The Bootstrapper's Search For Meaning
Hello. Welcome back to another episode of Bootstrap Web. Brian, what's up, man? We got some cool feedback on the on the previous episode where where we had Ian Landsman on.
Brian Casel:Yeah. We did. That was fun. Actually, I don't listen back to all of them, but I listened back to that one. It it was I I enjoyed it.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. More free flowing conversation. So we'll we'll keep at it. We'll see if we can add one. We'll see if we can do it with four people.
Jordan Gal:It still works the same way. But it was cool. So thank you, Ian, for for coming on. That was that was cool.
Brian Casel:I don't know if we have anybody booked for next week, but I know we've got a bunch of people booked over the next several weeks. And and yeah, some of them are four people, you know, four of us including you and me, and I'm I'm really looking forward to it. Got a got a lot of cool cool names that that people probably know Yep. Around these parts.
Jordan Gal:Nice, man. So our our bigger topic today is is is is an interesting one. It's kind of we're still struggling with how to talk about it and how to define it. It's kinda like business versus art. You know, can business be art?
Jordan Gal:Does does business kill art? And that sounds pretentious, but we'll we'll kinda get into more details after we give a few a few updates. So Yep. What's going on, man? What's new?
Brian Casel:Oh, let's see. You know, we're in the middle of summer here. It's getting hot up here in the Northeast. I've been playing a lot of tennis lately.
Jordan Gal:Good for you.
Brian Casel:Just trying to get back into that and it feels really good to be honest. I mean, I think I talked about this a bit before, but, you know, in terms of like working out and getting healthy, like, I just can't stick to a workout routine. But I've been playing tennis for about the past month, you know, at least once a week, sometimes twice, and it's I'm starting to like like, crave it now.
Jordan Gal:I Wanna wanna get better?
Brian Casel:I wanna get better and I wanna get back out there, and I'm looking forward to, you know, like, Tuesday nights when I go and play in a league and and everything and, like
Jordan Gal:Nice, man.
Brian Casel:It's it's a lot of fun. And and, you know, it it made me think about the importance of we talked a few weeks ago about having a hobby outside of your business. Right? Right. It made you know, I think in the summertime for me now, it's playing a sport like tennis.
Brian Casel:In the wintertime, I like to go snowboarding, although I don't get too many chances every year to go, but and I think the importance for me there is I'm constantly looking ahead to the future, like, are we working on? What are the goals for this month? What are the goals for this year? And I can't get my mind out of the future. I like my wife is so much better than me about like being in the present, like what's going on now.
Brian Casel:And so I find that playing a sport like tennis or snowboarding is keeps my mind right here in in in the present and it's a good way to kinda reset, you know, either I'm working on my shot, competing against somebody or I'm going down a hill trying not to kill myself. I
Jordan Gal:think it's really important to
Brian Casel:have that balance.
Jordan Gal:I like that, that formulation just kids help with that. Right? When you're hanging out with your kids, you're like, I'm gonna stop thinking about the future and help you ride this bike right now. And my my grandfather was, kind of the most amazing person I've I've ever known. He lived to 106.
Jordan Gal:He he he moved to Israel from, from Romania in 1936. So it's like twelve years before independence. He kinda has the, like, unbelievable life story. He used to say that life comes in three phases. In the first stage of life, you think about the present, you know, when you're an eight year old, you don't, you know, you're not that conservative, anything other than like what you're doing right now.
Jordan Gal:Then the middle part of life, you think about the future. That's where we are right now. And then the last stage of life, think about the past. So the human condition is always set to to it changes. When you're a kid, you're in the present.
Jordan Gal:And then when you're in your adult years, you think about the future. That's where we it's all we're obsessed with the future. Everything we're doing right now is to set things up.
Brian Casel:That's true.
Jordan Gal:Gonna look.
Brian Casel:I can't even like think about what it it must be like to be older in life and just just thinking in terms of back. Wow. We're getting kinda deep here. Yeah. Right.
Jordan Gal:Yep. But but important stuff.
Brian Casel:Cool. So, yeah, that's that's basically the update on the personal front. I I guess we're also not confirmed yet, but we're looking at at booking a trip to Southeast Asia to The Philippines later in, like, December into January. If that happens, we'll we'll try to fit that in just before we you know, Brad, Tunar, and I do the big snow tiny comp, which we also started talking about doing for February 2017. I know that's a little bit ways off, but that's going to be in the works.
Jordan Gal:Philippines is a big trip.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah. So so my wife is is Filipino and she has family in The Philippines. So it'll be a good opportunity for us to go out there for for the first time with the kids and and her extended family can can meet them. And, know, thinking about doing like four weeks out there and we'll stay around Cebu, which is where my wife is from, but, you know, maybe make a few trips to some like resort islands around The Philippines, maybe try to hop over to like Vietnam or something.
Brian Casel:We'll see what what we can fit in there.
Jordan Gal:Nice, man. And how about the business front?
Brian Casel:Yeah. So I mean, I don't know. You wanna you wanna flip back over to you first? Yeah. Sure.
Brian Casel:Alright.
Jordan Gal:So the the the big thing on my mind is going to Berlin tomorrow morning, which is very exciting. So, we're going there for an affiliate conference basically to find and recruit affiliates to promote our new product. That's like our preferred distribution path. We have like a personal connection to the organizer of the conference and they basically said to us, you get, if this is what you guys want to do in this, in this e commerce Shopify space, that this is the best conference in the world to do it at. So we said, all right, that sounds like it's worth the time and money investment.
Jordan Gal:We're going, everyone's doing it. The whole team, this will be the first time, first time we will ever all three of us be in person together.
Brian Casel:Oh, that's cool.
Jordan Gal:Right? So that's just super, super exciting. So Ben is gonna be in Europe for a wedding actually. So we're just he's just flying over to Berlin, which is easy. I am just gonna eat shit and fly fly from Portland.
Jordan Gal:It's fine. I'm I'm gone from the house for five days and I'm only there for three. So it's just just two days of of sitting around traveling, but it's but it's without kids. So it's easy. And and rock from Slovenia, it's like a, you know, it's an hour and a half flight or something.
Jordan Gal:So it'll be the first time after a year of working together.
Brian Casel:That's awesome.
Jordan Gal:Yeah, and very excitingly, Rock just signed onto the company. So we gave him a piece of the company, so it's officially, we're now partners and that just got finished last week. So it very much feels like you know, we kinda get to celebrate that, in person over over some some German beers and trying to do some business and find some affiliates. So that's that's exciting.
Brian Casel:So the so, I'm not familiar with this conference. So it's like it's a conference for all sorts of affiliate, programs and and industries and and things?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. It's it's basically a high end affiliate conference. So it's, you know, people who do really well in the affiliate world and a lot of that these days is pointed at e commerce and Amazon and those types of, right, there will always be the fitness products, the business opportunity products, all that that affiliates promote. But the Shopify e commerce space is really, really hot right now. Basically, there are a lot of people who have kind of figured out a methodology to use a combination of drop shipping and Facebook ads to grow e commerce businesses really, really fast.
Jordan Gal:So the targeting that Facebook provides when done properly can help you sell physical products a lot faster than was possible a few years ago. And Shopify makes setting up a store very easy and quick and so people are basically combining those two things and doing really well for themselves and then of course, there are those people who do well for themselves and then see the bigger opportunity in teaching other people how to do So there's a whole ecosystem kind of booming around that and a lot of affiliates are looking for products to promote in that space and that's what ours is. Ours is a you're using Shopify, you're using Facebook ads. If you put people through a funnel through our particular funnel that connects to your Shopify store, you can do well so that, you know, we talked to a few people and they were like, you need, you need to get over here because people will hear that and they will want to promote it. And that's, that's, that's the goal.
Jordan Gal:That's what we want to do. Very cool. Yeah. And besides that, our friend, Rob Walling, I wonder if we could we should we should talk about the the drip lead pages partnership thing that's I
Brian Casel:know. I mean, I'm still waiting to hear more details about it. I you know, I received the Yeah. The emails
Jordan Gal:and stuff. Don't know how many more details we'll hear. It's just kind of interesting to see something in the Bootstrap ecosystem.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Exciting stuff. Congratulations to both of them.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Big congrats to both.
Brian Casel:That's right.
Jordan Gal:Yep. So Rob Rob invited me to speak at MicroConf, which is here's what all relates back to Bootstrap Web. Remember the hidden episode? Yeah. So that shall not be named about the kind of full Shopify story.
Jordan Gal:Rob heard that and basically said, I think you should talk about that on stage. Cause that that it would be good for people to hear that because that's kind of like a real, you know, it's a difficult kind of story.
Brian Casel:There there have been several talks at MicroConf where the speaker kind of starts it off by like, look, this is, you know, this is just kind of for this room. You know, I appreciate, you know, no tweets or blog posts about it.
Jordan Gal:Yes. You know? Yes. And and I I know, what's his name? Pelti?
Jordan Gal:Yep. Right. He he told a very dramatic story. So I think Rob saw that and was like, I think you should talk at MicroConf about that. So that'll be my first, the first time giving a talk talk, not an attendee talk.
Jordan Gal:You did that in Europe last year, didn't
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah. Was the same one. Ropeldi gave a great talk there. I mean, are always a lot of great talks.
Brian Casel:But yeah, that was my first long form talk at MicroConf. I've done them at other places too, but Yeah.
Jordan Gal:I've never done it.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I I don't know. I I coming out of it, I wasn't very happy with my the way that I that it came off. I thought I thought the content was okay, but I I I'm still, you know, getting over the the the public speaking stuff and I'm trying to get more experience with that. Although I just haven't had too many opportunities to to do it frequently.
Jordan Gal:So Yeah. You know. I'm I'm in the same boat. So when Rob asked, I was like, yes. Right.
Jordan Gal:I just thought forty five minutes on stage. Okay. Yeah. It makes me nervous, but if it makes you nervous, I guess you say yes. So that's so that's Barcelona.
Jordan Gal:So unfortunately, I'm not gonna stay in Europe and kinda gallivant around. I gotta come back here. So it'll be Berlin for, four days, come back, wait a week, go back to Barcelona, three days, come back.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I love Barcelona. That that city is awesome. I'd love to get back to
Jordan Gal:talk about that. I want some jamon.
Brian Casel:Yeah. We we ate a lot. I I was there with my wife when we did MicroConf Europe, again, we only had like forty eight hours to to kinda jump around before we had to get out of there. Yep. So Alright.
Jordan Gal:So enough about the personal stuff. Nobody wants to hear that. Right?
Brian Casel:Yep.
Jordan Gal:What what's new with audience ops?
Brian Casel:Yeah. So so I think I talked about this a week or two ago. July right now is for me, it's a big focus on sales. I talked about how we're we're we are pushing off the training product, which we still plan to to launch at some point this year, probably this fall. But for right now, I decided to to step back to focus on the done for you service, the the productized service that it's been since day one and just focus on sales and and just our whole sales process because we do have a salesperson in place now.
Brian Casel:But now that we're making these updates, I've been jumping in this week and doing a few sales calls myself. And I guess I can talk about all the the things that that I'm updating in the sales process. So number one was to create an actual sales demo rather than just doing sales calls. More structure? More structure and now it's a visual demo with with slides and a presentation and stuff.
Brian Casel:Before we, you know, we just did a call. The challenge has that now that we have a salesperson was, you know, I I had been doing sales myself for the first year. And then I basically trained our salesperson to do what I've been doing, which is just do a call with the person and answer their questions and and I trained him on how to answer all the common questions and objections and and he's been pretty good about that and he's and this guy has been in our team for a long time, so he knows our business pretty well. But I realized like, even the way that I was doing sales calls is not the most optimal way. It's really better if we can have a defined sales presentation with a slide deck that just goes step by step through through the benefits and the value proposition that Audience Ops provides, and then do a little bit of q and a after that, you know, because I I found that even myself, but also the the salesperson, you know, we can have like, you know, different days where we're just going really well with it or just having an off day or the the person asks questions in a weird sequence that it just mixes up, you know, the they don't get the full view of the benefit of of what Audience Ops is.
Brian Casel:So at least having a sales demo, which so it's about a ten or twelve minute slide presentation that we give. It really lays it out in in an optimal way. And and it's, you know, all based off of a script that he can basically just run through. And that way we know that every sales presentation is being delivered in a standard way every time. So that's now launched and I've given this presentation about three or four times over the past week and it's going pretty well.
Brian Casel:So I think that'll definitely have an improvement right there. I guess that's an example, all these things that I'm talking about right now, there are a lot of things that early on in audience ops, I wanted to get everything launched and not everything needed to be perfect or needed to be perfectly optimized. And things just kind of worked well for a while and we kept growing, we kept adding clients. So there really wasn't an immediate urgent need to go in and like tweak every possible optimization in our sales process, you know. But but right now, now that we're like almost a year and a half into Audience Ops, I feel like this month is a good time to go in and examine every step in the process and see where in the funnel we can make improvements.
Brian Casel:The sales demo is one of them, but I've got other things that that we've been working on. We're now doing a better job of reactivating cold leads. So I mean, now that we have this new demo, I actually sent an email to all of the leads from the past year who never ended up signing up and just saying like, hey, know, lot has changed in Audience Ops. We've made a lot of improvements recently. Got a new demo that I'd love to to show you if you're still if this is still a priority for you.
Brian Casel:So that's kind of a one time push, but then, now I've updated our process for after the first two, three weeks where we do normal follow-up, about a month later, we'll like invite them to a live webinar and and just kinda keep those colder leads reactivated. Another update, I don't know when this this podcast will publish, but I'm I'm gonna be doing a live webinar on July 26 for for Audience Ops. And that's the the plan right now is to make this a monthly live webinar. And and I'll be hosting them for the first for the next couple of months. Raj, our sales guy, will will start to take over some of the hosting of those webinars.
Brian Casel:And the idea is just to have always have a live webinar in the calendar for the next month.
Jordan Gal:Coming up and what is it just like, it's basically like a live demo, like an explanation of what you're doing, maybe some case studies. Is it a sales presentation?
Brian Casel:It's it's educational. It's about, know, content marketing strategy. We'll probably change up the topics a little bit, but but this next one on July 26 is called, winning the long game with content. So it's kind of focused on the long term strategies that we implement for clients now.
Jordan Gal:Right. Is is there any pitch or just kind of like
Brian Casel:And then at the end there there is a pitch, to become a client of audience ops basically. So part of it is like we'll go back to older leads and say, you know, here's something new. We've got a live workshop coming up. You can check that out. And we're also running like retargeting ads and and that sort of thing.
Brian Casel:So what else are we doing? I'm just going through the site a little bit and making sure that all of our lead capture forms are optimized and we have a way to like download free samples, which that's kinda hidden right now. I wanna make that a little bit more prominent. In the sales process, we have a sign up page, which is not publicly you can't just nobody you can't just go to the site and sign up, you have to get a sales demo first and then you get to the sign up page. But I redesigned the sign up page and I launched that yesterday.
Brian Casel:So that's all optimized with more information, it's got some testimonials on it, it's got a little FAQ, it's easier to understand the purchase options.
Jordan Gal:That doesn't just assume that you just spoke with them on the phone three minutes ago and then they got the link.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Also, we had been sending giving them a proposal
Jordan Gal:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:And that sign up link. So like, we always give them like two links. Now, I've basically ditched the proposal and we're just sending them this sign up page. And and that sign up page kinda serves as like a mini proposal. It it outlines like like what's included and everything and then, you know, the buy now button.
Brian Casel:So it's just it it makes that easier. We we've actually had a couple of leads be like, yeah, I'm ready to sign up. How do I sign up? It's like, that's not
Brennan Dunn:a good sign. So
Jordan Gal:It's easy as possible to give give you money. Yeah. So it sounds like an optimization month, basically going back to all the things that you built and said, I'll get back to this and you're actually going back to them.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Exactly.
Jordan Gal:I never go back to them.
Brian Casel:Yeah. You know, like like having the proposal and having having this like non optimized sign up form, which is probably the most critical page on our site, but it's but it hasn't changed since like the first week of audience ops a year and a half ago. Like, think
Jordan Gal:You mean your checkout page is important, Brian? Yeah. Right.
Brian Casel:Exactly. I think you know a thing or two about that. But but yeah, that's that's basically it. And then, you know, the challenge with all this stuff is all these changes that that you make right now, you won't see the results tomorrow. I wanna see the results tomorrow.
Brian Casel:I wanna know that, hey, I signed up. I I launched all these like, the new sales demo and everything and and all of a sudden, like, sign ups are through the roof. But no. It like it takes months before you really see a a tick up in in in sign ups. Same thing like anything that you do with battling churn or, retention, like last month, we did a lot of work around rolling out this like twelve month roadmap for clients and doing like a long term strategy there.
Brian Casel:So I don't know that that's going to impact the customer's lifetime until several months have gone by. So that's it's just a little frustrating to to do all this work and then have to wait. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:I do think the adding structure to the sales process, I think that that will be such a huge difference. Because then then you can actually be optimized and improved over time and and then things become more predictable. It makes me think of, you know, Damian Thompson, who we've had on this podcast before is is joining LeadFuse. Yep. I'm so interested to see just to hear about what what what he does, what someone who really knows sales comes into an existing company that's already up and running and has a certain level of momentum, but hasn't clicked fully.
Jordan Gal:I I just wanna see what someone does to the sales process.
Brian Casel:Sounds like a bootstrapped web episode in the works.
Jordan Gal:It does sound like a good we should do we should have both of them on.
Brian Casel:That's what I'm saying. Damien, Justin, get over here. Yep.
Jordan Gal:That's it. They're in. They're still in the schedule. Yep.
Brian Casel:Whether they like it or
Jordan Gal:not. Yep. Alright, cool.
Brian Casel:How about you? What's up with the CarHook?
Jordan Gal:So tactically, we did our first webinar. I don't think we did I talk about this last time?
Brian Casel:I think we left it off with you were promoting it and it was it was upcoming.
Jordan Gal:Yeah, so we did it. It was a great experience, which involved a large glass of scotch on the rocks at 11:30AM.
Brian Casel:There you go.
Jordan Gal:To calm my nerves. Because you don't, you you get pumped up about that sort of thing and I was just tense. I was like, I gotta I gotta relax, man. You know, I don't wanna feel tense. I don't wanna I wanna have fun.
Jordan Gal:I I wanna come across as happy and relaxed, and I was like, I'm I'm having a scotch, man. That's the way go. I've done a few videos before for, like, previous businesses, and a shot of tequila before you do a video just just makes the video come out better. So, yeah, there's there's my first tip for webinars, you know, have scotch on hand.
Brian Casel:Totally. So I like, how how did that go? Like, from, like, the numbers in terms of the the like, I don't know how much you can share, but the
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I'll share. I'll share everything. Whatever is just kind of it was an experiment. You know what it was?
Jordan Gal:We talked about this before. It was, you know, laying down the railroad tracks as as you're going over the path for the first time that that's what it was. I wanted the company to go through it once. So now that the tracks are laid, it's much infinitely easier to go over it again. So I just said, let's just schedule it.
Jordan Gal:I hired Keith Perhak from Delphi and a bunch of other businesses to help me with the funnel. So we got the landing pages, we got the email sequence for registration, and then the email sequence, it's an eight part email sequence for after the webinar. That includes the webinar replay and then additional info, answer questions, build trust, build desire, and then makes the close and adds the scarcity of, hey, you have to do it by tonight, closing in two hours. So everything kinda got put in place.
Brian Casel:So can we talk a little bit because I'm actually working on this right now with this upcoming webinar for audience app.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I can go through the whole funnel basically.
Brian Casel:Yeah. So, okay. So you have the landing page up. I I know you're running Facebook ads. Right?
Brian Casel:Yes. And like how how else did you promote that? Was it just organically and your Facebook ads or how yeah. Can you
Jordan Gal:put I that didn't want that many people. I didn't wanna spend the money to get that many people there. Right? It was just like, let's just go through the path once. So my goal was like 30 registrations.
Jordan Gal:So once we get to 30 registrations, we just stopped. So what we did is we emailed people who had already signed up or told me they were interested in the checkout product. So that was about 100 people that just like had shown some interest. Then we did Facebook ads. So about 10 people signed up from the existing list and then we ran Facebook ads until 20 people signed up through that.
Jordan Gal:And then we, and then we turned the ads off and I said, okay, cool. We've got 30 registrations. Now let's just go through the process. Okay. So it starts off with the Facebook ad going to a landing page.
Jordan Gal:I use lead pages for the landing page.
Brian Casel:And these Facebook ads are cold? Totally cold. Like they're not retargeting ads?
Jordan Gal:Nope, not retargeting, just totally cold Shopify based audience, e commerce interest, that sort of thing.
Brian Casel:Are you able to share any like numbers on like costs
Jordan Gal:per
Brian Casel:conversion?
Jordan Gal:The costs were awesome. It was like less than $4 per registration.
Brian Casel:Oh, okay.
Jordan Gal:It was, I was extremely happy with, if that can scale then hallelujah. And then I don't really, they didn't really pay attention to the conversion rate. I just knew we spent about a $100 and got 20 registrations somewhere in that vicinity.
Brian Casel:So on Facebook ad targeting, because this is something that I know a lot of people kinda struggle with. Because I I think Facebook ads are so easy to be like, oh, just run some Facebook ads, target this and that. It's so easy. But then once you get really into it, yeah, it's complicated, but also optimizing it is really really tough.
Jordan Gal:It's its own thing. It's like AdWords.
Brian Casel:Like you've you've gotta have a Facebook expert
Jordan Gal:on it. I I hired someone. Yeah. Exactly right.
Brian Casel:But I I am curious. So the so you're running these Facebook campaigns and you've got an upcoming webinar date. So how soon how many days before the live webinar event are they seeing the ads? Two days. Two days only.
Jordan Gal:Yep. I mean, the future, I'd rather start off like four or five days beforehand. My ideal is to start running ads on Sunday and have the webinar on Wednesday. So Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and then Wednesday morning also up until the webinar. So a few days basically, not not any more than that.
Jordan Gal:And so Facebook ad to a lead page landing page that's connected to both GoToWebinar and Drip, and the integration now with Drip and Leadpages is so easy. It used to be a little complicated. Now it's super, super simple. And so it goes to a campaign in drip that says, hey, thanks so much for registering. And then there's another another email beforehand that says, hey, we're excited to see you tomorrow.
Jordan Gal:And then, hey, the webinar is gonna start. Here's a link. And then at the same time, GoToWebinars is sending its own kind of default emails. And then the webinar happens and then after the webinar, then they get put onto a drip workflow.
Brian Casel:So in the webinar, it's like educational about checkout optimization stuff?
Jordan Gal:Yes. So I used Russell Brunson's perfect webinar method. I guess you call it right. There are a few different, like, kind of webinar gurus who have their own kind of like, this is how you do a webinar sort of thing. You do five minute intro and they do this.
Jordan Gal:So I used I've I've done James Wedmore before and I've used Lewis Houses before and this one I did with Russell Brunson and Basically what it is is you're you're trying to establish one core belief that you're trying to convince someone is is true, and and for us that's like you need a better performing checkout page, checkout process in order to to advance in your e commerce business. And then and then what you do is you kind of cover three, he calls it secrets for me. That was like a little too much for me. So I called it lessons. So, and what you want to do is you want to teach each lesson and have it contribute to the belief of that core principle that you're trying to kind of address.
Jordan Gal:So, right. So I talked about a one page checkout that's optimized leads to more conversions and here's the math behind what works, right? The whole thing was like, you can make a lot more money with your existing traffic. You don't need more traffic, you need a better conversion rate. So that was like the overall belief I'm trying to get to.
Jordan Gal:So the first one was you need your checkout page to convert better because that's where the leverage is. Then the second one was, you need to increase your average order value with one click post purchase upsells. And then I kind of showed what that means and I showed the math. Okay. Hey, if you have 10,000 visitors and your conversion rate is X, if you had the exact same conversion rate, but now you also converted people post purchase, this is how much more money you'd make.
Jordan Gal:And then the third belief was, you need a funnel for your e commerce business and these new funnel strategies are not possible right now with Shopify unless you're using our product. Right? So it was like those three things contributed to the fact that like you need what I have basically. And I showed the math behind it and it was good, but still relatively weak because I don't have a case study yet. So when I can use a case study that says this person went from 50 ks a month to 150 ks a month using our product, then I think it'll just start selling really well.
Jordan Gal:So after the webinar, have a long form sales page.
Brian Casel:Wait, so did you have like a limited time offer promotion that okay.
Jordan Gal:Yes. And so I did a value stack, which is also part of the perfect webinar approach. You basically like, I'll give you this, which is worth this much. I'll give you this, which is worth this much. I'll give you this bonus worth this much and this bonus worth this much and that total value is call it $10,000 and if you sign up today, you'll get it for X.
Brian Casel:So you had 30 registrations.
Jordan Gal:30 registrations. How many attended last? Eight people attended, which makes perfect sense, kind of 30 ish percent.
Brian Casel:Right, and the rest can watch the recording.
Jordan Gal:Exactly, right. And then one person bought for a thousand bucks. Nice. So it was like, all right, if those numbers scale in any way, then it's gonna be very successful. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:So that was basically what it looked like and then at the end of the webinar, I'm promoting a URL that basically is a long form sales page and at the top of the sales page is the replay of the webinar.
Brian Casel:If I remember correctly, you're offering is the annual license, right?
Jordan Gal:Exactly right. An annual plan for checkup product. Got
Brian Casel:it. Cool. And that's that's really cool for for anybody running a SaaS or really any sort of like recurring
Jordan Gal:business. Annual annual annual Annual. All your favorite SaaS companies that you admire, go through their funnel. If they have a webinar, they will only offer the annual plan there.
Brian Casel:Yeah, and do you offer the annual plan on your public sign up page for Carhartt?
Jordan Gal:Nope, not
Brian Casel:now. So the only way to get it is through the webinar?
Jordan Gal:As of right now, yes. And we left the juxtaposition to be as extreme as possible. So right now if you go to our checkout page, the minimum is $300 a month and we're offering it for a thousand bucks for the year on the webinar. So people are like, well, okay, then I'll fricking take it. You know, so which is exactly, that's what you want.
Jordan Gal:You want people to be like, that's a good deal because it is a genuinely a good deal. And I set expectations. I was like, this thing is new. We're looking for people who are kind of ambitious and early adopters. If you're looking for a perfect software product, talk to us in a few months.
Jordan Gal:So I tried to set the expectations as much as possible in that way. So after that sales page and then once the replay is ready, you put the webinar replay at the top of the sales page and then it's a long form sales page that has a bunch of copy and storytelling and features and screenshots and all that stuff and then at the end you can buy. And then there's an eight part email sequence that goes afterward like yesterday was amazing and then see how someone else has been successful using it and here's just trust building, adding desire, that sort of thing.
Brian Casel:So far, I mean, this first webinar, I mean, obviously, it it was a success even with these small numbers. So it's mostly cold cold traffic except for like the the people from that first 100 interest list. Everyone else is cold traffic. So you have you you didn't even do any like retargeting or or sending to your existing email list for the people who are on content and anything like that?
Jordan Gal:No, we didn't do that purposely because it don't feel ready for it yet. Got it. So so the truth is, the person that bought was actually convinced that they were going to buy basically before the webinar started, which is not an uncommon thing.
Brian Casel:Sure. Right? So they know they're going
Jordan Gal:to see some sort of deal like I want this product and then they saw the webinar and they were like, I like what this guy's talking about and it's a good deal that I was going to buy anyway, so let me, I'll just going to buy, which is not uncommon. It's like your webinar does the work, but it's not, it doesn't have to be like this perfect thing that takes a total stranger because the the truth is that there probably will be several contacts with your company.
Brian Casel:That's what I'm thinking for this audience hops webinar coming up. I mean, so far, it's it's only being promoted to to people on the list, people in in my audience as well, but we're running retargeting ads to people who visited the site. As of right now, for this first one, we're not running cold ads to to brand new people that will probably start experimenting with that and and maybe like the next webinar.
Jordan Gal:In the e commerce space and where we are, we will not be able to sell cold traffic, kinda like the first time they see us is an ad in a webinar until we have eye popping numbers. When we can show a case study, here is the exact funnel that this person built and they're running traffic to it and they made a $100,000 last month off of our product. When we have that, people will just buy because and so we won't we won't be able to close cold traffic until we have that, which is why that's that's kind of the name of the game right now. Just just make people successful.
Brian Casel:Yeah. But even even the cold traffic, even if they don't buy, I mean, it's still a really solid lead magnet and it's a really, you know, it's like cold traffic coming from Facebook, register for the webinar, obviously, they get on your list after that. So so then you can kind of follow-up with content and and like other webinars down the road or other offers. But the other great thing about it is the webinar itself is a really strong first exposure trust building thing. So even if they're not ready to buy on that, like, they're probably not ready to buy on that first day, but they got to know you live on a video thing.
Brian Casel:So it's so they're gonna, like, remember your face when you send them emails after this, you know.
Jordan Gal:Yes. So it's a I totally agree. It's a great first contact with with with someone cold like that. Your voice and you know, and I get freaking excited. I I had a great time doing it, which was like a good signal to me.
Jordan Gal:I was nervous as hell. I took a lot of time on the presentation to make sure that I felt good and kind of proud about it, you know, because you're you're looking at your own presentation on screen and you're like, are a bunch of other people looking at this right now and you you kinda wanna feel like good about it and confident.
Brian Casel:You know, it's so funny. I talked earlier today about public speaking, I get super nervous with that. Right? Like I've I've always just been shaky and I think I've I've gotten better about it over the years, but
Jordan Gal:Not any scotch.
Brian Casel:Exactly. Not just, you know, not drinking enough. The I mean, I've done like public speaking at like local meetups with like 20 people and I'm like, my heart is like beating through through through my clothes. Definitely. But but then I've done webinars and I've done like joint venture stuff with like some pretty huge audiences, like literally a thousand people live on the webinar.
Brian Casel:Woah. And I'm like, it's just me in my office. Just sitting in my office and totally calm and and like enjoying it, like not nervous at all with like thousands of people on this thing live. And it's so I I really enjoy webinars. For some reason, it's like, you know, not being in a in a live stage setting, but but over the computer for some reason is, it is easier to present.
Jordan Gal:It's easier, definitely. I'm I'm literally in like the basement of my house, in my office that I'm always at, you know, that is
Brian Casel:I've been talking to like Justin and Greg about this in our mastermind group. The whole setup of webinar is a total pain in the ass. I mean, queuing up the emails, the landing pages, the sequences. I fucked up
Jordan Gal:so many things.
Brian Casel:And and I've and I've had templates that I've used before, and I spent, like, half a day setting up this next one, even just reusing all of our templates. It takes that much time, know. So that that stuff is such a pain in the ass, but the the live presentation, I I really enjoy it.
Jordan Gal:Right. Once once you get there, I screwed up so many things. And and we were almost we were well, not almost. We were embarrassed about some of things we screwed up, but I just told the guys, this is why we're going through it once.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I remember last or a couple years ago, I did one I did a webinar. One of the the first ones I did, I didn't realize until, like, probably, like, almost all the way through the entire presentation that nobody was seeing my slides. They were seeing me on video and I had no idea. No way.
Brian Casel:And like people thought that I was just like giving this speech, you know? You know? It was like
Jordan Gal:That's brutal.
Brian Casel:It was terrible. Yeah. And and, like, nobody told like, somebody told me, like, right at the end, like, are there supposed to be slides for this thing? And I'm like, what?
Jordan Gal:That's amazing. You gotta have a colleague on it also. I had been I had been on it and I had another friend Richard Patey on it and they were just like texting me and ping me on, you know, on Skype just being like, you're good. Yes, I can hear you. You'd like need some outside validation otherwise.
Brian Casel:I know.
Jordan Gal:Just start talking.
Brian Casel:Yeah. So on this next one, on the twenty sixth, I've got the my sales guy, Raj, he's gonna be joining me. He'll be kinda like manning the chat room while Yep. And I mean, I've done many since then. I got that's definitely something that I like double check for sure before I start the webinars.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:We screwed everything up.
Brian Casel:But, yeah, that one sucked.
Jordan Gal:The email that goes out afterward, that's like, we're so excited. Here's the link to buy. Like, the URL wasn't there. Yeah. So that's so tactically that's what's happening.
Jordan Gal:And that's why we're going to Berlin to basically find people to send us. What I want to do is eat shit on our own and run our own webinars for a few weeks and get better at it. And then when we're ready, go to the people that we make contact with and relate and other people that I'm kind of networking Facebook, by the way, that's, that's all my networking right now is on Facebook. I just see who's promoting to a Facebook audience, who has a course, who has like expertise that they're like showing screenshots of like what they're doing on and because of that they have a following. I just reach out to them.
Jordan Gal:I add them as a friend and I'm like, yo, I we should talk. I run this thing and I think we might be able to work together and we have this product and then they're like, all right, cool. I want to promote that. Let's let's talk. And LinkedIn completely useless and Facebook is everything.
Jordan Gal:Interesting. Yep. So we basically just want to get better at it and then just increase the numbers. And then not spend on Facebook ads, but spend on affiliate payouts, which I'm totally happy to do because you only pay for it when it's already in your pocket. Yep.
Brian Casel:It's perfect, man. Yeah. I'm excited to see to hear how it like scales up in the second and third webinar. I mean, was profitable on the first one. So I'm interested to see how it goes from here.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Think it's gonna be, you know, we're strategically speaking and I'll just talk about this for two minutes so we can talk about the other things that this doesn't run on. It's like a Joe Rogan three hour thing. Strategically, we're in no man's land and it is is difficult. Our original product, the card abandonment product has slowed down significantly on the growth.
Jordan Gal:We're not paying attention to the growth side. We're not doing new integrations and partnerships and all that, so we're maintaining and supporting and adding new people on, but not pushing on it. Then at the same time, new product isn't quite producing yet because it's kind of not quite there yet. So we're just in between right now and I don't like it. So we're just kind of buckling down to how do we get out of no man's land to a point where, you know, where the new the new product is producing revenue and that's starting to drive the growth.
Jordan Gal:So right now it feels very precarious, but we know we kind of have to hurry up and be patient at the same time. Yeah. So that's been challenging.
Brian Casel:Yeah, mean, did you want to get into?
Jordan Gal:Yeah, let's talk about it for a few minutes. Let's do it. I don't know what what sparked
Brian Casel:the You started to talk off air before this. So why don't you frame it up how you were framing it up earlier?
Jordan Gal:Okay. So so something I've been thinking about lately, and for me for me, it's cooking. I I really like food and cooking. And I think I was listening to a Tim Ferriss podcast with with some unbelievably pretentious, guy, but he's really fascinating.
Brian Casel:Most of his guests are.
Jordan Gal:Yes. I think he wrote Modernist Cuisine, like that six part, like super encyclopedic book, that was kind of a big big breakthrough over the past few years. As he was talking and I just I watch cooking shows. I I I don't know. I just like it.
Jordan Gal:Right? So what it made me think about is I admire the hell out of people who who seek perfection and and don't think about they don't really think about efficiency. They're just like, wanna make the best thing I possibly can. Right? So in this particular context, there was like this guy talking about the restaurant that he worked in and how the the head chef there was just like, he just would go the extra 2%.
Jordan Gal:Like, you don't know, you don't stop at 98%. You go the other 2% where no one else goes. And that's so appealing. You know, you think about people who make things and furniture, musicians, and they the the idea of striving for this, like, ideal, and it's very, very much not what at least I personally do in business. In business, I'm like, what's the shortcut?
Jordan Gal:What's the efficiency? What's the outsource? What is the way to get there faster? You know, it's about like, it's about not seeking perfection. So you look at something like Apple is this insane exception where you had someone like Steve Jobs who was really striving for as close to perfection as possible and it actually worked out.
Jordan Gal:Whereas right now, if I was striving for the perfect software product, we would go broke before we got there. I feel like it's not as satisfying always thinking about the business side and saying, the perfectionist forget perfection, forget it, forget it, forget it, don't strive for it, go for the right thing, the thing that makes sense, things that's practical, the thing that's profitable.
Brian Casel:I totally relate to it because I come from a background as a musician and songwriter. That was like my whole life for the first like twenty, twenty five years of my life. And unfortunately, my guitar is just kinda collecting dust in the corner right now. But Uh-huh. When it came to writing songs and I used to compose some tracks for for like TV and and film stuff back in the day, That that was very much an art.
Brian Casel:And and I think my my thinking there was always like, it I'm basically making something for myself. Like, something that I would want to listen to or that, you know, gets gets my creative juice, inspirational juices Good
Jordan Gal:enough good enough for you.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Like, does this fit in, like, with my own music collection? Like, is it something that I would wanna tune to, you know, jam out to in the car or wherever, you know. And maybe that's why I'm not making a living at music right now, but when it comes to business, building a business, building a product, you cannot make it about yourself. It doesn't matter if yeah, you might be scratching your own itch and that's fine, but that doesn't necessarily make it a business.
Brian Casel:You have to be so focused on the customer and what makes it valuable for them and to me, you know, now that I've put all of my energy into running a business for these past few years, the art of it for me is is making that customer's experience as perfect as I can make it.
Jordan Gal:Even though you wanna stop thinking about them? At some point you're like, I don't just wanna strive for
Brian Casel:You know what though? I I think that's where I find the enjoyable like art in all of this. And that it comes back to design as well, you know, designing a page or writing copy, which I kind of think is a form of design. It's all about I'm not designing it to make it look pretty, I'm designing it to make an experience for someone else. I'm making design decisions or copywriting decisions or user experience decisions or onboarding decisions or sales process decisions, all based around how is this being perceived by the person I want to be on the other end of this thing.
Brian Casel:And even from the very beginning when we're in like the MVP stage, I still think that it's important to to keep that in mind and and and not cut corners on the on the person's experience. You may cut corners on like the number of features that that you include from the from the start, or some like behind the scenes stuff in terms of like process, the you know, there can be a lot of messy stuff that goes on behind the scenes, but what the customer sees every step of the way, even even if it's very simple, should be optimal and smooth and pain free and and easy. That's that's where I think the art in all of it is.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I I think there's plenty of plenty of art in that in in in the creativity that we're forced to to come up with and and all that. But I think what what I'm trying to get at is like that that is is still it's still so clouded by trying to to achieve profit and and there's nothing wrong with profit, but you like moving and shifting, it's not something that you are creating for yourself or for like your own standards, you know, like it's almost like I look at some businesses and some people that they're just trying to do the absolute best thing that they can possibly doesn't matter if belts, if it's furniture, or if it's, I guess, if it's software.
Brian Casel:Unfortunately, there's the other end of that spectrum too. There's there are plenty of businesses that literally try to do the bare minimum that they can get away for charging money for. And and they don't care if they get 90% refund rates and and and I mean, that's that's that's the bad side of it. But I think what you're getting at really when it in in our world of running businesses is like, how much integrity do you have in your product? And and how much effort and care are you gonna put into it?
Brian Casel:You know, that a lot of it may not be entirely necessary to win a sale, but to make a a truly standout product that that can stand the long term. And, you know, that's that's like built with integrity. I think that's that's really important, you know?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I I guess I guess maybe what I'm complaining about is constantly being forced to compromise. I don't wanna compromise that much. And maybe I'm looking outside of the business world, I'm looking at something like like this ephemeral thing that's like cooking, you make it and then it disappears, right, and then it literally no longer exists.
Brian Casel:Yeah. If you if you look at like a fine restaurant, you know, like a high end I guess what they're selling is obviously the the food, you know, like like world class chefs, but they're also selling the experience, you know, like the the best designers designed the the dining experience and all that. But that that is the product. They're not selling like a fix to hunger. They're they're selling, you know Experience.
Brian Casel:Luxury and experience and Right.
Jordan Gal:The the lighting and how people are dressed and how people you get treated and yes, from from from start to
Brian Casel:finish. Right.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I don't know. It's just something rattling around in my mind where it's like, what, how do you turn the corner? How is it? Is it possible?
Jordan Gal:Is that going to happen eventually where, where I'm going to find that type of meaning and satisfaction Or do I have to look elsewhere? Do I have to just compartmentalize and say, no, in the business sense, there's so much constant compromise that that's just its own thing. Its own art and creativity is working within constraints and figuring out which compromises to make. Right. And maybe it's just the situation right now with, with this particular software product, this particular situation, the whole thing is prioritizing.
Jordan Gal:We want to do everything, but every week it's what are we not doing? Because that's like the more important decision.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And I totally agree that is the more important decision. And I think few founders are good at making those hard decisions of what to focus on and when to prioritize things. What we're striving towards is just everything running on on all cylinders in in an optimal way. And obviously, you can't get there overnight, but you know, it starts with just the the basic value proposition, the product market fit.
Brian Casel:Right? Like, am I solving a problem? And then it's, can I, you know, attract the right customers to to buy this? Like, the are the marketing channels all dialed in? Is is the onboarding dialed in?
Brian Casel:Is the customer support? Is churn reduced? You know, like Yeah. But I
Jordan Gal:I think I think the focus on that stuff is is not as powerful as what you were talking about. The the customer's experience, just like the restaurant goers experience, is made up of all those parts, but that's the goal, right? I want people using our product to be more successful, right? That means so many things. That means they can make more money so they can buy a fancy car or they can quit their job and, like, be at home with their kids.
Jordan Gal:Like, whatever that means to them.
Brian Casel:That is I think you hit on it. I think I think that is the the art in all this is to really care and have that empathy for your customer at that level. Because you can create a product that just it's a utility, it it does what it does, and customers need that job done in in one form or another. I feel like that's just solving the problem. You can go above and beyond, which I think is what you're hitting on, which is like, you're gonna solve the problem, but really make it, you know, have a a true return over a long period of time and and really help them, you know, get the long term value out of it.
Brian Casel:I just posted an article today. This is called how to improve your your customer's lifetime. Like, if you wanna improve customer lifetime value or a k a k a reduced turn, focus on their on their life, like make their lifetime better. Make the lifetime of them using the product better.
Jordan Gal:This is fascinating. When I got that email from you, my first thought was, oh, he left out the word value. Yeah. And I and I read it again and I wait a minute, he's he's using a new a new term and you were literally talking about their life's like their actual life.
Brian Casel:Well, was talking about like the lifetime of them using your product.
Jordan Gal:Right. But not not specifically the lifetime value, not And
Brian Casel:the the result of of improving their lifetime. Right.
Jordan Gal:And how much they paid you total over time.
Brian Casel:No. But but the impact of working on improving their lifetime will result in a higher lifetime value, because they stay with it longer, they're incentivized to stay with it longer. What the point I was making in this article was make the experience of using your product get better over time, not just do the same solution every month for x number of months, but actually make leverage time like once a customer has been subscribed for six months, what are some new things that like you can only do with those long time customers that you might not even be able to do with one month customers.
Jordan Gal:Right. So it's more value over time, not in a linear way.
Brian Casel:It's in their best interest to stick with it over over a long period of time.
Jordan Gal:Alright. So I think we have a title for this episode, the bootstrapper search for meaning.
Brian Casel:Yes. Yes. I like it.
Jordan Gal:Alright, my man.
Brian Casel:Alright, dude. Well, back at it next week.
Jordan Gal:If anyone's in Berlin oh, it's too late. There's a lot to be published. Yep.
Brian Casel:Already believe it's gonna
Jordan Gal:be more slow to hit me up.
Brian Casel:There you go.
Jordan Gal:Alright. Brian, be good over there.
Brian Casel:Alright. Later.
