0:00

What's up, dude?

0:05

Yo, what's going

0:08

on, man? Who do we got today?

0:11

Liz and Lucas Herman. I'm excited about

0:13

this. You know what I'm excited about,

0:15

Luke? And his wife, Liz, they're

0:17

sort of a team running this company together.

0:21

Their app, I think they make $8,000 a month. That

0:24

was back in January, so maybe it's more now. They

0:27

have this very simple tool that I

0:30

think anybody would look at and be like, I could build this in

0:32

a weekend. Usually

0:34

it's not a weekend, six months or something. But I could build

0:36

this very easily by myself. But they're making

0:38

$100K a year from it.

0:40

And also,

0:43

he was working as a software engineer. I think he went to college.

0:46

Software engineer was making $80K a year at a startup.

0:49

He had been underpaid by a startup, and

0:51

he quit that. And now he's making more than that

0:53

as an anti-hacker. From something very simple that he

0:55

bootstrapped with his

0:56

wife, and he doesn't know anybody, any money.

0:59

He's just basically free. He's living the anti-hacker

1:01

dream. Yeah, yeah. By

1:03

the way, I feel like that detail

1:06

of it looks really simple from

1:08

the surface. I've been seeing that everywhere

1:10

lately. We've posted a couple of stories of people

1:12

that are building AI companies, and

1:15

every single comment section has one or two people going,

1:18

wait a minute, this is just two API calls. That's

1:21

it? Yeah, that's super simple. Well, AI is like

1:23

next level. I was posting about AI, I think a couple

1:26

days ago, because I've got this new bot,

1:29

or Anderson Koop bot, who basically is an AI

1:31

journalist who sends us little

1:33

reviews of people's submissions for writing and tells

1:35

us. What ratio of your time are you spending

1:37

figuring out the names of these bots versus actually

1:40

building the bots? It's like 50-50, I would

1:42

say. It's hard to come up with good bot names. Why

1:45

don't you use the bots to name the bots?

1:48

I should. I've tried it. I swear to God, I put names

1:50

in the GPT-4. It sucks.

1:52

You've tried to use it for creative writing. It's not that good

1:54

at coming up with creative writing.

1:57

It's not that good at being funny. It's partially

1:59

in the prompt. But yeah creative writing yeah, it'll it'll

2:02

like get your creative juices flowing. It's like good

2:04

for brainstorming But anyway, I mean

2:06

I posted about the spot and people keep asking me like

2:08

oh open source it write a guide I'm like no no

2:10

like it's like not that much code like the vast majority

2:12

of the working stuff by open AI

2:14

So there's a lot of cool stuff you could build nowadays. That's

2:17

super simple. You know what also is cool about

2:19

Lucas and his wife's not just that they're building

2:22

something really simple, but that they

2:24

are Incredibly ambitious

2:27

so he has let me send you this thread. I think you've seen

2:30

this thread

2:31

Here it's like his Twitter thread the

2:33

very first tweet of this thread is yeah

2:35

I'm going to get rich and this is how I'm gonna

2:37

do it. He's not he's not like

2:40

oh, I'm you know I hope to make some money. He's like no I'm gonna

2:42

get like

2:43

insanely wealthy and like I am he's

2:45

like Babe Ruth Pointing to the outfield

2:47

exactly where he's gonna hit the ball. He's not he's not

2:49

hey guys. I made something Hashtag

2:52

building in public oh here. He is what's

2:54

up Lucas hi Liz

2:56

hey guys We were just talking

2:58

about your Twitter thread Lucas

3:01

And I think it's amazing the vast majority of

3:03

indie hackers are not that ambitious

3:05

Like Sean purry for my first million came on our

3:07

show like very recently And he was kind of like you

3:09

guys are doing small boy stuff You know we're all about big boy stuff

3:12

on my first million and like I look

3:14

at your tweet And like you're like the same attitude

3:16

right you've got this app. It's very cool.

3:19

You're just getting started though I mean even your Twitter

3:21

background You've

3:22

got like these three mountains and the first mountain

3:24

is like a little stick figure walking up it And

3:26

it's like a million dollars a year in revenue, and there's

3:28

another mountain after that It's a little bigger, and it's like a

3:31

hundred million dollars a year in revenue and the third

3:33

mountain is like

3:34

Something crazy,

3:36

and then even like your progress bar

3:38

like every indie hacker has like the same progress

3:40

bar under like their Twitter profile Like where

3:42

you've got like the boxes and on the left

3:44

It's like zero dollars on the right It's your goal and you color

3:46

the boxes green the further you get

3:49

and most of us are like yeah $10,000 a month

3:51

is like my goal. You know 20,000 years

3:53

is like a million dollars By

3:58

the way and by the way we can't we can't let them off the

3:59

hook. I want to read

4:02

a couple of highlights from this sick thread.

4:04

So number one, you're like, all right, I

4:06

canceled my interviews. I stopped looking for work because

4:09

you had gotten laid off. And you're like, but I'm going to be rich.

4:11

First, I'm going to stop selling my time for money. Then

4:14

I'll bootstrap a product. I'll scratch my edge. You

4:16

kind of go through, I'm going to make

4:18

a lot of money. Then I'm going to start my second company.

4:21

And then you do something that's so funny, which

4:23

is you predict

4:26

a point that happens in a lot of people's journey

4:28

that they always blind sized them. You

4:31

specifically go, then I'll have a midlife

4:33

crisis. What am I even doing? I

4:35

reached my buddy goals. I'm living the life.

4:37

My parents retirement is secured. What next? Then

4:40

I remember like, now I have my

4:42

financial freedom. I'm excited about my space

4:44

X, right? Like you completely draw

4:47

this thing out in a way that like

4:49

even the people who do reach these goals

4:52

don't see like all the steps coming the way

4:54

that you've like laid it out. Yeah, it's pretty

4:56

cool. The funny thing here is

4:58

we are big fans of my first million. And

5:01

then one day out of the blue,

5:04

Sam started falling and I'm a big Sam

5:06

fan and he is a big Sean fan. And

5:09

then I'm like, ah, Sam follows me and I even

5:11

tweeted. Oh, I think it was by mistake. But and

5:13

then he answered Sam answered and said, no, no,

5:15

I like what you're doing. And that's why I followed you.

5:18

And then a few weeks later, he

5:20

tweeted something actually saying, and then I'm

5:22

going to be interviewed on my first million

5:25

and started following him. Okay,

5:28

yeah, all the path here.

5:29

Yes, I was like, I'm gonna make this killer

5:32

tweet. And I even looked up

5:34

the Disney story spine.

5:36

That's like, you know, things all

5:39

the time and then have a this and then have a this but

5:41

one day and then have as like, okay, I'm gonna

5:43

write a tweet exactly like the Pixar

5:46

story. And totally work.

5:49

So let's let's clue people into what you guys are doing here.

5:51

Your app, as I mentioned earlier, it's very simple,

5:54

but it's very

5:56

good. It's called stage timer.io.

5:58

So let's say I'm running a

5:59

conference or an event where I've got speakers. I

6:02

want my speakers to all know, like,

6:04

pretty simple, how much time do they have left

6:06

in their talk? Is it 10 minutes? Is it 30 minutes? And

6:09

I want it to be like on some sort of laptop or screen

6:11

or iPad that they can see while they're talking

6:13

so they don't go over time.

6:15

But I want to also be able to control that,

6:17

pretty much everything about that timer from like the comfort of

6:20

my seat. I don't want to have to be running up to the stage,

6:22

telling them how much time is left, or pressing pause on the screen.

6:24

And so that's basically what stagetimer.io is.

6:27

You basically

6:28

sign on to your website, and you create

6:31

a timer, and you get this whole dashboard with all these cool controls

6:33

to control a timer. I can add time to it,

6:35

reset it, make it flash. I can have multiple timers. I

6:37

can show messages, whatever I want I can do.

6:40

And then there's another link I can give people. It's like a special

6:43

view to the timer that I set up for my speakers.

6:45

And that will just show them the timer, and it will just show

6:47

them any messages I send to the timer that I

6:49

can control.

6:51

And that's, as far as I can tell, that's pretty much it.

6:53

And I think you're charging like 20 bucks a month, 30 bucks

6:56

a month for this. And you are at, last

6:58

I saw $8,000 a month in revenue.

7:02

Yeah, a bit more already. Yeah, nice.

7:04

I mean, this is the dream. Chani, I were talking before you came on, like

7:06

everybody wants to build something that's simple, that's

7:09

easy to understand,

7:10

but that like makes you a living. I mean, you're

7:12

making more from this than you're making at your startup job,

7:14

Lucas.

7:15

Yeah, it's actually a bit wild. If you

7:17

think that a countdown timer, like

7:20

the most unruly thing that anybody

7:22

would pay money for makes more money

7:24

than the startup, it's

7:26

a great, it's a great signal.

7:28

Yeah, I saw a post actually where you guys talked about coming

7:30

up with your idea.

7:31

I think it's really funny how you came up with your idea, because this is like the

7:33

most generic startup advice ever. It's like, keep

7:35

your eyes open for problems in the world. And like one

7:38

day you'll find a problem that's worth solving and then solve

7:40

it. And like almost nobody

7:42

does that. It's so hard to do that. It's like

7:44

incredibly hard to just stumble across an idea, but

7:46

that's exactly what you did. You were at,

7:49

I think Lucas, a friend's recording studio.

7:52

Yeah, and then you saw them like start

7:54

a timer on their iPad and then run to the control

7:57

area to start controlling it. Like he didn't have a remote.

7:59

He had to like.

7:59

physically sprint across the studio

8:02

to do his timer. Exactly.

8:04

Yeah, it's like I see him running in, running in,

8:06

you know, like clicking this one button on the laptop,

8:08

running back out, seeing as there must

8:10

be a better solution for this. You know, many people say

8:13

on Twitter, like, scratch your own edge, do

8:15

you know, build a business that you that yourself

8:17

like,

8:18

and I looked around like I want to scratch somebody else's

8:20

edge. You know, I see this guy, like, can

8:23

I build something that is a solution for him?

8:25

First of all, I thought, surely, surely

8:27

somebody else has has made has made something.

8:30

I feel like whenever you look in the world and

8:32

it's like, there's such an obvious solution to this

8:34

problem

8:35

that maybe you see because you have the background and

8:37

everybody else just like doesn't know that

8:39

that's a perfect business. And I was like, I'm

8:42

gonna build it in one weekend. And of course,

8:44

like free, you know, like just very simple, put on the

8:46

internet, put on Reddit, it's like, you know,

8:48

who cares? Let's see if people want this if you

8:50

want to use it. I just did it as I get like,

8:53

I get skeptical when I see things that are obvious. I'm

8:55

like, I get this built this on a weekend. And I'm like, somebody

8:57

has to have already solved this problem. Like it must

8:59

be my friend who doesn't understand he's like

9:01

running from the time of the control. Like he doesn't understand

9:04

he's never googled this. But like, there's

9:05

no way

9:06

you know, it's 2023. And nobody's built like a timer. Did you

9:10

do any research? Did you go back and try to find out like, hey,

9:13

like, does this exist?

9:16

Yeah, so I like on the very spot, I tried

9:18

to find this solution. And I couldn't.

9:21

I just a simple website that you open half

9:23

a timer. That is remote

9:25

controlled. So I build it and

9:28

afterwards, I find like two or three solutions

9:30

that are old windows apps.

9:34

What's interesting is you did the you did something that's

9:36

the opposite of what Paul Graham said

9:39

just a couple of days ago, he tweeted,

9:42

when young founders build something that they don't

9:44

want themselves, but that they believe some

9:46

group of other people want 90% of the time,

9:49

they're building something that nobody wants.

9:51

And even you must respond to it. Yeah,

9:53

it was like, like true. But I

9:56

would say also, this is the thing

9:58

about percentages, right? There is still the 10%.

10:01

He said, nice. So there is still 10%. And

10:04

I'm not saying that other people should do it,

10:07

but I'm just saying that the smart thing

10:09

in Lucas' case that he always summarizes,

10:12

of course.

10:14

So the story goes fast. But

10:16

the truth is that he went on Reddit

10:18

and he asked, if he could use

10:21

Countdown Timer that would be controlled

10:23

remotely, what would this need

10:25

to have? And from that feedback,

10:28

he actually created the first one. And

10:30

then,

10:49

in

10:54

this case, like event organizing

10:56

and media recording, there's

10:58

so much low-hanging fruit

11:00

that you as a developer coming

11:02

from a startup, you

11:04

look at it, it's like, I would automate this. I

11:06

would change this. I would make this better. There's

11:09

so much low-hanging fruit. I feel there's a lot

11:11

of

11:12

remote problems to be solved for developers

11:14

in other industries. I think that's spot on. Until

11:17

today, we see that all the time that

11:19

people actually write us because they love so

11:22

much the interface of stage timer, they

11:24

write and say, OK, do you have something like

11:26

stage timer but for this in the industry?

11:28

So we get emails all the time, people

11:31

asking, OK, but do you have something like

11:33

stage time but for teleprompter? Do you have

11:35

something like stage time? And then

11:37

they are always mentioning things. And we're like, man,

11:40

there are so many things that we could

11:41

do in this industry. Again, these

11:43

low-hanging fruit that are still there to be

11:45

taken. It's fascinating because it's like, in

11:47

the world of technology, if you're a developer,

11:50

you're building tools for other developers, you go on GitHub, millions

11:53

of products. Like programmers are solving every

11:56

single little thing about every single thing. And

11:58

somebody builds a library, then somebody comes in.

11:59

another library to solve the problems with that library and

12:02

it's just like tons and tons of stuff. So

12:04

even if software engineers

12:06

and Andy hackers have already gotten to some other industry

12:08

like let's say insurance and they've already built some

12:11

tools there, they haven't built anything near

12:13

what they built for software engineers and so there's like guaranteed

12:16

to be like something that

12:19

you can build. And sometimes it's as obvious as like

12:21

hey like you should be able to control this timer with a remote

12:23

and this old shitty Windows app is

12:26

not good enough. But sometimes it's a little bit deeper

12:28

and I think that people can explore a little bit more here and

12:30

then try to figure out

12:31

what's going on in other industries.

12:33

Absolutely and there's of course there's the big

12:36

industry problems that probably are worked on but

12:38

there's always these little niches for indie

12:41

hackers that are little problems that nobody

12:43

really wants to solve because there's just not enough money

12:45

in it but for a single person like

12:47

me like us it's just like perfect

12:50

and enough to grow a good business.

12:53

What was a patio 11 had

12:55

a really simple app for

12:57

teachers I forget what it's called. Bingo Card

12:59

Creator. Yeah Bingo Card Creator.

13:02

Back in 2007 and it was the exact

13:04

same story where it's not

13:06

a super sophisticated

13:08

product and when he's talking to developers

13:12

or to coders like eyebrows would go

13:14

up like really you're making a product out of that

13:16

and the thing that he hammered the drum

13:18

about all the time is like look

13:21

to us this is just a simple app but

13:23

to teachers or people who are not technical

13:26

this is magic right. Yeah

13:28

they're literally creating bingo cards by hand

13:30

for these kids it's taking them hours we could you

13:32

know use code to do this in a minute and like no one's

13:35

doing it for them because programmers are only making apps for

13:37

other programmers. You mentioned that you launched

13:39

on reddit this wasn't just like a singular moment boom you

13:41

have an app it was like a

13:43

six month process and I found the post where

13:45

you launched on reddit I thought it was so smart how you did it because

13:48

the

13:49

vast majority of indie hackers like oh you can't

13:51

launch on reddit you can't advertise on reddit you're gonna

13:53

get banned I've been kicked out of so many subreddits

13:55

blah blah blah but I think they're just doing it wrong

13:57

and I think Lucas the way you did it was

14:00

So you went to, there's a

14:02

subreddit, it's called r-commercial-av,

14:04

and

14:05

you made this post called Advice for Presentation

14:07

Timer App in the Making. And just with your title,

14:10

I think you killed it. Because you're like,

14:12

you're not like, hey, everybody come use my thing, I'm advertising,

14:14

blah, blah, blah, spam, spam, spam. You're like, hey, I need

14:17

some advice. All of you smart, genius

14:19

people out there, I could really just use some tips. So

14:22

it's disarming in a way.

14:23

And then in your post, you kept it real short and

14:25

simple.

14:26

You're like, hey, everybody.

14:27

I'm building a presentation timer app that runs in the browser,

14:29

blah, blah, blah. Can you give me some feedback about

14:32

the features necessary for such an app?

14:34

Here's the current version, and then you literally put a link

14:36

to your app. So you've done all the things you need to do. You put

14:38

a link to your app. You tell people you're building it. And

14:40

now you get all this free feedback

14:43

from people and probably some of your first users

14:45

and just that one post.

14:47

So I actually, first of all, I had to look for the subreddit.

14:49

It's so hard to find a subreddit if you're not knowledgeable.

14:52

So I found this tool where you put one subreddit

14:55

and it gives you all the connection to the other ones. Is

14:57

it like that network graph thing? I think I've seen

14:59

that visualization. Yeah, it's like a network graph of a

15:01

subreddit. Yeah, it's so cool. It's like a map of Reddit.

15:04

It's amazing. And so I go there

15:06

and exactly I thought, OK, how can you

15:08

post this? So people actually want

15:10

to read it and want to respond. Reddit,

15:13

you can exhaust very quickly. And funny, there's

15:16

another tool, another timer that's launched like

15:18

a year later in the same subreddit.

15:20

And I read these posts and it was open source tool. And

15:23

he posted, first one, everybody was excited. And

15:25

then he posted like every single like every week

15:28

he posted and it petered out. You can't

15:30

do that on Reddit. You've

15:32

got one post. You make it short. You

15:34

make it to the point you ask for questions. You don't

15:36

advertise. You got it. And

15:38

then like six months later, I was like, OK, now I

15:40

did it. Like, hey, with your help, I did

15:42

it.

15:43

Check it out. What do

15:45

you think? Oh, that's smart. And it was when you

15:47

think of the paid version. That's when we launched the paid

15:49

version. But I didn't mention the paid version. I just said

15:51

like, hey, thanks for your help. I

15:54

built this thing and now it's a thing and it's

15:56

awesome. There's a hilarious comment

15:59

on your first. Reddit post that I liked. It

16:01

was like someone was basically talking about a different time

16:03

wrap that they found

16:04

where a speaker might have 10 minutes,

16:06

but you can actually speed up the timer. So

16:08

really only nine minutes go by, but

16:11

the countdown looks like it's counting to 10. And

16:13

it's like the most amazing trick for basically

16:15

making so your speakers don't go over time and everything runs

16:18

smoothly. Do you guys have that? Did you end up adding that feature

16:20

to your app?

16:21

This literally the one oldest feature

16:23

in our backlog. And

16:25

I have not built it yet because it's such

16:27

a mind-boggling hard task on a district

16:31

We get very funny requests

16:33

actually, but we also get some

16:36

ultimatums. I mean, not anymore,

16:38

but in the beginning, it was really funny building

16:41

stage timer,

16:43

really listening to the

16:45

users because we didn't know any better, right?

16:48

We didn't know how industry works.

16:50

So I remember the first time I got an email and

16:52

the person said like, Oh, can you add this

16:55

and this so I can build a rundown

16:57

with stage timer? And I was like, what is a rundown?

17:00

And then I asked him,

17:02

so it was really funny entering an industry

17:04

with no prior knowledge, but

17:06

then also the user base,

17:08

right? Teaching us and educating us.

17:11

There was this one guy that was really funny. I

17:13

think it was one of our first yearly

17:15

subscriptions

17:17

and he wrote very

17:19

like straightforward. He said, I love stage timer.

17:22

And here are the things that

17:24

I would like to see on stage timer, because

17:26

if you don't have these things by next year, then

17:29

I'm not going to renew

17:29

my subscription. Like for us, like

17:32

I just gave you money. You better have this next

17:34

year. It's like a mafia. Yeah, it

17:37

was awesome because then we had

17:39

exactly what a producer needs,

17:42

you know, he was really organized and he mentioned

17:44

the most important things. And we

17:47

are very thankful for the

17:49

input on this guy and many other people that

17:51

wrote us because we didn't

17:52

know what they needed for

17:55

the event production space. And then we just

17:57

hopped on a call like, Hey Kat, can we have a call with you? Can

18:00

you tell us what you're actually doing? Like just show us. And

18:03

of course the cool things that when you were dealing with

18:05

early adopters, they're super excited,

18:07

right? So they were actually thanking

18:09

us for the time. They were feeling so good,

18:12

you know, for talking to people

18:14

that work for StageTime. And until today, we

18:17

get messages and even people saying,

18:19

please send my thanks to the team, you know. And then

18:21

I just turned to Luke and was like, thank you.

18:24

And that's it because people actually believe that

18:26

we are a larger team. And

18:29

recently you even met a person and the person

18:31

said, oh, you are one of the engineers.

18:33

And I was like, yeah, well, a bit more

18:35

than that. It's cool because like what

18:37

you're doing is basically proving that like you don't have to solve

18:39

your own problem, right? And I think solving your own

18:41

problem is a little bit overrated because at the

18:43

end of the day, like you're trying to find like other

18:45

customers, right? And they're going to be different than you

18:48

no matter what. Like even if you know an area

18:50

inside and out, other people are going to be different than you. And

18:52

if you don't keep your ears and eyes open

18:54

to listen to what like they have as problems

18:57

and what they want, you're going to be dead. And

18:59

so you might as well get in the habit of doing that from day one

19:01

by solving like other people's problems. And I

19:03

like that you posted on the subreddit

19:05

and like you said, you posted like again. So you later on

19:07

like came back

19:08

and you were like, okay, hey, spend six

19:10

months.

19:12

Here's a link to my old post. Thank you. And you were super smart

19:14

again with how you did it. Like thank you so much for the

19:16

advice. You know, it was so great. So helpful just

19:18

so you know, like here's what the new product is like with

19:20

all your advice added. So you're not like advertising.

19:23

You're just like participating as a community

19:25

member. I've tried to get

19:27

people to do this for indie hackers for so long. It's so hard. You

19:30

get like a group of indie hackers or founders together, put

19:32

them on a forum.

19:33

Everybody just wants to advertise and

19:35

I think everybody cares about what they're doing. It's like nobody

19:37

cares about what you're doing. They care about themselves.

19:39

They want to feel smart. They want to feel important. They want to feel helpful.

19:42

And like I feel like you're one of the few people who did that

19:44

right.

19:45

And so I think after that second Reddit post is when you got

19:47

is that when you got your very first paying customer?

19:50

Yeah, so I pushed out on Twitter and I

19:52

had like 300 followers at that time. Like,

19:55

okay, nobody's going to read it, but you know, that's what you do.

19:57

Build it public, push it out, you know, treat it out. And

20:00

just the same night somebody purchased

20:02

it. This is incredible. Your

20:04

first daughter online is some magical moment. I

20:07

contact the guy. I write him on Twitter. He's

20:10

like, hey, why did you buy my thing? I

20:13

know you're from this first Reddit post. And

20:16

I just followed you. And I love it. I

20:18

love new things. I love what you're doing. I bought

20:20

it right away.

20:21

And it knocked me

20:23

off that it's from this first Reddit post. Actually,

20:26

somebody purchased it. Are you guys, how much

20:28

do you tweet? I know we were reading that one Twitter thread

20:30

that you have. But I haven't really like, I just followed

20:32

both of you.

20:33

How big is Twitter and your marketing and

20:35

growth strategies?

20:37

Nothing. Because all the people

20:39

on Twitter, like there's the Venn diagram between people

20:41

on Twitter and the people that do

20:43

video live video recording and events. It's

20:46

like, there's always no overlap. Just don't

20:48

touch. We just created actually

20:50

now a Twitter first stage timer. But

20:53

it's not at all our, it's

20:55

not even a customer acquisition channel for us.

20:57

So it's not a focus at all for us. And

21:00

then as Luca said, the first users came

21:02

from Reddit. And then

21:05

the coolest part is that it grew mainly

21:08

through word of mouth in the beginning. So

21:10

because this industry is so tightly

21:13

knitted, so it's just the way it

21:15

is for them. As soon as they find something, they

21:18

tell others.

21:19

And the most amazing part about this

21:21

industry is, as you can imagine, they are

21:23

great with video. So I

21:25

think 90% of these people are actually

21:27

YouTubers. So what happened

21:29

is that people started making videos

21:32

about stage timer. And

21:34

then we have these really cool videos made about

21:37

stage timer that we didn't even commission. It's

21:39

just because they're excited and they want

21:40

to share with other people. So every now and then,

21:43

we get an email from a user and say, oh, I just

21:45

saw that so and so mentioned

21:47

you. And then they send the video with the minute already

21:50

you know that I should watch. And it's becoming

21:52

this tool in the space where people

21:54

even reference already as if it's like

21:56

a house brand.

21:58

And then, for example, they all The other day I saw

22:01

that a big creator in the space, he

22:03

mentioned stage timer.

22:05

Actually, he was using stage timer.

22:08

And then he mentioned that he wanted to do something

22:10

related to a timer. And

22:12

two people on the comments on the live

22:15

on YouTube said, yeah, but you should check because

22:17

stage timer actually allows you to do that. It

22:19

was such a model for me because like, oh,

22:21

look at that. They actually mentioned

22:23

stage timer. It's like Nike, you know?

22:25

It's like the Nike of the space. It's just

22:27

like, you don't have to say anything else. It's just stage timer.

22:30

That's really cool to see that it's developing

22:32

like this

22:33

in the industry. That's awesome. And

22:35

word of mouth is, I think it's the best

22:37

type of marketing because it's, your customers

22:40

aren't being marketed at. The downside

22:42

of it is that it's relatively slow. And

22:44

so you had your first

22:47

Reddit customer, but what

22:49

were you doing while your revenue grew

22:52

by word of mouth? And like

22:54

Lucas, I know that at first you were working at a startup.

22:57

Liz, what were you doing? So actually

22:59

I only joined a few months

23:02

after he created the paid version

23:05

before I was working in, in

23:07

humanitarian work.

23:09

And I was working in social development

23:11

and so on. And when I joined

23:14

Lucas in September, 2021,

23:17

I started helping

23:19

him exactly to grow the, to one thing that Lucas

23:21

did that was quite genius. And this again

23:23

comes from

23:24

the way he functions is that he

23:26

called the thing stage timer. It's

23:28

just like calling a clock a clock.

23:31

So because he called stage timer,

23:33

stage timer, SEO

23:35

came by default.

23:36

So when people were

23:38

stage timer, then you would show, we

23:40

were already on the first page pretty fast

23:43

because of that. So this was already SEO

23:45

then became the

23:47

largest, actually word of mouth. It was the second

23:50

largest growth channel. And

23:52

then

23:54

since we saw that SEO would be the way for

23:56

us, then we started tackling SEO

23:58

more intentionally.

23:59

and found out that the best

24:02

way, because it's such a technical

24:04

industry, is to just do technical

24:07

blogs or documentation even better.

24:10

Because these top of funnel silly

24:12

blogs that usually you can do other

24:14

projects doesn't work in this case. Because if

24:16

I make those, we bring the wrong traffic.

24:19

These are the people that won't convert, because they don't

24:21

need such a complex time.

24:24

So funnily enough, one of the things

24:27

that brings us the most paying customers

24:29

is a documentation about how to use a countdown

24:31

timer with OBS.

24:33

So

24:34

we started to realize, OK, we have to go

24:36

very technical, which is hard, because we don't

24:38

know the technicalities of the industry

24:41

so well. But that's how we

24:43

then started growing. Of course, then ads,

24:46

and we keep expanding to

24:48

get more and more customers. So patting back

24:51

a little bit, you ask, what do you do with your

24:53

time now? And I was in the same position,

24:55

probably many people in the same position, like, oh, first dollar,

24:57

what do you do? So as

24:59

one does, I go on Twitter, and I ask, how do I do marketing

25:02

points, too? What do I write? What articles

25:04

do I publish? No idea.

25:06

And somebody said something very genius. They

25:09

said, some products are so simple. If

25:11

you sell a horse, just say horse for

25:13

sale. Just say what it is.

25:15

And I'm like, yeah, I think mine is so simple. So

25:18

I just created blog posts or documentation

25:20

that says, here's how you use my tool. First

25:23

step, this step, this step. Click this button, do this

25:25

thing.

25:26

And this, to date, the most

25:29

clicked and converting articles that we have.

25:32

Yeah, I think I run an Airbnb, and

25:34

it's kind of in the same bucket.

25:36

It's the easiest thing I've ever sold.

25:39

I'm just like, hey, I got a place. You can sleep

25:41

in it. It costs this much per night. Here it is. Put

25:43

on Airbnb. And it's like, ah, I'm just making $5,000 a month, instantly.

25:47

And it's so much easier than selling the vast majority

25:49

of super complicated tech

25:51

products that everybody's addicted to making.

25:54

You sell a stage timer. It's like, yeah, you want to time

25:56

your events? Here it is. It's literally

25:58

called stage timer.

25:59

You said you're killing an SEO at Google stage time and

26:02

you guys are the number one

26:04

Result which is a pretty good place to be that's

26:07

also one of the benefits of Moving

26:10

into a niche that doesn't have a lot of competition,

26:12

right? You actually can get that,

26:14

you know, for example that domain name

26:16

exactly I mean the flip side is you go on a

26:18

threads you look for your keywords and there's like

26:20

zero traffic I was just like almost

26:23

nobody's ranking for it and then you kind of start doing content

26:25

and you realize okay There are two hundred two hundred three

26:27

hundred people coming

26:28

and they have high purchasing intent. So

26:31

these are enough for us So what's it like

26:34

working together because you two are you're married, right? Yeah,

26:37

yeah, I aren't married but we're related sometimes

26:39

we want to kill each other, you know, so that works out really

26:41

well I think like the the most

26:43

stereotypical advice is like don't you know get into

26:46

business with your friends and your family? We're

26:48

all four of us doing like literally the exact

26:50

opposite You do seem pretty

26:52

happy. You're both smiling like

26:55

Mutually complementary you haven't killed each other

26:57

yet. How's it how's it going?

26:59

Well, I I think I can I can say

27:01

more about that because because of the

27:03

following look at this left He was cousin for the

27:05

other day I even made fun on Twitter and said

27:07

like that is awesome you know

27:08

being married to your co-founder because

27:10

you can have meetings as you go for walk

27:13

or as you go out to eat and Then

27:16

some very patronizing guy comes

27:18

to me and says like yeah

27:21

once the pink colored glasses You

27:23

know fall your boot power and we

27:25

have been about ten years Married for seven

27:28

had worked together since the day one

27:30

because we met while volunteering So

27:33

I soon met we started working

27:35

together and we did a ton of projects

27:37

together while we were working in Humanitarian

27:40

aid Lucas came to Brazil we work together So

27:42

this is not our first thing

27:45

and I think he works so well exactly

27:47

because of that because we tested the waters

27:50

In

27:51

like low risk Environments

27:53

before and we knew that we work well

27:55

together and then when Lucas invited

27:57

me to just join Stay tuned

27:59

time I was like yeah this is tried

28:02

in and tested. I mean I

28:04

had to do a calculation right because I invited her eventually

28:07

and it's like is it a wise idea this is a good

28:09

idea like you know you can't step back from bed it's

28:12

like having a kid. I'm

28:14

co-founder your wife so I

28:16

thought you know when when you look at families

28:19

most of them they kind of build

28:21

up their different jobs and they lose kind

28:23

of the things that they talk about and then they end up talking about

28:25

the series that I watch and then they get kids

28:27

and then talk about their kids

28:29

and we thought I thought you know if we do work

28:31

together we have some like we

28:33

have a common interest and common topic so

28:35

like a world that overlaps with that we can

28:38

use for dinner conversations and it works great

28:40

just an example one exercise that we do when

28:42

we take a walk outside and we

28:45

see businesses like a you know an old selling

28:49

cheese or selling meat or something and

28:51

we think how would we how would you revitalize

28:53

or how would you grow this business. It's just

28:55

this challenge that gives this challenge to each other and because

28:58

we're both in this world the other one can like okay I

29:00

would do this I would do this I would do this smart.

29:02

I don't even know what other couples talk

29:04

about but we are like we

29:06

do talk about series okay we just

29:09

finished our favorite series succession

29:11

and we talked about it all the time. Love it. But

29:13

the truth is that because

29:16

we

29:17

have the same interest to grow this

29:20

one business you know we have way

29:22

more things to talk about and it's more fun

29:24

you know to be in each other's company

29:27

and this game that we do we have been doing that for

29:30

quite a while already and this game of just looking

29:32

around and seeing how we would improve

29:35

how we would because sometimes we see a business

29:37

failure and you're like what could we have done

29:40

or how could we actually take advantage

29:42

of this network effect here

29:44

you know and we are all the time playing

29:46

this game and I see that this

29:47

is also what makes us because we

29:50

are we have side projects to

29:52

stage timer and we usually

29:55

get these ideas from these exercises

29:57

and these conversations so it's pretty cool.

30:01

One thing you said that's really underrated

30:03

is it's not merely that both of you

30:05

had a 10-year relationship

30:08

that you knew what it was like to

30:10

live together and to just

30:12

be together. It's that you also

30:15

started specifically, you did volunteering

30:17

work together. And so I think that one of the

30:19

things when it comes to working with friends,

30:22

working with family, and there being

30:24

tension that sometimes arises is because

30:26

you have totally different types of relationships

30:29

with people. And so you might be like, actually

30:31

speaking of friends, Cortland Vincent, a

30:33

friend of the pod and

30:36

a friend of both of ours, used to run this

30:38

company called CoderPad where he taught people

30:41

how to code and he taught his girlfriend

30:43

how to code. And according to him, I don't know

30:45

if I'm supposed to share this, but that ended

30:47

up being this huge transition

30:49

in their relationship and they ended up not working out

30:51

well. And I asked him for advice. I said,

30:54

hey, my girlfriend wants to learn how to code. Should

30:56

I teach her? She asked me advice for me. And he

30:58

just looked at me across the table and was like, yeah,

31:01

don't, don't do it

31:04

anyway. And that

31:07

was a useful conversation because I was like,

31:10

hey, Natalie, here's

31:12

what Vincent told me. We're going to put like a three

31:14

month window on this. And I kind

31:16

of like, you know, sort of created all of these caveats

31:19

and ended up working out well.

31:20

I got to say the other thing also

31:23

is that it's not like I was employed,

31:26

you know, and then Lucas convinced me to

31:28

become an entrepreneur. I think that's the other part.

31:31

Sometimes when I tweet about, you

31:33

know, how cool it is to be married to your co-founder,

31:36

people say, oh, how can I convince my

31:38

girlfriend?

31:39

And I think this is the problem. It's the same.

31:41

I think it was Elon Musk that threw

31:44

on an interview like recently

31:46

when he was like, ah, what would you say to

31:49

like incentive, to encourage a person

31:51

to become an entrepreneur? And he was like, no, if you

31:53

need encouragement, don't become because this doesn't

31:55

work. And I think it's the fault. You

31:58

need to convince your partner to do.

31:59

then it doesn't work. I've had businesses

32:02

of my own. I'm from Brazil, so my businesses

32:04

were in Brazil in the past. So

32:06

I'm not coming like, oh, let me give

32:08

this a try. And my husband convinced

32:11

me. And I think that's another important

32:13

point here is just that we already

32:15

had prior experiences working together. We

32:18

already had started things of

32:20

our own and together. So

32:23

we have been testing this concept for

32:25

quite a while and it

32:27

was fine. And I'm going to give

32:29

this credit here because I was working for a

32:31

startup and they kind of rolled down

32:33

and stopped this project that I was working on.

32:35

And they gave me a

32:36

few months extra pay to find a new job

32:39

or fine. And this kind of was the one that it

32:41

can give me, hey, you have this perfect opportunity

32:44

now to go full time on your own tool.

32:46

Right. It was very small. It didn't make a lot of money

32:48

back then. But I thought, you know what, I have a few

32:50

paid months now.

32:52

Let's use it. Let's do it. And

32:54

she was the one without her encouragement. I might have

32:56

not done it. And we might, you know, so this

32:58

is a good, good How long until you guys have

33:00

a bunch of kids and you're basically

33:03

the family on succession and you've

33:05

got kids fighting for your empire. That's

33:08

what then we talk so much about that,

33:10

funnily enough, the things that I never wanted

33:12

to, to actually have kids of my

33:15

own. So we had

33:17

to talk a lot about even, you know,

33:19

having kids of our own. I always wanted to adopt

33:22

and we keep postponing. So we having

33:24

married, as I said, for seven years. And he's

33:26

always like, yeah, I think in two years, we

33:28

can have you. And

33:31

we were supposed to start, you know,

33:33

like talking seriously now. And

33:35

we just talked last week, let's

33:37

give him another two years. And

33:39

we keep postponing. We do

33:42

want to approach it like a business,

33:44

to be honest. I think it wouldn't be any different

33:46

for us. I really hope

33:48

that we don't end up having four kids

33:51

like in succession because that's

33:52

where I love that show. Honestly, it's

33:54

like I'm, I don't show,

33:56

but yeah, loving the show and emulating

33:59

it to.

37:59

carbon scrubber, the photosynthesis crypto

38:02

miner, then I'm really, truly

38:04

wealthy. Don't get me wrong, I don't care for riches, I

38:07

just can't work for somebody else. New challenges will

38:09

get me out of bed in the morning. Getting rich is just

38:11

a side effect.

38:12

Follow me if you want to see me succeed or fail. I love

38:14

that. That's like the most badass tweet I read out

38:17

loud on the show. Every single part of it is

38:19

hilarious, fun, insightful. And you're kind of

38:21

doing it. I mean, you're like on the path. Do you

38:24

think Stagetimer is the one that gets you to $10 million

38:26

a year?

38:27

No, $1 million. I think $1 million is possible. And

38:30

I have the next one in the world. I mean, now

38:32

with AI, there's the whole four more

38:34

like, oh, should we do AI? It could

38:36

be potential. But I also believe

38:38

in the industry that we know now. And I believe we

38:41

can build a product in this industry that makes that

38:43

kind of money.

38:44

How do you get Stagetimer to $1 million?

38:46

Right now, you're at a little

38:49

over $8k a month. I think $1 million is like

38:51

the magic number. Every indie hacker knows $83,333 a month. That's $1 million.

38:55

So basically, you need 10x, which

38:58

is not crazy. That's

39:00

a realistic goal. One order of magnitude. You

39:02

got a plan to get there?

39:03

So we have a projection

39:06

in our Google Sheet. And

39:08

we say, okay, what was the growth

39:10

rates per month? And we apply them into the

39:13

future. And we basically hit the mark

39:15

this month by like $50. Wow.

39:18

Keep it heating and actually passing

39:20

the mark. And so

39:22

we have a quite predictable growth

39:25

right now.

39:26

So yeah, we shouldn't be

39:28

too far from that, actually. So yeah,

39:30

there is of course, there's a ceiling when you

39:32

do MRR, right? There is like you have your churn rate.

39:35

And eventually, because your churn rate applies on the entirety

39:38

of your customers, eventually your

39:40

churn rate will cancel out

39:41

your customers and your love. So we

39:43

thought, what can we do?

39:46

And one approach we will take is

39:49

go into like kind of an add-on and

39:53

enterprise style, right? So instead of you

39:55

just having it for yourself, we say, okay, you want

39:57

to share it with your team. So make an enterprise.

43:57

is

44:01

almost like a reaction to

44:03

that. It's like a way to solve that problem. It's

44:05

almost like you find ways to turn it

44:07

into a game. I almost call it gameful

44:09

design where you're always

44:12

finding something new to learn or you're finding something

44:14

new to master and

44:17

then to bring it back to Rupert

44:19

Murdoch. So I haven't watched Succession. I

44:21

haven't seen that show, but I

44:23

do have a book, kind of like a biography

44:26

I recommend that it's called the Murdoch Method, like

44:28

one of his 20-year-long advisors

44:31

or consultants kept enough of a distance

44:33

relationship with him that he didn't have to ask

44:35

permission to write down everything that he knew.

44:38

And one of the things that he says about Rupert Murdoch

44:40

is like, the way that he's reached that

44:42

third mountain of being this massive billionaire

44:44

with this huge media empire is

44:47

that he just fucking loves what he

44:49

does. Number

44:51

one, he's super competitive. They

44:53

said that he stalked the Wall Street Journal for

44:56

many years. He wanted the New

44:58

York Post. So he was like, I want

45:00

to beat the New York Times. And

45:02

that was a game in and of itself to him. He's

45:04

also just really, really curious. One of his

45:06

friends is like, no, he just knows, you

45:08

know, you'll never ever get the same topic with him.

45:11

And that's key to running a news empire.

45:14

And so I think that the sort of funny

45:16

catch-22 is that if you want to do something

45:19

where it's a like sustained run

45:21

and you're going to climb this huge mountain, it

45:24

almost has to be the case that you're not doing it so that

45:26

you can get to the top of the mountain. You're doing it like

45:29

to get there. You have to just really, really love

45:32

like these weird turnoffs and sort

45:34

of experiments and small

45:37

things that you master.

45:38

That's step one. And then step two is you have

45:41

to have absolutely no succession planning

45:43

for who your successor is going to be. And then encourage

45:45

your children to fight and compete to

45:48

be your successor, which

45:50

is exactly what Rupert Murdoch has done. And

45:52

you know, who also did that, Gangus Khan, and like

45:55

a whole group of other

45:56

crazy people throughout history. I don't know why that's

45:58

so common. I don't know why people do that.

45:59

And this is true for many inventors.

46:03

Edison, if you read a biography

46:05

of him, he loves inventing.

46:08

He sleeps in his workshop. He's

46:11

never at home. His wife

46:13

hates him for that, but he just loves

46:15

inventing. And I'm reading

46:18

right now a book about Da Vinci, Léodard

46:20

Da Vinci. Just finding out

46:23

things, like how does the human body work? How

46:25

does clothes flow? How do you paint

46:28

something? He's so far,

46:31

once he figured something out, he doesn't

46:33

want to finish his painting. There are so many unfinished paintings

46:35

of Léodard Da Vinci. Because as

46:37

soon as he finds out the method, as soon as he

46:39

figured out a painting, he gets boring

46:42

and he wants to do the next thing. You the original indie hacker who just

46:44

kept starting side projects and then never

46:46

launching them. You mentioned that,

46:48

Liz, he didn't convince

46:50

you, and you can't convince someone to do something like

46:52

this. And interestingly,

46:55

it's the Isaacson, the Walter

46:57

Isaacson biography of Da Vinci, right?

46:59

So I'm reading that too. And it's

47:01

so funny when you look at these,

47:04

pretty much anyone who's done things that people consider

47:06

them great for. I put people into

47:08

three buckets in terms of their relationship

47:10

to their work. You have, and it's by numbers,

47:12

you have the one tens, the 80 20s and

47:14

the 50 50s. 50 50 is

47:17

like, oh, we'll see how I feel about this thing. 80 20 is

47:20

the Pareto principle. It's like, ah, you know, how do I

47:22

be efficient? What's my ROI? How do I do the 20% of

47:25

the work that can get the 80% out? But all

47:27

these other people, the Murdoch's, you

47:30

know, the Da Vinci's, pretty much anyone that

47:32

you know who's doing something great, they're

47:34

the 110%. Right. The

47:37

funny thing about Da Vinci is he'd

47:39

paint landscapes and he would, you

47:42

know, sort of go and learn about a certain bird. And

47:45

he would always travel to

47:47

the location. He would like go cross

47:49

country and go visit the thing

47:51

when they had like atlases and they had images

47:53

like there's a way that he could study it. And he

47:55

very specifically, when someone questioned him, they were

47:58

like, why don't you just look at the, you know, why don't you just. the

48:00

encyclopedia on the thing. And he's like, you should

48:03

never read an encyclopedia when you can go

48:05

and see the thing in real life.

48:08

And almost certainly that's highly inefficient.

48:10

The return on investment, like

48:13

Courtland just mentioned, he had tons of wasted

48:15

images, but he was all in.

48:17

We actually appreciate a lot

48:20

this kind of mentality. And I

48:23

think it's this curiosity. One

48:25

thing that we always try to emulate is being curious.

48:28

When I read about the people that now

48:30

I admire after reading about their lives

48:32

and so on, is always these very

48:35

curious people. They never stop

48:37

asking questions. And we

48:39

have been trying to really become

48:42

more and more like this.

48:43

You two seem naturally curious. You seem naturally

48:45

interested. You seem naturally really excited

48:47

to be entrepreneurs. You're launching side projects. You're

48:49

growing your normal thing.

48:51

Hopefully we'll have you two back on when you

48:53

hit your million and you dollar your goal. When

48:55

you hit 10 million, you got 100 million. And then when you

48:57

got your own SpaceX. And you got two believers right here.

48:59

I think you're going to get there.

49:00

Can you tell listeners where they can go to find

49:03

out more about what's up to you with stage timer

49:05

and your other projects as well? So I

49:07

think the best way to follow is on Twitter. Yeah,

49:09

go comment Twitter at

49:12

underscore lherman one r

49:14

two n terrible name, but you'll find it probably

49:16

put in the show notes. Yeah. And

49:18

I think I am at least Herman

49:20

also. Perfect. Thanks again,

49:22

guys.

49:28

Bye.