John Nunemaker (00:01)
Hello, hello, this is John and you are listening to Standing in the Fire. Kris is laughing very hard right now. He was not ready for that hello, hello. And this is a podcast about real talk for founders in the heat of SaaS growth. We're the owners, John, Kris and Garrett of fireside.fm, a podcast hosting platform. You should use it. And today we're gonna talk about prioritization among other things. And so I'm gonna start with Garrett because he's been feeling it a lot.

Garrett Dimon (00:28)
yeah. So basically for me, it's been a matter of juggling and feeling like, should I be working on fireside? Should we be working on flipper? Okay. I'm working on this. Should I be doing, dependency upgrades like rails, upgrades to get rails caught up and Ruby caught up because there's obviously performance benefits, security benefits, all this stuff. but then too, you know, having, cause right now it's two weeks of kind of consulting on box out.

to help more pay the bills and then two weeks. And so it's basically like two weeks a month across two products, one of which needs a lot of updates, just, you know, cause obviously Dan was caught up in so much and a lot of that's just behind. And so then we want to work on features thankfully it's been really nice having a team because then Kris's brain can stay in marketing mode and thinking about that, which I feel like is a much more like.

John Nunemaker (00:56)
Mm-hmm.

Garrett Dimon (01:22)
You kind of have to be more open-minded, exploratory, whereas in development you need to like zero in focus, make it work and that kind of thing. whereas all the marketing, feel like is much more, and not in a negative way, but it's more guess and check. have to like, just be open-minded and try a bunch of things and figure out what works, for the audience, the product, et cetera. and so that's nice. And I haven't had to

change my mindset at least when I'm switching products. then too, you know, was having heck the last month has been almost nothing but rails upgrades from getting fireside from five to six, getting, like even flippers on seven one and he's to get to seven two and possibly eight and then, box out was seven one and needs to get to seven two as well. and so I'm like,

switching between all three apps and doing Rails upgrades, forgetting which version of Rails I'm working on and which specific app and that kind of thing. And then there's just a whole itch of like, I wanna like build features too. And so it just feels like this constant, where do you focus? What's the biggest priority? But then also there's a whole, I feel like motivational aspect where...

to a degree doing Rails upgrades for a month straight on across three different apps is kind of soul sucking and not energizing. And there's something to be said for the type of makes you, and like I want to do it because we need to, but at the same time it's like, I want to ship some stuff that customers see. So customers, know, cause like there's definitely a perception in terms of like how fast are things shipping, how fast are they updating and improving the lives of customers.

John Nunemaker (02:42)
Hahaha

Garrett Dimon (03:00)
As a customer, can feel when things start to stagnate, you're like, what's going on? It's like, I've never like been cranking on more fronts in my life, but at the same time, so little of it's customer facing. It's like, okay, well, what can we do that's customer facing? It's like, hey, there's this feature that we've, we just finished this up and ship it. There's something. and there's just the whole aspect of knowing now that we're running two apps. one of which has, you know,

Kris (03:17)
Wha- Wha-

Garrett Dimon (03:26)
client-side is the wrong word, but gems that people have to install as opposed to just using a CRUD interface of some sort. And then Fireside itself has a lot of infrastructure. Thankfully, you've been able to work on that because otherwise, we've been bouncing between Lord knows what. And so just all of that mixed together, the best analogy just feels like a ping pong ball where I'm just back and forth, back and forth. And it's all great and I've never been more fired up, but...

I want to ship some features, like ship customer facing exciting things for them that make their lives better. And obviously on Flipper, the pricing is out the door now, but that took longer. And I think mostly because of the whole two weeks on. And so that, and then we've got the temporary versus permanent flag, which is shipped now. So like that was like, and it was probably spent a couple of days, but it was just a nice breather.

to like step back from Rails upgrades, but then it's constantly looming. And so to me, that's biggest thing is like balancing all of this and prioritizing and choosing what to work on every day.

John Nunemaker (04:24)
What were you gonna say, Kris?

Kris (04:26)
I have two thoughts. One, when you were talking about the marketing, think it's interesting. There's different challenges because you can get into, I think a similar mindset of analysis paralysis of like, where do I start and where do I focus time? Because there's so many things I could be doing. But I agree, like it's beneficial not to have to do the mind switch. And I think with this, that's some of what I'm trying to both think through and learn.

through some just like reading about it's like where if we were going to focus on for like, you know, the next 30 days, one or two channels, you know, what should that be? And let's versus doing little tidbits everywhere and nothing really moves the needle. You know, what are one or two things that going day after day on those two? Let's see if that moves it. And my personality is a little bit of a paralysis analysis. So getting over that is just a personal challenge sometimes.

Garrett Dimon (05:20)
And I feel like it probably doesn't help that John and I have been so heads down. I feel like we're almost blocking you on some of the things that, and not intentionally, it's just trying to, again, juggle all that. And so then it's like, well, crap. I mean, it's almost this, yes, we're not in marketing mode, but we need to find time separately from like upgrading all of this stuff and like, okay, Kris, what do you need so we can, you know, help you keep moving forward as opposed to, cause we can keep doing upgrades and all that nonstop.

And John's done a ton that obviously have improved performance and simplifying our process and all that. So we're getting closer and closer, but at the same time, it's going to, it sucks if we're holding you back because we're so swamped with upgrades or what have you.

Kris (06:05)
Well, and I wonder if there's like a, as we go through this, planning and, you know, working together, you know, especially now when you're spending so much time on upgrades, do we say, okay, Garrett or John an hour or not maybe an hour and half, you know, for this week, knock out whatever, you know, updates on the marketing or copy side you can, and then cut it off, but at least just to segment a little bit of it. and, again, whatever gets done, gets done, whatever doesn't get punted. but I'm wondering if that could be helpful.

just to get like little incremental things out. And I was even thinking as you talking about the features, know, do we brainstorm like, hey, like what is one that we think is, you know, low effort, but high impact or medium impact that you guys can do? Just so that A gives me some content to send out, but also something that people can see. I don't know. And I don't have at the top of head what that might be, but with that specific feature might be, but that's maybe what we need to do just to keep some little things going.

where every month we can show people something that's beneficial.

John Nunemaker (07:05)
Yeah, I have a thought on that,

actually. Yeah, because like I've kind of been doing this. I don't think I like said that I was doing this or that I I didn't ask for permission or anything, but I've been like an hour or two a week. I've just been like changing links, removing, you know, cruft So for the listeners, Kris has like a whole bunch of marketing issues opened up that are basically rewrite the contact page, rewrite the FAQs there's a whole bunch of things like that where the content is basically there. It's just like now it's on, you know,

Kris (07:11)
Mmm.

John Nunemaker (07:29)
Garrett or myself to actually go in and like integrate that stuff So I've been kind of slowly doing that like we're hoping to change the news link, you know to Ghost I might have even done that. I'm maybe I forgot we'll see But yeah, there's stuff like that that like has been been coming in. One thought I had for like feature stuff that would be really easy to do is like Bluesky has gotten very popular as a social network in the last let's say three weeks or so

And we had one request for that recently from a customer who was like, hey, I'd like to be able to put in my bluesky socials and have that show up on the website And I'm like, well, that's a really easy that's basically add a column to the database and then add a couple of, you know, spots and get an icon. And it just works for everybody. Again, it's not high value from the standpoint of like, everybody's like, my gosh, this is a blocker for me. I don't have my bluesky handle

automatically everywhere. But that was that was one idea I had. It's like a very little one that I could hop in and do something on. So I've been thinking about maybe doing that. I've also thought about we have the looks like the Twitter thing. Twitter changed their API. And so they have like a V2 API and they're all their one their V1 stuff got shut down. I mean, years ago. And so that's one thing that like I think people are still actively using. And I think some of

don't even know that it's currently broken. And I'm like, at a minimum, we need to be like, okay, this doesn't work. Let's comment it out and hide it until it does work. Or we should just like fix it quick. And I mean, I've written, you know, V2 stuff for Boxout, one of my other companies, and it's all about social media and stuff like that. So I've definitely done those kinds of things. I know how to do it. But yeah, it is this balance. for me, like, I think how I approach it is I try to say,

Okay. How much time do I want to spend on each of these types of activities? So I've broken them down into admin, which is just like, you know, general emails. It's, boring things and stuff like that. infra, which is like, you know, things that simplify or improve the infrastructure on fireside or flipper And then code, which is like where I get my joy. So it's like, I'm in there, I'm writing, you know, things and actually creating stuff. You could, you could call it product, whatever.

I have meeting, podcast, and sales. So right now I'm on podcast, so.

Kris (09:36)
Do you track your time with that, like little bucket so you can have an idea at end of the week how much? Interesting.

John Nunemaker (09:42)
Yes,

I do. And I have never I hated tracking time. So like a long time ago, I yes, it is. And I don't bill anybody. I'm basically just I look at it as I'm billing myself. And that's really the most important person that I could bill. So I should make sure that I actually do this. So I started using this app called Toggle, T-O-G-G-L, no E on the end because they're too cool for that. And Toggle basically, it's really simple. They have Mac, IOS, all those things. And they allow you to track your time. So I just set up, you know,

Kris (09:46)
I know, it's the worst.

John Nunemaker (10:11)
projects in there that would be like Boxout, Fireside Flipper, South Bend Watch, et cetera, things like that, Speaker Deck. And then I have tags, which are like activities that I'm doing. So admin, code, infra, marketing, meeting, podcasts, sales, support. And it's not perfect because if I do, if I'm working on code and I flip over and do a support request, it takes five minutes, I don't market as, I don't stop and then start.

It's all kind of the same. It's not worth switching for that. But for the other stuff I do. And it's really useful because I mean, for me, it's like I again, I have three companies. We've been throwing out Flipper a lot for people who don't know Flipper is another part. So very good software is the parent company. Fireside is one of the apps. And then Flipper is the other one. We're merging that in before the end of the year. We're recording in middle of December right now. So because we're merging that in, I have admin for merging it.

I have had admin for like merging, you know, fireside into very good, transferring it from Dan, you know, there's code that's regular, there's, you know, marketing, there's

Garrett Dimon (11:09)
with technical.

That's not just technical stuff. That's a lot of like lawyer and tax and all that kind of stuff. When you

John Nunemaker (11:15)
Yes. Yep.

Accountant.

Yep. It's it's literally runs the gambit. I mean, some of it was Kris and I just figuring out how to get access to bill pay, like with the bank, you know, it's just simple things. So there's definitely like a lot of balance. So what I do, I guess, going back to the beginning is I have those like eight things. Sales and support just happen as they happen. And I just know they're important and I'll do those quick as I can. Podcast is going to be on a regular interval. But everything else like meetings are trying to keep under five hours in a week.

Ideally under like two or three hours, marketing is going to happen when it's going to happen for me because it's not my primary, but admin code and infra. I kind of try to split up of like, look, I'll do like five hours of admin and the rest needs to be split between code and infra. whatever's important that week. So we had database stuff last week. So that took up a lot of infra. It wasn't a whole lot of code, you know, and then we've had other weeks where it was a lot of code and not as much infra. So that's that's kind of how I look at it. I kind of

split things into buckets. I track the time so I know and then I kind of it sounds like overly formal process. It's really informal but it's been really helpful because now I know exactly what I spent my time on.

Garrett Dimon (12:25)
So this is almost a side note, but I'm going to forget if I don't mention it now. There's, they have like devices you could put on your desk, like a cube and you just spin it. like, you change whatever side is face up and then it automatically changes how it's tracking your time. So you can categorize it just by physically turning over a device on your desk. I had it once and I just, it didn't work for me because

of just the way I was working and stuff, but like as much as you're switching, then you're not going to a software interface. You just flip over and say like, okay, I'm going to admin work now. Okay, support. And then you just turn that and then it makes it a lot easier. So as you're tracking more time and now you're making me want to track my time more. I think the thing, like if you think about it, generally speaking, tracking time is

John Nunemaker (13:07)
Haha.

Garrett Dimon (13:12)
more about it's almost always consulting related and the only real direct, like if it's your business and you're tracking time, then there's less of a chasm to bridge. But like if you're doing consulting and you're just tracking time, it's just this tedious abstract concept that has no direct benefit to you. And it's hard to appreciate it, but when you're tracking time for yourself to understand things become use your time better, whatever, then there's less of a disconnect.

because you can see a direct correlation to the benefits of now I understand why I don't feel like I got anything done today because I did, but it was one of those things that doesn't feel like a checkbox task.

John Nunemaker (13:51)
Well, that was one of the problems I was having is I would constantly feel at the end of the day, like I was busy swamped the entire day and I got nothing done. And I was like, I definitely got things done. So why do I feel like I got nothing done? And I was like, well, if you don't reflect on what you did in any manner, then it feels like you did nothing or you at least didn't do the one thing that you really wanted to get done that day. And so that's what I think that's what's been the most useful while actually tracking my time is

within 20 % of the time that I actually want to track. again, I don't track everything and I'm just aware of that and I'm okay with it. But I know, you know, how much time I was spending on fireside and how much time I'm spending on flipper and how much time I'm spending on speaker deck. I know how much time I'm spending on every single thing that I work on. And so and that's really useful. And then I can look back at the end of the week, I just click report. And I'm like, did this week? do I feel like I was productive?

Garrett Dimon (14:24)
Yeah.

John Nunemaker (14:41)
Yes or no. And then also when I look at the hours, was I productive on the things that I wanted to be productive on? Did I spend too much time on admin stuff that I spent too much time on? I'll be able to look at like what I spent my time on and it will be predictive of my mood. And it's actually I feel like I've been a happier person. This is strange because I actually hadn't thought about this until we just now started talking about it. But I feel like the last

Kris (14:55)
is actually.

John Nunemaker (15:02)
four weeks or let's say maybe eight weeks since I've started tracking time, I've actually been happier. And I think part of it is because I'm noticing when I'm not spending time on the things that make me happy. And so I'm trying to spend more time on it, number one. And then number two, like I'm able to look back and say, even when I didn't spend time on the thing I wanted to, I can tell that I was still productive and which makes me feel good. And so I think for those two reasons, I've actually been a little bit happier about work, you know, over the last two months because of that.

Garrett Dimon (15:30)
Do you feel like by tracking your time to like, you end up spending a day and it was on productive things, but it wasn't things you were aiming to do that it helps clarify, reinforce, or just give you some peace of mind about what you work on the next day, because you're like, look, I got this stuff done. I haven't worked on this specific area in a week. It's okay for me to go spend some time there.

Kris (15:46)
.

John Nunemaker (15:52)
Yep. Yeah, it's because as long as you know how much time you want to spend on certain things, then I think it makes that really easy. I'm curious to like, Kris, for you, because you actually do probably track some time like you when you are consulting, do you do more like project based billing or block based? Or do you actually track I feel like you track hours on at least some of the stuff.

Kris (16:13)
Yeah, on some of the stuff, it's gotten to, I've definitely bought into the idea of value-based versus time-based because if you do it time, then you run out of time and that's as much, that's caps you at what you can build and what you can make. But when there's, it's a little bit more, when it's ad hoc stuff, then it's, you know, a little bit more time-based. But anything like.

project is like, okay, I know the value I'm creating. took me five, 10 years to figure out how to do it efficiently. So people are paying for that value. I think official time tracking, I think I've tried it once or twice and it's miserable. So I have like, I'm old, old school or inefficient, a word document that I, that I just go down and I, and when I've worked on something today, like I put in how many hours I did for that.

specific client or project. Luckily, I'm doing less and less of that client work, so that won't be an issue. But now I agree, I read a lot of business books and now tracking forever is not necessarily what they recommend, but doing it for two or three weeks so you can have that window and understand and reevaluate what's happening. I think that's probably a great exercise I'd need to do. just takes some discipline to get there.

Garrett Dimon (17:22)
My solution has been going even more old school and using pen and paper. I got these three months planners that like you set out a bunch of stuff in the beginning of like what in three months from now what I look back and see if I've accomplished but then you do it week by week and so I have like It's like a week

a full week and two across two pages and I'll every day, like as I'm doing things, fill in like the specific task I was working on and just add it. not tracking time, but so I can look back at the week and be like, I got that done, that done, that done, that done. Cause like these rails upgrades in particular, it's always interesting how it plays out, but it's such an amorphous, unpredictable thing. Cause you don't really know how much you're going to have to fix or upgrade.

John Nunemaker (18:01)
Mm-hmm.

Garrett Dimon (18:04)
Especially across different apps that have varying degrees of dependencies, which may be far enough behind on their own. And then you're kind of untangling that and you want to get them. So anyways, like even it's like, okay, well today I figured I got this upgraded or this upgraded or whatever it was and just recording the notes. And then the next week I start, I look back at the previous week and it's physically on paper and I could be like, okay, I did get stuff done. And that's been huge because it also is just visual. and this is too,

just generically one of those ADHD things where it's time blindness. And so I, I also added a clock on the wall, like directly in front of my desk so that I'm constantly aware And then, I got one of these time timers. And so like, all it does is you set it and you see it gradually disappear. So you can do Pomodoro and it's visually in front of you. It's not software based. that's helped me. So I'm just more visually and consciously aware.

John Nunemaker (18:40)
Haha

Mmm.

Garrett Dimon (18:58)
of where the time's going and you you see the red and it's like, okay. You know, and I've got usually the task written down, so I know what I'm working on. And so even if I get distracted, wife comes in and kids come home, whatever it is, I can easily be like, okay, this is what I'm working on and be back at it. so like little things like that have helped to a ton, just being more aware of time. even if not tracking it down to the second type of thing.

John Nunemaker (19:20)
Yeah, so what I'm hearing right now is prioritization A is hard because part of it is, you know, managing your time and all of us are doing multiple things. None of us are just like one thing. You know, I have Boxout and this, you know, Kris has his consulting and this and other things as well. Garrett, you know, is going between Boxout and between this. So all of us, you know, are splitting that and that's not, I don't think a normal thing. I think most people have like one job.

And that's probably 99 % of the world. So there's some amount that when you're an entrepreneur and you just make it work, however you have to make it work, and this is one way, is to split between things, but then prioritization becomes really hard. And then the other side of it as well is like what to build when you actually have time, which is really hard too. here's a ton of things to do, and I've got this amount of time.

I guess one way that I look at it, I'm curious what you guys do is I say, well, what can I actually, of anything on the list, can I get it done in that amount of time? Because if I can, even if it's not the most important, I'd rather have something done at the end than something not done. And then the other thing is sometimes it's like, how emergent is it? So if it's like super emergent, then I just try and get as much of it done as I can, whether I can get it all done or not. And then also it's, I would say maybe the third thing that factors in for me is like mood. And it's just like, what do I feel like doing?

because you're usually going to get more done if you're doing something you feel like. do you guys have any thoughts on those things from a prioritization standpoint or what what you do or how you work about it?

Garrett Dimon (20:43)
Yeah, I I think it's just a difficult multivariate equation, right? It's like important versus urgent versus mood versus available time block. And like there was a while where I was like actively trying to estimate time on like how long will this task take and not like detailed, but like order of magnitude. Is it like a five minute task, a 30 minute task, a day long task? And then when I'd have that small window, I just filter and say like, what can I knock out?

that didn't work great for me for who knows why, I don't know. but it, did make me think about it more. And I think it's just one of those things where it is, it's every time it's like, all right, important, urgent mood and available window of time today. Like, do I have a meeting coming up in an hour or whatever? And oddly enough, the thing that has helped me the most is one of those things that intuitively I

probably wanted to believe really bad, but until I started coaching basketball and gave myself like a hard 3:30 end time every day to get to practice or what have you, I didn't have a discipline to do it. But since now like practice and the team and all that, like that's somebody else relying on me. So like I have to stop.

John Nunemaker (21:45)
Mmm.

Garrett Dimon (21:55)
I don't know about y'all, for me, after four o'clock, I'm going to check email, plan the day tomorrow. And it's just really kind of drudgery work because my brain's so exhausted by then anyways. So in a way, that's helped me because it gives me that hard deadline, which then, and again, this is, it's kind of like procrastination, whatever. You've got that deadline that's immovable and that will make you act, or at least me.

now the downside is I don't know when I'm going to work out because I wake up now and immediately get in and just bang on the keyboard until practice and I get a lot done and I feel like I get a lot done. even though my day's technically shorter than it probably was, I feel like I've never been more productive, but now I'm afraid to like carve out time for anything else in that window because I have that line.

John Nunemaker (22:25)
Heh heh.

Yes.

Garrett Dimon (22:44)
I mean, that, goes back to the juggling. It's like, okay, I know I need to work out and move around and like that gives me more energy and makes me feel better. And, but it's, it's a lot more difficult, at least at basketball practice, I'm standing up and, know, occasionally getting involved in moving more. But that to me has been like my productivity hack is to give myself less time and then I just use it better.

John Nunemaker (22:56)
Mm-hmm.

Kris (23:05)
Yeah, there's a couple of things that you guys have been saying that spark. So one is I know my days are feel more productive when I plan the night before. So like when I create a checklist of like, here's what I accomplished tomorrow, even if it gets in disarray because something else comes up, it's always better. But my discipline to always do that is not always there to create it, but I know that that's a better thing. The other thing, Garrett, as you were talking,

John Nunemaker (23:15)
Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Kris (23:31)
that I've been trying to do, I would say often on the last few months is like boundaries and with people or with text messages or with emails. so like, just as an example, like last night for a project, like a bunch of texts were coming in like after seven o'clock and I was like, I need to shut down because I need to create that. this morning when I wake up, I'm more energized.

And so I just didn't, you know, acknowledge those or respond to it until the next day. because none of us can be going, you know, to 11 o'clock trying to manage that stuff. then there's never a break. and yeah, so there's, and, don't know, are you familiar with Jesse Itzler? he's, he, so he's been popping up on my Instagram a lot. And, one of the interesting things that he said that came up was.

John Nunemaker (24:05)
Yeah.

Kris (24:17)
You know, just because someone asks for your time doesn't mean you have to like give it to them. And I think, you know, that's been, I've been really thinking about the last couple of days of just how to, how to manage, you know, John, say you only want two to five hours, you know, a week of meetings and I need to get better at saying no, or not having that time. Cause if it's not a priority, is it not cause don't, you know, not that I don't want to meet with people or whatever, but it's not the priority of what the three things that I need to get done. so not always saying yes. So

It's a challenge. I think that's one of the things, you know, for the next few months I want to get better at it. I want to consciously practice those sorts of things.

Garrett Dimon (24:53)
Well, it's not always easy, like what I found and thankfully I'm in a lot fewer meetings these days, but I've found that scheduling meetings towards the end of the day when, cause like I can do a meeting, you know, when my brain's not like hitting on all cylinders, but like juggling the code or whatever, that's more difficult. scheduling meetings for the end of the day would

John Nunemaker (24:54)
Those are great points.

Garrett Dimon (25:17)
simultaneously kind of provide that hard stop and delineation while also making use of otherwise wouldn't be as useful for programming because by then my is depleted.

Kris (25:29)
Yeah, that's interesting. Cause like I would say I loathe meetings at the end of the day.

Garrett Dimon (25:34)
it's just gonna say, you know, end of day mornings, like just not in the middle of the day, basically, it works for you works for you. But you know, the meetings in the middle of the day, to me, you know, it just saps the whole day, because then you're cut off at an awkward window at the beginning of your work. And then you have to switch mindsets into talking to human beings as opposed to computers, and then get back into talking to computers.

Kris (25:37)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

John Nunemaker (25:58)
Yeah. Awesome. That was really good. I like the prioritization stuff. That's actually like, it's funny because when we talk about what we're going to talk about beforehand, it's extremely awkward and like doesn't go anywhere. But then I feel like once we actually start to talk, it's like, dang, we're smart. We know things like and it's yeah, it's borderline. You know, like we planned it and organized it.

Garrett Dimon (26:13)
experience.

And I feel like I learned this with Sifter, but didn't internalize it until like now, being a little older and wiser, is that as you're juggling all this stuff and it's like, I want to work on these upgrades because they benefit customers, even if they don't like directly see it or it's not, you know, an announcement worthy thing.

But two, feel like when you're building software products, SaaS in particular, what feels slow to us in terms of cranking out improvements, whether they be performance and invisible or really customer facing interface changes, the timeline horizon is a lot longer than we think it is. And a lot of the pressure is more self-imposed, like, I didn't get this done.

But like the reality is like, yes, do our customers or any customers of any product want improvements? They wanted things to be better. Yes, absolutely. Are any of them sitting up at night going, damn, I wish fireside did this or I wish flipper did that. Like, no, they're not. They're just like. You know, they want to be pleasantly surprised on an occasional basis, like, OK, my life's going to be easier because they did this. Whereas as the developers, it just all we see is the backlog being, you know,

two years long and it's like, man, our customers are going to hate us because it's going to take us two years to deliver all this stuff. the reality is that's not how they're operating. Everybody's got their own much more important things to care about. But that said, it's like, as long as you're slow and steady, it's going to improve. They're going to be happy. and that's the hardest part to accept. And that's kind of where like,

John Nunemaker (27:32)
Ha

Garrett Dimon (27:56)
having a hard end for my day has helped in that otherwise I just am working based on a backlog exists, I need to not stop. And this way it's less about the backlog and it's more like just put in a healthy amount of work. Because like with sifter and admittedly I was by myself, mostly pretty much doing it all that and like I would just go through cycles of burnout because I couldn't stop. And it wasn't because I like

John Nunemaker (28:05)
Yeah.

Hmm.

Garrett Dimon (28:22)
felt obligated to work. I was having fun doing it and I didn't want to stop and there was nothing stopping me. And so I would just get burnt out and then I'd have like a really crappy week or two and then I'd be energized again. Whereas now I feel like that hard stop every day. I'm just steadily and consistently energized and excited to work on it without facing that burnout. And to me that's been huge. And so it feels slow, but in reality we're

really cranking on all cylinders and they're gonna, you know, all the customers are gonna have these benefits. It's just gonna take, you know, everything's gonna take longer than we want it to because we can't snap our fingers. But it's helped to kind of accept that and just chip away at it instead of feeling I've got to get through this backlog. I've got to get through it because you're always going to have a backlog. Like, doesn't matter. But it's never going to go away. It's never going to get shorter. You know, and so to

John Nunemaker (29:11)
Yeah.

Garrett Dimon (29:17)
Like for the longest time, I tried to just not have one and just ignore it. And then whenever I finished something, it's like, what do I do now? But like important, but somewhat invisible, which is disappear, fall off. So like that didn't work. So now I keep a backlog, but I just ignore it until I need it. So, but anyways, so it was just slow is not as slow as it feels. I think is.

John Nunemaker (29:28)
Yeah.

Yep.

Yeah,

and that's a good, I think a good analogy to that would be like eating. Like if you pick like your favorite food and you just eat it and eat it and eat it and eat it, like it's not your favorite food anymore. So there is like, there's like, I think the best restaurants do this really well where they like you leave and you're, you're full, but you're not stuffed and you, you wish you had a little more on the plate. Like that's like, if you get, you know, if you go to Outback and you just get like everything on the plate.

And you leave and you're like, gosh, and you've got more in a box to go and you're like, I don't need to eat it out back for like a week or two or four weeks or a year, you know, but you go to like, like a place like locally, Rose Lily and you eat there and you leave and you can have like a five course, six course meal, but you're not full at the end. You're just like, I wish I had more of that one course. And I think that's kind of what you want as well from like a work standpoint and prioritization is like where you're, you're excited to come back the next day and

Garrett Dimon (30:15)
Yep.

Yes. Some excitement for tomorrow.

John Nunemaker (30:37)
and take a little bit of a break in the evenings and that kind of stuff.

Yeah. OK, let's wrap up. Talk about Kris, the topic that you brought up a little bit around. goals and things like that Everybody has different processes, but let's let's go through that before we wrap on this one.

Kris (30:55)
So I would say like one of the priorities I want to do, say, let's say for the first four to five months of the new year with fireside is adjusting our like community of members and our onboarding process to make it

more user friendly so that people get value much quicker. So they're not having to, you know, hunt and poke around to feel that first piece of value. And I think we can do that a number of different ways with just like documents and emails and even with words one-on-ones with customers. But I think, you know, creating that tribe and creating that loyal customer base is what I kind of want to prioritize for the beginning of next year. I don't know. What are you guys thinking about?

Garrett Dimon (31:34)
I mean, I would say overall, and it's, it's kind of a discreet goal, but it's also a collection of a bunch of other things is so like firesides infrastructure, there's a lot of moving parts, and we've been reducing that and simplifying it.

So to me, the thing is once our infrastructure is...

like simplified in a way that we can release quicker because like Flipper, it's fully set up because it's been dialed in from the beginning by John. And so now he's getting to all that stuff, but like setting up, you know, analytics and stuff so we can actually quantify our performance and simplifying deploys, like being able to iterate and ship faster and more confidently to me will then open the doors for

everything else on our wish list, especially as some of those features involve multiple moving parts or layers to it. And to me, that's the goal is like get it to where we can ship quickly, painlessly, frequently without worrying that we're going to break everything and then we can start improving very rapidly.

John Nunemaker (32:38)
Yeah, I would say my tactical one is like, DHH says a bunch lately, compressing the complexity, like, so just compressing down like the stack that makes fireside work so that it's easier. from a tactical standpoint, that's it from like a strategic standpoint, I think the thing that I want to figure out is like, what's the thing that we are going to do? my biggest goal, I think, for the first quarter of next year is like,

What do we want to do that's different than everybody else? And what are we missing that is table stakes that we need to have? So those are the two things like I'm starting to wrap my head around as we've had it for a couple months now. But I think long term, that's the stuff that strategically I really want to figure out in the next, at least, you know, some idea of like some first stuff we can do. We have a great, you know, list from customers and from, you know, potential customers and things like that.

And those are kind of obvious things, but like, are some niches we can serve? What are some functionality that other people aren't thinking about that we can think about? What's stuff that we can uniquely do that others can't? So those are the things that like, I would really like to spend some time on. I'll have to make sure I carve out some extra hashtag meeting time or like admin time for myself and also us as a group to go through those things. So I think tactically it's like compress the infrastructure and the app as a whole to make it.

easier to work on and faster to move things forward. then tactically, it's like, it's like, what, what are, what are we gonna do? Because I have lots of different ideas. But again, it's prioritization and figuring out what's first. And I think that'll be the fun thing to figure out.

Garrett Dimon (34:06)
And I hope like, don't think it was well, I know it was an explicit goal. And it's not directly related to fireside, but one of my things. No, no. But like, like I said, with Sifter I went through those burnout cycles. And so I really did want to come into this and say, like, okay, I'm juggling more different projects and tasks that I'm equal, like excited about all of them.

Kris (34:14)
So nothing to do with what we're talking about. I'm just kidding.

John Nunemaker (34:17)
hahahaha

Garrett Dimon (34:33)
and I'm doing the exact work I want to do. And in a way, it's harder to tap the brakes when I'm enjoying my work. And so a lot of it has been, I want to get better at tapping the brakes, not for the sake of like myself, but because, it's so far, it seems to be working. It just gives me that steady rhythm of work. And like this last Sunday, I mean, this is almost embarrassing, but like it was the first

weekend or well first week, weekend day and I don't know how long where I like, I truly did not touch my computer. I did not sit and like historically for me that was a struggle even if it was just like I'm to go do some stuff from like eight to 10am before the family's like really going and humming and but like it was a great day. I'm like, wow, okay. And then I'm just that much more ready to get started Monday. And so it's one of those things where

Kris (35:07)
Hmm.

Garrett Dimon (35:27)
And I think it was I mentioned it somewhere I was like, I should have been looking at rest as productivity all along. And I knew better. That doesn't mean I was good at it. And it's 10 times more difficult when you're really enjoying your work because you don't want to stop. It is fun. Like I would probably be hacking on rails. If I was independently wealthy and never had to worry about money again, I'd probably still be hacking on rails in my free time and building things just because that's what I want to do.

So it is related to fireside and flipper from the standpoint of like, want to like have those contributions be steady, consistent, ongoing and not burnout. And so that was another side goal for me that so far is doing well, even though I'm busier than I've ever been when I'm like between basketball coaching and this and juggling projects. And so, I don't that was just another goal that I feel like helps, but

I wouldn't have guessed how much it would help, even though I've read enough books to know that it is obvious you've got to rest and all that.

John Nunemaker (36:32)
So that's the summary, you have to stop to go. You gotta be cruel to be kind. No, was kidding.

Garrett Dimon (36:34)
Yes.

John Nunemaker (36:40)
cool. Is that the pod?

Kris (36:42)
That's it.

Garrett Dimon (36:43)
I guess so.

John Nunemaker (36:44)
That's it.