What's up, everyone? This is Cortland from IndieHackers.com, and you're listening to
the IndieHackers podcast. On this show, I talk to the founders of profitable internet
businesses and I try to get a sense of what it's like to be in their shoes. How did they
get to where they are today? How do they make decisions at their companies and in their
personal lives? And what exactly makes their businesses tick? And the goal, as always,
so that the rest of us can learn from their examples and go on to build our own successful
businesses. Today, I am talking to the one and only Joel Hooks, the co-founder of Egghead.io.
Joel, welcome to the IndieHackers podcast, and thanks so much for coming on.
Hey, Cortland. Thanks for having me.
So Egghead is a platform for people to learn how to code and become better web developers.
Can you explain to us a little bit about how it works?
My joke is that we are a video blog that has a membership component, which is really just
kind of like a self-deprecating way of minimizing what we actually do. We are basically like
a marketing and delivery platform for content creators, specifically people that are creating
screencasts for developers. So we kind of focus on a more intermediate, advanced audience.
We invite people that are doing things and kind of teaching already on the internet to
come do it on Egghead and make money. So we're there to facilitate people that want to educate
and that are kind of already doing that on the internet. So we give them a platform to
kind of take away the unsavory bits around marketing and like asking people for money.
So on one side, you've got these creators who are inviting to make courses, video courses
to teach people to know things about coding. On the other side, you've got mostly software
developers, web developers who want to learn how to code and they're paying you for access
to these courses.
Yeah, exactly. Like we have, like I really, I tell people, like my primary customer is
actually the instructors that are teaching. And then we are connecting them with a broader
audience that's paying to view their material.
Yeah, you're like this two sided marketplace, which is always fun, because it's almost like
you're running two completely different businesses with two sets of customers, two different
groups of people to make happy.
Yeah, it's a matchmaking service at the end of the day. Like if you think about it that
way, right, like we find people that want to make materials and then connect them with
the folks that want to pay to view what they're creating.
You started egghead way back in 2013. And at that point, it was just you and your co
founder, john, today, you guys are up to 12 full time employees, you're making over $250,000
a month in revenue, and you bootstrapped your way here. How does it feel to be in this position,
you've got a company that's actually helping people and you're not beholden to any investors
and you're sort of financially independent, you're the one in control.
I really like it. It suits my personality, I would have a hard time. Like I don't want
to shoot for growth, growth, growth, which is, you know, like when typically when you
describe a startup, that's, that's the goal, right? Like we need to grow, we got to grow,
we got to grow. And that isn't my goal. I want to build a sustainable business, I want
to help people, I want to like be able to hire entry level developers and help them
like learn their skills over time. So our approach of not taking any money is slower,
but that's that's kind of kind of the intent is to be a little bit bit slower and more
intentional with what we're doing. We don't take ads either. So we don't advertise and
we don't don't take any sort of ads. So we've kind of turned it on to hard mode a little
bit. But at the same time, like long term, it's nice. And really suits the pace that
we like to work.
Yeah, we've met a few times in person. And I would describe you as a super laidback guy,
a lot of founders of successful businesses like yours are high strong, they're always
busy. They're always stressed out. That doesn't seem to apply to you. And I guess if you ever
stressed out, you hide it very well. What is it that drove you to want to be a founder
and want to be an entrepreneur when this is something that stereotypically is going to
involve a lot of stress and a lot of worrying about growth?
Yeah, it's funny because the motivation is kind of the same motivation for not taking
investment in that like having unlike to have a boss and I don't want to like I've had employers,
you know, if we start time was 830 and I show up at 835 and they're going to like give me
grief over that. And you know, just like this, this general work a day attitude and working
for somebody else has always been hard for me. And you know, I think it's hard for a
lot of people, frankly, and you know, like, what are we going to do about it? And I started
programming computers specifically, so I could like get out of that, that situation. I read
Hackers and Painters by Paul Graham. And like, it was an inspiration to me like I can like
he talks about, you know, like things like learn Python, if you want to be different,
which probably would be a different language today. And then, you know, like the software
is this last frontier of like wealth creation, like I can just sit there with me, my computer
and my time and actually like make my own workspace, right? Like my own ability to earn
and produce and do what I want to do outside of the confines of like typical like nine
to five employment, which has been like true. In fact, it took like like 12 years from reading
the book to get to the point I'm at now, because there's a lot of in between, obviously, but
you know, like that premise really was like a light bulb going off in my head. And I'm
like, well, I can do this, I can escape, I need to make a plan and you know, kind of
put that in motion and you know, like a decade later, get to realize the fruits of that initial
inspiration.
Yeah, software is pretty magical. I mean, once you can sit down and just create something
of value at your fingertips from home, it's hard not to have the idea across your mind
that hey, maybe I shouldn't be working for somebody else. Maybe I should just build my
own app, my own website and sell that to other people.
Yeah, and I mean, you know, code's a part of it. And like, I'm pretty good at systems
of a mediocre programmer, I'm not, you know, like a great, great programmer. But then beyond
that, like, it's like the like, I studied economics for a couple years, I studied like
business and marketing, and I tried to go back to school, and that was so slow. And
I was just like, well, I can I can do this at home. The stack of skills that it requires
to actually start a business is pretty significant. But like the barrier to entry is also very
low. So it's like, you can sit there and you know, like, like learn and study and be kind
of a bookish learner on the whole thing. And you know, not even necessarily do the thing,
which I did for many, many, many years, or you know, kind of get out there and like,
what's the worst that could happen, right? I'm going to ask people for money, they'll
either give it to me and they won't. And you know, I can like practice kind of on the job,
which is pretty good. Like once I started, right, like once I got over that initial,
oh, I don't know what to do, or I have this grand idea. And it's so big, and I'm going
to do it. And like, you know, when you have these grand ideas, it makes it even harder.
Because like success is a lot further away than if you have like a small idea that you
incrementally improve.
I found a lot of founders on the podcast, you've said that the more successful businesses
have gotten, the harder it's felt that it's never ever felt easier to them. Is that true
for you and ACAD? Or have you sort of been able to rest a little bit easier as your business
has grown?
So we've been in business for five years. I moved across the country and had a baby
in the in that time period is our fifth child. And I look at that, like I'm thinking about
it, right? And I was able to like move and really like, turn it off. Like for a full
year, I wasn't you know, we weren't focused on growth or focused on anything. And it was
it was basically stress free. And I could I can be gone for a week and I can come back.
And guess what? And everything didn't collapse. It still exists. You know, the mechanisms
are in place. We're a very generous workplace. We actually have my key values profile. If
you go to keyvalues.com, there's the ACAD profile where I worked with Linda and I hired
her. We aren't actually hiring. So she normally doesn't do that. But I was like, well, can
can you put together one of your profiles for me? Because I really want to communicate
with everybody. And I built a workplace where everybody gets to enjoy like the same freedom
to relax as I do. If that makes sense. I think a lot of times, you know, a founder will be
like, I get to relax, but everybody else has to work their ass off. And to me, I didn't
want it to be that I want it to be, you know, like everybody gets the same kind of benefits
of building this calm workplace. And like, it's true for everybody, you know, I have
people I'm going to take a month off, and I want to do this or that or you know, I'm
going to move. And it's like, well, you can you can relax, everything will still be here.
And as will your job, you know, assuming that while we're here, we're all working towards
the same goals. Overall, like the I don't feel super stressed, I put a lot of stress
on my shoulders, just in terms of improvement, because I like to do interesting things. So
I get bored, and that stresses me out. But ultimately, that's just, you know, like me
focusing on the future and carrying stress, we don't have deadlines, for instance, which
is, I think a big source of stress for folks is the need to like get stuff done at a certain
period of time to meet very specific goals that people are like artificially putting
in front of themselves.
One of the things you mentioned earlier, that is very true is that while there are lots
of different skills and knowledge sets that you need to be a successful founder, you can
actually go into it knowing very little, and you can sort of pick up all this knowledge
and all these skills on the job. But you took a different approach. You studied economics,
you studied programming, you studied business, sort of taught yourself all these skills before
you decided to become a founder. Why did you take that approach? And why did you think
that was necessary rather than just learning on the job?
So my Twitter profile used to be an annoying book guy, because anybody would bring up a
topic and I'd have a book recommendation, right? Like, Oh, you should read this book
or Oh, here's this great book on that subject, which is only annoying probably if you live
in my house. But so that was where I started, right? Like I like to read, I'm reading books
about business as in it, this goes way back because I read like rich dad, poor dad, which
is one of the most polarizing books on the internet. But I was, it was great. And I understand
allegory. So I'm able to read this. And I'm like, Oh, that's, that's pretty interesting.
He's talking about real estate and stuff. And then like the emiff was another great
book. And he talks about franchises like opening franchises, but that's really about systems.
And I mean, that's, you know, like where my, my, where my core competency is, is systems
and thinking about them. But I wanted to like understand, you know, like the economics and
how people work and how, like how people think in terms of, you know, like what economics
is and kind of as a study of sociology and how the world works more than like spreadsheet
style economics and predictions, just, you know, like how, how, how does it work in terms
of human psyche? And then more, when I talk about business, I've read a, you know, a good
handful of business books, but more like the marketing, things like copywriting and, you
know, like all that kind of stuff that goes into like, like building a business and talking
to people. I was reading and reading and I had like, you know, these grand ideas and
I was going to, you know, like build this big thing. And I had the, you know, the idea
of what I was going to build. And it didn't really like come together for me until I met
Amy Hoy, who runs a class called 30 by 500, which is basically a how to bootstrap a business
class. And at the core of it is how to find your audience and understand their pain and
solve it for them for in exchange for money. And I took that class for three years. She'll
at the time, allowed you to take it repeatedly. And I'm taking the class and I have my idea
and she's always like, your ideas are stupid. You need to like kill your darling, stop with
the ideas, find the problems and solve them. And finally, like I went to the conference
that they had called bacon biz. And it just like I hadn't like an epiphany moment. And
it was just like a sequence of events. And I'm like, no, I think I get it. I'm a developer.
I understand developers. Everybody's trying to learn AngularJS right now. Why don't I
stop and like help them learn AngularJS. And that was like the seed like the moment when
it occurred to me that that was the business that I could build. And I didn't need to have
a grand idea I could just start solving those problems directly. And that's worked out pretty
good.
Let's talk about this epiphany for a moment. I just got back from an indie hackers meet
up in Atlanta and I was talking to a few people. I talked to people on the index forum. I feel
like this this concept of building with an audience in mind rather than just building
sort of your pet idea and searching for a customer is pretty hard for people to understand.
Can you explain it a little bit and like maybe talk about why it was hard for you to understand
it and why it took three years before you had your epiphany.
I think the tendency is especially with folks that there are software developers, and you
know, I'm not like universally describing those two software developers, but we like
to we like solutions. We like to get to the solution and solve problems. And the entire
time when I'm spinning my wheels on this idea, it's a great solution and the audience didn't
work. So the idea like specifically was my wife's a professional photographer. I built
this like my first app that I built was for her and I was this pretty cool like wall designer
app for photographers. And I was going to sell this application to the niche market
of stay at home mom photographers. And as I'm going through it and you know, like I'm
trying to do Amy's technique, she calls it sales Safari, where you kind of you go and
just kind of if you imagine yourself on Safari, you know, you're looking at the oasis where
all the animals are congregating and you have your binoculars and you're just kind of observing
and seeing what they do and how they get their food and water and that sort of thing. So
I'm like in their forums trying to, you know, like do do this do the sales Safari thing.
And so the last thing that stay at home mom photographers want is some dude sitting in
their forums like marketing to them like they're used to that. They've seen this coming like
they have seen the Jeep on the horizon and know exactly what's you know, what's going
on and they just don't they're not interested in it is not my people, right? Like I don't
understand them. They don't understand me. They don't want me in their space. And I was
like, man, this is just really hard. I don't know what to do. And then you know, like,
I'm a software developer. I understand all of the inside jokes. I understand the pain
I can relate to these people across the board in a very, very direct way. And once I like
like was like, Oh, okay, well, I can like provide solutions for these folks right now.
So I started writing a book, but then I had a friend that was making screencasts about
AngularJS on YouTube. And I was like, Hey, man, can I package those and sell them? And
that's John link was to as my co founder. And that's what we did. And so I had the epiphany
I took the I went to this conference and I took a Brennan Dunn had a consultancy master
class, which I took. So I was like, maybe I need to start a consultancy. So from both
of those, I had sketch notes, like I do sketch notes sometimes. And I took them and I put
them on my blog and sold them for like $5 each. I was like, All right, I'm selling a
product on the internet. Here's my sketch notes. And I sold I've sold a few hundred
dollars worth of those. That was my first product. But in the same time, I'm like, I'm
gonna write an AngularJS book, I want to see what john wants to do. And I'm talking to
john and john was like, I don't know, man, I'm doing YouTube, they said they're gonna
allow me to monetize pretty soon. So I might just stick with that. And I'm like, I described
myself as the Terminator, I play a long game. I'm not trying to kill you. I'm trying to
make you money. So I'm, you know, not not exactly like the Terminator, but I will like,
over time, I'm persistent. Unless you give me a hard no, I'm going to like, like continue
to ask and continue to like, knock those objections down, which I guess is basically a sales process.
And I convinced him, I'm like, Look, man, I can take those zip files from YouTube, all
your videos, your 50 videos, and put them in a zip file, I want to email your donation
list, which was like five or 6000 people at the time. And we'll see what happens. So I
did that. And it did like $6,500 that first week. And it was like, see, dude, I told you.
And that was like the the seed money for our first year of a good Okay, so john is making
these videos teaching people AngularJS all by himself. And you come in and say, Hey,
john, why don't you email the people donating and ask them to actually pay money for the
video in sort of a transactional way? Why were you so confident that people would actually
pay money for these videos? And also, why did john need your advice and this push from
you? Why didn't he just charge money for the videos himself without any help from you at
all?
He felt bad doing it. Like, I think a lot of people do, right? Like asking people for
money like is like this hard thing, like, what are they going to think about me? And
so, like, I was able to take that away. Like, I'm like, look, you don't have to ask them,
I'm going to send it to them. And you know, we'll see what happens. And it didn't matter.
Right? Like, it's this small thing that provides value to people that they've already proven
that they're interested in, right? Like they're interested in this. And I think the funny
thing about that was it was like two clicks away for them to get to the free thing. Right?
These are all just free videos that john was putting out on the internet. And I'm like,
look, people will buy it. I know in my heart, they'll buy this stuff. And like, it blew
me away that like, I wasn't expecting that many people to buy it. Like at all. We did
that. And I was like, Look, and he's like, All right, it's a go. And we formed an LLC.
And I stood up my first rails app in like two weeks and was like, all right, now you
can subscribe for $99 a year. And we'll have pro content at some point, because we had
no plans on how we were going to do that at all at the time. But like, it was minimal
for me to go like to do that, right? Like, it's not a big idea. You know, like I said,
we're a video blog, right? Like I just I made a rails app, there's a video blog that could
also take payments. And at the end of the day, like people were interested and they
started subscribing and giving us money monthly. And we had to, you know, now we have to produce
videos. So it wasn't, you know, hey, I got this this grand solution, or I'm building,
you know, a big sass app. It's just, you know, people need to learn any knowledge, you're
good at sharing knowledge, john, I'd like to do the selling part. So maybe we should
collaborate and it worked out.
And the very beginning, once you saw that you sold over $6,000 worth of videos in this
first week, what was your plan for the company at that point? I mean, I know you eventually
switched to a subscription model. Did you have any other big decisions that you wanted
to make any vision for what this thing could turn into?
Yeah, I mean, initially, like my plan was the subscription model, like that was like
the whole thing, I was just trying to prove the point and get those people in the door.
And that was like immediately afterwards, like we sold it, I was like, see, and he says,
go, so we do that. The problem, like the big hurdle after that, like after we start taking
subscriptions was john is one person, and producing content relentlessly for people
like on a weekly basis, is a lot to ask of anybody, it's a lot of pressure. And we've
seen people, you know, burnout like some people that kind of famously do the screen casting
thing have, you know, experienced burnout just disappeared, and they stopped doing it.
So like, my first, you know, like next step was to bring other people in to bring other
instructors in, both to relieve the burden of that from john, and then also to eliminate
risk myself, because if I'm going to go all in on this thing, like I can't have, you know,
like the linchpin of the whole operation being like, I can't do this anymore, I can't can't
produce and then you know, all the people that are giving you money are now like having
to like you have to explain that to him, which is a hard thing. So we started, you know,
I asked a few people and I was like, Hey, can you make videos for us? I promise there'll
be some sort of payment involved. And they trusted me, I kind of tapped my network upfront.
And they made videos and you know, our first courses. And you know, that that led to more
people being like, Hey, can I make videos for you to or folks that I'd reach out to
and get them to come in and make videos for us. So now we are up to like 140 published
instructors and are bringing people in all the time. And we've got a system and we wrote
a small book at how to egghead.com and are able to expand on that that general idea and
improve that process over time. Even though at first it was like I didn't have a solution
or a system in place, but we are able to just start and just start doing the thing. And
that led to, you know, the ability to improve it now. So we get to start working on improving
it because we've already started.
Which side of this marketplace would you say, over the course of your business has been
the toughest to grow the course creators or bringing on programmers who want to learn?
Yeah, I mean, it has to be the creators is a really is a just a big challenge to keep
that flowing. We have those relationships, we have a, you know, a Slack channel for them.
So it's like a constant ongoing thing. You know, we had to like initially it was like,
Oh, that's not to our standards, but we didn't have anything written down. So it's like the
standards were just in John and I's head. So like developing that and then, you know,
like finding the voice and developing a style and setting clear expectations, that's been
a real significant challenge where if that falls into place, if we're able to like deliver
consistent content, the rest of it that growing the audience base has really just been kind
of, you know, it just it just happens, right? Like it just follows like, so if we're delivering
the quality, the audience is there and they enjoy it. You know, I still work pretty hard
like on like email marketing is a big, big portion of what we do. And then, you know,
like generally, like how do we, you know, funnels and all that that business, which
I really, really enjoy like thinking about, but then also, you know, like balancing that
with the like instructor development and the content side of it's been interesting and
you know, it goes back and forth.
Okay, so let's dive into growing and dealing with both sides of this two sided marketplace.
You said that just by having really good courses, great content that the developer side of your
marketplace, all the people who come to your website to learn sort of took care of itself.
And that's really fascinating to me. I really want to dive into that and come back to that
later. But first, let's talk about the course creator side of your marketplace. What did
the process look like for training these course creators and getting them to create content
that was up to you and John standards and what kind of mistakes did you guys make early
on in that process?
John and I, we would just be like really aggressive and, you know, kind of, I don't know, there's
no there's no softening to the like the delivery of our critique. And, you know, for the most
part, that would mean that people just kind of fade away, right? Like they wouldn't want
to put up with our BS. So instead of doing that, they would just would just stop or, you
know, it's like this idea of also like starting them out and expecting like the end result
immediately versus giving them like achievable goals. Over time, like how do you take somebody
from being a novice to being a badass, which there's a book called badass by Kathy Sierra.
It's like an inspiration. And really, maybe reading that was was a big part of how we
changed our approach to like teaching instructors, because we want to do that for everybody,
right? Like the people watching our videos, we want to take them and we want to make them
badasses and we want to make, you know, badasses out of instructors too. And it's kind of an
interesting chain. And in the end, a lot of our instructors have actually come out of
our user base. Like they they're people, they're fans, right? Like they're people that interact
and they like what we do and then they'll send us, you know, kind of their demo or whatever.
And we've taken that and developed it and then softened our approach both in like the
writing it down, like where we, John and I and others collaborated to to make this document
and then bringing people in, they can help instructors more directly. And that's, you
know, kind of the their whole job is to be the support network for our instructor base,
which was a big help to just kind of like moving John and I out of the mix because,
you know, like we're a little close to it. And, you know, if our personalities didn't
work just right, like it was, you know, whatever we needed documentation. And to me, it's like
anything. The same is true for like, like, say code reviews for developers, right? Like
we do code reviews, but code reviews can be really harsh and they can be like a bad environment
that turn people away. Or you can have a nice set of standards that you can reference and
link people to and have discussions and ask why and guide people along and get a better
process going too. So kind of drawing from that experience. And then you know, like just
feedback from the groups of instructors that we would roll through over time.
Can you explain this concept from Kathy Sierra of turning people into badasses? Because I
think most people looking at this from the outside end would say, Okay, well, if you
want to get people to produce good courses, and all you really need to do is provide a
financial incentive. What is this about making them into badasses? And how did you get people
to want to make courses for you that are high quality? And when you were really in your
early days, and you couldn't guarantee they're going to make a whole lot of money?
Yeah, so the financial incentive is really weird. Like everybody has that, right? Like
all of us like, we have our hierarchy of needs, but we need to meet them. And you know, everybody
you know, like making money is great. I found it's not a great motivator. Like I've even
had like a difficult time getting people to take advances, if I want them to do a course
just because they don't want to do the commitment. And really like getting people to accomplish
first, right? Like, like the if you if I pay in advance to somebody, that's just putting
a bunch of pressure on them and giving them deadlines and causing stress over the whole
thing. That's how the traditional publishing model works, which isn't what we want to do.
Like we want to like build a relationship. I want it like I want an instructor to be
able to come in. They're going to go ahead and you know, now we have them like make a
30 second demo that leads into a draft full length single lesson. We do several of those
before we get into, you know, talking about the course and I want them to win and understand
the process and feel comfortable with the process throughout the entire thing, right?
Like so we come in and here's a really achievable thing that you can do. We're going to take
you from never having recorded a screencast before to, you know, your first 30 second
demo and we're going to talk about that instead of, you know, like recording a five minute
thing being like, Oh, this is garbage. Start back over because it isn't, you know, it isn't
up to snuff, which was, I mean, like not literally, but generally how we used to approach it.
So we're able to, you know, take people from, you know, not knowing anything up to, you
know, all the way through a course development or more recently we're even like trying to
help people launch like a bigger product outside of egghead because everybody wants to, you
know, like what's the next step after you've succeeded to the, to the max on, on egghead
IO, you know, let people want to go out and like, Oh, now I want to do my own product.
I want to, I want to have a big launch of my own and we're helping people do that too.
So we're able to like take from zero experience all the way through, you know, kind of the
finish line of somebody that's connecting directly and building their own audience versus,
you know, just sharing ours.
Yeah, that's great. You're sort of mentoring people and guiding among this entire process
from having no experience being a teacher or a course creator to, you know, selling
the course on egghead to going off to do their own thing.
That's exactly it. Like it's just a, you know, like this, this stage progression of advancement
in terms of, you know, how, how they are approaching, you know, this kind of second career or side
career as a, as a content creator and giving them, you know, like achievable steps based
on, you know, their motivation and interest, right.
Like you don't, like we have plenty of people that have come on and created a single course
or a single lesson. And then they go away, right? Like we send, you know, we send a thousand
dollar box of professional audio gear. So like if somebody creates a lesson and that's
it, like, you know, it's like disappointing. Like we're like, well, what happened? Why
did they go away? And that's, but that's a learning opportunity for us to like, why,
how did we get you to this point and then just have you kind of disappear and no longer
want to work with us?
You know, you got your gear, you created a lesson and then, you know, that, that's it.
Like what's next? And understanding that's, you know, something that we continually strive
to understand because, you know, one, we don't want to be shipping internationally, you know,
expensive boxes of gear that don't get used. You know, that's disappointing, but more,
we want to like learn how to build those relationships and learn like what the roadblocks are and
why somebody would be interested and then stop being interested. That sort of thing.
Let's talk about the other side of the marketplace. You first got started with John making his
own video courses on learning AngularJS and you took that and you emailed it to all the
people who had donated to him in the past and asked him to pay for it. How did you go
from that presumably small list of donators to the massive number of people learning on
Egghead today?
Yeah. So that was actually a pretty big list. It was I think like 6,000 people total head.
Like John.
Oh, wow.
John is really good at what he does. And he's, you know, probably one of the best screencasters
on the planet. Like he just, just great at it. And he was doing it for quite a long time.
So he had a pretty good list and it equaled out about to a dollar per person on the list,
which is, is decent for kind of a cold list, if not great for a cold list. When we first
did that to me, like the subscription is just the way to go. Like predictable input income,
you know, like, like just giving really, that's what it gets down to its predictable income.
So it's like, how do we, how do we build that up? And then, you know, like at the end of
the day, that's more email lists. Like the email list to me is the key to specifically
like an online content business for sure. But like, I think any sort of, you know, even
a software as a service, like the email list is kind of the, you know, the foundation,
the bedrock of the entire thing is, is, you know, keeping that list warm and using the
email list and providing them value over time in exchange for them eventually, you know,
converting into a paying customer.
So I assume these first people that you emailed, you just charged them a one time transaction
fee for access to the videos. They didn't pay the recurring fee. When you decided to
move to a recurring subscription model, did you have to go find a bunch of new customers?
Here's the cool thing. When somebody's paid you already, they're very likely to pay you
again in the future. So we had that list, we sold them a tangible product, right? They
all got their zip file of videos. They liked it, right? Like they have them, they can archive
them, they can store them, collect them, print them out. You can't print out videos, but
I guess you could, it would just be weird. But they paid us money. And then, you know,
not, it wasn't, it wasn't even a month later, I, you know, send out another email, hey,
we now have a subscription site. We don't have any videos yet outside of those first
50 that you've already paid for, but we promise we're going to have some premium content.
And it'll never be this cheap again, you know, buy $100 for the year, or $9.99 a month. And,
you know, a bunch of people signed up and our MRR started climbing at like $1,000 a
week. And that lasted for quite some time, a few years, actually, we did about $1,000
a week of increased MRR, which was like amazing. It slowed down considerably at this point.
But you know, I think at some point you reach a plateau, but like, you know, it was like,
wow, $1,000 a week, look at that grow. And that allowed me to like four months in, really
consider quitting my job, which I did, and then did workshops. So I sold workshops, because
we had the list. So I was able to like advertising the site. And we've always had good traffic
and kept me booked up. So I could do workshops to augment my income, which I was able to
quit doing that as a is two years ago, right about in the time we had the baby.
That's really cool to hear. I think one of the biggest challenges for a lot of indie
hackers is they've got a lot going on in their life. They might have a family, they have
a career, a full time job. And they have no idea how they're gonna juggle building something
on the side with living their normal life. And with you guys, you just sort of fearlessly
sent emails to these people and asked them to pay you a monthly subscription for a product
that really didn't even exist yet. I mean, you guys hadn't created the courses. And yet
people were paying you 100 bucks a year to subscribe.
Yeah, I mean, that trust, right, right, like that, like them sending me $100 to for a full
year, right? Like it's like that, that's me pledging to you that for a year, you know,
for the next year, I'm going to provide you high quality content, we just don't know what
it is yet. Like, that's amazing to me that people would and that's, you know, that's
like I had a small audience and john had an audience and we were selling to people inside
the AngularJS community that we're a part of. So there are people that knew us and trusted
us, right, like enough to do that. And that that really gets to like the point of like
choosing your audience and where's your audience coming from? Because like stay at home mom
photographers, we're not going to ever do that for me. But this audience that that's
my people, that are the folks that I deal with and interact with and engage with anyway,
they have that level of trust and we're able to like place it in us and know that we were
going to deliver.
One of the interesting things about catering to the audience that you know, is that most
Andy hackers are developers. And so the audience that they know is other developers. And so
you see dozens and dozens of companies being started that end up competing with each other
and trying to solve some of the same problems, for example, teaching people AngularJS. I
think for a lot of founders, first time founders, especially seeing all this competition is
pretty discouraging, people will actually switch into an entirely new idea because they
think their idea won't work because there's so much competition. How much has the existence
of all this competition affected your decision making? And you're thinking, if at all with
egghead,
I mean, it's like, it approaches zero, I'm just not worried about it. Like, I don't,
you know, it's like people, you know, like the big like plural site, right? Like they're
the big player in this space. And I just don't care. Like I don't don't chase what anybody's
doing. I'm not worried about competition. I've always just focused on making the thing
that we can do as good as we can do it. Like if I get bogged down and start worrying what
everybody else is doing, and then it really just takes away from, you know, what we want
to do.
So like from day one, I haven't, I haven't paid attention to that at all, to be honest.
I wonder how much that is because and the particular industry you're in with education,
people like to learn in different ways. I mean, I've talked about this on the podcast
before, but like some people like going to school and getting degrees. Some people want
to be self motivated learners and take online courses. Some people want to mentor or tutor.
So it's, it almost doesn't matter if there's competitors because you can carve out your
own niche. And if people like the way that you teach and what you're doing, then it doesn't
matter how big your competition is.
Yeah, I mean, there's just there's a lot of space too. And you know, like if I'm learning
right, like I have a new topic, I'm all hyped up for like, my first stop is to get all of
the five Starbucks on Amazon, I don't I don't get the one, you know, book I get get the
stack of them, which my wife would verify with my stacks around the house. I don't think
like, you know, we'll get you know, hey, should I get x, y, z or egghead? And it's like, well,
you should probably get all three. And you know, if you're a working developer, you should
get your boss to pay for it, because they owe it to you to provide you the education
that you need to do the job. And it's like a combination. And you know, it's like, nobody's
ever said, wow, there's way too much JavaScript learning material on the internet. There isn't,
there's not enough. And it's not explained well enough. And it's not explained in a way
that will will resonate with every individual. So people really want to, you know, absorb
multiple information streams and then combine them into form their own opinions, which is
you know, like, that's that's ultimately what what education is, there is no, you know,
it's like, when we talk about, well, I'm self taught, we're all self taught, like education,
like, if you are not learning, like, if you are not putting in the work, whether somebody's
standing in front of you in class, it's recorded, or it's in a book, if you're not putting in
the work, not paying attention, not taking the notes, not trying not doing the projects,
like you're never gonna learn anything, regardless of where the information comes. Like, I hate
watching coding videos, I really don't like it. I like to read blog posts and books. I
like like zines, those are really neat. And that's a trend that I've seen lately, where
we're using cartoons and comics to make hard concepts easy to understand. And I don't really
want to sit down and watch videos, I like them more now that I can do them at two times
speed with transcript or closed captions, but it's just not how I enjoy learning. But
other people really love it. And I think that's great. And then we can all kind of have our
preferences met. And that's the joy of the internet is that while we all have these preferences,
and we want them to be a certain way, it doesn't have to be that way. And there's probably
something out there for you. So if you just make something that's good, and you can meet
the expectations in terms of quality and consistency, then people will come and watch your stuff.
Yeah, it's really cool. It's almost like an unsolvable problem. Like you said, there's
never going to be the perfect amount of JavaScript, how to learn, you know, this JavaScript framework
or JavaScript in general information on the internet. And so there's always going to be
room for someone to come in and teach it their own way. And I think if you're listening to
this, you want to start your own company, it's, you know, probably wise for you to enter
an industry or a market where that's the case where there's never going to be one competitor
who comes in and does it better than everybody else. And suddenly, your company's dead.
Yeah, I mean, it's like, you know, online book delivery. That's a tough market. And,
you know, competing against Amazon is going to be tough. But there's still people that
do it. Like, here's the thing, like, there's like, I see, you know, like pragmatic programmers
and they use Amazon, but just like these different publishing houses and stuff to do their own
thing and probably do pretty well. And like, I think there's like space, you know, especially
if you're targeting the audience and you're solving a specific pain or you're doing it
in a, you know, kind of a opinionated or principled way. And I like, I love principled businesses,
like businesses, like I love it in like restaurants and, you know, boutique education on the internet
and you know, just just people that take a stance and do their thing and do it well and
deliver on their promise is something that constantly inspires me when I see it in other
people and something that like I strive to do in terms of my own business.
Yeah, you mentioned you had a profile on Lentai's website, Key Values. That's a super opinionated
principled business. And it's in a super crowded market, like a ton of businesses are trying
to help companies hire developers and help developers find jobs. But there's so many
different ways to do it that it's another example of like an industry where you can
carve out your own niche and stand out and it doesn't matter that there are competitors.
Yeah, and it's tough. And, you know, like, like with what she's doing or with what anybody's
doing, there's, you know, like sales process and you have to, you know, like learn, like
you have to message it properly and you have to deliver on the promises and the principles
that you uphold. But you know, all that stuff is achievable. You know, if you kind of stick
to it and your goal is to help people, honestly, like that's like a driving thing for me. I
think if your goal and your attention is to truly help people and help them elevate themselves
in their lives, then you know, it's kind of hard to fail if you succeeded that at all.
So let's jump back into growing Egghead. You've mentioned several times that one of the tricks,
one of the tools that you've used to your advantage is building an email list and maintaining
that email list and improving it. What are some things you've done since you first launched,
since you first started emailing people about your subscription model to sort of tap into
your email list and to grow it and to use that as a distribution channel and find more
customers?
Yeah. So we like our site is really heavily trafficked. We get a lot of organic search
and we're aggressively free, meaning that, you know, I think somewhere around 50% of
our content is actually free. So if you land on it, you know, you can just watch it. One
of the biggest ways that we get new subscribers during email lists is just, you know, annoying
them. And that's the thing, right? Like I don't want to annoy people. Like I don't want
to bother them. It's a real, real, real hurdle to having a business online because you have
to, you know, like if you don't, like if you don't ask, if you don't ever ask them to pay
you, if you don't ever ask them for their email address and just hope that passively
they will somehow give it to you, it's going to be really hard to like grow and build a
sustainable business. Do things like provide healthcare for employees and, you know, like
give them paid vacations and take them yourself. You have to ask and you have to be confident
enough to put it forward and kind of demand that they comply with this, this next step
if they are getting value from, from what it is you're delivering. And that's like one
of the biggest hurdles that I see from people. Even for me, for the first couple of years,
I didn't use my email list in a way that was effectively, I was like scared to email them.
I was like, if I start emailing them, they'll just unsubscribe because look at my email
and they'll hate me. And I was talking to Patrick McKenzie, who was a, always been kind
of a friend and mentor that helped me in both direct and indirect ways. And he's like, yeah,
just just email your list. Like you have to start emailing your list. And I did. And then
I've had, you know, like, I've got a great network of friends and mentors. And Brennan
Dunn has helped me out a bunch. And they'll be like, he'd come in and be like, you got
to do this, Joel. And I'll be like, wow, that's just too much. And I can't ask them, like,
I can't be that aggressive. And he's like, look, you need to be that aggressive. And
you need to quit like, like whinging about like, what we need to do to get this done.
And I do it and it had, you know, like a radical impact on and it was like the enough of an
impact where we could start hiring people and I could stop doing everything by myself.
You know, when we would just ask and start being more aggressive in terms of, you know,
like our marketing efforts and being in people's inboxes. I get a lot of hate too. Like I get,
you know, like some people just hate it. And that's fine. I really try not to reply. Sometimes
I have to, because it's fun. Like I try not to engage, right? Like if somebody's like,
oh, I hate your thing, it doesn't mean my preferences instead of replying, I just block
them.
Right. And I think dealing with developers, I think developers are obviously like one
of the most sophisticated, internet savvy audiences to deal with. And we have sort of
the strongest opinions about email marketing, etc. The fact that most of your customers
aren't bothered by it and actually like it is pretty cool. I mean, if you're building
something that people like that actually helps them, then it turns out they're not all that
upset when you email them about something new that you've done or give them a special
offer, etc.
No. And you know, like, well, and some of our lovely friends, the software developers,
they'll put like honeypot emails in there, right? Like spam trap emails and fake emails
and really like try to subvert your thing because they're just so angry that you're
asking for emails and you're just a spammer. And it's like, you know, or, you know, we'll
have a promotion and we do a Christmas promotion and I send. So every workday we release a
course and it's over two weeks and I send an email every single day for two full work
weeks. And on the last day I send like five emails and I say, okay, this is the final
one. And then the next day, the next morning, it's done. There's no more sale. I sent a
last chance to, you know, a portion of the list and like I'll send one more. And that
gets like just angry, angry people in my inbox, like just, you said it's the last one and
you're a filthy spammer. And it's just like, um, it's one, it's not true, right? Like you
signed up. We had, you know, we have an agreement. There's an unsubscribe button, like, like
a legit unsubscribe button at the bottom of every single email I send, I click it for
them and block them and don't even reply. Like it's like you are, you know what those
people are, those people are never, ever going to be a client. All they are is a complainer.
So just ignore them and continue doing what you're doing. And especially if you're approaching
it from a principled way where you're legit and they're complaining about like getting
12 days, like 15 free courses that they can watch. That's the complaint. Like, Oh, you're
just sending too much. And it's like, okay, well, I want to just ignore it, right? Like
you have like the tools at your disposal, just ignore it. But like, if they're complaining
about that and they're there, they're only there for the free stuff. And they're even
complaining about that. You can ignore them. They don't need to be there. When people unsubscribe
from your list, it's actually a good thing. It's filtering out. It's making your list
higher quality. You want people to unsubscribe. You want to give them the real deal and not
just tiptoe around them. You want them to go away if they are never going to like fall
in line with what it is you're trying to deliver them.
So speaking of things that are sort of hard to deal with psychologically and practically
as a founder, you guys are entirely bootstrapped. You mentioned earlier that bootstrapping is
hard mode. You know, you're not taking money from investors, so you can't grow quite as
fast. You guys don't do any advertising, which I'm sure could be lucrative for what you're
doing with all your videos. But like you've decided not to. Why have you gone this route?
And what have you seen in terms of advantages and disadvantages?
Yeah, we had good luck with Facebook advertising in terms of profits. I have just some personal
issues with their business model. So nothing against anybody that loves Facebook or works
at Facebook or anything. It just isn't in line with how I wanted to operate. So we stopped
doing that. And mostly because we can. It's not essential to us. And the numbers were
great, but it was just money versus kind of following my instincts on that.
At the end of the day, we had a few things in our favor. In America, our healthcare situation
is kind of whack. Everybody knows that. Everybody makes fun of us on the internet as a country
over this thing. But we were able to do it with the Healthcare Act and able to get insurance
and stuff for John and I and our families because he has five children too. And then
it wasn't even until last year where we were finally able to afford to offer full-paid
healthcare to our employees, which was a huge milestone for us. But it took four years to
get there because of the bootstrapping where if you take a seven-figure funding round,
then you can probably start that immediately. That's one of the first things you'd line
up.
So that's been a real struggle with the bootstrapping and the ability to make sure we're taking
care of our employees and doing the right thing with regards to them. But otherwise,
I honestly wouldn't have it any other way. I've thought a few times, wow, we could go
so much faster. And then I think again, I'm like, I couldn't handle it if we're going
any faster. I don't know what I'm doing in terms of my role as a leader. And I have to
figure it out. So the slow pace allows me the space to figure it out as we go along
and figure out my place in terms of being a leader of this thing and what does that
mean? And other people are looking to me for answers. That's all new to me. So I'm able
to slow that down and really be more considerate about how we approach the whole thing.
I can see how on one hand, moving slowly is really effective for saving you from a lot
of that stress and anxiety because you're not worried about needing to grow as fast
as your biggest competitor. You're not worried about hitting all these artificial deadlines.
If you're doing well, you can just sort of relax and enjoy that. But on the other hand,
let's say things aren't going well. If you're stagnating or you're shrinking, that can cause
you a lot of stress and anxiety as well. Has that ever been something that you've had to
worry about? And if so, how do you handle that and stay true to your mission of slow,
steady growth?
A little bit. Mostly it's like, I got this really big idea I want to do. Which is funny
if you think about what I talked about in terms of starting the business at all. This
idea I want to do this big thing. And if you have the capital to do the big thing, that's
what you're going to do. I want to pursue this big goal. If there's anything that I've
learned over the last five years, it's that things change. And a lot of times the big
ideas are bad. I put a lot of money into big ideas that turned out to be bad and I had
to do it slowly. So thankfully, I didn't blow millions of dollars on some bad idea. It was
just tens of thousands of dollars.
What's also interesting in terms of being a bootstrapper and the responsibility and
what that means to me is that my decisions directly impacts my wallet. If I spend six
months on a bad idea that doesn't pan out, I had to pay for that. I literally took food
off of my table and money out of my bank account to make that happen. It's like you have skin
in the game. It's like playing poker for no money. You're never going to play good poker
until you really have money in the game. So I'm learning how to grow this business. And
it costs me. I'm not playing with monopoly money. I'm not playing with VC cash. I'm playing
with my money. This could be in my kid's college fund instead of being spent to build this
dumb feature idea that I had that didn't work out at all. So in that respect, not so much
the stress aspect of it, just the reality of the situation in terms of picking what
we do and thinking about the big idea has been interesting as a growth opportunity for
me and then as a lever in the decision making process.
I think that's one of the reasons why more entrepreneurs should consider charging money
as early as possible, doing what you guys did and bringing on customers before they
even have a product out. Because once you actually have money coming in, then you've
got skin in the game and you're going to try to make better decisions. Whereas a lot of
times people will spend 6, 12 months building something for free with no business model,
no customers. They're trading away their time and it doesn't feel as tangible as trading
away dollars out of your own pocket.
I get why people don't too. I know people. I talk to people and they're like, they want
to get capital and they want to get them big dollars so they can do the big thing and just
go after it and swing for the fences and that fails and then they just do the next thing.
The whole idea of a serial entrepreneur and gather an investment that way. I see the appeal
and why that works for a lot of people and they would just die of boredom if they had
to do it my way. It would just eat at them because of the slow, snaily turtle pace that
I take. To me, it's like I'm not looking for an exit. I've had endless venture capitalists
and people in my inbox like, hey, do you want money? Hey, are you looking to sell? I'm like,
no, I don't want to do that. I have family members that work for us and I like the idea
of a legacy business, something that we can commonly grow over time.
I look to the Basecamp 37 signals, Jason and DHH. I really look to them a lot in terms
of how they built their business and their attitudes toward the whole thing have been
really inspiring to me and continue to be looking at them and watching them run this
business and build it and cap their employees at 50 because Jason's like, I just can't handle
more than that. That's where I'm at right now. Maybe one day we might grow more employees
than that, but this is where we're at right now. Then be successful with that over time.
Just have something that they can build and craft and not worry about what the next big
thing is because I'm not really excited about new things or change. I like to improve on
what exists and grow that.
Yeah, it's like you said earlier, you got into this to control your own life and to
be financially independent, to have a job that you actually liked. It wouldn't make
any sense to make decisions for your business that put you in a place where you're running
something that you don't enjoy running and that's super stressful and that you can't
control.
I truly love the work. It's like a big payout. You get millions of dollars, now what do you
do?
Find something to do.
I mean, you could have worse problems, for sure. I have to work. I love it. I'm driven
to do it. I want to wake up every day and get things done. Some days, I don't though.
Some weeks, I don't. I need to be able to facilitate both of those modes and balance
it out. This is like bootstrapping the business, growing it slowly, building the team slowly.
All that stuff has really helped to facilitate that in quite a significant way.
One of the cool things you mentioned earlier on this note is that as a founder, it's really
easy to build a business. Well, I won't say it's easy, but let's say you built a business
that's successful. It's easy to take time off yourself. It's easy to live the life that
you want, but you've gone a step further than that and you've made it so that the people
working for you can do the same thing.
I know that's difficult to do. I remember talking to John O'Nolan, the founder of Ghost,
who said he felt super guilty that if he ever took any time off as a founder but his employees
are still working hard, how have you set up Egghead to function in such a way where your
employees have the same sort of freedoms that you do as a founder?
The idea is you get the unlimited vacation and people talk about that. I try to phrase
it more like a mandatory minimum vacation. When you say unlimited, it's like, well, I
could just take the whole year off. I was like, well, that's not really what we're talking
about. It's a contract with everybody that's doing the thing. We all want to work hard.
We all enjoy doing the work. Sometimes we can't. We've had Slack messages, we're going
to read in the park because it's sunny today. I think that's fantastic and I want to be
able to do that. I shouldn't be able to go do that and then everybody else, if they said
that, well, what do you mean you're going to read in the park today? That's not cool.
To me, it's like an experiment with the tension between being loose and being able to trust
trusting and loose in that regard versus a rigorous workplace. There's been experiments
like a fellow that runs Team Treehouse. They had their 32-hour work week and then they
decided that wasn't working for them. They couldn't do that and they were going to be
like, I work 60 hours a week anyway. Sometimes I feel like that too. I work a lot but I like
it and I work constantly, but I don't want to expect that of everybody because I don't
think everybody needs to be in the weekends and evenings and whatever I'm putting in.
It's because I want to and it's my business and I get compensated accordingly. But then
I also want to open it up to where everybody makes a good living, works a job they like,
gets to do meaningful work, but then also gets to have the space to be themselves and
relax and take care of themselves mentally and physically outside of the workplace. I
think if more companies could do that, that'd be great. But I don't really have to worry
about them because we get to do it.
You mentioned that you are the father of five kids. You mentioned on the website a few months
back that you guys homeschool your kids. You mentioned earlier that you even had a baby
while you were building Egghead. You moved across the country and you turned it off for
a year, but your business kept going. How have you been able to systematize things and
outsource work and hire people and get it so the business can work so well with your
attention divided? You're doing a ton of stuff and I think it would be hard for most people
to keep pushing the business forward while being in your situation.
The homeschool thing is, generally speaking, I think K through 12 education, particularly
in the United States, is a conversion sales funnel for college debt. I don't think it's
a great system. Honestly, we enjoy our kids. We unschool. They don't have a whole lot of
pressure in terms of academic education. The idea is that you constantly have to be learning.
That's all I really care about. What are you working on? Are you getting good at something?
It doesn't matter what it is. I'll facilitate whatever it is you want to learn. They all
know how to read and do math and stuff. We're not trying to raise wilderness weirdos or
anything. That's fine. That's what they want to be. That's not the objective. In terms
of logistics, it means that I've worked at home for the last 10 years too, so we're all
always here. That's been interesting. It's like starting a business, having meetings,
doing these things, and then having my office in the dining room as the central hub of the
house while everybody else is working and learning too.
It's been great. It definitely is just like, hey, I want to make this a little bit harder.
I'm going to have too many kids and we're going to keep them home. We're going to start
a business. Hey, we can move across the country too. Why not have another one? We just got
to the point where they could all feed themselves and we could go to Europe together. I love
it and I love the experience. Also, the baby was a great decision. I don't know if making
the decision and moving across the country at the right time is necessarily what I'd
recommend for other people, but it's fun and interesting. Like I said, I play this long
game and to me, it's just this long-running experiment with them as my experimentees.
We give them the opportunity. We're like, hey, do you want to go to school? None of
them have taken us up on that at all. They like what they do.
Yeah, I think the entire way that you run your company has allowed you a lot more freedom
and life to take liberties and do things that would be harder if you had a normal job or
harder if you ran a more traditional company that had investors or had this sort of mandate
to grow as fast as possible at all times.
I want to go back to something you said earlier, which is that kind of as a result of having
to grow slowly and move slowly, you can't do all the big ideas that you have, but that's
okay because a lot of times your big ideas are bad. And there's this idea of product
market fit where you sort of come up with an idea or product that really fits well with
your market and it works. And you guys sort of had that from your first week. The second
you emailed your list and $6,000 in revenue came in and one week you knew what you're
doing could work and you knew that you could charge subscription fees for it. Have you
had any big ideas since then that have changed your business or if you just sort of put the
pedal to the metal and just taken that initial idea, that initial business model and just
grown it to where it is today?
Yeah, so we took the initial idea for sure. We were like over the last six months, had
the realization that our model, I've always kind of compared ourselves to O'Reilly or
a book publisher. And we had Alex Hillman, who is Amy Hoy's business partner in 30x500
and a friend and mentor of mine, was like, you guys are really more like a record label.
Your entire business is like a record label. And I was like, wow, that's totally spot on
with how we run it. And we do A&R, which is artists and repertoire, which is out there
finding talent. And we're looking for people dropping mixtapes on YouTube. And we'll take
those folks and we'll develop them over time. And up to the point where we're going to work
with them to collaborate on a hit record that will drop, which is what we just did with
Kent C. Dodds. We released testing javascript.com. And it was like the idea of using Egghead as
a platform versus Egghead.io as the service that people subscribe to. It's like a big
idea, but it's like a natural progression and natural evolution of what we've done. It's
not something that I would've never started out day one being like, oh, this is what we
should do. It's more like, wow, we did this. And then it's like, hey, what if we just did
this and we could have this site and we can use our API and use our infrastructure and
our payment gateways and all this different stuff that we have set up and do something
bigger for instructors that were motivated to do so and had their own audience. And we've
worked with for years and the one, if we released something like that on Egghead, our royalty
pool is a zero sum game and it would completely destroy it and destroy everybody's royalties.
So how do we solve that problem? Plus take people from paying the mortgage payment to
paying the freaking mortgage off in one fell swoop. And that's what we have actually achieved
that's been a raging success. I'm over the moon about the whole thing and really excited
for the future. So that's kind of our progression. And if it doesn't even change Egghead and
what we do, in fact, it allows us to kind of be more true to our original vision of
what Egghead was and serve that audience even better because we can like, hey, what if we
stand up a site that's like this, that serves this other niche or it's like, we've really
struggled with the beginner content because we don't cater to that audience very much.
So where does that go? Do we wedge it in and we change our whole model on Egghead or can
we can we do something else? So it's, you know, like, things like that kind of open
up for us in terms of using it as more of the idea of a platform beyond just Egghead
and I know.
Yeah, there's a lot there. That's, that's so good. I mean, one part of what you're
talking about is almost like you're starting a completely different business, which means
you have to in a lot of ways go back to the drawing board and do customer research and
make sure that like, all the resources you're investing into this new thing are going to
be well spent and then it can work out. And you can't just sort of assume and take for
granted that it'll work. In addition to that, it's also like, by having this other analogy
for your business by seeing yourself as a record label, it sort of enables this creativity
and enables you to see different models of how your business can work. And then the last
cool thing is that like this came about because of really your relationship with Alex, like
the mentors and people you have who are sort of helping you run your business. How do you
find these mentors? How do you incorporate them into your decision making as a founder?
I pay them. Yeah, no, yeah, like, like straight up, like, I've always like, since I started
as a software developer, and I had this idea that I wanted to start a business, I've paid
people to coach me, I joined their classes, I buy their books, I talk to them, I take
their advice and actually implement it and then tell them what I've done and ask if I
could do it better, which is apparently pretty rare, like, like people that are in the advice
business, like having people actually listen to them and then like implement and then iterate
on their advice isn't something that occurs a lot, which is, I guess, sad, but like, I
have no, no problems with like, like, like just compensating people for their time. I
don't like ask anybody to pick their brains. I asked them if we can talk for an hour and
I'll pay their consulting rate. That's like how I do it. And I've always done that. I've
done that since, you know, when I first took Amy Hoys, Amy and Alex is 30 by 500. It was
$1,200 and it was like a significant like family meeting, like sit down, like, let's
talk about this because that's a big expense, but I'm going to do this. And that's one example
of doing that. But that's, that's where most of like the mentorship that I've received
in my life is me like directly compensating them for the opportunity to, you know, put
for their time, like for their, you know, that we're talking about something that's
making me money. I don't expect like free work out of anybody. I don't, I don't like
free work. I don't think people should, should give it. I don't like spec work. If I'm trying
to hire a designer, I hire eight designers to do the same project and pick the ones I
like best. And they all get paid the same. That kind of thing is important to me, just
in terms of like a lifestyle choice.
I think a lot of people listening are probably going to want to copy you what you're saying
right now. So I want to dive in a little bit more detail. I mean, is this something that
you're doing on a regular basis? Like every week you're emailing somebody you want to
learn from and offering to pay their consulting rate? Is it just a limited set of mentors
you found early on that you've stuck with? What does this actually look like in practice?
So I went to microconf last year. And you know, it was funny because I'm watching the
talks. I'm like, man, I don't want to implement that. But I really want to hire them, which
is what actually happened like coming out of it. I was like, Hey, you know, we work
with us on a project. So I like to do like, you know, people that already offer their
services for a fee or a lot easier. Because you can, you know, simply, hey, let's work
on a project or they consult or whatever. You know, so I'll do like discovery engagement.
I'm like, Hey, can we do a discovery engagement? You know, I'll pay you X dollars. You can
come in, you can look at the processes and see what's up and then like give suggestions
about other projects that we can do together if it's a good fit, which is where I've kind
of come to these days in terms of hiring folks. I have a Why We Hire Consultants at ACAD blog
post that kind of goes into some details about this. But I love hiring consultants and working
with them and using them as both to implement like tangible things that what it's in their
sphere of influence, but then also, like advancing that relationship, hiring them over time, I
have several people that I pay retainers for, like consultants that have worked out really
well to, you know, get a monthly retainer and then kind of hang out with us. And we
do do things every month on an ongoing basis. And I really love that. Like I love the, you
know, the the ability of the internet to like find smart people. And as we've grown and
our budget is increased, I've been able to do it more. And it's like one of the things
that you know, that I really, really love is like, like, I can you can contact your
heroes and be like, Hey, you want to work together? I had this idea, and we would really
love your help. And often, you know, their schedule permit if you can pay the fee and
then over time, even if you're paying somebody, right, like you can you can it's like a you
know, they're it's like an employee and you can have a relationship though, right? Like
it's not like it's like a peer relationship at some point. And sometimes it moves beyond,
you know, hey, we're not going to work together and pay but we're peers now. So we talk about
it, we can collaborate in other ways and discuss what we're doing with our businesses.
Yeah, it's super cool. And I haven't heard of anyone else besides you sort of operating
their business and spending their budget that way. But it sounds like not only useful, but
really fun.
Yeah, it's great. And it allows us to work with people that we like literally couldn't
afford, like in terms of being like full time employees, and then also people that don't
work that way. But you know, like the best and the brightest of the folks that I really
am inspired by like getting to work with them is like a such a nice benefit of the gig for
me at all. And then I can take that I also like I'm like, well, this is you know, like,
this is way better than like a college class, right? Like I can pay this person, you know,
however, whatever thousands of dollars to come in on a month engagement. And you know,
we take notes, we learn from them, we talk to them, we clarify with them, and we actually
implement what the strategies that they are dictating to us. And the end result is that
we learn and grow, we deliver a better product, and our business is healthier for it. And
it's worked out really well across the board.
So you've got egghead to the point where you guys are doing a little over $3 million a
year in revenue, you're pretty much financially independent, you can run your business however
you want. What are you looking forward to in the future? What is what does that look
like 510 years from now?
Well, that's, that's a pretty good question. I don't really know. Like, I look at it as
you know, a place like I have all these children that I'd like to raise up and like offer the
opportunity to work in the family business if they want to. That's interesting to me.
I love the idea of continuing what we're doing and like the catalog at that point, like you
know, when you're 10 years in, and you have just the back catalog, like the historical
record of all the things is really fascinating to me as well. And then, you know, as we spin
it off, and we think about this and all the people that we can help, you know, I see a
lot lately where these these kind of bootstrap funds, right, like where they're offering
to invest in bootstrap businesses for different, different things, there's been a few of them
that I've noticed lately. And the idea too, that we can, you know, we can like help people
that are trying to start out and help them like build their audience and help them get
their content, you know, like their content products off the ground so that they can work
on whatever, you know, like come up with new ideas and build new sasses or do whatever
and fund it like through this this way that's, you know, like, kind of, you know, like, like
outside of the investment space, they make it like a new opportunity for funding it through
like helping them build little content empires to fund fund their dreams. And I think that's
like a like a strong possibility in terms of what we can do. And, and it's cool, because
that also, you know, like what we've built in the approach that we've taken isn't limited
to like developers, there's so many markets. And I don't think every one of them has to
like be as lucrative as software development. And that like software development is lucrative.
And you know, like that space has so much money. Right now, like hopefully, like, you
know, I'm all for that trend continuing. But there's all sorts of like artists and people
they're doing like smaller things and different, you know, like, I don't know, there's all
sorts of people out there creating really cool stuff that I think people will pay for
and can enrich all of us across the internet and get that kind of more sharing and really
like I'm personally like, I don't like school. I don't like work. I want to change both of
those things. And I'm just a guy with a little tiny hammer and a chisel in the corner chipping
away at that rock. And that's, that's my general goal is keep figuring out how I can change
that for as many people as possible.
What a world we're living in in 2018, where you can pass down the family bootstrapped
SaaS business to your kids. One more question that I'll let you get out of here, Joel, a
lot of people listening in are software developers are people who don't know how to code as well
who'd like to make their own online business and aren't quite sure where to start. What
advice would you have for somebody in that situation?
I mean, I'd be like read a book and take a class. I mean, I, I can't express how much
I enjoyed and got out of that 3500 class I've mentioned several times. I don't think like
going out there and just like doing it on your own, like, you know, like you there is
an education component to it. The trick there the balance is one to like pick the right
learning materials, and two to execute and actually try them, you know, the idea of analysis
paralysis, or I'm going to read every single book, like I got to get all the five star
books and read them all. And I'm still confused. Like, that's the hard part. And that's the
hard part of learning anything. It's like, that's the biggest struggle struggle that
people have. One is finding the time to do that. And then to actually implementing and
I see that like for people that are trying to learn how to be software developers or
business owners or whatever, it's like, you can learn the thing, but actually, you know,
like you can memorize the terms, you can like, you know, like, like read it and until you
actually do the thing, like it's really hard. So you find something small that you can practice
on and release it out there. There's a book called apprenticeship patterns that I love
quite a bit that has a chapter titled breakable toys. And the premise is that you can build
something and it doesn't matter if it fails or breaks, you just you know, like building
it and getting out there. And like I said, the first thing I released was literally like
a 10 page scan of some notes I took of a conference. They're pretty cool, actually. But like, that
was it that I sold it and I sold it for five bucks a pop and people bought it and my list
grew. And you know, it kind of opened the door for me. So you know, like think small,
think small while thinking big, I think you can you can think in both ways. And you know,
like, like do the next, you know, next smallest thing to get to your goals. And actually doing
it is is really the hard part. But it's the most essential part.
Yeah, actually doing it's pretty crucial part. Well, that's great advice. Joel, thanks so
much for coming on the podcast and sharing your knowledge and your story with us. Can
you let listeners know where they can go to learn more about egghead and about what you're
up to in your personal life as well if you share that stuff online?
Yeah, we have a we record a podcast we like a lot. It's all egghead.io is where all that
stuff lives forward slash podcast if you like to listen to developers and I like to like
talk about business with them and people that are doing interesting things in that regard.
So I like that quite a bit. And then Joel hooks calm, which is infrequently blog, but
there's some gems on there too, if you're interested in that sort of thing.
All right, Joe, thanks so much.
Nice to talk to you, Corbin. If you enjoyed listening to this conversation
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