're giving an intern this responsibility?! But they were just, like, kind of generous enough to be like, all right, here you go. Have at it. And I took it and ran with it. To be honest, I hate events, but I was like, this is my one chance to show some ownership and some responsibility at this, so I'm not going to squander it. So, yeah, I found the conferences. I had no idea what I was doing. I talked to people and got advice and got a lot of feedback along the way. But we scheduled them. We spent the money. We planned and coordinated all the travel schedules and cocktail parties and the booths and who's going to go where and how do we get salespeople to actually get meetings and make the most of these events? But I could have just been like, hey, I can't do that. Or, like, I need, you know, I'm going to basically, like, push this off to someone else, and, like, they're going to help me do it, but it's still not really going to be my responsibility. So just learning how to take on responsibility and really have that ownership be a part of what you do. It's a totally different experience, being a part of something that happens in marketing versus, I am the driver of this thing that is happening, and it forces you to be really objective and to really be like a truth seeker, to be like, Maybe this doesn't work out. Or maybe I was wrong about the way that this thing worked. I remember actually early on after conferences, we were like, all right, we need to fix our website. I came up with, like, the worst website copy of all time. Just, like, slapped a whole bunch of chatbots on there. That's when Drift was really hot. I had no idea what I was doing. Nothing worked. Nothing happened. I was like, oh, yeah… I was really wrong about that. It didn't really matter at the end of the day, because it was a couple of months that was kind of lost in progress but didn't hurt sales. It's just that nothing good happened out of that, right? But after that, too, I was kind of riding the high of all these events, and I was like, yeah, I need to really be honest with myself about this stuff. Maybe. I don't know everything. I need to really be objective about how this thing works, or is this right for us? And I just want to do things my way or what the ideas I have are. But what is the most promising idea to actually work and drive results for the company? Let's do that thing. And I'm willing to be wrong or adjust course or fix things along the way or change it completely, because I just, at the end of the day, want the best outcome for whatever it is that this thing is that I'm responsible for. On researching how to solve attributionThe beauty of startups getting to wear all those hats and drive big projects, sometimes with big budgets. I remember a couple of years ago, around the time that you left Baremetrics, you spent a lot of time chatting with a bunch of different folks, wearing a bunch of those different hats and different roles and stuff like that. You reached out to Close, you and I chatted about attribution. What were some of the things that stood out in the groups that you chatted with? Was that part of: I'm thinking of maybe one day building a SaaS and I'm doing some research here. Maybe talk about what's the hardest role to hire for in marketing and why it's operations.Well, actually, when I talked with you, I was really hot on this idea of marketing attribution and building software to solve that. I'm kind of convinced that at this point because of the direction with data and Privacy laws and a lot of deprecation of technology around cookies and tracking and browser technology, that it's sort of a lost cause. We might be able to have this conversation maybe like five years from now once the pendulum swings back in the other direction away from a lot of Privacy and data stuff. But right now it's basically impossible to build an underlying technology that would solve market attribution. It's just a total crapshoot. Sure, you can piece things together, but really, if you want to solve it, solve it. It's a little bit easier for ecommerce and for products and stuff. But for SaaS, if you want to solve it, it's impossible. So after about 50 conversations, one of which was with you, we realized that, yes, this is actually a pretty impossible task. But marketing attribution by far was the biggest and most painful problem across every marketing organization that I talked to and probably still is, because at the end of the day, that's literally what matters: what is working in marketing. If you can't prove that if you don't know it, you're misplacing dollars, you are optimizing for the wrong metrics, you are going after the wrong channels. You're not using your budget in a way that is profitable to build and grow the company. So that is the thing that's the crux of the whole thing working is how do we know that if we deploy this dollar, it will result in $2 in the error for the business? A lot of the other really painful problems were around, I would say, around operations and just like kind of meshing with sales, a lot of the kind of marketing automation stuff around personalization and how do we connect all the dots so that people get the right experience at the right time for the right lifecycle, et cetera, et cetera. I would say just like data in general is really difficult to do, like Segment and if you build your own data warehouse and whatnot kind of solve that. But it's still like a massive headache to manage, make any tweak or change. And similarly, those operations roles are really difficult to hire for because who knows how to do that. It's just you're looking for a unicorn, like you're looking for an engineer who likes marketing and they like getting the leads with data and automations and all this stuff. It's really hard. The hardest role to hire for in marketing is the head of marketingHonestly, though, I was thinking about it, and I think that the hardest role in marketing to hire for – just in general – and maybe I'm thinking about this wrong or interpreting the question wrong, but I think that the hardest person to get right to hire for is basically like a head of marketing. Because there are so many bad people out there who look qualified on paper but just aren't and just are really bad. To be honest, during my time at Cordial, I think that within about two years we went through five different marketing leaders and all of them were crap. Sorry, but they were all complete trash. Had no idea what they were doing. No managerial skills, no leadership skills, no budgeting skills. Couldn't even tell you what HubSpot did. I was like, how are you in this place? How did you get hired? There are a lot of roles that are really hard to find people for, like Ops. I think Demand Gen is a pretty specialized skill set in SaaS, especially when you want to find a SaaS marketer. For Demand Gen, content marketing is getting easier and easier. That's probably one of the easier roles to hire for. But to get a marketing leader right is such a critical position in the company. And normally there's a reason why it has the highest attrition and the highest turnover is because it's hard to find the right person. So that's my answer. What makes up the DNA of a great marketing leaderFinal answer for hardest position, great answer. I want to dive a little deeper on that. Like, what do you think makes up the DNA of a great marketing leader at a SaaS company? I just don't think that you can be a marketing leader and not be able to get your hands dirty and execute and do the work yourself. Maybe at a really late stage when you're more like CMO or VP of Marketing level, truly, and you have 20 to 50 people on your team, it's a lot more about leadership and managerial skills and actually more like budgeting kind of capital allocation. How do we get all people working in the right direction working on the right things. But I would say for a director of marketing, head of marketing, early stage VP of marketing, you just have to be able to do the work. You have to be really good at it. I think that's why Dave Gerhardt was such a massive success and like unicorn when he was at Drift. He was amazing at doing the work. He was an incredible marketer at doing the work. And early on you just need people who can get their hands dirty and get down to business and crank out some landing pages, crank out some email campaigns like really think through the ads and be strategic about do you know your market really well where you can sponsor the right podcasts and you can show up in the right communities and you can make the right connections for your sales team and your marketing team to the right events, et cetera. It's not really about the people skills and the leadership and just managing a team, making sure that everyone shows up to your daily stand up. No, it's about doing the work. I think also having the respect of other people under you, if you can do the work, makes them a lot more productive, a lot more motivated, and they will get a lot more done knowing that they have a leader who can actually help them with their work rather than someone who's just like, yeah, let me know how I can support you. And then in your next one on one next week, nothing's changed, right? You're still alone doing the work yourself, maybe mediocrely or just kind of stuck and blocked because they're not really doing anything. They're just sitting on their hands going through meeting to meeting to meeting, reporting to leadership. I think for earlier stage companies, maybe like seed through Series Bish, it's really about being able to do the work and managing the people. You can't be a crap leader, of course. I think it's kind of like we don't need to say that. Right. But you have to also be able to do the work well. From owning projects to leading teamsJust to tie this back to something you said earlier, like the advice around owning a project, there's a straight line from owning projects to being a team lead. You own projects. You can own all of marketing eventually, it's a transferable skill set. Yeah. You can't not know what you're doing in any one area. That's a huge blind spot. And that area will absolutely hurt because either that person won't know really what they're doing and they'll do a subpar job and that basically reflects badly on you or it's just not going to get done at all because you're like, I don't know, this whole event's thing, we're not going to touch that. I'm not that type of marketer. No, dude, you have to do everything. You have to do whatever the business needs. On writing a book on early stage marketingReally good advice for especially that early stage marketing role. Right. You actually tweeted about this a few times. One of my favorite tweets that you wrote was potentially one day writing a practical book on early stage marketing. For the folks that are listening to the podcast right now that are in an entry level role or mid level management that are one day hoping of leading an early stage marketing team or even mid stage marketing team. Did you ever get around to writing that book? And what would the rough chapters look like? Because there's so many things you can specialize in marketing, right? Like you say, you need to know how to do the work, but the T-shaped marketer is so vast and varied, how would you break it down? What are the most important parts of early stage marketing? My goal is to have it done by the end of 2022. This year, we'll see. Basically I'm working through a framework. I don't know if you guys know Rob Fitzpatrick. He's the author of The Mom Test, which is a great book, even for marketers, about how to talk to your customers because they're mostly lying to you very nicely. It's sort of white lies, but he has a whole framework around how to write useful books. And so I'm kind of going through his process, but I started with a table of contents, and the table contents is basically supposed to act as, like the skeleton of high level learning outcomes and topics to hit, and also what not to hit. So the frame of reference here is that it's for: how to grow a SaaS startup with limited time, budget and resources, basically, early stage companies. I'm not like a late stage scale up to a unicorn type of marketer, but if you're a founder, first time marketing hire, and you're kind of struggling to kickstart or accelerate growth, create some kind of scalable marketing channels, then this will help you basically create that plan and go and do the work and not have any sort of, like, area weakness or things that you can't do. I'm repackaging a lot of the course material, so it's not really a lot of writing for me. It's going to be a lot of transcribing and assembling stuff that I've already created from a lot of other courses and newsletters and podcasts and things I've done in the past. But the loose structure is kind of like we have table stakes: All marketing is derivative with the product Here's how you measure your product market fit, that way, you're not like throwing money into a leaky bucket and marketing something that isn't really ready for traction. How to pick a great market or expand to great markets. Common myths and mistakes that hold people back. Customer researchAnd then it really starts with customer research. I'm a big believer in this. You can let customers tell you how they want to be marketed to, and the customers basically set the strategy for the copywriting. Here's the thing that resonates. Here are all the areas where they hang out. Here are the most likely value propositions and offers to resonate with them. Here's how we go and find more people like this. So I first start with online sleuthing, where you do a lot of review mining and going through communities, being active there. Then you can kind of go through surveys. If you have an early access list or a small group of customers, we can ask them basically to find patterns and value propositions, what they care about and buying triggers, how they find and search for software like yours. And then you can go to video calls. We hop on a call like this and you really kind of dig deep and you're trying to really grab voice of the customer. Right. Like tangible words. These are the words that customers use. And you can copy paste them onto your landing page about how they describe their problems and what they're looking for, as well as influence mapping. So what are all the podcast you listen to and the Facebook groups that you show up in? Basically, who and what do you lean on to learn in your industry? Where do you go to learn about stuff related to your job, these digital watering holes of fuel. Right. Landing pages and positioningAnd then I think it really starts with once you have that kind of nailed down, you have to start with your landing page on your website. This is the same thing that I did with SavvyCal. That worked really well when I started with them. We were doing like $500 in MRR. Maybe. And of course we want to kind of get down to business and start scaling stuff up and do some marketing campaigns. But I just knew, like, there's still a lot of people who are signing up. They were like, how is this different from Calendly? And we would try to describe it still wouldn't really make sense. The conversion rate was really low. Like, Derek had sent out a bunch of blasts to his email list and it still wasn't really converting very well. So I just knew, if we do anything else, it's still not going to land very well. We need to nail the landing page. And really what that means is we need to nail our positioning. We need to nail the messaging. We need to have a clear, concise, compelling reason for someone to click that button and say, get started with SavvyCal and connect my calendar. So that's why I tell people now. It's like, okay, go to customer insurance. Then you start with your landing page and your positioning. You can use what I call the only test to basically create a compelling positioning statement where you are kind of the obvious choice. This is very derivative of April Dunford. It's obviously awesome if you can't tell. So we use a lot from there. But you need to be an obvious choice for someone, right? Not just marginally better or not just different, but you need to be an obvious choice for a subset of customers. Pricing and activation modelsOnce you have that down, I think the temptation is to just immediately jump straight to channels. But your pricing and activation models really matter because, again, you got someone to click the button and get started. And now what a lot of people do is they'll put them through a form where it's ‘contact us' or it's ‘start your trial', but it's ‘credit card required' or there's just some sort of exorbitant price that they just pull out of thin air. That doesn't make any sense. And people are like, whatever, screw it. I'll look at this later. Right. So you want to map pricing to value, not to cost or competitors. But you also want to make sure that you're picking pricing that you can learn from and that's oriented around the primary value metric that's linear with the value that people get and the outcomes that your software helps them achieve in their lives. And also that you're onboarding them in a very fluid, nice way so you're not turning them off immediately. Then the real marketing startsAnd then we can start getting to the marketing, the real marketing, the scalable stuff. Here I have everything on how to launch and announce and kind of use special offers to create momentum. A couple of examples, with SavvyCal, we did a landing page, we planned for a Product Hunt launch before Product Hunt. We ran a little campaign to reserve your username because there's some scarcity on the little slug. So SavvyCall.com/corey and whatever the meeting ID is. And so I want Corey. I don't want Coryhanes3691. I want it to be Corey. And we knew that a lot of other people would, too. So we sent that out to the list. We said, hey, this is our customers only sign up today. We're about to launch on product hunt and we know there's going to be a huge wave of people coming. So become a customer, save your own slug. That created a lot of momentum and early kind of scarcity. We did another thing around a Calendly buyout where we offered to buy the end of your subscription since it was around the end of the year. And we know that you just re upped for your annual subscription calendar, probably, but we'll buy it out. We'll basically credit the same amount to your SavvyCall account. You won't lose a dollar if you switch. Right now, we'll get this done for you. That created a whole bunch of ways. So things like that, you're building this momentum, and then the kind of crescendo is at the end with a product launch that's kind of like the last thing that you do in your launch event. Product Hunt was absolutely massive for SavvyCal, really. There's like a step change in inflection point in the launch or in the MRR trajectory after that, and then we get to channels. ChannelsSo I go through all the channels, everything from content, which I think is very much like the cornerstone of marketing strategy to advertising partnerships, platforms. Events, community, product, virality, and how that can be engineered as well, even if you're not inherently viral and then gorilla tactics. Rest of the bookThe rest of the book, I'm not really sure. I have some ideas for scaling. So how do you hire and create budgets and map a budget back to a goal and then, some type of stuff around your tech stack and minimal tools and things you need to implement. But the real meat of it is channels, obviously. But then, the work before that too, which is your landing page, customer research, pricing, and the launch events. What about the metrics?There are so many things you said there that I want to go off on tangents with, but I know we have a limit here on time, but one thing that you didn't really dive into, and maybe that's in the channel section. But metrics is something that's super close to Jon and I's heart, being at Klipfolio. We know that early stage founders love to obsess about all the metrics they can track. Once they get into the funnels and the channels they think they have product market fit, then it's like, all right, what are we tracking? And I know that you've recently been talking a lot about this idea that your SaaS metrics are oftentimes lying to you and specifically talking about LTV, churn and attribution. What do you mean exactly by that? And is that part of the channel section of the book? Yes, actually, I need to figure out a place to put that in there. Maybe they'll come in the tech stack section. But also given my time at Baremetrics, metrics are very near and dear to my heart, and something that I spent an insane amount of hours thinking about and looking at and consulting others about. Actually, one of the core things that I did was I would meet with about 10 to 20 founders and operators a week, either who were customers with questions and wanted help and advice, or with trialing potential customers. How do I use this? What is the value of Baremetrics? So I've seen everything. Like, any combination, Jon, I'm sure it's the same. I've seen it all. There's nothing surprising, and it really gives you a lot of perspective. And so I finally after all those brain dumpsI was like, here's some kind of quirks about your status metrics that you might not be aware of. It can actually be really misleading. Higher growth leads to higher churnThe first one, actually, is that higher growth usually equals higher turn. This drove me absolutely bonkers at Baremetrics because it felt like every time we started to grow faster the turn would pick up and then everyone else on the team would be freaking, oh, what's going on? We need to stop whatever we're doing, fix the churn and then we can start growing again. So it's the stop, start, stop. We'd like to turn on the channel, start doing these campaigns, churn would pick up, we'd stop, trying to go back down. After the third time, I was like, wait a second, this happened three times in a row. Now I started really digging in with other founders and other Baremetrics customers also looking at literal growth rates and curves on the graph and mapping that onto your turn rate as well. And it's pretty much always like a one to one linear correlation between higher growth equals higher churn. Why is that? It's because when you're growing more, you have a lot more top of the funnel, a lot more interest, a lot more hype and momentum. And also with that, a lot, a lot more cruft, the drifters, the people who are not the best fit for your product. So basically when you're fast growing, a lot of metrics are going to go down, your retention is going to go down because people are going to be churning out after the first month or two because they got really excited about it or they caught you when you're running an ad, turns out they're not a great customer. Also your conversion rate is going to go way down because again, more trials or more premium users, but less conversions because they might not be a great fit or just like you caught them early, you're sort of like front Loading a lot of your marketing. Also your landing page, you're getting a lot of traffic conversion rate way down. At one point I think the landing page was converting at around like 3% from visitor to trial. And then I started doing all this content marketing, all these events and all these launches, and then it went all the way down to like 05%. And I thought, I am the worst marketer of all time. No, actually it's par for the course. It just happens. So a lot of people don't realize that. But you can expect higher churn when you have higher growth. And if you'll see as well really plateaued startups, they have great churn. Their churn is like 0.5% or 1%. Why? Because no unqualified customers are coming through the door whatsoever. Because they're not doing a lot of marketing, right? They're not doing a lot of acquisition. Reactivation rates are underratedBut also you can actually have high churn if and you can sustain high churn if you have a high reactivation rate. No one talks about reactivation at all for some reason, I think because no one really understands it or has taken the time to really think about it. But reactivation is the rate of canceled customers coming back and signing up as a paid customer again and again. I realized after our churn would go down, our reactivation would go down too. And then growth would go up. Churn will go up, reactivation will go up. I'm like, what is going on here? And it turns out that some customers are just finicky, especially certain segments. I found this a lot when I started digging in into software that serves freelancers kind of creators and anyone who generally doesn't have a lot of money. Actually, a lot of gym owners are like very on edge with their finances for whatever reason. I couldn't tell you why. But just like anyone in the fitness industry, they're probably going to have failed payments or they're going to cancel, come back for next month, or like, they're always in between different things. But you can actually have high churn if you have high reactivation. Basically, think about it as a discount to your churn rate. So there was a startup that I talked to, looked at the churn. It was like 12%. I was like, this is absolutely insane. But about half of it, about 6% of that was coming back, like the next month or the month later, they had about 6% of their growth come from reactivation every month. So I was like, oh, it's actually fine. It's actually about 6% truly churn. So it's sustainable. It's fine. And they made it work with another one. And then I'll kind of digress. LTVHere is lifetime value. I could talk about this all day long, but lifetime value is not a thing in SaaS. It just isn't. It works for one time sales. Actually, if you guys have a different opinion, I'd love to hear because I'm always trying to test this and see how I'm wrong here or if there's any edge cases. But it works great for one time sales. Because basically the thought is how do we quantify the expected average value of a customer over time when you have a one time sale or like a very small product skew with very similar price points? It's very easy to calculate lifetime value. And that becomes useful because, you know, even if I'm like break even on the first purchase with this customer, over the lifetime, they'll be profitable. Right. And that's the whole idea. The problem with SaaS is that it's recurring revenue. So therefore, there's kind of multiple sales happening every month or every year, and there is no end date. There's also a wide range of price points. Could be anywhere between $9 a month and $900 a month. And so if you average that out, you're going to get to a number that might be skewed lower or higher than what's actually representative of the customer base. And also the way that you're supposed to calculate value in churn is by dividing your average revenue per customer by your user churn rate. And the thought there is that your user churn is basically the rate at like if you take 4% user churn, for example, over the course of twelve months, in theory you will churn through about 40% of your customer base. And so you can kind of reverse engineer the expected time for customers to be with you, which I think for I want to say for 4%, it's about an average lifespan of about two years. The problem here's, what we found at Baremetrics was that our highest paying customers stuck around the longest and their lifetime value was about like $40,000. For example, the lowest value customers stick around for about six months to a year on average and their lifetime value was about $1,000. Our lifetime value evened out to like three or $4,000. But that was not a useful metric whatsoever. It was like, what do you do with that? Right? How is that even useful at all? So anyways, I basically just say don't use lifetime value, it's not useful whatsoever. People try to use it for like CAC:LTV… just use payback period, just use ARPU compared to CAC to multiply that to your cost of acquisition. That gives you your payback period. At the end of the day, that's what is the most useful way of thinking about lifetime value anyway. So I digress. This is fascinating, I think there's definitely room for a full chapter just on metrics and including this rant here. I think your breakdown of LTV is fascinating, especially folks that don't buy into the annual plan model of SaaS and are all about the monthly recurring revenue and SaaS products change all the time and the pricing model changes as well. The reactivation bit too as well. I think that's a huge untapped area. I feel like we could chat about metrics all day. Happiness and balanceWe only have a few minutes left here, but JT, I'll let you kick it off with the last question for us. Thanks so much for being on the show. I know you've got like a ton of stuff going on, just evident through this podcast. One question we ask all of our guests I'm very curious on your take is… between all the things that you're doing and managing on a day to day basis, how do you manage being successful and happy? That's a good question. I'm glad you ask it. It's a fun one for a podcast like this. Every week is a little bit different. I think, though, for me, just knowing that I'm making progress, doing the best that I can. Like I mentioned before, it's kind of like eustress. It's only distressful when I feel like I'm not doing a good job or when I'm behind on things, or when I feel like I'm letting people down. I'm very much like a yes man and a people pleaser. So for me, being happy, like in my work, it's just knowing that I'm doing the best that I can and that things are moving forward and generally the way I've set things up between Swipefiles, consulting these new staff projects, advising, and random other investing stuff that we do on the side, I just want to make sure I'm not letting anyone down. I'm not doing that. Then I'm pretty happy. And I can kind of go at my own pace, which sometimes feels slow and sometimes feels fast. Personally, I find that having really strong friendships and also a really good relationship with my wife is very key to just being happy overall and in general. But I've also found, I don't know if you guys have a similar experience, but I'm not happy if I don't get outside and do something competitive once in a while. So more recently, I've taken up pickleball, which has been like a huge sort of competitive release for me. And it's like, active and it could be outside and it's fairly casual to do it with friends. It kind of checks all the boxes there. I love basketball. I also love playing poker. It's also very social and competitive as well. So if I do that, like one of those things at least once a week, I can look forward to that and kind of get my fix. And it makes me happier and it kind of releases me to do my work as well. But I find that if I don't do my work and I'm only doing those things, I'm unhappy. If I only do work and I don't do those things, I'm also not happy. So it's like having the blend of both those things to work with and kind of the back and forth that makes me happy. Where to find CoreyAwesome. Love it. Thank you so much for your time, Corey. I'll let you end it for us. Why don't you plug some stuff for our audience? Sweet. Thanks for having me. It's been a ton of fun. Love the conversation. Great questions. Kudos to you guys. You can find me on Twitter at Coreyhainsco for all the things that I'm working on, Swipefiles.com for the newsletter. Also just for podcast listeners: You can use the code “humans” at checkout at swipefiles.com/membership for 50% off the 50 membership, join us in the community. Get access to the courses, office hours, access to me, and I think that's pretty much it. Check out the Swipefiles community. I'm a member (Phil). See a lot of value from there. I'm actually friends with a couple of people that I met in the community, so, yeah, thanks for putting that together. And thanks for taking some time and chatting with us. It's been an awesome conversation. Feel like we can keep this going for two or three more hours. But. Yeah. Thank you, guys.--Corey's Twitter: https://twitter.com/coreyhainesco Corey's website: https://www.coreyhaines.co What Corey has going on Marketing weekly newsletter https://app.mailbrew.com/coreyhainesco/marketing-weekly-WV3pZMdwsL29 Swipefiles https://www.swipefiles.com/Phunt launch Podcasts everything is marketing https://pca.st/7myeg6u3 default alive https://pca.st/beidemfp refactoring growth https://www.swipefiles.com/refactoring-growth tiny marketing ideas https://www.swipefiles.com/tiny Mental Models for Marketing: https://mentalmodelsformarketing.com Marketing Like A Media Company Microconf video directory https://www.producthunt.com/posts/the-unofficial-microconf-video-directory Consulting side gig https://savvycal.com/icloud hey marketers (sold) https://www.heymarketers.com (Formerly) Baremetrics: https://baremetrics.com Corey's offering 50% on his swipefiles membership if you use the code "humans" at checkout -- so check it out swipefiles.com/membership✌️--Intro music by Wowa via UnminusCover art created with help via Undraw
On this episode of the Audience podcast, Matt and Stuart talk about what it takes (behind the scenes) to make a great podcast, with examples from the 3 Clips podcast. They talk about best practices and their processes when it comes to booking guests, pre-interviews, monetization, and editing. Not only do they touch on a few newbie mistakes (and how to avoid them), they also talk about how to make your podcast better. Whether you're a newbie or a veteran, everyone will find something to take away from today's conversation. If you have any questions about this episode or want to get some of the resources we mentioned, head over to Castos.com/podcast. And as always, if you're enjoying the show please share it with someone who you think would enjoy it as well. It is your continued support that will help us continue to help others. Thank you so much! Never miss another show by subscribing at castos.com/subscribe. Today you'll learn about: 3 Clips podcast: featuring podcasts and their processes Booking guests: People's time (yours and your guests) The importance of pre-interviews Building rapport Reaction during interview Avoiding one-word answers and rambling Working with producers Editing a podcast episode The perks of having seasons for your podcast Newbie mistakes: avoiding podcast burnout Monetizing your podcast Resources/Links: 3 Clips Podcast: https://3clipspodcast.com/ SavvyCal: https://savvycal.com/ Calendly: https://calendly.com/ “Creating an audio experience w/ Eric Nuzum”: https://audience.castos.com/episodes/creating-an-audio-experience-w-eric-nuzum Castos Survey:
The Tuple team has recently grown by three team members! Ben is looking forward to getting the Linux client out the door in the next month. Derrick is staying busy moving SavvyCal forward and bringing his new developer into the app.
How can asynchronous conversations help us achieve work goals? Our guest today is Brian Casel, founder of ZipMessage. You'll learn why async is so important for remote workers, how it can improve your hiring process, where realtime calls still work better, and more.Download the MP3 audio file: right-click here and choose Save As.Podcast feed: subscribe to https://feeds.simplecast.com/4MvgQ73R in your favorite podcast app, and follow us on iTunes, Stitcher, or Google Podcasts.Show NotesZipMessage — Brian's product, a tool for asynchronous communicationAudience Ops, ProcessKit — Brian's previous productsUI Breakfast Podcast. Episode 85: Validating Your SaaS Product with Brian Casel2021, a 'shake-up' yearHow Stripe Manages Remote & Hybrid Work and CultureBasecamp, Tailwind CSS, Userlist, SavvyCal — several product inspirations for BrianUI Breakfast Podcast. Episode 154: Refactoring UI with Adam Wathan and Steve SchogerSend Brian a ZipMessageFollow Brian on TwitterBootstrapped Web — Brian's podcast with Jordan GalOpen Threads — Brian's personal podcastToday's SponsorThis show is brought to you by Userlist — the best tool for sending onboarding emails and segmenting your SaaS users. To follow the best practices, download our free printable email planning worksheets at userlist.com/worksheets.Interested in sponsoring an episode? Learn more here.Leave a ReviewReviews are hugely important because they help new people discover this podcast. If you enjoyed listening to this episode, please leave a review on iTunes. Here's how.
Ben recently had a Tuple team retreat. He is still in hiring mode. The Tuple product team is progressing on their Linux integration. Derrick ran a product-market fit survey for SavvyCal, and the results are... tune in to find out. He's pondering how to approach a freemium play.
Today I'm talking to Ben Orenstein of Tuple and Derrick Reimer of SavvyCal. I recently joined them on their podcast The Art of Product and we talked about things like long-term goal setting and hiring a team of people you actually enjoy being around. Follow Derrick on Twitter: https://twitter.com/derrickreime Follow Ben on Twitter: https://twitter.com/r00k Listen to The Art of Product: https://artofproductpodcast.com/
We talk with Derrick Reimer about his product SavvyCal. He used Elixir as a solo dev to create a service that can take on an 800lb gorilla like Calendly. He shares what competitive advantages he feels he has both from Elixir but also in being more nimble. We also talk about creating a company as an independent, solo developer and how that can work. Derrick shares some tips and resources that were helpful for him on his journey. We feel the PETAL stack positions Elixir developers well for optionally taking that Indie path if desired. Check it out! Lots of nuggets here! Show Notes online - http://podcast.thinkingelixir.com/86 (http://podcast.thinkingelixir.com/86) Elixir Community News - https://twitter.com/josevalim/status/1488640181364273160 (https://twitter.com/josevalim/status/1488640181364273160) – Livebook Kino gets a new Youtube control feature - https://twitter.com/josevalim/status/1489234959592214531 (https://twitter.com/josevalim/status/1489234959592214531) – Only display LiveView topbar progress animation after a delay - https://github.com/phoenixframework/phoenixliveview/commit/22ac99b108a167c324182f22be369aeea9eff346 (https://github.com/phoenixframework/phoenix_live_view/commit/22ac99b108a167c324182f22be369aeea9eff346) – Commit showing the topbar changes to add delay - https://fly.io/phoenix-files/make-your-liveview-feel-faster/ (https://fly.io/phoenix-files/make-your-liveview-feel-faster/) – Mark's blog post about the topbar progress delay - https://twitter.com/josevalim/status/1489522409426325504 (https://twitter.com/josevalim/status/1489522409426325504) – Ecto minimal cheatsheet - https://twitter.com/innovation_code/status/1490729612892069889 (https://twitter.com/innovation_code/status/1490729612892069889) – Grisp2 boards are shipping - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/peerstritzinger/grisp-2 (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/peerstritzinger/grisp-2) – Grisp2 Kickstarter project - https://medium.com/opentelemetry/opentelemetry-erlang-elixir-javascript-and-ruby-v1-0-3a0c32e0add4 (https://medium.com/opentelemetry/opentelemetry-erlang-elixir-javascript-and-ruby-v1-0-3a0c32e0add4) – OpenTelemetry for Elixir/Erlang reached 1.0 - https://hex.pm/orgs/opentelemetry (https://hex.pm/orgs/opentelemetry) – OpenTelemetry group - https://www.germanvelasco.com/blog/starting-elixir-lunch (https://www.germanvelasco.com/blog/starting-elixir-lunch) – German Velasco is starting a remote Elixir lunch - https://github.com/fly-apps/live_beats (https://github.com/fly-apps/live_beats) – LiveBeats project works great as an example Do you have some Elixir news to share? Tell us at @ThinkingElixir (https://twitter.com/ThinkingElixir) or email at show@thinkingelixir.com (mailto:show@thinkingelixir.com) Discussion Resources - https://twitter.com/derrickreimer (https://twitter.com/derrickreimer) - https://twitter.com/savvycal (https://twitter.com/savvycal) - https://savvycal.com/ (https://savvycal.com/) - https://twitter.com/frigidcode/status/1477656247772094467 (https://twitter.com/frigidcode/status/1477656247772094467) - https://artofproductpodcast.com/ (https://artofproductpodcast.com/) – Podcast Derrick co-hosts - https://www.drip.com/ (https://www.drip.com/) - https://github.com/whitfin/cachex (https://github.com/whitfin/cachex) - https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Founder-Painfully-Honest-Startup/dp/0735213321 (https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Founder-Painfully-Honest-Startup/dp/0735213321) - https://tinyseed.com/ (https://tinyseed.com/) - https://microconf.com/ (https://microconf.com/) - https://www.indiehackers.com/ (https://www.indiehackers.com/) - https://www.derrickreimer.com/books-for-founders (https://www.derrickreimer.com/books-for-founders) – List of books Derrick recommends Guest Information - https://twitter.com/derrickreimer (https://twitter.com/derrickreimer) – on Twitter - https://github.com/derrickreimer/ (https://github.com/derrickreimer/) – on Github - http://derrickreimer.com/ (http://derrickreimer.com/) – Blog - http://savvycal.com/ (http://savvycal.com/) – SavvyCal website Find us online - Message the show - @ThinkingElixir (https://twitter.com/ThinkingElixir) - Email the show - show@thinkingelixir.com (mailto:show@thinkingelixir.com) - Mark Ericksen - @brainlid (https://twitter.com/brainlid) - David Bernheisel - @bernheisel (https://twitter.com/bernheisel) - Cade Ward - @cadebward (https://twitter.com/cadebward)
Ben & Derrick chat with Courtland Allen from Indie Hackers. They discuss the challenges of building a community and finding fulfillment in work, among a variety of other topics. Resources: Indie Hackers (https://www.indiehackers.com/) SavvyCal (https://savvycal.com) Tuple (https://tuple.app)
Which SaaS Metrics really matter? What are good Startup Metrics or Startup KPIs? Corey Haines, Founder of Swipefiles and Marketing Lead at SavvyCal shares his hot takes on SaaS metrics that don't really matter and what to focus on instead.SaaS metrics and KPIs give you a pulse on what's working, not working, and what you should do next.But what if one of those KPIs gets off track, but your SaaS startup is growing really fast? Do you try to fix it?Corey shares his experiences and hot takes from working at Baremetrics and consulting other startups with their SaaS growth metrics. Get a deeper understanding of your SaaS growth in 2022.Show NotesContinue the conversation on Twitter -@ExploringPrdct@rdkhatch@candidrobert@coreyhainesco
Derrick and Ben catch-up about what's going on at Tuple and SavvyCal. Derrick had a fun customer experience on Twitter last week. Ben is still in hiring mode.
Steph talks about winter storms and thoughts on name pronunciation features. Chris talks about writing a query to add a new display of data in an admin panel and making a guest appearance on the Svelte Radio Podcast. Finally, Chris decided that his productivity to-do list system was failing him. So he's on the search now for something new. He asks Steph what she uses and if she's happy with it. How do you, dear Listener, keep track of all your stuff in the world? This episode is brought to you by ScoutAPM (https://scoutapm.com/bikeshed). Give Scout a try for free today and Scout will donate $5 to the open source project of your choice when you deploy. Upcase advanced Active Record (https://thoughtbot.com/upcase/advanced-activerecord-querying) Svelte Radio (https://www.svelteradio.com/episodes/chris-toomey-talks-svelte-rails-and-banking) Things (https://culturedcode.com/things/) Todoist (https://todoist.com/) MeetingBar (https://meetingbar.onrender.com/) SavvyCal (https://savvycal.com/) Become a Sponsor (https://thoughtbot.com/sponsorship) of The Bike Shed! Transcript: CHRIS: Hello and welcome to another episode of The Bike Shed, a weekly podcast from your friends at thoughtbot about developing great software. I'm Chris Toomey. STEPH: And I'm Steph Viccari. CHRIS: And together, we're here to share a bit of what we've learned along the way. So, Steph, what's new in your world? STEPH: Hey, Chris. We have Winter Storm Izzy headed our way. It's arriving in South Carolina early tomorrow morning. So that's kind of exciting just because it's South Carolina. We rarely see snow. In fact, I looked it up because I was curious because I've seen it every now and then. But I looked up the greatest cumulative snowfall in 1 season, and it was 19 inches in the winter of 1971. I was trying to add an old-timey voice there. I don't know if I was successful. CHRIS: Does 1971 deserve a full old-timey voice? STEPH: Apparently. CHRIS: I feel like people from 1971 would be like, "We were just people in the 70s." Like, what do you... STEPH: [laughs] CHRIS: Wait. Nineteen inches, is that what you said? STEPH: 19 inches. That was total for the season. CHRIS: Yeah, we can bang that out in an afternoon up here in the North. So yeah, okay. You were here for the terrible, terrible winter, right? STEPH: Oh, Snowmageddon? Yes. CHRIS: Yeah, that was something, oof. STEPH: I don't remember how many inches. Was it like 100 inches in a month or something wild like that? I've forgotten the facts. CHRIS: I, too forget the facts. I remember the anecdotal piece of data, the anecdata as it were where we shoveled our driveway, and then another storm came, we shoveled our driveway. And then finally, I was living in an apartment, and it was time to shovel the driveway again. But the pile of snow on the lawn was too big. So we had to shovel the pile of snow further up the lawn to make room for the snow that we were shoveling out of the driveway. But I also remember that being a really nice bonding moment, and I met more of the people living in the...it was a house that had been converted into six apartments. So I actually met some of the people from the house for the first time. And then we hung out a little bit more in the day. So I actually have weirdly fond memories of that time. But to be clear, that was too much snow. I will officially go on record saying too much snow. No, thank you again. STEPH: It was a lot of snow. I think it broke Boston for a while. I remember I don't think I went to...I worked remotely for two weeks because they were just like, "Yeah, don't even try to come into the office. Don't worry about it." So it felt like my first dabbling into understanding quarantine [laughs] except at least with less complicated reasons, just with lots of snow. We also went snowboarding in Charlestown, where we were living. And that was fun because there are some really great hills, and there was so much snow that that was delightful. But I'm not expecting Snowmageddon in South Carolina, although people may act like it and rush out and get their milk and bread. But hopefully, we'll get a couple of inches because that'll be lovely. I don't know that Utah has ever seen the snow. So this will be fun. CHRIS: Oh, that'll definitely be fun. I imagine you've got like even if you do get some amount of accumulation, a day later the sun will just be like, "I'm back. I got this," and clear it up, and you won't have any lingering. The year of Snowmageddon, if I remember correctly, the final pile of snow left in July, the shared one that the city had collected. So you'll probably do better than that turnaround time. [laughs] STEPH: Yeah, it's perfect. It's very ephemeral. It snows, it's beautiful. It's there for a couple of hours, and then poof, it's gone. And then you're back to probably 70-degree weather typically what's here, [laughs] which I have no complaints. There's a reason that I like living here. But in some other news, I have something that I'm really excited about that I want to share. So there's something that you and I work really hard to do correctly, and it's pronouncing someone's name. So whenever there is either a guest on the show, or we are referencing someone, we will often pause, and then we will look for videos. We'll look for an audio clip, something where that person says their name. And then we will do our best to then say it correctly. Although I probably put a Southern twang on a lot of people's names, so sorry about that. But that's really important to say someone's name correctly. And one of thoughtbot's projects is called Hub, which is something that we use internally for all of our project staffing and then also for profiles and team information; there's a new feature that Matheus Richard, another thoughtboter, implemented that I am just so excited about. And now that I have it, I just think I don't know how I lived without this. And I want it everywhere. So Matheus has added the feature where you can upload an audio file with your name pronunciation. So you can go to someone's profile, and you can click on the little audio button and hear them pronounce their name. And then a number of people have taken it a bit further where they will provide, say, the American or English pronunciation of their name. And then they will provide their specific pronunciation; maybe it's Greek, maybe it's Spanish, and it's just phenomenal. And I love it so much. And I can't wait for just more platforms to have something like this. So really big shout out to Matheus Richard for that phenomenal feature. CHRIS: Oh, that is awesome. Yeah, we definitely do pause pretty regularly to go scan through YouTube or try and find an example. And often, people just start into talks, or they'll only say their first name. We're like, oh, okay, keep searching, keep searching. We'll find it. And apologies to anyone whose name we still got wrong regardless of our efforts. But it's making this a paramount idea similar to people putting their pronouns in their name. Like, okay, this is a thing that we should get into the habit of because the easier we make this, the more common that we make this. And names absolutely matter, and getting the pronunciation right really matters. And especially if it can be an easier thing, that's really wonderful. I hope Twitter and other platforms just adopt this; just take this entirely and make it easy because it should be. STEPH: That's what I was thinking; if Twitter had this, and then I was thinking if Slack had this, that would be a wonderful place to be able to just see someone's profile because we can see lots of other helpful context about them. So yeah, it's wonderful. I want to hear more people how they pronounce their names. Because I'll always ask somebody, but it would just be really nice to then be able to revisit or check-in before you talk to that person, and then you can just say their name. That would be delightful. CHRIS: I do feel like creating it for my name would be interesting. I actually had someone this week say my name and then say, "Oh, is that how you pronounce it?" And I stopped for a minute, and I was like, "Yes. I'm really intrigued what other options you were considering, though. I would like to spend a minute and just...because I always thought there was really only the one approach, but I would love to know. Let's just explore the space here," but yes. STEPH: [laughs] You ask them, "What else you got? What other variations can I hear?" CHRIS: [laughs] I would like three variations on my desk by tomorrow so that I can understand what I'm missing out on, frankly. There's a theme or an idea that I've seen bouncing around on Twitter now of people saying, "Yeah, I really just want to apply, get hired, work for one day, make this one change to a platform, and immediately put in my resignation." And I could see this like, "All right, I'm just going to go. I'm going to get hired by Twitter. This is it. This is all I'm doing," which really trivializes the amount of effort that would go into it for a platform like Twitter. I can't even imagine what engineering looks like in Twitter and how all the pieces come together. I'm imagining some amount of microservices there, and that's just my guess. But yeah, that idea of just like, this is my drive-by feature. I show up; I work for a week, I quit. And there we go; now we have it. STEPH: Well, we are consultants. Maybe we'll get hired for all these different companies, and that will be our drive-by feature. We'll add it to their boards and be like, "Don't you want this? Don't you need this?" And then they'll say, "Yes." [chuckles] CHRIS: I am intrigued because I can't imagine this hasn't come up in conversations at Twitter. And so, what are the trade-off considerations that they're making, or what are the reasons not to do this? I don't have any good answers there. I'm just asking the question because, for an organization their size, someone must have had this idea. Yeah, I wonder. STEPH: Yeah, there's; also, I'm sure malicious things that then you have to consider as to then how people...because, at the end of the day, it's just an audio file. So it could be anything that you want it to be. So it starts to get complicated when you think about ways that people could abuse a feature. On that peppy note, what's going on in your world? CHRIS: I had a fun bit of coding that I got to do recently, which, more and more, my days don't involve as much coding. And so when I have a little bit of time, especially for a nice, self-contained little piece of code that I get to write, that's enjoyable. And so I was writing a query. I wanted to add a new display of data in our admin panel. And I was trying to write a query, and I got to build a nice query object in Ruby, which I always enjoy. That's not a real thing, just in case anyone's hearing that and thinking like, wait, what's a query object? Just a class that takes in a relation and returns relation but encapsulates more complex query logic. It's one of my favorite types of ways to extract logic from ActiveRecord models, that sort of thing. So I was building this query object, and specifically, what I wanted to do here is I'm going to simplify down the data model. And I'm going to say that we have users and reservations in the system. This may sound familiar to you, Steph, as your go-to example [laughs] from the past. We have users, and we have reservations in the system. So a user has many reservations. And reservations can be they have a timestamp or maybe an enum column. But basically, they have the idea of potentially being upcoming, so in the future. And so what I wanted to do was I wanted to find all users in the system who have less than two upcoming reservations. Now, the critical detail here is that zero is a number less than two. So I wanted to know any users that have no upcoming reservations or one upcoming reservation. Those were the two like, technically, that's it. But say it was even less than three, that's fine as well. But I need to account for zero. And so I rolled up my sleeves, started writing the query, and ActiveRecord has some really nice features for this where I can merge different scopes that are on the reservation.upcoming is a scope that I have on that model that determines if a reservation is upcoming because maybe there's more complex logic there. So that's encapsulated over there. But what I tried initially was users.leftjoinsreservations .groupbyusers.id havingcountofreservations. So that was what I got to. And thankfully, I wrote a bunch of tests for this, which is one of the wonderful things about extracting the query object. It was very easy to isolate this thing: write a bunch of tests that execute it with given data. And interestingly, I found that it worked properly for users with a bunch of upcoming reservations. They were not returned by the query objects which they shouldn't, and users with one upcoming reservation. But users with zero upcoming reservations were being filtered out. And that was a surprise. STEPH: Is it because the way you were joining and looking where the reservation had to match to a user, so you weren't getting where users didn't have a reservation? CHRIS: It was related to that. So there's a subtlety to LEFT JOINS. So a JOIN is going to say like, users and reservations. But in that case, if there is a user without reservations, I know they're going to be filtered out of this query. So it's like, oh, I know what to do. LEFT JOINS, I got this. So LEFT JOINS says, "Give me all of the users and then in the query space that I'm building up here, join them to their reservations." So even a user with no reservations is now part of the recordset that is being considered for this query. But when I added the filter of reservations.upcoming, I tried to merge that in using ActiveRecord's .merge syntax on a query or on a relation, as it were. That would not work because it turns out when you're using the LEFT JOINS...and as I'm saying this, I'm going to start saying, like, here's definitively what's true. I probably still don't entirely understand this, but trying to do the WHERE clause on the outer query did not work. And I had to move that filtering logic into the LEFT JOINS. So the definition of the JOINS was now I had to actually handwrite that portion of the SQL and say, LEFT OUTER JOIN users on and then, you know, the users.id=reservations.userid and reservations. whatever the logic there for an upcoming reservation. So reservations.completed is null or reservations.date>date.current or whatever logic there. But I had to include that logic in the definition of the LEFT OUTER JOIN, which is not a thing that I think I've done before. So it was part of the definition of the JOIN rather than part of the larger query that we were operating on. STEPH: Yeah, that's interesting. I don't think I would have caught that myself. And luckily, you had the test to then point out to you. CHRIS: Yeah, definitely the tests made me feel much more confident when I eventually narrowed down and started to understand it and was able to make the change in the code. I was also quite happy with the way I was able to structure it. So, suddenly, I had to handwrite a little bit of SQL. And what was nice is many, many, many years ago, I recorded a wonderful course on Upcase with Joe Ferris, CTO of thoughtbot, on Advanced ActiveRecord Querying. And I'm still years later digesting everything that Joe said in that course. It's really an amazing piece of content. But one of the things that I learned is Joe shows a bunch of examples throughout that course of ways that where you need to, you can drop down to raw SQL within an ActiveRecord relation. But you don't need to completely throw it out and write the entire query by hand. You can just say, in this case, all I had to handwrite was the JOINS logic for that LEFT JOINS. But the rest of it was still using normal ActiveRecord query logic. And the .having was scoped on its own, and all of those sort of things. So it was a nice balance of still staying mostly within the ActiveRecord query Builder syntax and then dropping down to a lower level where I needed it. STEPH: I love that you mentioned that video because I have seen it, and it is so good. In fact, I now want to go back and rewatch it since you've mentioned it just because I remember I always learn something every time that I do watch it. On a side note, the way that you represented and described query objects was so lovely. I know you, and I have talked about query objects before because we adore them. But I feel like you just gave a really good mini class and overview of like, this is what a query object is, and this is what it does. And this is why they're great because you can test them. CHRIS: Cool. I'm going to be honest; I have no idea what I said. But I'm glad it was good. [laughs] STEPH: It was. It was really good. If anyone has questions about query objects, that'll be a good reference. CHRIS: Well, thank you so much for the kind words there. And for the ActiveRecord querying trail, really, I was just along for the ride on that one, to be clear. I did write a bunch of notes after the fact, which I've found incredibly useful because the videos are great. But having the notes to be able to reference...past me spent a lot of time trying really hard to understand what Joe had said so that I could write it down. And I'm very glad that I invested that time and effort so that I can revisit it more easily. But yeah, that was just a fun little bit of code that I got to write and a new thing that I've learned in the world of SQL, which is one of those topics that every little investment of effort I find to be really valuable. The more comfortable I feel, the more that I can express in SQL. It's one of those investments that I'm like, yep, glad I did that. Whereas there are other things like, yeah, I learned years ago how to do X. I've completely forgotten it. It's gone from my head. I'm never going to use it again, or the world has changed. But SQL is one of those topics where I appreciate all of the investment I've put in and always find it valuable to invest a bit more in my knowledge there. STEPH: Yeah, absolutely same. Just to troll Regexs for a little bit, they're powerful, but they're the thing that I will never commit to learning. I refuse to do it. [laughs] I will always look it up when I need to. But Postgres or SQL, on the other hand, is always incredibly valuable. And I'm always happy to learn something new and invest in that area of my skills. CHRIS: Yep, SQL and Postgres are great things. But let's see. In other news, actually, I had the pleasure of joining the Svelte Radio Podcast for an episode this week. They invited me on as a guest. And we got to chat about Svelte, and then I accidentally took the conversation in the direction of inertia as I always do. And then I talked a little bit more about Sagewell, the company that I'm building, and all sorts of things in the world. But that was really fun, and I really enjoyed that. And I believe it will be live by the time this episode goes live. So we will certainly include a link to that episode in our show notes here. STEPH: That's awesome. I haven't listened to the Svelte Podcast before. So I'm excited to hear your episode and all the good things that you said on it. I'm also just less familiar with them. Who runs the Svelte Podcast, and what's the name of the show? CHRIS: The show is called Svelte Radio. It's hosted by Antony, Shawn, and Kevin, who are three Svelters from the community. Svelte is a really interesting group where the Svelte society is, as far as I can tell, a community organization that is seemingly well-supported by the core team and embraced as the natural center point of the community. And then Svelte Radio is an extension of that. And it's a wonderful podcast. Each week, they talk about various things. So there are news episodes, and then they have guests on from time to time. Recently, having Rich Harris on to talk about the future of Svelte, Rich Harris being the creator of Svelte. Interestingly, if you search for Svelte Radio, they are the second Google result because the first Google result is the tutorial docs on how to use Svelte with radio buttons. But then the second one is Svelte Radio, the podcast, [laughs], which is an interesting thing. Good on Svelte's documentation for having such strong SEO. STEPH: I was just thinking there's something delightful about that where the first hit is for documentation that's a very helpful; here's how you use this. That's kind of lovely. Well, that's really cool. I'm really looking forward to hearing more about Svelte and listening to you be on the show. CHRIS: Yeah, they actually had some very kind things to say about The Bike Shed and, frankly, you as well and our co-hosting that we do here. So that was always nice to hear. STEPH: That's very kind of them. And it never fails to amaze me how nice podcasters are. Everyone that I've met in this community that's a fellow podcaster they're just all such wonderful, nice, kind people, and I just appreciate the heck out of them. CHRIS: Yeah, podcasts are great. The internet is doing its job; that's my strong belief there. But let's see. In other news, I actually have more of a question here, sort of a question and an observation. My work has started to take a slightly different shape than it has historically. Often, I'm a developer working on a team, picking up something off the top of the Trello board or whatever we're using for project management, working on that thing, pushing it through to acceptance. But all of the work or the vast majority of the work is encapsulated in this one shared planning context. But now, enough of my work is starting to spill out in different directions. Like right now, I'm pushing on hiring. That's a task that largely lives with me that doesn't live on the shared Trello board. Certainly, the rest of the team will be involved at some point. But for now, there's that that's really mine. And there are other pieces of work that are starting to take that shape. So I recognize, or at least I decided that my productivity to-do lists system was failing me. So I'm on the search now for something new, but I'm intrigued. What do you use? Are you happy with what you have for to-do lists? How do you keep track of stuff in the world? STEPH: Oh goodness. I'm now going to overanalyze everything that I do and how I keep track of the things that I do. [chuckles] So currently, I have two things that I used to track, and that is...okay, I'm going to expand. I have three to-do lists that I use to track. [laughs] Todoist is where I add most things of where whatever I just think of, and I want to capture it Todoist is usually where it goes. Because then it's very easy for me to then go back to that list and prioritize or just simply delete stuff. If I haven't gotten to it in a while, I'm like, fine, let it go. Move on. And then the other place I've started using just because it's been helpful in terms of linking to stuff is Basecamp. So we use Basecamp at thoughtbot, and we use it for a number of internal projects. But I have created my own project thanks to some advice from Mike Burns, a fellow thoughtboter, because he created his own and uses that to manage a lot of his to-dos and tasks that he has. And then that way, it's already one-stop shopping since you're in Basecamp a lot throughout the day or at least where you're going to visit some of the tasks that you need to work on. So that has been helpful just because it's very simple and easy to reference. And then calendar, I just live by my calendar. So if something is of the utmost importance...I realize I'm going in this in terms of order of importance. If something is critical, it's on my calendar. That's where it goes. Because I know I have not only put it somewhere that I am guaranteed to see it, but I have carved out time for it too. That's my three-tier system. [laughs] CHRIS: I like it. That sounds great, not overly complicated but plenty going on there. And it sounds like it's working for you, sounds like you're happy with that. STEPH: It has worked really well. I'm still evaluating the Basecamp, but so far, it has been helpful. It does help me separate between fun to-do items which go in Todoist and maybe just some other work stuff. But if it's really work-focused, then it's going in Basecamp right now. So there's a little helpful separation there between what's going on in my life versus then things I need to prioritize for work. What are the things that you're currently using, and where are you feeling they're falling down or not being as helpful as you'd like them to be? CHRIS: My current exploration, I'm starting to look for a new to-do list-type things. Specifically, I've been using Trello for a long time for probably a couple of years now. And that was a purposeful choice to move away from some of the more structured systems because I found they weren't providing as much value. I was constantly bouncing between different clients and moving into different systems. And so much of the work was centrally organized there that the little bit of stuff that I had personally to keep track of was easy enough to manage within a Trello board. And then slowly, my Trello board morphed into like 10 Trello boards for different topics. So I have one that's like this is research. These are things that I want to look into. And so I can have sort of a structure and prioritization within that context in my world. And then there's one for fitness and one for cooking. I'm trying to think which else...experiments, as I'm thinking about I want to try this new thing in the world. I have a board for that. So I have a bunch of those that allow me to keep things that aren't as actionable, that are more sort of explorations. But then they each have their own structure. And that I found to be really useful and I think I'll hold on to. But my core to-do board has started failing me, has started being just not quite enough. And then, more so, I wanted a distinct thing for work for a professional context. So I was like, all right, let me go back to the drawing board and see what's out there. And I did a quick scan of Todoist and Things, respectively. And I've settled on Things for right now. It just matches a little bit more to my mental model. Todoist really pushes on the idea of due dates or dates as a singular idea associated with most things. Almost everything should have a date. And I kind of philosophically disagree with that. Whereas Things has this interesting idea of there is the idea of a due date, but it's de-emphasized in their UI because not everything has a due date; most things don't. But Things has a separate idea of a scheduled date or an intent date. Like yeah, I think I'll work on that on Wednesday. It's not due on Wednesday; that's just when I want to work on it. It can have a separate due date. Like, maybe it's due Friday. STEPH: Is the name of the application that you're saying is it Things? Is that the name of it? CHRIS: Yeah, it is. STEPH: I haven't heard this one. You kept saying Things. I was like, wait, is he being vague? But I realized you're being specific. [laughs] CHRIS: It's one of the few things that...yeah, one of the few things that I think is not great about Things. It's from a company Cultured Code, and the application is called Things. And that is all I will say on that topic. Different names maybe would have been better, but they seem to have carved out enough of an attention space. Enough people know of it that if you search for Things and to-do list, it will very quickly pop up. But yeah, that's a pretty ambiguous name. They maybe could have done a different one there. But the design of the application is really nice. It's on my desktop. And now I have it on my phone as well, and they sync between them and all the stuff. So there's never going to be a perfect system. I'm certain of that. I've at least talked myself out of trying to build my own because, man, have I fallen into that trap before. Oh goodness, so many times. STEPH: I'm very proud of you. CHRIS: Thank you. I'm trying. STEPH: But yeah, it'll be interesting to see how it evolves. I continue to struggle with there are these things that come to mind, and I want to capture them during the day. But some of them are just stories I'm telling myself, which would probably be best captured in a journal tool. And then there are notes that I might want to keep on remote work and how people think about that. And so I'm starting to think about Obsidian or a note-taking system for that. And then I've got this Trello board concoction. And now I've got a to-do...and suddenly I'm like, well, that's too many things. And so I'm trying to not overthink it. I'm trying to not underthink it. I'm trying to just find that perfect amount of thinking. That's what I'm aiming for. I'm not sure I'm going to hit it directly, [laughs], but that's what I'm aiming for. Mid-roll Ad And now a quick break to hear from today's sponsor, Scout APM. Scout APM is leading-edge application performance monitoring that's designed to help Rails developers quickly find and fix performance issues without having to deal with the headache or overhead of enterprise platform feature bloat. With a developer-centric UI and tracing logic that ties bottlenecks to source code, you can quickly pinpoint and resolve those performance abnormalities like N+1 queries, slow database queries, memory bloat, and much more. Scout's real-time alerting and weekly digest emails let you rest easy knowing Scout's on watch and resolving performance issues before your customers ever see them. Scout has also launched its new error monitoring feature add-on for Python applications. Now you can connect your error reporting and application monitoring data on one platform. See for yourself why developers call Scout their best friend and try our error monitoring and APM free for 14 days; no credit card needed. And as an added-on bonus for Bike Shed listeners, Scout will donate $5 to the open-source project of your choice when you deploy. Learn more at scoutapm.com/bikeshed. That's scoutapm.com/bikeshed. STEPH: Some of the topics that you mentioned earlier did stand out to me when you're talking about recipes and working out some other topics. Those are things for me that I often just put in notes. So I liked the word that you used for stories that you're telling yourself or things that you're interested in. Is that something that...I don't put it in Todoist or put it somewhere because I don't really have an action item. It's more like, yeah, this recipe looks awesome and one day...so I'm going to stash it somewhere so I can find it. I'm currently using Notion. I used Bear before. It is beautiful. I really liked Bear, but I needed a little bit more structure, and Notion gave me that structure. And so I will just dump it in Notion. And then it's very searchable, so I can always find whatever recipe or whatever thought that was as long as I try to add buzzwords to my own notes. Like, what would have Stephanie searched for looking for this? So I will try to include some of those words just so I can easily find it. CHRIS: I love you're defining yourself as a Stephanie. For a random Stephanie walking through the woods, what search terms? How can I SEO arbitrage a Stephanie? STEPH: What would she look for? CHRIS: Who knows? STEPH: That Stephanie, she's sneaky. You never know. CHRIS: You never can tell. Obsidian is the one that I'm looking at now. But I'm currently using Apple Notes. And it's really nice to be able to search directly into a note very quickly. I have that both via Alfred and then on my phone. And I'm finding a lot of utility in that, particularly for notes, for things I want to talk to someone about. But now there are seven different things, and how are they connected? And where is something? And to the question of where would a future Christopher look for this, let's make sure I put it in that place. But I don't know what that dude's going to be up to. He's a weird guy. He might look in a completely random place. So I'm trying to outsmart him, and oof, good luck, me. STEPH: [laughs] I have heard of Obsidian, but I don't recall much about it. So I'd have to look into it. I do feel your pain around Todoist and where it really encourages you to set a date. Because there are often things where I'm like, I saw something I want to read. And I know there are tons of tools. There are so many tools and videos and things that people could watch if they really want to invest in this workflow. But right now, I've told myself no, and so I use Todoist. And I see something I want to read, and so I just link to it. And I don't have a particular date that I want to read it. I'm like, this looks cool, and so then I add it to a reading list. But that also, I guess, could be something for notes. More and more, I'm trying to shove things into notes, so it feels less like a task and more of a I'm curious, or I'm interested in things that have piqued my interest. Let me go back and look at that list to see if there's something I want to pull from today or I need inspiration. That's what my notes often are; they're typically inspiration for something that I have seen and really liked, or maybe it's a bug that I looked into, and I want to recall how that happened or what was the process. But yeah, my notes are typically a source of inspiration. So I try to dump most things in there. I don't know if that's particularly helpful for your task, though, because it sounds like you're looking for a way to manage the things that you actually need to do versus just capturing all of your thoughts. CHRIS: Honestly, part of it is having a good system for those like, oh, I'd like to read this sometime. Ideally, for me, that doesn't go into my whatever to-do list system. But if my brain doesn't trust that I'll ever read it or if I feel like I'm putting it into a black hole, then my brain is just like, hey, you should really read that thing. Are you thinking about that? You should think about that and just brings it up. And so having a system externalized that I trust such that then the to-do list can be as focused as possible. It's a sort of an arms race back and forth battle type thing of like, I've definitely done the loop of like, all right, I want to capture everything. I want to have perfect, lossless, productivity system, and that is not possible. And so then I overcorrect back the other way. I'm like, whatever, nothing matters. I'll just let everything fall away. And then I'm like, well, then my brain tries to remind me of stuff or tries to remember more. And there's a book, Getting Things Done, which is one of the more common things recommended in the productivity world. And that informs a bunch of my thinking around this, the idea of capturing everything that's in your head so that you can get it out of your head. And in the moment, be focused and in the moment and not having to try and remember. And so that's the ideal that I'm searching for. But it's difficult to build that and make that work. STEPH: It seems the answer is there's no perfect system. It's always finding what works for you. And I feel like it's always going to change from hopefully not month to month because that would be tedious. But it may change year to year depending on how you're prioritizing things and the types of things that you need to remember or that you need to accumulate somewhere. So I feel like it's always this evolving, iterative process of changing where we're storing this. But I feel like where you store the notes and inspiration, that's something that, ideally, you want to make sure that you can always continue to keep forward. So even if you do change systems, that's something that's usually on my mind. It's like, well, if I use this system to store all of my thoughts, what if I want to move to something else? How stuck am I to this particular platform? And can I still have ownership of the things that I have added here? But overall, yeah, I'd be intrigued to see what other people think if they have a particular system that works for them, or they have suggestions. But overall, it seems to be whatever caters best to your personality and your workflow. That's why there are so many of these. There are so many thoughts, so many videos, so many styles. CHRIS: Yeah, I think a critical part of what you just said that feels very true to me is this is something that will change over time as well. Life comes in seasons, and my work may look a certain way, or my life may look a certain way, and then next year, it may be wildly different. And so, finding something that is good enough for right now and then moving forward with that and being open to revisiting it. And yeah, that feels true. So I'm in an explore phase right now. I'll report back if I have any major breakthroughs. But yeah, we'll see how it goes. STEPH: I will say I think the main tool that I have really leaned into, while some of the others will change over time, is my calendar. There are certain things I've let go. My inbox is always going to be messy. My to-do list is always going to be messy. But my calendar that is where things really go to make sure that they happen. And I will even add tasks there as well. So I feel like the calendar will always stick with me because I can trust that as the one source of like, these are the things that have to happen. Everything else I can check for during that day or figure it out as I go. Or if something gets dropped or bounces to the next day, it's okay. CHRIS: Yeah, the calendar is definitely a core truth in my world. Whatever the calendar says, that is true. And I'm actually a...I hope I'm not annoying to anyone. But I'm very pointed in saying, "This recurring meeting that we have if we keep just canceling it the day before every time, let's get this off our calendars. Let's make sure our calendars are telling the truth because I trust that thing very much." And two apps that I'm using right now that I've found really useful in the calendar world are MeetingBar, which I've talked about before. But it's a little menu bar application that shows the next meeting that's upcoming. And then I can click on it and see the list of them and easily join any video call associated, just a nice thing to keep the next thing on my calendar very top of mind, super useful, really love that. That's just open source and easy to run with. The other that I've been spending more and more time with lately is SavvyCal. SavvyCal is similar to Calendly. It's a tool for sharing a link to allow someone to schedule something on your calendar. And, man, it is an impressive piece of technology. I've been leaning into some of the fancier features of it of late. And it has an amazing amount of control, and I think a really well-designed sort of information architecture as well. It took me a little while to figure out how to do everything I wanted to do in it. But I wanted to be able to define a calendar link thing that I could share with someone that really constraints in the way that I wanted. Like, oh, don't let them schedule tomorrow, and make sure there's this much buffer between meetings. And don't let this calendar link schedule too many things on my calendar because I need to control my day, and give me some focus blocks. And they're not actually on my calendar, but please recognize that. And it basically supports all of these different ways of thinking and does an incredible job with it. As an aside, SavvyCal is created by Derrick Reimer, who is the co-host of The Art of Product Podcast, which is co other hosted by Ben Orenstein, former thoughtboter, creator of Upcase, and a handful of other things. So small world and all of that. But yeah, really fantastic piece of technology that I've been loving lately. STEPH: That's really cool. I have not heard of SavvyCal. I've used Calendly and used that a fair amount. And that is so awesome where you can just send it to people, and they can pick time on a calendar and do all the features that you'd mentioned. So it's good to know that there's SavvyCal as well. Well, pivoting just a bit, we have a listener question that I'm really excited to dig into. This question comes from fellow thoughtboter, Steve Polito. And Steve writes in that, "Hey, Bike Shed, I've got a question for you. I find it difficult to know if there's an existing method in a large class or a class that includes many concerns. How can I avoid writing redundant methods when working on a large project?" And Steve provided a really nice just contrived example where he's defined a class user that inherits from ApplicationRecord. And then comments, "Lots of methods making it really hard to scan this giant class. And then there's a method called formatted name. So it takes first name, adds a space, and then adds the user's last name. And then there are a lot more methods in between. And then, way down, there's another method called full name that does the exact same thing. Just to provide a nice example of how can you find a method that has existing logic that you want and avoid implementing essentially the same method and the same class?" So as someone who has worked on some legacy systems this year, I feel that pain. I feel the pain of where you have a really giant class, and that class may also include other modules. So then you have your range of all the methods that you may be looking through gets really widened. And you are looking for particular logic that you feel like may exist in the system, but you really just don't know. So I don't know if I have a concrete method for how you can find duplicate logic and avoid writing that other method. But some of the things that I do is I will initially go to the test. So if there's some logic that I'm looking for and I think it's in this class or I have a suspicion, I will first look to see what has test coverage. And I find that is just easier to skim where I can find, and I'll use grep, and search and just look for anything. In this particular case, let's use first name as our example. So I'm looking for anything that's going to collaborate with first name. Some of the other things that I'll do is I'll try to think of a business case where that logic is used. So, where are we displaying the user's full name? And if I can go to that page and see what's already in use, that may give me a hint to do we already have this logic? Is there something there that I should reuse, or is it something new that I'm implementing? And then if I really want to get fancy about it, for some reason that I really want to see all the methods that are listed, but I'm trying to get rid of some of the noise in the file, then I could programmatically scan through all the available methods by doing something like class.instance methods and passing in false. So we don't include the methods that are from superclasses, which can be very helpful. So that way, you're just seeing what scoped to that class. But then, let's say if you do have a class that is inheriting from other modules, then you may want to include those methods in your search. So to get fancier, you could look at that class' ancestor chain and then collect the classes or models that are custom to your application, and then look at those instance methods. And then you could sort them alphabetically. But you're still really relying on is there a method name that looks very similar to what I would call this method? So I don't know that that's a really efficient way. But if I just feel like there's probably already something in this space and I'm just looking for a clue or some name that's going to hint that something already exists, that's one way I could do it. To throw another wrench in there, I just remembered there are also private methods, and private methods don't get returned from instance methods. I think it's private instance methods is a method that you'd have to call to then include those in your search results as well. So outside of some deeper static analysis, this seems like a hard problem. This seems like something that would be challenging to solve. And then I guess the other one is I ask a friend. So I will often lean on if there's someone else at the team that's been there longer than me is I will just ask in Slack and say, "Hey, I want to do a thing. I'm worried this already exists, or I think it already exists. Does anybody have any clues or ideas as to where this might live?" I know I just ran through a giant list of ideas there. But I'm really curious, what are your thoughts? If you have a messier codebase and you're worried that you are reimplementing logic that already exists, but you're trying to make sure you don't duplicate that logic, how do you avoid that? CHRIS: Well, the first thing I want to say is that I find it really interesting that I think you and I came at this from different directions. My answer, which I'll come to in a minute, is more of the I'm not actually sure that this is that easy to avoid, and maybe that's not the biggest problem in the world. And then I have some thoughts downstream from that. But the list that you just gave was fantastic. That was a tour de force of how to understand and explore a codebase and try and answer this very hard question of like, does this logic already exist somewhere else? So I basically just agree with everything you said. And again, I'm deeply impressed with the range of options that you offer there for trying to figure this out. That said, sometimes codebases just get really large. And this is going to happen. I think the specific mention of concerns as sort of a way that this problem can manifest feels true. Having the user object and being like, oh man, our user object is getting pretty big. Let's pull something out into a concern as just a way to clean it up. That actually adds a layer of indirection that makes it harder to understand the totality of what's going on in this thing. And so personally, I tend to avoid concerns for that reason or at least at the model layer, especially where it's just a we got 1,000 methods here. Let's pull 200 of them into a file and maybe group them somewhat logically. That tends to not solve the problem in my mind. I found that it just basically adds a layer of indirection without much additional value. I will say in this particular case, the thing that we're talking about presenting the full name or the formatted name feels almost like a presentational concern. So I might ask myself, is there a presenter object, something that wraps around a user and encapsulates this? And then we as a team know that that sort of presentational or formatting logic lives in the presentation format or layer. Maybe I'm not entirely convinced of that as an answer. But it's just sort of where can we find organizational lines to draw within our codebases? I talked about query objects earlier. That's one case of this is behavior that I'll often see in classes as, say, a scope or something like that that I will extract out into a query object because it allows me to encapsulate it and break it out a little bit more but still have most of the nice pieces that I would want. So are there different organizational patterns that are useful? I think it's very easy to start drawing arbitrary lines within our codebases and say, "These are services." And it's like, what does that mean? That doesn't mean anything. App Services, that's not a thing, so maybe don't do that. But maybe there are formatters, queries, commands, those feel like...or presenters, queries, commands. Maybe those are organizational structures that can be useful. But switching to the other side of it, the first thing that came to mind is like, this is going to happen. As a codebase grows, this is absolutely going to happen. And so I would ask rather than how can I, as the developer, avoid doing this in the first place...which I think is a good question to ask. And again, everything you listed, Steph, is great. And I think a wonderful list of ways that you can actually try to avoid this. But let's assume it is going to happen. So then, what do we do downstream from that? One answer that comes to mind is code review. Code review is not perfect. But this is the sort of thing that often in code review I will be like, oh, I actually wrote a method that's similar to this. Can you take a look at that and see can we use only one of these or something like that? So I've definitely seen code review be a line of defense on this front. But again, stuff is still going to sneak through. And someday, you'll find it down the road. And that's the point in time that I think is most interesting. When you find this, can you fix it easily? Do you have both process-wise and infrastructure-wise the ability to do a very small PR that just removes the duplicate method, removes the usage of it, and consolidates on the one? It's like, oh, I found it. Here's a 10-line PR that just removes that method, changes the usage. And now we're good. And that can go through code review and CI very quickly. And we have a team culture that allows us to make those tiny changes on the regular to get them out to production as quick as possible so that we know that this is a good code change, all of that. I found there are teams that I've worked on where that process is much slower. And therefore, I will try and roll a change like that up into a bigger PR because I know that's the only way that it's really going to get through. Versus I've been on teams that have very high throughput is probably the best way to describe it. And on those teams, I find that the codebase tends to be in a healthier shape because it just naturally falls out of having a system that allows us to make changes rapidly with high trust, get them out into the world, et cetera. STEPH: This is that bug or inconsistency that's going to show up where on one page you have the user's full name. And then on another page, you have the user's full name, but maybe the last name is not capitalized, or there's just something that's slightly different. And then that's when you realize that you have two implementations of essentially the same logic that have differed just enough. I like how you pointed out that this is one of those things that as a codebase grows, it's probably going to happen, and that's fine. It's one of those if you do have duplicate logic, over time, based on your team's processes, you'll be able to then identify when it does happen, and then look for those preventative patterns for then how you organize your code. How quickly can you make that change? Can you just issue a PR that then removes one of them? But then look for ways to say, how are we going to help our future selves recognize that if we're looking for a user's full name, where's a good place to look for that? And then what's a good domain space or naming that we can give to then help future searchers be able to find it? I also really like your code review example because it does feel like one of those things that, yes, we want to catch it if we can, and we can leverage the team. But then also, it's not the end of the world if some of these methods do get duplicated. There's one other thing that came to mind that it's not really going to help prevent duplicate methods, but it will help you identify unused code. So it's the Unused tooling that you can run on your codebase. And that's something that would be wonderful to run on your codebase every so often. So that way, if someone has added...let's say there was a method that was full name but is not in use. It didn't have test coverage; that's why you didn't find it initially. And so you've introduced your own formatted name. And then, if you run unused at some point, then you'll hopefully catch some of those duplicate methods as long as they're not both in use. CHRIS: I think one more thing that I didn't quite say in my earlier portion about this. But in order to do that, to use Unuse or to have these sort of small pull requests that are going through, you have to have test coverage that is sufficient that you are confident you're not going to break the app. Because the day that you do like, oh, there's a typo here; let me fix it real quick. Or there's this method I'm pretty sure it's not used; let me rip it out. And then you deploy to production, and suddenly the error system is blowing up because, in fact, it was used but sneakily in a way that you didn't think of, and your test coverage didn't catch that. Then you don't have trust in the system, and everything slows down as a result of that. And so I would argue for fixing the root problem there, which is the lack of test coverage rather than the symptom, which is, oh, I made this change, it broke something. Therefore, I won't make small changes anymore. STEPH: Definitely. Yeah, that's a great point. CHRIS: So yeah, I don't have any answer. [laughs] My answers are like, I don't know, it's going to happen, but there's a lot of stuff organizationally that we can do. And granted, you gave a wonderful list of ways to actually avoid this. So I think the combination of our answers really it's a nice spectrum of thoughts on this topic. STEPH: I agree. I feel like we covered a very nice range all the way from trying to identify and then how to prevent it or how to help future people be able to identify where that logic lives and find it more easily. Also, at the end of the day, I like the how big of a problem is this? And it is one of those sure; we want to avoid it. But I liked how you captured that at the beginning where you're like, it's okay. Like, this is going to happen but then have the processes around it to then avoid or be able to undo some of that duplicate work. But otherwise, if it happens, don't sweat it; just look for ways to then prevent it from happening in the future. On that note, shall we wrap up? CHRIS: Let's wrap up. The show notes for this episode can be found at bikeshed.fm. STEPH: This show is produced and edited by Mandy Moore. CHRIS: If you enjoyed listening, one really easy way to support the show is to leave us a quick rating or even a review on iTunes, as it really helps other folks find the show. STEPH: If you have any feedback for this or any of our other episodes, you can reach us at @_bikeshed or reach me on Twitter @SViccari. CHRIS: And I'm @christoomey. STEPH: Or you can reach us at hosts@bikeshed.fm via email. CHRIS: Thanks so much for listening to The Bike Shed, and we'll see you next week. All: Byeeeeeeeeee!!! Announcer: This podcast was brought to you by thoughtbot. thoughtbot is your expert design and development partner. Let's make your product and team a success.
Ben Orenstein is the founder of Tuple, a tool for remote pair programmers that has been steadily growing for the past few years. Now, Ben runs Tuple with a small team and is delving into what happens when your SaaS starts to hit scale. You might have also heard Ben's voice on the Art of Product podcast, which he co-hosts with Derrick Reimer, founder of SavvyCal, talking about the behind the scenes of running their respective SaaS companies.What we covered in this episode: Why Tuple is the most successful product he's made How Ben's approach to enterprise sales has changed How much revenue comes from enterprise sales How the enterprise product is differentiated How indie hackers can sell to bigger companies Where Tuple gets it's customers from What does Ben's day-to-day look like? Has he just built himself a job? The benefits of making a podcast Some of Ben's favourite previous products Recommendations Book: The Mom Test Podcast: Bootstrapped Web Indie Hacker: Adam Wathan Follow Ben Twitter Blog Follow Me Twitter Indie Bites Twitter Personal Website Buy A Wallet 2 Hour Podcast Course Sponsor - Fathom AnalyticsFor the longest time, website analytics software was seriously bad. It was hard to understand, time-consuming to use, and worse, it exploited visitor data for big tech to profit. I've spent countless hours in Google Analytics dashboards trying to figure even out the most basic metrics.This is exactly why I signed up for Fathom as soon as I heard Paul Jarvis and Jack Ellis were building it.Fathom is simple website analytics that doesn't suck. It's easy to use and respectful of privacy laws, with no cookies following your users around the web. They're also a bootstrapped, sustainable business so I love supporting them. Yes, it might feel strange paying for analytics at first, but once you realise the real cost of free Google Analytics and realising how easy to use Fathom is, you won't go back. You can install the lightweight code on as many websites as you want and quickly see the performance of all your sites.Link → https://usefathom.com/bites
2021年にProduct Huntで2,000以上のupvoteを集めたプロダクトをチェックしました。 ホスト: 山本 大策（ https://twitter.com/daisaku ） 今回のキーワード: 参考: 2020年のProduct Hunt Top10プロダクトをチェック。2021年は自分にとって必要なものを作ろう。 https://www.prototype.fm/79 以下、2021年にProduct Huntで2,000以上のupvoteを集めたプロダクト。 （upvote数は2022年1月9日確認時点のもの） Tango 3,322 upvotes スクリーンショットを使ったハウツーガイドを自動で作成 ドキュメント作成の煩わしさから解放されます。新入社員の採用、顧客の問題解決、製品アップデートの共有が迅速に行えます。 https://www.tango.us/ ワークフローの理想的な進め方を自動で取得し新入社員研修を簡易化するTangoが約6.3億円を調達 https://jp.techcrunch.com/2021/08/26/2021-08-24-tango-dances-in-with-5-7m-to-making-employee-onboarding-easier/ Sprig 3,189 upvotes オールインワン製品調査プラットフォーム Sprig（旧UserLeap）は、プロダクトやユーザージャーニーの中で、一口サイズの質問をすることができるオールインワン・プロダクト・リサーチ・プラットフォームです。ビデオインタビュー、デザインコンセプトのテスト、実際のユーザーへのマイクロサーベイを数分で簡単に実施できます。 https://sprig.com/ RobinWho 2,943 upvotes あなたを泣かせる最初の投資アプリ。 あなたは、株を買って、売ることに慣れていますか？利益を出すことに慣れましたか？この作業は終わりがありません。利益は魅力的で、単なる収入以上のものをもたらし、習慣を形成します。私たちは、それを中毒と考え、株で儲けることを断ち切るアプリをリリースすることにしました。 ロビン・フー！は、利益中毒を克服するために、この恐怖と戦うために開発されました。全ては超簡単です。「利食い」「損切り」の2つのメインボタンから1つを選ぶだけです。そして、取引を停止します。 https://www.qooore.com/robinwho Typedream 2,816 upvotes Notionのように簡単で、Webflowのように美しい、ノーコードサイトビルダー 使い慣れたNotionのようなインターフェースで素早くページを構築し、コンテンツに集中することができます。 どんなウェブサイトでも最小限の努力で見栄えを良くする、美しくモダンなデフォルト設定 高性能な静的ページと最適化された画像は、Vercel 上の NextJS によって実現されています。 https://typedream.com/ Lucky Carrot 2,667 upvotes 従業員の意欲を高め、認め、評価する Lucky Carrotは、オールインワンの従業員エンゲージメント・プラットフォームです。 ◾ 従業員同士がお互いを認め合うことができるようになります。 ◾ 従業員の成果を可視化する。 ◾ アンケートを通じて、社員の声を届ける。 ◾ 従業員エンゲージメントを向上させるための知見を提供します。 https://luckycarrotapp.com/ Contra 2,500 upvotes 新しいタイプのプロフェッショナルネットワーク Contraは、フレキシブルな働き方のための新しいプロフェッショナルネットワークです。私たちは、あなたが望む人生のためにキャリアを成功させるために必要なツールとインフラを、手数料ゼロで提供します。 https://contra.com/ Cal.com 2,415 upvotes すべての人のためのスケジュール管理インフラ Cal.com（旧Calendso）は、Calendlyに代わるオープンソースのCalendlyです。セルフホスト、または私たちがホスティングします。高度なカスタマイズとオープンAPIで、あなたのビジネスにシームレスに統合します。 あなたやあなたの訪問者が楽しく使えるように設計されています。 https://cal.com/ Persona 2,407 upvotes あらゆるユースケースに対応する、0円からの本人確認サービス Personaは、世界中をカバーする完全自動の本人確認コンポーネント群を提供し、あらゆるユースケースに合わせたカスタムフローを作成するための設定やブランディングを行うことができます。スタータープランに登録すると、10分以内に無料で開始できます。 https://withpersona.com/ Ray.so 2,356 upvotes あなたのコードを美しい画像にする あなたのコードを美しく画像化します。構文カラーを選択したり、背景を隠したり、暗いウィンドウと明るいウィンドウを切り替えたりすることができます。キーボードショートカットを使って、処理を高速化しましょう。 Raycastのチームによって開発されました。 https://ray.so/ Podcastle 2,266 upvotes オーディオの作成、編集、強化、オンラインインタビュー。 Podcastleは、音声コンテンツの作成、編集、強化、オンラインインタビュー、テキストから音声への変換、プロダクション品質のサウンドを数秒で実現する、AIを活用したコラボレーション音声コンテンツ作成プラットフォームです。 https://podcastle.ai/ OpenVC 2,243 upvotes 2,200以上のVCファーム。根本的に自由でオープン。 スタートアップに「最適」なVCファンドを瞬時に見つけることができます。OpenVCでは、2,200以上のファンドを投資基準で閲覧することができます。その代わり、VCはスパムを減らし、より質の高いディールフローを受け取ることができます。ベンチャーキャピタルへのオープンな道を築きましょう https://www.openvc.app/ Scribe 2.0 2,213 upvotes ステップバイステップのガイドを数秒で自動作成 あらゆるプロセスのステップバイステップガイドを自動で作成します。記録を押すだけで、Scribe は、あなたの行動に基づいてスクリーンショットを含む詳細なガイドを作成し、同僚、顧客、友人と共有できるようにします。 https://scribehow.com/ tl;dv for Google Meet 2,205 upvotes 分単位で会議をキャッチアップ 会議の議事録は、ビデオ録画とトランスクリプトの正確な瞬間にリンクされます。重要な内容を完全に文脈化して、即座に共有できます。お気に入りの非同期コラボレーションアプリやCRMと連動します。 会議の内容をすぐに確認できます。 https://tldv.io Doodle Ipsum 2,160 upvotes イラストのロレムイップスム Doodle Ipsumは、Blushが提供する開発者向けの無料イラストレーションツールです。古典的なLorem Ipsumに触発され、簡単なコードでプレースホルダーのイラストを自動生成します。 https://doodleipsum.com SavvyCal 2,142 upvotes スケジュールリンクの送信は、変な感じがしないようにする必要があります。 多くのスケジュール管理ツールは、受信者側に負担を強いるものです。SavvyCal は、両者が会うのに最適な時間を瞬時に見つけることを容易にします。 https://savvycal.com Veganzone 2,137 upvotes ビーガンのビーガンによるビーガンとベジタリアンのためのビーガン Veganzoneは、ヴィーガン＆ベジタリアンのライフスタイルを実践する人々が、共通の価値観を共有し、互いに出会い、イベントを介して交流し、ヴィーガン製品を購入できる新しいモバイル・アプリケーションです。 http://jro.net Audiblogs 2,089 upvotes あらゆるウェブ記事をポッドキャストで聴く Audiblogsは、どんなウェブ記事もAudibleのような音声でPodcastプレーヤーで聴くことができます。運動しながら、料理しながら、家事をしながらなど、「ながら読み」に使ってみてください。 https://audiblogs.com/ Zodier 2,061 upvotes 人気メッセンジャーのチャットボットでデート あなたは出会い系アプリのすべてを見たことがあると思っていますか？ ほとんどない！？ Zodierは仲間を探す新しい方法で、すでにあなたのスマホの中に入っています！ Zodierは、あなたの携帯電話の中にあります。 ボットとデートを統合し、出会いとチャットをシンプルにします。 デート + チャットボット = Zodierです。 これがZodierの始まりです! https://zodier.io Mobile Chat Kit 2,027 upvotes アプリ内モバイルチャット構築のためのUIキット＆サンプルアプリ Streamのアプリ内チャット用UI + SDKを使えば、美しくスケーラブルなチャット体験を数時間で構築することができます。FigmaとSketchのための50以上の手作りの画面。Flutter、React Native、Kotlin、SwiftのためのUIコンポーネント。サイドプロジェクトに利用できる無料のメーカーアカウント。 https://getstream.io/chat/ux-kit/ Integrately (Zapier Alternative) 2,023 upvotes 500以上のアプリに対応する800万以上のオートメーションが用意されている Integrately 2.0 は、技術者でなくても 1 クリックでアプリケーションを統合し、プロセスを自動化することができます。これを可能にするため、私たちは 800 万以上の自動化機能を作成しました。そして、常に追加しています。 必要なのは、オートメーションを有効にすることだけです。 https://integrately.com/ Ghost 4.0 2,019 upvotes ニュースレター、メンバーシップ、サブスクリプション - すべてを一元管理 https://ghost.org/ SigmaOS 2,018 upvotes あなたを速くするブラウザ SigmaOSは、あなたの仕事をより速く、より良くするために設計された、初めての仕事用ブラウザです。 ページやウェブアプリを整理するためのワークスペース。 スヌーズページで頭をスッキリさせる プロ並みのマルチタスクを実現するスプリットスクリーン https://sigmaos.com/ Deep Nostalgia™ 2,016 upvotes 家族写真にアニメーションを 家族写真の顔を、驚きの技術でアニメーション化。 https://www.myheritage.jp/deep-nostalgia このポッドキャストへのお問い合わせ、ご感想、ご質問、ご要望は公式サイト( www.prototype.fm )内の、お問い合わせからメッセージしてください。 Twitterの場合は #prototypefm をつけてツイートしてください。 iTunesStoreでのレビューもお願いします。
Ben and Derrick catch up after a holiday break. Ben chats about his recent design hire and Stephen's promotion to Chief of Staff at Tuple. Derrick ran a successful Black Friday promo for SavvyCal and is hard at work on the Stripe integration.
The Smart Passive Income Online Business and Blogging Podcast
#526 If you listened to this Wednesday's episode, 525, we spoke with Derrick Reimer from SavvyCal, which is a tool that competes with Calendly, a very popular calendar/scheduler. In that episode, Derrick and I talked about competition. We talked about standing out. We talked about how to get started and grow your business in a crowded space. Now, Derrick's in the software business. But there are strategies and principles to help you stand out that apply no matter what type of business you're in. Whether you're an app developer, or a content creator, or serving an audience in some other way, you need to find ways to set yourself apart from everyone else out there. That's why today I want to give you four ideas to help you frame how you can stand out from the competition. Those four things actually have an acronym: P-A-S-T. Why P-A-S-T? Well, that's what you'll find out when you listen in to this follow-up Friday episode. Let's do this! Show notes and more at SmartPassiveIncome.com/session526.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
The Smart Passive Income Online Business and Blogging Podcast
#525 How do you compete in a space where there are already established players? Whether it's software, or information products, or physical products, it's not always possible to create something entirely original. There are likely others who have already built something and started cultivating an audience or customer base in your space. Today we're talking with Derrick Reimer, who created SavvyCal, a competing tool to popular schedulers like Calendly. As a competitor to an established option, Derrick had to go about things thoughtfully to make sure there would be a market for what he wanted to create. We talk a little bit about SavvyCal itself (and it's a really cool scheduler!). But the big focus of our conversation is how to get started in a crowded space and create something better than what exists. Because it is definitely possible—you just have to go about things smartly. You're going to learn a lot—because I learned a lot—and I hope you'll take what you learn and apply it to the market and niche you're in. Show notes and more at SmartPassiveIncome.com/session525.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Finding tools, apps and services that make things simple is a passion of mine. Today I want to bring your attention to a scheduling tool called SavvyCal. It's simple. Clean and makes scheduling easy and personalised.Video: https://www.kiakamgar.com/video/scheduling-with-savvycalPodcast: https://www.kiakamgar.com/podcast?e=0284866aHi, I'm Kia
Ben tells the story about a recent Tuple incident in production. The guys discuss how they're putting planning into action after last week's chat with Adam about Shape Up. Derrick gives an update about growth efforts for SavvyCal.
What tasks are worth automating in our businesses? What tools shall we use? In this episode, we talk to Jimmy Rose, founder of Content Snare. You'll learn several automation ideas that can improve business processes, the differences between popular automation platforms, how to automate content and document collection from clients, and more.Visit our website for the detailed episode recap with key learnings.Content Snare — Jimmy's SaaS productZapier, Integromat, IFTTT — popular automation toolsCalendly, SavvyCal — scheduling toolsSuperhuman — a Gmail clientFront, Intercom — shared inbox toolsElgato Stream Deck — a tool for streamingTouch Portal — the Android app for controlsZapier Lead Score — an integration for scoring leadsZapier Email Parser — a built-in email parserZapier vs. Integromat YouTube videoTypeform — a popular form builderDropbox, Google Drive — popular cloud storage optionsClickUp, Monday.com — project management systemsNotion, Dropbox Paper — other collaboration toolsjimmyrose.me — Jimmy's website on automationFollow Jimmy on TwitterThanks for listening! If you found the episode useful, please spread the word about the show on Twitter mentioning @userlist, or leave us a review on iTunes.SponsorThis show is brought to you by Userlist — the best tool for sending onboarding emails and segmenting your SaaS users. To follow the best practices, download our free printable email planning worksheets at userlist.com/worksheets.
Derrick Reimer is the founder of SavvyCal, a tool for scheduling meetings that both you and the people you are scheduling with will love. He's also the co-founder of Drip, a marketing automation tool, and he is the host of the Art of Product podcast. I have long enjoyed using an app to schedule my meetings. For example, I scheduled meetings with my coaching clients. Rather than going back and forth with endless emails, trying to find a mutually convenient time. I just send people a link so they can book a slot on my calendar. I had been using a different tool, but recently I discovered SavvyCal and it's so much more enjoyable to use. So I looked into who created it and I ended up on Derrick's Twitter account. I learned that Derrick had co-founded Drip, which was one of the first apps I used years ago when I was first building my online business. And I have very fond memories of Drip, even though I no longer use it because Drip went into a different direction. Anyway, I was interested to hear Derrick's story—and it turns out there were quite a few ups and downs. Derrick and I discuss: Regaining your confidence after launching a failed product Transitioning from wearing all the hats in a business to delegating certain tasks Saving your most productive time for your most valuable work Find Derrick and Savvycal: SavvyCal.com Derrick on Twitter Derrick's podcast, The Art of Product Note: the link to SavvyCal is an affiliate link. It's an awesome product and by signing up through this link, you get a free month and you support the podcast. Thank you.Also mentioned: Derrick's popular blog post, “I'm Walking Away From the Product I Spent a Year Building” Drip, the marketing automation business Derrick co-founded The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick Tiny Seed, an accelerator for SaaS bootstrappers xFusion, which offers support staff for SaaS
I've known Corey for about a year now. He's the founder and community manager of the SwipeFiles.com Community and many other things across the interwebs. Corey has worked with some amazing brands in the Software-as-a-Service sector, including Baremetrics and currently SavvyCal.com. In this episode Corey talks about his Entrepreneurial Journey from an in-house marketer to being out in the world on his own and building products and businesses. You can find more about Corey at his website: CoreyHaines.co If you're enjoying Entrepreneur's Enigma, please give us a review on the podcast directory of your choice. We're on all of them and these reviews really help others find the show. Also if you're getting value from the show and want to buy me a coffee, go to the show notes to get the link to get me a coffee to keep me awake, while I work on bringing you more great episodes to your ears. → https://gmwd.us/buy-me-a-coffee Sponsor For Entrepreneur's Enigma Season 1 This episode is sponsored by SEMrush, the search engine optimization tool that we use here at Goldstein Media. If you go to https://socl.bz/semrush you can get a 7 day FREE trial of their software and take your site to the next level. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Derrick Reimer got his first computer in kindergarten. His Dad was a mechanical engineer, but at home, tinkered with code.. and Derrick was always interested in the projects he was working on. In junior high, he learned Dos basics, and started to make games. He found it really fun to write utilities and tools for people, and funny enough, he even tinkered with accounting software - and tried to replicate Quicken.Even still, he ignored coding as a career path. He majored in math in college, and wasn't sure how he wanted to apply it. He needed more creativity than most math jobs offered at the time. After college, he discovered the Basecamp team and their perspective on building software. It was at that moment that his interest in tech and entrepreneurship merged together.For fun, he loves to do a lot of things. He lives in Minneapolis, and is outdoors a lot - hiking, road cycling, and playing a bit of tennis here and there. He also enjoys cooking, and coffee - but not just drinking coffee. He has gotten into hobbyist coffee roasting - with a popcorn popper. He likes to play around with the beans, the equipment, and overall, tinkering with making the perfect cup.After collecting dust in his idea notebook, in the list of markets which he knew well, he decided to venture forward to make a better calendar scheduling work tool... based on his anxiety using this type of product, and his desire to level up the status quo.This is the creation story of SavvyCal.SponsorsCourierImg.lyRoutableCTO.aiCloudways offers peace of mind and flexibility so you can focus on growing your business instead of dealing with server management. With Cloudways, you get an optimized stack, managed servers, backups, staging environment, integrated Git, pre-configured, Composer, 24/7 support, and a choice of five cloud providers: AWS, DigitalOcean, Linode, Google Cloud, and Vultr. Get up to 2 Month Free Hosting by using code "CODE30" and get $30 free hosting credit.LinksWebsite: https://savvycal.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/derrick-reimer-93916020/https://www.derrickreimer.com/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
Living at the #2 Spot on ProductHunt for January 2021, Derrick will take you on a look behind the success of his launch with SavvyCal.
http://microconfonair.com We had some issues with the original recording of this episode, so we've gone ahead and added a new version - hopefully this one works for everyone! Sorry for the inconvenience! As you are seeking out product market fit, it is important to consider the path you forge into that market. Will you be competing for every customer against a crowded or competitive market because you think you can do it... better? Or will you forge your way into a deeper niche that may leave you to early to be noticed? We invited Derrick Reimer, who just finished building SavvyCal, an easier way to create schedule appointments, and co-founded Drip with Rob. When you're staring down the landscape and you see giant competitors like MailChimp or Calendly, what does that decision making process look like, and how do you carve out your own share of that market from those giants. The MicroConf Remote Replay is available at http://MicroConfRemote.com. Check out the recordings from the first ever digital only MicroConf event, MicroConf Remote. MicroConf Connect ➡️ http://microconfconnect.com Twitter ➡️ https://twitter.com/MicroConf E-mail ➡️ support@microconf.com MicroConf 2020 Headline Partners Stripe https://stripe.com Twitter ➡️ https://twitter.com/Stripe Hey https://hey.com Twitter ➡️ https://twitter.com/heyhey
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