Episodes

Both Ed and Steve are feeling a little bit stressed, perhaps at the beginning of burnout. We discuss why this might be, and what we are doing about it.

Nick Swan was about to launch paid plans for his SaaS when a sudden terrible life event changed everything for Nick and his family.

“The doctor said, ‘You have to go the main hospital now. Drive straight up there. Don’t even pack a bag.’ He didn’t say what it was, but he said it was serious.”

We discuss how this affected his life, his family and his mentality as a bootstrapper.

Aidan Doyle is a science fiction writer. Amongst his work are two self-published books, including The Writer's Book of Doubt. I'm planning to produce a book later this year as a marketing endeavour for Feature Upvote. So I chatted with Aidan to get tips on how to do this well.

Ed and Steve discuss the return of Microconf Europe as an in-person event, working out if a new feature is worth the effort, and weighing the risk of becoming a customer of someone’s side project.

My guest in this episode is Corey Haines, founder of Swipe Files. Swipe Files is a membership site that provides content, community, and courses to help you master marketing.

Ed Freyfogle is back! We talk about Ed's systematic attempt to reduce his support workload.

Alex Yumashev, founder of JitBit, returns to the show. We discuss why Alex ditched Google Analytics from his website, how he keeps his work interesting after so many years running the same business, and why differentiation is often not possible.

Nick Franklin and I talked about what it is like to go down the venture capital route instead of bootstrapping.

Peldi Guilizzoni is the founder of low-fidelity wireframing tool Balsamiq.

We argue for and against having a monthly email newsletter for your product. Ed is firmly in the "No way" corner. Steve represents the "You gotta have a newsletter" side. Let the debate begin!

Ed and I cover a lot of ground this week: nerves, geo-trivia as marketing, a brief foray into geopolitics, using Twitter for marketing, the frustrating unpredictability of what marketing efforts will bear fruit, the pleasure of working from home, and dealing with zombie customers.

Ed and Steve talk about the mental stress of having real-time business metrics, how to find a business mentor, and Steve's attempt to get started with enterprise sales.

Allan Jardine is the creator of DataTables, a popular jQuery plugin. We discuss his challenges and successes as he learned how to make a viable business from creating Open Source software.

In this episode I answer some listener questions about freelancers. I discuss how to find, hire, and communicate with freelancers.

Ed grills me on my progress with Saber Feedback, my B2B SaaS, nine months after I acquired it. We talk about SEO, competitors, getting backlinks, finding a niche, and resisting the temptation to write code instead of doing marketing.

Ed and I discuss what we want to achieve in 2021. Last year, unexpected world events turned our "goals for 2020" upside-down. Having learnt no lesson whatsoever from this, we fearlessly enter 2021 with plans!

Steve and Ed look back at the goals they set for 2020 at the beginning of the year. What goals did we hit? What goals eluded us? What did we learn along the way?

This is a talk I recently gave at Barcelona's ESIC business school. Ostensibly, I spoke on working with intangibles as products. But actually, I told the story of how I started as a bootstrapper - and revealed how clueless I was at the beginning.

Liz is an expert in onboarding email sequences. Over the course of this episode, Liz helps me design a great email sequence for Saber Feedback.

Ed and Steve talk about recent challenges and successes in their bootstrapped SaaS businesses. Ed tells of the agony of doing enterprise sales. Steve admits to  self-doubt when waiting for SEO results.