Bootstrapped Web - The podcast for founders bootstrapping their startups online

Hello Competitors

00:00 / 00:38:02

Today we’re talking about camping ratios, COVID and Black Friday, the eCommerce boom due to COVID, emotions versus moods, Twitter, and competitors. We go over some bold and unique marketing strategies with ProcessKit, how we’ve won Jordan over in the “Working-from-home” battle, and about hiring contractors and coaches.

“He found the reviews where they’re complaining about the competitors and we’re, like, featuring those. Not to just poke at them but to show, ‘If [the customers] complain about this, here’s how ProcessKit solves that.” – Brian

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Here are today’s conversation points:

COVID trends and looking into the near future
Competitor hype and making a dent in the market
“Aggressive” marketing in ProcessKit
People management and coaches
Hiring contractors for marketing strategies
Embracing the working from home life

“Identify the difference between an emotion and a mood. A tweet from a competitor, that creates an emotion. But my mood is dictated by, like, my family and my wife and my amazing kids and our health. But how to separate those two out and not let an emotion ruin the mood, feels like a new skill.” – Jordan

Resources:

As always, thanks for tuning in. Head here to leave a review on iTunes.

What does VC really mean? And marketing.

00:00 / 00:51:11

We’re back after a two-week break. More specifically, a camping and Niagra Falls break. Today we go over two kinds of VC: vacations and venture capital. Not to mention, we go over ProcessKit’s newest marketing news, Ali Mese’s article on Medium, and our thoughts on positioning.

“I’m trying to understand the type of person who discovers a SaaS product and starts emailing their support every single day for fourteen days straight, with multiple paragraphs.” – Brian

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Here are today’s conversation points:

How do you know when you need a vacation?
Brian’s new purchase
How often do you contact support?
Marketing
- Positioning and building for additional platform integrations
- Ali Mese’s article on Medium
- Keyword research and other marketing ideas for ProcessKit
- Know who your best ideal customers are
Jordan’s lessons in venture capital

“I always have in my mind that I have to be having the right dream. So if you win, make sure you want that outcome.” – Jordan

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Resources:

“To Build a Business Empire, Own an Opinion, Not a Marketing Budget” by Ali Mese (published on Medium)

As always, thanks for tuning in. Head here to leave a review on iTunes.

What Should We Talk About?

00:00 / 00:44:04

We’re back in the studio with a very special agenda… in that we don’t have an agenda today. So we turned to Twitter to ask listeners and followers what topics they would be interested in hearing about. If you have a question or a comment you’d like us to cover in a future episode, feel free to tweet it to us! Today we cover everything from product management to marketing to hobbies.

“To me the most important part of [product management] is the customer feedback.” – Brian

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Here are today’s conversation points:

Product Management with ProcessKit and Carthook
Hiring and delegating in the early days of a product or business
Marketing these days is a puzzle
Twitter addictions
Managing product requests from users
Marlo, the special guest
How much time and money do you spend on hobbies?
COVID budgeting
Family and school plans for the future
Twitter conversations:
- Financing and Funding
Day-to-day tasks: A Day in the Life of Jordan Gal
How we feel about our businesses and progress

“It’s a muscle; that ability to trust other people with very very critical things. It’s not an easy thing to get over.” – Jordan, on delegating important tasks to someone else

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Resources:

The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It, by Michael E. Gerber

@PoweredBySearch Twitter

Twitter: @JordanGal

Twitter: @CasJam

As always, thanks for tuning in. Head here to leave a review on iTunes.

Heyyy + People-ing, Building & Marketing

00:00 / 00:59:31

We’re back and we have so much to talk about. First off, we’d like to dedicate this episode to Ian Landsman and his twitter account. “Hey” seems to have taken Twitter by storm. We’ll talk about how we feel about that, and, of course, we’ll update you on what’s going on in our businesses as well.

“For an everyday email app, I need it to be as clean and simple as possible. But the experience and the functionality and the UI makes a lot of sense, I think.” – Brian, on Hey from Basecamp

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Here are today’s conversation points:

Hey (from Basecamp): the pros & cons, and the controversy with the Apple Store
Hiring at Carthook
- Recruiters
- People Ops person
- Culture and training
Onboarding updates at ProcessKit
To build or to market, that is the question
- Forms features
- Marketing tasks on my to-do list

“Now we have 8 completely new people we’ve never met, we probably won’t be able to see for, like, a year. How do we give them a good experience? How do we make sure they don’t feel isolated?” – Jordan, on hiring new team members during COVID

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Resources/Links:

HEY – Email at its best, new from Basecamp

Help Scout – Simple Customer Service Software and Education

As always, thanks for tuning in. Head here to leave a review on iTunes.

SaaS Onboarding & Recruiting at Scale

00:00 / 00:42:59

We’re back behind the mic today after a one-week hiatus. We had originally recorded an episode last week (which addressed current events) but decided not to publish it. Our hearts do go out to everyone in this time of chaos and uncertainty.

This week, we’re back, talking about business, bad habits, and kindergarten graduation parades. We’re talking about ProcessKit’s onboarding updates and one of their newest customers. We’re also talking about Jordan’s big problem and his recruiting and hiring issues.

“He turned the tables on me and we bartered. So he’s a paying customer of ProcessKit and I gave him a pretty big ProcessKit plan in exchange for him writing three of these pages for ProcessKit.” – Brian

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Here are today’s conversation points:

Jordan’s big problem: putting off strategic tasks, but then having no energy
Brian’s early morning exercise schedule
Brian’s ProcessKit’s onboarding updates
1. The various levels of customers
2. Tools, widgets, checklists, and onboarding courses
3. What each customer needs in order to be successful
Jordan’s recruiting and hiring process
1. Their first (in a long time) fully remote hire
Brian’s newest customer experience
What to do with B2B SaaS these days?
1. E-commerce platform issues

“The mistakes in hiring are more costly than any monetary mistake. Like, buying the wrong thing, using the wrong software, hiring the wrong consultant. I see those as monetary mistakes. When you making a hiring mistake, it hurts so much more.” – Jordan

Resources/Links:

As always, thanks for tuning in. Head here to leave a review on iTunes.

Navigating Stress & Distractions

00:00 / 00:44:47

The world is in chaos but we’re still here. Today we’re talking about some of the trends and the future of podcasting after some big news with The Joe Rogan Experience. We’re also going over some updates with Carthook, ProcessKit, and Audience Ops.

“It does seem like there’s still that massive gap between the seed rounds and the Series A. Right? When you’ve grown to a certain level and you still need more firepower to grow.” – Brian

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Here are today’s conversation points:

The big debate over Joe Rogan’s Spotify deal
Jordan’s (who is not soliciting for investments, SCC) fears over investors
ProcessKit’s onboarding course, not quite ready
Funding: social media ads, marketing partnerships (affiliates and referrals)
Jordan’s biggest deal ever…and he didn’t even talk to the prospect
Difficult clients in Audience Ops

“You’ve been working on something for over five years. This is all you care about. You love it. You love the job, the company, the people. There’s so much involved in that. How are you supposed to find investors that are going to respect that?” – Jordan

Resources/Links:

As always, thanks for tuning in. Head here to leave a review on iTunes.

What if we take some off the table?

00:00 / 00:41:50

In today’s episode we’re talking about socializing with family friends and work during the pandemic, as well as the latest news and questions on our minds about the current status of tech and the world. PokerStars, weekly stand-ups, Facebook, and what reopening might look like. The big question on everyone’s mind is: “How long is this going to last?” In business news, we’re talking about Brian’s new ProcessKit course, and Jordan’s views on hiring.

“You’re taking money off the table but you’re also taking off the table, the desire to sell when the first semi-big offer comes along and instead go super-big.” – Brian

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Here are today’s conversation points:

Facebook news
Jordan’s most popular tweet ever
- Taking on more money and the possibility of hitting zero
- What is Clubhouse and why is it so big right now?
Serendipitous audio conversations versus Twitter versus podcasting
- Private podcasts
Interesting new platforms: Substack
Updates on Brian’s new course about ProcessKit
Jordan’s views on hiring
Brian’s work on the sales demos

“People watch how you treat people and then they put themselves in those shoes.” – Jordan

Resources/Links:

Managing Customers & Managing Teams

00:00 / 00:44:26

Welcome back! Brian and Jordan are back behind the mic. We’re talking about ProcessKit’s best month, and Brian’s excitement about moving forward and making progress. We’re also talking about Jordan’s experience with Carthook’s people coach and accidental faux pas with his leadership team.

“I am acting fast on a lot of the smaller requests. I only do it when I’ve heard it two or three times from different customers. Usually and hopefully I’m shipping something fast and notifying multiple customers that, ‘Hey, we just shipped that thing.” – Brian

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Here are today’s conversation points:

ProcessKit’s best month with conversions
Jordan’s focus on hiring and salaries
Brian’s focus for ProcessKit: onboarding
Brian’s old blog posts
Setting up SEO
Jordan’s humbling experience with the people coach
Accidentally taking away authority
Brian’s support requests on ProcessKit

“What am I really doing though? I’m taking authority away from their manager. I’m not allowing that manager to be that person, resource, and that trust and that bond and… I’m messing with that and it’s not helpful.” – Jordan

Resources/Links:

As always, thanks for tuning in. Head here to leave a review on iTunes.

Remotely Working on Working Remotely

00:00 / 00:40:17

We’re back for another episode of Bootstrapped Web. This episode is all about our thoughts on quarantine hair, having our kids at home, and working from home challenges. We’re talking about how to make working-from-home better, happier, and more productive.

This week’s ad is for Council.Club, which is an invite-only site that helps remote workers find like-minded people in order to expand their work community and collaborate together.

We also go over the issues stemming from working remotely while you go through the resignation and hiring process with your team. Jordan struggles with managing emotions and expectations remotely. Meanwhile, ProcessKit has a fantastic (and big) new feature in the works and Brian goes over his sales and onboarding goals.

“It’s conditional logic. You gotta make sure that every combination of automation rules and scenarios work and that we have test coverage on everything.” – Brian

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Here are today’s conversation points:

How working from home has altered our schedules
Brian’s drive-arounds and how they’ve helped
Jordan’s stand-up desk
Friday realizations about productivity
This week’s ad: Council.Club
- Top-Level Domains
- Memberships and the vetting process
- Landing pages for each type of cohort
Jordan’s issues with working remotely with his team
Going through the resignation and hiring process while working remotely
Brian ships conditional logic in ProcessKit
The importance of testing
Managing emotions and expectations remotely
Brian’s goals for sales and onboarding
Brian’s out-of-date welcome video

“In isolation, assumptions start to come up, and doubt. I don’t know how other people are feeling cause I don’t see them.” – Jordan

Resources/Links:

As always, thanks for tuning in. Head here to leave a review on iTunes.

Trailer: The Productize Podcast returns in 2020

00:00 / 00:02:25

Brian shares a quick announcement for his other podcast, The Productize Podcast.

That’s an interview show where Brian invites business owners who are scaling with systems, processes, and teams — Primarily those in productized services, but he also speaks to SaaS founders who are pairing services with their software.

It’s a different format than Bootstrapped Web, and if it sounds interesting, you can subscribe here or search for “Productize Podcast” in your pod catcher.

Also, Brian will be hosting some live online hangout events this year, all to be announced through the Productize Podcast.

Bootstrapped Web aint going anywhere! Jordan and Brian will continue to drop new episodes every Thursday morning… errr… Most Thursdays.