Make Lemonade

Today we're bringing you a special instalment of the Lemonhead series, getting to know our co-founder and CEO, JR Farr. We talk about how JR left college to pursue the "internet thing" before starting what would become the world's largest Wordpress marketplace, Mojo. In 2012, Mojo was acquired by Endurance (owns brands such as Bluehost and Hostgator) and JR went from founder to executive on a leadership team managing a $700m budget towards an IPO. After another 5 years in this role, JR started Weav, which ultimately fizzled out, but led to the conversations that started Lemon Squeezy.

Timestamps 

• 00:00 Intro
• 00:24 James is back
• 03:58 No Context Round
• 04:58 JR's early years
• 08:05 JR's life ambitions
• 10:00 Getting into the internet and affiliate marketing
• 12:38 Getting into Wordpress and starting Mojo Marketplace
• 19:42 Launching Mojo Marketplace
• 23:16 Roots in payment infrastructure
• 26:01 Selling Mojo Marketplace
• 36:04 Lessons from a 10 year period
• 38:04 Why Lemon Squeezy is like Space Mountain
• 39:52 Starting Weav
• 41:54 How the idea for Lemon Squeezy came about
• 45:51 Getting users in the early days of Lemon Squeezy
• 48:28 Positioning
• 52:43 Pricing
• 55:33 JR in his spare time

As always thanks for being a listener of the Make Lemonade show. Hosted by @jrfarr & @jmckinven— brought to you by LemonSqueezy.com. 

If you're looking to sell digital products online, be sure to check out Lemon Squeezy or follow us on Twitter @lmsqueezy.

Today we’re joined by Guillermo Rauch, CEO of Vercel. A cloud platform that has built pioneering technology, including the Next.js framework for React. Their most recent funding round was a $150m Series D at a whopping $2.5b valuation back in 2021, to give you a sense of the size of the company.

This is an exciting episode, as it comes shortly after Guillermo announced that Vercel are partnering with Lemon Squeezy to build the world’s fastest checkout. So naturally, we had to get him on the podcast to discuss how exactly we’re going to achieve this.

Timestamps:

• 00:00 Intro
• 01:11 Partnering with Lemon Squeezy to build the world's fastest checkout
• 11:09 Being inspired by Wordpress' open source approach
• 15:11 Coming up with the idea for Next.js
• 21:07 Are there any disadvantages to the open source model?
• 25:04 Vercel's founding story
• 28:58 Pivotal moments in Vercel's growth
• 33:03 Anti Next.js sentiment
• 36:45 What G is excited about in the future for Vercel

As always thanks for being a listener of the Make Lemonade show. Hosted by @jrfarr & @jmckinven— brought to you by LemonSqueezy.com. 

If you're looking to sell digital products online, be sure to check out Lemon Squeezy or follow us on Twitter @lmsqueezy.

Today we’re joined by Rob Hope, the founder of One Page Love and host of the Yo! podcast. He also has an upcoming course, Show Them. Rob has been hustling away for almost 15 years on One Page Love, sharing the best single page websites on the internet. The Yo! podcast is a phenomenal showcase of the most talented designers and makers, packaged up into a top class production.

Timestamps

• 00:00 Intro
• 00:55 Rob's $1,000 interview
• 09:19 Working on the same project for 15 years
• 13:06 Monetizing One Page Love
• 19:11 The partnership with Webflow
• 23:27 Crafting a brand deal
• 26:55 Does Rob have a team?
• 29:01 How Rob creates so much content
• 31:40 Focusing vs building new revenue streams
• 36:22 When's Rob's landing page course coming?
• 43:56 Investing in the Yo! podcast
• 49:55 Having Lemon Squeezy as a podcast sponsor

As always thanks for being a listener of the Make Lemonade show. Hosted by @jrfarr & @jmckinven— brought to you by LemonSqueezy.com. 

If you're looking to sell digital products online, be sure to check out Lemon Squeezy or follow us on Twitter @lmsqueezy.

Today we’re joined by Jay Clouse, founder of Creator Science, which is a platform with a membership, community, courses, a podcast, newsletter and more. Jay has scaled his media business to over $50k a month, while studying the best creators in the business. Creator Science was born out of a newsletter Jay started in 2017 which has grown to over 50k subs, then a podcast in 2019 which has millions of downloads and in 2023 he built his YouTube channel to 60k subs.

In this episode we break down his revenue split, how he’s doubled the business for 2 years running, how he provides value in $3,000 a year membership and what processes he’s put in place to create so much content to drive a thriving creator business.

Timestamps:

• 00:00 Intro
• 03:02 Why Pat Flynn bought Jay's community
• 06:06 Being an early Circle user
• 07:42 From product manager to content creator
• 09:39 The 7 year overnight success
• 11:36 Jay's revenue breakdown
• 16:36 Structuring the creator membership - The Lab
• 20:13 Jay's approach to Churn
• 23:51 The content side of Jay's business
• 28:13 Focusing on one platform vs publishing everywhere
• 29:47 The machine behind the content production
• 33:38 What is the most impactful content platform
• 35:41 Advice to people starting out
• 40:10 Jay's plans for 2024
• 43:38 Life outside of work
• 47:24 Favorite podcasts
• 49:00 Favorite books
• 49:44 Favorite creators

As always thanks for being a listener of the Make Lemonade show. Hosted by @jrfarr & @jmckinven— brought to you by LemonSqueezy.com. 

If you're looking to sell digital products online, be sure to check out Lemon Squeezy or follow us on Twitter @lmsqueezy.

Today we’re launching a new series we’re calling Project 100k, which is all about my journey as a creator going from 0-$100k selling through Lemon Squeezy. I’ve been a podcast producer for years but would like to stop trading my time for money and find a way to build an asset that makes me money while I sleep. In this episode, JR turns coach as we brainstorm ideas and come up with a new direction for me to make $100k by the end of this year. But first, we uncover a shocking revaluation about JR. Let’s get into it.

Timestamps

• 00:00 Intro
• 01:03 Why JR doesn't like cats
• 03:46 Context on James' situation
• 08:29 Focusing on the podcast course
• 13:11 Time boxing and executing the work
• 20:23 Thinking about distribution
• 21:56 Other ways to monetize
• 23:28 Getting focused
• 25:57 Repositioning the existing course
• 29:55 Hiring employees - is it worth it?
• 36:05 Summary and action plan
• 39:40 Creating the Project $100k series

As always thanks for being a listener of the Make Lemonade show. Hosted by @jrfarr & @jmckinven— brought to you by LemonSqueezy.com. 

If you're looking to sell digital products online, be sure to check out Lemon Squeezy or follow us on Twitter @lmsqueezy.

Today we’re joined by Justin Jackson, co-founder of Transistor.fm, a podcast hosting platform that hosts over 27,000 podcasts. Justin has bootstrapped the business since 2018 and has used it to build a better life for himself and his employees. In this episode we discuss if video is essential for podcasts in 2024, is YouTube going to kill off the audio podcast? And we also touch on how Justin is taking the slow and steady approach to building Transistor.

Timestamps

• 00:00 Intro
• 00:55 Should you invest in a video podcast?
• 12:35 Can friction be a good thing?
• 16:41 Are we past peak podcasting?
• 23:43 What is the new north star for Transistor?
• 27:50 Finding different motivations
• 31:46 Building a business that you love
• 39:17 Would Justin sell Transistor?

As always thanks for being a listener of the Make Lemonade show. Hosted by @jrfarr & @jmckinven— brought to you by LemonSqueezy.com. 

If you're looking to sell digital products online, be sure to check out Lemon Squeezy or follow us on Twitter @lmsqueezy.

We’re back with the first recording of 2024 and so we thought we’d take a look back through 2023, some of the key moments for Lemon Squeezy and the team, then we’ll round off looking to whats coming up this year.

• 00:00 Intro
• 00:34 Christmas break catchup
• 03:18 Looking back on key events in 2023
• 11:13 Reflection on not raising
• 13:29 Some of the key features launched in 2023
• 18:57 Thoughts on the pod in 2023
• 24:15 Surprising niches on Lemon Squeezy
• 25:45 Who would JR love to have on Lemon Squeezy as a merchant?
• 26:29 Where did Lemon Squeezy mess up this year?
• 28:09 JR's approach to setting goals for 2024
• 36:59 Lemon Squeezy growth in 2024
• 40:53 Looking back on Matt Paulson's interview

As always thanks for being a listener of the Make Lemonade show. Hosted by @jrfarr & @jmckinven— brought to you by LemonSqueezy.com. 

If you're looking to sell digital products online, be sure to check out Lemon Squeezy or follow us on Twitter @lmsqueezy.

Today we’re joined by Matt Paulson, who is the founder and CEO of MarketBeat, a financial media company with their main newsletter, MarketBeat Daily being sent out to over 4m subscribers. They do over $25m in revenue and has over 15 employees and have seen rapid growth over the past few years. JR and I speak to Matt about his origin story, how COVID almost 4x’d the business, Matt’s advice to people starting out with a newsletter today and why he’s so involved in the local startup community.

Timestamps

• 00:00 Intro
• 00:58 Why Matt has a private jet
• 03:55 Matt's origin story
• 08:45 From finance blogger to MarketBeat
• 10:24 Avoiding platform risk
• 11:39 Why Matt left his job to go full-time on MarketBeat
• 15:19 Growing MarketBeat
• 17:13 How a $25m newsletter business operates
• 20:24 Huge growth during COVID
• 25:02 Spending $3m on a new office
• 27:10 The newsletter craze
• 29:14 Different advertising models for newsletters
• 33:45 Matt's advice on starting a newsletter
• 37:39 Why Matt invests in the Sioux Falls startup community
• 43:21 How Matt spends his free time
• 44:04 Final takeaways

As always thanks for being a listener of the Make Lemonade show. Hosted by @jrfarr & @jmckinven— brought to you by LemonSqueezy.com. 

If you're looking to sell digital products online, be sure to check out Lemon Squeezy or follow us on Twitter @lmsqueezy.

Today we’re joined by Rob Walling, an entrepreneur with his most notable exit being Drip in 2016. Rob also founded MicroConf, started TinySeed and is the host of the Startups for the Rest of Us podcast, which has over 690 episodes having started in 2010. He’s also written 4 books, Start Small Stay Small, Start Marketing the Day You Start Coding, The Entrepreneurs Guide to Keeping Your Shit Together and most recently, The SaaS Playbook.

In this episode we discuss a myriad of topics in bootstrapping and business, including life after exits, why Rob feels compelled to write books, his most successful angel investment and if he would invest in Lemon Squeezy today.

Timestamps

• 00:00 Intro
• 05:12 Selling Drip & Mojo
• 14:11 How Rob splits his time
• 17:55 Why Rob writes books
• 22:21 Collaborating with a significant other
• 25:31 What does Rob do for fun?
• 28:27 How to make time for hobbies
• 30:54 TinySeed
• 40:20 Why Lemon Squeezy didn't raise funding
• 44:06 Gumroad price rise
• 49:03 Multiple projects vs focus
• 54:38 Building a marketplace
• 58:59 Rob's advice to JR about Lemon Squeezy
• 01:02:22 Would Rob invest in Lemon Squeezy?
• 01:02:58 Suggestions for Rob's 700th episode

As always thanks for being a listener of the Make Lemonade show. Hosted by @jrfarr & @jmckinven— brought to you by LemonSqueezy.com. 

If you're looking to sell digital products online, be sure to check out Lemon Squeezy or follow us on Twitter @lmsqueezy.

Today we’re joined by Jason Cohen. He’s most well known for being the co-founder of WP Engine. You might also know Jason as @asmartbear on Twitter and from his popular blog with the same name, started almost 2 decades ago. Jason is a 2 times unicorn founder so has some incredible startup wisdom at all stages of growth.

This is a wide ranging conversation where we talk about Jason’s day to day life at WP Engine, how he deals with big business problems, if his writing is done on WP Engine, how he would scale to $1m if he was starting from scratch and we also get his thoughts on Lemon Squeezy’s growth going into 2024.

Timestamps

• 00:00 Intro
• 02:51 Why there is so little content on the scale up stage
• 07:00 Is WordPress growth stagnant?
• 09:47 What does Jason's day look like?
• 13:02 Doing the boring things
• 16:08 Does Jason miss the early days?
• 20:03 Dealing with people challenges at scale
• 27:56 How does Jason fit writing into his schedule
• 30:41 Andertoons
• 32:33 Going from 0-$1 million
• 39:22 On side projects
• 40:13 Thoughts on Lemon Squeezy fundraising
• 47:42 Advice on Lemon Squeezy growth in 2024
• 55:16 The future of WP Engine
• 01:00:32 Should Jason invest in Lemon Squeezy?

As always thanks for being a listener of the Make Lemonade show. Hosted by @jrfarr & @jmckinven— brought to you by LemonSqueezy.com. 

If you're looking to sell digital products online, be sure to check out Lemon Squeezy or follow us on Twitter @lmsqueezy.