Talking Businessly
Episodes
90: You have to pre-launch before you launch
02 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Tidy marketing is in full swing. Please join our mailing list to support the launch! tidyup.agnecy
89: The zero risk agency (empaneling Justin Jackson)
19 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
After hemming and hawing for 20 minutes, we are joined by the inimitable Justin Jackson. He gives us an absolute treasure trove of good advice for lau...
88: Setting pass/fail criteria on our projects
14 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Laracon.EU was a blast. We continue to develop the sales funnel. We need to know whether our growth plans are actually working. So we set some simple ...
87: tidyup.agency
24 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
We have quietly launched our client management app. It has invoices, agreements, schedules, time sheets, reports, and more. We'll be doing a full mark...
86: Holacracy, if you can keep it
18 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
John went on a Claude frenzy, and Kapow is nearly here. We reach out to bankers and learn a little bit about how their world works. John believes in b...
85: Our billion dollar theory of the future
03 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
It feels like there's a dark cloud over web development right now. So where does Thunk fit into the future, and how do we win? We lay it all out here.
84: You are here
27 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
We had a very bad week. In related news, we are looking for a new client.
83: Do a good job ™
06 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Our goal for 2026 is to do a good job. John wants to start doing some serious, long term business development.
82: AI fatigue
16 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We gave ourselves raises. John is weary of AI. Daniel is using Claude skills.
81: We set up pay bands
09 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We hired someone. We set up standardized pay bands. We discuss how we use AI, and what makes a bad AI-driven pull request. We like Three Body Problem....
80: Late fees are unenforceable
20 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Marketing works. Late fees don't. John is speaking at Laracon EU! We review our OKRs and cash situation. John has more mic issues.
79: The wire:live retro (empaneling Caleb Porzio)
11 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Our dear friend Caleb Porzio drops by for some laughs, and a retrospective on Wire:live. We discuss what went well, what could improve, and what we'l...
78: Empaneling Matt Stauffer
06 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Matt runs Tighten, and is a kind of big brother to us. We ask him about running agencies, building teams, hiring senior developers, and a lot more. Wa...
77: Silly season takes no prisoners
20 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Our biggest client had a problem. We tried to get out in front of it, with mixed success. Here's what we learned. Join the new social game here. Liste...
76: Pitching our next conference talks
30 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We are busy as heck, with more work coming in. Forge launches this week. Wire:live is filling up fast. Listen to John's new game podcast. We brainstor...
75: The good kind of scary
16 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We're at an exciting but scary inflection point as a company. Wire:live is filling up fast! John is sad about the internet, but excited about real lif...
74: Radical truth telling
09 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We landed a big client, and things are heating up. We learned once again that telling the truth and being candid is the best path.
73: Be a sustainable business
02 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We finally talk about our OKRs for the remainder of the year.
72: wire:live
28 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Wire:live in Buffalo October 28. Get your tickets today! We had some technical difficulties, and weren't even sure if it was recording, so this one is...
71: No dogs, no ponies
19 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We are streamers now. Kapow now has a client portal. John has a new podcast. We had another accounting / tax crisis that has driven us to the edge of ...
70: A deeply unserious Laracon recap
12 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
If you're looking for that incisive, smart business insight, go ahead and skip this one. We talk dogs, Laracon, John's talk, Laravel Forge, the upcomi...
69: We'd be richer if we lied more
14 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We discuss the Beatles. Daniel reviewed John's code on the Social Game. Finally, we lost a proposal for a big contract. We wonder if the entire RFP pr...
68: The pitch to the "lower middle market"
08 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Daniel and Chris are nearly done with Verbs 1.0. We settle into our new roles. John prepares another talk directed at non-tech companies. Finally, we ...
67: We fire Daniel (from project management)
30 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We played the Social Game a lot, and it's so cool. Daniel is not going to do project management at Thunk anymore, and we brainstorm how we backfill fo...
66: Empaneling Erin Antcliffe
10 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Erin is an outstanding product manager who is fairly new to the agency world. She shares her feedback on our process. We brainstorm how to position an...
65: Being uncomfortably explicit
02 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Daniel got a 3D printer. John got a new iPhone that he feels meh about. We are feeling out how to consult when there are issues way outside of our con...
64: Kapow!
27 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We hung out in Philly and had a little role reversal. Chill clients abound. The sales funnel is decent. We talk about who Kapow is really for, and bra...
63: We sent invoices from the client app
12 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Spring is here, and the boys are out frolicking. We sent our first invoices from the client app. The Laracon game is going to be its own company. Clot...
62: Useful anxiety
05 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We watched a lot of movies, and gambled a little. We are deep into silly season, and talk about our relationship with anxiety. Finally, we talk about ...
61: Empaneling Ian Landsman
29 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We are now a professional podcast. Ian Landsman gives us some feedback on our goals, and our new client app. He is smart. And we don't talk about poke...
60: Our biggest client yet
21 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
John got star struck on Easter. Daniel got a new couch. We got a big new client. John is working nights and weekends on the Laracon game, and it's awe...
59: We lost a client for good reasons
14 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
John is locked in, and made a playlist so you can lock in too. We are in silly season, but we have an excellent new PM who will get us through. We los...
58: Finding the real decision maker
07 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
John's Macbook air is having problems. We made a bonus episode. We have a new trick for finding the decision maker at a prospective client. Always neg...
Bonus Episode: PHP × NYC Chaos-Cast™
07 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
At a PHP x NYC event, we realized we had a critical mass of Laravel podcasters. Apologies for the audio problems.
57: Sunsetting Papercuts
31 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Spring is here. John was on the Over Engineered podcast to discuss running product processes on small teams. We are sunsetting Papercuts. We do a quic...
56: Chunks of work
24 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
John got married. We got paid by a delinquent client. John spoke at PHP x Philly. The client management app is getting really good, which can now invo...
55: Vertical Slices
24 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
You need to build vertically, not horizontally.Also: Point Break is a good movie (Broey Deschanel's analysis). We helped a client dismiss a scammy wor...
54: Building without a blueprint
17 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Why do old special effects look good? Pennsylvania needs better websites. John wants to speak a lot more. We are building our PM business, but don't h...
53: Be a great place to work (empaneling Bossman Chris)
10 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We empanel Bossman Chris. Daniel and Chris survived Philly's Super Bowl celebration. We recap Laracon EU, and give high praise to Amsterdam. Chris cou...
52: Coaching clients to have more urgency
27 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We talk retro video games. Daniel is wiring up his whole home. John preps for his Laracon talk. We recap what we learned from an uncomfortable client ...
51: John built the client management app 🤫
20 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
John built the MVP client app! Daniel watched Survivor. We brainstorm what we want out of our 2025 OKRs.
50: Growing our product team
13 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We talk about how it will work to have another PM around, the paradox of project scoping, good interview questions, and the power of learning from ret...
49: What does success look like in 2025?
06 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We do a little vision casting for what a great year would look like. We have some disagreements about sales, plan to remove ourselves as individual co...
48: Holiday party
09 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Daniel is moving, and we have some business logistics to figure out. We want to hire a junior PM. We do a roundup of our OKR results. We also talk gam...
47: Killing Harvest
18 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
John saw Hamilton. Daniel is moving. We are finally building the client management app that we've long resisted. We talk through the requirements and ...
46: We want to buy your business (maybe)
11 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We watched good movies this weekend. We re-learn that good management is mostly about un-blocking people. John's journey into React led him back to Li...
45: The client onboarding checklist
04 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Daniel played Colossi. We make a checklist of all the things that have to happen when we bring on a new client. Thunk wants to buy a small business??
44: Clarifying roles for Silly Season v2
28 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
John went jet skiing at the Statue of Liberty. We love Bluesky. Tech bros keep getting one-shot by psychedelics. Business is great right now. We clari...
43: Getting personal about working styles
21 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
John used to be a choir boy. We remember being terrible at college, and wish we could have a second try. We talk working styles, and where we could do...
42: Celebrating $1M in revenue!
14 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
(sorry for the terrible quality. SOMEONE forgot to record. We'll let you guess who). How to write a good email. John went to the Texas State Fair. We...
41: Un-profitable software that helps people
08 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Daniel survived a terrifying storm. We are building software to support Asheville. John is speaking at Laracon EU! We're in sales mode for Papercuts. ...
40: Pricing saga (part 3)
23 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We've changed our pricing model again to solve a couple important problems. So far it is going great. We also talk about movies and games. It's an un-...
39: Aaron said to put it out no matter what
09 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Daniel's talk is out! Go watch it. We plan out future talks and screencasts. John talks about game projects he has in the works, and pushing Verbs to ...
38: Laracon recap
03 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We share all the gory details about shipping (and almost failing to ship) our game and Laracon talk. Here is a video of the fun we had. And here's a f...
37: International man of mischief
12 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We plan the rest of our 2024 goals / OKRs. We're making t-shirts. We're shilling Verbs. John has intrusive thoughts and a therapy moment. There's a li...
36: Thunk Pyramid Scheme (the super secret Laracon project)
05 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We built a game for Laracon, and it rules. Also, John released his board game Colossi! Finally, we get started on our OKRs for the second half of the ...
35: The problems that Papercuts solves
17 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
John did a bunch of Papercuts interviews, and now has a way clearer sense of what problem we're solving. He talks about his process as a PM. And we ta...
34: Go to papercuts.io
02 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Our new Saas app Papercuts.io is up, and it is in Alpha testing. If it sounds useful to you, go sign up and we'll reach out shortly! We also talk abou...
33: This too shall pass
24 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We accidentally talk about movies for 15 minutes. Then we talk about calmly riding the waves when bad things happen (a bad thing happened). Finally, w...
32: Monday morning scrutiny
17 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We took some time off. Papercuts is good now. Verbs is still good. We had an uncomfortable moment with a client, and learned some good things from it....
31: Buying our time back
27 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We're working fewer client days, but it costs us a lot of money to do that. So what are we getting for that money? We make a plan for what we can do w...
30: Strategy brainstorm (empaneling Luke Roush)
21 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Luke Roush is the Co-CEO and Co-Founder of Sovereign's Capital. John worked for Luke for 4 years. If John ever says anything smart, there's a 40% chan...
29: Awkward money conversation
06 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 conversatio...
28: Short term profit vs. long term strategy
29 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 outboun...
27: Silly Season (empaneling Steve Smallman)
23 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 (espec...
26: The leads are weak? YOU'RE weak!
15 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 ou...
25: ❤️ Devs seeking new obsession ❤️
08 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 a...
24: Cohort 2™ (working title)
01 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 reca...
23: SaaS opportunity knocks again
11 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 a...
22: Mentees keep becoming clients
04 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
21: Our new pricing model (empaneling Joel Clermont)
26 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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...
20: The FULL Stack Developer
20 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Papercuts progress. Daniel spent some time with the dutch. Getting busy and landing business. John give talks, Daniel gives talks. Retro-driven co...
19: We're building a SaaS app
23 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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.
18: Setting fewer, better goals for 2024
11 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We review our 2023 goals, and set better goals for 2024.
17: Empanelling Allison Lacker
13 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 execut...
16: Brainstorming our first SaaS product
11 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 202...
15: What kind of clients we do (and don't) want
05 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We reflect on a problem with a client. Then we discuss the importance of learning new patterns, adopting new tools, and sticking to conventions.
14: Monday morning baseball
27 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 som...
13: Launching Verbs at Laracon AU
23 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 Col...
12: Colossi + Verbs (it's shill day)
07 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 spen...
11: Trust issues
31 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We do some bits. We talk about good practices while pair programming. Then we wonder if product development processes primarily exist to compensate fo...
10: Daniel is Going to Laracon AU!
16 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
John is tanking a lot of bureaucracyDaniel is writing a LOT of codeDaniel is going to Laracon AustraliaWe discuss https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgV6...
9: The Dawn of The Pricing Saga
11 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
According to ChatGPT we discussed:Mentoring and meetingsAge discussionProduct managementSplitting time between two companiesHome inspector conference ...
8: Progress!
06 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We catch up as usual, and check in on the state of all our goals.
7: Our Great Shame
25 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On this episode we dig deep and do a post-mortem on a messy wrap-up to a client engagement.Our key takeaways:OvercommunicateOvercommunicate some more
6: How Thunk Will Die
24 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This episode is late because of an interesting process breakdown.Verbs VacationA New "vision-mission-value"The Pre-Mortem
5: Empanelling Aaron Francis
15 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Aaron Francis (@aarondfrancis) officially joins Thunk's panel of mentors! Aaron gives John feedback on his blogs, and provides LOADS of good ideas for...
4: Who Are Your Guys?
05 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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.
3: The Sales Funnel is Working
30 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
John's game Colossi is almost readyThe sales funnel is workingMax is having a hard oneWe've made progress on our goalsThis is not the episode about hi...
2: Vision, Mission, Values
22 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We have glowing feedback for each otherDaniel's blog feedback made the blog a lot betterGetting creative with business development tacticsWe discuss t...
1: The FG Scale
18 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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? Sho...