0:00:00Welcome to Under the Radar, a show about independent iOS app development.
0:00:04I'm Marco Arment.
0:00:05And I'm David Smith.
0:00:06Under the Radar, it's usually not longer than 30 minutes, so let's get started.
0:00:09So recently, as listeners of ATP might know, my family purchased our favorite restaurant
0:00:16to save it from possible worse fates.
0:00:18And so we have been spending a lot of time basically getting that transferred over and
0:00:24getting it ready.
0:00:25And we are not day-to-day managers of it.
0:00:29Fortunately, the staff will do that.
0:00:31But there has been a lot of work for us in kind of transition and setup.
0:00:35And so as a result of that, I have been doing almost no work on Overcast for maybe two months
0:00:45or so.
0:00:45That has put me in kind of an interesting position of, first of all, like, kind of every day kind
0:00:51of just crossing my fingers and hoping, like, I hope nothing breaks today.
0:00:54And I think there's also been a little bit of kind of, you know, guilt that I
0:00:59that I should be working on it.
0:01:00But, you know, that's maybe that's a topic for a different episode.
0:01:03And don't worry, everybody.
0:01:05I'm coming back to it.
0:01:06It's just just a question of getting things, you know, finishing up all the transfers and
0:01:10set up processes so the staff can do their jobs.
0:01:14So in the meantime, it kind of got us thinking, like, designing or considering self-sufficiency
0:01:22in our products and our apps and our services so that, you know, right now the reason I've
0:01:27been able to mostly not work on Overcast for a couple of months is the result of having built
0:01:34a lot of headroom into things, having designed things to not need frequent or constant daily
0:01:40interaction and for the very few things that do need, you know, regular interaction, making
0:01:47those things as few and simple and fast as possible.
0:01:51You know, I have spanned in my career lots of different roles and product roles from needing
0:01:58constant attention, like, you know, like at the peak of Tumblr, like most of my time at
0:02:03Tumblr, I was needed to be constantly on call because the growth of the service was so strong
0:02:10and we had so relatively limited resources and staff that, like, I was constantly on call
0:02:17to deal with servers that were exceeding capacities and breaking and falling over and failing and
0:02:22errors and things like that.
0:02:23And over the course of my career since then, you know, Tumblr was kind of the peak of that,
0:02:29of that, you know, kind of stress and, and, you know, high stakes environment.
0:02:33And then Instapaper after that was like a little bit less because it was just way less traffic.
0:02:39The servers were still a little bit needy, but, you know, way less traffic.
0:02:42And then, you know, I had to often deal with, with Instapaper, like the article parser is
0:02:48now broken on some popular website and I have to go make a, you know, make a definition or
0:02:54rule change to fix that on some other website.
0:02:56So there was constant need there and Instapaper, I had a lot of support needs as well.
0:03:00And then Overcast, having learned from Tumblr and then Instapaper, I designed a lot of
0:03:06Overcast to not need nearly as much manual interaction from me.
0:03:12And so there's been, you know, different design decisions in place there, different feature
0:03:16designs, different expectations, and just a whole different kind of app.
0:03:20And I've kind of landed in a place now where I'm still running servers and a decent amount
0:03:26of them.
0:03:27I think I have 25 servers.
0:03:28Like I'm still running servers, but things are much more stable now than they used to be.
0:03:36So I'm wondering, Dave, like, how have you found your journey through that and what have
0:03:40you found to be helpful there?
0:03:41Yeah, because I think this is certainly something that I have learned the hard way.
0:03:45I think in some ways, the same as you, where you, if you don't think about this kind of self-sufficiency
0:03:53or the degree to which you are putting yourself or some person specifically into an essential
0:04:00role of your app, eventually that is going to come back and bite you because there will
0:04:05inevitably, and in some ways that maybe it makes me think of how, like, it is so easy in
0:04:10the early days of designing and building something to not think about the downsides of success where
0:04:18it is, you know, you start to think about like, oh, well, I just wanted to succeed or exist in
0:04:23the first place.
0:04:24I don't think about, well, what if it exists and exists 10 years into the future and is going
0:04:30to be something that is going to, you know, is what I'm doing sustainable?
0:04:33Like maybe it will be in the short term, but it won't be in the long term.
0:04:37Like I think the most, the biggest place I ran into this was when I launched Feed Wrangler.
0:04:40Gosh, this is probably like, I don't even know, that was 10, 15 years ago, a long time,
0:04:44which was an RSS syncing service.
0:04:47And it's like, I launched it and didn't necessarily, like, it was initially built just in a very
0:04:54basic, simple way.
0:04:55And it was more successful than I thought it would be, which was a great problem to have,
0:05:00but meant that I had architected a lot of the backend of that system to not, you know, to be
0:05:06running close to its thresholds and to be using things in such a way that eventually, like, as
0:05:12you screw, the whole thing would just start to fall apart.
0:05:14And I was just constantly in there getting notifications, you know, oh, this service is
0:05:19down, this service is down, or this aspect of something is above, you know, the CPU load that
0:05:23I had an alert for.
0:05:24And like, it was just constantly, I was involved.
0:05:27I was the linchpin.
0:05:28I was the thing that was holding, like, I was the duct tape holding the whole system together.
0:05:33And that was a terrible place to be.
0:05:35That was not a great situation because it was not sustainable.
0:05:38Because if I, if it meant that I, you know, I took a couple of days away from the system
0:05:43and something went wrong, very bad things happen.
0:05:46And in the case of Reed Wrangler is a sort of, I guess now a famous story where I went,
0:05:50you know, spent a couple of days in a cabin in the woods and, you know, 10 minutes after
0:05:54I left cell phone reception, it fell over.
0:05:57And for two or three days, it was completely down and it started off, people were grumpy
0:06:01and then people were worried about my safety.
0:06:03And like, it was, it was a whole situation, right?
0:06:05Because I had built this thing that was, it didn't have margin, didn't have headroom, didn't
0:06:10have this, you know, sort of was able to be sustained by my effort.
0:06:15And that put me in a bad position.
0:06:17And in the case of Reed Wrangler, eventually I just solved it with money where I went and went
0:06:22from shared hosting to dedicated hosting that was substantially more expensive, but gave
0:06:27me so much headroom that I didn't have to be, you know, it's like my, the servers could
0:06:33deal with my lousy code in that way that made it sustainable.
0:06:37But I think in the same time on iOS and on the apps that I've built, there's an element
0:06:43where I intentionally now try my best to build and structure my apps so that they don't rely
0:06:52on me for anything.
0:06:54And this has been very, it was very, you know, there's situations where like, you know, when
0:06:58Widgetsmith had its moment and massively sort of had this massive explosive growth in users,
0:07:04the, I was incredibly glad that no part of that app had a server component at that point.
0:07:11There was nothing it did that required something other than locally on the user's device.
0:07:17And if you can push and maintain, you know, the user's device as the extent of largely what
0:07:22you're doing, there's a lot less things that can go wrong.
0:07:25There's a lot of fewer things that are going to come back to bite you.
0:07:29But subsequently, as I've been building out features or building things, you inevitably find
0:07:35yourself in this place where you're like, Ooh, I could do that.
0:07:38But that would require me to build a server or to become responsible for something or to deal
0:07:42with user data in a way that is different.
0:07:45And that is a tension that now I have this feeling of like, if it, you know, I'm pushing
0:07:51as much logic, as much thoughtfulness I can into the client, into the iPhone app itself,
0:07:57do as little as I can otherwise, because otherwise I do become essential.
0:08:01I do have a role to play or I have a responsibility to play.
0:08:05And that is a dangerous thing to do because life is going to change.
0:08:08Life is going to come and you'll be seasonal.
0:08:12Like right now you're in a season where you are running a restaurant and setting that up.
0:08:16And as you say, like, that's not going to be probably forever, but it's going to be for
0:08:19some amount of time.
0:08:20And I've definitely had periods, you know, for health or personal or family reasons where
0:08:25I have to step back from work for extended periods for, you know, for weeks or a couple
0:08:29of months at the longest I think I've run into.
0:08:31And in those periods, it's really awkward if you can't go on leave because you're an
0:08:37indie, like you don't have this big staff or team who could just step in and, you know,
0:08:43pull up the slack.
0:08:43In theory, maybe you could hire someone to be you, but like, that's really awkward and
0:08:48complicated and difficult to do, especially if the reason you're taking this break is unplanned
0:08:54and awkward and you're not in a great, you know, physical and health, emotional, whatever
0:08:59state, like there's reasons why planning for this ahead of time can be really helpful.
0:09:03And so, yeah, it's like it is the self-sufficiency aspect is something that I am so grateful that,
0:09:09you know, past me has transitioned into this mindset that I want to not be the linchpin or
0:09:16have any person really be involved in the day-to-day core functions of an app.
0:09:20And as a result, when things come up, when I have to take step back, it's usually totally
0:09:25fine and there's nothing that I need to worry about.
0:09:28I can go off, you know, go to the cabin in the woods for a couple of days now and not
0:09:32be worried that something is going to horribly have, you know, blown up in the meantime because
0:09:36that's just fundamentally how things are engineered.
0:09:39And that took intentional choice as a result, you know, to get to that place.
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0:11:21So I'm kind of thinking, like, when talking about self-sufficiency in apps, I kind of
0:11:25categorize it into a few different types of considerations.
0:11:29So I think number one thing that you want to avoid if you want your app to be reasonably
0:11:33self-sufficient is editorial roles for yourself.
0:11:37And this obviously varies based on the type of app.
0:11:41So, like, in my extreme case, when I was running the magazine, the entire product was the editorial
0:11:47content that had to be put out on a fixed interval.
0:11:50So there was no way for me to run that myself and have it be any kind of self-sufficient
0:11:56and have it tolerate any temporary losses of my time and resources because the whole thing
0:12:01was the editorial content that had to be put out every two weeks.
0:12:04You know, in Overcast, what that could look like would be things like featured podcasts
0:12:11in the directory or any kind of, like, you know, this week we're featuring this or here's
0:12:18a news post that shows up in the app every two weeks or whatever.
0:12:22Like, anything like that, I have intentionally not implemented human editorial content in Overcast
0:12:29because if I did, that would require that I go and make that or do that or process that.
0:12:35And that isn't just typing some things into a text field necessarily.
0:12:39Like, if it's podcast featuring, for instance, for the editorial directory content, that could
0:12:43require things like not only me finding the right podcast to feature, but also maybe, like,
0:12:49writing up a quick blurb or getting a certain sized image or something like that.
0:12:53And all those things would add up.
0:12:55And it's better off if I don't rely on that kind of thing, rely on myself for that kind
0:13:00of thing, because then I would never be able to take a week off from that.
0:13:03That's something I'd have to do all the time.
0:13:05Kind of an offshoot to editorial is anything that is content in your app that is written
0:13:13by humans that becomes visible to other humans.
0:13:18And of course, that's not just writing.
0:13:20It could be, you know, photos or whatever.
0:13:21And you can think if there's any venue for users of your app to write things visible to
0:13:27other users, then you create the possibility for spam and abuse and copyright violation and
0:13:34all sorts of, you know, problems that you'd have to monitor and moderate and deal with and
0:13:39filter.
0:13:40And so, again, in Overcast, there is no user review feature.
0:13:43There's no, I've intentionally left that out.
0:13:46So there is no way in Overcast for users to post or create or write things to other users.
0:13:52That way, I don't have to deal with all of that.
0:13:54Because then there's all sorts of complexity there.
0:13:57You have to deal with not only, you know, what's decent and right, but you have to deal
0:14:00with what's legal.
0:14:01And you have to deal with what's legal and decent and right all over the world in all
0:14:04different languages around the world that you don't speak.
0:14:07So there's lots of potential mess there if you can design your app not to have, you know,
0:14:13the user-facing content made by other users.
0:14:17And then you start looking at other areas of what can make an app sufficient or not.
0:14:23Infrastructure is a big one.
0:14:25And again, we're talking things like servers.
0:14:28But infrastructure can go into other areas, too.
0:14:32Like, where, if your app shows content, where is that content coming from?
0:14:36Do you, does that require some kind of maintenance or special casing ever?
0:14:41You have to deal with that.
0:14:44Then there's business roles of your app.
0:14:47This is like, where does your money come from?
0:14:49Or do you have business relationships that you need to maintain?
0:14:52In my case, Overcast has ad banners for the free version, and I sell those ads on the website.
0:14:58So I have set that up so that every new ad, I have to manually review and approve.
0:15:05So I have then created a job for myself that, like, when people buy an ad, it does not go live
0:15:11immediately.
0:15:11It goes into a queue, and I have to go a couple times a day and go refresh my admin
0:15:16page for that queue and see if there's any ads there and approve any that are there.
0:15:20And if I'm really busy, suppose, say, I'm traveling with family or something, and I'm
0:15:25really busy, I still have to do that.
0:15:27Like, if I don't do that, those ads will just sit there, and the advertisers might get mad
0:15:31if they're sitting there for more than, you know, 12 or 24 hours.
0:15:34Like, they might start to get annoyed.
0:15:35Like, why isn't my ad approved yet?
0:15:37And I don't get money until it's approved also.
0:15:40So there's, you know, I have created a job for myself, but it's a fairly simple one.
0:15:44But that's still, you know, if I was going to be so, you know, disconnected that I couldn't
0:15:51go do that at least once a day, I would have to have somebody do it for me.
0:15:55Like, that's how important that is.
0:15:57And then as you move up the ladder from that, I think the next up is support, like user technical
0:16:03or whatever support.
0:16:04This is probably the biggest one of these, but I think it's the easiest to deal with in the
0:16:14sense that, like, you will get the most support.
0:16:16If you've designed your app to not have editorial, to not have human-to-human contact, to not
0:16:22have, like, tricky or high-maintenance infrastructure, to not have, you know, high business development
0:16:28needs, support will then be the thing that you have to deal with the most.
0:16:33And the good thing is that support is also usually the least pressing and the easiest to outsource.
0:16:39So if you fall behind in your support inbox by three or four days, probably doesn't matter that much.
0:16:46Unless you have, like, serious problems, you're probably okay with that.
0:16:50It's also the easiest thing if you want to hire a service or a person to cover your support for you.
0:16:56That is not, I wouldn't say it's easy in absolute terms.
0:17:00I've had very mixed success there myself, but it is the easiest to outsource of all these other
0:17:06things, typically.
0:17:07So that's something you can cover, you know, somewhat reasonably.
0:17:12And you can also choose or design your app in such a way that it either doesn't need a lot of
0:17:19support, hopefully, or in a slightly worse case, you can do what I do and set expectations to people
0:17:25that you don't really provide support and that most emails will not be answered.
0:17:30And then it becomes more of a kind of feedback or user request channel, which is very valuable in its own way.
0:17:37But it's far less engaging and far less demanding of your constant, never-ending time than support.
0:17:43And then finally, after all of that, if you cover all those things, then you have actually the code of the app,
0:17:50the writing of the app, bug fixes, updates.
0:17:54And that is the best thing to be the thing that's falling on you because that's the part that you can do best and that you can often do on your own time, in your own schedule, in your own priorities.
0:18:08So that part, like we all have to deal with occasional bug fixes, you know, but for the most part, until, you know, the OS changes under our feet, which does happen, but until the OS changes from under our feet, we can usually do that when we are good and ready.
0:18:23And so, you know, in my case with Overcast, I did a whole lot of work on the app during all of last year and the year before.
0:18:30So last year was a massive Overcast year.
0:18:33And because I did all that work, I'm able to take a breather now.
0:18:38Like the app is in a pretty good place now.
0:18:40You know, a lot of the old problems of the old app are gone.
0:18:43Most of the problems with the new app are resolved.
0:18:47And so I'm able to take a brief time off now for a few months while I get all this stuff sorted.
0:18:53And then I'll be able to go back to the app on my own time, most likely this summer, and, you know, get back into the full bandwidth swing of things with the actual bug fixes and improvements and new features and new designs, stuff like that.
0:19:05Yeah, and I think in that, it's like you've made those choices as you work your way up that.
0:19:10And I think the interesting aspect is, A, that's a choice you have to make.
0:19:14And I think it's interesting, it's important probably to understand that if at those, as you're working up that hierarchy, if you have a project or something in mind that requires you to not, you know, to not decline a feature or to deal with something.
0:19:31Like, if you need user-generated content, if you need to deal with moderation or regular updates or business-to-business stuff, like, if that is essential for your thing, in my opinion, it's like, most likely, it's good to keep in mind, you're likely going to need a staff.
0:19:46You're likely going to need people to, or maybe not necessarily a staff, but you are going to need outside help to accomplish those things if they become important.
0:19:55Because it is unlikely or unwise, perhaps moreover, to think that you would be able to just indefinitely manage that yourself.
0:20:03It's like, maybe you don't need the outside support initially until the thing actually happens, but as soon as it actually happens and you've suddenly created this, you know, sort of situation that you exist in, you may need that outside help.
0:20:16You may need that extra thing.
0:20:17And something like on the servers and services side, it's like something I've gotten into a lot more recently is, like, a lot of my services, they rely on these small, dedicated, sort of one-stop APIs that are necessary for something.
0:20:31So, like, in, you know, Pedometer++, there's a thing that does directions for hikes as you walk around.
0:20:37And that could have been, as I was deciding, it's like, do I want to build something like this myself?
0:20:42You know, sort of explore it, and it's, like, technically possible.
0:20:45I could have used OpenStreetMap data and, like, this whole thing, infrastructure I could have built.
0:20:49Instead, I decided, you know, I'm going to get external help with that.
0:20:53And so I use Mapbox, which is a, like, a dedicated API provider who that's what they specialize in.
0:20:59And it's now become, in some ways, their problem that if their service goes down or there's some data change or some aspect of this needs to be updated, it's like they have an expertise and a specialty and a sort of an obligation to some degree to take care of that for me.
0:21:15And I think that has worked out really well for me in a lot of ways where, in some of our things, like, I think both you and I, we tend on our, the actual, you know, the code at the bottom of our app, we have a lot of, tend to exert a fair amount of control on.
0:21:30We don't tend to use a lot of third-party libraries.
0:21:32We tend to roll a lot of things ourself.
0:21:34And I think that's, for both of us, it's kind of worked well insofar as we have a deep understanding and control over that part.
0:21:42And that works well because that part isn't really ongoing in the same way.
0:21:47It's ongoing in the sense that we have to update our app and do bug fixes.
0:21:49But it doesn't have the day-to-day, hour-by-hour sense of that.
0:21:53But as soon as it gets outside of the iPhone itself, I look for other ways that I can do this, that I can get external help.
0:22:01And, you know, last year, I've subsequently hired someone who helps me with a lot of the other things that I can't do because some of these roles are essential and are inevitable and are just part of the deal.
0:22:13But it's important, I think, to understand that where you're going to need external help, that's going to happen.
0:22:20And if you don't think about it ahead of time, eventually the situation will present itself where you will have to think about it.
0:22:27But you can decide how you're going to go.
0:22:30And it's like, for me, I spend money to avoid this.
0:22:33Maybe it's another important aspect of this.
0:22:36One of the things that is easy for me to get sucked into in the early days of being indie was that I was very adverse to spending money on anything.
0:22:47I would always think, well, I can do it myself.
0:22:50I should just do it myself.
0:22:51And while there may have been a very narrow, brief window where that was actually necessary in terms of getting the business up and running,
0:23:01that window was probably a matter of a few months.
0:23:04And I probably held on to that mindset for a few years, that I was holding on to this view that I needed to be involved in all aspects of things and didn't get the help I needed or try to take on things that I probably shouldn't have.
0:23:16And I not treated it like, if I can exchange money for my time, that is usually a pretty good exchange.
0:23:23That is usually a thing that is going to come back to benefit me.
0:23:27And in terms of making my apps more sustainable, it's like as long as the app is generating enough income to do that thing, that to pull me out of the critical path of something, that's a great thing.
0:23:36And if it doesn't, if the business doesn't generate that income to provide that, to externalize that need, it's like the business isn't really a business.
0:23:46Like if it's only held together by me being the duct tape, it's not a business.
0:23:49It's not sustainable and it's not going to live up to the long-term turbulence of life, I suppose.
0:23:55Yeah, I mean, and that's, I think it's really important to recognize that like no matter what you think when you're designing something, when you're, you know, in your 20s, no matter what you think, you will have times where you are needed to, like you need to pull away from things.
0:24:12You need to not be available for various reasons, you know, maybe it's, you know, a health thing or, you know, a major family event or a loss or just something, something really important is pulling you away.
0:24:25And even, you know, look, every night you have to sleep at some point, you know, so every night, like there's, there's like, there's small scale versions of this happening every day for you.
0:24:33And then, you know, there's, there's possible big scale versions of it happening, you know, when life throws you a curveball.
0:24:38And so you should plan for this, whether you think you need it or not.
0:24:43And then it's a question of just how much.
0:24:45And then on the other side of that, what I'm not saying is that you can just set things in motion and then just never think about your business again.
0:24:54Like, I'm, I'm definitely not saying that, you know, like the way, the way I view a lot of these, these kind of, you know, life curveballs is more like, you know, you have like the short term versions of sleeping every night and maybe, you know, having a weekend to yourself.
0:25:11But then you, you have longer term versions and those are kind of like sabbaticals or, you know, like, like parental or, you know, maternity leave.
0:25:18It's like, well, you know, you can take leaves from your work here and there.
0:25:24If you are always on leave for many years, that's, you're not really doing that job anymore.
0:25:32But you should build your job in such a way that you can take leave when you need to and the whole thing doesn't fall apart.
0:25:39And there's, you know, a lot of distance between those two extremes.
0:25:43And so, you know, if you are never taking time off, that's not healthy for you.
0:25:50And if you are always off, that's not going to be healthy for your business.
0:25:54But a lot of things in the middle are just fine.
0:25:58And that's life.
0:25:59And you can make that work if you, if you think about it.
0:26:02In a weird way, it reminds me of, I had a friend who used to work in finance, like doing kind of, you know, stock trading and all kinds of things.
0:26:09And his company had a policy where every year he had to take two weeks consecutive leave where they completely shut him out of all of his work systems.
0:26:22That's awesome.
0:26:23And for the company, it was this thing, it was a sort of a safe, it's like this, this way for them to safeguard against someone who was doing dodgy trading or doing things and was, you know, like doing this thing where they were, you know, wash trading or finding ways to hide a big loss or a big problem by continuously doing things that, you know, sort of hit it.
0:26:46But if after, you know, if most of those kinds of schemes or trades or things would unravel if they weren't sustained for, you know, in this case, a two week period.
0:26:57And it was a way for them to safeguard against that.
0:26:59And in some ways, that makes me think of as a, just a mental exercise for, it's probably useful for us all to have.
0:27:06It's like, if we had a two week period where we were completely disconnected from our work, what would suffer as a result of that?
0:27:15What problems would be revealed?
0:27:17You know, in this case, it's what are these, you know, what maybe in your case, like your ads wouldn't be sold.
0:27:22And like that has a certain cost and maybe that's okay.
0:27:26Maybe that isn't.
0:27:27But it's probably just a useful mental exercise to think about if I completely logged out of all of my, you know, all of my systems, never went, didn't check my email, didn't log into my servers, didn't look at my stats, all those kinds of things.
0:27:40What would be the consequence for, you know, I think two weeks is a reasonable amount of time to think about where some, so many things, you know, will probably be fine for a couple of days, maybe a week.
0:27:51After two weeks, maybe it starts to run into trouble.
0:27:54And if you have things in your app, in your business, in your situation that couldn't survive two weeks of you being away, that's probably something that's worth looking at and understanding and making sure that you have at least a vague notion of how, what you could do to address that.
0:28:09Because sometimes that's going to happen on a positive sense.
0:28:13You're going to buy a restaurant.
0:28:14You're going to want to set it up.
0:28:15It's going to be fun.
0:28:15There's going to be a great reason.
0:28:16Sometimes life is going to cause you to have to do that.
0:28:20And so being ready for it is just a wise move to do when, you know, when the sun is shining and things are straightforward is much better when, you know, you're in the middle of the hurricane and things aren't as great.
0:28:30I love the idea of that as like a safeguard against, you know, fraud in the financial industry, but also like showing you like, are you irreplaceable?
0:28:40And if you design something like that, you're also making sure, like in the case of your friend's business there, they're also making sure nobody's irreplaceable.
0:28:49Like that, you know, if somebody got hit by a bus, like no one is irreplaceable because if their job just doesn't get done for a while, the business can continue and, you know, the system will not fail.
0:29:01And that's a hard thing to design for when you are a one person business, but it's not totally impossible.
0:29:07So I like the idea of challenging yourself to start thinking about that, like to say, start thinking like if I had to drop everything with no preparation, if I just got pulled away, maybe I was knocked unconscious for two weeks.
0:29:20Like, so I had no time to set things up or change things.
0:29:23What would happen and how can I prevent the bad outcomes there?
0:29:27Yeah, hopefully it never happens.
0:29:29But if you're ready for it, then it won't matter if it does.
0:29:31So, yeah, just one of these things to keep in the back of our mind, especially in perhaps the quieter time that we're in before, you know, the summer busyness.
0:29:38It's like maybe it's a good time to think about how we can make ourselves, you know, a bit less essential and a bit more replaceable in that way, I suppose.
0:29:46Thanks for listening, everybody.
0:29:47And we'll talk to you in two weeks.
0:29:49Bye.
0:29:50Thank you.