My guest today is Seth Coelen who is the founder of the product design company UX Cabin. In this episode, we discuss how Seth landed his first freelance client working at a laundromat, doing grunt work to hone your technical skills, pros & cons of being consultant vs full time employee, entertaining opportunities even if you aren't actively looking, art of salary negotiation, importance of an emergency fund for freelancers, designing your own digital products, launching paid vs free products, dealing with negative online feedback, making $37,700 from selling Bootsketch plugin, difficulty selling subscription services, power of timeboxing and much more! For show notes, guest bio, and more, please visit: www.designmba.show To learn how to launch your design side hustle, please visit my blog: www.blog.designmba.show Connect with me: https://twitter.com/jayneildalal www.linkedin.com/in/jayneil
Seth Coelen is the founder of the product design company UX Cabin. He is also the creator of Bootsketch, LayoutLab, and Pester. In between client work and projects he enjoys making design parody videos and tutorials on YouTube and Twitter. When he's not working he enjoys spending time with his wife, son, and daughter.
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Jayneil Dalal: Today's amazing guest is Seth Coelen who is a UX/UI designer, creator of Bootsketch, LayoutLab and Pester. In between client work and projects, he enjoys making design parody videos and tutorials on YouTube and Twitter. When he's not working, he enjoys spending time with his wife and son. To stay updated on what Seth is working on, go and check out his personal website. That's SethCoelen.com.
Seth, thank you so much, man, for coming on the show. Super excited to be chatting with you and learning from you.
Seth Coelen: Thank you. Thank you. It's a privilege to be here. Thank you for having me on.
Jayneil: So, what does the weather like on your side?
Seth: It's starting to get nice. I live in Cleveland, Ohio area. So, it's nice for about 19 days out of the year and we're coming into some of those nice days. No, I’m just kidding. Summer here in Ohio are really nice. Feels like we have winter for about six months, spring for about a week and then summer for a few months but no, it's good.
Jayneil: Yeah, I see that you're sitting in this nice kind of like sunroom that you got going on there. You've got the whole background and that's a really neat space.
Seth: Yeah, we have some trees around us which is nice. This is my happy place.
Jayneil: Love it. I am recording this interview right now with you out of Dallas, Texas. And it's hot and it's sunny outside, the perfect weather that I like to go running. And as you can see, I’m actually wearing, for those of you who are just listening into this, I’m actually wearing a beanie and my workout gear, literally ready to hit the trail as soon as after our interview with Seth. So, I’m super excited, man.
Seth: Awesome.
Jayneil: So, let's start with the cliché question. How did you get started in design? What set of events led you to think of a career in design?
Seth: That's a good question. When I was in school for Marketing and I took a few website design courses and these were just like “What is HTML?”, “What is CSS?”, just very foundational building block type things. I didn't know there was a distinction between website design, development, front-end development, back-end development. I just assumed it was just you were a website designer and you did all of those things. So, I thought it was interesting, cool and I actually worked at a laundromat at the time during school and I got to know some of the people who'd come in and drop off their clothes. And one guy, just based on me telling him that I’ve taken website design courses, and he was just asking me about my classes, he basically asked me to build a website for him and redo his website and he told me he would pay me a thousand dollars. And I didn't really know how to do it but I agreed, of course, to do it because that's like lottery.
Jayneil: That’s a lot of money.
Seth: Exactly. So, I was like “Yeah, I’ll do it. I’ll figure it out.” Worst case scenario is I can't figure it out. So, that kind of led me down a journey of tons of YouTube videos, tons of stack overflow and this is just basically to get a static HTML site out the door. And it was one of the most fulfilling things just to be able to get paid for that to know it's like “Oh, I created something.” I was able to use code and design and put it together. And then after that I was like “I need to do more of this.” So, I went and I printed out flyers and I went around to all of the different companies in my town and tried to like just pitch building them a website. It was funny. I didn't have any idea of what I was doing but I was going into places like H&R Block and I was like “You guys need a website? I’m a website designer.” And people are so nice. They're like “Oh, that's cute. We handle that in our New York offices” but I did manage to get like a handful of small businesses and a couple hundred dollars here and there for a website like really good opportunity for college type scenario where you're trying to make a few extra bucks and it's better than working in fast food or something.
Jayneil: And it's kind of funny because as soon as you mentioned that you’d go to H&R Block and you're saying that “Hey, do you need a website?” and they're like “That's cute.” So, I was sitting at Whole Foods with one of my friends. And I really had this urge that I want to help the elderly people. Maybe I was thinking of my grandma. So, we went to an elder care facility right next to the Whole Foods. So, we go in and I did not know this is one of the most expensive five star elderly facilities and they have a 24-hour chef on board and I go in and I’m like “Hey, we want to volunteer and stuff” and they're like “Yeah, we don't take volunteers here but there's a sister location you can go 10 blocks down the road.” And I’m like “Oh my God, so embarrassing.”
Seth: That is hilarious. Yeah, I look back on that with shame. You got to take your stripes and take the good with the bad.
Jayneil: So, after you do your first project with this guy that you're just winging it and you get paid a thousand dollars, did you stop working at the laundromat because that seems to be where you got your start, maybe it's a lucky spot?
Seth: It was interesting. It was a great job, best college job because I just had to basically man the desk. And anytime there wasn't people, I could work on homework. And for a while there, I could get on public Wi-Fi somewhere. So, I was able to get paid and then usually get in either a couple hours of homework or website design work while I was there. So, it was a great setup.
Jayneil: And do you ever visit that maybe years down the road now just to kind of remind you of the beginning days? Did you ever do it again?
Seth: I would if I still lived in that area. So, that was in Wisconsin and I’m a few states away but I would definitely go back there with fond memories if I drove past it.
Jayneil: Love it, man. There's just something magical I feel about going to the places where we've had our first gig or where we kind of get the start. So, it's very nostalgic for me. So, at that point, you were kind of getting all these contracts and you graduated from college. So, from that point, did you already just start working on this full time after college or did you get a job at an agency or trying to figure it out?
Seth: Yeah, after that, I got a job at an agency doing basically production front-end work. So, like entry level, front end, fixing CSS bugs, coding things for like HTML for IE7 and just kind of doing the grunt work that you're supposed to do in your first job. So, that was super good experience, just being able to hone your technical skills, be able to get experience either just getting agency experience working with clients, hard deadlines, juggling multiple projects, getting quicker at code, getting quicker at design and just kind of building up that technical skill set. So, worked there for over a year, went to another agency, moved more into the design UX aspect. And after that agency, then went to a corporation and was kind of like a consultant/contractor.
Jayneil: So, right there when you were going as a consultant, did you want to actually go in as a consultant or were you thinking about just going there as full-time?
Seth: That's interesting because one thing that I’ve always done is if someone reaches out and they're like “hey, I’m a recruiter. Are you interested in switching jobs or hearing about this opportunity?”, I was always very open to listening about opportunities like there very well might be something that would be better fit.
Jayneil: Even if you're not looking.
Seth: Even if you're not looking, exactly. And so, I would always have the conversation. And what I found is “Okay, if you want to be a consultant or if you want to go as a contractor, you can make a lot more money because you're not getting health insurance, you're not getting employee benefits, things like that.” And for me, that made a lot of sense because my wife was working, we had healthcare through her, I didn't really care about having paid vacation time off or things like that. So, just me talking to the recruiter helped inform me about just a different side of employment.
Jayneil: Now, when you would talk to the recruiter, would you kind of give a disclosure that “Hey, thanks for reaching out but I’m not actively looking” or do you just go in with open ears like “Yeah, tell me about it?”
Seth: I would usually be like “Yeah, I’m not looking to make a move but would love to hear about what you have. Maybe it would be a good fit, I don't know or maybe I know someone that it would be a good fit.” And what that kind of does, thinking long term, is there's probably some point in my life where I’m going to need someone's help either to find a job or whatever. So, just kind of building that goodwill among recruiters when you get a genuine request that looks like “Okay, they actually looked at my profile.”
Jayneil: They're not copy and paste.
Seth: Yeah, exactly. If they seem genuine, if they're local to me, whatever, if it seems like a remotely reasonable fit, then I’d be happy to have a 30-minute conversation. What's the worst that could happen? Because you never know what's going to happen down the road.
Jayneil: Absolutely. And were you always good at negotiation like the hourly rates and stuff or you just kind of figured it out as you went?
Seth: That's something I’ve definitely got better at over time. My first job, didn't push back, didn't have any counteroffer or anything like that. And as you grow and as you get more confidence, you find you have a little bit more leverage, you know your value a little bit more and what you're worth and if you ask for something, someone's not going to like say no and “Oh, by the way, since you asked for that, you're out of the running now.”
Jayneil: Cancelled.
Seth: Right. That's what you have in your mind. You're like “If I ask for a 5-dollar raise and they don't want to give it to me, they might just cancel me.” And as you get more comfortable, I think you can be a little bit more cavalier in your negotiations and maybe you want to give up some money so that you can work from home or so that you can take Fridays off or whatever. One thing I learned is that most things are negotiable if you're willing to have the conversation.
Jayneil: This is one of my favorite failures that I’ve had experience in life. So, my first job when I moved from India to Dallas was at Texas Instruments. And I went in just like you as a consultant because that was the fastest way they could bring me on board. And I remember very vividly the recruiter saying that “We'll give you 38 dollars an hour.” And I told my dad. I know my dad hasn't worked in tech but he does know a thing or two about street smart in business, he's like “You should ask for more.” I said “You're crazy. 38 dollars into” like that time like one dollar was 65 Rupees, the local currency in India. So, I was like “38. That's like 78,000 dollars a year into 60.” So, I kind of like came with this huge figure in my head of the local currency. So, what happened when I left Texas instruments, I asked the recruiter “Hey, I’m going to ask you a question. Please give me the correct answer or the honest answer.” I asked him “Could I have asked for more when I negotiated?” He's like “Hell yeah! Why didn't you. You could have gone up to 60 dollars an hour.” And at that moment, I was like “I put so much money on the table.”
Seth: That is amazing but, yeah, you have that opportunity. You don't want to lose that. You don't want to like jeopardize that. It's such a great opportunity at that point in life but you hate knowing what you leave on the table.
Jayneil: So, right now, if I was a recruiter and I was trying to hire you, if you were to do a mock hiring, if I asked you “So, Seth, what are your salary expectations hourly rate?”, how would you go about that question now?
Seth: That's a great question. So, the name of the game in negotiation is you always want the other person to say their number first, if you can. It's really hard. It gets really uncomfortable, especially if you don't have the leverage but I would try to ask the question preemptively first and I would say “So, this position, five years’ experience. These are the requirements. What type of price range are you looking for this type of consultant?” If they're good, they will push back on that and they'll say “Oh, well, we really want to figure out what your expectations are?” And if you're working with a recruiter, one thing you can say is “I totally get it. You guys need to make a little bit off of it. So, whatever margins you guys need to make, just let me know what your margins are and I’ll be happy to work with you on whatever your margins need to make” because that kind of takes the walls down and it's saying like “I want to give you what you want. You just need to tell me what you want.” And so, if recruiters are like “Oh, shoot. Well, we're making 200 dollars an hour off this guy. We can't tell him that. We'll just tell him what we're willing to pay him, whether it's 50, 60, 70 dollars an hour.” If they're only making 10 dollars off of you, they might say “Hey, listen. Tight contract. We're making 50 dollars. The best we can pay you is 40. Absolutely best.” And you're like “Okay, whatever.” Now we're transparent, we know but that's my strategy for trying to figure out the threshold of what you can get.
Jayneil: Yeah, I’ve kind of found very few recruiters are willing, I call the acid test, when they're really willing to tell me. If I ask them “What are you charging the client for my services?”, very few of them will probably be like “Yeah, we're charging this.” I’m like “Charge 200 but let me know so that I can mark it up too a little bit.”
Seth: Right. It's all how you position it. Even the way I do it like, yeah, success rate's fairly low. So, then I just go in with a big number and let them bring me down like I’d rather go high and then be like “Oh, no, that's way too high. Most we can do is this.” And then you're like “Okay.” If you don't get the number, go in high and see what they say.
Jayneil: Got it. And when you're doing the consulting gig, I’ve worked with a lot of consultants at big companies, one of the things I’ve noticed is whenever there's layoffs at big corporations, usually the contractors are the first ones that they lay off. So, has that bothered you going as a consultant, the job security, versus full-time employee?
Seth: Not really because you're kind of conditioned as a consultant to know you don't get the benefits, the niceties that the employees get. So, at least where I was at, I didn't get access to the gym, I didn't get a prorated lunch or anything like that. So, I’m like “Yeah, I know I’m getting booted if things need to go” but I also knew I was making more money or at least in my head I thought I was making more money than the actual employees there. So, I’m like “This is cool. I’m just going to put a little bit away, plan for it, know if I get kicked off, then I have a growing reservoir of money I can dip into, whether that's one month, two months, three months that I can go look for my next consulting gig.” So, it's just a mindset. You put that mindset on and you're like “Okay, I’m aware of this. I’m planning for it.”
Jayneil: So, you essentially have an emergency fund whenever you're working on these consultant gigs just so that if there's a layoff, you're like “You know what, I’ve got two to three months to kind of look for the next gig.”
Seth: Totally. I like to plan it out. I’m like “Okay, if I think this project's going to go for six months, let's see where would I be at the end of this six months. Oh, okay, I’d be sitting really good if I make it to six months. Okay, what happens if I make it just three months or two months? How much runway will that give me if everything goes wrong and they boot me after that?” And that lets you be confident and you don't have to just be a yes man. You can say what you think and you can know that you can do the best job on the project that you think without having to just kind of like brown nose everyone while you're there because you're trying to whatever.
Jayneil: Oh my God. I have been accused of being a brown-noser a lot. My colleagues tell me that. I’m just laughing when you said that. This is like a tangent. So, I knew that she had published a book. So, we had a new Vice President of design come in, and if she's listening, she's going to be so mad. So, everybody was scrambling to try to make an impression because jobs are at stake and there's layoffs going on. So, what I did is I noticed that she's an author. So, I bought her book and I read it but what I did is, when she came the first day on the job, I went to her and said “Can you sign a copy of this book for me?” and she looked at it and she's like “Oh my God! That's my book.” And my colleagues are like “There it goes Jayneil, the brown-noser.”
Seth: That's smart though. I think that's just really smart. I’m more thinking of if someone says like “Oh, we can't design this this way” or whatever reason, you can kind of put up a fight like “Hey, this is actually best for the project” or “Hey, you're just being weird about it” but I think what you're talking about is just strategic positioning.
Jayneil: Although, looking back, I wish I would have done it in private because you don't want to piss off other people too. So, that's the lesson that I learned like maybe do it after 5 p.m. when it's just only you and her so you can just give this book to her. You were working with all these projects. You were working as a consultant. How did that itch come about to you like “Hey, I want to now launch my own products in the market? I want to have something of my own?” How did that come about?
Seth: Since I started working, I have been fascinated with the idea of reoccurring money like making money when you sleep is just like the most tantalizing thing I could think of. So, I’ve always been thinking of like “Oh, maybe I’ll sell themes on Themeforest” or “Maybe I’ll do this or that” or whatever. And that kind of led me to buy probably 20 different domain names over the years, think of all these different ideas and I just came to the point where it's like I could never flesh out any idea, I could never finish a web app or a product or anything like that and it was just so dang hard to put all this time and effort into all these side projects and not ever have anything come of it. So, that's kind of how I came to Bootsketch, the first product I launched and it's basically a one-for-one design replica of a bootstrap in the program Sketch. And really, it was just an exercise for me to be able to actually finish something like I want to just do something and see what happens. And that was kind of the initial urge of “This is something I can do. And I’m going to time box myself, I’m going to force myself to do that and I’m going to launch that.”
Jayneil: And when you thought of launching Bootsketch, was monetization already built in from day one like you were going to sell this product or was it “I’m going to just do this project and see where that goes?”
Seth: I think, from the beginning I wanted to just see if I could make any money. I wanted to see is this something realistic that can make money. I see a ton of free design frameworks and a handful of paid design framework and files and there are so many resources out there. Is it even feasible to think that someone would pay 5 dollars for this or 10 dollars for this? And I think, considering the two options of should I do it for free or should I do it for paid and think like if you do it for free, you're getting exposure and getting name recognition and getting a voice in the community and then if you do it paid, it’s the monetary side, you want to be able to get a return financially on that. So, that's always something I’m like “I wonder what would have happened if I launched that for free? Would I have just more Twitter followers or would I have an email list that I could sell the next thing to?” It's always an interesting thing, I think.
Jayneil: And then if you had sold it for free, then you would have wondered “What would have happened if I had made it paid?”
Seth: Exactly.
Jayneil: Tell us about the launch. What happened? You finished the whole file. It's good to go. And you just announced it on Twitter or how did you launch the product?
Seth: So, I first put it on Designer News and I tried to make a really thought out post on Designer News. I didn't link to my website. I just said “Hey, this is what I’m thinking. I think this could be useful.” I put a bunch of gifs in the post of like how the files work and I said “Hey, just give me feedback on this.” And for Designer News, I don't know if you're familiar with it, but it's kind of like one of the worst parts of the internet, if you can believe that. People are just mean on there. People are super opinionated. People are mean. People will just like say the meanest things on there because it's not tied to any … I guess, it's probably like Reddit or YouTube comments or whatever. So, I’m like “This is going to get destroyed. This is just going to get pummeled” but it actually had, I would say, a moderate amount of like “Hey, this is cool. Nice. Good stuff,” whatever. And I think when I put it on there, I was like “Hey, I’m trying to sell it for 30 but for you guys, if you want it for 10, I’ll do it for 10.” And that sold a bunch. I think I probably sold something like 20 copies and I was like “This is way more money than I thought I’d ever make on this.”
Jayneil: So, you're saying that Designer News people say a lot of mean things. How does that feel getting your baby or your this thing you worked on for so long just getting butchered like that in the open?
Seth: So, it's definitely one of those things where it's like “Ah, I feel like people are going to just trash on this” whatever but to be fair, there are some good things that are shared on there, there's some good feedback and some good discussions. So, it's not like a complete loss. It's just sometimes they can pile on. So, I posted it on there and saw some of the feedback come in and people were like “Oh hey, this is cool. This is really well thought out version of this tool.” And the cool thing was, the best thing was that Mark Otto, the creator of Bootstrap, actually commented on it and he was like “This is the best design resource for bootstrap that there is.” And I was like “What!”
Jayneil: That when you know like boom!
Seth: Yes, exactly. So, that was big just to see all the work that you've done and see someone who's really big in the game of bootstrap like the man say that. So, that was awesome and I’m like “Okay, there might be something here.” And then Sketch picked it up in their newsletter and then it did well on Product Hunt. And from there, it's been a fun product that I’ve been able to update every few months as new changes come out.
Jayneil: I’ve never launched a product on Product Hunt. So, how does that process work? Can you just post your product there or do you need somebody to post it for you?
Seth: So, if you can get a popular product hunter to post it for you, it's going to alert all of their followers that they they've hunted something. You can do it on your own. I’m not sure if there's like a waiting period or you have to have like a validated account but you certainly can post things. I’m trying to think. Because I’ve had a Product Hunt account for a lot while but I didn't post anything for a while but I have posted other products before. I mean, if you can get a popular person to do it for you, that's the way to go.
Jayneil: So, I can get somebody popular to potentially list my podcast and our interview in there too.
Seth: I don't know podcasts go on there but potentially, yeah.
Jayneil: And did you also find somebody really popular to do a post for you?
Seth: I didn't. I was actually going to post it myself but then I woke up one Sunday morning and I saw it had been hunted and I was really upset because I was going to make a video and I was going to curate the post super nice and then I was like “Oh no, I have to hurry up and do all these things.” And then I just mentioned Product Hunt on twitter and they're like “Yeah, we'll schedule it for tomorrow” and I was like “Oh, good” because that's actually like a funny issue is like sometimes people's products get hunted before they're ready to be hunted.
Jayneil: And you launched this in 2017, if I’m not mistaken.
Seth: Yeah, end of the year 2017.
Jayneil: From that point to now, if you're comfortable, would you mind sharing how many downloads you've done and maybe how much revenue can something like this bring in if done well?
Seth: Yeah, absolutely. So, since the beginning of me launching that, I was like “Oh, cool.” It made like a thousand dollars like 1500 dollars surrounding the launch. I was like “This is awesome. This is way better than I thought it would be.” And I’m like “I wonder when it's just going to taper off or when it's going to be done.” And the crazy thing is that it has basically sold a consistent amount every single month for the last few years. So, I’m pulling up my statistics here. And it’s made around a thousand dollars a month for the last few years.
Jayneil: Wow! Oh my God! So, it would be fair to say three years and if it's making 12 months a year, so like 36 months, so would it be fair to say that from the point you launched till now, it probably brought in about 30,000 dollars, give or take, in revenue for that?
Seth: Yeah. So, over the course of December 2017 to today, I have made 37,700 dollars on Gumroad.
Jayneil: Holy cow! Oh my God! I mean, it's insane. If you think about it like when we think about selling products, it's going to be this really big thing, but you just went in on a niche like a really specific, as you were talking about themes and templates. Wow!
Seth: Totally. When I was starting off, I was like if “I make 500 dollars off of this, this would be a win.” And that's the thing. It's like building a product for a long time, doing a resource, whatever it is, if it's a blog post, if it's a resource that you can sell, if it's a SaaS product, it's all a long play. You're not going to see money when you're starting it but the return is so much more than trading your time for money, doing consulting or doing hourly work.
Jayneil: Wow, man! And then since launching this product, you went on to launch multiple other products. You were talking about LayoutLab. So, what was the motivation behind that when you thought about doing LayoutLab? And what is it in your own words too?
Seth: So, LayoutLab is a landing page building tool that aims to give you just the right amount of flexibility with the right amount of guardrails to help you build a really nice landing page. So, it's like, on one end of the spectrum there's templates that you can buy and you kind of have to fit your content into the templates and it's kind of fairly rigid and you do use this layout and on the other side, there's web tool builders out there that you can customize anything, you can change it, you can make it look however you want and those often come with a large learning curve. And so, with LayoutLab, I was trying to hit the perfect balance of the middle where it's like you can customize this a lot but there's not really any learning curve.
Jayneil: I did use it. And you're right, it was very straightforward and simple, man, just trying to use it.
Seth: That's great to hear. So, LayoutLab was a super fun project to build and work on. It is one of those things where it's kind of like the long play. We're thinking about what we're going to add to it next, how we're going to make it more useful. And it's hard because this is like a subscription. It's a whole different ball game than like a one-time pay. And it is really hard to sell subscription services.
Jayneil: Why do you say that?
Seth: I think people are, and this might just be a product issue, but it is very hard, for me, personally and I think for other people, to say like “Oh, this is something where I have to pay a monthly thing to use it or a yearly thing to use it. I’ve got a ton of subscriptions anyway. I just either want to use a free tool or I want to be able to pay for it and then always have that version of that free tool.” So, it's been tougher to see that monetary success on the LayoutLab side of things versus Bootsketch.
Jayneil: I have the same mindset too when I’m buying products. For example, I use Auphonic to improve the audio quality for the podcast and it's a one-time, I think, 90-dollar fee. So, I love that model because I’m like “Man, I pay for Netflix, I play for Amazon Prime and all these things and another one.” So, has that made you pivot from a SaaS model like a monthly pricing to something like “Let me just do a one-time flat fee for LayoutLab?”
Seth: Definitely thinking about that because myself, unless it's a bigger service or something I know I’m going to use every day, it is hard to justify like a monthly cost for something or a yearly cost. So, I think, in the future we're going to offer something like that. LayoutLab was something that me and my friend built in between some of our client work and just to keep having work to do. And thankfully, we have a lot of work right now. So, it's like we have all these things we want to build into it. We just have to find the time in between client work to get it in.
Jayneil: I don't know how you manage this, man. I think you're married, if I’m not mistaken.
Seth: Yes.
Jayneil: And you're juggling all these things and somehow you found time to also launch a new app which is Pester. So, what is Pester and how did the idea come about?
Seth: Pester is an app that aims to help get your whole family on the same page for your work status. So, oftentimes, my wife, she doesn't know if I’m on a big important client call with the CEO or if I’m just having a call with a teammate or if I’m just on Twitter. And Pester is a really simple app where I can go in and I can set my status of either green, yellow or red. And that just allows her to know “Okay, hey, I can interrupt Seth if I need to if it's something worthwhile” or “Hey, we need to be sure to keep the little guy out of the room or I can't go knock on his door for something.” So, this was solely built just because it was like something I needed and then “Oh, look what happens. COVID comes around and everyone's working from home.” So, we're really excited here to officially launch it here in the next week or so.
Jayneil: I did use it. It's very simplistic. And I also noticed, given that you're a very shrewd businessman in terms of thinking about the long-term play and the monetization strategy, there was no monetization model as of now when I used the app, which is today is the May 29th. So, I’m wondering what are your thoughts on that.
Seth: Yes. So, I have to give a shout out to my buddy Fisher who did all the heavy lifting on this. I did maybe 20 hours of design on this and my friend Fisher and another developer Hernan that we brought in did the heavy lifting on this. So, all props to them for getting it pushed out and live but as far as the monetization method goes, I have this long-term plan of “Okay, I think there needs to be this free version. I think this is useful and it can be good and it can be free but I think the monetization method is in the integrations.” So, in the not too far off future, I want this to be able to integrate with my calendar or computer to some degree. So, this should set my status automatically and maybe it knows when my webcam is active, that's always a red so no one comes in or maybe it knows, based on my calendar, what my status should be. And the ultimate play on long-term play is to hook this up with a smart light bulb so that you can put this smart light bulb somewhere in your house where your family can see it, maybe it's outside the door, maybe it's in the living room and that light bulb is going to change to the color of your status so that they can know if they can interrupt you or not.
Jayneil: I love that. And maybe it can also have a mood function in there like you're having a bad meeting with a client, it looks all red like “Seth is so mad. Don't go near him.”
Seth: Exactly, exactly.
Jayneil: Oh boy, I wish to have that. So, how do you manage this man? You're running all these products. Some of them are like an app model. You're experimenting different, different models there. Then you're also running your own consultancy with your own developers and taking freelance projects. So, how do you manage all this, launching products and consulting work?
Seth: Honestly, what I had to do with Bootsketch is I had the idea for months and months and months. I’m one of the people who like to be all in on something and jump from things to different things, different projects to different projects but with Bootsketch, what I really had to do is like “Okay, I just need to work on this for 45 minutes a day or a half hour a day, do one thing on it” and kind of going back to the long-term play is like “I know I could have a very full day of client meetings but I need to carve out 30 minutes, 45 minutes where I can just push this forward just a little bit.” And just having that discipline to be able to push just a little bit, make it 1% better over the course of this next month, is really the only possible way I could launch anything. I don't have 4, 8, 12 days where I can just be like “Oh, I’m just going to dedicate this to it.” Just time box it. Give yourself, say like, “Hey, at night, I’m going to work from 9 p.m. to 10 p.m.” or “This is going to be the first thing I’m going to do in the morning because I’m super excited about it” and just being able to reserve that time for your creative product or your next thing that you want to build.
Jayneil: So, how long was that journey for you for Bootsketch like getting like time here and there, time boxing it? Was it few months, couple of weeks?
Seth: For the first launch, it was probably about a month of work on an off, not a month of actual work but probably the span of a month once I started to do little pieces of it. Once you start to get a little momentum, it's like “Okay, I’ve built all these things.” Yeah, you start rolling.
Jayneil: Like an avalanche [inaudible].
Seth: Exactly, exactly. It's just kind of like the ceremony of dedicating that time to it is going to be what propels you to do it because at the end of the day, what do people want to do? We want to hang out with our family, we want to watch Netflix, we want to chill. And that's necessary. You should do that but if you can get that momentum of “Okay, I’m almost here with this. I’m almost there,” then you can be like “Okay, I know how much I need to do for this. I’m going to either plan this before my day or after my day” and that just gets you really excited about watching it.
Jayneil: Wow, man! I’m just completely blown away. It's like you've got all these things going on but your tendency to focus on the long term, you're finding these pockets of time, maybe on Fridays you get three hours free, so you're time boxing the three hours to work on a new product instead of saying that “Oh, I’m just going to stop and just work on this continuously.”
Seth: Yeah. I don't know if you're familiar with that study that was done with kids who were given one marshmallow where they were offered if they waited, they could have two marshmallows. And the study goes like they followed these kids throughout their lives and the kids who decided to wait and not take the marshmallow but get two after 10 minutes ended up having a way better life in all aspects, whether it be like financial, education, relationship wise, which is crazy. I don't know how much correlation or causation there is there but I think about that a lot and I’m like “Am I prioritizing the short term over the long term?” And I always am trying to remind myself to play the long-term game. And my nature, I think it's like “Oh, I want to do this thing. It's a billable immediate client thing where I can send an invoice.” I always try to remind myself like “Do the long play. Go for the home run even if it takes six months or a year. Your older self will thank you.”
Jayneil: So, you are the kid that would wait and get the two marshmallows.
Seth: I don't think naturally. I think it's hard. It's discipline because it's like you could have a sizable project, you could have a 10,000-dollar project that you might have to say no to because you want to work on your own product. That sounds crazy. Why would anyone do that? But if you build up enough of those products, if you take enough swings, you can make a calculated risk to hit a home run.
Jayneil: It's almost like you're applying the venture capital mindset but to your own career, which is really unique.
Seth: Yes.
Jayneil: Oh my God. That's just a mind-blowing way to look at it. You're thinking of your career in terms of bets like these are long-term bets. They may pay off, they may not pay off but if one of them does pay off like Bootsketch and you get like a couple of them under your belt, boom!
Seth: Exactly, exactly. That's kind of what want to do with my consulting is just be able to build up leverage to take a bigger swing at something, whatever it is.
Jayneil: What advice would you give to designers who are just like you, trying to follow your footsteps and hopefully take bigger swings in life and creating true means of passive income? What would you tell them?
Seth: Oh, man. So, I would say the best thing that you can do is, I was going to say network, but then I was thinking doing stuff leads to more stuff. It sounds so base and sounds like nothing but one thing I’ve learned is doing some stuff leads to other stuff. So, for example, we're having this conversation because last year, I reached out to Stephen Olmstead and I was like “Hey, Stephen, you are a cool guy. I would love to pick your brain on some things.” And he was the nicest guy in the world. He took time out of his day to talk with me. We became connected on LinkedIn. I saw that he was on this podcast and I commented and I said “Hey, this is awesome. Congrats.” And then you reached out to me. So, it's like if you write a blog post, if you do a free design resource, if you do a paid design resource, if you make a product, anything like that is going to have long-term effects that you don't even know, that you can't even imagine. So, like launching Bootsketch. Some people heard of that and they invited me on their podcast. I didn't know that was going to happen. From there, when I show clients or when people come to me to talk about things, they automatically think I’m an expert because I’ve made this thing. I don't feel like an expert because of that. I don't feel like I’m anyone important but anything that you do, anything that you can kind of add to your backpack of things that you've done is going to give you a long-term return. So, I would say reach out to people, make friends with people, create content, create resources and you're going to see a return on that in the long run.
Jayneil: I am having one of those Inception-like moments that people call the meta moment because it was the same reason I reached out to, Stephen Olmstead. It was just a cold email. I sent it to him. I spent the time watching his talks and his articles and it was not like a “Let me just hit everybody I can.” So, he did get on a call with me and my God, he's so helpful, dude. He connected me with a bunch of other folks. So, oh my God. That guy is the nicest guy I’ve met in the tech industry.
Seth: Totally. I was actually able to have dinner with his family earlier this year, which was awesome. He's just like an awesome humble guy.
Jayneil: It's amazing because how much success he's had, it's just insane. Thank you so much, man, for coming on the show. It's been a blast just learning from you.
Seth: Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. I am super excited about this podcast. I hope you get to interview people way more famous than me. You've already done way more famous people than me just like we were talking about. So, I’m excited to see where this is going and I wish you all the luck in the world.
Jayneil: Thanks so much, man.
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