Make Lemonade

In this episode JR and James discuss some thriving creator businesses and what they’ve been doing right. Especially some of those that have used YouTube to build a brand, then start course or template companies. Seems there is a lot of people focusing on productivity (and Notion) making lots and lots of money.

From student doctors to self proclaimed "productivity geeks", these content creators have leveraged their audiences to make seriously impressive businesses. They aren't all following the same playbook; some are making long form content, others are building their own platforms, but there is lots to learn from each example.

Timestamps:

00:26 - Lemon Squeezy update
03:02 - Ali Abdaal
09:46 - Thomas Frank
15:01 - Johnny Harris
22:12 - Peter Akkies
27:28 - Marie Poulin
29:55 - Outro

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

The Make Lemonade podcast is back with a fresh new format. We’re going co-hosted, meaning co-founder J.R. is going to be joined each week by James McKinven (you might have heard his voice on the Indie Bites podcast).

Some episodes we'll be riffing on some topics, other times we’ll interview some of the best creators and entrepreneurs around and, finally, we’ll bring you some juicy behind the scenes content of how we’re squeezing those Lemons here at Lemon Squeezy.

This episode, we discuss how the Lemon Squeezy team have been capitalising on people looking to switch from Gumroad since made a huge pricing change, the trends creators should consider for 2023 and highlight an impressive course pre-sale.

Timestamps:

01:06 - The great Gumroad migration
11:56 - Merchant of record and taxes
18:30 - Lemon Squeezy hires
22:26 - Trends for creators
36:54 - Creator spotlight: Brett Williams

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

In today's episode, I sit down with Simon Rohrbach, the Co-Founder & CEO of Plain.com — CS without the BS. Previously, Simon led design at Deliveroo and was the entrepreneur in residence at Index Ventures.

There's something to be said about building products within "nonsexy" categories. For example, customer service. When it comes to customer service solutions, not much has changed in the past decade. 

Plain.com hopes to bring something fresh when it comes to the customer service tools that exist today.

In short, Plain is building the Stripe for customer service. The product is a customer service tool but with context. Their focus has been around making it easy for engineering teams easily integrate into their existing workflow.

Follow Simon:

• Twitter
• Plain.com

As always thanks for being a listener of the Make Lemonade show. Hosted by @jrfarr — 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 another solo Lemonhead session with @jrfarr (JR Farr). Today I wanted to reflect on one year since we launched, 10 years in the making, as we look towards the next phase of growth with our first hires. In this episode, I give you two important pieces of advice on hiring, along with my notes from Simon Sinek’s, Leaders Eat Last, on how to continue to evolve as a leader as your team grows.

As always, thanks for being a listener of the show.  Hosted by @jrfarr (JR Farr) — 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

Yo! We're back with a brand new episode. I decided to do something a little different today. I just sat down and hit record and started talking about what was on my mind as a founder myself. I talked about the current phase of the business journey we're in. This led me to start talking about the idea of building an audience vs. capturing an audience. 

We'll be back with more interviews, Lemonhead chats, and more of these "behind the scenes" episodes where I share more about our own journey.

As always, thanks for being a listener of the show.  Hosted by @jrfarr — 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

Meet Peter, the co-founder of Reform — the modern form builder.  A long-time developer who studied at the Copenhagen Business School.  Over the years, Peter has built and sold several digital products. Peter was also part of the first batch of the TinySeed — an accelerator fund for bootstrappers. 

Peter is hoping to carve his own niche in the form builder space and so far, he and his team are off to a great start. They recently rolled out a freemium version of Reform. We at Lemon Squeezy use Reform for all of our customer surveys and we're big fans of the product. 

Links mentioned:

• Reform — The modern form builder
• TinySeed
• Book — Traction
• Book — The Art of Non-Conformity

Follow Peter:

• Twitter
• Personal website

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Show notes:

(0:42) why another form builder?

(3:40) raising money with TinySeed

(10:10) offering a freemium plan

(12:46) focusing on marketing

(16:45) what's next for Reform?

(21:42) wrapping up

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As always thanks for being a listener of the Make Lemonade show. Hosted by @jrfarr — 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

Mark is an indie developer from Manchester. He's the Founder of UiPress, a WordPress plugin that provides a white-label admin experience for WordPress. Over the years of using WordPress and its evolution, the admin experience has been a hot topic. But what if you could customize it to your own needs. That's where UiPress comes in.

Mark's story of success with UiPress began when he almost gave up on the product idea altogether. Today, Mark is working on UiPress full-time and his story is a good reminder to scratch your own itch.

Follow Mark:

• Twitter
• UiPress

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Show notes:

(1:49) solving your own problem

(4:30) almost giving up

(7:30) rebranding / repositioning

(13:10) revenue numbers

(16:26) what lies ahead for UiPress?

(18:33) wrapping up

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As always thanks for being a listener of the Make Lemonade show. Hosted by @jrfarr — 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

In today's episode, you'll learn from Mike McAlister. Over the past decade, Mike has carved out his works in the WordPress industry. Mike has the unique ability to be a designer, developer, and marketer.  With this formula, he has launched and grown multiple projects from ground zero to over a million dollars in revenue before, ultimately, being acquired by WP Engine.

Today, Mike is the Principal Software Engineer at WP Engine. He also recently launched the Liftoff Creator Course. In short, the Liftoff course teaches you step-by-step how to pinpoint your expertise and turn it into digital products like courses, ebooks, memberships, digital goods, podcasts, and templates that earn recurring revenue. 

Links mentioned:

• Atomic Blocks
• WP Engine acquires Array Themes

Follow Mike:

• Twitter
• Personal website
• Liftoff course for digital creators

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Show notes:

(1:30) early beginnings for Mike

(4:17) moving from a marketplace to running own business

(7:07) leading the charge with Atomic blocks for WordPress

(10:28) getting acquired by WP Engine

 (13:38) a typical day in the life

(17:29) the Liftoff course

(24:20) Mike's love for astronomy inspires his work

(28:05) wrapping up

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As always thanks for being a listener of the Make Lemonade show. Hosted by @jrfarr — 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

For the past decade, Matt Medeiros has become an expert when it comes to podcasting and building audiences. Within the WordPress eco-system, Matt is a staple in the community where he runs The Matt Report and The WP Minute.

Today, Matt is the Director of Podcast Success at Castos where he helps new and existing podcast shows become successful. I can't think of a better role for Matt. If you're lucky enough to get 30 minutes with him — you'll be in good hands.  

Links mentioned:

• Matt's thoughts on the future of WordPress
• Matt's favorite business podcast — This week in startups

Follow Matt

• Twitter
• Personal website
• Castos - Podcast Hosting

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Show notes:

(3:25) typical day for Matt

(6:00) what makes a podcast successful?

(10:40) how the platforms will influence what's next for podcasting

(13:40) what's next for WordPress

(18:25) balancing day job and side hustles

(21:25) how to get started with podcasting

(25:20) wrapping up

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As always thanks for being a listener of the Make Lemonade show. Hosted by @jrfarr — 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

Kacper Staniul is a growth marketer and the founder of Scrapelabs — a web scraping service. His company specializes in web scraping for businesses looking for data analysis, competitive analysis, pricing monitoring, and more. 

(3:05) going full-time

(6:49) tools and software used

(8:00) what's next?

(8:57) how long does web scraping take?

(15:50) wrapping up

As always thanks for being a listener of the Make Lemonade show. Hosted by @jrfarr — 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