Balancing Building and Customer Feedback Without Getting Stuck

Welcome to Building Better Developers, the Developer podcast where we work on getting better step by step professionally and personally. Let's get started. Well, hello and welcome back. We are continuing our season. We were looking at ways to get unstuck and to move forward and to get that full momentum and all the important things that are required to get across the finish line. But more importantly, because this is who we are, we are developing or we are the Building Better Developers podcast. I am Rob Brodhead, one of the founders of developing or also the founder of RB Consulting, where we help you leverage technology to do business better. Good thing and bad thing. We'll start the bad thing. I got out of 2025 and was so busy that I was not able to do all that I wanted to do for 2025. I was there's all of my normal year in planning and all the stuff I like to do did not get it all done. I've got it just spilled right into 2026. The good news is for all of you, one of the things I did get done is revamp the entire development or website. So if you go out there, it's going to look different. That's on purpose. That's not because we got hacked or anything like that and have done a lot to change, particularly the navigation and add some pieces there to just make it a little easier, depending on what you want to do on the developer or site to go do it. We also have all of our links and have tested everything out so you can join the newsletter. You can go out and you can check us out on YouTube. You can subscribe wherever you want to subscribe as a podcast. We yank some of the stuff like Google Play that doesn't exist anymore. We pull that stuff off. We have clean new about us pages. If you want to see what me and my co-host or co-host is about to introduce himself, what we're doing. Some of the apps that we've gotten out there over time that you guys can play around with and all the good ways to give us feedback. That was a lot, but now I'm going to pass it on to Michael. Go ahead and introduce yourself. Hey everyone. My name is Michael Mollosch. I'm one of the co-founders of developer NURB, Building Better Developers. I'm also the founder of Invisiting QA, where we build and test custom software design around your business. That way you can focus on running your business and scaling it. Good thing, bad thing. I'll start with the bad thing as well. I will say 2025 really was a struggle of a year. Just too many things going on at once, too many long weeks, too many long hours. And ran into that old trap that we run into as developers where you run into burnout. I ran into a high anxiety level of burnout where I was always on, never off. Thankfully in the 2026, I have been able to identify that. And thankfully a lot of the things that were causing that have kind of gone away and I've been able to reset and things are finally getting back to where I feel normal again. One of the things that causes him anxiety that is not going away is me. I'm still going to be here, unfortunately for him. So he still has struggles. So you will still hear bad things from Michael every week. Right now we have a very good thing as we're going to return to our conversation with Tyler Dane. This is a really good one. He, if you're watching out on YouTube, you will have noted that he actually even said beforehand, hey, I read the book or I'm starting to read the book and I love what you guys are doing. I think this is a really good fit. And it turns out he really is one of these people. He's one of you. He is one of the people that we do this for. He's like a perfect fit, the perfect avatar for why we do development or why building better developers even started. And so this has been a, it's a great conversation and there's more. So pencils up, start taking notes because we are about ready to drop a few bombs of knowledge. He's got a couple of great suggestions that he has. So make sure you don't miss those. Worst case, if you do rewind and listen to it the second time and make sure you get it so you don't miss it. That being said, let's dive right back in where we left off with Tyler Dane. Okay, I have one more existential question I want to ask you guys and then I'll, then I'll sit back. So let me give me some time to set this up. But from my context, I spend a lot of time like exercising. That's what I'm into these days. And it's very straightforward what you have to do. You have to eat less than you burn. You have to train hard. Your muscles grow if they have enough protein and you sleep well. If you get like sunlight, that's good for you. Social life, like it's very clear what you have to do and you just do it long enough and then you get better. And so that's very appealing to certain type of person like me who just like wants to grind and put his head down and just, okay, I'll follow the plan. I get better. Awesome. When I apply that going out of a full time engineering role into the entrepreneurship role, there's a trap. Because like you guys were saying, you are given that kind of plan when you're an engineer. You're like, here are the requirements. Here's your constraints. You have 40 hours a week, 50, 60, whatever. Here are the people you have on your team. Make it happen. And then you can just focus on the intellectual work, the coding, the making happen and just putting your head down. And what I'm hearing is you guys saying you have to make space for other inputs, customers being in the wrong market. And so, yeah, like you said, I'm on my third iteration of trying to figure out a way to make this work where I can't just say I'm going to code for 10 hours a day because then I'll code a bunch of features no one wants. But it's also tricky to say I'm just going to talk to 20 people a day because then I'm drowning in feedback. I don't actually make anything. And I would just put this to you guys. Like if you were in my shoes, how would you think about balancing those two mindsets? I think that's an excellent question. And that is often the challenge. And it's one we've talked about. It's one we struggle with. I have a self-built app similar to what you're building that specifically came out of me wanting to make sure that I've got checks and balances on balancing my time properly and focusing on what we often refer to as working in your business versus on your business, the things that are coding versus sales and marketing. And I think it does vary a little bit from person to person and product to product how much input you can take before you get overwhelmed basically. And also how far you can code before you've sort of run off the pier and now you're making it up as you go a little bit as opposed to getting some good feedback. So I think it's very much a planning problem is sitting down and thinking about, OK, well, what do I have in front of me? What is it I want to get to? It's almost like any business. What is my why? What is version 1.0 that I want to get out the door? What does 1.0 look like right now? Well, here's 10 features that 1.0 is going to have. What's it going to take to get here? OK, then I can use that. I can at least build out a schedule from a coding point of view and say, this is how I get there. Now what you need to do is say, OK, if that's what I'm going to do, you need to make sure that you've got buffer in there. So let's say you originally planned it because I'm a developer, so I'm going to work 80 hours a week. OK, great. You've just signed yourself up for 80 hours a week. Well, the first thing you do is you're a developer, so double all your estimates because we always underestimate things. So now and then we always I think we often often also overestimate what we can get done in a week. So cut it back down to a 40 hour work week or better yet like a 30 hour work week and then set aside our like there's a couple ways to do it. I've found it works sometimes really well to say like I'm going to start each day doing networking and marketing. I'm working on my business or I'm going to end the day with that or I'm going to do it in the middle of the day. I'm working on that so that you and you want to get it and I'm like you. I like having that that regular schedule, something that I can just sort of fall back on so that if I wake up in the morning and I really don't know what I've got to do, I have like this structure to fall into and say, OK, it's nine o'clock. I'm going to go do this that or set aside a day. I've often seen people that are like, OK, Monday through Thursday, I'm coding and then Friday, which is not a bad idea. If you're if you think of like an agile or a sprint approach is that you like maybe every other Friday or every Friday, you code through Thursday, you go sit down and do a lot of networking and talk to a lot of people. You light up a bunch of calls and then that you come in Monday and you go, OK, now I'm going to take the feedback that I got Friday and I'm going to be integrating that into my work this week. And then when I get to Friday, I'll have something new, something like that. I think sprints work really well for that from a product development point of view. I've used personal sprints where I say I set stuff up in two or three week cycles basically and say, all right, I'm going to be coding here. I'm going to be doing some testing here. I'm going to be doing some networking here. I'm going to test deployments and put something out. I'm going to write some marketing material. I'm going to go chase down the administrative stuff during each of those times. And that allows you to, from a technology point of view, a lot of people hear about technical debt. It allows you to avoid essentially technical debt and even business debt, which is, trust me, that is that's one of the killers. It's easy to sit down and write for go code for 10 hours. It's not as easy when you're like, OK, now I got to go beat the bushes and find some people to talk to about my product for eight or 10 hours. Michael, your thoughts? Yeah, so I'll go back a little bit more because you've touched on a lot of the technical side, the developer side, things like that. So going back, given the pain point where you're at with your business, so we've got a little bit more working on your business than in your business. Given that you're building this product, you have this idea. You're trying to build something custom and you're trying to find the right customer and identify who your customer is and what features they need solved. This is where maybe at your current stage and a lot of people kind of skip this stuff is maybe do a little additional market research while you're working on your product, maybe put out some questionnaires, join some like online groups or go to some networking conferences. Talk about the problem. Don't talk about the product. Talk about the problem. Is this a problem that these people are having? What? Basically, OK, oh, you're struggling with this problem. What would make your life better? Ask them how they would solve their own problem and see if your product kind of falls within that niche. And then you could start asking questions. Well, OK, if you had this, how would you use this or, you know, how would this solve your problem? So doing a little more, I guess, customer research or product research, even while you're developing the product, is still a good idea. And the kind of the flip side of that is, I know, you know, we've thrown out like, you know, work 80 hours a week. OK, I'll code for 80 hours a week. That's not sustainable. One thing I can attest to this, and Rob knows this, is we go through cycles. We have seasons where, yes, we are hyper focused as developers. We can sit down and code for hours. The problem is if we do that, we tend to lose focus of the business. We're more down. You're so far down in the weeds. You lose the big picture. Try to schedule at least 15 minutes a day, maybe at the beginning of the day and at the end of the day, where you refocus on your business. What is it that I'm doing? Who is my customer? What am I trying to solve? Then go into the business and work on it. That way you're coming in with the mindset of here's the big picture. Yes, I'm still down in the weeds, but I don't lose that big picture. And then you don't lose focus on your customer. That helps with the scope creep and throwing in features that may not be what your customer wants and you're wasting time. That also leads into your return on investment, your time. So you've left the corporate America. You have to work for a paycheck. You have to sell your application because you're not getting paid. So your time is your commodity. So you want to make sure that you're focused on what is going to move your product forward. Now, yes, you could spend 80 hours a week, but is that the best use of your time or is it getting out and talking to your customers, doing that research, figuring out what you need, get that small MVP out the door. And then I don't know what your pricing model is, but maybe offer the application for free, give a free base product, let them play around with it, get the feedback, find the right customers and then double down on the customers that it fits and then focus on them and see if you can build your product within that silo or within that funnel. I will follow up on that. One more thing is while you're having those conversations, it's really nice to have those while you're building out your application because those conversations end up becoming what your marketing message is. As you start out with things like, hey, what kind of problems, what are some of the pains that you're having that this will solve? What are the things that you where do you see this being useful? Where do you see it not being useful? Well, as you're tightening that up and addressing their concerns, you can start flipping that a little bit and say, hey, are you suffering from this problem? Hey, is this something that is a pain that you see on a regular basis? And that becomes then as you do it, not only is your your product is sort of like evolving into solving those specific problems and answering those questions, but now your marketing also is going to be like that because now you're getting used to talking about what are the in the language that people understand, what are the problems they're suffering through? And here's a solution and refining what that solution sounds like. So people will hear this thing hurts. You know, oh, I have this hurt. This guy understands it because he just asked me about it. And then he brought me gave me a solution that I'm like, yeah, that definitely will solve my hurt. And so you you really are going to be able to progress your your marketing and branding along with your product as you do it. Man, where were you guys on my first iteration? I needed to come on the show years ago. That was awesome. What I'm hearing is a couple of themes are sticking out. One is creating that cycle. So you talked about like your build work and then you go out and then you listen and then you update the build or you talked about in terms of the calendar, like structuring your time with recurring time blocks, the different things you're doing. And that's something that I've also come to that same conclusion. One of my big mistakes was trying to port over the same mindset that people took in, say, like a sports domain into the business domain. So I love listening to like medalists and champions. And there's this video of Michael Phelps that's forever stuck in my brain. And the reporter was like, how would you do it? And he's just like, well, I just swam every day for six years straight and didn't take a day off. And that blew my mind. And then I'd hear interviews from Kobe talking about doing four workouts a day. And I looked up to those guys and I felt like that was so appealing. And I didn't realize is those guys, especially Phelps, he he's in total control of his sport, he's moving his body like that's the product. He's totally in control. Kobe has four other teammates at a time he has to kind of coordinate with. But that's just four other teammates and us like we're out with the marketplace in the world and we need to listen to these people. And so it's I had to learn that it's not like all about me and it's not all about just getting the weight room and doing the reps or eating the food. It's about creating space to find out if I'm even making something helpful. If people want it, what's the language I can use to get through to them? Is there a better use of my time that will be more help? It's basically like getting out of this idea of being like self-centered. And that's hard for someone who is who wants to be an entrepreneur because it is an egoic endeavor. So to balance that that feeling of wanting to be a creator and being in control and seeing it your way, while also like serving someone and just shutting up and listening and balancing that and finding their structures to do that was like it took me so long to figure that out. So hearing you guys reaffirm that is gives me a lot of confidence that that was really cool. Yeah, I think the exercise analogy is actually not a bad one is because there's if you've got especially very high end athletes, there will be very specific routines, workout routines that they will do based on their sport and how they're doing it, even maybe their position. So like a quarterback in football is going to have a very different routine than a linebacker and things like that. And I think that's something to think about and something to ask yourself as a business owner. And this goes a little bit to what Michael said about making sure that you're making the best use of your time is it's like, is this exercise I'm doing something that actually helps my business or is it something that I'm just doing it and I'm just building muscles, but is it are they muscles that matter? And I think that goes to the, you know, trying to distinguish between being that being that entrepreneur and knowing that you have the weight of the company on you and that you have to be a, you know, you have to be a self-starter. You have to drive things. But also sharing that with the service mentality of if you're not in it to serve somebody else, if you're not in it to serve your customer, then you're probably not going to succeed. And I've read books and seen interviews with a lot of people that are in the service industry and some of the things they do and their mindset and that that is very much. I think useful in the in actually in any business is to understand that you're always in the service business service industry, no matter what it is you're building and this goes back. So you have to listen to your customer. You don't always the customer isn't always right, but the customer is their input is always valuable is always actually almost invaluable. You want that you want to find a way to make that work with your product. And sometimes it may be something that it's invaluable only because you know, OK, this is not a customer I want to serve, so I want to make sure I don't suggest that I'm going to serve this kind of customer because I don't want to go there. I don't want to do that. I don't want to be that product. So it's almost like negative marketing and saying, yeah, this is great. However, if you're this person, this person, this person, it's not this is horrible. Don't buy it. Go buy it. Like you say, go go use Google Calendar or something like that. And also speaking to the exercise mentality here, one of the biggest mistakes I see a lot of developers doing, especially if they're leaving corporate for the first time and that's kind of all they've known, you've known either waterfall, you know, agile, you know how to build products, you don't know how to run a business. So you have to expand your exercises. You have to include additional steps and tools to make sure that you're building products and tools into your daily routine. You have to expand that agile model to include your business. You have to include things like marketing, customers, sales. Yeah, you have to expand your focus and exercise those. If you're literally just coming from software development and trying to launch a company, you better be spending a little more time on the business side of things, understanding how a business works, how to run a business, how to talk to customers, how to do that research and a little less time on the code just so that you make sure that the product you're building that you can launch that, that you can sell that product, that that product's not going to be dead on arrival because if you just sit in a room and write something and code it and then come out and say, hey, I have this product, you haven't done the market research, you don't know who to talk to. You're going to be shouting in a very loud room and no one's going to hear you. So it's one of those where you just have to expand your tool set. You have to exercise other skills to launch your business and be successful. Yeah, building that skill or that muscle is something that is obvious now, but I, there's a trap that I fell into it with, with my career where I was good at it early. And then I became a senior engineer, a lead engineer, like, and then I had a team and then I had people looking up to me and every word I said in these meetings, they would all shut up and listen and they would do whatever I said. And they think, oh my God, Tyler, the Oracle is here. We're going to figure it out. It's going to be fine. So I felt like I could do no wrong. And it was harder for me to start. I had maxed out that skill of like engineering or creating product and shipping the code. And I was more reluctant to work those muscles of like, just listening to people, getting better at marketing. And I think that is a point for the argument that it's better to do it sooner, even if you're not financially like as stable as you will be in five or 10 years, because your ego has a way of strengthening alongside with those skills. And it's good that I found it harder to build a well rounded skill set when I was so maxed out on one, which maybe goes back to Rob's point about side hustling or getting something going on along the way when the stakes are lower. But just because you're a 10 out 10 at one skill set doesn't mean you're going to get there with the other and just letting the other muscles or skills go dormant for too long actually makes it harder to get to you, get to that point of competency when you have like as a system, you can work well. So a lesson I learned the hard way is to get a little too overconfident because I was so good at one thing and thinking that it would apply directly to another thing when it just doesn't work like that. Yeah, unfortunately, that's I think some of the best lessons learned in life are the ones where we stumble and fall like that, where we feel like we're invincible. And then we realize that, oh, now we're in a different we're in a different pool, we're in a different ballpark or however you want to look at it. And what we have or what we thought we had doesn't translate completely, but it does. Almost everything will translate somewhat. So I think that is a that's an invaluable skill to have is to is to have the the wisdom, I guess, to be able to look at a situation and especially when it's one that's not a perfect fit for your strengths. But to say, OK, well, how can I step in into this and help? And it does come back very often to it's you start by listening as you start by not. It's sort of like I like to think of as like Superman coming in dressed as Clark Kent. And so, like, yes, you can go do this thing very well, but being very subtle about it or not telegraphing it and let everybody else in the room sort of figure stuff out. And then you can come back and sort of say, oh, OK, let's let's walk through this solution because it is it's a challenge if you go into your own company like being the owner, the founder, the CEO, the president, whatever your title is. When you start talking to people, it changes. It changes how people look at you. It changes how people hear you. And you have to if if you're looking for feedback, if you're looking for a team approach, then you have to change how you do things so that you don't just drive everybody forward. If you want to truly scale who you are, you need to figure out how to sometimes let people do it, not as well as you would do it. And then also a huge, huge part of the happiness part of being as we grow through this is figuring out what we like and what we don't like and figure out how to find people that can do the things we don't like that they and not because we're shoving it off on it, but because they like it. It's like this is it's finding your own niche and then finding the niche of the people around you and figure out how to use that and turn that chemistry into a team. That being said, we've like I guess we'll switch back and we'll actually ask you a question again. OK, sorry. I could ask you guys questions. No, this was this was great. I think this is and the fact that you've you've gotten a lot of feedback out of this is really awesome. You've got some some stuff that you've you know that you can now take with you. But I want to go to what you have learned because you know, this is now your third time. So I'm wondering what like what is one thing maybe that you would go back the first time that you jumped out into this? What is one thing that you would say to yourself or one thing that you would do differently that you think would drastically move the needle from that first time around? OK, this is going to be a practical free tip that was actually insanely powerful. And I'm going to pull up right here to show you that I got it. It's journaling or writing writing things down. And I don't mean in a scrap piece of paper in the thrown away. I like a journal because then you have to look back at it and you can detect your own B.S. So you could just do it like that. But I give you some other options. If you want a system around it, like you want some structure, I recommend bullet journaling that they have like it's a lightweight framework around how to structure things in the page that you can learn in 10 minutes. It's not as like fancy as it sounds. Or if you just want to be like you're more of that grinder or the workhorse type, there's a notebook called One Line a Day and it's five years. And so each page is a different calendar day. And so you see it for five years. So I will see January 6th, 2026, January 6th, 2027, 2029, 30. And the benefit of that is you hit the bar so low just to write one line a day like you can do that before bed. But once you get to the second year and the third and the fourth and the fifth, you can see your B.S. from previous years just automatically. And there's nothing as like eye opening as seeing yourself lie to yourself for two years in a row, three years in a row, like on the same day about the same thing or seeing yourself slowly stray, spending time with the wrong people or working on the wrong feature or just putting your head down for months on end. And just watching that play out as like a third person is like the best therapy or startup advice or knowledge that you need is just having a mirror to detect your own B.S. And I think that would help me correct some of my my errors a little sooner on those first two attempts, because the longer it takes to learn those lessons, the more expensive it's going to be and the harder it's going to be to get to the procter market fit. So that would be my advice. Just write stuff down and look at it, basically. Be honest. Yeah, that is that's an awesome. I don't think we've talked about that enough, but I think I'm a fan of journaling as well, doing daily journals and being able to look back through those and sort of see the evolution of things like that. Yeah, I highly recommend that. And that's I have not heard of either of those. And I think I'll probably take a look into those and see if that's something I may try, especially like that one line. That sounds like that would be a really fun exercise to do over time. You know, the first year, like I said, it's just you're taking notes. But as you get further into it, I think to see how that change, the evolution or maybe where you have it, maybe where you're stuck, that is a great way to do it. For those that would love to figure out how to be more productive and to work with you to talk about your product, what are some of the best ways for them to get a hold of you? It's a choose your own adventure. But it all starts at TylerDane.com that I'll link to my other places. So if you're right now, my whole life is centered around, like I said, being healthy and then helping engineers just like you guys. So if you're an engineer and you like watching stuff, I got a YouTube. If you like reading stuff, I got an engineer focused newsletter. And if you want like a tool that's centered around the things that we talked about today, I got an app for you open source free right now in beta. But go to TylerDane.com and then you can pick where to go next. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time. This has been great. It's been a good and you turn the tables on us, which is like I think in all the interviews we've done, I think that's only happened maybe one other time. And that was we we slapped them down last time and then kept asking them questions. So this was this actually great. I could have asked more. I'm excited to dig into your book. And I think you guys are kindred spirits, except you have a little more head start on me. So I was excited to hear from you guys. So, yeah, this is fun. Let's stay in touch. Oh, definitely. We may have you come back on and ask us, you know, ask us questions in the future. So I'm able to flip the tables and say, OK, you get to interview us and see how that one goes. Yeah. Take a day off. Let me let me host. Yeah, that'd be great. We'll have to try that one. So thank you so much for your time. And all of you guys are out there. Thank you for listening in. We'll have all those links in the show notes. And we will be back next episode with another interview and continue on how to help you move forward. We're getting into this whole idea of forward motion and momentum. And sometimes just a step or two a day is all you need to start making very long advances in your journey. Go out there and have yourself a great day, a great week. And we will talk to you next time. I'd love to hear your thoughts, your feedback. So drop a note to info at develop the new.com. Be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube or wherever you listen. And remember, a little bit of effort every day adds up to a great success. Keep learning, keep growing, and we'll see you in the next episode.