Nick Groeneveld (@ToolboxOfDesign) understands that design isn’t about gadgets, widgets, or buttons. For Nick, design is understanding the needs, desires, and expectations of those you aim to serve. We chat about talking to your customers, what common mistakes indie hackers make when thinking about “design”, and just how much more UX means than web interfaces.
Nick is ALSO the guy behind my interview videos and thumbnails! He’s the producer of The Bootstrapped Founder, really. We talk about how freelancing and working with a media partner works, how he juggles his financials, and what lifestyle he aims for.
Arvid Kahl 0:00
Today, I’m talking to Nick Groeneveld, UX designer and the reason why you are watching or listening to this today. Nick has been instrumental in getting this podcast off the ground. And he’s extremely skilled at both seeing the bigger picture and making smart, specific choices. And he speaks the language of indie hackers. What’s not to love about this guy? He’s a design thinker and he will share his insights and frameworks with you today. So if you’re having trouble understanding and designing your app or you don’t know how you can learn more about getting it right, Nick will help you right here right now. This episode is sponsored by acquire.com. More on that later. Now, here’s Nick.
Hey, Nick, you are UX designer, you’re a creator and a great editor. And much more than that, you’re my great editor and my great designer and my creator. I want to dive into how this is working for you, working with for and as a creator in the greater economy and then dive into the freelancer life a little bit and where this is going, what the future of this is. My first and probably a question that I’ve never asked anybody else is, how weird does it feel to know that you’re going to be the one editing this interview of yourself?
Nick Groeneveld 1:10
I’ve been thinking about that all week, like oh, man, I have to listen to myself for four or five hours. But what’s even worse is that I also have to make a thumbnail of myself and then decide what of the parts are the best to turn into a clip. So it’s much more focused on myself than that I normally would. But I have to get through it. And it’s okay.
Arvid Kahl 1:38
It’s pretty funny because I think you started out as my thumbnail guy. You were really, really good at this and I loved your work. And then over time, we added more things on top. I wouldn’t even just call you an editor now. I think you’re more of a producer at this point, right? Like, do you feel that you are a producer? Would you put that on a business card at this point?
Nick Groeneveld 1:58
I think I would, at some point, beginning well, I’m not going to put beginning producer on it. But it’s growing into that direction. And I’m okay with that. I like to do more stuff and learn and keep growing. I don’t want to get bored.
Arvid Kahl 2:15
Yeah. Oh, for sure. Yeah, that’s been part of the process. Right? For like from the start, we’ve just been growing into this relationship, this professional co working relationship together. And it’s always been more new things that work with the other things that you already have been building. I really liked this. Did you set out to become kind of a producer? Because I know you’re a UX designer, I think by trade, right? Is this something that just happened randomly? Or was it a conscious choice to move more into the media production world for you?
Nick Groeneveld 2:43
Well, you know, the funny thing is, I never wanted to become a UX designer on purpose. I always know I wanted to do something with design. But when I went to school, you know, the design school stuff, you know, I never, I didn’t even know what UX was at that point. But I enjoyed certain topics like usability and psychology and color theory. And then, without really knowing about it, I ended up as an intern as a UX intern somewhere, then I was like, well, what does that even mean? And then well, I kept doing it, you know, UX work because I got some experience. And it made it easier to get another job in UX. But when I was very young, I started as just a, you know, an all round designer animation and drawing and stuff like that. And I never really wanted to let that part go. So then you get asked for more different kinds of design, you know, hey, I see you can do icons too. Oh, yeah, but this is my UX job or I don’t care. Can you make me an icon too? Oh, sure, you know, whatever. I like to do that kind of stuff. And more that just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And I don’t know where it’s going to end, to be honest.
Arvid Kahl 4:09
Yeah. Well, who knows? Right? That’s the beautiful part of entrepreneurship or just doing your own thing. And that’s kind of what you do as well, right? You do a lot of stuff for me. And I really, really appreciate it. I’ve been blown away by your work from the start, like the first couple of thumbnails you made was like, yeah, this is what I want. And then over time, you figured out how to take my process and make it even better. I was talking to Marc Lou last week compared to when this is being recorded. And we talked about just giving jobs that you established as a process to people who do them way better. And that’s what you do for me. I really, really appreciate that. But I also know that I don’t fill your full week with my one podcast episode. So you probably do more things. Can you maybe elaborate a little bit like what the field is that you work in with maybe other clients and all that kind of stuff? And how you juggle this because context switching that costs some effort, right? So I would like to know, as an ex freelancer myself, how you deal with that?
Nick Groeneveld 5:13
I didn’t know you were a freelancer. And that’s cool.
Arvid Kahl 6:49
Yeah
Nick Groeneveld 5:20
I think that’s clear now I do a lot of different things. I still have the UX part, like the main thing that I do. Some people call it product design, some people call it UI/UX or just UX or something else. But that’s the main thing. So I work with startups now. And then that’s like, one day a week somewhere. But also, sometimes there’s someone running a software as a service business. And they’re like, well, I’ve done everything myself so far. And I’m getting a bit of traction, you know, the MRR is growing. It’s above zero now. And now it’s time to have someone do something better than I can do, you know, what you just mentioned. And then I help them as well. And it can be a small thing like, a few hours doing a review, giving them some points to improve like, you can check these few things that would really help. Sometimes it’s a bit bigger. It’s a full like, how can we make sure more people join the platform and then actually keep using it. So more conversion on one end and less churn on the other side, like the whole psychology behind that. And sometimes it’s just thumbnail design like, you know, I like to draw and it’s not really, you know, UX related per se. So it’s a lot of design things. And yeah, so I think that’s about it. It’s a lot of different design things.
Arvid Kahl 6:51
But all design things, right?
Nick Groeneveld 6:55
All design things
Arvid Kahl 6:56
That’s what I hear. Yeah, that’s really cool. I love that for you that you get to explore all these many different things, but still have this core thing, this creative process that always leads to some tangible outcome, right? Either it’s an icon, which is itself a tangible file or it’s a process improvement, where you see the numbers change at the end. I think that is often I think overlooked, particularly when you come from a very technical background. Maybe let’s dive a little bit into, you know, the indie hacker world, the software engineer centric design, which is often not very much designed at all. You probably know that I recently started building something and I really don’t think I have any design skills. Or at least I don’t have the mental models to express, you know, what I want things to be like or what I wanted the kind of the conduit between the wish and the reality to be like overtime, right? How can I make these things happen? And I think a lot of indie hackers that are very technical just coders but not much designs because other than knowing how to implement like tailwind CSS, right? Which is kind of pre designed UI components. They struggle at some point with making things not just better but making things usable at all. Let’s maybe establish kind of a baseline. What do you think is the most helpful thing for an indie hacker to consider when it comes to UX? Not just UI, not just the interface, but actual UX, the experience of the user in their product?
Nick Groeneveld 8:30
I think the number one thing, by accent, we talked about that, you know, a few days earlier, I think when this comes out, I call it the aha moment. And I think you call it time to first value. Yeah, I think that’s the thing. People are busy. They don’t have time to read a, you know, a big wall of text or to fill out an endless form of different things. They want to have this oh, this is useful. That realization like wow, I’m onto something here. They want to have that as quickly as possible. So that’s the time to first value part. But then the aha moment is like, well, what’s that thing going to be? And I think that’s a real UX job. Like it’s pre figma. You know, it’s pretty tailwinds UI. It’s really thinking things through first. And people think that takes a long time, but it doesn’t really have to take a long time, you know.
Arvid Kahl 9:33
I think there’s a common issue with with products like this, that where people eventually stop and think, hmm, what is this about? What should this be about? Like everything leading up to that moment it’s just like adding one more thing on top of it, right? That’s kind of my developer experience. I build something that I think is okay. And then I add a feature and I add a feature and I add a feature. They’re not very much connected. They’re just independent and then over time, it grows into this weird like blob that is shapeless and not really stringent. So do you have any concept of first off how you can stop yourself from just adding, adding, adding and then maybe if you haven’t stopped yourself, if you’ve built this weird amalgamation of everything, how can you zoom out? How can you zoom out and kind of break things down into usable parts again?
Nick Groeneveld 10:24
I always hope when something like this happens that I’m involved very early. For one of the startups that I’m working with, I was lucky enough to be there from the start. So when you see the first design, it’s very empty and some would even consider it boring. Like there’s nothing going on here. But that’s because I know that over time, all these, you know, Lego bricks are added on top and I want to make sure it’s a nice looking tower instead of some sort of blob, you know and so it’s very hard to untangle when it’s already like a mess. Especially because when you’re the owner or the founder, like you’re very attached to your baby, you know, it’s hard to well just take away an arm or leg, you know. I’m like, I want to build it up again. Usually, what helps is to have a designer, me or someone else just look at it. And a few tweaks would help. I think a very important one is just consistency in margins and visual hierarchy, like at some point, it becomes a big wall of text. And that’s just too much. It really overloads the users like, I don’t know where to look, you know, is this part important or that part? And then the founder’s like, oh, everything is important. But that’s usually not really the case. Like there’s like a main thing. And then a few supportive things. And really sitting down with a founder or if it’s a bigger company, like someone who’s in charge of that part of a startup really helps to well, I don’t want to use negative words anyway. But to really educate them and to take them by the end and help them through that process of this thing is important. And this is only a little bit important. So let’s hide it behind, you know, a second view or something like that.
Arvid Kahl 12:27
That is a very interesting observation. And I think that the fact that you call it like to, I’m paraphrasing, I guess, but what I hear you say is, the founders think everything is important. Because for them, all the data has a purpose, right? Nothing is adjacent, even though it might not be as important, it still is something that they want to have there. My recent experience with this has been in Podscan, like I have these notifications, where I show people where their mentions of their keywords have just been found in some podcast somewhere. And to me, obviously, it’s super important that the name of the podcast is there and the name of the episode so they know exactly what the context is. And then when the transcript that is and then when it was found and you know, where the link goes and all these things, but probably the fact that there is a mention of your name, click here is almost enough because you know, like that is the first initial trigger. For me, it’s hard to understand that and see all these other things are also important, but not as critical. So do you have any idea how I can fool myself without the involvement of a designer, which we’ll get to that part, like working with somebody, right? But as somebody who has to juggle all these hats, right? The developer hat, the designer, the marketing, the operations hat, how I can teach myself to or re educate myself, as you said, to prioritize these moments, these kind of hierarchy based structures more?
Nick Groeneveld 13:59
I would make a good boring old school list of things that you want to put on a certain page. Let’s say for Podscan you already mentioned, I think you know, I see all the tweets and I really have to refrain myself from feedback, feedback, feedback, help, help and help. I have a lot of ideas there. But maybe first check if there aren’t any duplicates. Like I think you had a timestamp in multiple places. But if you have a list, like unsorted list of all the things that you want to display on a page, like everything that’s potentially useful for a user. And then I would use like 123, like extremely important, somewhat important and not really important. And then without really thinking about well, I have a lot of ones now. Let’s do with two next. Don’t think about that. Just write what makes sense to you behind everything you want to display and then you have like three buckets, like the ones, the twos and the threes. Hopefully, you don’t have too many ones. If you have too many ones and well, everything’s important, that’s going to be a mess. Users will be like overstimulated and I don’t want to use this anymore. Let’s look at a competitor or let’s not look at anything at all. Well, if that’s the case, then you can maybe do the same exercise for only the bucket of ones, you know, really be critical about it. But hopefully, it’s a pyramid like a few ones, a little bit more twos and a lot of threes then, you know, like okay, everything that’s a one, I want to display right away. And then the twos are maybe behind the show more collapsible thing. And then the threes, they can be behind like settings or show or like really buried somewhere. It’s not really important. I think that’s a very good way to do it even better way. And I know you’re talking to users already, like I think that’s super important. I was very happy to see that you were doing that already. You can let your users do it as well like in the UX, it’s the card sorting exercise, like you can do it in Miro or Figjam or any of these collaborative tools where you make all the sticky notes. And all day, you know, within a sticky you write features or things to show and then you let them sort it, put it into groups. And in that case, it doesn’t have to be 123. You can leave it all out and let them decide like, how would you group this even? And but that’s more like you have different tiers in this. How far you want to go. Like it can be super simple, like you’re doing it. And then you have like user testing and card sorting. But that also depends on like, are you just an indie hacker on your own? Or do you have funding like VC or already MRR? Like, you know, that really plays a role and how far you want to go.
Arvid Kahl 17:07
Yeah. And it also plays a role in how much time or how much capacity, let’s just use that word. You have for these kind of exercises. Because when I think about this and I’ve been talking, like you said to users and ask them certain questions, trying not to lead too many of these questions, right? To give them the opportunity to explain themselves without me putting thoughts in their minds. But that stuff for somebody who has this vision of truth, right? I want this to be the thing and now tell me how I can make it up. But talking to people
Nick Groeneveld 17:38
I have something to say about that as well maybe.
Arvid Kahl 17:40
Oh, well, what is it? What what do you want to say?
Nick Groeneveld 17:43
It’s I think important for you or anyone talking to users to know if you’re a designer or a founder or developer. I’ve done this myself as well. So I’m not trying to be like the preacher like you have to do it like this. But users don’t really care about what it looks or what you use. So let’s say there’s too much info, like too much text, like we’re already talking about that one. I’ve done this myself. And I’ve seen other people say like, well, would a list help? Well, how about a table maybe or a graph? And then the users are like, well, I don’t care. I just want to see where I mentioned. I don’t care what you’re doing. So I would try and just listen to what’s going wrong. And I hope they get very, like passionate and emotional about I don’t like this and I just want to do that. And then, you know, just lean into that, what they’re saying like, oh, really? Why do you want to do it? And what would it bring to you? And don’t mention any solutions. That’s something to you or maybe to a designer, like this is what they want. And then you can think about well, maybe we should try this and then you can return to them and show it to them and test with them. And then you know if they’re less angry and more or if they’re happier. And you know you’re on the right track, but don’t bother your users with well, how about a table? How about a drop down menu?
Arvid Kahl 19:16
Yeah, that’s the kind of the engineering thinking right? Like, okay, this is the solution to your problem that they just have, but you really want to discover the actual problem more and better, right? Yeah, that is hard for me. Like I’m so solution centric and my thinking as a developer and also as a writer, I’m always trying to help like, by telling people what to do. It takes some effort to take that back and just explore the topic to give people room to find their own solutions. That’s complicated for solopreneurs who are pressed for time. And let’s just be frank like bootstrappers who are pressed for money, they need the conversion, they need to make it better. So people pay them for the product. It’s hard to take that step back. How much time would you invest in this if we were like a bootstrapped solopreneur somewhere starting with your business? You may have a couple of users. Let’s use Podscan for an example. I think I’m now at $80 MRR. It’s MRR.
Nick Groeneveld 20:09
Congratulations!
Arvid Kahl 20:08
It’s not necessarily, right? It’s more than zero. Thank you. But it’s definitely not profitable yet. I’m at a point where I need to ramp this up. How much time should I be spending on talking to customers? And maybe in addition to that, how should I do it? Like, should I go and zoom and watch them use their screen? Should I go visit them? Like, what’s the ideal situation for somebody working from home like building this maybe on the side to get started with these kind of exploratory conversations?
Nick Groeneveld 20:37
I think what really works for you is that a lot of people know you, I think. I think you have a lot of reach a lot of followers a big audience. So I think you can get people on a video call quite easily. I think that’s a big advantage for you. Otherwise, I always want to keep things small at first, right? Yes, it’s super important. But you still have to build the thing as well, you know and I would like to make it like a continuous feedback thing, like what works now. All that’s good to know. And then you add a feature. But that can change the whole thing. Like, if you decide to put something like on top of the first page, everything else moves down. Maybe the things you knew before, they don’t really apply anymore. So maybe like, once a week or once per two weeks, like talk to maybe three people. And they can be the same people. I know you can give them like a longer trial version or a big discount, like in return. And I think that would be the best way. I really want to keep it simple.
Arvid Kahl 21:58
That’s very interesting. And it clicked into my mind just now because the people that I talked to initially, like several of them, are also the people who actually subscribed because like they told me something. I helped them get to that, like I didn’t do what they told me to build. I built the thing that I figured would help them best at what they wanted to do. So that was kind of the abstraction there. But they were also the ones that I feel I have the most connection with. So obviously, I will talk to them again. Yeah, that makes sense. That’s also one of the things that I as somebody who hasn’t read much UX literature or hasn’t been around a lot of UX designers or product managers or people who really understand this kind of more human approach to all things, right? I’m very technical, talking to the same person over and over again to see your progress from their perspective. It is kind of sad, but this blows my mind, you know. Like, that’s just having this as a framework, having this as a tool is really helpful to think about, like the progression of your business. Thank you for sharing this. That’s really cool. That’s really useful.
Nick Groeneveld 23:05
And what’s also great when you do it like that is those people, they feel very involved. They feel like a part of Podscan at some point like, wow, did you see that feature? I made it happen. Well, you developed it, but they feel like it’s their own thing. And they will probably be a subscriber for a long time. They will feel so involved that they will keep giving you feedback, which is good for you. And they are very likely to bring more people on board as well because they are so happy with the whole user experience of how things are going on having a handful of those people I think is very good for business. That’s something you have to consider as a UX designer as well. You know, the you of user, you know. I was in UX boot camps and schools, it’s all about user first but sometimes even user only. Well, that’s not true. It’s still a business. And now having finding like the middle ground between the business and the user, I think that’s like a UX superpower. Like if you can do it that way.
Arvid Kahl 24:18
Yeah, I think finding middle ground between business and the other thing is always a problem in entrepreneurship or in solopreneurship, right? And people building their business as they build the business Iike building the product as they build the business, right? These are two very distinct things. Product, you can lose yourself and you can be in your basement, right? And build it for months and months when the business is nowhere to be found. On the other side, you could try to drum up a business but you don’t have a broad product that you need to balance these kinds of things. One thing that you just mentioned is very interesting and I experienced something similar with Feedback Panda, the company that I sold a couple years ago. The people the customers that I talked to very early and that I helped very quickly and built the thing that they needed or fixed the bug that they found or you know, just helped them in some meaningful and measurable quick way. They were the ones that stuck with us the longest. They had very high retention. And the thing you just mentioned that I want to kind of drill into, they will also evangelists for the products, right? They took great efforts to talk and fight people talk to and fight people on Facebook, who weren’t the kind of shit talking on product, like they were defending us when we were sleeping. Like that’s the kind of relationship that came out of that. So community is really important to build. And that’s the way to build it, right? You can build goodwill in your community by building goodwill with individual people. That is a very interesting point. In a way this kind of customer service interaction is a UX, a business UX interaction, right? That’s an experience there. I’m just trying to highlight this because UX is not just the interface,. US is everything beyond it as well, right?
Nick Groeneveld 25:54
Yeah. Many designers, myself included, are very passionate about labels, I think a little bit too passionate. I call myself a designer but people are looking for UX designers. So I still have to put on the UX mask and call myself UX designer as well because I still need to pay the bills. But I consider myself much more than just a UX designer. But you are right about that part. Like it depends on the customer as well. Like what they’re looking for, like sometimes a shiny landing page is enough. They already know exactly what they want to do. And it doesn’t really matter if they’re correct or not. But at least they think they know what they want to do. And you know, just a UI project. Like here’s a shiny landing page, nice gradient interfund and other the basic stuffs, it’s all there. That’s sometimes it’s enough. But I like the holistic approach more like I’ve done enough of light development myself. And I’ve talked to enough developers and business people that I know it’s more than just UX. There’s a much bigger pie. And I’m only a small bit of the whole thing. But I do like to focus on moving the whole party forward. Like, it’s more than just design. That’s very true.
Arvid Kahl 26:40
Yeah. So from, I like this description as it’s like a small, like a crumble of the big pie, right? Like a little part. And that’s how I think about like hiring people to help me. I started with little crumbles, like our experience, right? We started with thumbnails and then over time, got into editing. And now you’re kind of helping me figure out what to even write about and what to talk to who to talk to all these things. There’s a cascade of the part of your pie just gets bigger and bigger right over time. But let’s start with the crumble, where does somebody who has no clue about design UX design and who wants to talk to somebody like you, but not hire you for 40 hours a week? Like, what is that progression? Where does it start? Where do they even go? Like, where would people find you in particular, but also find people that can help them that understand their language? Right? Where does a developer go to find somebody who speaks their language?
Nick Groeneveld 28:21
Well, if you can start with something really small like, for example, I even have a design checking service, you know. It’s on the ask a designer thing that I that I have. And then you just, well, we do a design check. And you probably have one question, you’re stuck somewhere. And it’s just while you’re asking a designer, that’s what the name is about. Pretty obvious, right? And while we sit down, we can be asynchronously a bit again, meaning it can be in a meeting as well. And then usually 30 or 45 minutes later, then the person who’s stuck, they’re like oh, that’s very helpful. And then they’re super happy. And then they can, can move on, you know and that’s, I think, very accessible because it’s a one meeting and one challenge fixed.
Arvid Kahl 29:16
That I love because it is very specific, right? And that you have to like, if you are capable of solving this specific problem, then I know you will also be capable of solving the bigger problems that are kind of compounding into these things. That is cool. I like this, ask a designer. That’s cool. Is that something that you just build for yourself? Or is that a business? Or is that like, a kind of a lead generator for you? Like how does that work?
Nick Groeneveld 29:41
Both actually, you know, if that design check in if it helps, you know, people like to do more things that are helpful. That’s my UX strategy, usually also with, you know, in a big corporate job and where everyone’s you know, they don’t really want a lot of UX. But if you give them one like gold nugget, they’re like, I want more of this stuff, you know. So the design check in, now that’s one fix, but then, you know, you can do a full day where I’m there just, you know, eight hours straight. We can do everything design related, if that’s needed. And then it goes bigger and bigger and bigger until it’s, you know, 40 hours a week or productized service thing with all the things that you have. So that’s the lead magnet side of things. You can start small, you know. I’m even thinking about making products to start even smaller for people with less budget. But it’s also a business like, I’m going to put everything on the website that I can do for you. Thumbnail design is also on the website. It’s what you mentioned, I have like the perfect thing in my head and I’m building it myself to learn a bit of development as well. Yeah, so it’s both.
Arvid Kahl 31:06
That’s a cool idea. I love this, like do you have a vision for this to go even bigger, like maybe into kind of a SaaS platform or maybe even a marketplace? Like that kind of, you know, MentorCruise is a kind of human to human marketplace for people who look for mentors. Do you envision building something along those lines for designers?
Nick Groeneveld 31:25
Yeah, I had a lot of things in mind.
Arvid Kahl 31:28
Okay
Nick Groeneveld 31:29
That’s what I like about, you know, how my career has been going so far is that it’s like, it’s very foggy in front of me, like I know the next step. And I have like, a fake vision of where I want to go. But most things that I do happen by accident, you know, because I was an icon designer and I can do visual design as well. It’s part of my toolkit and all my other tools that I have, but I wasn’t actively searching to become a YouTube thumbnail designer for anyone, you know, for you or anyone else. But it happens anyway. And that’s a recurring theme for anything that I do. So for the website, for example, I was also thinking about a, like a credit system, you know, where you can just buy like 10 design tokens or credits or whatever. And then well, do you want the landing page like a basic one? Well, that’s five and then, you know, it’s like the opposite of a subscription. Like it’s pay once and then, you know, it’s like prepaid, you know like old school phone cards, you know. And but that requires like users and so that’s like, the SaaS thing that I had in mind but and multiple things. But that’s evolving as I go.
Arvid Kahl 32:50
Okay, that’s cool. What do you think about the concepts? Like, what is it Brad Williams says design joy? These kinds of design as a service things. Is that something that you’re interested in? Or how does that work?
Nick Groeneveld 33:04
Well, I am well, it’s a retainer in a way. And that’s very old school way of working. You know there’s a lot of hype there, of course. And at first it was a bit weary, like well, how does this work? And you know, some people they claim, like I have so many active subscribers and then I was doing the math like, well that doesn’t fit in a day. But Brad Williams, he shared recently, like, out of the 30 that I have like, some of them don’t have any active requests, a few have and then a few others are I’m waiting on feedback. And then it was like, whoa, now I can see the math work, you know and I am building something like that as well. But I want to make it more suitable for my way of working. And so I want to limit the number of people that I take on, as you know, like I really want to focus on the relationship that I have with someone. I don’t like to oh, you want a landing page? Here’s a landing page, goodbye and let’s never talk again, give me your money, you know. I get a lot of motivation out of seeing, like the lines in your YouTube analytics go up like and you being happy with how things are going. That motivates me. So I would probably limit it at two people, you know, maybe three but let’s start with two because I want to focus on things because that’s the big motivator for me. I want to build things.
Arvid Kahl 34:39
That’s really, first of, really nice to hear. I love that you’re kind of buying in to the success of the people you work with. It kind of makes it way less transactional. And that just allows for a relationship to grow. Right? Like just before we hit record, we figured out that we’ve been working for over a year together which is really cool. You’ve done hundreds now of the thumbnails and you’ve edited dozens, soon to be hundreds, I guess as well of the episodes here on this show. And it’s just really nice to know and be able to trust you. We will also talking about that, right? Like my QA, my quality control for the videos is I uploaded and I trust you, that is my QA. And that is something that can only happen because you’ve shown over and over again that you want to make it better. It’s funny, a couple of weeks ago, I had Rox on the show. He is the let’s say ex owner of thumbnailtest.com, right? A tool that we used together to AB test. I think the current owner of thumbnailtest.com reached out to me to ask me if they can feature some of our AP tests of their landing page now.
Nick Groeneveld 35:51
Really?
Arvid Kahl 35:52
Like that’s how it all of this is connected. And I really love this, right? It’s kind of these in our community, the tools that exist and the people that work together, we know each other. We trust each other. And we trust each other’s work and each other’s commitment to the work. And I can see this very strongly in you obviously also in Rox and the people involved in this community, but very much in you. And again, I’m gonna use this episode to just say thank you this whole time for you being awesome and for you doing wonderful work. Knowing that you also do it for others, I love the idea that you limit the amount of people that you work with. And I think Brad Williams is also trying this in a way, right? Like, even though there’s a lot of people there, he still doesn’t like infinitely scale this because I think the big discussion on Hacker News when it was posted the vitriol that came out of people and the negativity was focused on this, right? You dilute your capacity to build something meaningful if you use too many people. So it’s nice to know. Do you generally do this? Do you always have like a max of people do you work with at any given point?
Nick Groeneveld 36:56
Well, I have more of a lifestyle goal. I don’t need like 50k a month. I don’t need it. It would be nice as well. Everyone’s going to say of course. You know, I want to spend time with my family. I have a daughter just turned one last week, you know. And I work from home a lot because I really made that choice on purpose. And sometimes I look at a very nice picture of her and I see the timestamp. It’s like five just past 5pm. And I’m like, well, I would be in traffic if I wouldn’t work from home, you know and that makes me very happy. Like I’m building this lifestyle for myself. Like, I have numbers in my mind. Like if I can reach this number, I can build the life that I want. And that’s very family focused, do what you want kind of approach while working with people like you like and I mean, the way we’re working together, that’s something I enjoy a lot. So I need about two or three artists. I can call it like that. And that’s enough for me. You know, I don’t need to become a millionaire or something.
Arvid Kahl 38:18
I love this. I love that you used the word enough because that was gonna be where I was gonna go with this. It seems you have enough. And that is rare, man. That is rare to find somebody who’s like no matter how much money I make, if I don’t spend time with my family and I’m just projecting here, but that’s what I hear, then it’s not enough. You know? And if I just get to spend time with my family, it doesn’t matter how much money I make as long as it’s, you know, sustaining the life that I have. That sounds like a very reasonable approach to life.
Nick Groeneveld 38:49
Yeah, yeah, I have this dream of having the family Minecraft server at some point, you know, the Sunday afternoon and I don’t have enough children to make a raiding party to go into like
Arvid Kahl 39:04
Yes
Nick Groeneveld 39:05
Yes, that’s true. Yeah, we’re one DPS short.
Arvid Kahl 39:08
That’s awesome. Yeah, but those are life goals, right? I mean, being a millionaire and all that in our community, it’s like celebrated as this massive thing, but the actual life goal is having enough DPS.
Nick Groeneveld 39:26
Yeah, I feel very much part of the community but I’m still like the strange one there because I don’t have the digital nomads dreams at all, you know. I don’t think you have either right here.
Arvid Kahl 39:40
I never had. I’ve always been mesmerized by people who would go to Bali or would go to you know, all these places in the world and hang out with other cool indie hackers and build stuff together and then travel, travel travel. But I’m not a traveling kind of person. I mean, you know, like try taking a studio and traveling with that. I want to build a place in which I can just work, maybe that’s the thing. And I don’t know how that works for you. I would like to know about your office setup, your work setup. Like, do you as a person working from home, do you have like a separate place where you just go and you can commit to the work? Is that how you set up as well?
Nick Groeneveld 40:18
Yes. Yes, I have my home office. And it’s very much like a work in progress. And to make that all happen, I probably need for a short while about five or six Arvids. That’s, yeah, I can close the door behind me because I think that’s very important especially, you know, after all these lock downs and stuff like that, I was still living in a smaller apartment. So I was working from the kitchen table. And then at the end of the day, I had to slide like the laptop and all this stuff to decide. And then I was having dinner. I could still look to the side and see work. You know, I was never really at home. But now it’s my commute. It’s walking down the stairs.
Arvid Kahl 41:06
That’s also the same for me. It’s like literally the same for me. I work in the basement and my commute is really from the coffee machine upstairs with the mug into my office and then I’m at work. And when I leave work, I’m out of work, right? I’m done with work.
Nick Groeneveld 41:18
It’s important. Yeah
Arvid Kahl 41:20
How do you I mean, you work from home. Obviously, that means you probably don’t hang out with people in offices too much. It kind of feels like you sometimes might if people want you to but how do you find community like people like us people like you, people who are skilled professionals or just interested in the same thing? How do you deal with that now that you work from home?
Nick Groeneveld 41:42
Well, I am considering, you know, like a few streets down the block, there’s a new office building for like small businesses. They have one person spots for hire like in a bigger room. I’m considering going there just to be with other people as well. But I don’t really miss it, to be honest. But I do talk to a lot of people, virtually mostly. But that’s also because most of the people I work with, they’re not from the Netherlands like I am. I looked at my client list recently. And it’s last week, I worked with another Dutch person for the first time in, I think in five months, to be honest. So I’m very much like globally working. And yeah, we already established. I’m not much of a traveler as well. So it’s hard to meet each other in real life.
Arvid Kahl 42:47
Yeah, I wonder when we’re going to meet for the very first time, you know, like how many years it will take us to get to that point.
Nick Groeneveld 42:54
I’m in Germany every now and then. I mean, I can drive for an hour east and I’m there.
Arvid Kahl 43:02
Well, I’m in Canada. So I need to jump like all across the pond to go visit family, which I also don’t do much. Like I’m so settled here in the studio, right? I’m so settled in what I do and how I do it, that I can barely travel. It’s very interesting because like the whole indie hacker community is very focused on the Nomad thing and like being very flexible and independent in the geographical sense. But the moment you start building something, either a family or a business or something bigger, like a community, you kind of have to settle in some way. I found this to be something that even Pieter Levels was talking about, like being a slomad, right? It’s like you just slow down, you’re kind of you can just jump from place to place if you have something to lose, right? If you have processes and stuff in a yeah, and a family makes us obviously even more complicated.
Nick Groeneveld 43:53
I feel a very strong sense of responsibility, especially after becoming a parent. I’m like well, if I’m not there, you know, it sounds a bit harsh, but the little thing over there is going to die. Right? So I have to provide and make sure it’s all going very well. And I don’t feel like traveling the world really fits that stage at this moment, you know and I’m okay with that. You know, I don’t really mind. I enjoy the family time too much.
Arvid Kahl 44:24
Yeah, I love your priorities. I really enjoy that you very consciously strategized around your lifestyle design. That is really cool. And obviously, this lends itself pretty well to being somebody who helps other people find their own priorities in their business in their UI in the UX, right? It feels like this is kind of a tool of the trade to just be aware of what things are and where they should be going. That was really, really cool.
Nick Groeneveld 44:50
You know, I mentioned I’m one DPS short for full party. You know, it’s like in our way of working like you’re the main tank and I’m just support. I’m just healing. You decide where you’re going. I’m just making sure you’re getting there in one piece.
Arvid Kahl 45:09
Yeah. But without your work, I would die, right? The loss would just slap me a couple of times that I’d be dead. So that’s a very, I love this analogy. Obviously, being a gamer myself, I think that is what business becomes, right? In the beginning, you’re kind of this Paladin who can both tank and DPS and heal at the same time, right? It’s kind of how that happens. You just have to do it all at the same time. But over time, you start going into one of these directions and you find other people to take up the spots, people who are better equipped to tank better equipped to heal, right? Better equipped to deal damage in the vernacular of a gamer. I think that’s a very interesting observation. I think also an observation that a lot of us indie hacker dev nerds can really understand. Right? You know, what a raiding party is and you know, like how it works. And oh, that you can only defeat the boss together.
Nick Groeneveld 46:00
Yeah, that’s an important one. I was, you know, this analogy came to me while walking just before this chat. I was like, wait a minute, I’m a healer. But that’s also a UX thing. Like you have to talk the language of the people you’re working with like, if I’m all about shiny gradients and all this stuff. And you’re like looking like with big question marks in your eyes. Like what? Like, that doesn’t really work. I mean, that’s super important.
Arvid Kahl 46:32
Well, if you’ve shown anything over the last like three quarters of an hour, you have shown that you speak the language of indie hackers and solopreneurs, who may not know much about design, but who are interested in making things better. And I would very much appreciate for anybody listening and everybody watching this to check out your work. Where do you want people to go to find you both to find where they can book you to help but also to find you and your journey. Like to find you as you become more of yourself and build the businesses that you want to build? Where do people go?
Nick Groeneveld 46:32
I’m mostly on Twitter. And it’s @ToolboxOfDesign because the designer’s toolbox was too long. So I had to get creative. Like, that’s where you can find me. And the ask a designer thing that I mentioned is askadesigner.io just because I’m in that community.
Arvid Kahl 47:07
Yeah, that’s right.
Nick Groeneveld 47:21
And you can see me building it in public. It’s a version 0.1 of what I want it to be. But if you want to see a designer try and build stuff, that’s the place to go.
Arvid Kahl 47:49
That’s awesome. Thank you so much for sharing all your insights. It’s been really, really nice. It’s always nice chatting with you, obviously. We do this occasionally. But it’s nice to learn from you. That is really helpful. Thank you so much for sharing everything you shared today. It was really, really nice.
Nick Groeneveld 48:03
Thanks for having me.
Arvid Kahl 48:04
Of course!
And that’s it for today. I will now briefly thank my sponsor acquire.com. Imagine this, you’re a founder who’s built a really solid SaaS product, you acquired all those customers and everything is generating really consistent monthly recurring revenue. That’s the dream of every SaaS founder, right? The problem is, you’re not growing for whatever reason, maybe it’s lack of skill or lack of focus or play in lack of interest, you don’t know. You just feel stuck in your business with your business. What should you do? Well, the story that I would like to hear is that you buckled down, you reignited the fire and you started working on the business, not just in the business and all those things you did, like audience building and marketing and sales and outreach. They really helped you to go down this road, six months down the road, making all that money. You tripled your revenue and you have this hyper successful business. That is the dream. The reality, unfortunately, is not as simple as this. And the situation that you might find yourself in is looking different for every single founder who’s facing this crossroad. This problem is common, but it looks different every time. But what doesn’t look different every time is a story that here just ends up being one of inaction and stagnation. Because the business becomes less and less valuable over time and then eventually completely worthless if you don’t do anything. So if you find yourself here, already at this point or you think your story is likely headed down a similar road, I would consider a third option. And that is selling your business on acquire.com. Because you capitalizing on the value of your time today is a pretty smart move. It’s certainly better than not doing anything. And acquire.com is free to list. They’ve helped hundreds of founders already, just go check it out at try.acquire.com/arvid, it’s me and see for yourself if this is the right option for you, your business at this time. You might just want to wait a bit and see if it works out half a year from now or a year from now. Just check it out. It’s always good to be in the know.
Thank you for listening to the Bootstrapped Founder today. I really appreciate that. You can find me on Twitter @arvidkahl. And you’ll find my books and my Twitter course there too. If you want to support me and the show, please subscribe to my YouTube channel and get the podcast in your podcast player of choice, whatever that might be. Do let me know. It’d be interesting to see and leave a rating and a review by going to (http://ratethispodcast.com/founder). It really makes a big difference if you show up there because then this podcast shows up in other people’s feeds. And that’s, I think where we all would like it to be just helping other people learn and see and understand new things. Any of this will help the show. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for listening. Have a wonderful day and bye bye.
