
## Full-time maker

Last week was a big week for me. I finalised the sale of my shares in [Animade](https://animade.tv), the animation company I co-founded in 2010, and acquired all shares in [Boords](https://boords.com), the storyboarding SaaS I've been building for the last 5 years. As of right now, I'm a full-time independent product person. Happily, my co-founder [Tom](http://tomjudd.co) and I completed the whole process amicably. 

As you might expect, it's a mixed bag emotions-wise. I'm of course sad to see the end of a professional relationship which yielded so much. This is mixed with relief to be at the end of a year of legal back and forth, and excitement to start a new chapter of my life. 

I didn't appreciate how much energy the legal process took out of me until it was over. Tom and I agreed on the top-line terms in an hour or two, but the whole process took just over a year. While time actually spent *doing* legal things - signing documents, gathering information etc. - was very small, the mental parking space it occupied in my head was very large indeed. I suppose that's to be expected with something which touched so many parts of my life. 

Now that it's done, I'm excited to be able to dedicate more energy to making things and contributing to the indie software community as a whole. Building software is where I feel I have the most to offer, and happily is also what I enjoy.

In future, these posts will have more structure. Every other Thursday I'll share 3 items of interest from my work building software products. If you'd like to get a flavour of the regular format, there are a handful of posts from the last few months in [the archive](https://jameschambers.co.uk/newsletter/archive).



<figure>
  <img src='https://img.jame.sc/pricing-discount.gif' alt='Pricing card flip
  animation' />
  <figcaption>Testing a new approach to annual pricing</figcaption>
</figure>

Welcome to my twice-monthly newsletter about the highs and lows of building indie software products. 

---

## 1. A new approach to annual pricing

I'm testing a new [pricing page](https://boords.com/pricing) for Boords. I want to find out if reframing yearly billing as a discount will get a higher percentage of annual plans. I stole the idea from Manual Frigerio's post on [reframing discounts](https://blog.friger.io/how-reframing-discounts-led-to-a-4x-increase-in-yearly-plans/). I'm pulling annual vs monthly subscription plan ratios from Stripe Sigma, so I'll check back in towards the end of February to see the results. I also added a rather snappy card-flip animation to reveal the discount rather than putting up an interstitial. 

---

## 2. Not 'Getting Things Done'

I'm making my way through Cal Newport's [Deep Questions Podcast](https://www.calnewport.com/podcast/). In episode 62 he discusses David Allen's Getting Things Done, a productivity system which until very recently formed the bedrock of my own approach to - well, getting things done. Allen proposes that all projects, no matter how large, can be broken down into discrete tasks, which we can then crank through in batches. There's an analogy with the factory manager (the 'planning' you) identifying tasks on the production line, then passing these tasks to the worker (the 'doing' you). 

I've always struggled with GTD, and Cal was the first person I've heard articulate why - you can't plan out every task in a complex knowledge project in advance, never mind the overhead of managing a system which attempts to do so. As a result, I've split my task and knowledge management into separate processes. I use Apple's reminders for the basics (e.g. buy milk), and Notion for larger complex projects (I have a notion page for each project, and can see them all at once on a Kanban board). It's refreshing to see that buying milk and building a SaaS product operate on two entirely different levels of complexity, and it's impossible that one piece of software would do both of these things well. 

On a practical level, the new Apple Reminders is a breath of fresh air. I enjoyed [this post by Jon Mitchell](https://jonmitchell.net/blog/reminders) outlining the new features which make it a genuine contender in the todo list software world. 

---

## 3. Basic After Effects

I'm building out some new landing pages for our marketing site, and in the hope of including some more motion in the screenshots, I cracked open my copy of After Effects. While I ultimately ended up outsourcing the screenshots themselves, I did find some useful resources for creating small UI animations. 

First, [this Udemy course](https://www.udemy.com/course/ui-animations-and-interactions-with-after-effects/learn/lecture/15653156?components=deal_badge%2Cdiscount_expiration%2Cgift_this_course%2Cprice_text%2Cpurchase%2Credeem_coupon%2Ccacheable_deal_badge%2Ccacheable_discount_expiration%2Ccacheable_price_text%2Ccacheable_buy_button%2Cbuy_button%2Cbuy_for_team%2Ccacheable_purchase_text%2Ccacheable_add_to_cart%2Cmoney_back_guarantee%2Cinstructor_links%2Ctop_companies_notice_context%2Ccurated_for_ufb_notice%2Csidebar_container%2Cpurchase_tabs_context#content) on UI Animations and Interactions was a great help to understand the basics in about an hour. After Effects is immensely powerful, and many courses go deep into that power. It's hard to find a short course which shows you how to move some UI around, and this was the best I came across. 

It's also worth checking out [Motion3](https://www.mtmograph.com/products/motion-3), an AE plugin which makes easing a breeze, [AEUX](https://aeux.io/guide/download.html) which allows you to link After Effects and Figma or Sketch, and [GifGun](https://www.schoolofmotion.com/blog/gif-in-after-effects), which as the name suggests makes exporting GIFs incredibly easy.



<figure>
  <img src='https://img.jame.sc/resting-heart-rate.jpg' alt='Resting Heart Rate' />
  <figcaption>My resting heart rate data 2019-2021, captured from my Apple Watch (screenshot composed from Health app)</figcaption>
</figure>

Welcome to my twice-monthly newsletter about the highs and lows of building indie software products. 

---

## 1. M1

I upgraded to an M1 MacBook Pro last week. The process went pretty smoothly, and aside from running iTerm in Rosetta (i.e. legacy) mode to run Homebrew, there wasn't much to report in terms of setup. I was experimenting with Docker on my old mac, and I'd been through the mill setting up [hot reloading in Next.js](https://jameschambers.co.uk/nextjs-hot-reload-docker-development), so took the opportunity to 'dockerize' my entire development setup. I intended for Docker use to be optional in the Boords repos, but ended up bricking the Boords installation on our frontend dev's machine, which caused him hours of frustration. Move fast and break things, but not when it slows everyone else down. 

The M1's performance is - as expected - exceptional. Everything is incredibly snappy. But by far my favourite feature is the silence. It has no fan. I never thought my old mac was particularly noisy, but a completely silent laptop makes a noticeable difference to my work environment. 

---

## 2. Heart Rate

This week I learned (via my Apple Watch) that my resting heart rate is 22% lower than it was in 2019. I wrote a [short blog post about it](https://jameschambers.co.uk/remote-work-heart-rate) (the TLDR is I'm exercising more and commuting less). However, what interested me most is that I don't 'feel' much healthier now than I remember feeling in 2019. The data, however, is pretty unequivocal. Without it, I wouldn't have known beyond the fact I can run a little bit faster now. [Find out more](https://jameschambers.co.uk/remote-work-heart-rate).

---

## 3. Content Calendar

This week I assembled the 2021 [Boords](https://boords.com) content calendar using Notion's killer feature, Linked databases. Linked databases let you embed and filter the same information set in multiple places (for those of a web development disposition, think of them as database components you can render on any Notion page). In this instance, I used them to set up personalised content dashboards for each of our freelance writers. This would be labour intensive with other tools. With Notion, I have a 'master' content calendar and filtered views of that same data for each writer. Changing the master version changes all of the filtered versions. It's awesome. I've linked to him before, but if you're interested in levelling up your Notion game I highly recommend [August Bradley's YouTube channel](https://www.youtube.com/user/AugustBradley).



<figure>
  <img src='https://img.jame.sc/201217-golf.jpg' alt='Golf Course Rainbow' />
  <figcaption>English golf in December has its benefits</figcaption>
</figure>

---

## 1. Stripe checkout launch

This week saw the culmination of a month of heads-down building and refactoring, as we ditched Boords' home-rolled billing and invoicing UI in favour of Stripe's [Checkout and Customer portal](https://stripe.com/docs/payments/checkout) products. Aside from the reduced complexity in our code - I was able to remove ~2,500 lines of code from the backend alone - the new billing system is much easier to reason about. We effectively try and mirror Stripe's subscription status as delivered by webhooks. Previously we took that information and translated it through our own logic, which is a layer of complexity I'm happy to see gone. 

---

## 2. Rails upgrade

Our billing upgrade necessitated a Rails upgrade. We've been running Rails 4.2 since Boords' inception in 2015, so an upgrade is long overdue. For the most part, it went fairly smoothly. Most of Boords' complexity lies on the frontend, which no doubt sped things up. There were a few gem upgrades as you'd expect, but the bulk of the migration was done in a couple of hours. One notable fly in the proverbial ointment was JSON fields. It turns out that Rails 6 stores JSON fields as strings (as per the [RFC 7159 standard](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7159)), whereas Rails 4 stores them as objects or arrays. It took a couple of hours of stumbling around to find [this Github issue](https://github.com/rails/rails/issues/28292), and I ended up implementing an ActiveRecord concern to mirror the old behaviour [as described here](https://github.com/rails/rails/issues/28292#issuecomment-324061067). 

---

## 3. Typescript in Vim

While this was mostly a backend upgrade, some frontend work was needed to launch the new Checkout page. Editing Typescript files in Vim had been noticeably slow for me for some time, and this felt like the right time to figure our what was going on. My first instinct was the Typescript server, but it turns out the blame lay squarely with syntax highlighting, specifically the regex engine I was using. I wrote up [a quick summary](https://jameschambers.co.uk/vim-typescript-slow) which hopefully will save someone else a few hours of head scratching.



Welcome to my twice-monthly newsletter about the highs and lows of building indie software products. 

---

## 1. Boords DX

Like some kind of horrible inverse of Moore's Law, my Boords development experience is exponentially worse now than it was five years ago. This reached a head last week. My local page reload time hovered around ~45 seconds every time I changed a Ruby file. After successfully reducing the friction required to publish a blog post by using [Notion as a CMS](https://jameschambers.co.uk/build-notes-1), this level of friction for making even the slightest change to Boords is unacceptable. 

The first step was to upgrade our dated Rails version to Rails 6. It's not yet released, but for the most part, it was smoother than I expected. It was also a good opportunity to cut out some of the cruft which inevitably appears over the years in a product. While the new version of Rails is certainly faster, it didn't solve my slow page load speed on its own. I did the rounds on various profiling tools trying to get to the bottom of it, and wrote a [short blog post](https://jameschambers.co.uk/rails-dev-performance) summarising the most useful. And happily, my local page load speed is now ~1s, which obviously lowers the friction enormously. 

---

## 2. Stripe Checkout

As part of the Rails upgrade, I'm replacing our home-spun checkout and billing sections with Stripe's Checkout and Customer Portal. Using Stripe's self-hosted system will remove an enormous amount of complexity from the app, which I'm perhaps unreasonably excited about. Of course, it's not as flexible as our own system - you can't deep-link to specific plans, for example. However, the reduced complexity, internationalisation, Apple pay, hosted invoicing and a bunch of other stuff make it a good trade-off in my book.

---

## 3. Life of Focus

This week I finished [Life of Focus](https://www.life-of-focus-course.com/waitinglist.html), a 3-month online course from Scott Young and Cal Newport. It builds on ideas from their existing work, Deep Work, Ultralearning, and Digital Minimalism, and packages them into 12-week's worth of 5-15 minute videos from the authors. While I'm familiar with the ideas in their books, the course format helped me consolidate them and integrate them into my life (for example prioritising and tracking deep work). If you're interested in working and learning more effectively, [I highly recommend it](https://www.life-of-focus-course.com/).



Welcome to my twice-monthly newsletter on the highs and lows of building indie software products. 

---

## 1. Acquisition strategy as a filter

I didn't think about customer acquisition when we started Boords, mostly because I didn't know any better. Now, finding customers through SEO-driven content marketing is our bread and butter. Not all industries lend themselves to a search-driven acquisition strategy. Storyboarding is a well established process with many applications, so it's ripe with opportunity. 

I've started using this as a filter for new product ideas. If / when I build a new product, I'd like to use my hard-won SEO knowledge to grow it. I've nixed a couple of product ideas recently for exactly this reason. They weren't bad ideas per-se - they're in established markets with funded companies - but if I have to build in a whole new acquisition process, I'm out. 

---

## 2. Boring Bits™ Templates

There's a lot of boilerplate which needs to happen in a SaaS app - login, signup, forgot password etc. This was surprisingly difficult to get going with my stack du jour, namely NextJS and a Rails API. So, I pulled the generic stuff out into some template repos. I'm calling them Boring Bits™. 

The [Rails template](https://github.com/jameschambers/boring-bits-rails-api) is a legit Application Template. You can run it with `rails new`. It's basically a templated version of the Rails API I wrote about previously. [Check out the repo here](https://github.com/jameschambers/boring-bits-rails-api). 

The [NextJS template](https://github.com/jameschambers/boring-bits-nextjs) is less sophisticated, in that it's a 'clone and you're on your own' git repo. It aims to be a whitelabel starting point for auth-driven frontend. Headline features are Storybook, Tailwind, token auth & error messaging / alerts. Basically everything you need to get going with component-driven app development which can be a bit time consuming to set up. It's designed to work with my Rails API template, but it's easily adapted. [Repo here](https://github.com/jameschambers/boring-bits-nextjs). 

---

## 3. Office rejig

My office is a low-ceilinged attic space over our garage / my workshop. It has slanted walls, so desk position is a challenge. I used to face a window, but even though the view is generally pretty peaceful (it's trees and part of a gravel driveway), I find myself staring into the distance more than I'd like. So, I've moved my desk to face one of the slanted walls, and so far, so good. Fewer distractions, and I feel like I've been able to focus for longer stretches. On a side note, I recently purchased a [Realforce mechanical keyboard](https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07R3VT1PZ/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1), and oh my goodness do I love typing on this thing. It wasn't cheap, but for the amount of time I spend typing it felt justifiable. 

I also bought a record player, and disconnected the bluetooth from my speakers. I'm still in the honeymoon phase, so we'll see how I feel about it in a few months, but here are my initial impressions. 

I own six records. To my eternal shame I gave most of my teenage record collection away, and the rest was stolen at a house party in 2004. While I regret not being able to take an auditory trip down memory lane, the lack of choice is refreshing. I always feel a bit overwhelmed when I open Spotify. Should I 'Discover Weekly'? While the physical effort of putting a record on is greater than opening Spotify, there's much less cognitive friction.



## 1. Boords Growth

October was [Boords](https://boords.com/)' best growth month in 3 years. It was the first time we've exceeded our self-imposed month-on-month growth target, and we cleared a significant MRR milestone. 

I put it down to continued work on our SEO-driven content marketing strategy. This normally takes at least a couple of months to pay off, so it's gratifying to see work which started in the summer come to fruition. It's reminded me that success is often about [doing the basics well, repeatedly](https://blog.stephsmith.io/how-to-be-great/). 

---

## 2. Rails API post

Last week I wrote a blog post about [setting up a JSON:API with Rails](https://jameschambers.co.uk/rails-api). It started as a reference for myself, but as I had to consult so many sources to get the thing finished, it felt like sharing that legwork was the right thing to do - hence the blog post. I tend to white-knuckle difficult technical problems and move on as soon as they work, even if I don't fully understand them. It was rewarding to take my time and turn a problem into something positive.

[Read about building an API with Rails →](https://jameschambers.co.uk/rails-api)

---

## 3. Notion as a CMS

I've had a Notion account for a couple of years, but it wasn't until I watched [August Bradley's YouTube channel](https://www.youtube.com/user/augustbradley) that it clicked for me. Effective use of complex software is about the effort you put in to understand it. From a tangled mass of files and apps, I now keep all my notes, bookmarks, tasks etc inside Notion. It's great. 

It occurred to me that I could significantly reduce the friction required to publish a new blog post by using Notion as a CMS. Although Notion doesn't have an official API (as of November 2020 at any rate), there is a [React renderer for Notion pages](https://splitbee.io/blog/notion-as-cms-using-nextjs). In a few hours, I was able to wire up a new Next.js app to my Notion account, and the result is the blog you're reading now. All posts on this site are Notion pages. As hoped, it's significantly reduced the friction.


Build Notes Archive