EP47: Meat and potatoes with Chase Reeves (part 2)

This week I got into the meat and potatoes with Mr. Chase Reeves. This is part two of our discussion. We talked about the struggles of building products, especially when you're just starting out and you're trying to figure out which direction to go in, what you're good at, all that kind of initial stuff. Then we got into the actual logistics of how they built fizzle.co.

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You brought up something that I wanted to talk about anyway which is because you mentioned that you just had a kid and you're out looking for work and stuff like that. And I wanted to talk a little bit about the struggle. Struggle in the beginning whether you're if you're unemployed and you have a wife and kid at home, there's a struggle of I gotta get work. I gotta get, you know, I gotta get some income in here. Yeah.

And it's kinda like that when you start when you start a business. Yeah. Like at the beginning, you know, I I interview a lot of people and I talk to a lot of people. And it seems like some of those folks with a lot of experience that have been doing this for years and years and years

Mhmm.

They've either forgotten about the struggle or maybe they didn't have it because they were young and they had no expenses. But, you know, you've got a wife and a kid at the house. You got to pay for those gluten free crackers that you keep talking about. Know? Yeah.

So tell me about that. Tell me about you're building fizzle right now. What's that like? Like, did you guys start from $0 a month and you're just kind of building it up from there?

Yeah. So well, I see two things here. First of all is when I was like like a few years ago when I was young and trying to figure this out. And then there's the the what you just said with the Fizzle Building. What was it like to to to build that up or what is it like right now?

So I'm I'll I'll I'll address both of these, one after the the other. Okay. So the first of all, I mean, going back a few years to to watch myself try to figure out who I am and what I'm here for, like I feel for that guy. I really do like that. This is part of the reason why I love the work that I do so much is because I've discovered so much about myself through it.

I mean, what what Jesus what I was trying to discover in the Jesus stuff, there was the same thing. Who am I? What am I here for? And I got a lot of a lot got a lot of it there. Same thing with, you know, the Enneagram and Myers Briggs and stuff like that.

Right? Mhmm. I've always been kind of hungry for that stuff. Looking for insights about me because I always just kinda I felt like I didn't really know who I was. I didn't or when I'd say something that felt like me or maybe I felt said too many things that I didn't know if it was me or not.

Right? Yeah. I feel like for the upper middle class Bay Area kid growing up here, it's like, that's what the struggle is. And half the time you just like missed you just stop asking the question because drugs are so fun. Other times you're just like stop asking the question because like so clearly this this is the path that set out for me to become an investment banker.

You know? Yeah. Can I just stop you there? Because I think I can identify with that feeling. I think a lot of people feel like that in this space.

Like this kind of space where people are, you know, telling people how they can run a business or how they can build a product or how and there's always kind of like this this carrot that they hold out in front of you.

I don't know if

it's a carrot, but this idea that, you know, if you truly knew yourself or if you knew the secret about yourself, that's it. If you knew the secret about yourself, you'd be able to, you know, kind of fully realize all this stuff or you're just you're just missing this one piece. And that stuff always drove me crazy.

Yeah. Totally.

Because I never knew if I, like it it just gives you so much doubt of like do well, do I know myself? Like if I know my Myers Briggs score, will that help me get a better job? If I, you know, do the Colby, will so how did you kind of reconcile all that?

So I guess I I could tell the story. You okay with it? Yeah. Definitely. Okay.

So I was it was it was a rainy this is thunder and lightning. It was a rainy cold day in Portland, Oregon. There was a young man with a large nose and a parka on walking his son to the park. And so we it was sort of drizzly in Portland. It was gray and dismal.

I had been listening to some interview. Let's say for the sake of argument, it was your interview with Jason Kalkanis or something. I can't remember what I was oh no. It was an interview with Jason Fried and he talked about how the first thing he does every morning is he wakes up and he looks at that sales dashboard and he wants to see which way the needle moved. And and I was like it kind of stuck with me and then the next day I'm taking my kids to the park and I am just in full on existential crisis mode.

Right? So what are so I'm walking into the park just around the corner from our house, walk there. He I try to kinda get him to go play by himself and I fire up Evernote and I start recording a voice note. And in the background throughout this note, you can hear my son like, daddy, come play with me. And I'm like, hold on, daddy's working.

And I just start like was like, what the fuck is the point? Why am I working so fucking hard? Why would I try so hard if when I get to the top of the mountain, the first thing I do when I wake up is look at a sales dashboard? Like, why on earth am I working so hard? Why wouldn't I just become a janitor?

Literally clean up other people's shit for a living. Get my two weeks a year, you know, spend some time with my family, try some interesting drugs, you know, get, like, super into vinyl or some shit, like, play in a in a super, like, like, just d super decent blues band or something like that.

Like, I like this janitor narrative.

Right? Like, I could like, yeah. I could really go, like, for the Portland dream. Yeah. And I could do that.

Why would I try so hard to make something if this is what waits this is what it look because, like, up to then, it was like, okay. Successful. I wanna be successful. Wanna be successful. Never one's thinking about what do I mean by successful.

Don't worry don't worry about what that means. Like, let's just keep we're heading up this mountain because we gotta work hard. We gotta do the thing, and this feels good and yada yada yada. And then I saw this picture, and and this is reduction reductionistic picture of what Jason Fried looks like at the top of the mountain, so to speak. But I saw him as a guy who's, like, really done the thing, like, built a business he's proud of.

He's continued to sustain it. He's done I I I like a lot of this. Right? We all do. Right?

They're the love child of of every single person who's trying to build their own thing. Yeah. But then I and and and so I saw that. I was in this moment. My son's in the background.

Daddy play with me. I'm recording in the Evernote like having an existential crisis and I'm like, so what the fuck is the point? And okay, this is gonna get this is where it gets weird. Alright? As if it wasn't weird before.

But I was like, alright, what do we know about humanity? Because I up to now, like I had been like a total Jesus guy. That framework got totally ripped out from underneath me and now I'm on my own. I don't get to just pray for my brother. I have to get involved.

Not my brother meaning like, hey brother, but like my actual brother, my biological brother. Right? Yeah. So I my life my life is in my hands. I have full autonomy.

I have full authorship of what we do with this from here on out. Like, so what do I want is the question.

Mhmm.

So I say, where where are we going? Where's humanity going? We're going to space. Humanity is in, you know, a million years gonna be like, you know, populating the universe or whatever. Right?

Because this is all the movies and books that I read. But what role do I possibly get to play in that? Like, I don't get to play. I'm not a physics guy. I can't create some I'm not I'm not gonna create some fucking rocket or some shit.

I'm not I don't have an electric car company. Right?

Yeah.

So what can I do? I'm just a guy who could be in a pretty decent blues band, you know? So the thing I landed on was I can help I can make people's lives better in small and meaningful ways. How can I do that? Well, I'm getting pretty into weight lifting right now.

I really like that. It makes me feel like I'm not a piece of shit. It makes me feel like I'm not a piece of glass. It's really made me like had serious changes myself and how I live my life. So there's that.

There's that fitness angle. Right? Yeah. And then it was like, you know, there's this entrepreneurial angle. Like, I love the autonomy, the creativity to create better than feeling it than, like, being, like, all in.

God, I love where this is going. But I love that about entrepreneurialism and I see it as a story that exists in humanity since the dawn of time. We've made since we were making our first tools, however many millions of years ago. You know, this creation, this working with our world and creating and discovering bits of ourselves and how to do things better and all this other stuff and then it's like creation and connection is what I think. Then you make the thing you ship, you go you go and fish, you have this fish and then you either go to the market or you realize like your next door neighbor has a bunch of sheep or whatever you're like, I'll give you 20 fish for a sheep.

Right? This is business. This is humanity. Yeah. So I saw this as an essential human story.

I saw the autonomy, the creativity, the independence that that comes with it, and these are all personal development themes that I've always been interested in. And I was like, fuck it. Let's do that. Let's make people's lives smaller. Let's make make make small people's lives better in small and meaningful ways through the lens of entrepreneurship.

And so that's what started me. This is when we were actually creating Fizzle at the time. It was this way when we were kind of concepting it and it was so all this stuff was deep within me and I was like, okay, this is the rest of my fucking life. I am gonna serve people who want to build their own thing and I am not the I am not the expert. I'm not Paul Graham.

I'm not Brad Feld. I'm not Seth Godin. I'm not these guys I look up to and I'd like, you know, cherish every one of their morsels that they that they that they let drip from their plate, you know? Yeah. But I can pay attention to them and I can pay attention to as many entrepreneurs as I can over the next fifteen years.

So that by the time I'm 50, like, I have got some serious things to say about this. And specifically, what it's like to be an entrepreneur. The the personal journey that the of being an entrepreneur. This to me is probably, at least now, where I'm most interested in.

Mhmm.

So that's my whirlwind story. Yeah. So how do

you so there's kind of the the existential purpose. That's your Yeah. That's your mission.

Yeah.

And how do you balance that with this need to make a dollar? Right? Right?

That's a question Justin. I was gonna ask you the same freaking thing. I don't know. You gotta you just like, where where do you have the opportunity to make a dollar? Can you try that there?

Right? So we had this big audience at Think Traffic, and we had these we had Corbett and myself and Caleb, and we knew how to make content, quote, unquote, I hate that word, but I have to use it for some reason. I can't find a better one than than content. I'm a content creator.

Yeah. It's fine. You know, let's just take it back. Whatever.

Yeah. Exactly. But

It's we a good word.

We know how to make this stuff. I like that. Yeah. Let's reclaim content.

Yeah.

It's good.

It's it's kinda like a there there's a hipsterism or a I don't this kind of like, oh, I don't like that word content. Right?

Don't like that word. Oh, who gives a shit?

It's Yeah. It's a word.

There was someone at XOXO. I can't remember exactly who it was, but he he's he talked about that a bit. I oh, it was Jack Conte of of Pump Lemoose. He had a great talk. I can't wait till those x o x o videos go live.

It was insane. But Anyway, so you

guys are good at content.

Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. We know how to do a lot of this stuff. Right?

We know how to build an audience. We know how to create it. We have a big audience. We we see this need. We know how to create something valuable for these people.

Right? Do something that that helps people in small and meaningful ways. So let's roll this into, we we've already sold several products before in our history. Let's make one that that kind of rules them all. Let's make the lynda.com of starting your own thing.

Specifically right now your own online business because that's what we know really really well. Probably as good as anybody else out there. So so that's what we that's what we did in Fizzle. That's the the sort of the issue that we're tackling, the problem that we're solving because, you know, it's it is for these reasons. Right?

These all this is my freaking story and that's why I care so much about the people who are in Fizzle because they're on the same journey and not all of them are gonna be successful and not all of them are supposed to do this for a living. Right? But they all deserve to be sort of, you know, creatively fulfilled and building something that they care about versus having their soul sucked away one day at a time, you know?

And and let's talk about let's talk about the actual logistics. So like like when you guys are you just had your one year anniversary. Yeah. So that first year, you must be thinking, like like, did you have a number that you guys were going for?

You know, Corbett has numbers. We do have we have some number, and I'm not even exactly sure what it is. We have, about 760 members or 750 members right now, something like that. I haven't checked today because I didn't wake up this morning and look at my sales dashboard. But we have 750 sales, or, you know, paying members, and that's only growing.

You know? It's growing bit by bit, and and and we have the conversations about how do we grow this more, how do we make it sustainable, do we get into advertisement, do we do this, that, and the other. But suffice it to say, like, our our monthly nuts are are are covered, you know. Okay.

And what at what point did your did your nut, so to speak, get like, what when was were you covered? Did did that happen fairly soon after you launched?

Well, yeah. Yes and no. Yeah. It kinda did. Well, so we started we have a big audience at Think Traffic.

We launched into them with an email that's saying like, hey, we're gonna let a 150 people into this alpha thing of this new thing we're making. It's it's it's brand new. There's sawdust all over the floor. You might cut yourself on some broken glass. We're still cleaning things up.

Right? Yeah. But you'll have you'll get in at this at this lower price, and you'll get, you'll get everything sort of for life at this price. Right? So we did that, got a 150 people in, sold it out in a and in just about two hours, which I was just like, no way.

Right? Yeah. That's amazing. The first launch I've ever been a part of like that.

But out of how many people on the list?

There good question. I always say 50,000, but I think it's more like 45. Okay. Something like that. So or 30 something.

I don't know. A lot. You know? Yeah. More like it took it took several years for Corbett to build that up.

And not all of the, you know, or the open rate is what, you know, 20% on something like that when you send an email out to Yep. 40,000 people. So, so it was good, though. You know, we okay. Clearly, a 150 people right off the bat, couple hours do that.

Spend a month hearing from them, trying to make it better, doing the lean startup thing. Right? Launch beta, another 150 in, sells out in, I think it was like three or four hours. Then another month or two of of getting the product better, writing more more courses, getting more education in there, kind of luckily, the best people we could possibly have gotten got into it. So, like, part of me feels like, well, we've made a really great product in physical.

Part of me is like, I have nothing to do with because so much of what makes physical great, I think our training is sensational. Right? But then the other 50% of this thing is the community. And it's the kind of person that's joined, and it's the kinds of interactions you get with people on the site. Right?

This whole communal aspect of it. Yeah. And they just fucking they set up such an amazing I think something about the way we marketed it, something about our personalities, how it was very honesty, sort of rawness driven, very vulnerable language. It was just very personal. That attracted a certain kind of person, and they have absolutely shaped the the way the community looks.

And and subsequently, what it feels like for someone to join up right now. It feels like a very welcoming experience as opposed to like, oh yeah, what have you made? Oh yeah, hey, I'm here to learn how to get some SEO tactics. I've got a couple of niche sites that, I like to take advantage of old people that can't see very well. So, you know, whatever.

So, am I getting anywhere near your question here?

Yeah. Yeah. And and I think, you know, like, I'm wondering how much do you worry about money now?

I we do. We I mean, so we have some. So there's a there's a product that Corby created a while ago called Start a Blog That Matters. It's a $99 thing. That's a thirteen week course on blogging, like how to start up your blog and actually get it to some notoriety and and and make your, like, sort of minimum viable audience, so to speak.

Mhmm.

And how to build it from the start really well so that you're not, like, you end up shooting yourself in the foot accidentally and you realize it two years later. So that sells that sells quite a bit. And we have, you know, good affiliate program with that. So a lot of people are are are, you know, promoting that. We get a lot of traffic to that site and it sells quite a bit.

But that's not where we want to be heading so much as we want to be heading towards this fizzle direction. We don't want to be heading towards the Internet marketing direction. We want to be heading towards, you know, not that douchey sort of vibe that we all kind of sense, but like the best of that plus this, the ability for someone to to sort of find creative fulfillment and make a buck doing it. Maybe it's not supporting you and your family but but it's certainly helping you buy some beer every month, you know. So heading more in that route than how do I craft a killer headline or how do I, you know, SEO tactics to make even the poorest person wealthy, you know, or whatever.

The Aladdin fucking rags to riches story of an Internet marketer.

So And did Corbett like was he just willing to share that with you as a partner?

Like Yeah. Well, so that that it took a long time. Right? So we started I was just working on we did the we did the website on Think Traffic. That was just a contract.

And then we did the beginnings of Fizzle. That was just a contract. And then that that was a contract for a partnership on Fizzle. And then subsequently after, you know, six months of that, it was like, we're gonna go all in on this whole thing. So he had other other things making revenue outside of Fizzle.

I was just a part of Fizzle at that time. Then the bigger partnership for the the whole kit and caboodle. And when I was getting into the those products about Ford was that these things are making revenue, and we have, like, big decisions to make about if we stop offering that or offer that in a different way or bring that within Fizzle or do other things that might jeopardize those, you know, 4 or $6,000 a month that we're getting from those things that are like really helpful for me who lives in the Bay Area paying. It's like almost more than that for my rent, you

know? So,

and not to mention I have to buy these gluten free crackers for my kid, you know? So those are really big revenue questions and long term brand questions and story of like creating a movement that's worthwhile because that's kind of that's sort of where I live. I live on making something feel really great because it's capital t true. Mhmm. I don't live really well in how to maximize revenue out of this thing or how to this, that and the other.

I can make something feel like it has a lot of momentum in it if it has that potential for that momentum, you know? Yeah. But to try to optimize for growth, like this is where things start just going in one ear and out the other, you know?

And and really it sounds like you're you're just you you have a lot of trust in Corbett to be thinking in those kind of places. Right?

I absolutely do. He's daddy, I'm mommy, Caleb's Caleb's the kid. But yeah, he I really do. He he's he's great at this stuff. His ass is on the line as well.

And so we're both very much in it together. And frankly, he's just been really he was really gracious, took a chance on me to develop his website after I hadn't done very much work for a long time. And that ended up being a massively successful redesign. He loved it, and he loved working with me. He loved what I could bring to the table because I am just that golden retriever type, you know.

I'm I'm not gonna be able to contribute to the monthly revenue, spreadsheets the way that I am, know, able to just throw together a homepage that that sells out in a in an hour and a half. You know?

And what are some other things? Because now you're interacting with a lot of people that are starting.

Yeah.

And, like I alluded to before, you know, people that have been doing this for years and they've already kinda covered their net as as you say Yeah. They're not worried about that anymore. It's like out of their mind. Like, they don't even think about that. But for those people starting out, what's kind of the common struggle struggle that you've seen and how, like, how have you helped people get over that?

Well, right now, we're in the middle of a of a couple courses that we're writing. One of them is on, like, the these in there are these intro courses to Fizzle. One of them is on the business and one of them is on the entrepreneur. And I think we hear a lot about the business. Can We go look at miss business model generation or lean canvas or things like that.

We don't hear a lot about the entrepreneur and what it's like to do this, why so many burnout, why so many businesses why why so many founders end up quitting.

Yeah. Exactly.

And in that course, which is sort of my wheelhouse, I I'm talking I get into to a lot of things that I'm, you know, passionate about, but but but basically summed up, it's about setting the right expectations about how long this is gonna take and how much work it's gonna be. Mhmm. You know, meaning you you can absolutely be have a successful business in ten years. No no doubt about it. You can do that.

You can do that. If you start right now paying attention and learning and persevering, you know? Mhmm. You can make something that somebody wants and you can have a really successful business doing that, making that thing and selling to them in ten years. So the challenge typically becomes because we don't know founders don't know or hopeful founders don't know.

They are expecting this to happen within the next year. And they should be thinking about it over four years, probably. And then also, like, there's this real rush and a and a kind of a it's kind of hip to talk about quitting your job right now. And I love telling people they should be an apprentice under someone for a while. Find someone who's doing something you you're interested in and work for them whether or not they can pay you.

You know? Let that be your side business for a year. Learn as much as you can. Caleb did this with Corbett, and now he knows exactly what it's like to run a large site, to create a product and launch it, to do all of this stuff. Right?

Be because he's seen behind the scenes of all of that, and he's been wildly helpful to Corbett through through that. Caleb's been with Corbett longer than I have. So, so the the apprentice thing, being able to find someone that that you'd like what they're doing and buy them coffee and hang around like Bob from the mad from Mad Men. You know? Being around them, being helpful to them, whether or not you can make any money doing it because you look at this over the next ten years and you see that as a valuable lesson to learn right now.

You know? So Brad Feld always talks about it long. He says it's really hard for a 22 year old to look at the next twenty two years of his career with any sort of perspective, but that's what you have to do. It's a long term view with many short cycles. And if you can look at the next twenty years and segment that into, like, two year sprints and then ask yourself, okay, so what do I need to do this month?

Mhmm.

You know? Reverse engineer from, I'm gonna have a successful business in five years where I'm just making my, you know, 6,000 a month a month to keep my head alive. So what that means that, like, how do I reverse engineer from there and give myself that time? Now for me, that I'm really sensitive to this because I puts you I've been in that mode where I'm putting so much pressure on myself that I can't even fart a creative fart, you know? You're just you're in fight or flight mode and you're not in creative mode.

Yeah. Where you need to be in, you you need to be able to have that kind of patience and that kind of the ability to network and to and to launch something into a network versus launching something, into oblivion. Yeah. You know? So all of that stuff is what I would wrap up as my answer to, like, the just starting out struggles.

Mhmm. They're really self created struggles about how long this should take, and and you have all these worries and pressures about I'm not making money yet. Was like, that's fine. Make a make like, have you found out something that people want? Have you made an audience that might want that thing?

Have you figured out something about yourself that you're not gonna burn out if you spend the next two years making this thing, alone the next fifteen? Right? Have you can you take some of these excursions to figure out what it's like to be the person who's writing about x versus y versus z, let alone try to figure out a little audience from that, a minimum viable audience so that you can launch a $1 product into to see if anybody there is willing to pay for a thing if they have money and if they can afford this kind of relationship. Right? Yeah.

Am I talking to the air here people? Yeah. What's happening?

That I think that's exactly it. That idea of, there's two things there. Think well, actually, there's three things. One is that there are there are a lot of us in in how can I say this? Desperation mode.

So like, you need to make enough money just to meet your basic needs. And if you're in that place, you've you've got to take care of that however you can. Right? Like, I think that's one thing you hit the nail on the head. Like a lot of people feel like, well, I'll just quit my job and I'm going to start this thing and I'm going to make a lot of money and I'll be able to, you know, I'll live off credit cards for a couple months and then I'll be able to pay my bills.

Yeah, totally.

That could be true, but that I think you're going to I love that that imagery of like not being creative. It's very hard to be creative when you're in desperation, when you don't know if you're going to make rent. So I think that's the first thing is like you need to take care of your needs somehow. The second thing is like kind of going from that point, like you said, like what are my needs? And then working back from there and saying, okay, well, if my needs are, you know, whatever it is, if it's 50,000 a year or 100,000 a year, whatever it is, working back and saying, well, what would I what would it take to get there reasonably?

Right? And then kind of working back, like you said, and then you actually have a timeline, Like then you have well, based on, you know, my limited experience and and, you know, you might put the timeline out further if you've never sold a product in your life. If you've sold something before and you know what it takes, you might be able to have more precision, right?

Yeah. Absolutely.

And and then the last thing you mentioned that that I thought was so good is like starting small. Like, I I talk to a lot of people and I I think people have great ideas and they've worked on projects. But until you've until you've sold that first thing on the Internet to a stranger for a dollar, you kind of don't know what to expect.

Yeah. Absolutely.

And and people, they wanna, you know, they wanna sprint before they've walked. And I think that can be hard. Like, I I just I see a lot of people that are building these huge complex systems. And it's like and I think partly because, you know, like a lot of us kinda get maybe, I don't know, ashamed about that stuff. But like, you know, I sold a PDF for $5.

Yeah. And it and because it goes into that, like you said, that kinda douchey

douchey Internet marketing stuff. Yeah.

But the point the truth is, like, you need to start somewhere. And I love going back and, like, looking at, like, old posts by, like, Marco Arment and, like, Jason Like, it's so it's refreshing because you read those things and you go, like, oh, man. They've really developed quite a bit, right? Yeah, totally. Totally.

And you can go back and you can look at like the first products they released or whatever. And the truth is, is that, you know, like Jason Fried had shitty little database software for managing tapes And then like 37 first product. No one a lot of people don't know this. Their first product was a PDF that they sold for $75 about what was it? It was like, they just analyze the best ecommerce sites on the web.

Like that sounds so douchey. Right? Like Yeah. Like who who'd have thought? But they had to start somewhere.

And I think what you were mentioning there, like this idea of just build something small, release that. You've got to start somewhere. So while you're kind of working up to your four year plan or whatever, just keep releasing small little things trying to, you know, try to make a dollar first from one person and then move on to, you know, making $10 from 10 and then there's kind of like this ladder.

Yep. No. Absolutely. I mean, once you like you said, once you sell once you make your first buck from someone you don't know online, that's when it's just like, oh, okay. So like when Fizzle, we're building in these, like, revenue excursions where where you do this as a thirty day product where you're you're gonna break this seal because once you do it once, you know just about everything you need to to do it better next time which will teach you everything you need to do to know to do it better the next time.

But really getting the technology and the sales page and the things in order just to do it that first time, you learn so damn much and it changes the way you approach the work. It changes the way you approach your audience. It changes the the kinds of thoughts that you have about what you should do with these two hours on a Tuesday morning or something like that. Right? Yeah.

And I that's that to me is what's so exciting, you know? And and I don't know. Like you said, like like, the I love I love hearing that about the 37 signals. The the fact that their first thing was was totally douchey sounding. Yeah.

Right? It's like I was just at XOXO and I feel like a an impostor there. I would or I would I did last year a little bit more because I'm essentially a marketing guy who's who's learning how to make something instead of sell something. And it just felt like, God, want to be in with this crowd, but they are actually making things. Like, they're the nerds who don't think about money versus and I'm making this parable up in my head, like, about them.

That isn't true. The whole thing is about how to do something you love and make money. Yeah. Know what I So the truth is is that is that money is just as as essential. It's just an essential part of the thing.

We have to be thinking in those terms and we have to be willing to put things out there and people are sensitive to whether or not you're in on this thing or not. You know, whether or not this is a douchey. I had that we have one episode of the podcast where, we try to we we just like talk about like what is it what is this douchey thing, that like how do we not do that? And one of the hardest things about it was like how do we define Because, what I realized is everybody's a douchebag to somebody. Yeah.

Justin, you look like a douchebag to some someone else. Like when I went on on to some site looking at like what does douchebag mean? Like it's looked like they were talking about people who wear affliction shirts. And when I think of a douchebag, I think of people like in the marina in the city who are like, yeah. I don't know.

Like like they're wearing they're wearing topsiders because they saw him in a magazine or something like that. I don't know. There was there's like a money thing there and there's a there's something like that. But really what it comes down to, I think, first of all, every everybody's a douchebag to somebody. You don't get to put something online without someone being able to say, what a douche.

Yeah. Right? That's just gonna happen. Welcome to YouTube commenting.

Yeah.

Yeah. Second of all, I think what's essential to douchebaggery is a sense of I will I have no problems stabbing you in the back to to to sort of climb up over you. Yeah. And and it's this veneer of kindness and of service on the front that ends up being not not malicious, not like they're these people hate humanity but just that like they're not they're not really interested in me or what I'm doing or in their customers. They're interested in making their nut.

Why? Because so they could buy their kid gluten free crackers or so they can fund the lifestyle that they want to live. There's not these are fine things. I'm going I'm trying to get this same shit. Right?

Yeah. So it's like even even when you are a douchebag, you're not actually all that bad. You know, you're just selling a PDF about the most common e commerce thing. You know, you're just trying to buy gluten free crackers for your kid. Yeah.

But dude, I don't know for us, for creative types, for, designer types, for myself. I'm just so sensitive to that identity stuff. Mhmm. It's always been an insecurity that, it works against me. It works for me when I'm making the sales page and writing the copy and doing the thing that makes it feel cool and not lame.

It makes me feel desirable and not undesirable. But it works against me when I'm constantly judging my myself and second guessing every decision I'm making because and asking you, hey, if Merlin Mann saw this, would he think I was a douchebag? Oh, I don't know. You know, it's like, I gotta get I gotta give up on that. I gotta move on.

I gotta be my own man somehow. And that's just frankly, it's a hard it's a hard journey. It's a hard thing to try to do.

Yeah. Well, I think and maybe we'll just close with this. I I think, like, that's where having maybe starting small and starting now, that's where it comes in handy. Because now instead of you worrying about what the industry thinks or what the web thinks or what your heroes think. All you're thinking about is, well, what do these people who are on my mailing list or who have signed up to receive my product or what have you, what do they think?

Yeah. And, you know, and you might release like first product syndrome. Like, it's okay to release something and to charge people for it and then to for it to not be that good. Like, I think we need to release people and say, it's okay. Like, it Yeah.

You might release something and Who

meant release people? Did you have any Pentecostal background?

But but the idea of like just allowing them to do that and fail and get, you know, everyone asks for their money back. That's fine.

No. Totally. Totally. And and half of the freedom of that is just saying like, it a dollar. Yeah.

Make it $1. Because you could put you could shit on a plate and charge a dollar for it. You probably wouldn't feel that bad because it's a dollar. Exactly. You know what I mean?

Exactly. But now when you get to your stage and you got a 150 people that sign up for Fizzle and you kinda have that feeling like, am I a douchebag or am I am I an impostor or whatever. And then and it takes a little bit for me anyway because I I'm pretty self focused a lot of time. It takes quite a bit for me to get out of that mode and to focus on the other people. Yeah.

But when I do that and like let's say I created something that was focused on other people and I release it to them and then they come back and say, like honestly, that was really helpful. Yeah. Then all those kind of thoughts of, like, douchebaggery and all that stuff, they're gone because Totally. You know you've made a difference.

Because you get down to the smallness, the human the human on the other side of the screen. You know, you've you've made a small and meaningful you've been a small and meaningful help to someone.

Yeah.

You know, and that that you're exactly right. That when you come down to the human level and realize I wrote a post recently on Ice to the Brim called the third tier and it's about, you know, I could try to be Merlin Mann's friend. I could try to get these people to like me, but really I'm on the third tier. They're on the first tier. There's some cool people in the second tier too, but what I've learned is is if we go all in on the third tier on just the humans that are around us doing regular fucking life shit.

Right? Trying to they're in the same boat. They're trying to make interesting things. Some of them are further along than others. Some of them are more talented than others.

But just like, wow. Like, this is this is we're all in this together. We're all lonely people who are looking for connection at the end of the world. Know, like this is this is it and we can go all in on one another or I could spend the next two hours hanging around the outskirts of a crowd that's gathered around John Gruber. You know?

Exactly. That's great, Chase. Let's leave it there. You folks can follow Chase on Twitter. He's chase underscore reeves.

He's the guy holding the pineapple. You can also find him on ice to the brim. That's right. You've got it. And fizzle.co.

And is that where your podcast is as well?

Yeah. So or or you can go to fizzleshow.co. That is the podcast.

Right on. And definitely at reply@chaseunderscoreReeves, and thank him for being on the show. You can follow me on Twitter at m I Justin, and we will see you all next week. Thanks. Thanks.

Thanks so much for listening. Please go out and check out our sponsors, Sprintly, www.sprint.ly, and Fusion Charts, fusioncharts.com. Come back next week where I'm going to be talking to Ruben Gomez of BidSketch. Ruben is super smart and has a lot of really practical application stuff that you can use when you're starting your product business. I call him the next Rob Walling.

You're gonna really like it. I'll see you next week.