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Justin and Jason discuss some big donations from the Australian contingent, the story of Spent – an expense tracking iPhone app, the importance of momentum, how Ben Boyter got a raise, Justin’s new life in Savannah, building an NDA signing service, the customer development being done for AnyFu, whether life is easier as a funded or bootstrapped startup, the maven versus the consultant, quality over quantity, drafting an LLC agreement, traveling to MicroConf, developing a payout system, bringing Preezo back from the dead and why Jason and Justin love their accountant.
- Super Producer $177 – Peter Goldsmith and Tim Cinel & (Spent iOS App)
- Grand Patron $100 – David Walz
- Executive Producer $50 – Ben Boyter
Thank you very much for your kind donations! 🙂
Hey,
Great podcast this week , I agree that better to make a cast with bad soundtrack than not make one at all.
Wohoo great to see other Aussies are listening to your great cast keep delivering great value.
Remember to turn off the mic else trim the excess mins or you will have to have the explicit tag in iTunes 🙂
Great show always look forward to each week.
Cheers
Edwin
Sigh. I guess I should reread my emails before clicking the send button. Oh well life goes on. Hopefully nobody things im too stupid for that comment.
Personally I care about sound quality. I use reasonably decent headphones and any crackles or pops or hisses make things impossible for me to listen to. In a car I wouldn’t mind so much, but I walk/train usually so it can be really distracting. Heck that’s why I pitched in $100 back in the original donations drive as I could not deal with the noise. So that’s +1 to decent post production from me, and I really appreciate it. Most podcast’s get the chop from me unless they sound great.
On the Aussie thing, not sure if its just a cultural thing for more donations, it might also be because our economy is pretty awesome at the moment and was pretty much the same through the GFC, whereas its still pretty bad in most of the rest of the world.
Finally if you guys ever come down south ill shout you both a meal at a pub. Or Harry’s Cafe De Wheels.
@Ben Boyter – I can’t remember anything about your comment that was stupid and I apologize if anything we said about you made you uncomfortable. But honestly no body really cares. I say about fifteen stupid things every show and yet people are still listening. 😉
Yeah, I would love to make a trip down to Australia one of these days.
Thanks again for the generous donation.
Nah don’t worry I have thick skin. I was in no way insulted or even slightly uncomfortable. I am the first to point out anything dumb I do or say. It was just a public note to myself to read emails aloud before clicking send.
If you are going to do it wait till the dollar shifts around. For the first time ever in my history I can buy USD and get more money back then what I spend. Quite an interesting experience.
Great show guys! I always enjoy the discussion shows and this one was no different.
Jason
Re: Payment script
Instead of having the service fee hardcoded in a settings file, why not have it configurable for each expert? Gives you more flexibility in case you need it in the future.
@James – I’m glad you liked the show. 😉
Your idea about the service fee is something to consider, but I think if we did implement something like that we’d tie the service fee to the client and not the expert since the client is the one who actually pays the service fee. The expert gets their full invoice amount regardless of what we charge for the service fee.
Congrats guys on another entertaining 2 hours. Kudos to those who donate to the show. Have you considered getting some regular sponsors? Have you ever measured how much traffic a mention on your show would generate.
Happy to hear we are not the only ones struggling with a Google plus. Some of their products seem to lack intuition. Maybe too many engineers in the company?
We think the podcast site looks pretty good as it its. You could add some more social media buttons to help with sharing but overall the pages look neat.
You guys should be proud of what you have delivered so far on anyfu. It is a great example of getting something to market. The fact you have customers makes the whole effort worthwhile. Plus an opportunity to hear first hand from users. Don’t under estimate the value of your product. It is appealing for experts and anyone seeking help with a difficult problem.
Keep sharing the stories.
Ler me make Australia seem smaller: I’m Alfie’s old boss and first met Jeremy in the late 90s IIRC.
(Also, “Aussie” sounds like Ozzie Osborne, rather that “Ossie”)
Cheers!
Rick
@Rick Measham – Wow, we need to start making a list of listeners by location because I think Australia, and maybe Melbourne specifically, would be a TZ hotspot for sure.
Thanks for the correction on the pronunciation of Aussie. Good thing I only mispronounced it like TEN times in one show. Geesh. 😉
@Spark N Launch – Thanks so much for the positive feedback on everything!
Yeah, we’re feeling pretty good about AnyFu. It’s moving slower than we’d like due to our respective consulting obligations, but the feedback from the clients and experts has been really motivating.
Loved the show 🙂
My bucket list:
# ….
# …..
# getting mentioned in TechZing podcast# ….
# …..
And i’ll make it smaller again:
– My old boss listens to TechZing
– My new boss listens to TechZing
– The first person I talk to at Web Directions Melbourne brings up TechZing
Feedback: I think people are getting a lot of value and second hand experience with building startups by just listening to your stories and hearing the issues your facing along the way. So being AnyFu centric isn’t a problem… in fact I think it’s interesting and encouraging to others.
+1 on the jovial and happy discussion. Maybe TechZing is popular down under because it definitely has that “pub” feeling and we Ozzies love pubs 🙂
btw: Is this the first discussion with outtakes after the outro? I usually pull out my headphones after “we’re out”, but looking at iTunes there was still 9 minutes left. I wonder how many other outtakes I’ve missed!
Great show as always. Thanks for giving me a shout out. I’m pretty excited about how anyfu.com is unfolding. I can’t wait to see your entourage of experts expand.
Do we like the word “Entourage” or should we go with the “A Team” or maybe “Fantastic Fleet”? 😉
Hey guys-
I just finished listening… another good ‘un. Justin, please take Jason’s advice and post some pictures of your new place already. Excuses, excuses… 😉
As for AnyFu, I just completed my first session as an AnyFu expert today — what a blast! It was so refreshing to have a time-bound discussion with someone who needed help with their site & online business. I can only hope to eventually have a few of these sessions per week.
You guys had an interesting back and forth about straying from your original vision (e.g., bringing people into the site who don’t ‘need to charge’ for their time). I’ve been there. Eventually, when people start to request lots of your time, you quickly grow weary of giving away your precious time — and you’ll want to charge. Trust me. I’m old. 🙂
Instead, I would encourage you to stay true to your vision. You’ll get the experts you need — there are thousands of ’em. And by staying true to your vision, you won’t dilute your message. This is very important. The more specific you can get with explaining your core offering to your target audience, the better. Diluted messages are boring and they SUCK (just ask Joanna!!).
Justin, if you’re feeling challenged to get people to take you up on your offer to become an expert on the site, then I’d say you have a problem with your ‘pitch’. How are you pitching AnyFu? I’d love to hear how you are doing it and how Jason is doing it — care to share here or on the show? I’ll bet TZ listeners would respond with all kinds of helpful feedback. 🙂
I really hope you’ve created a flier here. You deserve it!
Lance
By popular demand here are some pictures I took of my new place in Savannah:
http://techzinglive.com/jvs-picture-story
Inside of building a Window’s service you might want to consider using Open Office – it has command line support for file conversions and it runs in Linux.
@Jason – Guaranteed AnyFu will look much better than any of our planned projects.
@Justin – Nice photos. Savannah looks like an interesting place. Not so close to the valley thou?
@Justin Dude… you look like Billy Crystal in the first photo. The resemblance is uncanny.
This is the picture I am referring to BTW.
http://topnews.in/light/files/Billy-Crystal.jpg
http://techzinglive.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/jv2.png
Hey I was listening to your last episode and paused right on the Mavens discussion to post this comment. You, guys, should add the option for experts to donate their earnings to their favorite charity (or open source project) that way everybody wins.
And that is all. Great podcast. I’m sure I’m your only listener from Mexico 😛
@Armando Sosa – While I think your heart is in the right place (and I appreciate the sentiment), I don’t think that the “work for charity” model scales any more than favors do. I realize it may come across as politically incorrect to suggest such a thing, but I’m not remotely convinced that that kind of a model would work. In fact, I’m pretty confident that it wouldn’t except for the occasional or one-off promotions with famous/wealthy entrepreneurs like the one Exec is currently putting on. If an expert wants to donate some or all of their income to charity then that’s their business, but making it something that certain experts advertise on their profile would put a weird and uncomfortable pressure on the experts who actually want or need to make a living through consulting work.
Regarding sound quality: sure, sound quality is important and I’ve turned off other podcasts just because it was too hard to hear what people were saying. But I think your sound quality is pretty darn awesome, so if it’s occasionally down a notch or two from your normal level, don’t worry about it.
@Alfie: there have been outtakes before, but not very often. I always keep listening to the very end, hoping for blooper outtakes and stuff. 🙂
@Ben: Lol, there definitely is a resemblance. And I think there’s a Tim Curry-esque smile in there too! 🙂
RE: Aussie (pronunciation)
There is a restaurant chain in the US called Outback Steakhouse. It is ok food with names that are a parody of Australia. For example, Kookaburra Wings are breaded chicken tenders. Anyway, someone once asked me if it was “real Ossie” and I said “That’s it exactly what it is, real Ossie food. ” 😀
I think about 90%+ in the US say Ossie rather than Ozzie including my relatives that have heard us say Ozzie for years !
P.S. My spouse is Australian.
@Mikael Green – Thanks for the kind words. I’ll take that as a compliment 🙂
This was a great show, thanks. It’s really good to see AnyFu getting off the ground and hear lots of details about what you’re doing, if this is what you’re excited about at the moment then it’s fine to make it the main topic of the shows.
@OurAussieFriends Nice donations! And thanks for clarifying the pronunciation of Aussie.
@Justin Great pictures of your new digs.
@Ben Now I can no longer unsee the “uncanny resemblance” 🙂
I enjoyed the AnyFu-centric discussion a lot. I have been quite involved with electronic docs and digital signatures at work and it is quite a fascinating field. Just a word of caution though that applying a signature image (uploaded or generated after drawing with a mouse/pen/pad) does not hold the same legal value as a verifiable digital signature (usually associated with a certificate).
Loved the outro (I always make sure I don’t miss them).
The enthusiasm is definitely contagious!
Thanks for a great series of podcasts!
I’m a fellow Aussie from Adelaide in South Australia. I’ve been meaning to post for a while, and it was to comment on the pronunciation that finally did it.
Keep up the great work! The two of you inspire and motivate me every time I listen to you. Great job!