Benedikt asks some tough comparison questions. Benedicte leans on the "engine" and has some fun.

Have you weighed in on Benedikt's data comparison conundrum yet? He stirred up quite the team conversation at Userlist, and on Twitter, too. There were some hot takes and lengthy discussions, but he was thankful to have a team to run some difficult date-handling questions by. He was also thankful to get back some deep focus time this week to tackle the challenge. He uploaded the catalog of Slow & Steady episodes to YouTube — now one more place you can listen!

Benedicte relied on the Gatsby engine while she had some fun last week. Covid restrictions were lifted in Norway over the weekend. She got drinks with several friends and visited briefly with her sister in person after years apart. On stream last week, viewers seemed to enjoy a more freeform troubleshooting session and she finished a draft of her done-for-you demo. While POW! didn't qualify for TinySeed this year, Benedicte has a friend interested in helping with the marketing and customers interviews.

And Brian? He's settled in Boulder and is doing well!

Benedicte shares some positive feedback. Benedikt moves forward with a suite of integrations.

Benedicte is feeling flattered, is receiving praise online, and saving this kind of feedback for the future in a "brag folder". She recommends starting one of these for brightening up a gloomy day or for reminding you of your achievements when it comes time for performance reviews. In addition to working on some new sales pages, Benedicte has applied to TinySeed with POW!. She doesn't meet the recommended MRR threshold but discusses the motivations behind applying anyway.

Benedikt hasn't had the strictest focus given recent customer support issues and new hire ramp-up time, but he has made lots of progress with the Userlist integrations despite this. Some companies make this work easier for developers than others — Stripe is one of the good ones (add this to the list of non-sponsored Stripe shoutout episodes). In another milestone, Userlist has moved all email marketing to... Userlist! This was made possible with the feature update from last year and they finally made the jump over.

Time flies for Benedikt at Userlist. Benedicte will save you from your Gatsby emergency.

Benedikt has a frustrating day but shares a big milestone — after 50 months, his shares in Userlist have fully vested. He details how the business agreement between the Userlist co-founders worked and why it was smart to have it in place early on. Benedikt also shares a "royal screwup" story from the past week. After deleting an entire account he was able to restore everything after only several hours of work. In fact, despite the undesirable set of events, the success of the recovery effort is a "win".

Benedicte launches her "Emergency Gatsby Call" sales page for those stuck on a reef — a one-on-one call to the rescue! She plans to make a page for giving talks as well. Some people think she works for Gatsby. These pages will help reinforce that she can help do Gatsby work for them. The upcoming streams include some plug-in making and code reviews.

The two talk integrations, dunning emails, and they tease a future guest!

Benedikt and Benedicte chat with Lesley about her product Newsletter Glue.

Lesley Sim, co-founder of Newsletter Glue and fan of unique top-level domains, discusses product pivots, finding co-founders and freelancers, bootstrapping, WordPress, and more.

Newsletter Glue is a plug-in that allows you to build and publish newsletters with the power of WordPress. The current offering is the result of a zoom-in pivot where Lesley solved one of her own problems. She works on the product remotely with her technical co-founder, Ahmed, and they've seen traction since the pivot.

The three wrap up with weekly updates. Benedicte gets a new customer for POW!, Benedikt shares a meaningful win, and Lesley is riding a productive wave.

The third Monday of January may be a downer, but not for Benedikt and Benedicte!

Benedikt is bathing in artificial light, exercising, and staying focused thanks to the new frontend developer, Leo, at Userlist. These factors, combined with a good year and small raise, have him beating the usual winter blues. Last week they helped a customer through a spam attack and he completed more integration work. Benedikt has enjoyed talking through the code with another developer. 

Benedicte, feeling confused about progress last week, is nonetheless keeping the engine alive. Schools are closing and childcare has been tricky but she had glimpses of "supermom". She completed her first non-hourly contract, started a draft for her Smashing Magazine article, kept up with yoga, and will even sneak in a short treehouse cabin trip this week. Like Benedikt, she has also enjoyed discussing code at a higher level with Ola as he comes up to speed.

Benedicte celebrates her birthday and Benedikt dives into backend work.

While Benedicte enjoys a birthday tradition, the momentum from last week has slowed down. Not to fear — the Gatsby "engine" is proving a valuable way to keep things moving along. Routine, systems, and daily email writing were all "winners" for the week. A podcast appearance on React Round Up went well, too.

Benedikt adjusts to working with Userlist's newest addition, Leo. Despite delegating tasks, Benedikt realized he is still spending time thinking about the delegated work. Otherwise, the onboarding is off to an excellent start and it has allowed Benedikt a chance to focus on the backend work. Exercise returns as a focus as well.

Admire anyone that is working "slow and steady" on their business? Let us know and perhaps we'll have them on as a guest!

Welcome to the new year! Benedicte and Benedikt report on their year-end breaks and share a few goals for the coming year.

Benedicte enjoyed a great Christmas holiday and New Year's celebration. Between a trip to the mountains, sledding on toboggans, and watching the fireworks over Oslo, she felt invigorated to get started in 2022. Her encryption and privacy talk went well and she already has a podcast appearance and streams lined up to kick off the year.

Benedikt's holidays were not quite as relaxing, but he still enjoyed some of the family time and took a trip to the Black Forest. One big win was onboarding Userlist's new frontend developer. Benedikt says he's a great fit, is learning the code, and it felt good that things were getting done while he was away. They also hired a new customer success manager from their previous short-list, who already jumped in and helped with a recent AWS outage.

For 2021 review and 2022 goal setting Benedicte and Benedikt used the YearCompass framework. Benedicte's theme is "slow and steady". She has goals to avoid "shiny object" temptations and to keep progressing the things that are working for Queen Raae. She still has to decide on what that means for POW! — will it be the year that POW! becomes all that it can be? Benedikt isn't big on trackable or concrete goals either, though he wants Userlist to become profitable. Not profitable for just the sake of it, but to break even for longer-term financial stability.

In his last episode before taking a break, Brian gets some great news about his game, Backpack. Benedicte recovers from a few sick days. Benedikt shares some hiring lessons from Userlist.

Brian is leaving on a high note. His game won FIRST PLACE in the board game design contest! His submission started as an accountability exercise and ended with real feedback, a cash prize, the option to publish, and credibility for future pitches. For JTBD.app, the future is still undecided. For now, Brian is having some conversations in the MegaMaker community and is staying open. 

Benedicte is recovering from a few sick days during a busy time. Thankfully, she had built up some buffer and won't miss her encryption talk this week. She has kept up with yoga despite the missed time and is celebrating non-hourly work. It's a great fit for how she wants to work and the flexibility is a benefit when working while feeling less than 100%. Benedikt will come on this week's livestream to help with data modeling decisions for ConferenceBuddy. 

While Jane was on vacation at Userlist, Benedikt focused on customer support and hiring. They have some promising frontend developer candidates moving through the later stages in the process despite a setback with the customer success manager role they previously hired for. Separately, Benedikt starts to regret a decision they made to use Markdown as the source of truth for messaging content and shares how he is thinking about moving forward.

The gang is all here! In addition to updates, they discuss the "sawdust" metaphor — packaging the byproducts of your primary service and putting them to good use. Brian announces he will be taking a break from the show.

While he feels conflicted, Brian plans to take a three-month break from the show. He's tired of the march to grow his MRR and doesn't feel like he has meaningful updates. He is enjoying his role at GitLab and wants to spend his free time away from building a SaaS — namely on projects like board games. Last week will be his final episode before the break.

Benedicte has updates on several fronts — a new plugin, a yoga accountability partner, and her first non-hourly gig! She plans to have Benedikt on an upcoming stream to talk databases after the next authentication stream. She also needs to unfollow some Twitter accounts to follow some new ones... without making 5000 clicks.

Benedikt's time has been spent almost entirely in hiring for the frontend development position at Userlist. They had to say "no" to the previous round of candidates and it isn't easy. In between hiring, he has snuck in some small features and bug requests. The good news in causing stupid bugs? They are easy fixes. Usually.

Not sponsored, but Benedikt and Benedicte rave about Stripe a little. The Userlist team grew by one while Benedikt was on vacation. Benedicte gets a small POW! win.

Benedikt took last week off but didn't unplug 100%. He moved hiring forward on the frontend developer role. The pipeline is filling up and he expects to wrap up soon. While he was out, and completing some projects around the house, the customer success role was filled. 

Benedicte fills Benedikt in on her newest streaming plans — ones that will cover authentication and privacy in the context of Mirjam's app, Conference Buddy. She celebrates a small win for POW! as a user inquires about yearly pricing. After they shower Stripe with praise, Benedicte gives Benedikt an update on holiday baking!