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Welcome to another episode of the Osom to Know podcast, where we discuss about entrepreneurship, and innovative business solutions. Today, we are joined by John Rush, an indie maker with a remarkable portfolio of 24 indepandant projects. We explore the essentials of business competition, the evolving landscape of B2B and B2C incentives, and the challenges and opportunities presented by AI integration. We also discuss the dynamics of niche tools in the tech world, the concept of building in public, and John’s future plan known as the “village project” for indie creators.
John Rush [00:00:00]:
They will participate in this, you know, camps, events, and programs, and they can do it, you know, every now and then. And then eventually, some people will can will like it so much that they will wanna stay long term. The principal has certain job to do, and they have a lot of pains. And the chance that one of the principals in one of the schools will suddenly realize that I could automate this with software is very low. It’s very low chance. But the good bundling where you pick 1 user and you satisfy all the user’s needs.
Maciej Nowak [00:00:29]:
Hello, everyone. My name is Maciej Nowak, and welcome to the Osom to Know podcast where we discuss all things related to building a great website. In today’s episode, we dive deep with indie maker, John Rush, who’s been championing independent product development with a portfolio of 24 projects. We explore his ambitious “village project”, a planned community designed specifically for indie creators, a place where innovation thrives beyond the digital space. John shares his unique philosophy on tackling challenges from managing legal hurdles in Portugal to his iterative approach of building out of pain. We also discussed building in public the role of AI in SaaS and why specializing in niche tools can be a competitive advantage. Join us for insights on indie entrepreneurship, tackling real world obstacles, and creating solutions that resonate. If you don’t want to miss new episodes and keep learning about WordPress, subscribe to us on to now newsletter at osomstudio.com/newsletter.
Maciej Nowak [00:01:32]:
This is osomstudio.com/newsletter. If you watch this on YouTube, give us a thumb and subscribe to the channel. This means a word to us. Without further ado, please enjoy my conversation with John Rush.
Lector [00:01:53]:
Hey, everyone. It’s good to have you here. We’re glad you decided to tune in for this episode of the Osom to Know podcast.
Maciej Nowak [00:02:02]:
Hello, John. How are you?
John Rush [00:02:03]:
Hello. All good. I’m ready for this chat.
Maciej Nowak [00:02:07]:
Great. I will start with one of your recent projects. I want to ask, how is the village project progressing? And, you know, for our listeners, I would want to know how it all started, but now I want to know how it how it’s going.
John Rush [00:02:23]:
Well, it is way more difficult to progress on physical projects compared to digital. So, we underappreciate how how easy it is to run online business and directories and SaaS tools compared to offline, the real world stuff. So now I’m still in the process of looking for land and and figuring out the permissions and how to build stuff and the the legal parts and if I can actually build the things I wanna build because I’m looking for Portugal. And in Portugal, the laws are quite strict on what you can build. But just recently, they changed the laws, and it’s easier to build stuff than it was, like, just a year ago. So I’m just researching all this stuff now and still in the in the process of figuring out the location, the land, and the size of the project. So it’s it’s not that much progress yet.
Maciej Nowak [00:03:19]:
Alright. So, like, mapping us into a digital world, you are still still, like, figure figuring out how to how to start because you are you know, you want to do that, but you are stuck with legal aspects. You can’t, you know, progress with the whole idea. Right?
John Rush [00:03:36]:
Yeah. But I’m not sad about that. It’s just I because I have things to do, and things are going slow on that side, but, you know, they are still moving forward. And I do other stuff while waiting for that stuff, so it’s that’s the beauty of having many projects.
Maciej Nowak [00:03:54]:
Mhmm.
John Rush [00:03:54]:
Whenever one project is gonna be moving slow, and there is nothing you can do to speed that up. And if there was only one project you have, you would be sad. But in my case, I think that’s a great time to focus on some other projects I have.
Maciej Nowak [00:04:07]:
Perfect. So can you tell us more about that project, that physical project? You know, you you you run 24 projects, digital projects, And, this one is physical. So I’m very curious, how you came up with the idea. And for our listeners, maybe who don’t know about that, a village project, Can you introduce us to your vision for that village?
John Rush [00:04:33]:
Yeah. So I think the indie maker world is growing, and it’s growing really fast. And it soon will be so big that I think the indie making way will be the default way of building startups, and people will turn into VC path farther along the road. And I think there is one problem with indie maker world is that all Indomakers or MOS are really lonely because we don’t have an office. We don’t have partners. We had we we don’t have team. Even if we have, usually, it’s remote. So and we don’t go to conferences, and we don’t do all the other stuff, the the events that’s VC backed founders do.
John Rush [00:05:17]:
That’s why I think the loneliness is a problem, and it will just keep growing. And I thought, like, there is no place there’s no capital of in the making. Like, we know the capital of VC backed world, which is Silicon Valley, and we know, YC as the place where everyone everyone wants to go in. And then we have Web Summit and TechCrunch, disrupt, like so everything is kind of all the rules are there, and we know what to do, and we know what to strive for. But in in in the maker world, there’s only one thing that unites everyone is product hunt. But otherwise, you know, everybody’s on their own. And there’s some there’s Twitter as well, but still it’s just online. So I think, having a physical place, not just in one location, eventually, I wanna have a lot of locations, but start with 1.
John Rush [00:06:05]:
Having the physical place where people kind of all know that this is the place where you can go if you wanna, you know, hang out with other, people. And, also, this is the place where you can have, you know, education, you can have acceleration, you can you can learn stuff from others and things like that. That place doesn’t exist, and I want that place to exist. So if someone else has built that, I would be just happy and join them, but, you know, nobody’s building that, and I feel like I’m probably in a good position to be the one who builds.
Maciej Nowak [00:06:37]:
Mhmm. And this is the idea behind why. So this is the why, you are doing this. And what is that you are building? Like, you mentioned you need to buy the land. So what Yeah. How this is going to materialize?
John Rush [00:06:52]:
Yeah. So I wanna buy land, of a large size, where I wanna build several types of properties. So one is the long term property where people can stay up to 6 months, and there will be few of them. And then there is short term where people can stay up to 30 days. And then I wanna run, the events there mostly, like, in an incubation events. So I wanna have an incubation for SaaS, incubation for directories, incubation for others type of business that Indie Makers can do. And it will all start, and the first form of this will be like a place for education. So it will be kind of like a campus where you can study or you can learn with others with good kind of teachers, how to do stuff.
John Rush [00:07:44]:
For example, we’ll have any, like, a program for growth or a program for SEO, and then people who run businesses can come and just, you know, go through that program and improve their SEO for their product, for example. Because I I want the place to be busy. I don’t want the place to be, like, relaxed where people just come and, you know, do yoga and stuff because that’s there are a lot of places like that for that. And my place will be mostly for people who wanna come and do progress on their projects. And I think when, you have people doing progress next to you, it’s much easier to do progress yourself too because it’s motivating. And I’ve been through the start up innovators many times, and there’s really good vibe. Everybody’s working hard, and people share ideas, people help each other, and and, you know, even some people form teams. So that’ll be the start.
John Rush [00:08:36]:
Like, the, the way it will look, it’ll be like a place with bedrooms, like, very small bedrooms, per person, and then there will be, everything will be managed, like all the food. Like, you won’t have your own kitchen because that’s kinda waste of of place and resource. If you come for 30 days, that’s not needed. So it’ll be like a nice huddle, basically, with a really large coworking place that has, you know, meeting rooms and and special rooms for for different workshops. And there will be program, and every morning it starts, and it has ends at the night. And then on the weekend, people just party and, you know, drink or play sports or whatever. So that will be also organized. So I went I wanna organize the whole thing, both the work part and the leisure so that, you know, you don’t have to really spend hours researching where to go, where to eat, all those I don’t want this to be like a tourism thing.
John Rush [00:09:40]:
I want this to be like a program. You come from day 1 and to day 30, everything, is known. There’s clear program for every hour you have.
Maciej Nowak [00:09:50]:
Wow. It’s, like, very strict. It’s because when I was thinking about that, before our conversation, I was thinking, is it going to be, like, a hotel where you where you go, you check-in, you spend time, you do your work, and then you leave and, you know, someone else coming from your place. Or rather, you know, more on a, let’s say, ownership basis where you when you have a skin in game in the game in a sense, you buy something. You buy your room, you buy your flat, you stay there for, like, for living, like, to live there. Because I was curious. Is is it going to be, like, you move in as a citizen and you join the village as as that as a villager and you stay, like, not forever but for years or on a hotel basis where you you stay for much short and now now I get it. And it it it sounds like, like a camp where every part of your day is really planned and your focus and and, like, your job there is to maximize the out outcome of that of that visit. Right?
John Rush [00:10:57]:
Exactly. But, you know, there will be some mix. So I have this picture in Twitter where, it’s like 3 circles. So the outside circle is the long term properties where you can actually own that or can long term rent or you can even buy that and own it. And that part is totally private. It has own entrance, and you’re basically having access to the inside, but also your kind of own backyard is your own. Like, nobody has access there. Because I think for long term residents, they wanna have 100% privacy, like, not they don’t wanna share stuff, like, in spaces unless they want.
John Rush [00:11:35]:
And if they want, they go inside, and the inner circle will be a short term stay. They’ll be like a camp with the events, with the, you know, programs, etcetera. And I think, the natural way for people to look at this is that, you know, people will be first visiting the short term part. They will participate in this, you know, camps, events, and programs, and they can do it, you know, every now and then. And then eventually, some people will can will like it so much that they will wanna stay long term or, you know, medium term, like 6 months. And those people can rent the outside circle housing and stay there for longer term and then kind of, you know, visit all the programs once in a while. And some of them eventually will think that they like this all so much that they wanna actually invest and buy the property they live in, and they can buy the property they live in. And when they buy it, it’s basically appreciating in the price, and, you know, eventually, they can get citizenship if it’s in Portugal after 5 years.
John Rush [00:12:36]:
So, basically, you can turn from, you know, this kind of temporary mode into more, like, you know, permanent modes. And you can even have your family and children there because I because I have family and children, and I wanna make it, suitable. So there will be school for children. There will be, all kind of things you need for,
John Rush [00:12:57]:
for having, you know, not just dudes there, but, you know, more like adults.
Maciej Nowak [00:13:03]:
Yeah. Now now don’t you worry that this is, sounding a little bit too utopian to make?
John Rush [00:13:11]:
I think it would be utopian if it was a community. Like, I’ve seen communities where there is no proper ownership where everybody comes in. There’s no system. There’s no hierarchy, and people do stuff because they wanna do stuff. You know, and if they don’t want, they don’t do, and things like that. In my case, it will be very different. It will be more, you know, down to the earth. So the inner part will be just like any camp./hotel, ./an incubator and conference room.
John Rush [00:13:46]:
Right? So that part is, it exists. Exactly.
Maciej Nowak [00:14:16]:
Yeah. There are bridges like that.
John Rush [00:14:16]:
Yeah. And then, the outside part where you can actually stay for years, the idea there is that it’s optional. I think only 1 out of 100 will be interested in that, and even they will buy it, and they will own it. It’s not like, you know, they own in exchange for them working on something because that’s difficult.
John Rush [00:14:16]:
Like, it’s king of socialism. Right? So I want this to be truly capitalistic So people buy the property just like they would buy anywhere else. They stay there. In 1 year or 2 years, they get tired of being, you know, outside of the big town maybe. They sell it or their children grown up and they’re they wanna go to schools and they leave and somebody else moves in. Right? Who has smaller children, for example. Most likely, that will be the case. Like, people with smaller children will like it more because it’s easier, you know, but if you have bigger children, like, 10 years or old, they wanna have busy life, and they will move out.
John Rush [00:14:51]:
They will sell. Right? That’s why it would be utopian if I did it in a way that the whole place is owned by everyone, and then, you know, like
Maciej Nowak [00:15:02]:
That’s what we’re dystopian.
John Rush [00:15:05]:
Supposed yeah. And and everyone’s supposed to do something, like a family
Maciej Nowak [00:15:10]:
Yeah. Shifts.
John Rush [00:15:11]:
And I, yeah, and I don’t believe in that. I’ve seen a lot of communities trying that, and people you know, like Mad Max. Or not Mad Max. Burning Man. Burning Man works because it’s very short. But, you know, once you make it longer that people who don’t know each other have to collaborate for a year, they’re gonna kill each other at the end. That will be the end of the story. Right? Or they will hate each other.
John Rush [00:15:36]:
So that’s why I I wanna make it easy to understand the rules. So you own the property. It’s yours. You do whatever you want. And, also, if you wanna use something, like you wanna go to the event, you pay. You don’t get it just because you’re part of something. Everything costs money there. Everything.
Maciej Nowak [00:15:55]:
Yeah. That like, that’s super interesting. How it like and it’s a lot of a long, let’s say, you know, you are in the station where you are looking for land. So we are looking at some, you know, some time. Right? It’s not going to happen, you know, next month or maybe or not even this year. So I’m curious how this will develop whereas, you know, this is you mentioned this is so much harder with, fiscal projects than with digital ones, and we don’t have shift. How how is it with digital? Whereas, you know, I had a thing that people tends to think that, okay, digital is so difficult. Let’s let’s sell stuff we buy cheaper.
Maciej Nowak [00:16:37]:
You know? Sell sell it more, you know, with higher prices. Right? So this is different one because this is, you know, like, like, commerce. Right? Whereas you are building. It’s it’s totally different thing when you’re building where versus you are, you know, in a in a in a commerce business.
John Rush [00:16:55]:
Yeah. It is the way more difficult also because all the regulations and you know, your you have to go through all that legally. Otherwise, you have a legal structure. But I think in my case, like, it will take time for me to promote it. It will take time for me to explain the world what this is. And while I do this, my audience is growing on digital products, and those people are the people who will be interested in this. That’s why it is even better that I don’t have it right now because maybe having it done in a year or 2 will be better because the people will be more ready for this, and I will have more people who already kind of heard it about this for many times, and they have some picture of this in their head. I think during the next year, I will buy the land and start construction, and, the year after, we will have our 1st MVP kind of ready.
John Rush [00:17:59]:
So, basically, it’s 2 years from now when I expect to to host the first group there.
Maciej Nowak [00:18:05]:
Mhmm. Yeah. So this is like, you know, when I’m I’m looking at this from a, like, a construction management where you have a building for, like, for tenants, like, you know, apartment block built within up to 3 years. Right? This is, like, 2 to 3 years. This is the cycle. You know, you
John Rush [00:18:36]:
Yeah.
Maciej Nowak [00:18:36]:
For the decision until, you know, the keys are hand handed over. So it’s like, you know, very quick, but then, these guys are doing this, you know, building after building after building, all set up.The one city, you know, always always very, you know, repetitive. Whereas you are you know, I I I think I remember when you were considering the in the country. You’re considering Portugal, Turkey, and one more country, Thailand. Was it Thailand?
John Rush [00:18:52]:
I was actually just considering these 2
Maciej Nowak [00:18:55]:
Alright.
John Rush [00:18:55]:
And and many others, but these 2 work in the the top of my list.
Maciej Nowak [00:19:00]:
Yeah. So it’s like
John Rush [00:19:01]:
And, you know, I’ve tried that a little bit. So I tried it in Turkey, and and I’m trying now just small projects just to practice. So I’m, late this summer, I’m building one building that I wanna practice on. And that’s interesting thing as well. Like, the the goal of the project isn’t just to build the place somehow and then run this whole thing. The process of building is part of the project too because I want to, slowly start, you know, doing more of non tech projects, non digital projects. And one of them is how to build effectively. Because, right now, it takes forever to build something and then maintenance is expensive.
John Rush [00:19:48]:
And if something breaks, you have to break the whole wall to change the pipe, etcetera. So I actually wanna build it in some cool way that’s not just using bricks, and that’s something more, you know, modern. And I want that whole process to be a case study and something I do in public with others and have a lot of innovation within. And then, the step number 2 after we build the first village is to build more villages in other countries. Right? So the phase 2 is that we build more villages within Portugal, few more, and that’s faith phase 3 is that we build it in every city in the world, and we connect them together, as a kind of network, and then the whole new thing opens up in that case. And to do all that, we have to develop the the new product, which is, know, how to build stuff in a efficient way.
Maciej Nowak [00:20:43]:
Mhmm. Like like a franchise.
John Rush [00:20:48]:
Exactly. And and if you look at the things I do, like, for example, I was growing my one product with SEO, and then I learned SEO. And I learned how to do it really fast with little effort and get high results. And I’m not that good at it, but I don’t have to be because I only need that much out of that. I just need few small things. And then I build a product out of this process. And and now I have these products, and those products are really good, and they help other founders. And I think same thing while building this village. I will like, a side effect of this is that we will build multiple products around how to build stuff, how to furnish how how to put furniture, how to connect stuff together, how to deal with the, regulations.
John Rush [00:21:39]:
Right? Because right now, the process is very difficult, but but I wanna build a tool or a service that will let anyone in Portugal, to actually go through this process in a very simple way over the website, you know, with with just clicks. Instead because it can always partly, you know, automated and, you know, you have all the laws and you have AI and it can help you so you can avoid paying a lot of money to lawyers and other people. And so there are a lot of products I wanna create on the way, and that’s kind of my whole credo. Like, whenever I come up with ideas, I never come up with ideas randomly. I only come up with ideas, out of my own pain, and I will create a lot of pain while building this product. And then once it’s launched, there will be new pain, like the entertainment, how to entertain people, how to run the meeting rooms, and how to run, the incubation processes, how to grow our food, how to do the transport. And all this will result into more products and more products.
Maciej Nowak [00:22:39]:
I like this approach because, like, I wasn’t thinking about that part. I was thinking, when I knew about when I learned about your, village project, I was thinking about, okay, what’s what’s the end goal? Now I’m thinking about, you know, the way, like, you know, Ryan Holiday.
John Rush [00:23:06]:
Exactly.
Maciej Nowak [00:23:06]:
Has has book “The Obstacle is The Way”, and runners have The Way more important than the goal. You know, can translate.
John Rush [00:23:06]:
Yeah. There is no goal.
Maciej Nowak [00:23:07]:
Yeah. So so but The process is the goal. Yes. So the village is like the MVP of the process that you are coming up, novel process, let’s say. You mentioned the materials. I think this is, like, on one hand, very risky because, you know, doing something different than, you know, what’s the usual way of doing stuff. On the other hand, this can lead to so much pain. And, like, I’m looking at this from the perspective that we are seeking the pain so that you can address that pain with a product that will alleviate that pain, like, if I get this right.
John Rush [00:23:44]:
Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, to address your your concern about the risk, there’s not much risk when you solve your own pain because unless you’re not a normal human, your pain is shared. Like, there is no pain that only you as a human have in the whole world. Right? There are other people who have who will have and experience the same pain. That’s why I think our worst case scenario that we solve our own pain and we benefit ourself, and that’s good. So we we benefit. Right? And then, better scenario is that we benefit ourselves and then others say we wanna, you know, benefit ourselves the same way.
John Rush [00:24:25]:
Can we use the same thing that you use for your own benefit? And if you look at all the things I do with these has tools and directories, like, once I switch to only build out of your own pain, once I switch to this process, nothing really failed after that. Like, it’s strange. Like, things supposed to fail most of the time, and I’ve been failing most of the time before I switched to this process. Like but now since that, like, last year and a half, everything I launched worked out because nothing I launch comes out of my hypothesis or my fantasy or whatever. It just comes out of my own need, so I build for myself always, and then I use it for myself, and I iterate with myself until I’m happy. Once I’m happy, I launch for the rest, and it just works every single time. And I have a guess that it will keep working every single time because, there is no reason for it not to work as long as I’m happy with the product myself.
Maciej Nowak [00:25:33]:
Mhmm. Yeah. And so I wanted, to transition, to because this is your physical product, but, you know, this is on, like, the tip of the iceberg with all of those digital products. And I I wanted to ask, you know, how many nights this overnight success, took?
John Rush [00:25:58]:
Well, 20 years?
Maciej Nowak [00:25:58]:
20 years.
John Rush [00:25:58]:
So I, yeah, I started, like, in in 2004 or even before that, 2001, when I was a kid, and I did different other stuff. But my my first technological or Internet business, I started in 2004. And it went it went really well at the start. Like, the the interesting part is that, my first years were really good. Almost nothing failed because with in in my first years, I didn’t really wanna do business. It just happened because there was something that pushed me to that. Like, for example, I was, just helping out my friend with his schoolwork with the in the university. And then his friend asked me, can I help out him too? And I’m like, you know, I don’t know you, so you have to pay because this is my friend.
John Rush [00:26:51]:
I I help him for free, but I have no idea who you are, and I have other things to do. I wanna play football. So if you want me to not play football and do your work, just pay me. And he paid me, and then his friend paid me, and a friend of friend, a friend of friend. So it’s like a lot of people came to me over time, and then I realized that, I have to actually, you know, hire people to help me because it’s a lot of work, and I’m not doing that all by myself. And then eventually, I built the marketplace, that was just connecting the one party with the other party. And and, you know, at the beginning, I had no plan for that. I didn’t really think like I will build a business.
John Rush [00:27:28]:
It just happened. I didn’t understand how it happened. It just happened. And that’s how I built all my first businesses. And they were went really well. I sold this one and then the others were making money. And then when when I went into, like, proper startup world, I moved to, an incubator in Oslo, and there were, like, VCs there, and we started building, like, VC backed startups. And the whole thing changed because now my brain was different.
John Rush [00:27:58]:
I was thinking, like, I have to come up with idea. I have to come up with idea that will be funded that I can build later, and every single idea failed. Like, the next 7 years, all ideas I came up with, and we raised money for them from investors, and we’ve got grants from the government and and everything. And we got, you know, media talking about us. We won conferences, but all those projects failed because the origin of those ideas was totally wrong. Like, the ideas came up just inside of my head without me having that pain, just just by me by me trying to, you know, imagine what if that kind of group had this problem, and what if they had this solution and they would be happy, and and it sound, like, true. Right? So that was, like, a long period, like, from from 2011 to to 2022. For 11 years, I did that stuff, and it just all failed.
John Rush [00:28:57]:
Maybe, like, 99% failure rate. There’s only, like, 2 projects survive, the rest fail. And then and and then I realized that I have to kind of go back to the roots, and I have to go back to the idea that ideas should come not from my head, but from from something outside, from some pain, either my own pain or somebody else pain, but not just my imagination. And I started doing that, and things went differently, and nothing has failed since then.
Maciej Nowak [00:29:30]:
But but I’m thinking about that. And isn’t it look like everyone thinks they are solving a pain with their idea? Didn’t you think that it it was real pain, the ideas for for those, you know, startups within that incubation, phase? Didn’t you think that this is also a pain, that you are you have a real solution to?
John Rush [00:29:55]:
There’s some pain in every solution you can imagine. Right? You can imagine that there is some pain and and you will solve the pain. But there is big difference between you imagining somebody else pay pain. For example, you can say, like, look. There are there are taxi drivers. What if they had an app that would help them, find place to eat? They’re hungry. They could find places to eat. And it sounds like good app, man.
John Rush [00:30:24]:
But in fact, you’re not a taxi driver, so you have no idea how serious is that pain because it has to be, important, and you have to be willing to actually download the app or pay for something. And often, just pain and all alone doesn’t, you know, solve the problem. You have to have strong enough pain, and you have to have strong enough motivation to solve the pain, and you can only evaluate your own motivation and pain. You can’t evaluate someone else. And if you ask someone, like, you know, people say, go to people and ask. It doesn’t work because people can’t really give you good answers. They will say, yeah. I have the pain, and you ask, would you use the app? They will say, yeah, maybe.
John Rush [00:31:09]:
What does that mean? And if they say, yeah, maybe. May may maybe they’re just not trying to be not rude.
Maciej Nowak [00:31:17]:
So sorry for casting, but there’s that test, which treats exactly about this. If you go to your friends and ask, will you use the tab? Yes. I will. Is this good? Yes. It excellent. And he will learn nothing. Exactly nothing. And the whole …
John Rush [00:31:31]:
Exactly. Exactly.
Maciej Nowak [00:31:32]:
… Of of asking right questions to drive the conclusions, not not asking directly about the conclusions. So, I read that book, and it it was astonishingly, like, fresh to think how how wrong most of the time people ask for feedback about their products.
John Rush [00:31:50]:
Yeah. Exactly. And I’ve done that mistake many times, and and it just never worked. But people still keep telling that it works. You know, I I I even know people who who just came up with ideas by, by interviewing other people and asking for their pains, but, it’s very difficult. Like, I think doing something that you don’t have your you’re not a user of of that thing yourself, it may work, but I think if it works, it’s kind of very strong luck. But if you wanna have less luck and more predictability, Go for things you have your own pain for. And, people say, I don’t have pains.
John Rush [00:32:36]:
And the reason you don’t have pains is that you do nothing. Like, once you do something or whatever, you you get a lot of pain. Like, for example, like, in this case, if I’m building the end of maker village, I’ll have a lot of pain to solve on the way, but you can do smaller things too. You can even do some hobby. Like, for example, go play, football, for example, and then you will start having pain on for on finding teammates or or finding places to play. So if you’re active in the world, you know, the pain appears.
Maciej Nowak [00:33:07]:
But, again, but I I have a friend who had the pain of finding teammates for football plays. And because he was an expat, he is an expat, and he started a startup community platform for finding teammates. I don’t know what’s the state of that, but, like, exactly. You you named it because that pain must be shared, you know, worldwide with that, finding teammates and especially if you are, you know, not local. So, yeah, I’m sorry. I forgot some queue off. I I had to make this remark because this is
John Rush [00:33:42]:
Yeah, it is. it is good point. So I would add this. In in the consumer apps, even if you have the pain, it doesn’t mean you can execute on it. So the pain exists. Someone in the world one day will make that app that will solve this pain, 100%. Is it you or not? That’s the question. Most likely, it’s not you because that’s just the statistics. Right? And especially on this topic, I was the guy who was looking for teammates, and and I went and tried building the app.
John Rush [00:34:18]:
In Turkey, it’s called Eat, Pray, Football. So I was partnering with a girl, and we built the app, the real app, and it worked, and it still works here in Istanbul. And but it didn’t grow into a huge app. You can Google this called Eat, Pray, Football. And then I when I was living in London, they had this app called FUTI Addict, which is huge. It has, like, hundreds of solvents of people playing in it, so that’s really huge success. And so he managed to grow the same thing really, really big. Right? So I think, for B2C world, for consumer apps, if you have pain, then it’s real.
John Rush [00:34:59]:
Others also have it. But if you can execute on that pain or not, that’s the question because it’s very difficult. But in B2B world, things are much easier. Because in B2B world, if you have pain in your work, at your work, then usually it’s much easier to explain other people your product, and they will see their pain and map it. And also since it’s work and people try to optimize their work, they try to spend less time and do more because the companies are trying to compete, and they have way higher motivation to try new things. Because if you took a regular guy, regular human, for us, it’s difficult to change our habits. While for employed people, they don’t decide whether they wanna change habits or not. They don’t decide that.
John Rush [00:35:50]:
Their boss says that, you know, we have to do this thing faster. Figure out. Or their boss says, you know, I sold this tool and it makes this thing faster. Start using it. They will not ask if you want or not.
Maciej Nowak [00:36:02]:
In general, I agree. But then there’s that that famous not man, but, like, let’s say, man, with that, picture taken from above of a, of a loan with a pavement. And there’s that, you know, corner cut with, you know, people, walking and cutting the corner, and there’s that path send I don’t know how to put it, but now there is that pavement around the corner, and people start started to cut the corner and, you know, like, UX, like, UI versus UX. Right?
John Rush [00:36:34]:
Oh, yeah, I saw it.
Maciej Nowak [00:36:35]:
Yeah. Yeah. So even though you will make employees, and if you want to force behavior change, there will be some degree of cutting the corners. And and if you hit search and threshold with how an like, unfit this is, you won’t, you know, you won’t benefit from that. So, like, I agree in principle, but not in not totally. There has to be it has to be a good product. Otherwise, even, like, you know, superior decision won’t won’t make that, behavior change happen.
John Rush [00:37:14]:
You’re right. But I didn’t say that you have guarantee outcome of success in B2B, but the difference is huge. So in B2C, the chance to actually successfully solve your pain by building an app or a website or something is nearly 0. It’s so low that you can say it’s 0. Like, some people will make it, but the winner takes it all. Like, if you make it, then you take the whole world with it, like Airbnb or meetup.com or, or Uber. Right? But there’s only one Airbnb for the whole world. And there are so many other guys who tried that different stuff and and then never made it.
John Rush [00:37:59]:
But if you look at the B2B world, in B2B world, there is more fragmentation of pain because there are more jobs and that there are, like, 100 or thousands of jobs in the world. And every job has, you know, 100 of paints, so it’s large variety. And because it’s large variety, most of these paints don’t have big markets. So even if you build successful product there, you will not make billions. Because of that, there’s not much competition because people don’t wanna target something where there is not that much money to be made. Right? And and and in some cases, it’s such a small pain for a small group that nobody wants targeted because you can make, let’s say, a million a year on that, and that’s too little for for a startup. And that’s why if you enter, there’s small competition and there are fewer alternatives for the users there. Where with B2C, there is, like, abundance of alternatives, and there are people all over the world with huge funding trying to solve all the pains because we share the same pains.
John Rush [00:39:13]:
Almost all of us share same consumer pains. Very few things are custom to certain groups, but most are the same. That’s why everybody knows them and all the smartest people in the world are able to come up with those ideas because they also have they’re also humans. Whether with B2B, imagine certain profession that’s kind of small and people who do that job are not entrepreneurial. And then who will come up with idea for that group? They they will never come up because they’re not entrepreneurial. Right? For example, good example here is is, you know, even jobs, like in schools. Like, in a school, you have a principal, for example, and the principal has certain job to do and they have a lot of pains, and the chance that one of the principals in one of the schools will suddenly realize that I could automate this with software It’s very low. It’s very low chance.
John Rush [00:40:13]:
That’s why if suddenly you’re the principal who came up with such idea because it’s your own pain, the chance that you’re the only one in the world who is trying to solve this right now is really high. Mhmm.
Maciej Nowak [00:40:25]:
I’m I’m thinking also about, like, this concept that if this is for B2B, which means, ease of, like, simplification of processes or reducing time, you know, number of man operations and so on. So, basically, you are talking about the efficiency. The tools are bringing the efficiency. Wouldn’t it converge into one set of, like, most efficient frameworks, tools, platforms. You know what I mean? That it should be the case where not more and more tools are built, but rather less and less because everything converges to one ideal way of doing things. It’s very, like, a philosophical question.
John Rush [00:41:08]:
Very good. That’s very good question. Very good question. And the answer here is that we change our habits at work way faster than we change our habits at real life. For example, the adoption of things at work happens way faster than in real life. Like, we have robots at work. We don’t have robots at in the kitchen. Right? But we have robots making the cars.
John Rush [00:41:35]:
So that’s why the workplace is progressing so fast that everything that has been built today will be obsolete in 5 years. And usually, the people who build stuff that gets big, they don’t have really high incentives to innovate because they own the market they’re gonna reach, etcetera. That’s why if you look at the B2B vendors and providers, they have very long, very short life. Like, B2C has very long life. Like, Instagram started Twitter started long time ago. Gmail, like, every and they’re still running. In B2B world, products start, and in in 3 years, they might go big or they might start dying because, you know, the way they solve the problem is not relevant anymore. Now we have a new way of solving the problem.
John Rush [00:42:26]:
And just because the B2B world consists of tools, like tools are used to use the other tools, etcetera, like, every all the tools are connected to each other. So once any part of this toolset is being replaced by new tools, then the other tools also has to be replaced and everything has to be re replaced.
Maciej Nowak [00:42:46]:
Ripple effects.
John Rush [00:42:47]:
Yeah. The ripple effect. And that’s why we see that, we see the opposite of what we just said that the big players, unless we talk about governments and huge corporations where people don’t seek best product, but they seek just just a contract and it runs for very long and they just use some old stuff just because, you know, they don’t care. They are paid by taxpayers. But if you take any normal world business, every single day, they’re looking around and thinking, can I replace all my tools with new tools so that I’m more efficient?
Maciej Nowak [00:43:24]:
Because there’s there’s that pressure of being efficient. Because, you you have to
John Rush [00:43:28]:
You have to win.
Maciej Nowak [00:43:29]:
You have to not only work, but to run to keep to, like, to to to keep the place you are at. Right?
John Rush [00:43:40]:
Exactly. Exactly.
Maciej Nowak [00:43:40]:
Run faster and faster to move ahead of your competition slowly and slowly.
John Rush [00:43:40]:
Yeah. You have to be become more productive every, year. And if you don’t, then your margin’s getting worse, and then somebody else comes into the game with better margins, and they just take the market and you go bankrupt. And that happens all the time.
Maciej Nowak [00:43:55]:
Incentives are bigger in B2B because they are driven by money, basically, and and fear of, losing that money or
John Rush [00:44:04]:
There is more money?
Maciej Nowak [00:44:05]:
Yeah.
John Rush [00:44:06]:
Yeah. And there’s less taste. For example, in a consumer world, taste means a lot. And if we are used to something, we keep using it just because we are used to it and we like it, not because it’s the best. And maybe there’s something better out, available, but we will not switch because we are used to it. And you can have a lot of examples for that. That’s why the adoption of things in B2C world is so slow. Like, practically, things are like, if you we had COVID, and then people started ordering deliver of things because there was no other choice.
John Rush [00:44:43]:
But before that, that whole delivery thing was growing really slow. Like, for example, grocery delivery. People did delivery for tools and products, but not for grocery. Why? And now grocery is also being delivered almost everywhere. People don’t go to grocery shops as much as they did in before. So but if you look at the business, if today, they hear about something that makes it easier to order, let’s say, food for people or whatever, they will make decision here and now even if nobody wants even if nobody’s willing to change their habit because decision is made by the managers who have to maximize the profits, and they have no hard feelings. They have no attachment to the vault.
Maciej Nowak [00:45:29]:
Since we are talking about that efficiency, how what what what’s your take on the AI AI bots, implementation of AI, which promises huge gains. And I know you covered this, like, briefly touched on this, on your one of your, Twitter comments on, yeah, AI tweets. So I’m curious now. Are you seeing that?
John Rush [00:45:52]:
I think we have very slow progress with actual usage of AI within tools. In reality, if you look at the tools you use daily, very few of them utilize AI. Very few of them. Almost none. So which is surprising because we we thought that by this time, every single tool in the world will be powered by AI, will have some AI stuff within it, and will be kind of smart. And right now, nothing is really smart yet. But we have huge success for GPT, for chat GPT, for chatbots, basically. And if you look at the usage, like, most of the world usage of AI comes to 2 things.
John Rush [00:46:42]:
1 is chat GPT, and the other is generating either code or text. And it’s just okay. We also have the image generation at 3rd, but we don’t have it within actual workflows, like, which is interesting, and I think we are pretty much nowhere with AI from that standpoint. So the chats are strong, but the SaaS tools don’t use AI, and, I don’t see that accelerating. That’s why I think we are just at the start. We’re not even in the middle, not at the end. We’re just at the start. And it seems like people need a lot more time to figure out how to actually integrate AI into workflows so that it’s part of the workflow.
John Rush [00:47:28]:
Because right now, AI only works as a as a mentor on the side. Right? That that kind of helps you, but not as a portal workflow. Because we don’t know how to do it in terms of UX. It’s not easy. And then the other thing that, we have very few agents. By agents, I mean, the AI tools which can do everything just like employees do. Like you mentioned, Klarna and support, I haven’t seen the results of it. But so far, I I haven’t found any product where I talked to their chat that had AI in it, and I get the answer that satisfied me.
Maciej Nowak [00:48:11]:
I have one case. I have one case here. I was in a I was in in Vienna on a conference, and I, we picked a, like, a place, and it turned out there’s no reception. And we had the wrong room. And what do we do then? First of all, there was, there was, and this was done through Booking. And there was an agent connected to Booking.com chat. So So it wasn’t even a non native solution, It was just integration with Booking.com, and I had every answer right. So I I was, yeah, I I was able to check-in. I was able to ask questions, you know, ask a ton of stuff. Obviously, the chat couldn’t replace my room, so I had to get a connection to human being. But I was astonished at the speed of delivering that information. It was instant, and this was correct. So this is the first time I I, I I came across such a good results because most of the time, this is the the chat agents, most of the time, are are just stupid. You know? You don’t you don’t get better results This way, you get most of the time inferior results.
Maciej Nowak [00:49:24]:
But this, I was blown away by this was the this is the first case I I noticed that.
John Rush [00:49:30]:
Yeah. I mean, they take the risk, right, because it’s, you never know whether it it can say something that will be totally bad, and then, you know, you’ll make a screenshot of that and and humiliate them publicly. Right? That’s why I saw huge backlash, and I saw that a lot of the companies have removed their chats from the support or they keep it there, but it’s supervised by humans. That’s why I think it’s not reliable enough so that you can trust it that way. But I think that’s the challenge to overcome, and anyone who can overcome that challenge in any of the applications of of AI and make it reliable, they will win big. For example, even when articles, like, if you create articles for blogs with AI, there’s huge chance it will hallucinate and create nonexistent links and nonexistent facts. Right? And that’s why people were very happy with it at the start, and now they’re, like, saying that, it has a it all looks good, but when you fact check, half of it is not true. Mhmm.
John Rush [00:50:39]:
But some people, like, for example, with with articles, I have one project called SEO bot where we did a lot of work on hallucination to remove them by googling things, by checking Wikipedia, and other doing fact checking for every sentence. And, it gets so much better that it looks nearly like a human made now. Often, you can’t really say if it’s human or not. Like, at least it looks like human who use AI. Right? So it doesn’t because the language of AI is too good, and humans are not as good at writing. So that’s what typically when humans write, you find not the errors, but some statistical mistakes or things like that. But here, it’s too perfect. That’s why it’s yeah.
John Rush [00:51:29]:
But, otherwise, it’s it’s really good quality. And I think and it took us a year and a half to get there. Right? We thought we will be there after a week when we started. We felt, here’s an AI, and we just do that on this. We put the prompts. We we chain the calls. We make the agent, and it just works. And then it didn’t.
John Rush [00:51:50]:
It produced something that was cool on demo, but terrible at reality. And now a year later, it looks all the same, but it’s it doesn’t lie. Right? So the progress, it was just under there. Like, for the user, it looks the same, but it doesn’t lie anymore. And I think, that’s what we need in all other applications. And I think that’s why a lot of the products not gave up, but they went into more deep tech mode to figure things out. They launched AI demos quickly 2 years ago. The world went bananas with that.
John Rush [00:52:28]:
They shared, and they thought the world is ending. The jobs are gone. But then once everyone tried, they saw that it’s not as good as on demos. And now all those companies went into the, you know, mode of actually building the reliable thing, and it takes years. And some of them are still doing that.
Maciej Nowak [00:52:46]:
Mhmm. And I wanted to go back to a little bit through our conversation and, ask you about one of your other products, which is the directory, let’s say, SaaS tool for building directories. And in fact, this is a CMS. Right? And, you know, we are coming from WordPress world, WordPress being massive, popular, customizable. So I wonder why does the world need yet another CMS? And don’t take, like, don’t take this, like, aggressive as an aggressive question.
Maciej Nowak [00:53:24]:
But, you know, and, you know, I’m also referring to the fact that, you know, you since some time ago, building on top of your own page. So I’m curious, you know, what was the what was the the path to building yet another CMS?
John Rush [00:53:38]:
Yeah. Good question. I think, the more things the product can do, the harder it is to use the product, and the lower is the quality of the result. Right? So, basically, if you’re building a directory somewhere we can build everything, then it takes more time, the higher chance of mistakes. And in the outcome, you don’t control the details because the tool itself was never knew that it will be used for directories. But once your tool is niched down and it knows that it’s gonna be used to build directories, then you can start making a lot of details within it, a lot of, you know, cases, a lot of hard coded little things, which will make directory perfect. And then, this builder can’t build other things because it’s tailored for directories. So that was my idea that, in the world of of generically used tools like WordPress and Webflow and other things like that, we lack more limited single use builders for directories, for launchpads, for marketplaces, for things like that, because there’s other problem here, which is even bigger problem, is that we have huge influx of new people into the maker world who don’t have experience with anything.
John Rush [00:55:14]:
And for you and me, for people who use all the tools all our life, we can use any of those tools and can build anything we want, and it’s roughly the same effort because we know how to use. If you know how to use the tool, even difficult tool is easy to use. But if you don’t know how to use the tool, then you enter the tool and there are 100 buttons there. You need 1, but you don’t know which one. You don’t even know that you need one button. Right? You know nothing. And then if you make a tool that does only few things and the only button is it has is the one that you have to press, then the newcomers can come in there and just use their intuition and walk through the steps and get the outcome they need. And and that’s the reason I did it so that I could let people do this stuff, like, it’s in with iPhone.
John Rush [00:56:04]:
Like, without any training, without tutorials or guides, they just enter, and they just produce something.
Maciej Nowak [00:56:11]:
I want to comment, obviously, not with my own, words, but there is that saying that the only make there are only 2 ways to make money. It’s bundling and unbundling. I don’t remember who said that, but with your tool, I think this is unbundling and cutting off everything apart from very limited use cases. It’s like very specialized tool to do only this this particular thing. Whereas, other other things are more on bonding together. You get more for the value of previous value, let’s say. Right? So the tool grows, grows, grows with more functionality. Road map means adding new features.
Maciej Nowak [00:56:54]:
The price doesn’t change, but you keep the user base. Your approach is totally different. And and maybe one more word of comment is that this goes into the trend that I observe on, for example, on on Twitter where there is or maybe my bubble where there are more and more tools which are very limited. For example, for analytics. More and more tools just, like, very simplified analytic tools to analyze very small part of the website on the server level on user behavior and so on.
John Rush [00:57:30]:
Yeah. And I’ve I happen to run one of those tools too. Alright. Count Count visits, which which does exactly that. It’s just analytics for directories and for landing pages, for simple landing pages and and directories. And the best thing about the tool is that because I know the use case of the tool, I can automate the onboarding. So for example, if if you have directory and you put there something like post hoc or plausible, you will have to write code and do a lot of actions to handle and collect all the events you need because they won’t be collected out of the box, obviously, because they that analytics doesn’t know that you have directory. And my tool is made just for directories.
John Rush [00:58:18]:
Right? Which means that if you put it there, it knows that it can only run it within directory, so it will find the things and assign events and have them on the dashboard. So, basically, it’s a zero configuration. You put it there and shows exactly what needs to be shown and collects exactly what needs to be collected for directories. And that’s the future, I think, is that people like in old days, the business user was someone with a lot of productivity and a lot of time, and they were not really looking for, you know, simple ways. They were rather the opposite. They thought, like, job has to be difficult. So if the tool is difficult, it’s a good tool. Like, in old days, you would sell by number of features and you would show screenshots with a lot of buttons on the on the screen.
John Rush [00:59:12]:
Right? And and and if you brought a tool that has a white background, no gray no gray, no buttons, just small smaller things, people will think it’s it’s too simple. I can pay for this. Right? But in in today’s world, what happened is that, the modern business buyers are consumers. They’re like their behavior is like in consumer world. And in consumer world, people are spoiled, people are lazy, people don’t wanna learn, people don’t wanna think, and that’s what they want things that are easy to use. And, ideally, they don’t have to do anything. Things just happen out of the box. And in that kind of world, you have to unbundle.
John Rush [00:59:56]:
Right? Because if you don’t unbundle, then there’s complexity. And sometimes it’s the opposite. For example, the other example of bundling, like, you get very good quote with bundling. For example, if someone is building a directory and the directory builder can give you both directory and analytics in one, you’re gonna like it. Right? Because it’s easier. You don’t have to go and search for an analytics tool and bring it in and connect it. Right? And that’s the that’s the example of bundling where you bundle based on the job to be done. So, basically, you bundle it for 1 user.
John Rush [01:00:38]:
So me as a user, I come in, and the whole bundle suits me 100%. Like, bad kind of bundling is is when you have huge tool and you as a user, you come in and only 5% of the tool makes sense to you, the rest is, like, not for you. It’s like Microsoft products, for example. It’s like a lot of stuff there. But the good bundling where you pick 1 user and you satisfy all the users’ needs, everything, and then it’s all in one.
Maciej Nowak [01:01:04]:
With Microsoft example, I’m thinking also about another concept, which is distribution. And there’s that saying that that obviously, I read it on Twitter recently. But with, there there’s that saying that the best product wins or best distribution. And this was the case. Someone, covered that for Slack versus Teams, whereas Slack has so much Yeah.
John Rush [01:01:25]:
I see.
Maciej Nowak [01:01:26]:
It it yes. So so much older product, more may mature and probably a little bit more stable. Whereas, you know, if you have that huge user base, you just ship you bundle on one more, not feature, but one more solution into your, like, suite of tools and push it to everyone for free, basically. But then there is that bit of a moat so that no one is doing that, and, like, trying to chip, you know, create some cracks in that armor with their, you know, with their new product, for example.
John Rush [01:02:03]:
Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s that’s good and bad. So the good thing is that if you win distribution, doing good things, eventually, you can use the audience you have to supply them with more stuff. And, usually, it starts well. So if you were the one who won the distribution initially, then you are good at products. So probably gonna build good products again and supply to them. And the problem with this approach happens later when you become so big that you don’t care as much and you can just supply people with any kind of products, just because you have distribution.
John Rush [01:02:45]:
You know, people don’t have a choice almost. So I think it’s good and bad, but I don’t think there is big problem with it because in long term, best products wins always. Good example is Microsoft and their operating system, and it was pushed to everyone for, like, decades. And people used it even if they didn’t like it, but now macOS has won the market because it’s a better product. So even this huge Microsoft with all their power couldn’t keep that market for a long time. And I think Slack versus Teams, I think same thing here. Like, eventually, if Slack is a better product, Slack will win. But I don’t think Slack is a better product anymore because, I left Slack for Discord, for example, because Slack became so slow on my phone.
John Rush [01:03:41]:
I just couldn’t use it. So I think it is the market the open market is a great thing. It always it has some moments of unfair stuff, but in the longer run, always things get really fair and best things win against not the best things.
Maciej Nowak [01:04:00]:
Yeah. I I like it. Although I hate this script, but, I get that. You know? You as the user switch to another tool that is more convenient for you because how much more can you do with Slack, you know, with new interface getting funky, for example. This is not something I like. But but yeah. I’m curious when you think about, you know, building the pro these products, and I’m thinking about small small features that are, you know encapsulation of small features into in in in in SaaS or in tools, in frameworks. I’m thinking also about, for example, plugins on top of WordPress.
Maciej Nowak [01:04:42]:
You know, you have the WordPress asset platform and foundation. There is the pen you feel. You encapsulate that solution in in the form of a plugin, and yet then you distribute this through workers that come, that that, you know, plug in library. What would you recommend to plug in makers, you know, in the maker building purpose plug ins, as, like, a good advice when, you know, to someone who’s who’s listening to us as a developer, SoulMaker.
John Rush [01:05:13]:
Yeah. I think, being dependent on platform is dangerous thing because, you know, if plan if platform syncs, you sync with the platform too, right, which is a problem. But that’s why, I think you should distribute your plat your plugins everywhere, not just on WordPress because usually your key expert is is the UX of the plug in, the the actual business logic. Right? And the the connection to the platform is is not a big deal usually. And that that’s why you should have at least 2 platforms where you have your plug ins. It has to be WordPress and something else. Maybe Webflow, maybe Shopify, maybe somewhere else. Or or maybe you should try to make your plugin into little tool depending on what your plugin does.
John Rush [01:06:03]:
But, you know, now there’s huge market for micro tools because SEO works really well for micro tools. You you if you if your tool does if it’s just like a a thing that converts hours into minutes, for example. And, in the old world, it would be too small to release on its own. In new world, it’s not too small. You can actually buy good domain and win a lot of SEO traffic for that thing. So I would try to diversify if I was building for 1 platform. And WordPress, a lot of people think WordPress is dying, but the reality is that WordPress is not dying. It is huge.
John Rush [01:06:41]:
It’s it’s just as huge as as as it was. That’s why there is no big worry that it will, you know, collapse very soon. But at the same time, I wouldn’t be worried as much about collapse rather than about the competition. So if there’s a platform and it runs for a long time, the number of people who wanna build for the platform keeps growing. And that’s why, probably, eventually, it’s like in Spotify. Like, artists make almost nothing there. At the store, they made a lot of money and they were happy, and now they make nothing because you listen a lot of different stuff and they get a little share. Same here.
John Rush [01:07:19]:
That’s why I would actually look around for platforms which are new, where there are not so many people and there’s high potential. And then if you’re one of the first who built their plug in there, then you’re gonna grow with that platform. Like, for example, framer, exam the people who made first Framer templates, the good ones, they’re making tons of money because they just get, you know, dragged along with the with successful Framer.
Maciej Nowak [01:07:43]:
Yeah. It’s like picking the winner. You have to know or have a hand who who’s who’s going to be a winner, in that new landscape. And I I want to also to ask you about building in public because you’re one of those guys who shares a ton of stuff, the secret sauce, and, you know, you’re very transparent in your process. And then I observed that, like, there not not a hesitancy, but rather, like, an internal battle. Should I share my stuff? I get a lot of, heat for that. Or, I get a lot of, you know, shadow binding because both farms, you know, an attack under the tweet, so you get a shadowban. So I’m I’m curious to know, is there, like what’s your stance on it now?
John Rush [01:08:40]:
I have very strong opinion on this. I think everybody has to build in public. I think it’s a must. Why? So number 1, you get good trust from the market, both from your users, from your partners, from potential investors, employees, journalists. So, basically, when you build in public, you simplify the process of attracting people of any sort. Because when you don’t build in public, then whenever you talk to someone, you have to tell them a lot about yourself. You have to convince them. You have to convince them it’s true what you’re saying and etcetera.
John Rush [01:09:31]:
And I see nearly no downside of building it public. You mentioned the bots and the forms and the attacks. That happens very rare. And for that to happen even more rare, you should like, usually, people attack you if they’re jealous or they think you’re lying. So make sure you never write something that looks like a lie even if it’s true. Like, I have a lot of things I don’t pass because I it’s true, but I know people will think it’s not true because it seems to be too good to be true. Right?
Maciej Nowak [01:10:10]:
Can you share can you share something like that? You know, it’s not Twitter. It’s it’s
John Rush [01:10:14]:
I mean, for example, like, some, revenue numbers on some products, for example. And I feel like people will think that that’s, you know, not true or or it can be some thinks there are numbers, basically, often. And that that’s why I try to share stuff in a way that it it looks natural. It doesn’t look too good. And when it’s too good, I wait for it to spread out for longer and then you know? So it’s it’s more smooth.
Maciej Nowak [01:10:44]:
Alright.
John Rush [01:10:45]:
Because some people will think you’re lying, and some people will think you’re not lying, but they they will get really jealous. And both Both of them. Will will hurt you. Right? So there there’s basically no group that that will appreciate that because it’s, you should make sure you don’t bruh too much and don’t create this kind of thing. That’s why I try to when I build in public when I just entered the building public world, most people were sharing their numbers, revenues, and everything. And I realized that that’s kind of not that interesting for people, and what can they learn? Okay. So you get 20 k MRR. Cool.
John Rush [01:11:27]:
Congrats. But what for a minute. Right? I think building public, the key thing you have to think is that if you ever post anything on the Internet, always look at that from the eyes of the viewers. Do they get value or not? If there’s just a, like, a milestone you achieved, the only thing they get is jealousy or they don’t trust you or they don’t care. Like, there’s no positive, really. Some few people get energized. Like, you know, you got money. I wanna make money too.
John Rush [01:11:58]:
Cool, bro. Let’s go. It’s very few people, actually. It’s very few people because it’s not natural for people to to do that because we are, you know, in a competition, all of us, with each other. Right? And if someone is winning, it is often considered by your animal brain that, you know, you are losing. That that that’s why don’t try to share wins. Just share ways of, you know, gearing somewhere and how you did that and all the actions you’ve done, and educate people on things you do. And it’s it’s good for you because whenever you educate people on things you do, you educate yourself.
John Rush [01:12:42]:
Because when you have to write down all the things you’ve done to get from a to b, usually for that, you have to be collecting analytics. You have to be looking where you are and where you are now. So you get better just because you have to produce that kind of content. And the readers find it useful.
Maciej Nowak [01:12:59]:
So my take on what you said just just now is that it’s again again a process where process of building a product creates probably some pain points, which may be the, inspiration for building new products. And the circle starts again and and and and so on because we built on top of one on top of another. Like, these complement themselves in a in a way. And if you take that to Twitter, let’s say, and share that path, you have those moment of recollections with writing because I tend to keep the journal now less. But I was writing every day for, like, 3 years, and it made me realize a lot of stuff, you know, happening. And with writing about the the the path, it’s like like, the process is finer with you realizing what you are doing, more more, like, more aware of your what you are doing. Be because it’s a little bit of a long run because run because I also want to understand because this is seem this seems counterintuitive with sharing a lot of your secret sauce with public, for the general public to be able to copy copy you maybe in a field where you are competing. With various products, maybe this is not the case.
Maciej Nowak [01:14:26]:
But in more general general terms for example, I had a conversation on on a podcast and episode with Adam Robinson from retention.com. And from about a year ago, he started, that building public, like, running his profile in a very building public, very transparent way, saying everything how they came up with the numbers. And they have a very, very big competition with their product. So I’m I’m trying to understand, you know, how this is benefiting not only from, like, review perspective, but this just seem counterintuitive to secret to to share your secrets.
John Rush [01:15:13]:
Yeah. So, basically, there are 3 groups of founders. So one group is the early founders, those who haven’t done anything successful yet, and those who don’t have any extraordinary knowledge or skills yet. Because you can’t just have them. You have to earn them while doing. Right? And then there’s a other other group who’s running medium sized business that’s growing, and then there is group of successful founders. So for the first group, it’s safe to build in public because the chance that they know something that other people don’t know is 0. Right? With no offense.
John Rush [01:15:54]:
And then the second group that’s growing their stuff. For them, the growth they get by building in public. By growth, I mean, possible new hires, possible new investors, and media coverage outweighs the possible, you know, risks of their competitors stealing their ideas which they share. There’s some chance they will kind of copy something, but most things they can copy just by viewing the stuff as well. Like, it’s very few things that you can’t see with your own eyes by looking the website, the app, and registering yourself. And then the 3rd group, the successful people, who are, like who built something great, for them,
Maciej Nowak [01:16:40]:
they that they will get there either way. Yeah.
John Rush [01:16:43]:
For for for them, it doesn’t matter because they are so good at that. So, basically, there there’s no, use case for actually being heard from this. The intuition says there is, but if you actually break down the founders and the 3 groups, you just see that it benefits everyone.
Maciej Nowak [01:17:00]:
Yeah. Then this is our brain has to say, don’t do that. Don’t don’t do that. Whereas in it turns out
John Rush [01:17:05]:
Brain often makes, yeah, brain often makes mistakes. Actually, brain always makes mistakes for things where it tries to average something, but in real life, usually nothing is averaged. You’re always within a group, within a stage, within a phase. Right? You’re not the average founder because every founder is it it every founder doesn’t exist. Founders is always somewhere in the in the journey. Right? And your brain never thinks that way. Your brain gives you the average founder risk. And, yeah, there’s risk for average founder, but there’s no risk for actual founder.
Maciej Nowak [01:17:41]:
Oh, yeah. I love that. I really love that. John, thank you very much for the conversation. It was, like, one of those conversations where during which I learned a ton and, like, I want to say my, like, my my viewport has changed. You know. It it it broadened my my, my perception of things. So I I really appreciate that, and thank you.
John Rush [01:18:09]:
Yeah. Thank you for having me.
Lector [01:18:10]:
If you like what you’ve just heard, don’t forget to subscribe for more episodes. On the other hand, if you’ve got a question we haven’t answered yet, feel free to reach out to us directly. Just go to awesome studio.comforward/contact. Thanks for listening, and see you in the next episode of the awesome to know podcast.
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