BIG CITY ENERGY

**Justin Jackson** (0:09)
Welcome to The Panel, where founders talk about building a better business and a better life. I'm Justin Jackson, co-founder of Transistor.fm.

**Brian Casel** (0:18)
And I'm Brian Casel, founder of Builder Method.

**Jordan Gal** (0:20)
And I'm Jordan Gal, co-founder at heyrosie.com. Gents, good to be back together.

**Justin Jackson** (0:26)
Guys, this is so good. I listened to your episodes while I was away. I got a lot to talk about. I got big city energy. That's what I want to talk about. I was in London, UK for a week.
Had incredible time there. Stopped by the Indie Beers, like the Indie Hackers Meetup, just on a whim. And it was like, Charlie runs that over there. And I spent all day at this conference that had like thousands of people, this podcast industry conference. And I felt like I got a better reception at the Indie Beers Indie Meetup. And that's really been my past two weeks. I've just been jumping from meetup to meetup, from meeting to meeting, from party to party. And that would exhaust some people, but I am at 120 percent.
So yeah, did London, UK, did Toronto.

**Brian Casel** (1:24)
Let's talk about it.
Let's go, man. I'm sorry. I'm going to, I'll be in, I'm flying into London, but I'm speaking at Brighton Ruby in what, two weeks, two, three weeks.

**Justin Jackson** (1:34)
Oh, wow.

**Brian Casel** (1:34)
So I'm excited to be my second time to the UK. Wow.

**Justin Jackson** (1:39)
I mean, it'd be interesting to get your perspective. There's this new thing that Charlie started. It's Charlie Ward, I think, that runs that, is that right? From Ramen Space, Napkin Math.
He started a thing called London Maxing, which is, instead of, the Brits are notoriously cynical and negative and not super big on their own. And he's like, wait, London's a great city. Let's just start London Maxing it. And it just exploded. He's had a meeting with the mayor.
All these influencers have come out of the woodwork to, they've done a giant meetup about it.

**Brian Casel** (2:23)
I'm just picturing you on all the touristy, like the double-decker bus, you know, the selfie on the big, on the eye.

**Justin Jackson** (2:33)
I mean, here's the thing. I've never really lived in a big city. The biggest city I've lived in is in Edmonton, which is about 1.2 million people. The first time I flew into New York, I got it. It was like, oh, wait a second. This is an entirely different thing. There are cities that are a million people, and then there are these kind of cities, New York, London, Toronto, Paris. I'm sure Tokyo is like this. There's just these cities that have this energy that you can feel it. It's a dynamism. It's just you can feel the money and everything flowing through it.
And I am just totally infected by it. When I'm in these cities, I come alive. I feel like the most true version of myself. I'm just like, who do I know? Who can I talk to? Who can I meet? And it's just the definition of a good trip for me is like, I've got something every day, meeting people every day. When I was in Toronto, I was visiting my son. I'm bringing my son to all these different meetings. He's just getting thrown into these things.
I just love it.

**Brian Casel** (3:54)
Jordan knows what I'm talking about. Like, New York City has always had that energy for me. I don't know. Part of it is like growing up in the, I grew up in Long Island, but like going to the city as a little kid all the time, and still, I'm an hour out. Yeah, it's like almost like something in the air. I just even remember from when I was a little kid stepping out of the train onto the street in New York, there's a different smell, energy, feel, like excitement than any other city. And that's still true for me today. And I also think that like big cities, I would almost, I like to think of it as like East Coast cities in the United States. I tend to, but I bet the same is like in a place like London, where it's like, there's something about the language and the vibe of like New Yorkers and Bostoners, and probably people from London, I think, I would say, people I know there, where it's like, I don't know, it's like a rougher edge. It's a little bit more aggressive, a little bit more cynical, like faster pace. We're all impatient.
And it's like, we have this language that we just understand each other out of the gate.