Probably fine

[00:00:16] Speaker A: Hey, it is bootstrapped web. October 25, 2024. We are. What are we, a week or two away from election day here in America. Yeah. [00:00:26] Speaker B: I think we're one Scaramucci away from election day. [00:00:30] Speaker A: That's a great way to put it. [00:00:32] Speaker B: Yep. [00:00:32] Speaker A: How you doing, buddy? [00:00:34] Speaker B: Good. I am looking forward to the election being over. Yeah? [00:00:37] Speaker A: Yes. [00:00:38] Speaker B: Everything. The whole country gets crazy. [00:00:40] Speaker A: I know. [00:00:41] Speaker B: It's crazy. Twitter gets crazy. [00:00:43] Speaker A: All wound up. [00:00:43] Speaker B: Everything's life or death. It's either we win and it's. You know, and everything's gonna be glorious, or we lose and everything's over. [00:00:51] Speaker A: I know, man. [00:00:53] Speaker B: We're gonna be okay. We are gonna be okay. It is healthy. [00:00:57] Speaker A: It's gonna be fine. I think, overall, it's probably gonna be fine. [00:01:02] Speaker B: It'll probably be okay. It's most likely, it turns out okay. Yeah, it's healthy, seeing how engaged everyone is. But it does feel like it tips over into unhealthy when it's, like, demonization and everyone, like, you're right, and the other side doesn't disagree. The other side's crazy or evil or something. [00:01:25] Speaker A: That is the worst part of it is, like, it. Look, I'm. I'm in this. I'm describing myself, too. Like, I'm. I did a tweet the other day, a political tweet, which I rarely do anymore, talking about who I'm voting for and why I'm voting, and it's. I'm not voting for her. I mean, I am, but I'm not voting for her. I'm voting against him. [00:01:50] Speaker B: Okay. Okay. [00:01:51] Speaker A: And I feel like that's what most people in America, if you can define the political climate, everyone is voting against the opposite party. Very few people are actually voting for their candidate. [00:02:05] Speaker B: Yes. I'm not voting for him. I'm voting against her side. So I saw a TikTok recently of a woman, and she was like, I don't know where I'm supposed to be, but, like, this is what I believe. And I was like, just sign me up for that political party. It was just like, what I assume a very large chunk of people believe. Just, like, reasonable positions on a huge list of issues. [00:02:35] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:02:36] Speaker B: Nothing extreme. It's just kind of like, hey, I think this is totally fine. Do whatever you want, but not this. And this makes sense, but not that. [00:02:45] Speaker A: I mean, you're right. I think that that is the vast, vast majority, the big middle, the big center of. At least in America. I know it's absolutely. For me, like, there's a whole list of policies that I do not agree with the Democratic Party and then a whole bunch that I do agree with. And a lot of stuff from Republicans that I do resonate with and I agree with their stance on things this and that. I mean this, this election, I just, I'm just not Trump. That's, that's to me completely understandable. [00:03:19] Speaker B: Yeah, I often think of it as like, as like a rank of priorities. But the weight on each priority is super, super skewed to the top few priorities. So if you have like 10 issues and you know, look, I'm, I was born in Israel, I'm a Jew, like, okay, that issue is pretty damn high up for me, of course. And I put a lot of emphasis. So it has like a multiplier and if you're a young woman and you're single and reproductive rights very important, like that goes to the top, but there's a multiplier on it. So going in and like judging based on who someone's voting for is actually, it doesn't make sense to judge them on it. It's like this list of priorities, background parents, where you grew up. It's such a mix that to just assume a bunch of stuff is so unfair. [00:04:12] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, because really you're not judging the other person's opinion on that particular issue. You're judging why do they weight that value so heavily? [00:04:24] Speaker B: Yes. [00:04:24] Speaker A: And that's, and that's a judgment on like their own values. And that requires. You can't do that. Like, you can't like, because look like there's gonna be, there's always, you know, 50 different issues on the table and we're never gonna agree 100% with our chosen candidate. There's plenty of stuff that I don't like about the person I'm voting for. But you have to wait different things differently. And that's what the really the choice is. Right. When it comes to these political times. I don't agree with anyone who does not vote. I just think if you have the right to vote, use it. Just whoever you're voting for, just do it. And I also don't get on board with the idea of, oh, I hate both candidates, so I'm not gonna vote or I hate both candidates, so I'm gonna vote or write in or vote for this third party that has zero chance of winning. I just don't get on board with that line of thinking either. Am someone who desperately wants to get out of the two party system. I would be all for a viable third party. I, you know, but there aren't any viable third parties, so you have to choose one. [00:05:36] Speaker B: You know, I think that's totally understandable. It does end up being an individual choice. So, I mean, what. Last time, last election, I did exactly what you described. I could not bring myself to vote for him. I did not want to vote for Biden, and I just left the top of the ticket blank. And then I voted on all these other things. And especially locally, you can be probably. [00:06:03] Speaker A: More of an impact. [00:06:04] Speaker B: It does have more of an impact. I mean, I have lived in extremely blue places like Portland, Oregon. But inside of the local politics, it still makes a difference on which Democrat you choose, basically. But here in the suburbs of Chicago, it's kind of been very interesting. You live in Connecticut, but you live far away from the city. [00:06:23] Speaker A: Yep. [00:06:24] Speaker B: The local stuff is both a mystery because it's kind of. It's more difficult to get information on and be informed on, but it has so much more impact on your life, your family, your kids, the school, your community. Yep. [00:06:38] Speaker A: So, yeah, I mean, we were talking a bit offline about this. I'm always fascinated by the local vibe on politics as we lead up to an election. And something I always look out for, and I really paid attention to it starting in 2016 when it was Hillary and Trump. And then is the yard signs. Right. Like, you look at the yard signs, and so I'm driving around my town here in Connecticut. So I'm in suburban Connecticut, but pretty far away from the city. I'm not, like, I'm a good over an hour north of New York City. So I'm actually. Connecticut is known as a blue state, but I'm in a. I would say leaning red county or town in my area. Right. So just driving around my town, like, there are clearly more Trump signs on lawns than Harris signs. And just, like, by a lot, like, there are some Harris signs, but there are not only Trump signs. You also see the handmade Trump signs, the big ones. [00:07:41] Speaker B: Okay. [00:07:41] Speaker A: Yeah. They'll nail them to a tree. They'll do, you know, which is like, look, that's enthusiasm. And you don't see that on the Democratic side. And Thinking back to 2016, I remember driving around and I saw zero Hillary Clinton signs, not one. And this was at a time when, like, so at this time, like, two weeks out, every single poll, every single news outlet was like, Hillary's got it in the. In the bag. There's. There's no chance Trump can win. And I'm driving around my town thinking, man, there's a whole lot of these Trump signs. And I don't see any Hillary signs. That's weird, isn't it? And what do you know? Yeah, you know, so ever since then, I've been very, very tuned into, like, what I'm seeing on the ground. And. [00:08:28] Speaker B: Here is. How would I describe it? Not. Okay. I was going to say not a single Trump sign, but I stopped myself because I noticed the one Trump sign because it's the only Trump sign. Okay, okay. [00:08:43] Speaker A: So you're in a much more blue. [00:08:45] Speaker B: So here's the thing. We are incredibly blue because we're near the Chicago. We're in Illinois, which is blue, and Chicago, which is beyond blue. And the interesting thing about Chicago is the horrific, horrific level of corruption. [00:09:01] Speaker A: Right. [00:09:02] Speaker B: It is devastating. And it's so out in the open and so heartbreaking because it's just the schools that just get demolished and all the money stolen from the schools. So it's like this very ugly sore that's kind of out in the open. And the mayor here is a hot mess. But where we are in the suburbs, this is highly educated, high income blue. And what that means is that every sign is for Harris. And every conversation I have, not every conversation call. 50% of the conversations I have are the same. The wife supports Harris, the husband supports Trump. [00:09:45] Speaker A: Interesting. [00:09:45] Speaker B: But you cannot put a Trump sign up because socially it's unacceptable. [00:09:51] Speaker A: Yes. [00:09:52] Speaker B: That's a kind of interesting dynamic, you know, among this state, this location, and this, like, socioeconomic strata where supporting Trump is seen as, like, beyond the pale. How could you. Yeah, people just avoid it and they put it aside and they go into the voting booth in private and they vote for him. [00:10:13] Speaker A: I totally know what you mean. And I think that that sort of. I think there still is this, like, stigma against Democrats, like, in all. In a lot of part of the country, like here too, you know, and that was always sort of my assumption, like, why I don't see as many Democrat signs as Trump. I mean, in 2016, it wasn't just that. There was actually a lot more enthusiasm for Trump. I think there's still some of that, but. Yeah, I don't know, man. It's crazy out there. [00:10:48] Speaker B: Yeah, it is. Well, another week or so and we'll be done with it. [00:10:52] Speaker A: I'll be over or it'll be just beginning for another three months of recounts. Who know, that's. [00:10:58] Speaker B: I think what all of us agree on is just avoid some mess, some January 6th thing, some riding, like, just please let us get through a nice, peaceful transfer of power, maybe even a little Respect, maybe even a little grace, God forbid. So that. Right, that's, that's what I really hope. [00:11:19] Speaker A: I mean, if there's anything that should just be like off limits in terms of like controversy, it should be the counting of, of votes. Like that. That to me is like the area that's just like, come on there. There's so much flying around. Like it's, it's an election. Like, no one's trying to like, whatever. I don't want to get too deep into the weeds of conspiracy theory, but. [00:11:38] Speaker B: It'S like, so it's, it is tough to find some consensus on anyway basic things. But one way, regardless of how this thing goes, we got to make a living. Brian. [00:11:50] Speaker A: That is true, sir. How are we doing? [00:11:52] Speaker B: Living and then some. Because the other day I had a conversation with my youngest, Daphne. She loves sushi, but she's in that phase of early sushi adoption where you don't eat fish yet. Okay, Cucumber rolls, avocado rolls. [00:12:05] Speaker A: You creep your way. [00:12:06] Speaker B: California roll, right? And I'm like, honey, there's a world out here that you got to make the crossover to some raw fish. And I was like, tuna is the great starting point with salmon. And she goes, dad, tuna's gross. Tuna is cat food. And I said, one day we're going to go to Japan and we're going to eat some tuna and we're going to go to the market. In my back of my mind, I was like, get busy, bro. Go make some money. So you could take your kid and your family to Japan. Do these things that you want to do in life, like, really helps. That visualization, like, really helps. Because I think about it, I'm like, you know what that cost cost? About 25 grand. [00:12:45] Speaker A: I don't want to go out to Japan. [00:12:48] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. A big ass trip with the family, you know, to Japan. I think it's, it's 15 to 25. [00:12:52] Speaker A: You're right. Like, we're big travelers too. And I do gauge my current financial comfort on like, how readily, just on a whim, we're like, let's book another trip. When's our next one? Let's just book something. Like, like, we're, you know, we actually just booked something just now. And like, so it's like, so, so that's, that's the, the meter in, in my mind, it's not willing. It's not like, literally like, how much is in the bank account. It's like, how willing are we to just go, yes, you know? [00:13:21] Speaker B: Yes. I just booked tickets last night for D.C. we, we have a new niece in the family. [00:13:26] Speaker A: Oh yeah. [00:13:27] Speaker B: Sister in law had a baby. Everything's so excited. They're going to come up here for the holidays, for Christmas in Hanukkah. But everyone, all my kids were like, we don't want to wait two months. We want to see this baby. And we were like, you know what, let's go for Thanksgiving. We have 10 days off. And so that's one of those things. I go, I look up some miles and I'm like, oh, this trip is like a normal trip. Right. Let's be honest. What's a normal trip? Two to five grand. [00:13:50] Speaker A: Oh, @ least. [00:13:51] Speaker B: Right. That's like a normal little. Look, we're going to stay with them. We don't rent a car. It's this very contained thing. [00:13:57] Speaker A: Yeah. Once there's like flights and hotels involved, like, and kids, like tickets for kids. Like yeah, you're right. Multip multiple thousands no matter where you're going. [00:14:05] Speaker B: Right. So that's the normal trip. And you're right. It's almost like the emotional friction to booking that tells you kind of like how you feel about. [00:14:15] Speaker A: Are we talking about road trips or are we talking about plane trips? [00:14:20] Speaker B: My wife was like, do you want to drive to DC? I'm like, Honey, it's 16 hours. [00:14:23] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a far one. [00:14:25] Speaker B: Just. No, absolutely. [00:14:27] Speaker A: Last random bit on this before we get into business. [00:14:31] Speaker B: Okay. [00:14:31] Speaker A: I, I kick myself for not getting on the, the credit card flyer miles train sooner. So I, you know, about a year ago, year and a half ago, I switched over all my cards to United. You know, United cards. I'm in the United program with Hartford is a United hub. So I mean I don't know why like I was in Chase cards for all those years before that but like man, like it's just so much more economical to book flights using miles and racking up the miles. And so now it's like, you know, it's easy to get a first class on most trips throughout the year paid for. Like it's. [00:15:13] Speaker B: Yeah, that's good. [00:15:14] Speaker A: That's just my one tip to listeners. Like I think anyone in this industry who's going out to conferences and doing vacations with their family, just make sure all your cards, including your business card are racking up flyer miles, not just like general credit card points. You know, commit to one airline. [00:15:32] Speaker B: United. [00:15:33] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:15:33] Speaker B: I mean one of the great hacks that venture funded founders do is you are running all the company's expenses on credit card and you are accumulating that personally, it is a cheat. [00:15:48] Speaker A: And that is one of the just literally the difference between any. Any entrepreneur, like if you're running your own business versus someone who just has a W2 job. Like, we can just pool all those points, all those miles with the business expenses anyway. [00:16:03] Speaker B: Oh, yes. [00:16:04] Speaker A: Let's talk about business. [00:16:06] Speaker B: Yo. What do you got going on? What's up this week? [00:16:08] Speaker A: So this week, one of my running themes and the stuff that I've been talking about on this podcast for the past year has been my off and on, mostly off attempts at trying to get serious about content. I was talking about trying to grow my YouTube channel that started and then sputtered and then started again and then sputtered. And just in general, I think that I need to be doing more content, like, personal, like me putting out content. And I think most of it has to be video based. I think that is the best way for me to grow my reach to distribute products. And I can get more into the strategy there. But the frustration that I came into this week is like, man, how long have I been saying I want to do more content? I want to do more content. And I feel even more and more crunched on my time and my creative energy. I have a lot of creative ideas and content ideas that I want to put out there, but I'm literally not publishing the content that I want to be pressing publish on. Why is that? Because there's a bottleneck. That bottleneck is clearly me. So I need to solve that problem. So I'm going to hire someone. [00:17:28] Speaker B: Please explain. Because I have this problem. I feel like a lot of people have this problem. How do you. [00:17:33] Speaker A: So I have not made the hire yet. I'm talking to one guy about this, but I'm still open to talking to people. And basically what I want to have is the ability for me to record or write content on a regular basis. Hit record. Like, I literally have my good camera sitting right here. I should just be able to hit, record raw footage, put it into a Dropbox or something, hand it off to my content producer, and they do all of the editing, all of the whatever, Create a thumbnail, write up the show notes, schedule it, publish it, send the thing, send my written thing to the newsletter. If it's a blog post, then, like, do the spell check and publish it. Like, I just want to. I only want to be on the mic or on the camera or write the raw content in a page and hand that off and everything else should be done. I don't want to do the post production. Right. [00:18:35] Speaker B: Okay. So the T ball analogy that we have described before, set it up, Let me walk up, take a swing, walk away. [00:18:42] Speaker A: That's right. [00:18:43] Speaker B: You're gonna, you're gonna attempt to kind of set that up. [00:18:45] Speaker A: I want, I just want to remove any excuse for. Because I, I feel like every time I try to just create a video about something, I'll spend an hour at least, you know, like scripting and then, and then recording and delivering it and then like another two hours editing it and getting it up. And I just can't do that. I have other projects to do, you know? Right. So I, so that's the thought. So I am hiring someone who is mostly a video editor, but someone to handle all the other legwork that, the publishing that like cutting it into short form and distributing to different platforms and repurposing all this kind of stuff. Right. That's the role I did want to talk about my favorite approach to hiring people, especially people like this. And this goes across different types of roles and it's this part time retainer model and a queue based system. Let me talk, let me explain what I'm talking about. My customer success person is on a flat monthly part time retainer. We don't have a strict schedule. She just kind of shows up most days a week, not full days. She has other stuff going on, but she just takes care of what I need her to take care of in that role. She's answering customers questions, she's talking to them on the phone, she's, she's filing bug reports, all this different stuff. The video guy that I'm going to be hiring soon, same sort of idea, like we're agreeing on a flat monthly retainer fee. I'm not expecting them to work full time. It's going to be a part time thing. I don't exactly care how many hours or which days a week this person works. What I do care about is just I'm going to have a constant queue of new pieces of raw content and I want him to be working through that queue and getting them published. And we're not like a magazine, we're not like a newspaper where we have to be publishing by a deadline every single Monday. Like not like that. Like I don't care when exactly when things get published. I just want things coming out on a pretty regular basis, you know, and that's basically it. Just like I'm not tracking hours here, I'm not necessarily paying per deliverable. I'm just saying like you're the person to work through my queue and you can manage your own pace as long as we sort of agree that we're publishing like a good amount of content on a regular basis. [00:21:33] Speaker B: Okay. So you can find some form of equilibrium. We do this with the designer. We pay a flat amount. I don't track hours, he doesn't track hours. [00:21:41] Speaker A: There's no point in that. [00:21:42] Speaker B: Right. Is the level of work, does it make sense then? Yes. You don't need to be one month you'll do more hours than you would have if you had paid hourly. One month, you'll do fewer. [00:21:52] Speaker A: Yeah. And I really like the queue based approach. So like literally we have a Kanban board. So like it's extremely similar to my developer, how I work with the developer. Right. So like I have a developer, she's actually full time but like she just has a long list in her queue that I keep adding, adding car, adding issues to. We use linear. So I just add an issue to the bottom of her queue and she's going to get to it and then work it through the system. And different things take different amounts of time. That's okay, whatever. And then I can, I can reorder things. Like if I want something to come out sooner, then I'll put that near the top of her queue. Or it's less priority, then I'll put it near the bottom. But like it's just a queue. That's all it is. And the same thing should happen with content. I expect to have a Kanban board and I'm going to continuously drop new pieces of raw content into the board and he's going to take it through the rest of the stages. [00:22:49] Speaker B: Okay. I'm very curious about this. I think this is a large and painful problem. [00:22:56] Speaker A: Yep. [00:22:57] Speaker B: And if the content comes out good, then I mean there must already be services that do this for people. [00:23:07] Speaker A: Yeah, there's services that like do content for you. And of course there's also like editing services. Sometimes I don't like those because they are too strict on like what you are purchasing and what they will. They're productized services. Right. Like I used to run. So like so we, so we have to have our clients fitting into our mold. This, this is why I much prefer to hire individual freelancers or consultants or someone to just be my person. And we can be flexible. We can constantly iterate on like because I'm going to have different types of content. Sometimes it's going to be a YouTube video, sometimes it's going to be a Twitter thread, sometimes it's going to be a blog post, sometimes it's going to be a mini course. Like, like I just want to put all that stuff into a big pile and have it, you know. [00:23:56] Speaker B: Okay, so you are, you are not assuming, you're specifically assuming that there's different forms of content. It's not like I will give you a five minute video, you turn it into a 60 second video with editing, post production and then go here you're saying sometimes it's going to be written. [00:24:11] Speaker A: And you're going to be blog post. Okay. [00:24:15] Speaker B: I'm very curious to see how it works. I think it's because this is, I'm. [00:24:18] Speaker A: Talking about like my personal content. Right. Like, it's not like a, it's not like we're developing a quote unquote campaign for a. Like here's what the campaign is structured around. We're gonna deploy this campaign to do that thing. Like this is just me ongoing, long period of time committing to like the long term. Like I just need. Because like I feel like my whatever audience and following has stagnated and it's been like hovering around the same level of growth. Same email subscribers, same YouTube subscribers, same Twitter followers. And to me that's like, I don't think that this should be important for most people, but in my case I think it is important. Agree. Especially given the products that I'm getting into with Instrumentl.dev like one of the, one of the challenges that I have right now with my current reach and audience is that like a lot of people listen to this podcast, which is a pretty wide range of like startup people. And some are developers, some are not, some are more business focused. [00:25:26] Speaker B: Yep. Some of my employees, I guess, you. [00:25:29] Speaker A: Know, and so I'm, I'm getting into building a developer tool. So I need to start to put out more opinionated content on how I build stuff. So development, related content, design, product stuff, a lot of that is going to be video based. And yeah, that's, it's like it's a priority. It's been a priority for a long time. I have not been executing on it. So I need to hire someone and that's. [00:25:58] Speaker B: I'm very interested to see how you work it out. Hell yeah. [00:26:01] Speaker A: Damn it. [00:26:02] Speaker B: Okay, you want to hear about my week? [00:26:04] Speaker A: What do you got? [00:26:05] Speaker B: I'm Jason Freed. This week, baby. Speaking of Chicago, I'm 37. Signals I am reducing. [00:26:10] Speaker A: We are removing features, adding by subtraction. [00:26:14] Speaker B: Yes, yes. It's, it's funny how we got here. I'll explain. And then the immediate reaction from everyone on the team, like Enthusiastic? Yes. Let's make it less complex. Let's reduce this other thing that's not necessary. So okay, I've spoken about it the last few weeks. We are very focused on onboarding. [00:26:38] Speaker A: Right. [00:26:39] Speaker B: We fixed our signup flow that's new and wants to go see it. Go to heyrosie.com what you'll see there is a multi path signup flow that provides a preview of the AI voice agent before you need to create an account. So this is our interpretation of the signup flow before account creation. And next up is great, you've created an account. Right now we just kind of dump you into an admin and say good luck and here's intercom. Please get in touch with us. So we did that on purpose because it did make sense to try to build an onboarding flow when you don't know what you're talking about. And that turned out to be right. We didn't know what we were talking about. We did not understand exactly how people thought about it, what their expectations were and so on. So good. It's ugly and our activation rate is bad and we're watching a lot of signups every day. Like that's increasing. That's great. But it feels wasteful because you're seeing signups get put in the admin and you know you're not maximizing. Okay, that helped put pressure on all of us to say, all right, we're ready to do this self serve onboarding that actually guides people through the setup. Now that we know who these people are, what they're looking for, what's important to them. As we are finalizing that, that's now like being, you know, it's over at the developers, like all the design decisions have been made, all that that's now being built that forced a lot of focus around features because if you're looking at your onboarding and your guided setup flow, you're asking yourself which features are necessary for us to surface and to force some type of enablement settings, something so that the feature is useful. [00:28:26] Speaker A: Right. [00:28:26] Speaker B: If we have a notifications feature, anytime a phone call comes in and Rosie gets the phone, what we were told was that you need notification, otherwise you don't know that you're missing calls like, okay, didn't realize that are bad. You're right. So we built a notifications feature for notifications. You need to be able to turn it on or maybe have it on by default. And then you need an email address. You can assume it's the account email address and then you can Also put in a phone number to get sms. Hey, you have a new call from Rosie. Click here to see the recording. Okay. That feature you realize. Oh, that actually needs to be in the onboarding. So when we looked at the onboarding and we're forced to make these decisions around which features are so important that we need to inject them into the actual guided setup and which features are. Now that you're ready, here's this other stuff that you can do that's a. [00:29:17] Speaker A: Good one for activation too. This is something directly that I think was helpful in Clarity Flow since the early days is the fact that we are notifying users when a new message is sent and when a message is viewed because it pulls them back in. [00:29:35] Speaker B: Yes. [00:29:35] Speaker A: Like on a regular basis, be able to do. [00:29:37] Speaker B: Who else do you want to notify? Right. The ideal is that we're sending out an email to four or five people every time a call comes in. [00:29:44] Speaker A: Right. [00:29:45] Speaker B: To me, that's adoption because at that point in time, to take that away is painful. So here's right, here's an email with a transcription and a summary of a phone call. How do you want to deal with that phone call compared to. Or you could not pay us and you could just handle that phone call yourself. So like, I love that setup. So as we started to look at these features and try to understand which are really important and which are being put off to the side, what we were confronted with was should we actually have these features at all? The ones that we're saying are not necessary for a guided setup and we're putting over here as like, keep fine tuning or you know, keep going with your rosy setup. We started to look at those features very skeptically and said, do we actually need the ability to transfer a call to a different phone number? Is that actually necessary? [00:30:41] Speaker A: Right now that seems nice to have. [00:30:43] Speaker B: Right? So if it's nice to have, should we put it in there as a nice to have or should we remove it and really nail down our base tier and our base tier. [00:30:55] Speaker A: Right. [00:30:56] Speaker B: So it's almost like this synthesis of this information from different places. Because we've been in the market for a while now, we've got paying customers and they are opinionated and they're not all super happy. Right. Everyone's like, I want this, I want that. How come this doesn't work? And then you really start to pay attention to where the support issues are coming from. And then if you match up those support issues with a feature that doesn't feel necessary and essential because you just looked at your onboarding in that way, you start to realize, oh, wait a second, maybe this feature doesn't belong here at all. Maybe this feature should actually be pulled out and reintroduced later when we have a better understanding of the feature, more confidence in its ability to be reliably good and maybe belongs in a higher paid tier. So all this stuff started swirling around and what really popped out and it was Sam who really liked, introduced it all the way out into the sunlight because he's the one that speaks to customers all day. What he said was, I think we're a little off on our product market fit search. It's not that people want a receptionist that's a human replacement. It's that people want a better voicemail and they don't want to pay for an answering service. So it's like this little shift toward, toward being really good at taking messages. Think about a phone call. If you call a local business. [00:32:19] Speaker A: Yeah. It's almost like instead of calling it like an AI receptionist, it's like a smart voicemail or something like that. Like a. [00:32:25] Speaker B: Right, right now it's AI answering service. Right. Which is kind of like, like the new headline I'm going to publish today is like 10x better than voicemail, 10x cheaper than an answering service. [00:32:36] Speaker A: Oh, I like that. [00:32:37] Speaker B: Yeah, that's basically. That's what, that's what it is. [00:32:40] Speaker A: I like that. [00:32:41] Speaker B: And so when we started to look at like that positioning, then all of a sudden we start to realize, oh, the features for that are basically what we put into the guided setup. They're not these other things. Let's just start ripping them out of the admin and launch. Not launch, have the signup flow, the onboarding flow, the messaging and the positioning for a smaller, tighter product. [00:33:11] Speaker A: Man, I'm so excited to hear you talk about this, dude. This to me, what you are learning here and making these adjustments. This is to me the most exciting part about starting new products and positioning and listening to customers and doing that. Figuring that out, man, that's the best thing. Because it's like we always start with something that we think that we need to build in terms of what is this product. And our customers just think about it differently. Our customers put the product in a category themselves. Whether we like it or not and whether we agree with how they categorize it or not, they are going to do that. And it's our job to figure out like what bucket are they putting us in and how do we meet them there, you know? [00:33:59] Speaker B: Yes. And the likelihood that you have it right at first is low. [00:34:03] Speaker A: Very low. Yeah. [00:34:04] Speaker B: Unless you are building it specifically for yourself and there are a lot of people like you, the likelihood is that you're a little off. So this, the way we are talking about this internally is this is our first adjustment in search of product market fit. Since being out in the market with our initial hypothesis, we think people want an AI to answer their phone. It was like our first broad. [00:34:27] Speaker A: And you can't get to today without shipping what you've already shipped. [00:34:32] Speaker B: Yes, yes. [00:34:33] Speaker A: You cannot figure this out with just customer calls or surveys or observations of a market. You have to actually put something out there and get real customers using your thing and then seeing where's the friction or where's the drop off. [00:34:48] Speaker B: Yes. And when I look back at the money spent slash wasted around getting people into the product, I realize that is the investment in this insight that to drive a bunch of people in through the system to sign up and then say no, wrong or yes. Right. But this other thing. So it's just we're at like this incredibly exciting moment because what we're doing is when we launch the new onboarding on November 4, we are launching with fewer features. [00:35:24] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:35:24] Speaker B: So the onboarding goes there and we don't make the recommendations on these other features that you should go set up. It's like two or three things, but we're eliminating four big features that you just won't be able to find in the admin at all. So it feels like, ooh, we have a chance to have it lined up that our advertising and messaging all the way at the top of the funnel will be about these messages and voicemail and answering services, not about appointments and receptionists and all this other stuff. You'll get to the site, it'll talk about that. The signup flow works with it, the onboarding works with it, the feature set works with it. And I'm like, okay, now we're about to learn new stuff over the next few weeks. [00:36:01] Speaker A: Yeah. It's so interesting, man, that learning from, from customers. I love it. Like, one of the things that I have on my list here is I've got two more things. But the thing that's most relevant to what you were just talking about is so I'm actively now building@ Instrumentl.dev okay, so, so this is a, a new product that's in the works. It's not even close to ready to put out yet. It's a Rails UI components library for the Rails ecosystem. And so I'm taking my components that I use to build Rails applications and I'm starting to productize them into a system that lets you generate and insert components and put them into your projects. So what I have there now, on Instrumentl.dev, when you go there, you can click and put your email in and then you get to a survey and on the back there's a survey with a whole bunch of questions that try to ask exactly what we were just talking about. What I'm trying to get to is how do you, as someone who's at least somewhat interested in what I'm building here, what I showed on the homepage, if you're interested in that, you've put your email in. Now I have a lot of questions for you. What I'm asking you are things like what other components, library products have you purchased? What do the best ones get right? What do they get wrong? How do they do documentation well or not well? Do you like it when they're more of an app template or more of a pick your own components style? So 10 more questions like that, right? And then I'm getting all these responses back now, and I'm reading every single one. And I'm so aware now of how different it is and in many ways more difficult to build a product for developers compared to, let's say, a SaaS. You know, it's just so, so many more opinions. [00:38:01] Speaker B: Can I give you my guess into what that's like? And then, like, you talk about your experience, please. My guess is that the battlefield of disagreement is very heightened with developers. Meaning there. There's a bigger base, a large number of people, but very opinionated differences. You almost need. You. You need thick skin, you need to be able to say cool story, but no, I, I'm not doing that that way. [00:38:30] Speaker A: You are very accurate on that. That's exactly what I'm seeing. There's definitely little details in the responses where I'm starting to see some patterns emerge which I 100% like. I love to see these particular patterns, like sentences that people are writing. I'm like, yes, I believe the same thing. I have the same opinion. Everyone's frustrated with the lack of this and all these other component libraries. I love to hear that. That's great. [00:38:56] Speaker B: I saw you talk about that on Twitter. [00:38:57] Speaker A: Yeah, I posted one of them. Yeah. But there's still a bunch of other elements where the audience is like 50, 50. Like, there's 50 in this camp who do things this way and 50 in this camp who don't like the way that that other Camp does it and we do it this way. Right. And so. And there's a bunch of other examples of that. This and I just think that like for a developer product, especially a components product, it's. You're just gonna. Everyone builds things differently. Everyone has different preferences. So like I just have to go into this accepting the fact that like not everyone is gonna be on board or this is not gonna fit everyone's style. But my, the way that I combat that is actually the way that I like to build my products, which is I'm sticking to the most Rails core way of doing things. Right. So this product is for people who use the stack that I use, which is Ruby on Rails Stimulus js, the new Rails Hotwire Turbo stuff and Tailwind css. [00:40:09] Speaker B: Does it have to be all of those? [00:40:12] Speaker A: Yes. [00:40:13] Speaker B: Okay. Okay. [00:40:14] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:40:15] Speaker B: If you did something different in the. [00:40:17] Speaker A: All of those are the most common stack if you're building in Rails. [00:40:21] Speaker B: Okay, great. So you're not like super opinionated from a unique Rebel point of view, like only. [00:40:26] Speaker A: Right. So what I just. Rails Hotwire Stimulus talend like that. Those are the core. There are some people who don't like Talwind, but more and more people do. That's like the base most common setup. Then there are other third party tools layered on top of that. So if you're involved in the rail space there are things called like View component and, and Flex, like PH Flex and other sort of third party things which in my opinion they sort of like overcomplicate components. Some people love them, a lot of people don't like them. So what I'm doing and I don't use those things, I stick to erb partials. I'm getting into the technical weeds here, but I'm trying to keep things as simple and Railsy as possible, to keep it as adoptable by as many people as possible. And it just so happens that that's the simplest, cleanest way to do this and it's the way that I prefer to build my products. It's very much like the 37 signals basecamp approach to like they're the makers of Rails like you know, so I'm taking that approach. And of course you could still take these components, insert them into your projects and then enhance them in other ways or adap adapt them in different ways. That's the whole point. But so. So I'm definitely going to be making a lot of like product decisions and I'm already responding to people's surveys saying like, I know that you're into that View component thing. Like, I'm just letting you know, like, I'm not taking that approach with this. So there's going to be some things like saying no and following the vision. And I'm also taking in a lot of this information and going down these technical rabbit holes and learning more and more and figuring out like, well, is my way really the best way and how opinionated do I want to be on certain things? And, you know, so it's very much a give and take and it's a learning approach because it's like building a SaaS, trying to get to product market fit on a SaaS. It's like, all right, these customers have this exact problem. Let's just build a feature to solve that problem and deliver it. [00:42:40] Speaker B: Only what they say matters. [00:42:42] Speaker A: Yeah. And what's the most efficient way to build the solution to their problem? Let's just build that. Yeah, in this. It's more like I'm taking on the responsibility of giving you some, like, I'm not trying to solve all of your problems. I'm just trying to make your lives easier as builders, you know, so how can I help? How can I remain niched while not turning off the majority of users in this ecosystem? So that's just been an interesting give and take and I'm learning a ton from those surveys as I build. And it's also like firing me up when I hear people describe things like, oh, I've picked up this or that UI components library, but it's not made for the Rails ecosystem and adapting it to Rails is a lot of legwork. And I couldn't agree more. And so that's a big reason why I'm building this. [00:43:33] Speaker B: Cool. I feel like you're about to go through a Indiana Jones gauntlet of neck beards and hate and being told why. [00:43:44] Speaker A: And my, my imposter syndrome. My imposter syndrome here is like through the roof. [00:43:49] Speaker B: Oh, that stuff. Because everyone's a more senior dev than you are. [00:43:52] Speaker A: I mean, they literally are, you know, because like I'm, I'm just stronger on the front end and weaker on back end. You know, I can build stuff, but I'm. Everyone, everyone's going to have a more technical understanding of things. And I, and I, but I sometimes I like, I try to use that to my strength, like, keep it simple. It's supposed to be simple. You know, we don't have to overcomplicate. [00:44:13] Speaker B: Okay, cool. [00:44:14] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:44:14] Speaker B: I wonder if you need like a, like a trusted mentor on, you know, very senior engineer. [00:44:22] Speaker A: I've been Thinking about that. Like, I like to get into mastermind. [00:44:25] Speaker B: Groups, but I'm not being stupid here. [00:44:28] Speaker A: Well, exactly. I've actually been chatting with more of my technical friends lately about this kind of stuff, and I would love to get into more of a mastermind group where I could gut check, insanity check. A lot of these technical decisions. For sure. [00:44:42] Speaker B: Right. It's, you know, if you're gonna get used to arguing back and saying, yeah, I hear you, you could do it that way. But I do it this way for these reasons. It would be great to have a sanity check, someone to be able to read something like that and say, actually, you should actually never do that. Here's why. [00:44:57] Speaker A: Exactly. Yeah, yeah. [00:44:58] Speaker B: Don't be. Don't let me. Don't let me look too stupid. [00:45:01] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:45:02] Speaker B: When I'm out here. [00:45:03] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, because, like, when I, When I hear that kind of stuff, I. That's when I go into the rabbit hole and be like, all right, let me learn everything I need, everything I could possibly learn about this particular question. Like, is this right or wrong? And. And I think that's part of it, you know? Yeah. Cool. [00:45:21] Speaker B: It's very interesting. We talk a lot about front end and, you know, basically why things take as long as they do when you have someone really skilled and very experienced. Right. We've worked with our front end engineer since Carthook. She was one of the first engineers there, so. First engineer that focused on front end exclusively and it took our app from. Everything on the front end is actually built by backend engineers and you know what that means. It's not great. And she has been with us for years and years and years and she often has to explain to us, look, here's why it needs to take a long time because if I do it quick and dirty, here's what's going to happen in the future. So we need to do it this way. [00:46:03] Speaker A: Yep, yep. 100%. Dude. Cool. I got one more thing, but you have something else you want to go to? [00:46:11] Speaker B: You know, the only thing I have that comes to mind. We launched a blog. [00:46:17] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. What's this about? [00:46:20] Speaker B: So it's our first blog post from Rosie and at Rally. I thought I looked at the blog as a pointless investment because to try to rank for content in the e commerce world is just. It's just very, very difficult. And we were going after enterprise that you don't really read content the same way. So I just didn't. [00:46:45] Speaker A: 10 benefits of using an AI phone answering system. [00:46:49] Speaker B: Yeah, there you go. So starting basic, but Rosie's different. And so what we're doing right now is we are working with an SEO company that was highly recommended. And the first thing that we're doing with them is around a content plan and we found a writer and this is the first blog post. So we went through the process and then we went through the hurdle of, all right, well, if we're gonna have a blog, so we gotta design it, we gotta make these decisions. And the font and the colors and the spacing and the blog page versus the blog post page. So we just finished that and now it feels like we're in good shape to just start publishing regularly. [00:47:29] Speaker A: Nice. [00:47:29] Speaker B: And it's the first. [00:47:31] Speaker A: Sorry, go ahead. [00:47:31] Speaker B: I was gonna say it's the first time that I've ever looked at SEO as like this long term strategic thing. Here are the keywords, here's what our competitors rank for. And now we just kind of put our head down for months. [00:47:43] Speaker A: Yeah, I was going to say, are you doing the playbook where it's like you have like a long list of sort of long tail keywords. Let's just make sure we have blog posts that cover all of them. [00:47:52] Speaker B: Yeah. What we first did is we hired a company to do link building and without a blog, just a few pages on our site and then just build links. And that has taken us to a pretty good place. I think we're like 25 or 26 and like that like, you know, domain rank thing. And now the next layer is what this SEO company does in their initial assessment is they basically create a map for you of which pages you need on your website. Like the entire all the pages over the next X number of months, build out all these pages, these industry pages, these article pages, these feature pages, and like this is what your site should look like. And then the content with the writer. And so we're just going to start to just go about doing what we're supposed to be doing. I am very novice in SEO. I understand most of the concepts, but I don't understand how to accomplish any of it these days. [00:48:47] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:48:48] Speaker B: So the way I look at it is just a decent portion of our marketing budget, 10, 15% of our marketing budget for the next foreseeable future. Just basically don't look for short term ROI from it. Just see it as an investment. I'm almost looking at it as an annual investment. This is how much I'm going to invest this year in SEO and ignore the fact that it goes out the window every month. [00:49:13] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's hard to Yeah, I mean, I feel like, I don't know, I've gone so many different directions with SEO and I've landed back on the fact that like we do like SEO is our most important channel, but it still all comes back to the homepage and a very few number of bottom of funnel pages and optimizations and all the content and money that I spent on the long tail blog post kind of stuff was looking back on it. I don't know if it was wasteful. Like I think it was wasteful in terms of those pages don't necessarily rank for stuff and don't bring us quality traffic that turned into customers. I don't know if it might have helped with the overall domain authority of the site. Maybe. But at the end of the day the people who find us on Google, they tend to land on our homepage or another high level, top level product page that leads them to sign up as customers. But we still are doing blog content now. Much fewer and far between. But it's. Kat writes she's our customer success person and any new blog articles that we are writing, we're really not even caring about SEO keyword optimization. She's just writing for our customers. So like she, she talks and helps customers all day. Part of her role. Like I've given her a task of like every month. Just like based on what you're learning from our customers come up with an idea for an article that would help our customers do what they're trying to do and just write about that. And we've. And she's published a few of those. She's a great writer as it is. So like we've published a few of those and I. And it's also like a good piece of content that we can send to our newsletter which reactivates some people who've been looking at. And she's talking about real use cases for clarity flow. So these are very clarity flow focused articles. Like how to do this in clarity flow. You know. [00:51:16] Speaker B: Right. You can categorize them as lower in the funnel. [00:51:19] Speaker A: Yeah. Bottom of funnel. Or like even more just like did you know you can, you can run a course funnel using clarity flow. Like here's how you would set that up and you know, so stuff like that. [00:51:32] Speaker B: Okay, cool. [00:51:33] Speaker A: Yeah, man. [00:51:33] Speaker B: What were you going to. [00:51:34] Speaker A: I got one more thing. This is about my consulting work lately which has been picking up in terms of volume and busyness. So right now I'm in the mode now that it's starting to pick up. So I have like two developers coming on board next week to start to work with me on these consulting projects. Basically transforming from just me being a solo consultant to being a small development shop where we're running multiple MVP projects. One of the big bottlenecks is proposals. So the typical flow is somebody sends me an email and it says, I'm interested in. I have an idea for a new mvp. I know that you offer the one month MVP service. Let's talk about that. Great. Here's my link to book a call. We do a live call, 20 minutes. I learn everything I can about their thing and then I go back and I write up a proposal and I sometimes spend like half a day writing a very detailed proposal on. Here's what a four week or a six week or an eight week version of your idea would look like. And here's item by item, the things that we will build in this number of weeks. So it takes me a long time to be very clear about what we're building and what we're not going to include in the scope. So one, one step that I did this week was I started to bring in AI into the process ChatGPT to help me take my rough notes from the call and just format them into the proposal. That definitely saved a lot of time in producing that V1 proposal to the client. Right. So I can. That, that has taken me down from like four hours down to like 20 minutes. [00:53:23] Speaker B: Okay. [00:53:24] Speaker A: Which is fantastic. Yeah. But there's still another thing that I haven't quite figured out yet, but I'm starting to mull it over, so I'll just do it out loud here on the podcast. Yeah. And that is, you know, this is sort of a classic problem that that many agencies and consultants have is like, how much time do you invest up front to hammer out the scope and the proposal and negotiate the terms and what's included in the project and not before you agree to move forward and get paid and have a deposit and all that. Right. Because it could very easily. And I've seen this happen a number of times. I've had a couple projects where I just send them one proposal and two weeks later I have a payment coming in and we're starting a project. And that's great. I've had other things where I send them a proposal, they come back with questions. Oh, I didn't realize you, what you wanted is actually more complex. Let me give you another proposal. Let me give you a third proposal. Oh, there's still more questions. What about this and that. Okay, let's, let's tweak it. Now we're on a fourth proposal. Now I've, now I've literally invested like 10, 20 hours of my time and I'm. And I still don't even know if this is going to be a project or not. Mm, not good. So that's not good. And this is where people end up. [00:54:44] Speaker B: Doing the paid proposal, paid discovery. [00:54:47] Speaker A: So that's what I'm thinking about, you know, but that's also challenging because it's like, you don't want to just say like, look, pay me X dollars and then we'll find out what's what. [00:55:00] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:55:01] Speaker A: And I want to offer some sort of value and also like, pay me X dollars. But like, before you do that, you're going to have no idea what this is going to cost in the end. Like, I don't like that either. Like, what if I'm, if I'm hiring someone I want to have an expectation of like, all right, well, are we going to end up with $100,000 proposal or a $20,000? Because yeah, help me question of like, help me understand what ballpark we're playing in here. So, okay, so, so my thought right now is I'm going to keep things mostly the same, have that initial call and give them a quick first proposal, which I can use AI and I can do that within a half an hour off of the first call. Or maybe in that thing, I'll position it like, if we're good to go, this is simple enough. Let's just move forward. Here's the quote. Let's do the project. Great. Or you can hire me for a one week engagement for this very palatable dollar amount. And in that one week engagement, I'm going to do more of a deep dive and I'm going to create some visual wireframes of the screens that go into. This is another problem related to this, which is like, I currently give a proposal just using Notion, which is a text page, a bulleted list of the things that I'm going to build, and then I give you a video of me talking through that list and trying to explain to you verbally. Here you're trying to picture this and here's what we're going to build. And look, no matter how detailed I explain it, I think that most clients have a hard time visualizing what is it really are we going to build here. I think what most clients want is they want to look at screens. They want to see like screen one is going to do this, screen two, screen three, and users are going to be Able to click this button and it's going to do this, right? Yeah. [00:56:56] Speaker B: Help visualize. [00:56:57] Speaker A: Yeah. And that's easy enough to do, but I'm not going to do that for free. I can't spend the time to create a wireframes and user flow and these visual explainers. Like there has to be a price point on that to do that time. So I'm thinking like some sort of like a one week engagement to take your idea into a much more tangible thing that we can look at that we can understand together. And the thought would be like, whatever I price that at, that'll be credited against the project if you end up hiring my team to actually build it. If not, you came away with something super valuable with a clear roadmap. You can think about it some more. You can shop it around to other providers if you want, but if you come back to us, then you get that credited toward your project. That's the thing that I think I'm going to start to introduce pretty soon. [00:57:50] Speaker B: Yeah, it matches very closely to my good experience with the SEO company. Recommendation from a friend, little trust building, get on a call, talk for 30 minutes and then the offer is an analysis. The analysis comes with all the pages you need to build on your website and a content plan and a bunch of keyword stuff that I pay for. Right. And now I'm waiting for that to be generated. So that is the first service is costs money, not a commitment. And once I have that, I can go do it myself. We can do it internally. We can say we want you to do all of it. We can say we want you to help us with this part, but not this part. And then what I found myself wanting to know before I made the decision on whether or not to go forward with the first limited project was let's just say we want to work with you after. What's the range of price? They gave me a range. It was in my price range and expectations. And then I feel good moving forward with the initial scoped limited project that I know is going to be valuable no matter what. [00:59:04] Speaker A: That's 100% exactly what I'm, what I'm thinking here. And the, in my case, I'm delivering MVP software application products as a service. Right. And so, you know, I'm doing a, I'm finding I'm having to do a lot of explain, not that they don't understand this concept but like I still have to explain it in terms of scope, which, you know, we all know the infographic that floats around like for MVP products. You start with a skateboard, and then you build up to a bicycle, and then you build up to a car. Like, everyone comes in with an idea and a concept for what their car should look like, and I have to tell them that, like, okay, well, the four week version of this looks more like a skateboard or maybe almost a bicycle, you know, and here's, and here's like. So I have to give them a proposal for like 60 or 70% of what they actually want, and I have to explain to them why. And then, and then here's the actual proposal for 100%. Right. So, but also there's like, logistical things. Like we can't build the 80, 90% feature because functionally we need to build the foundation first. Right. And so just logistically, things have to be built in a certain order. And it's just so hard to really explain that kind of stuff without looking at it in wireframes. Cool. [01:00:27] Speaker B: I like it. If you want me to send over, like, my conversations and the proposal, I feel like it's. [01:00:33] Speaker A: I would love. [01:00:33] Speaker B: Their process is very similar to what you're describing. [01:00:36] Speaker A: Yeah, that would be, that would be great. And anyone listening to this, because I know that there are a lot of, you know, development agencies out there who have. And this is a very common model, like you said. Like, it's, it's a very common, like a, like a paid discovery sort of thing. I like to productize things. I productized like the one month app thing. Unfortunately, somebody already owns a one week app, but, you know, the, you know, like, I'm thinking about, like putting a price point on it and making it like a valuable thing. Even if you just have like an idea that you want to flesh out and don't even intend to hire me to build it, like, I still want it to be like a valuable mini service, you know? [01:01:14] Speaker B: Cool. I like it. Well, that's it. You know what this weekend is? It's prime apple picking. Pumpkins, cider donuts. [01:01:25] Speaker A: I was just. Last night, I was watching the Daily show, and they did a funny bit on apple picking. They're like, who, what are we gonna. We, we eat like one apple a month. What are we gonna do with a bucket of apples? You know? [01:01:35] Speaker B: Okay, that might be your family. My family goes through $50 of apples every week. I don't know. We're. We're apple crazy. [01:01:42] Speaker A: Yeah. My kids. [01:01:43] Speaker B: Fifteen plus apples a week. [01:01:46] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:01:47] Speaker B: I don't know. [01:01:48] Speaker A: Just nice, man. [01:01:48] Speaker B: Just pushing through it. [01:01:50] Speaker A: Yeah. We now, you know, we do the pumpkin picking. Just like, get a pumpkin and then just throw it out. Like, you know. [01:01:55] Speaker B: You know, you don't carve. Mine's my kids. We. [01:01:57] Speaker A: We carve. Sometimes they. They paint them. Yeah. Yes. [01:02:00] Speaker B: There's usually crying. There's some screaming involved. There's. Dad, you're doing everything wrong. This. There's a lot of that. But, you know, I. I car. [01:02:08] Speaker A: When I was a kid, we, like, kids would, like, walk around my town and smash, like, the band name Smashing Pumpkins. That was a real thing. [01:02:17] Speaker B: Look, you and I from Long island, you know, it's a different thing. [01:02:20] Speaker A: It's a different scene. [01:02:21] Speaker B: The level of violence and danger and, like, fear involved in Halloween is not normal. [01:02:26] Speaker A: The way I'm realizing, like, now. I don't know if it's this generation or just where I live now, but, like, it was not what Rockville center in Long island was like. It was, like, the one day. Halloween in that town was the one day a year where, like, everyone, parents and police, sort of, like, tolerated a light level of, like, mischief. Yes. And, like, mayhem. People would have, like, shaving cream fights and eggs and Smashing Pumpkins. And remember the shaving toilet paper? [01:02:54] Speaker B: You stick the needle in the shaving cream, and they use the lighter to melt the plastic around it. So the hole was very skinny. So it would shoot out 15ft. Yes. [01:03:04] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. [01:03:04] Speaker B: I don't want any part of that. [01:03:07] Speaker A: Somebody last year, you rarely see this in Connecticut, but somebody, like, threw toilet paper up on. On, like, a tree near my house. [01:03:15] Speaker B: Okay. [01:03:15] Speaker A: Some kids. Some kids were, like, running around, like, you know, and I'm like, man, that's. That's annoying. I gotta. I gotta rip it down. But part of me is like, all right, respect. I did that when I was a kid. [01:03:28] Speaker B: The kids around here, I don't know if it's like the Ferris Bueller's Day off, like, North Shore of Chicago vibe, but they're. They're a little mischievous. My house has been toilet papered multiple times. [01:03:37] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. [01:03:38] Speaker B: I have three daughters. There's always some idiot out there ranging between ages 8 and, like, 12 doing something stupid. And teepee is annoying because as soon. [01:03:48] Speaker A: As it gets wet, it sticks up there. [01:03:50] Speaker B: Yes, yes. Anyway, I'm an old dad now, Brian. We just got to end this off in the right way. We're podcasters. This is a podcast. There is a podcast mega event happening today with the Orange man going on Joe Rogan. [01:04:06] Speaker A: Oh, is it really? I didn't know about that. [01:04:08] Speaker B: That will be an interesting podcast event overall. [01:04:12] Speaker A: Oh, that's crazy. [01:04:13] Speaker B: It's cool that podcasts have well broken into the mainstream, including politics. And now everyone does podcasts, for sure. [01:04:21] Speaker A: I heard, yeah, Like, I heard Tim Walls on Smart List the other day. Not exactly a podcaster, but, like, you know, Kamala Harris went on Howard Stern. You know, I do want to call out that daddy. [01:04:33] Speaker B: It's a big podcast. [01:04:34] Speaker A: Yeah, apparently that's a big one. I look, most of these things I don't tune into because it's just such politician bullshit. They. They have their canned answers, and it's just nonsense. I must say, I had, like, Howard Stern. I'm such a long time, lifelong fan of his. I truly think he's, like, best ever the goat when it comes to interviewing anyone. And the interview that he did with Harris, like, two weeks ago, it was one of the few where he can actually get her to speak real. And he does this with multiple politicians and other people. Like, he just has this thing about how he. Maybe it's, like, catching them off guard or making them comfortable, but, like, they start to take down their guard and actually be a real person and they're. That was a really good one, I thought. [01:05:22] Speaker B: Cool. I have searched for her, like, real self to come out. It's kind of rare. [01:05:30] Speaker A: Yeah, it's like an hour long. You got to get through it. She takes, like, 10, 20 minutes to get into that comfort zone. But then it's like, oh, these are some real stories coming from her now. [01:05:39] Speaker B: So it's like, yeah, yeah, I would like to listen because the caricature is not good. And the clips of people on Twitter basically, like, here's the worst possible 30 seconds of her. You know that if that's what you take in all the time, you're like. [01:05:53] Speaker A: Who is this person? Or if you watch, like, not like. Like, whatever, like CNN stuff, like, it's always gonna be like, right, Trump's packaged and canned and like, yeah. [01:06:03] Speaker B: Do you see Trump on Andrew Schultz? I'm not a big fan of Andrew Schultz, but that was. It was just kind of like, when you are there long enough, you do start to get your guard down. And then you're like, oh, there's a person in there somewhere that I can kind of see. [01:06:19] Speaker A: Right. [01:06:20] Speaker B: Whole thing's so crazy. [01:06:22] Speaker A: It's all over soon. It's all over soon, folks. [01:06:24] Speaker B: Yep. Apple cider donuts. Family. [01:06:27] Speaker A: Yep. More important. [01:06:28] Speaker B: All right, brother, Later. Thanks for listening.