What's up, everybody? This is Cortland from IndieHackers.com, and you're listening to
the IndieHackers podcast. More people than ever are building cool stuff online and making
a lot of money in the process. And on this show, I sit down with these IndieHackers to
discuss the ideas, the opportunities, and the strategies they're taking advantage of
so the rest of us can do the same. I'm so happy you're my co-host. I tweeted
last week that I've been trying to convince you to become my co-host, and I don't really
know how you felt, but you seem kind of excited about it. And honestly, I've not been as excited
to actually do the podcast in a long time. I've been doing the podcast for four years,
five years now since 2017, and I think it got kind of boring to me two years in. There's
some interesting episodes, there's some episodes that are boring, but I think what never went
away was this feeling of anxiety that I get recording the show because it's always been
a guest-focused show. I always bring on guests, most of the time they're first-time guests,
and I have no idea whether they're going to do a good job or not. And that just gives
me like mild anxiety. I don't like to worry about that. And so I've been trying to find
different ways to make the show fun for me to run forever, and literally nothing has
worked. But what's always fun for me, what's never not fun for me, is when you and I get
on a call and talk about indie hackers, talk about our lives, talk about what we're working
on. And so I think the best thing we could possibly do for this show, at least for it
to be fun for me, is to bring you on as my co-host, and just literally completely change
the entire format.
Well, it's fun for you. Okay, but what about the calculus of what's fun for the audience?
What makes you think that they're going to want to listen to me coming on and riffing
about random ideas with you?
I think people will like it. I think you're an intelligent guy, you're super smart. You're
the most well-read person that I know, possibly in terms of how often you read books. Most
of the books that I read come from you. You just tell me that you read a good book, and
then I start reading that book. You know a lot about indie hackers and business and startups,
so you can riff with me. We obviously have good chemistry. You know what you're willing
to do that almost nobody is? You're willing to call me on my bullshit. You will call me
out because you're my twin brother, and you've been calling me out for 35 years, and vice
versa. There's maybe been one or two other guests on the show over the entire last five
years who are willing to do that. That's just like more fun for me, and I think more fun
to listen to. I don't know. I think the audience will like it. We'll find out, but I care more
about like, do I like the show? I really don't think people will stick with any show or any
creation for that long if the person making it doesn't enjoy doing it that much because
they're not going to be putting their all into it.
Well, I like the idea of the fact that we meet every day for indie hackers. You speak
about calling you out. The thing I constantly call you out for is we get off topic because
we're riffing off of each other on really, really interesting topics like the kinds of
stuff that we want to talk about in this podcast. I like the idea that we can have partitions.
We have a place where we can actually do this, and it's the thing that we're supposed to
be doing.
I think that's one of the biggest differences between us though. It's like I'm like this
meandering wanderer. My days, if you look at my calendar, it's pretty much empty. If
you ask me what I'm going to do today, I'm like, I have no idea what I'm going to do
today. You're the exact opposite. You're like, I have a regimented schedule. I live my life
literally on a timer, and every minute of every day is accounted for like you're this
productivity robot. When I go off topic, I'm like, oh, this is delightful. Let's just talk
about this. You're like, dude, we need to get back on topic where I've got places to
be things to do whatever. I'm like, why don't you take a chill pill, dude? I feel like this
podcast is the one way I can get you to actually chill the fuck out.
I distinctly have the feeling whenever we have meetings that you have nothing better
to do. That's the feeling that I always like.
I'm talking to my twin brother who I love about the business that I'm running that I
love. Why would I have something better to do? That's awesome.
I guess that's the dream. Everyone's got different dreams.
I think the whole point of enjoying life is I spent my 20s working on startups hardcore.
All of them failed except for Andy Hackers. Depending on your definition of failure, some
were kind of okay. They made money, but they weren't what I wanted them to be.
I don't know how many times I turned down friends. He said, oh, we're going to the soccer
game you want to come. We're going out drinking. You want to come having a birthday party.
We're going to this trip. I said, no, no, no, no, no, because I was living entirely
in the future. I want to succeed at this thing that I'm working hard on. I ignored the present.
I didn't live in the present and I wasn't that happy. I was kind of fulfilled. I was
doing things I like to do, but I'm much happier now, I think, when I have a good balance of
living in the present. Part of living in the present means not caring about what you have
to do. It's kind of like not caring about your goals to some degree.
I agree with that, but I almost feel like we approach it. We approach the same solution
from different angles. With me, on the one hand, I want to have balance. I want to spend
time with my friends. I want to spend time with my girlfriends. I want to talk to my
brother. Then I have all of these other things that I want to do as well. I feel like if
I get to the end of the week and I just pissed away my time doing the thing that was the
most fun in the moment, I tend to have regret.
Why is that pissing away your time? If you did something that was super fun and it brought
you happiness, what is the voice inside of you that says, you pissed away your time doing
that? I can understand that if it wasn't that fun. If you're just kind of sucked into scrolling
through TikTok and you're not having that much fun and you're just kind of stuck there,
okay, you're pissing away your time. It's not good for the future or the present. If
you go to an event with your friends and it's awesome. Are you having an awesome conversation
with your brother or someone? Why is that pissing away your time?
It's opportunity cost. I'm rereading this book, Molecule of More, and it points out
that there's a difference between wanting to do something and liking the thing that
you're doing. On the one hand, if you want to do something, I'll scroll Twitter and I'll
really enjoy scrolling Twitter at that moment, just because I'm kind of chasing this idea
of are the various headlines, are the various first tweets going to deliver on what their
promises are? They don't have to deliver on that for you to still want to keep scrolling.
Yet the things that I want to do often don't have that same anticipatory charm. I think
that there's a way where you can step back and you can say, hey, what's my whole project
stack? What are all the projects that I really want to do? You do that in a sense of abstraction
and you can decide what you want to do. Then I think it's just holding yourself to that
when I do that, I'm happier. I'm happier in real time and I'm also happier in retrospect.
It's kind of as weird things. I have the same feeling. If I'm doom scrolling on Twitter,
honestly, it's not what I want to be doing. There's never a time where I'm doing that.
I'm like, this is the thing I want to be doing the most in life right now. I would almost
always rather be reading a book or coding for indie hackers or hanging out with a lover
or going somewhere with my friends or sleeping. Almost anything is better for me than doing
that. I wouldn't even agree that that's something I want to do. That's something where I feel
like I've been trapped. Someone who's an expert at understanding the human brain and psychology
has gotten me hooked and I'm in this weird Neverland place trapped between I don't have
the activation energy required to not scroll to the next thing, but I also don't have the
desire truly to want to scroll to the next thing. What do I do? I'm just trapped.
I think that this is just the world that we're in. Look, we have a lot of freedom. We work
on indie hackers. In terms of finding exciting things to do, the world is your oyster. But
I feel that if you live in the opposite situation, in a world of scarcity, you have to be really
proactive about creating abundance. But I feel like in a world of abundance, you have
to be proactive about creating scarcity because you have all of these things coming at you.
You just have to make hard sacrifices. I don't want to sacrifice talking to my brother, but
it's like if we have a 90-minute meeting, you got to... I got another shit to do. At
a certain point in time, you got to cut that off.
All right. Well, you're on the podcast now and so now you're not going to cut it off.
It's going to be 90 minutes or 60 minutes or however we talk about random ass shit that
has nothing to do with whether or not you're being productive. Which raises the question,
what are we going to talk about on this show? If we're changing up the entire formula, I
think that there's an inherent risk there where there's 25,000 people who listen to
the Indie Hackers Podcast who listen because they like what it is. It's like an interviews
based show where I bring on Indie Hackers who talk about essentially whether or not
the stories behind the inspiring businesses that they're starting. I don't necessarily
want to do that anymore. Something I don't want to bring people on, but I would much
rather have the basis of the show be me talking to you about what we find interesting and
that be kind of the core. Which means we'll have episodes like this one where there literally
isn't anybody that we're interviewing. There's no story that we're telling. There isn't an
inspiration on any Hackers story. It's just you and me. So the question is like, does
that work? And if it does work, does that work for an entirely different listener than
we already have for the show so far?
I know that I'm interested in conversations with you, but then I saw that you made a tweet
about you trying to convince me. And I got a really interesting idea about it because
Vincent Wu joked about coming on and I love Vincent.
Being a co-host.
Right, about being a co-host. I don't know. I don't listen to a lot of Indie Hackers Podcast
episodes ironically, but I listened to a few, especially the ones where you had previously
you had guests that I'm friends with. I loved the episode with Lin Tai. Lin Tai is both
of our friends. I love the episode with Vincent Wu. So I like the idea of inviting some of
these people on so that we could just sort of riff with them.
I think that's kind of a no brainer for sure. Let's bring on people that we know, that we
like talking to. We'll do our own thing most episodes or half the time and then we'll bring
them on. They can join us. But what about the essential challenge that I've always had
with Indie Hackers is if I bring on someone who's totally new. I meet someone on the website
over my email who's got a cool business and she's crushing it, but she has never been
on the mic before. She's never told her story publicly before. There's a part of me that's
like fuck it. I want to bring her on anyway. But then it's like a total crap shoot, right?
Half the time it's a dud. The download numbers are super low. Half the time it's a star.
How many episodes have you recorded and then deleted?
Maybe like 10 or 15. I talked to the founder, one of the founders of Typeform. It's the
worst conversation I've ever had on a podcast. It took me like six months to get him to say
yes. We kept going back and forth. He kept forgetting who I was and then saying yes and
then like disappearing. And then he finally showed up one day and I'm like so ready to
interview this guy and I'm like preparing questions forever. And he's like, this is
only 20 minutes, right? I'm like, dude, it's an hour. It's on your calendar for an hour.
It's like, oh, I only have 20 minutes. And I'm like, fine, let's just do it. Hope we
can get 20 minutes out of him now and then like maybe another 20, 30 later. And he just
gave me like the most half-hearted, lukewarm, like he wasn't even really paying attention.
So I just like canceled the episode and I was like, oh, have a good day, dude, and just
deleted it. I haven't had anything that bad before, but I've had other episodes that just
didn't go that well. Even with Len Tai, we recorded a bunch of times and she was all
nervous and we threw out the first two or three recordings and the one that went live
is the one that was the best. And so I think that's kind of part of the creative process
for anything, for writing, for making movies, for podcasting. But honestly, it's not that
fun. Especially if you have guests who you don't know, like it doesn't feel good to tell
somebody their episode isn't that good and you're not going to publish it. Whereas with
you, I could be like, dude, you suck. Delete. And I don't care at all because it's like
I'm used to saying that kind of stuff to you and you don't care.
I'm also interested in just seeing what I like about other podcasts that are sort of
similar to this and then maybe lifting that.
There's a good episode of Naval's podcast where he's talking about an idea from Peter
Thiel, which is like you kind of want to avoid competition. It's like every super hyper competitive
industry on earth is like pretty much impossible to be number one because everyone's doing
it. But it's hard to do that because essentially we're kind of copycats. And so if everybody
around you is building a startup, you want to be the best startup founder. If everybody
around you is good at dancing or all your friends are good at basketball, suddenly you
find yourself wanting to practice dancing and practice basketball. And that's how you
get sucked into super hyper competitive things that are hard to win. And I think podcasting
is hyper competitive. There's a million different podcasts in every industry, every vertical.
And so I think part of what we need to do is like not copy what other shows are doing.
And the only way to do that is just to be authentically who we are, right? Which is
why I want to talk to you because the only way to be authentically who you are is just
to do things that you love. And I love talking to you about different stuff. You have a lot
of things that you love. And if we do that, then like nobody's going to be Channing Allen
better than you could be Channing Allen. Nobody's going to be better at being me than I can
be me. But if we copy other shows, then like the best that we could ever do, even if we're
amazing at copying some other show is to be second best in it.
That's true. At the same time, there probably are things about other shows that they do
that we could take inspiration from. I mean, there are things that we do better than anyone
else.
It's kind of like this tightrope. It's almost like a paradox where to do anything of quality,
you have to be empathetic and you have to know like, what are your listeners want? What
are your customers want? What do your users want? You have to put yourself in their shoes
and essentially make something that they want. It's like literally the motto of Y Combinator,
make something people want. But to be authentic, you have to do what you want and what you
love. And that's like a complete paradox is like you can't do both of those at the same
time unless you're just extremely lucky and what you love happens to be exactly what everybody
else loves. But I think like the resolution to this paradox is realizing that you don't
have to do those at the same time for every single thing.
If you like pizza, for example, you could say, okay, I like pizza. I don't care if my
audience likes pizza. I like pizza. So I'm going to inject pizza into like the title
of my podcast and to the clothing and the merch that I sell and to like the segment
that comes to the end of my podcast and this particular question, whether anybody else
likes it, I like that. But then you could also have the empathetic side where you're
like, well, people really want to hear fascinating interviews. So they really want to hear from
guests who have a lot of authority. So they're believable. Or they really want to hear people's
backstory. You can insert that too. And that doesn't clash with the fact that you like
pizza. And so you have both of these things at the same time.
And so in this case, so in this case, it comes a lot down to things that we both like. And
the kind of funny thing is that we have a lot of things in common, but we also are like
polar opposites.
All right. Why don't you tell me what I like? I'll tell you what I think you like. I think
you like neuroscience. That's right. Books. You like being cool. You like comedy, writing
fiction in particular. I think you like playing games and not like literal video games, but
playing sort of turning your life into a game and you like productivity. I think you like
all of those things more than almost anything else.
That's true. I like games too. We literally ran a World of Warcraft guild together for
many years.
You like games, but that was like 15 years ago. You were like a kid. I mean, you played
Fortnite, but I feel like those are the things that I think you're the most interested to
talk about and actually do.
Sure. Okay. Well with you, I think obviously we both like productivity. You probably like
it less than I do. You're less obsessed over it. I don't know. I think you like keeping
in touch with a lot of your old friends. You've kept your college social network for a lot
longer than I have. You like non-monogamy and relationships and experimenting with that.
Obviously you like startups. You like tech. You still go to Hacker News on a daily basis.
I check it almost like professionally just because we got to keep the ball running with
indie hackers and we have to kind of keep up with our competition.
I think you have a lot of aspirational goals. I think you want to travel more. In a lot
of ways, I think about your interest as you spent your 20s hunkering down doing startups
and denying a lot of the things that you could have been spending your life doing. In a lot
of ways, you're on the redeem team now. You now are like, okay, what are all the things
that I kept followed up? I'm going to go do that shit now.
Ooh, you know what you like that I left out? It's politics.
That's not true. What about politics do I like?
You love politics, dude. I know a bunch of people in the audience are just cringed because
the last thing they want to do is hear maybe Hacker Show trying to do a show about politics.
Every single time there's any sort of election, you're the person out of all my friends and
family with something to be the most links about who said what, what's going on, what's
changing, what's new. You care more about that than anyone that I have.
I'll tell you what, I don't like politics. I think that I have a very gameable brain.
Right now on Twitter, I'm following one person because I have unfollowed everyone else. It's
just this daily death reminder because when there's some sort of new big story, it's like
it's an account that just spams. You're going to die one day.
You will die some day. You will die some day because
Dude, that's morbid. Why would you follow this account?
It's amazing. It's amazing because what it does is it makes it so that when I go to Twitter
mindlessly, when I'm supposed to be doing work and I find myself scrolling just because
I want to entertain myself, I see that and I get reminded like why the hell am I on Twitter?
That was the most jamming thing ever. Before I had that, I have a really gameable
mind when someone, like clickbait gets me and whenever it's political season, clickbait
gets me. Right.
That whole list of things that I like, the whole list of things that you like, we should
just talk about that whenever we want to. We shouldn't talk about shit that we're not
interested in. And then there's the other side of the equation, which is like, what
actually works on a podcast? Right. And so I think you mentioned earlier, there's like
different shows that we like. Let me pull up my, do you use Google podcasts?
What's your podcast app? I do. Yeah, yeah. Google podcasts.
How often do you actually listen to podcasts? I listen to podcasts literally every day.
I do some reading. I do some podcast listening every single day.
Okay. That's more than me. I go months without listening to a podcast and then I'll have
months where I listen like three or four times a week. I'm scrolling through my list. I'm
subscribed to probably 35 podcasts and I only listen to three or four of them. I listen
to conversations with Tyler, where Tyler Cowan just brings on expert scientists and world
leaders and he just, he'll read like 50 books before he talks to somebody, then he'll grill
them with questions that half the time you as a listener won't even understand. I'm gonna
have this crazy conversation that's like not at all dumbed down and you're basically just
a fly on the wall, which I love. I have the 10 fair show, which I listen to very rarely.
I wait for somebody that I respect or care about or a topic that's interesting to me.
I listen to that and then I skip every single other episode.
I'm the exact same, but I feel like that's the kind of podcast and sort of like Joe Rogan
where I can't imagine doing it any other way because they're super long.
They're super long, but it's also very topical and I don't want our show to be that. I don't
want to have a show where today we're talking about writing books, tomorrow we're talking
about hiring, the next day we're talking about fun, where it's like, okay, I'm just gonna
pick and choose. I would rather you and I just riff and it be the kind of show you can
different to any episode and it's always entertaining because it's you and I riffing.
So do you think that we should have any topics though? I mean, this is ostensibly an entrepreneurship
show. Should we be faithful to that to some extent? Should there be any segments that
we do?
Yeah, what if we have segments? I mean, I don't know, the stereotypical segments on
podcast were like, what are your top five favorite books? We shouldn't do that, but
we can do number one, what's going on in our personal lives. I want to hear what's going
on in your life. You got some interesting projects and stuff you're working on. I have
cool stuff I'm working on in my life. We should share that whenever it comes up. We can do
just insights. I know you write a lot. I'm trying to tweet a little bit more. We both
learn a ton during indie hack doing indie hackers. I have like giant lists of like startup
lessons that I've learned.
Oh, you know what I always thought about now that you bring that up. I started writing
a newsletter about my processes and about like, I'm really sister oriented and I wrote
a post because I thought I was going to write like seven more posts. And then I got really
busy and I haven't done that. And I actually literally yesterday got someone in my email
complaining that I basically created a teaser. And you told me some girl read that and was
like, you know, sort of a productivity system like this doesn't make any sense. And you
knew that that was only the tip of the iceberg. So my idea is maybe I just don't do that super
time consuming newsletter. And instead I just riffed on some of those ideas.
Talk about what you're doing here. Yeah, I love that. I would consider that like a personal
life update, kind of like a personal hack. We can bring people on we can interview people
we can have friends on and riff. We can just talk about some stuff on any hackers, because
usually what we talk about is like, okay, did you see this post on any hackers? Are
here's what we're trying to do? How do we fix this problem? I think if you're listening
to this show, you're probably fan of any hackers, the website. And so figuring out like, listening
to what we're doing with the website, I think is not bad. We can do almost like an advice
column, like Dan Savage does, where people write in with like their crazy stories of
like their fucked up love lives and sex lives and I'll just like give them advice. We can
do the same thing with people sort of write in with their problems. Like I can make a
post on the forum be like, Okay, ask me a chanting a question share story. We might
talk about it on the air. I don't know some some combination of either making fun of people
or actually helping them with their problems. If all goes well, it'll be an interesting
show and we won't be canceled. And that's well, that's also the reason why I want to
bring on people that we know, like that we have good rapport with. Because I feel like
for example, I feel that you have, there's much more of like the authentic, like ball
busting call bullshit when you see it vibe that you bring if you if you're talking to
like Vincent Wu, or if you're talking to certain people. So maybe that'll be our guest filter.
People that we know who are any hackers or who are interesting and related to like any
of the topics that we care about, whether that's science or productivity or tech or
business, then I think on the high end is like people that we don't know who we look
up to. You read a lot of books, I read a lot of books, we both read a lot of essays and
novels and listen to podcasts. There's a lot of these people who I just like look up to,
you know, like I want to talk to Jonathan Haidt. He wrote a cool essay about capitalism,
he's doing all these research on capitalism, like I want to talk to him about the ethics
of capitalism on the Adactions podcast. And I'm pretty sure you would enjoy that conversation.
Like he also reads books. So I don't know if we can start there. But eventually I like
to get to that place. So I think we should bring out a lot of authors too, and just talk
to them about stuff that they are like the world class expert on.
Yeah, I mean, that's a like already what I do to determine what I want to read is I look
at my interests, I look at the projects that I'm working on. And I think about like, you
know, what are those projects I'm working on, indie hackers, it's a business, I'm running
a community, I want to talk to like Andrew Chin, the guy that wrote The Cold Star Problem,
it's all about like network effects. I'm really into writing fiction, right? So lately, one
of my favorite authors has been this guy Will Store. I'm interested in fiction, and I'm
interested in science. And he wrote a book called The Science of Storytelling. So I'd
love to pick his brain. I'm all down for having the kinds of people that I usually read their
books, bringing them on and actually having conversations with them.
Same here, dude. What's cool about the phase of our end with indie hackers is like, indie
hackers is a successful business. And I put business in quotes, because indie hackers
like already sold to Stripe a long time ago, doesn't make any money. But I think there's
almost like two phases to every business, right? You got the like, the make it work
phase, and then you got the reap the benefits phase. And we're pretty lucky that we have
a business in a community where like the reap the benefits phase is pretty cool. The make
it work phase, I think it's all about like, how do I actually make money for my business?
How do I actually like, you know, create something that works? And I think the biggest mistake
people make here is the day they quit their job, they're like, I'm free. And they fill
up all their free time with a bunch of random shit and chores that's not working on their
business. And I feel like they haven't earned it yet. Like, your business doesn't work yet.
You know, the day you quit your job, and you work on your own company, like, you're not
free yet. Like, you've got to work on it and get it to the point where like, it's self
sustaining. But once you get there, I think it's very important to like, question your
assumptions and ask like, okay, like, do I want to keep making more and more and more
money? Or do I want to focus on like all these creative freedoms, and other types of freedoms,
like time, and creative freedom, and the freedom to like, very importantly, work with whoever
you want to work with, which is I think, super underrated. Oh, to any hackers, it's like,
I can work with you, we can sit here and have business meetings and turn them into a podcast.
Creative freedom, we can talk about whatever we want. And there's really no downside, because
we have like the underpinnings, like we're solidly in phase two. And so I think everything
we do with the podcast should just be, just start off kind of with that as like the North
Star, like what do we actually want to do? And if the show goes from 25,000 listeners
to 15,000 listeners, like, I don't care. But I honestly suspect that if we do what we want
to do, it'll go from 25,000 listeners to 250,000 listeners, because it's just more obvious
that it's a good show. And that's what people want to hear.
Yeah, I feel like we've never gotten past the make it work phase with the site or the
podcast. And honestly, I don't even really know what to make it work, like getting it
to the point where like, I don't know what it now works.
I think we have. I just think we get it to the make it work phase. And then you're just
like, okay, what's the next level of making it work? Like, okay, Andy Hackers is getting
to the front page of Hacker News every single week. It's getting tens of thousands of page
views. That was five years ago. That worked. It made enough money to pay my rent, that
worked. And then it was like, okay, well, raise the bar, join Stripe. Patrick Allison's
talking about changing the world in the face of entrepreneurship. And it's like, okay,
new bar, right? Now we got to make that work, right? Can we make an internet forum or a
social network that like is kind of like people powered where we're not running all the content?
Like we did that. If you and I don't post on any hackers for the next six months, there's
still going to be thousands of posts a month, right? We made that work, right? So we just
keep raising the bar. And I think there's something in it that's fun. Like I like raising
the bar. But I think you also need to sort of live in the moment and figure out like
how to like reap the rewards. So I want to do a combination of those. I want to be ambitious.
I want to talk to a bigger and better guests who like, you know, we previously couldn't
have dreamed of getting in the room with. I want the website to be bigger and better.
I want it to be like the number one social network where most entrepreneurs start their
journey. But I also want to be able to sit down and talk to my brother on a podcast.
I want it to. Here we go.