Bootstrapped Web - The podcast for founders bootstrapping their startups online

Updates: Redesign, Marketing Multiple Products, & Selling Services

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Today’s Bootstrapped Web is going to be an up-date episode. We both have a lot to talk about with what we’re working at the moment. Audience Ops and Carthook have new products and we discuss what is working for our sales respectively.

We talk about transparency and some resources that will help you improve your sales game. So tune in for the latest developments in Carthook and Audience Ops and what you can expect in the coming months.

Force the demo and you will get fewer sign-ups, but you will get into a lot of conversations. – Jordan

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Here are today’s conversation points:

Why we don’t see the point to total transparency.
When to ask for the credit card during a sign-up.
Brian’s plans to redesign the Audience Ops website.
Getting ideas from Ruben Gamez from Bidsketch.
Jordan’s lessons from demos.
Tweaking Audience Ops for a Resource Hub pivot.
Brian’s plan for launching Calendar for beta testers.

I feel like I can’t launch anything else, until I have the new site up and running. – Brian

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Resources Mentioned Today:

Securing the Five Figure Sale, by: Ian Landsman

Product Demos that Sell: How to Deliver Winning SAAS Demos, by: Steli Efti

Audience Ops Calendar

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

Family & Entrepreneurship

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Hey we’ve got a party episode with Rob and Sherry Walling from the podcast ZenFounder. We are going to discuss how to balance life with kids and entrepreneurship. We explore the common problems with living with kids and keeping a business going. We also discuss how entrepreneurship affects marriage.

Rob and Sherry share how they are able to keep their communication open. We also discuss how we ourselves cope with the struggles of keeping family and entrepreneurship in a fair balance.

Working for a boss was not even a possibility when you see that & you know entrepreneurship as the default. – Jordan

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Here are today’s conversation points:

The issues we have the public school systems.
How to encourage entrepreneurship with your kids.
How entrepreneurship affects marriage.
How to leave work behind at the end of the day.
Why spouses aren’t necessarily the best person to vent to or use as a soundboard.
How kids change your goals and motivations.
How to deal with burnout.
How to make the shift from work time to family time.
How to plan your week beforehand.
The importance of giving your spouse non-kid time.

I find a lot more value in having Mastermind groups and friends and advisors to talk about real issues. – Brian

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Resources Mentioned Today:

Rob Walling on Twitter

Sherry Walling on Twitter

MicroConf Vegas

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

Launching 2nd Products w/ Ruben Gamez

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Welcome back to Bootstrapped Web. Our guest today is Ruben Gamez, the founder of Bidsketch.com. We are talking to Ruben today because Bidsketch is getting ready to launch a new product. Since we both are launching new products we thought it would be good to compare notes.

Bidsketch’s main product has been a proposal tool. Now they want to add a signature app to their brand. Today we discuss how to research for a new product and how to handle expanding when there are competitors.

We compare notes about our own product lines and how to get the customers to notice.

I think there are plenty, well established competing companies who just have feature bloat. – Brian

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Here are today’s topics:

How to find positioning and distribution for a new product.
Why begin a separate product line.
Finding the “why” when people don’t use your product.
How to focus on two product lines.
Creating a good elevator pitch.
Finding your hook.
Asking the right questions of new customers.
How to reach people outside of your network.
Ruben’s timeline.
How to find the gaps in your competitor’s products.
Why you shouldn’t copy just to copy a competitor.

If you are interested in Bidsketch and their new product, you can go to bidsketch.com or find Ruben on Twitter.

There is all this lead up that goes into it [switching apps] that you don’t see it beneath the surf. – Jordan

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Resources Mentioned Today:

Audience Ops Calendar

Ruben Gamez’s Twitter

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

Updates: Validating a Consulting Offer / Self-Funding a New SaaS

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Today’s episode is an update episode. Jordan tells us about finding his customer base for the funnel tool. Brian discusses how he is working with his developers on a new training product he is planning.

We discuss when to allow custom jobs and when to say no. We also discuss what challenges a young bootstrapped company needs to expect. Building your company is so much harder, than it sounds. If you are just starting out as a bootstrapped business, then maybe this episode will help you get an idea of what you’re getting into and the other challenges.

We need to shift into a more diversified product line with software and training. – Brian

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Here are today’s conversation points:

Our reactions to the Presidential election.
Jordan’s new custom job, and how he’s preparing for it.
How to fill gaps in your business.
Brian’s new training program.
Building a good foundation ladder.
The challenges of bootstrapping.
Jordan’s time at Tanner Larson’s Mastermind.
Brian’s planning discussions with his developers.
Advice about pricing and how to decide it.

We are not giving up on short-term stuff but it is nice to start thinking in terms of the next few weeks. – Jordan

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Resources Mentioned Today:

Carthook’s Ecommerce Checkout Funnel

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

Taking a Big Shot vs. Lots of Little Shots

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On today’s episode, we welcome Craig Hewitt and Justin Jackson to the podcast. Jordan is having some time away. On today’s episode Craig, Justin, and Brian all discuss how to build and keep a company on track. We discuss what drives us and what we’re working on at the moment. If you want to know how to plan a product or just try to set a trajectory for your business, this is the episode for you!

Craig is the CEO of Podcast Motor, a podcast editing and production service. Justin is the host of his own podcast Mega Maker 3000 and a teacher of marketing for developers. We all have great insights to growing a company and how we’ve been able to stay on track.

I just really want to have a comfortable lifestyle, but also build valuable assets. – Brian

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Here are today’s conversation points:

Justin relaunch of Marketing for Developers.
Brian’s update on Audience Ops.
Craig’s update on Podcast Motor.
The lessons we’ve learned from starting and maintaining our businesses.
Our long term goals.
The disadvantages of working solo.
Why businesses choose to keep their companies small.
Justin belief in doing something uncomfortable for growth.
How you can over-plan.
Why you need to look at the bigger picture.
The importance of visibility and building relationships.
How to use evergreen content.
How we use automation in our businesses.
What keeps our ambition going?

You can never retreat too much in working because you have to maintain a certain amount of visibility. – Justin

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Resources Mentioned Today:

Market for Developers

Rogue Startups Podcast

Justin’s website

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

Managing a Development Process w Rob Walling

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We welcome Rob Walling from Drip to the podcast today. Today we discuss how to navigate and manage the development process of a SaaS product. We all share our experiences with the excitement and frustrations of working with developers.

Launching a new product is hard enough, but when you factor in the time, energy, and troubleshooting that goes into a project, then the level of stress can be crushing. We discuss these stresses and how we dealt with them. Or in some cases how we’re currently dealing with them.

As the non-developer founder, you have to somehow stay positive throughout the whole thing. – Jordan

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Today’s conversation points:

Audience Ops Calendar update.
Jordan’s update on Carthook.
How to manage expectations and deadlines with a SaaS project.
How to build a solid foundation for a product.
The importance of communication in a development team.
Having a back-up plan for features.
The process of from concept to developer.
Why you need a good user experience.
Why you need a good user interface.
How to cope with time constraints and milestones.
How to resolve disagreements.
When to pull the CEO card.
How to change developers or on-board new developers.

Speed is the top priority, at the same time going into this I want to build this with a strong foundation. – Brian

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Resources Mentioned Today:

Audience Ops Calendar

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

Pricing Questions / SaaS vs. Service

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We’ve got a party episode today. We welcome Rob Williams of Workshop and Folyo. Allan Branch joins us later on in the episode when we discuss his time with Less Accounting.

There are pros and cons to both the service and the software side of things. – Brian

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Today’s topic was primarily pricing. How to price effectively, why to price at a certain level, and what pricing can do for your business. This episode was a great discussion on how value to the customer is reflected in the pricing of a service or product. We had some great insights today and maybe we’ll help you decide how to price your own service or product.

Here are today’s topics:

Rob’s service Workshop. What is it?
Why Rob has recently changed the pricing of the service.
The art of pricing.
How pricing attracts the “right” clientele.
What is Folyo?
To do or not to do a Free Trial.
What is Audience Ops Calendar?
How to offer value to a customer.
Catching up with Allan Branch.
Why you are always beholden to somebody.
Why Allan and his team sold Less Accounting.

If you want to tie pricing to value isn’t that [revenue] the ultimate value? But no one does it! – Jordan

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Resources Mentioned Today:

Less Everything

Audience Ops Calendar

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

To Copy or Compete (or Both?)

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We find ourselves discussing competition and when you should copy a competitor’s model and when you should innovate a model. Many people get excited about a category, but are soon discouraged when they see the competition. On today’s episode we discuss why competition can be a good thing.

What most people do is they copy pieces and then they innovate. – Jordan

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We also discuss Big Snow Tiny Conf coming up on February 6-9 in both Vermont and Colorado. There are 2 slots left in those events so check out the link below for more information. The rest of this episode is just stream of consciousness, so hang with us for this conversation.

Today’s points:

Big Snow Tiny Conf.
Facebook culture vs. Twitter culture
Jordan’s Twitter conversation with Justin Jackson.
Who is true competition?
Why competition is good.
How competition pushes your business.
How to deal with competition.
Innovation vs. Copying
Brian’s observations of Basecamp.
Joe Rogan’s podcast with Dan Bilzerian.

If there is one or two other people doing the same thing as you, that’s a sign of some sort of market there. – Brian

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Resources Mentioned Today:

Justin Jackson’s Tweet

Big Snow Tiny Conf.

Joe Rogan Podcast #857

Borrowing Brilliance

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

Adding Service to Software / Marketing Pre-MVP

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Today’s episode is basically a therapy session for us both. We lay out our current issues and talk each other though the options. Jordan is dealing with customers and their personal expectations for the products. Brian is looking for balance in his development stage on the calendar product. We try our best to see our situations from all angles and possibilities.

The first step is deciding which things are the right things to pursue. – Jordan

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So join us for our conversation today, you might learn some things about the futures of Carthook and Audience Ops.

Here are today’s topics:

Carthook’s customer response to the checkout product.
Dealing with customer requests.
When it is time to expand a company.
Approaching service based business models.
Approaching product based business models.
The alternative answer to consulting services.
How to standardize operations.
The 2 approaches to launches.
Finding the balance of life and product development.
An Audience Ops podcast.
Audience Ops webinars.

What’s the higher level goal for the company? And that’s not just revenue and profit. – Brian

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Resources Mentioned Today:

Audience Ops Calendar

Sponsor

Indeed Prime – Get a $5,000 bonus when you get hired through Indeed Prime using Bootstrapped Web’s link.

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

Updates: Dev Process, MRR Milestones, Remote vs. Office

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Today is a basic update episode, but we have a special guest as well. Justin McGill is the co-founder of LeadFuze and co-host of the podcast Zero to Scale. He joins us on the update train today and gives us an idea of what the future holds for LeadFuze. Jordan tells us how his team meetup is going and Brian fills us in on what is going on with Audience Ops.

Finding talent is so hard & to limit to just my zipcode is… I don’t see how that would have worked. – Brian Casel

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We cover a lot of topics today. Our main discussion boils down to the pros and cons of remote teams. A lot of founders find remote works well for them, but today we discuss the virtues of a brick and mortar office space.

Here are today’s topics:

Jordan’s meetup progress.
The pressures of being the boss and having a life.
Jordan’s product development troubles.
Jordan’s new website and onboarding process for the check-out product.
Brian’s 50k milestone.
Brian’s search for a good writer.
Brian’s return to sale calls.
Justin’s LeadFuze issues.
The stress of going from remote team to office space.
The importance of office culture to a business.
How to decompress while working at home.
Slack vs. e-Mail
What’s going on with Audience Ops’ software.

There is a point in time where you just say ‘Screw it, I’m going to start marketing.’ – Jordan Gal

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Resources Mentioned Today:

Audience Ops Calendar

Sponsor

Indeed Prime – Get a $5,000 bonus when you get hired through Indeed Prime using Bootstrapped Web’s link.

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