Growing The Product Line & Shifting Priorities
Hey now. This is Bootstrapped Web. How's it going, Jordan? Back at it. Good.
Brian Casel:And how are you? Doing good. We've got a outdoor back backyard edition today. I'm I'm hanging out here in the summer.
Jordan Gal:I see that. The lovely Connecticut summer. Everything's all green. Got your dog
Brian Casel:in the background over there. Oh, you see him running around back there? Yes. See him running around. He's
Jordan Gal:What's up, man?
Brian Casel:He's on patrol.
Jordan Gal:Keep keeping things safe.
Brian Casel:Yeah. That's right.
Jordan Gal:Nice. And I'm gonna be in Connecticut soon. I'm looking forward to it. Few weeks.
Brian Casel:Awesome. Let me know. Maybe we can meet up.
Jordan Gal:That would be that would be great. So, Brian, wall to wall politics this episode. Brexit, the currency markets, the capital markets at large. We might touch on Trump here and there. What do think?
Brennan Dunn:Let's do it. You
Jordan Gal:can deconstruct Facebook comments that have made a huge impact on our lives.
Brian Casel:You know, those Facebook comments, there there's always everyone's got, like, a couple people in their in their circle that just feel the need to write a paragraph plus of speaking their mind. And as as soon as I see someone's post go beyond one line of text, I just immediately tune it out. I don't read it.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. You know what Facebook? Mark Zuckerberg, new feature. Unfollow
Brian Casel:Unfollow until November. I like it.
Jordan Gal:I like it. I like this person. I care about, you know, their kids growing up. I just don't wanna hear them for, like, a few months. Exactly.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. It's it's a funny thing because I used to be very into the politics thing. Yeah. And now looking at it from someone who's less engaged in politics, it's just so boring.
Brian Casel:Like Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Guys, it you don't make any difference, and and the words you write on Facebook make less less than a difference.
Brian Casel:Exactly. I I used to be the same way. Like, I used to be very, I still follow it actually a lot. I'm I'm kind of a a junkie for for following like the the news and the and and the stupid political stuff that we see on on TV.
Jordan Gal:That's good for you. It's
Brian Casel:To me, it's more like entertainment, like a way to like wind down and like not. It's that's how bad it's gotten. It's it's like
Jordan Gal:It's funny.
Brian Casel:It's basically I I mean, this Trump shit is like basically the best reality show on television right now. It's it is. But It is it is
Jordan Gal:an amazing thing to see, the whole
Brian Casel:thing. It's it's a total it's a total circus. It's a it's a freak show, but we're not actually gonna get into politics. No. No.
Jordan Gal:No. No. But I'll lose half my never mind.
Brian Casel:It's true though. Like years ago, I I used to really get into, like, getting into real arguments with people, even even friends on online, like, whether it's Twitter, Facebook, or talking in person, like, actually arguing out these points, now it's just, like, got to the point where it's like, it's so it just not it doesn't make a difference. Why waste your energy on that, you know?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Well, I I think where it does where it is worth the energy is if you try to keep the conversations and and arguments, disagreements focused on the ideas behind what's happening, it can stay interesting for the rest of your life. It's always interesting to see why is this happening? Not I can't believe they said this, I can't believe. And I think what ends up happening a lot is you always end up assuming the worst of the opposite side.
Jordan Gal:If you just take it a little bit more charitably, like, they don't actually want x. You know, that that's not right. I know them. The my guy the guy across the street from me is of that political stripe, I know he's not this horrible person. Exactly.
Jordan Gal:That's assume the worst.
Brian Casel:That's what really bothers me about it all of it now is that the, you know, the media and and everything makes it out to be these two sides when in in reality, it's far from that when when you get down to the personal, you know, your neighbors here and there. Like, nobody's really that polarized
Jordan Gal:Right.
Brian Casel:In in reality. You know?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Nobody wants horrible things. Anyway, I I think we've I think we've done it. We've we've touched on it.
Brian Casel:We've we've touched on it. Now let's leave it alone, and we'll move on. Back to business. Yeah. So, you know, today, I think, we're gonna go back to an updates episode, and, you know, maybe we'll have some some new things coming up in in upcoming weeks.
Brian Casel:We'll we'll keep you guys posted on that. But, yeah.
Jordan Gal:I think I think we could we could tease a little bit more. Okay. We're gonna be having parties.
Brian Casel:Yeah. We're gonna
Jordan Gal:bootstrap web get together.
Brian Casel:We're we're gonna turn Bootstrap Web into a big party here. Yep. Basically, I think we're gonna, you know, invite a handful of our of our friends who we talk to all the time, hang out with at conferences and whatnot to to come on and join us for these, you know, roundtable updates, talking about businesses, talking about what's going on, giving opinions, so that it's not just me and Jordan, rambling on, but getting a few new voices in. But also also bring those those people and those voices back as, like, recurring guests, if that makes sense.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Think it'll be interesting to kinda inject because you can right. A lot of the same people like, I know I I listen to zero to scale. Mhmm. Right?
Jordan Gal:So Greg and Justin, so I think it'll be interesting to kinda cross pollinate to see, okay, what happens when that personality and that point of view mixes in with with ours? I think it'll it'll be interesting.
Brian Casel:Exactly. And I listened to what a handful of other podcasts of our friends. And as I'm sure most of our listeners do, you know, Greg and Justin, Rob and Mike, you know, Craig and Dave, you know, a couple others, and and just to just to hear what's new in their businesses. And I and I always feel like I wanna like
Jordan Gal:Ask a question.
Brian Casel:Ask a question or give a reaction or give some feedback and, you know, we talk offline a lot, but it's
Jordan Gal:Yep.
Brian Casel:You know, it'd be cool to to kinda cross pollinate a little bit. So Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. We're really just doing it for the SEO juice. But anyway
Brian Casel:Maybe a few extra shares on Twitter. Although although we've we've determined that Twitter is basically dead at this point. So I don't know.
Jordan Gal:Anyway Not to me. I signed up for Snapchat. Did I tell you? Yeah. I literally got there and was like, oh, man.
Jordan Gal:Am I old? I don't know what to do. I know. I don't know
Brian Casel:where to go from here. Just a camera. I think I was watching Bill Simmons or listening to Bill Simmons and he was like Great podcast, by the way. Oh, it's awesome. And I just checked out his new show on HBO, which is pretty good too.
Brian Casel:He's he made a joke something about, like, if you're over the age of 30, you don't understand how Snapchat works. Just admit that or something like that.
Jordan Gal:I felt so it made me stressed out because you open the screen and it's a selfie. It's your camera facing you. It dawns on you like, oh, that's the first thing that generation thinks about.
Brian Casel:Yes. Yeah. It's like that's
Jordan Gal:share a picture of it and obviously that's what they want you to do, but I was not I'm like, oh, I'm I'm Twitter minded. I I wanna hide behind my anonymity and just enjoy whatever you guys are doing.
Brian Casel:That's an that's an interesting observation. I hadn't thought about it that way. You know, I I also opened up Snapchat last week after we were talking about it just to, like, I should give this thing another look just to see how the how the fuck it works. The other thing I noticed was was that, like and I'm pretty web savvy, and I come from a designing applications and designing websites, and I couldn't figure out off the bat, like, how does this application work? This this user this user interface, like, everything functions from, like, swiping up and swiping down
Jordan Gal:Inside.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And swiping to the left and right. But you're supposed to just intuitively know what those things mean. And I'm a new user. Like, I'm I'm new to the app, and it's still not teaching
Jordan Gal:me how Unlimited money for onboarding and all that.
Brian Casel:So Yeah. And they're not onboarding me or at least they're not teaching me how to use this interface, but I'm starting to wonder just like you said, I wonder if the younger generation just just gets it faster than
Jordan Gal:we do. Right. Different different point of view.
Brian Casel:They're they're growing up with iPhones in their hands.
Jordan Gal:Right. Right. Mobile first, experience. Mobile first point
Brian Casel:of Yeah. Mobile first, but, like, they have Internet from the time they're born. I mean, for for us, like, even the the most web savvy in our generation is still gonna be miles behind our kids in terms of, like, understanding how how to use applications. It's it's really yeah.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I have alright. So my four year old, right, she she's used an iPad, you know, plenty. So when she goes up to the TV, which is daddy, daddy, you know, it's the weekend I I get my shows, I wanna choose. I put on the the PBS Kids screen and it's just a bunch of a bunch of options, a bunch of shows.
Jordan Gal:So she takes her finger and goes up against the TV and swipes up and she goes, Daddy, let me see the other shows. Amazing. So now my two year old does the same thing. She doesn't know what she's doing, but she saw her big sister. So she walks up the TV and just swipes up.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:But for her, it's literally like before she has certain words, she has that built in that so you move things around on a screen.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And I you've seen, like, YouTube videos of, like, a two year old operating an iPad. It's just like
Jordan Gal:And then a magazine, they try
Pippin Williamson:to swipe on the paper.
Jordan Gal:Right. Right. So we've talked about politics. We've talked about our kids and how we're too old for things. Like, we gotta we gotta we gotta get serious.
Brian Casel:Let's get down to business.
Jordan Gal:What's going on, man?
Brian Casel:I don't know how much I talked about on the last one that we are rolling out a PPC add on service to That's right. To audience ops, and we're we're further along in that now. I'd say we're about one week away from starting to bring on paying clients to to this new service.
Jordan Gal:So What do do with that? Where's the expertise coming from? In house or are you like contracting hiring someone that
Brian Casel:In house. So I guess I'll run through the process of getting this up and running, and it started about two months ago. I I I talked on the podcast how I was hiring a a quote unquote marketing tech person. So I hired that person about two months ago. His name's Jeff.
Brian Casel:He's been doing an awesome job. And and, basically, the whole purpose in hiring that role is for him to get this PPC add on service up and running. And what we did for the past two months through through today, it's still running, he's been running these PPC campaigns and retargeting campaigns for our own block, for for audience ops. And so we're promoting our posts. We're we're running, retargeting ads to get people back to to opt into the email course if they haven't already.
Brian Casel:And we've and every week, we've been tweaking the strategy a little bit and doing different tests. And so now that we're about six or seven weeks into the running these tests, you know, we've gotten cost per click down. We've gotten cost per email subscriber way down. So now we we've learned a bunch of stuff like, okay. This is kind of the formula that basically works when when we're running PPC to promote content and to and to build an email list.
Brian Casel:So now we feel fairly confident that that we've got our process and our methodology nailed down, at least like a starting point for that. In the past two or three weeks, he started to focus on, and with my help, I've been working a lot on this too, putting it all into an actual process that we can run for clients and run on a on a scalable way when we're when we're managing multiple clients, not just doing it for audience ops. So that's been the the focus for the past three weeks. I I'd say we have our basic procedures down now for, like, onboarding a client, getting set up with their Facebook ad manager, a weekly process for updating their promoted post ad because we update it for every new article that we publish, a process for weekly reporting, like, we'd now we have we we just built a spreadsheet template for how we're gonna manage the weekly reporting. And and I've been prototyping this, like, as if I'm the client.
Brian Casel:Right? Because, like, Jeff has been giving me the weekly report on what's going on with the audience ops campaigns, and I'm looking at the numbers, and then he talks through, like, these are the three highlights, and this is what we're testing next week. And and so that's essentially what we're gonna be doing for clients. And so I've mentioned it here and there, to to our clients, and I've been asking them to just let me know if you wanna be included in our waiting list for this. So as of today, we have five clients who told me, like, definitely add me to the waiting list.
Brian Casel:So we've got five there. Three of those clients, I'm I'm gonna actually invite to get onboarded in July to to be the first paying customers on this, and we'll start to roll out the service and probably learn a lot and and iterate on our processes there. Then in August, we'll we'll onboard, like, three more. The other thing that I did was, you know, in terms of, how to sell this service. Right?
Brian Casel:It's not it's currently not mentioned anywhere on our pay on our site, on our homepage about Audience Ops. And I don't think I'm I'm really going to add anything. I mean, at least not yet, because it's we're only pitching it to existing clients, and you have to already be an Audience Ops client for content in order to take advantage for the PPC. So But
Jordan Gal:but but why not why not message it? Why not telegraph that it it is available Well an add on?
Brian Casel:I had a call with my sales guy and we do mention it during the initial sales call. It's just not a priority right now to put it on the homepage. We probably will at some point, but it
Jordan Gal:You know what I found? That the most leverage on the entire marketing site is your pricing grid. Anything you put there will be read. I assume. I think the safe assumption is that no one will read a single word on your marketing site.
Jordan Gal:They'll look at the pictures, they'll read a headline or two and that's it. But the pricing grid, people read.
Brian Casel:The other thing is, like, we can't get them started on the PPC add on until month two of audience ops service, or really, like, month three, because we have to wait until we've published a couple of articles.
Jordan Gal:Isn't it funny how always from the outside, it looks so simple?
Brian Casel:Yeah. There's there are all these little ins and outs. So so now I've I've added it into my process to reach out to all clients on month three to to say, here's here's the PPC service. It's an optional thing if you wanna upgrade to it. But the other thing that I worked on was a slide deck.
Brian Casel:It's like five pages long, which I'm gonna be sending out to all of our clients in in the next couple days. It which basically out it's like this the sales like the brochure, like the sales pitch for the PPC service. This is where we roll out all the details about it. And it's a p it's a PDF that I could just email to someone. I could email to a client on month three.
Brian Casel:And it basically says, like, this is the strategy. This is this is what we'll implement. This is how we report on it from week to week. These are the first steps to getting started, and these are the prices.
Jordan Gal:Right. The results you you can expect are that that we're trying to achieve.
Brian Casel:Yeah. The the objectives and here's how to get started, and these are the price points for the add on. There's an, like, an FAQ, and it's just a slide deck that it's like PDF, basically, that they can read and respond to and share with their partners and, and then get started. So that's so all that stuff is now in place. So now we're basically ready to start rolling it out.
Brian Casel:And it'll be interesting to see just like any other productized service, just like it started with our initial offering with with Audience Ops. You know, you start to offer it, and then you learn about all these cases and scenarios and things where it gets tricky, and then you gotta tweak the process a little bit. And and so that's why we're gonna just onboard three clients at a time for for the first couple of months.
Jordan Gal:Alright. I like it. I like it.
Brian Casel:Yep. So that's I'd put it
Jordan Gal:on the pricing grid.
Brian Casel:Yeah. We probably will at some point.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Mean, you have different options. Right? You you can sell it as an add on or you can sell it as an incentive to get to a higher tier.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Like, essentially, it is a higher tier.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Or but it could be part of a package for a higher tier.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:I I think I guess you'll you'll see over the next few months how people think about it and who who's most interested in.
Brian Casel:Yep.
Jordan Gal:Cool, man. Cool. I
Brennan Dunn:like it.
Brian Casel:So how about an update on your end?
Jordan Gal:So right now, we are how to say this? We're like, we haven't burned the boats because there's still revenue coming in from the cart abandonment product, but we have we've transitioned and we've gone more than halfway. A saying we have in the company is, if you're going through the desert, there's only one thing to do, keep going. We're more than halfway out of the desert, but the transition is official. Like this is the first month that growth has slowed on the card abandonment side, and it's because we're just paying 90% of our attention onto the new checkout product.
Jordan Gal:And so we're right in the middle. We don't have paying customers yet for the checkout product, but we've started to slow on the car abandonment. So we're like, all right, we've officially made the decision. The future of the company is in the checkout product and we are willfully kind of not paying attention or or allowing to slow down on the on the cart abandonment side. And it it definitely feels scary, and at the same time, it's definitely the right it's the right decision.
Brian Casel:Is that because the free trials of the checkout product are, like, just way higher than the cart abandonment?
Jordan Gal:What do you mean by way higher?
Brian Casel:Like, what's the indicator that's telling you that you should be putting more focus and energy on the checkout than the cart abandonment?
Jordan Gal:Oh, man. It is it's the market just talking to us. People want what we're working on. It's just a completely different feeling. I think we talked about this.
Jordan Gal:Ruben from here was talking to Noah Kagan about the feeling that something that has legs, it just feels completely different from something that you have to push up the mountain slowly.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:That's what this feels like. It is people coming to us saying, oh my God, I can't believe you're finally doing this. And as soon as you have this, I'm ready to go. And once you get PayPal and sure, $300 a month sounds totally fair we make more money, so sure, a thousand bucks a month sounds totally reasonable and it's just like all
Brian Casel:Yeah, there's a lot of positive feedback coming in.
Jordan Gal:Yep. Yep. And then a lot of people coming up to us saying we want to be affiliates. How do we get involved? It just has a very different feeling.
Jordan Gal:You know, I think the revenue on the checkout side can catch up to the card abandonment side, in a fraction of the time that it took the cart abandonment to get to where it is.
Brian Casel:Yeah. But they still work hand in hand, don't they?
Jordan Gal:They do work hand in hand, but you can kinda see, like, year from now that it might just be one it might just be one product. Got it. Right, because
Brian Casel:it's like the checkout product with a cart abandonment feature.
Jordan Gal:Yes, and it is currently a feature, it's built in, and so obviously it's integrated with our own checkout and all that. You can just kind of feel that the checkout product is the future of the company. Yeah. And so so we were like right in the middle of the transition. So it feels a little crazy, but Are you getting are
Brian Casel:you getting this feedback from all different platforms or or like a mix of different platforms or is it mostly coming from?
Jordan Gal:Well, we are we are purposely positioning it right now as as a Shopify thing. Mhmm. So we we're not even telegraphing or even even talking about that this will eventually work for Magento and WooCommerce and other things. We're just kind of keeping the message really pure for the audience that we want to attract and the audience that we can take on now. I don't think it makes sense to say this is for all e commerce, A, that dilutes the message, B, we can't accommodate it for months anyway.
Jordan Gal:What's the point?
Brian Casel:Got it. Got
Jordan Gal:it. So we're just like, right now this is like for Shopify. Yeah. When we're ready to take on non Shopify customers and well then we can start telegraphing that like new integrations coming soon and that that sort of thing. But I think there's there's enough space in the Shopify ecosystem for for a long time.
Brian Casel:Good stuff. Yeah, that's exciting. So you said they're not paying customers yet. When does that happen?
Jordan Gal:We've got a few live trials and so sometime over the next week, those first decisions will be made. But it's a funny thing. I assume it's similar to the PPC product that you're offering. When you first start something like this, you don't have the confidence quite yet to charge what you want to charge for it. You're kind of in this like exploration stage, like do people want it?
Jordan Gal:Does it work? Are people happy with it? Like, yes, all systems go. Good. Let me roll it out to my first paying customers.
Brian Casel:Well, what I really like about the your checkout product is that it's it is getting to be much more core or much more of an essential piece and a and a very visible piece, whereas the card abandonment is valuable, but it's a little bit easier to to just decide to turn it off or to or to build it in house or something like that. But well, maybe building it in house is probably more more difficult, but
Jordan Gal:Yeah.
Brian Casel:But you
Jordan Gal:can see what's happening. Mailchimp just released card abandonment.
Brian Casel:Oh, wow.
Jordan Gal:Right? They they they tie into Shopify and they have their own card abandonment, you know. So it's like you could see it's being commoditized. Yeah. With lot of competition.
Brian Casel:With the checkout, like, it is their checkout page. Like, the design of their checkout page.
Jordan Gal:So It's where the credit card gets processed. That's
Brian Casel:that's where you
Jordan Gal:wanna be.
Brian Casel:And it's a very visible thing, which means there's there's some lock in there because if they were to cancel, then they have to figure out another solution for their checkout page.
Jordan Gal:Right. And that's Or go back to the what they had before, which is no control, which is like
Brian Casel:Right. I I felt I I had that pretty good with Restaurant Engine because we control their whole what their whole website and their web host. So the cost of canceling is like, well, we gotta go hire a different web designer now.
Jordan Gal:Right. Different.
Brian Casel:And I I kinda feel that way with with audience ops. I mean, once we get up and running, a lot of our clients who've been with us for, like, a year or more now, we're their content engine and they're doing content marketing. It's it's not like they're they're just deciding to, like, not do content anymore. But the PPC add on, I feel like might be one of those things where it's like, yeah, we could turn it on, turn it off anytime. But, but that's why we're we're treating it as an add on and not like the core service.
Brian Casel:Yep. You know?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Now we definitely feel going up the value chain and the good things about that, there are also negatives. Like, you know, if card abandonment emails stop going out for a day, sorry, we'll get, you know, we'll fix it up. If the checkout goes down, that's, that's unacceptable. So, you know, it's like the Christmas Eve test.
Jordan Gal:Christmas Eve, your service goes down. You either have the type of service that it's like, sorry, we'll get we'll figure it out.
Brian Casel:Yeah. It was Christmas. Give us a break.
Jordan Gal:Right.
Brian Casel:Or it's like Or it's doesn't matter. What you're doing. We need this up three sixty five. You know?
Jordan Gal:Yes. So we've gone from the casual approach to Christmas Eve to, you know, to the to the more proactive.
Brian Casel:That's where you wanna be though.
Jordan Gal:I I think at
Brian Casel:the end
Jordan Gal:of the day, yes. Yeah. Cool, man. How about you? What's new?
Brian Casel:Alright. So I'm I'm facing a bit of a decision right now. It's not a major thing, but I basically, whether to push back up my plan to to launch this training product, which that I've been talking about. I've been getting a lot of good feedback about the training product. I want to launch it.
Brian Casel:I wanna work on it, but I feel like there are so many other things going on in the business that's requiring my focus and energy that are that I probably should prioritize. And I need and I need to be realistic about how much I can accomplish in a given month. So I need to I I think what I'm getting to now is, like, I need to just acknowledge that this training product, instead of launching it in July and August, might more realistically launch it in, like, September, October. Maybe even later than that. But
Jordan Gal:Okay. Let's let's let's talk through this for a second because I I I don't like the sound of that because I was so excited about what you were doing on that front. So what is it? What's the underlying like? Why does it not feel like our priorities?
Jordan Gal:Is it a validation thing? It's if people were saying, I will pay you?
Brian Casel:The the frustrating thing about it, I've had customers set leads say, will pay for this. And I want to do it for all the business reasons and because I think it's a valuable product that would solve a lot of problems for a lot of customers. It's something that I wanna do. It's it's not like I've decided not to do it. It's just a priority thing.
Brian Casel:So what's come up is that Audience Ops, the service is growing. The team has grown. I just hired three project managers, and that's proving to be pretty complicated to get them trained up. It's it's a lot easier for us to hire writers and have them fall right into our process than managers because they have to learn how to manage all the little things that go on. So that's been a bit tricky, and and Kat, our first manager, has been really stepping up to to train them.
Brian Casel:But my role in all this is to update all of our processes. Not all of them, but a lot like, a lot of what has worked in the first year when it was just one project manager and a handful of writers. Now we're a team of 20 over 20. So a lot of these systems have to be updated to manage a larger client base, to manage a larger team, more documentation, more leaving more of a history. So so there's that with the management side of things, and really the thing that that that's become apparent is the sales side of things.
Brian Casel:So I I talked about how I have a salesperson now, and he and now he handles a 100% of our leads coming in. So I'm no longer talking to leads.
Jordan Gal:Wow. And and how's the the close ratio?
Brian Casel:He's closing clients, but but now that it's been almost two complete months of him on it a 100%, I mean, it's pretty clear that we're signing less new clients than we than we were before.
Jordan Gal:Right. Which which is expected. Think I think that was expected. How much less?
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah. And it's a bit hard to track because I did I did a Mixergy interview about a month ago, and that brought in a spike in leads. And some of them have closed. Some of them are still in, like, the nurturing phase.
Brian Casel:Like, on the sales front, my role has changed to now I'm a coach for my sales guy. We talk, we have a call every two weeks. I listen to his recorded sales calls. We talk through them. I I coach him on how to answer objections, how how to change his approach.
Brian Casel:I keep him informed on what's happening in the service, how to talk about the service, how to talk about this new PPC add on, how to do things like that. So
Jordan Gal:Is that hard for you to just kinda watch from the sidelines?
Brian Casel:Yeah. It is. You know? And and there are a lot of, we get a lot of really good leads that just evaluating them on the service, just looking at their website, I would I would just say, wow. These guys are perfect.
Brian Casel:They fit our perfect client profile. And and I feel like I I could definitely close them. And I think and but at the end of the day, he probably will close them too because they are such a good fit and they fit the value proposition. What has become apparent to me now is I need to change our sales process or change the way that we conduct these consultations. Because currently, all we've been doing and all I've been doing since day one is just a call.
Brian Casel:Just an audio call. Let's talk through it. I'll I'll learn a little bit about your business, and then you ask us questions about or they ask me questions about audience ops. Like, you know, you probably know a thing or two about it so far, but what are your questions? Let me answer them.
Brian Casel:Let me answer your objections. And then we go through it, and then we follow-up over email, and then they either sign up or they don't. And I feel like we don't have a standard enough way to present the service and present the value proposition. And so I wanna move to doing, like, more demos, like a slide deck. Show show them
Jordan Gal:With a with a script.
Brian Casel:With a with a script, with a like, now join this video call. Instead of doing an audio call, we're gonna do a video call, got a ten minute slide deck to to present to you, and I wanna move to to that. So so now on my to do list, which is new, I you know, after Yeah. Like, now
Jordan Gal:It's a big big project that didn't exist.
Brian Casel:Exactly. Now it's a big project that I need to create this slide deck. I need to do a few sales calls myself again so that I can work it out and work out the kinks. And then I need to train Raj on it and and do do some mock calls with him and and then, you know, continue to to tweak that and then maybe even do like a recorded version and But that'll make a difference. I I think it will,
Jordan Gal:you know, and You can't optimize a conversation.
Brian Casel:Exactly.
Jordan Gal:You can't optimize a presentation.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Exactly. And I can present the value prop in a in a certain sequence and then have them ask questions after that. So And it's tricky. It still needs
Jordan Gal:to be a conversation. But what whatever it is, going a little bit more formal in that, I think will not only make it more productive and better performing, also most more scalable.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And so I I just found that my time currently between growing the team on the management side and and now I'm gonna be working more hands on on the sales side than I have been, like, I'm just less free to work on other things. So so this summer, I I'm really more in, a retooling mode than than a building mode, which is kind of frustrating because, you know, I'm I'm the founder. I wanna be building new stuff. I wanna be launching this new product.
Brian Casel:But I I think the the size and and the current growth, it it like, it has to be retooled in order to we have to take some time to step back and and and make sure that we can get things really on track for for another big phase of growth on its own using the using these new systems that we're building, and then I can go back to focusing on building out the product line. That's that's kind of the conclusion that I'm coming to and and like, because, you know, the the new new client sign ups have slowed. Like, there there were months ago a couple months ago, we were pretty regularly signing up, like, eight to 10 new clients a month, which which is kinda crazy to think about considering it's a product high service. And you know, I think that slowed down to like, we're we're probably signing around four to five a month now, which is fine. Like, we're still growing, but it's it's just slower.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm. You wanna get it back to to that same level Yeah. And I also you need better systems.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Also, I feel like some of the clients that are closing now are still clients that I spoke to from months ago. So only a few of them are the ones that that my new sales guy has talked to. But he has successfully closed a few clients that and and and, you know, the other thing that that comes in into all this, now that we have a sales guy and now that we have these managers in place, it's gotten to a point where I'm completely out of touch with some of our clients.
Jordan Gal:What That is such a strange feeling,
Brian Casel:isn't Yeah. Like, we have clients now who I mean, I am involved enough to obviously see their business and see their website and and and kinda oversee them getting onboarded. But we do have systems in place and people in place to manage every step of that from the consultation to the onboarding call to getting them up and running with content to writing and publishing their first post. Like, all that happens without me. So what what has happened is sometimes, like, a kink comes up or or a client has a weird question or or something just, you know, doesn't go quite right in their first month or two of onboarding, and and my manager just escalated to me, like, what should we do about this?
Jordan Gal:And You're like, I don't know who this person is or what were you And talking
Brian Casel:and now yeah. Now it's like, wait. So alright. What is their business all about? What do they do?
Brian Casel:Who are they? I gotta get a little bit caught up on that. Whereas before, it's like, oh, yeah. I remember speaking to that guy on a sales call. But now it's like, I I'm a little bit more out of touch.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:It it's I think it's a good thing.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And It just feels
Jordan Gal:it it it's a different feeling.
Brian Casel:It's a little bit scary, but but what I'm learning is that's even more of a need for systems. Everything had like, this is an opportunity to to make our systems even more bulletproof to say, like, these can our systems can account for these little scenarios that pop up. Like, when this happens, when when this client is in a highly specialized niche and and it's harder to to create content for them because they're in this weird niche compared to 90% of our other clients, then and this is something that I actually just worked on last week. Now we have a special way to to interview them and and get ideas for blog posts that and, like, now we have a system to deal with that scenario rather than, alright, let's just, you know, figure it out and hope for the best or or bust our ass and spend extra hours, you know. It, you know, it's it's just so so all this stuff is pulling me back into, like, this retooling mode, you know, and that's and that's why I think I need to kinda push off the the new product stuff for at least a month or two.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I mean, a month or two isn't much, but I definitely still I think that there's just really big potential in you putting out a course on this stuff. I don't see that type of course existing and or or at least no one comes to mind immediately, which means that not that it may as well not exist, but that there's space for a leader in it. You know? I think it's a it's a big ass market.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And I've I've had a lot of feedback just like that from also from clients and from non clients, and, and I do think that there is a need. I and and it majority of
Jordan Gal:people are doing this on their own and will do it on their own. Yeah. Exactly. And Overwhelming majority.
Brian Casel:And and, like, that's really the long term plan for for audience ops. And it falls right into I was talking with Greg and my mastermind about, you know, what what is the mission, which sounds whatever hokey and and fluffy.
Jordan Gal:I've been using that word lately too. Every time I say it, I don't like it, but but it makes sense in certain contexts.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Like, the whole mission of the company has to it's it is important to follow one mission. And and, like, for for for me, when I started Audience Ops, it it's always been, like, make it easier for founders and especially b to b SaaS companies to to just do content marketing and do it in in the right way. And whether we're doing it for you or we're giving you the the framework and strategies to run on yourself and the and the systems, and then I that's so, like, the next phase would be to do this training product. And then out of that, we could even build other other products where whether it's a a SaaS tool or or maybe like a, some like, a coaching element where we're helping you hire your own writer or, your like, a lot of different ways we can go with this.
Brian Casel:But, that that is the neck like, I don't wanna delay it too long because the done for you service will will definitely reach a limit on the scalability. And and it it is scaling now, but it's it's a question of, like, well, how how large of a team do I wanna have? And and and who are the most ideal clients for the done for you versus some other way to solve that problem. And so so those are kind of the longer term things. But in the short term, I gotta make sure that it can completely run at its current size.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. That's good. That's good. Yeah. I've had more of that scared feeling lately, and I'm I'm just trying to go with it because I I know I know what happened with Carhook where I tried to control everything in terms of the sales process and the customer relationships and interactions.
Jordan Gal:It pulled me away from doing things that scaled and that was on purpose for a while. And now it's like, I can't get involved or I won't do something that can attract more leads. So if you look over there, you go, okay. I I don't have the same feel that I used to, but we don't don't really have a choice.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, this is for anyone listening. Like, if you're if you're closing sales yourself, that's that's great. You you got more customers, but you haven't fully solved the problem yet. Like, it's you you have to get it to a point where you're closing leads, where your your business is closing leads and not relying on you to close the leads.
Jordan Gal:Yep. Yeah. All all of it. Not just closing. Closing services.
Brian Casel:Closing, boarding. Yeah. Exactly. Onboarding, serving, retaining.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. The, did we talk about this? I am I just gonna repeat everything I talked about last week? I I have no memory right now of what what we talked about, but that that Andrew Wilkinson article?
Brian Casel:Yes. You you mentioned it, and then I went I read it. It was it was perfect.
Jordan Gal:Is that is that good or what? Yes. That that was very some blog posts you kind of read like, oh, that's cool. I have that in my like memory bank somewhere. This like affected you, you're ready, okay.
Brian Casel:That was a great read. Listening, that's called, was it Lazy Leadership?
Jordan Gal:Lazy leadership.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yep. Really,
Jordan Gal:really It made feel better about a lot of the things that I often feel guilty about. Right. Which is the best type of blog post.
Brian Casel:Exactly.
Jordan Gal:It was a great vision of how does one person go beyond their own personal ability and reach. There's only one way. Just stop trying to control everything and hand it over and be okay handing it over to other people and systems. And you know, no billionaire, very few billionaires did it themselves. Right?
Jordan Gal:People trading commodities, sure, you can make a ton of money, but most people built organizations that run and make money far beyond what they can personally do, far beyond.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I feel like it's, the longer I do this, I'm sure most entrepreneurs, especially ones who are further along than I am, would agree for sure. It's it's it's so much more about the people than anything else. It's it's about attracting the best people and and managing them or letting them self manage in a way that's that's really effective and letting them be productive and setting the vision, setting the goals, but and the objectives, but, letting them make it happen. That's that's the key.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. And and not being in the office all the time. Yes. I think that's a that's a good goal.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And, you know, I think this goes for, SaaS too or purely software. I was reading a reading a post from, from Steven Bristol. I think he wrote it years ago. But I was just checking out their stuff because they recently sold Bless Accounting and, you know, congratulations to them.
Brian Casel:It's pretty awesome.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. It's awesome.
Brian Casel:But, there there he wrote a those guys are great at writing these, short, insightful, and pretty funny posts. He wrote one about, like, the reality of running a SaaS. Right. I think it was from back in, like, 2012 or something. It was like, I'm not gonna do it justice.
Brian Casel:But, like, the the fantasy, what most people think, and I I think a lot of people still have this idea of running a SaaS. It's like, you you run a SaaS, you're gonna start getting subscribers. It'll be very hard to build it and get the first few customers early on. But once you reach a certain point, maybe within a year, it becomes autopilot and it's just gonna grow and people keep paying monthly. And it's just that's just so far from the truth.
Jordan Gal:I wish that's what people look at SaaS and that's why they dream of SaaS.
Brian Casel:Right. But the reality is you you grow and then you gotta and then you gotta have more resources, you gotta fix your onboarding, you gotta fix your churn, then you gotta hire more customer support, and now you gotta manage them, and then you gotta hire more engineers and you gotta manage them, and and it's like, it does keep growing.
Jordan Gal:Because we're all pussies who don't charge enough, there isn't enough margin for things.
Brian Casel:That's what makes it difficult.
Jordan Gal:Right. You get stuck in this lower priced bootstrap SaaS. It's very, very difficult to get to a point where you can hire enough people and the business brings in enough money that you as the owner is just getting kicked out, you know, a healthy chunk of money. And then at the same time, if you go the funded route, you can't be an absent owner of funded company that they're giving you the money because they want you to run the company. So it's very difficult.
Jordan Gal:There are very few cases out there that you see that are public of people who run software companies and kind of sit off to the side while the software kicks them out 50 ks a month.
Brian Casel:Right.
Jordan Gal:It's rare.
Brian Casel:I I mean, I I think it's fair to say, like, it's not only rare. Like, it just doesn't happen. And and even whatever whatever stories you have heard, there's stuff behind the scenes that is is an ongoing expense and and resources. But, you know and I and I think he ended that article with, you know, this is not to dissuade you from starting a SaaS, but just have the right have have a reality check-in place. And I think most of us would probably agree like, well, we're gonna do it anyway.
Brian Casel:Because that's that's what we do. You know? I was I was emailing an old friend, and he's not an entrepreneur. And I was just giving him like a some I haven't spoken to him in a couple years. And
Jordan Gal:Okay. Catching up.
Brian Casel:Catching up and trying to give him like, like somehow recap what's happening in my life in like a sentence. And and I and I wrote, well, you know, I I now, you know, now I'm running a business and managing a team of of 20 people, and I just, like, summed it up, like, it's it's pretty exciting and stressful at the same time. And Yep. And I think that's that's how I would I would describe it. It it is both exciting and stressful, and I'm kind of fine with that.
Brian Casel:I'm I'm fine with it being stressful and challenging. I want it to be challenging.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I I agree with that. I think for me, I never really just look for like where where's the tipping point? Where is the breakthrough? Where where is that thing that changes the dynamic?
Jordan Gal:Not by five degrees, you know, by by a lot more. So I saw I almost died of I I seriously might have brought this up last week. Brian, don't I don't know what's happening. I almost died of jealousy. This new story came out about this guy who started an app while in college.
Jordan Gal:And at like 24 years old, sold it for like $50,000,000. And him and his wife were like traveling the world. Like, with with their two beautiful little kids. I'm like, goddamn it. I don't want that story to come in front of my face.
Jordan Gal:I don't wanna see that because it leads you down this weird dark path.
Brian Casel:That's like a lottery.
Jordan Gal:That's right. But it puts it in front of you and then you're like, damn it, that's such a fantasy. It makes it difficult to be like, well, let me just go back to the grind over here and hopefully things will go from x to two x and then maybe to three x and five x maybe instead of like, what about a thousand x? But just having it there on your mind, it gives you like this unhealthy standard or unhealthy endpoint.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I don't know. It's of course, that'd be great, but it's it's like to I I don't know. To me, that's just such a lottery that it's not even like that's something that I can model anything after. So there's no point in even I'd I'd much rather model it I hate this term, but like a lifestyle business.
Brian Casel:But the way that I think of a lifestyle business is like a business that I actually like to to work on, but still give me enough freedom to, you know, take Fridays off and to and to stop working at two or three in the afternoon if I want to or go travel and and, and still earn an income while and not just an income, but build building assets.
Jordan Gal:Yeah.
Brian Casel:That, you know, something that that I own.
Jordan Gal:Anyway, back to work.
Brian Casel:Back back at it.
Jordan Gal:It's it's Friday. You you got a a little nice weekend plan, I hope.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Not too much. I'm I think I mentioned I'm trying to get back into tennis. Haven't played a sport in a long time, so I've got a a tennis thing going on tomorrow morning, and, that's about it. Not not working on the yard a little bit.
Jordan Gal:I'm taking the family to some some mini golf up in on top of some rooftop building or something here in Portland. So that's that's my sport.
Brian Casel:Oh, that sounds a little awesome.
Jordan Gal:Oh, it'd be good. Good stuff, man. Alright, man. Alright. Talk to you guys soon.
Jordan Gal:Hopefully, we'll we'll do one of our party episodes soon.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Alright. You.
