It's beef season. We have figured out how to not have Daniel on every client, and which roles we play with each client. Then we have a fun conversation about how we spend money, how much we save for the future, and when to take money out of the company. This is a very real peak behind the curtain, and we're slightly awkward. Build in public.…

Business is great. But that means Daniel doesn't have time to do strategic stuff. John is pulling back on client hours to figure out how to do outbound sales. We plan out an onsite (or is it offsite?). Finally, we review our OKRs.By Daniel Coulbourne & John Drexler

Steve is the founder of a well established creative agency called fifteen4. Daniel used to work there! We asked Steve about how you do planning (especially with subcontractors) when you have lumpy sales cycles, and no predictable sales process. But he ended up giving us some free consulting on branding, positioning, and strategy for the target cust…

The sales strategy worked! Great leads are pouring in, and we're closing new business. We talk about our strategy on sales calls, and disqualifying ourselves quickly from the wrong kinds of leads. Also we are sleepy.By Daniel Coulbourne & John Drexler

We want to find a long term partner, and we want your help. Then things come completely off the rails and we stop talking about business. John rants about healthcare "markets", we discuss Kendrick vs. J. Cole beef, and recommend tv shows.By Daniel Coulbourne & John Drexler

We are looking for 2 big, gnarly, interesting projects to sink our teeth into over the next 6 months. And we want your help finding them. We also recap all of the smart little things we've learned from retrospectives in the last couple months.By Daniel Coulbourne & John Drexler

We have an opportunity to do something big, difficult, and pretty different from our other clients. John went on the Over Engineered podcast to talk about whether sprints and estimates matter. We review our OKRs.By Daniel Coulbourne & John Drexler

Daniel and John are out on the speaker circuit. John wants to give more developer talks. We want to mentor more programmers, because that has been an amazing source of clients. And we might convince our friend to become a Laravel dev.By Daniel Coulbourne & John Drexler

Joel Clermont joins us for a discussion about our pricing model. Like us, he has tried a lot of models, and walked away from most of them. He gives us feedback on our latest idea.By Daniel Coulbourne & John Drexler

Papercuts progress. Daniel spent some time with the dutch. Getting busy and landing business. John give talks, Daniel gives talks. Retro-driven company.By Daniel Coulbourne & John Drexler

Thunk is building a SaaS app. We talk about the plan, where the idea came from, and how it'll work. We also brainstorm ideas for the future.By Daniel Coulbourne & John Drexler

We review our 2023 goals, and set better goals for 2024.By Daniel Coulbourne & John Drexler

Allison is a former colleague of John's, and we're thrilled to have her on the panel of mentors. She has been a developer, product manager, and executive. She has a lot of good perspective on how developers can think more like PMs, and why that matters. We talk processes, metrics, building teams, living with legacy code, and a lot more.…

Also: is programming art or science? John finds reading painful. Daniel finds small to-dos painful. Why are we paying so many Quickbooks fees? The 2024 budget.By Daniel Coulbourne & John Drexler

We reflect on a problem with a client. Then we discuss the importance of learning new patterns, adopting new tools, and sticking to conventions.By Daniel Coulbourne & John Drexler

After a scheduling snafu, we needed to use our recording slot to have our weekly check-in with Jacob. This is our regular roundup of clients, plus some pleasantries and goofs.By Daniel Coulbourne & John Drexler

Daniel is jetlagged after returning from Sydney, where he launched Verbs at Laracon AU. We talk about the launch, talk about John's Kickstarter for Colossi, and do a quick catchup on our OKRs.By Daniel Coulbourne & John Drexler

You can buy John's game on Kickstarter right now! Daniel's new event sourcing package Verbs is nearly complete, and John loves it. Join us as we spend 40 minutes gassing each other up.By Daniel Coulbourne & John Drexler

We do some bits. We talk about good practices while pair programming. Then we wonder if product development processes primarily exist to compensate for trust issues. High trust environments are the only ones we want to work in.By Daniel Coulbourne & John Drexler

John is tanking a lot of bureaucracy Daniel is writing a LOT of code Daniel is going to Laracon Australia We discuss https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgV6M1LyfNYBy Daniel Coulbourne & John Drexler

According to ChatGPT we discussed: Mentoring and meetings Age discussion Product management Splitting time between two companies Home inspector conference in Atlantic City Billing strategies Different pricing models (hourly, project-based, retainer) Composite team approach (offering product management, engineering, design) Value proposition for sma…

We catch up as usual, and check in on the state of all our goals.By Daniel Coulbourne & John Drexler

On this episode we dig deep and do a post-mortem on a messy wrap-up to a client engagement. Our key takeaways: Overcommunicate Overcommunicate some moreBy Daniel Coulbourne & John Drexler

This episode is late because of an interesting process breakdown. Verbs Vacation A New "vision-mission-value" The Pre-MortemBy Daniel Coulbourne & John Drexler

Aaron Francis (@aarondfrancis) officially joins Thunk's panel of mentors! Aaron gives John feedback on his blogs, and provides LOADS of good ideas for how to improve it and grow the audience.By Daniel Coulbourne & John Drexler

Who are our guys? We run through a list of potential panelists for our panel of mentors and discuss what it would event look like to empanel them.By Daniel Coulbourne & John Drexler

John's game Colossi is almost ready The sales funnel is working Max is having a hard one We've made progress on our goals This is not the episode about hiring a mentorBy Daniel Coulbourne & John Drexler

We have glowing feedback for each other Daniel's blog feedback made the blog a lot better Getting creative with business development tactics We discuss the company's Vision, Mission, and ValuesBy Daniel Coulbourne & John Drexler

Daniel has feedback on John's blog posts. Why do feedback? Why is it so painful? The "FG Scale" Does Jacob feel empowered to give us feedback? Should we keep our docs in Slab? Why set goals? What are OKRs? In the back half of the episode, we get super detailed deciding what our goals are for the rest of 2024.…