Bootstrapped Web

Hey, everyone. We're back, Bootstrapped Web. Good to be back at it. Jordan, what's up, buddy?

Not much, man. How's everything going?

Going pretty good. I mean, well, other than that whole election thing, but we won't talk about that.

Yeah. So we just had our MicroConf, like, Portland meetup here. Yeah. And usually, we just dive into business, and it it was the day after election day. So a bunch bunch of bunch of software people are just like, you can't help it.

You gotta talk about it a little bit.

That was I'm not I'm just not gonna get into it. Move moving on. You know what? I did like your tweet. I think it was that night or the or the next day.

What was that?

What's funny is that I didn't realize that I did it. It was it was the election night, and it had become apparent who the winner was going to be, and everyone was melting. And I saw a fantastic tweet about Statuspage, you know, statuspage.io that company they do like 2,400,000.0 in ARR and they have one support person. 10,000 customers on 1,600 paid accounts and they have one support person and they wrote this article about how they rotate each person the company gets a full week that they're a 100% responsible for the support. And so I I I retweeted that and was like, this is great.

And I got the response back like, yeah, dude, focus on the right things. Forget the election. Keep moving forward. I'm just gonna kill my dog, bro. One second.

Yeah. But you had a follow-up tweet, right after that link that you shared. Something like, you know, we, you know, we gotta stay focused. You know, he he won't help us. He won't hurt us.

Right. The person in the White House is not going to really have an an impact on our lives one way or another. It's like no one's gonna do it but us, and just keep going.

That's it. And, know, I mean, for me personally, I I haven't talked much about it publicly, but, you know, I've probably, like many other people, I've been basically hooked to reading the news every day, watching some some, you know, BS news on on television, and just being in in this crap that we've been seeing for the last two years here here in The US. And I think it's just time to go on the news or at least try to go on on a news fast and just break out of that and just focus on the things that actually matter that we can control, which is, you know, family, friends, and working on the business.

Right. And, yes, there are macro elements, tax rates, the general business environment, but at the end of the day, your success or failure is dependent on you.

Exactly. And we we all have, you know, better things to focus on right now, right in front of us on in in the business that we're working on, and that's that's really what what matters. Definitely, definitely matters right now here today working on this podcast. So

That's right. Good segue into and this will be an update episode, see what's going on, what lessons we've learned over the past few weeks. I've got a few things I'd like to talk about. Yep. You you I'm sure you do too.

Let me know if you want to get going, you want me to start?

Sure do. Yeah, no, go ahead.

Okay, so I think the first interesting update will be over the past few weeks we have spoken about software versus services, can they coexist? Should you do both? I've basically been flirting with custom work services side. We talked about it's better if it goes along with the product you're building, all this other stuff. So basically my update is this week I closed the first service deal, the first custom work.

It's a custom funnel with custom design and strategy built on top of our funnel product, and it's in the 10 ks range. And so obviously money is good for the company, but the more interesting part is like, A, that it's out there. That the market, there are people out there that are looking at our product and say, yes, I will pay $10,000 to have that in my business. So that's like an indicator. What we've talked about internally the company is, is it worth our time?

We can't do something for a thousand bucks if it takes our focus off. So what we've come to the conclusion of was, okay, Jordan, if you say we might be able to have an opportunity in services, go close two deals of substantial revenue, and that will be our indicator like that, yes, there is an opportunity. So now we have our first piece.

I have two questions on that. Sure. Alright. So one is how how did the sale come about? And then two will be like, what's the plan for fulfillment?

So I mean, like, just on the first one, I I assume this came out of a lead for the product first. Right?

Yes. Just the basically just the website. Someone coming in and seeing the product and then getting in touch.

So they just reached out to you asking questions about cut like, did they bring up the idea of custom work or how do they know that that's even on the table or how did that come up?

So what what I have found, not surprisingly, is that people with budgets, reach out to talk instead of just signing up and and never talking. So they reached out, and I looked at their site and I said, uh-oh, these guys run like multiple brands, very impressive stuff. So I said, I wanna get these people on the phone. So I talked with the guy there and we hit it off and we're it's just like business owner to business owner. We just like side eye, got on really well.

And then when you start talking about what they're trying to accomplish, it was very, very clear from the beginning that this is not a normal, you know, just set up and get a little help onboarding. It's no. The design is super important. It's complicated. It is an integration with the Shopify store with a recurring billing application.

It was just very apparent right away that it was custom. So my, I tried to set the expectations of this is awesome. We want to work with you. It's really important for the company to work with people of your caliber, but this is more than just the software. This is a custom project.

Got it. So so the initial outreach from him was, I wanna talk to you about this product. Will will the product as it exists today, will that work for us? And it and the and getting on the phone allowed you to turn the conversation to, okay, we can do it, but it would require some custom work. Let's have that discussion.

And from there, did it go from from that conversation to closing the deal?

Building up a relationship over email, trying to figure out how to accomplish their goals. We are also working with another company that does the recurring billing app, and so we need an integration with them and our product and Shopify. So we brought other people in and it was basically just working over email with people cc'd trying to figure out how to accomplish what they're trying to accomplish, and that really allowed us to basically show what we were capable of, how we communicate, and then from there we became kind of professional buddies. And then, when it got to the point of, okay, is this possible? Tell me how much it's going to cost.

And then we talked and it made sense and I helped him understand. I was very honest. I said, look, we haven't done custom work like this before. We're rocking on the product. We're pumping out features.

We're trying to plan webinars. If we're gonna take our focus off, I have to make sure that my team is protected and justified in doing that. And he was like, totally cool. I fully understand. Now

You know, I think is a good sign for you on this is is that this this deal came about, like, without you even planting a public flag, like, hey, everybody, custom work is available. Come come talk about it or buy it here. You know, it it the the demand kinda just bubbled up naturally, and it was like an inbound request. So that that's another, you know, definitely a good sign, I think.

Right. And and so and I thought the same thing. I said, now what what would it take to set up a sales process that ensures that that's injected in as an option? So, you know, the the first thing you can do is literally in my drip campaign that goes out to someone after they sign up, I can just have another email go out. Right?

Like I I have a little planned onboarding where it's like welcome email day one. Day two is have you seen how the how it works video, and then how to build your first funnel, how to add upsells, and then one of those days should be, did you know that we're available for custom design and strategy work? Get click here. So that one thing would just be super simple, literally just adding an email to a drip campaign, and then that would ensure that everyone that signs up would see that that we're available for that. The truth is a little later on in this episode, I wanna talk about some pricing changes and and the pro not just the pricing, but the process around signing up is is changing to make sure that I get into conversations with people.

Yeah. Yeah. So there there is that like back end thing you can do on the drip campaign. You could also put, you know, some information up on the website or, like, a page, even, like, in the corner of the footer just to just it's there so that somebody can see that it's there. But, I mean but I think that maybe getting ahead of yourself, like, right now, you're still just seeing, like, is the demand there?

Is this something that we could actually work in? But that brings up the second question of like

Yes.

How are you gonna fulfill this and how much of a distraction will it be?

Right. And that's why it is still an experiment. It it cannot be called a successful experiment yet. One part of two has been a success, meaning we can attract and close. Now fulfillment will teach us, do we like doing this?

Do we hate it? Do we want to continue to do it or never do it again? Is this like a new business? Would we want to build out a team specifically for this? Or this is so distracting that it's gonna kill the other side.

So it's really it's gonna be a learning experience and all of us are looking at it that way.

So how about from this first project? Like, who who needs to work on it?

So today, this morning, on Fridays, we do, an hour and a half, stand up. No. It's not a stand up if it's ninety minutes. It's basically a planning a planning meeting for the next week. So this morning, I just got off the phone with the guys to plan for what's happening in next week's sprint.

And so what we've tried to do is basically make sure that the needs of the service are aligned with the needs of the product. So we need to do some custom templating for them. So next week we're working on our editor, so we should work on the editor first. And then once the editor is released, then work on the templates. So now I can go back and tell the client, okay, here's the expected timing on the templates being done because it's like, okay, the product needs progress on the editor once that's done.

So we're trying to like marry the two of them, right? We're not at a point that the product is built out to the point where it's just adding new stuff for custom work. It actually is going to interfere with the product development. So we have to like tiptoe around the needs of the product also. It's gonna be tricky.

The the good thing is I I think the the monetary value of the deal is high enough to to to help us with the justification. It's we're not just gonna be rolling our eyes like, jeez, how much time am I freaking spending on this thing for for $2,000? At least it's high enough to give us some cover.

Yeah. I mean, like, if you were to go down this path and really build it into a channel, I think early on the first couple of projects, it'll be more of a distraction. If the if the scale is like, you know, revenue and on one side and like distraction and delays on the other side, early on it'll be more of a distraction and delay regardless of the revenue because you have to pull people off and that means bugs and features come later rather sooner rather than sooner on the product. But but if the revenue is there and and the leads are there and you can, you know, build it into a a pretty consistent channel, then you can hire someone to cover that the the service side of it. I mean, that'll still take up plenty of mind share and focus, especially on on your end.

And you've got the I mean, I do it right now too. Like, we're building out a product and we have a sales arm of the service to manage and it and it is frustrating for me to go back and forth between the two and and think about making improvements here while I'm working on the other thing there and it's it's tough. Yeah.

Yeah. I feel yeah. You feel yourself the bottleneck where you really just want individual people in place to handle each thing, and it's just not yet. You can't can't afford to just hire everyone that you need just yet.

Yeah. But, know, I I do wanna just point out something that I've just been thinking about a lot in the last couple of weeks that there's not enough discussion generally about how to make a young, bootstrapped, but I would include, like, angel funded companies, how to make them financially viable and sustainable for the first year or two years. I mean, you you do have to to think about things like this. The way my strategy right now has has been, you know, launch it and fund it with a productized service and reinvest the profits into building out the product line. And that means having multiple products and multiple focuses and and, you know, a large team of contractors and employees.

And I mean, that's the financially it's working, but it also adds a lot of stress and lack of focus. And the speed. And slow, it has to go slowly. But you know what, these are choices that I made and I actually prefer it this way. And I think there needs to be more of like a reality based discussion.

Basically a bootstrapped software startup cannot make the same decisions that a funded startup would. And you have to set different priorities.

Yeah. It's it's tough. I we've talked about this before. It's this strange gap where you need more people and more work you know, more capacity effectively to get your revenue up, but you need money to pay those people and to create that capacity that you don't have yet. And yeah, you get into this point where, okay, this thing works.

People are paying for it. They're getting value. They're not leaving. So it works. Now let's do more, but there's like this big gap, especially because if you're signing people up for a $100 a month, it takes a long time to catch up to the amount of money you need.

So yeah, so we've talked about different types of solutions like charging for annual and getting that upfront, using a product x service. I've I've read, you know, of other situations where people got started with one big client or two that they did work for, and, you know, one client pays them $50 and that basically keeps them afloat for like four months.

Well, that's that's exactly how I I started with Restaurant Engine.

Mhmm.

I I had I I was doing client work for years, and then at the very tail end of that, as I was phasing that down, I kept on one or two clients for, like, six final months of consulting work. And those were, my two best easiest to work with clients. Mhmm. High high budget, you know, and, you know, it took a bit of time, but it was not a huge distraction. I was able to split my time with that and keep working on Restaurant Engine.

Yep. Yeah. That that's actually how I started Cardhook two. At the very beginning, I had done I was working with my my dad's biz and I the nature of that business is you do a bunch of work, you get paid like a year later on on a lot of that work. Mhmm.

So I just had like I had like nine months of income without with because the work I did previously.

Right.

Right.

So you you you need something to fill that gap, whether it's a product I service, a good client, presales, annual sales, something. It's it's a trick it's very tricky.

So, yeah. So I'm in on that note of of planning the sustainability of funding a new venture within a within a business as everyone I've been talking about, right now, we are heavily invested in building a a software a SaaS product right now. And my next update later in this episode, I'll I'll talk about progress on that. But for right now, I wanna kind of, I guess, announce in a way. I know I've talked about in the past the possibility of doing a training product from Audience Ops.

I had tabled that for a number of months this year when when we decided to go down the software route. Just recently, I decided that we will after all, we we have started building the Audience Ops training program, which will be a a paid product, and we'll be launching that in in probably around January or February next year. It'll kind of be a companion product come that that comes with the software. You you can just do the training or you can just buy the software, but the recommended ways to buy them both, it'll the the training will come with a trial of the software. Now, you know, I'm sure there are listeners thinking about, like, why are you taking on, like, another product right at the same time of of building the software?

So let me try to explain this, it goes right along with what we were just talking about.

Yeah. Let's hear the the logic justification, you know, what why why?

There's a few reasons, but just first first the the financial. I started mapping out the the marketing plan for the SaaS in 2017. Because our our whole marketing funnel will definitely need to change, you know, when we shift the focus from selling us a service over to selling a SaaS. I mean, obviously, we need way more leads and free trials and then converting those to to paying customers of a $99 a month SaaS versus, you know, getting a a couple of leads every month and landing those for the service. It's it's just a very different marketing game.

So I started so I spent a lot of time last week mapping out a very detailed marketing funnel, you know, that involves, you know, like automated webinars, paid advertisements, content, you know, doing different things and taking taking customers through different stages. And I started to think about, okay, the financial aspect of this, I'm already investing many thousands of dollars into development on this on this product right now. We've already spent a couple thousand dollars. I I am scheduled to spend several thousand dollars more over the next four months. And, you know, we've got a bit of of profit margin on the service to support that.

But looking ahead, if if the goal is to and and I've basically set the goal of of getting a 100 paying customers on the SaaS before the 2017. So I'm I'm starting to think about the the year long goals for 2017. In order to do that, we're I'm gonna need to invest pretty heavily in marketing, like much more than we are right now. And in order to make that viable along with with the cost of paying developers, you know, it it just need we we can't be strapped. So having the training product, you know, selling for somewhere around $500 a one time purchase, if we can sell, you know, five to 10 of those a month and make that the front end offering, that basically pays for the marketing spend, which then those leads get transferred into the software.

So that's that's benefit number one. Benefit number two would be we're training our methodology and our and our recommended strategies and we're giving away our our systems and our processes and for for how to run a content marketing team for your business. That goes hand in hand with our software. Like it trains you on how to use our software and that sort of thing. Again, you don't need the training for the software.

And, you know, you can you don't necessarily need our software for the training, but they go hand in hand, which I think will have the effect of getting people to to buy in to to the idea of using the software, you know, that could that could reduce churn, help with onboarding and that sort of thing. And then then off of the back of the of the training and the service and the software, you know, more leads will flow into the service as well and and we'll we'll we'll keep that going as as well. So, you know, yeah, it's like multifocused different different products all kind of coming together and being built at the same time. It's it's pretty hectic. The benefit right now, I mean, audience ops is almost two years old, so we have a very strong team.

Like, for this training product, I mean, I'm working on on the outline for it, but one of our lead writers is basically writing most of the content for it. And a couple of people on my team will be involved in along with myself, will will be recording some of the video training and and whatnot. So, you know, it's it's it's more of a team effort. I've I've got a really great developer working on the software. It's not like I'm I'm the one coding every day.

So, you know, I'm I'm kinda managing my time accordingly. It's I'm not pulling all nighters. I'm not working throughout the weekends. You know, I've got a family and kids. I'm I'm just working basically a forty hour week more or less, and, and I'm managing the time accordingly.

You know? But it's I mean, I'm not gonna say it's easy by any means. It's it's stressful. It's and especially thinking Anything but easy. Especially thinking about just how much of a big change is gonna happen with audience ops as we head into 2017?

It's it's that saying, you know, what what got us here won't get us there. Like we've hit a point now where the service just I'm I'm not I've decided, like, I don't wanna just double down on the service and keep growing that. We we need to shift into a more, you know, diversified product line with software and training.

Yeah. I I think it's gonna strengthen the service part also and allow you to charge more for it. It's it sounds to me like you're building out the, you know, the the three strong foundations for for a real value ladder. You know, the the software as as the lower end offering that anyone can benefit from, One step up in the training for people who buy into your philosophy, that can also be an entryway going both ways down to the software and up to the service. And then for people who have budget and want you to take care of it along with the way you teach it, then you've got the the higher end on the service.

So I I love it and and facing reality now on the cash constraints that will be created by the software is just is just a mature responsible way to look at it. Because even if the software is successful, it's just not gonna bring in significant money for months and months and months.

Yeah. And we're not talking about a $5 a month SaaS. I mean, the plan is to the average plan will be, you like, 99 a month, and we'll have some agency plans starting at 300 a month. Even even with a relatively, you know, higher price not higher for b to b, but you know what I'm saying. It's it's not like a step

for than most people assume.

Right. It's not it's not a painfully low SaaS price. Mhmm. But even at that level, it's you know, you you need hundreds of customers before it's a significant channel for the business. And to get to that point and I wanna get to that point fast.

I'm not gonna spend four years getting to that point.

So Yeah. This is like the biggest mistake you hear bootstrappers early on make is is getting the pricing wrong and then assuming that customer acquisition is easier than it really is. If you price something at $50 a month to get 50 paying customers on a new SaaS is really hard. Yes, it is. It's really, really hard to get to a 100 people, man, to get the first 10 people is hard.

So even if your average revenue per user is a $100 to get 50 people realistically speaking, if you do it within ninety days, you did awesome. And that's that's only 5

k. Insanely awesome.

Right. You did awesome. You got 50 paying customers on a brand new SaaS within ninety days. It'd be great.

I know that there are many people listening to this and who listen to lots of these podcasts and go to the micro comps and everything and and think about the and who have never done a SaaS before. I had the same misconception myself, like, before before I did Restaurant Engine, like, a SaaS, you you start thinking about thousands of customers paying x dollars a month. But that vision, it does not come true. It's so far it's so far off in the future. There's such a huge gap between day one and and getting to to a thousand, let alone a 100.

Thousand customers too. We're we've been we've been at it for a while. We're not we're not we're not close to a thousand. And not that there aren't exceptions, not that you should plan on everything going slowly, but look, we've been doing this for while. We know a lot of people doing it.

The truth is that the average is slow because it is not it's not top down. It's not, Oh, there are 250,000 Shopify stores. I can definitely get 500 of them. It's not like that. It's bottom up.

It's talking to each individual person on intercom. They ask you questions, you get them on the phone, you show them the demo, they sign up, they go through a trial. Hopefully they sign up and that's one. If you can do three or four of those a week, you're the man. And that's like 10 paying customers a month.

And then you have to assume that there are gonna be changes. Are gonna be setbacks. At 20 customers, you're gonna start to find, okay, a lot of them are not sticking around because they have this common objection. Okay. Now we have to change the product, you know, and it Right.

And, you know, getting them to switch from our competitor is not is not as easy as we thought it would. So you have to just plan for like, these things are gonna come up. And Yeah. And so, you know, that's kind of my thinking there. So, anyway, on the update, like, have begun working on the training product.

It'll be basically a big playbook plus a couple of videos plus our SOPs, our systems, templates, and and everything for running this stuff. And I love it, man.

I love it.

I So I pulled in, like, two of my teammates on it. We're working on it together, and and I think we'll like, I set up, like, a project for basically, like, a three month production, schedule for that. Hopefully, it'll get out there in January. And then kinda to go along with that right now, I'm I'm working on setting up a webinar, which will be an automated webinar series, and I'm I'm getting that going.

So Yeah. I think you can make more money on the training product than anything else just because of the efficiency, but but then you can use it everywhere. It's an asset. Right? You you you use it everywhere.

When someone signs up for the software, if you pay a $100 a month, you get it. But what if if you pay a thousand bucks for the year, you also get the training for free. Like it's just this thing you can use.

The other angle is you know, the you buy the training, you can if you decide to go for the done for you service, you can credit that towards your first month.

Right. So that's of Beautiful. Yeah. It works together. Awesome, man.

I'm very excited, and I kinda like this time of year. Like, November, you kinda start you you give up on unrealistic expectations, and you're like, okay. So my target is basically January, and what can I do? What can I get done over the next few weeks?

Yeah. I agree. I love getting a jump on those annual goals. As as much as the annual goals never really stick, you know? But, yeah, right now, we're definitely getting in that time of year where you start to, where you start to think through what are the big big goals and big changes and and what's act what what's the reality?

What what do we actually need to do in order to make that happen? And and I think that planning goals like this, you should take a lot of time. Like, now is a good time to start planning twenty seventeen goals. Take it take all of November and December to just step back and think and and then really take action next year.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, we're not we're not giving up on, like, the short term stuff, but it's nice to start to be start thinking in terms of, you know, the next few weeks and what's what's coming up. Cool, man. Alright.

So one quick thing and then one bigger thing. I had the opportunity to go to a mastermind a few days ago, earlier in the week. There's a good buddy of mine named Tanner Larson. He's a great ecommerce guy. He really knows his stuff.

He's got a pretty good following. He's got his own e commerce businesses. He's got a training program. He also has like a higher end mastermind and he invited me down to speak to them and show them the product. First time in Reno, Nevada.

Pretty pretty cool, beautiful place. So it was a very interesting experience. I went down there. It was basically like rubbing up against my target market for for for two days and, like, just sitting in a room with 20 of them and just talking. It was it was I got to watch someone sign up for the product and onboard right next to me on a couch, and just like biting my knuckles, like not to say, just it's right there if you just click it.

It was it was an awesome experience. As she's doing, was just writing in Trello, bug, bug, bug,

bug, That's awesome.

The the coolest part was well, two things. The unexpected part, the biggest takeaway was not what I need to do and how do I need to convince these people? What's the positioning? The biggest takeaway was who do I not want to target? Because when we were there, we talked about basically just different approaches.

There's like the retailer approach and there's the marketer approach. It helped me see if I want to sell, if I want to do the affiliate thing, that's just a different way to go with the business. And one of the guys there, this guy Will, was very helpful in helping me see it. We're going to have to choose. Are you gonna go like the professional route and like sell to retailers and work with that kind of thing, or are you gonna go the other route and basically sell drugs to to drug addicts?

Like, this is the new big thing

When you say affiliates AQ. Do you mean the what do you mean by that? Like, affiliates would use your checkout product to sell products that their affiliates for?

Affiliates would promote the checkout. We promote Just affiliates of Carta. To their list. Yes. And what the guy helped me understand was because he came from the affiliate world.

He's like, those lists are full of people who are drug addicts. They look for the next high, and they throw a thousand bucks hoping that that's the next thing that's gonna get them rich. And I did the presentation in front of them and he's like, what you just showed me, that will sell. It will sell because it it is unique enough and it's interesting and it's sexy. So if you want to go make $250,000 over the next ninety days, you can do it easy.

Let's do it. However, you have to understand that that's the direction you're going to take your business. Your users are going to be full of people who are unlikely to actually be successful with your product, but you will make money. It helped me look at that and say, yeah, I want money, but if I'm honest with myself, that's not the direction that we wanna go. We wanna go with the professional route, with retailers, make them successful, make them stick around for a few years and Yeah.

You know? So it was that that was

like It sounds like it it sounds like short term gain, but a huge churn headache right right off the back end of

it. Right. So it was, that was the biggest takeaway. And the the other part that was gratifying was during my presentation of the app, I did like a live demo. There was one person in the audience that was just beside themselves.

She her her her hands were just covered her mouth in disbelief over the product because, you know, and obviously that feels cool, but afterward I went up to her and I was like, I love you for all that support. Tell me what's going on. Why did you react that way? It was basically because she was the perfect target market. She was currently experiencing the exact pain that we're solving and then I was like, okay, you and I are gonna go get lunch together and just tell me everything that you're doing because you, if I can evoke that reaction in you, that means I need to ignore everybody else and find people like you and show them what this thing is because then they're gonna be like, oh my god.

Finally, thank you.

What was unique about her?

She was she was the, she was the perfect target. She was using ClickFunnels to accomplish one click upsells and she was using Shopify for order management and they don't talk to each other and she didn't know what to do with herself. How do I sell my Shopify products through a funnel? I know this is the strategy I want to use with a funnel, but then I'm stuck. I can't sell things with variants.

I can't sell things with different sizes. I can't use Shopify's back end to do all my email marketing and my fulfillment. She was just stuck in between the two and we came up right in the middle and said, how about a bridge between them? And she was like, oh my god. That's it.

That's what I need.

Awesome.

Yep. So it was it was cool.

Good stuff.

That was my mini update, but I think that was that was a lot. So why you go?

Okay. I'll I'll just give a development update. I know, couple episodes ago, we had Rob on, talking about managing developers and whatnot. I gave a bit of an update then. I think what I said was so my at that point, my my developer had been working for about four weeks on the product so far, and it had been going pretty slow, slower than I would have liked to see that that early on.

And I acknowledged that the first couple of weeks is really more about building the architecture and and doing some pretty important baseline planning. And I know that stuff just by its nature has to go slow. But after, like, week three and four, I was like, alright. We we gotta get kinda moving on this thing. And so what happened, you know, right after that conversation on the podcast or, I don't know, that day or something, I basically sent a long email to to my developer on this and just kind of laid out like, look, I'm not trying to be an asshole or anything, but, you know, I I just have to voice the concern that, you know, we're not moving at at the pace that I would have expected to to move here.

And I'm definitely understanding of of the technical challenges, especially the the initial requirements that we have. We're doing some pretty unique stuff with navigating a calendar and whatnot. You know, I'm not completely new to software development and and working on the web and and doing web projects. So I I do know the technical ins and outs of things that maybe he wasn't aware that I'm that I'm I I do know this kind of stuff. And so I think one of the challenges was, you know, I would write some pretty detailed requirements for some of the features.

And this is my fault for for having the wrong assumption, but I thought that if something was technically challenging and really, really tricky more so than I would have thought, that he would have voiced that early on and and try to question me on something or at least point it out to me and say, this is really challenging. But instead, what happened was he he went into a hole for three days and and researched and and and prototyped all these different workarounds for it and and just burned two or three days at a time, you know. So

Yeah. That's so hard to deal with.

Yeah. You know? And so assumptions.

It's like dealing with assumptions.

Yeah. And and it's like and two two or three of those things have happened and I've made it pretty clear that, like, look, if you run up against the wall, you have to tell me, and I'm willing to change the requirement or change the design to achieve this or this like, same end result, but but in an easier way. You know?

It's a difficult thing to do. I use the word ideal all the time when talking about development. I say what I just wrote out, that is the ideal. Don't go spending a week achieving the ideal. If the ideal is not reasonable, let's figure out an alternative to the ideal and we'll move one step further from ideal and then another step until we get to a realistic point.

But don't don't go into a hole for three days figuring out how to accomplish the ideal when it's not the most important thing in the entire business.

Exactly. Yeah. And and I think, you know, to be honest today, you know, like two weeks later, on the bright side, we we have been moving much much faster. And I think I think that just me voicing the concern was definitely a big wake up call and and I I I don't want that to sound like I was being a dick about it or anything, but like, I think he he was pretty clear that that, okay, this I'm sounding the alarm bells and things need to change. And and I saw a visible improvement over the last two weeks.

We're we're shipping features that, you know, we're we're moving right along now. I think it's it's pretty good. There are still some things like, you know, like yesterday, there there's a feature that I had I just written wrote a simple thing in one of the requirements that I did not realize through such a wrench and kinda lost half a day yesterday and I was like, woah. Woah. We'll we'll change it.

It doesn't have to be a pop up. It could work this way and like whatever. Right. But yeah.

I write I write a Google Docs. Google Docs has become my most often used app, which I didn't expect. But whenever we're talking about a new feature or something and I say, do you want me to write a Google Doc on that? And they say yes, and I just write out all my thinking. Screenshots from other apps, why this is important, what this accomplishes for the user, what I'm thinking about this detail, I just throw it all out in a Google Doc, and then before they start, we talk about it.

And they're like, did you mean that? Is that what you meant? Because that means this. And so it's like anything to avoid going into the hole, like better to talk about it for half an hour and then do do it the right way. It's like you what you're doing with your developers, you're turning it into a collaboration as opposed to I'm the boss and I'll tell you what to write.

Right. And then you go you go build it.

Yeah. And that's, you know, I've I've I've been wanting it to be that way. Of course, like, I also just met him, you know. It's like we don't have a history working together. So there's kind of feeling out the the different working styles and personalities and everything.

And, I mean, overall, it's been good. And he's been a, you know, a really cool and dedicated and very smart, very talented developer. I could definitely see that. So it's been it's been pretty cool. Kind of a learning experience still in the early days here.

But but, I mean, overall development is is moving along. Like, so yesterday, I had the second monthly group call with our beta customers. Again, we have that group of 14. I got them all in a group Hangout. I also have them in a Slack channel, and I've been giving them, you know, screenshots.

And yesterday, over the screen share, I I kinda walked through. I showed them the functioning app that we have working now. Like like, yeah, like, here's what we've built so far. Here's what we haven't built. It's it's still coming along, but but they could see noticeable progress from, like, last month to this month.

So I'm I'm getting, you know, their feedback on that. I also told them yesterday that they'll also get access to that training product that we're working on, which was like kind of a bonus that they weren't expecting because we just decided to do it. That's it on on this side.

Nice, man. Very nice. Artists, we've only got a few minutes. I I think what I'll close with is pricing. Always a a topic for us.

I'll give a little shout out to Ruben who we're gonna have on the show next week. You know, he's here in Portland, so he was at that lunch that I'm talking about yesterday Wednesday. At some point I asked him, you know, we were talking about pricing. We had a little disagreement over it on Twitter, we we settled it out in in person. I asked him, I said, Ruben, when when you want to change pricing, like, do you go to your team?

Like, you ask them what they think and do you get feedback? Like, how do you run that? He's like, oh, absolutely not. Because if I'm in charge of the marketing, then I'm gonna do whatever the hell I want in the marketing. The same way if they're in charge of development, not that they can do whatever the hell they want, but I'm not gonna go tell them that you need to use thing versus the other thing because if they think that's best to use that thing, then that's their call.

Which kinda, you know, I try to act that way anyway, but I I might sound like a tough guy sometimes on the podcast. In reality, I I try to be as collaborative as possible with the team. I don't want to just do whatever the hell I want and without getting their input on it. Sometimes I frame it as this is what I'm doing, give me feedback. Sometimes I'm like, this is what I'm thinking about.

What do you guys think? But it helped me realize that pricing is one of those things that should not be decided by committee. I have the best feel for it because I talk to the most customers and I'm most involved on that side of things. So that was interesting. That kinda helped me free up, and and this week we changed our pricing pretty significantly.

Right now, you go to our site, you won't see pricing at all. It's just a schedule a demo, but that was basically like a Band Aid. Like, let's just take pricing off and just put that up until we get the new pricing grid up. But what we're trying to do is we're basically trying to reduce the amount of quantity. We were just getting a bunch of sign ups, and then people weren't really launching, and they weren't successful, and so they were canceling.

And I wanted the quality of the of of the users to go up. So we changed from from $97 a month to a flat $300 a month as our first tier, and now we opened up a second tier. And along with the whole services opportunity, that second tier, the first tier is priced $300 a month or $2,400 for the year because that's 33% off. And it shows the features and a free trial and allows you to start. And then the second tier is like a custom tier and the and there I use that opportunity to basically message that were available for services.

So I wrote like custom design strategy that I just messaged things that are clearly custom and and then there's no price attached to that and it says start with a demo. So that's like basically use the software or get a project done.

Right. Yeah. I think that makes sense. Have you launched it? Have you had any feedback on that yet?

No. Since we changed to just a demo, obviously the number of signups have been reduced, but now we're getting more demo requests. And so

But they're not, they have no idea what pricing is. Although I there's there's the kind of the assumption that like it must be high if

it And was not people are asking me on intercom. They're saying, hey, don't see pricing. Can you let me know? And I've had multiple conversations that say really $300? Why so expensive?

And then I tell myself that's good because some people are going to see it as expensive and that's not if every single person says, woah, way too expensive. Maybe that's a problem. Right now we're getting a little bit of both like, okay, 300. You know what? Let's let's do the demo and and see what it's all about.

And then some people are like, woah. Why why so high? I'm like, okay. So now I'm I've gone up past a certain amount of people on, the x y Yeah. Intersect.

Cool. I mean, I think that I think that makes sense. You know? I I think it's a good move at the very least just for a test, you know? And it's so it's so early on that, like, you have to test it.

Yeah. Right. Have no I have no idea. If it should be 500, if it should be 300, if it should be a 100, I just don't know yet. Ruben was telling me about Sean Ellis and his experience with, I think, with with Qualaroo after he acquired it, that at some point he just went and just woke up one morning and was like, I think we're gonna try something else.

Like, did did just did very very decisive experiments. Like, okay, we've been at $29 a month for a month and I'm gonna change it and now it's just gonna be $500 a month flat.

Are you guys technically able to just test different prices? Like, that or is that a headache to to change the change things on on the technical side?

It is a headache, but I can't care that it's a headache. Right. Right? It's like whatever we need to deal with and change the Stripe plan and the marketing side and the sign up flow and

But at this point, like, can't can't you just kinda do things manually and and like, build like, early on, like, while you're testing prices, just show whatever prices on the front end of the marketing site, have them sign up, and then when it's time for them to upgrade, you kinda just manually subscribe to the plan in Stripe?

No. Because we require credit card upfront, and so they need to know what plan they're signing up for upfront. Now the truth is we're still doing some things manually because

I I'm, you know, I'm sure there are technical things I'm not aware of, but the can't you just still show them a price on the front end of the website? Have them have them put in their credit card, they're in your Stripe system, and then you just manually update their plan?

Yes. Definitely. We're we're trying to avoid that, but it it is inevitable. Like some people who saw the pricing when it was 97, are reaching out and said, hey, can I still get that old pricing? And I'm saying, yes.

I'll honor the pricing we talked three weeks ago. And so they're signing up for the higher plan and then I'm just going in and changing it back to to to 97. Yep. Yep. So we'll see.

I'll I'll let you know how that experiment goes and see if I if we keep it or change it or who knows?

Very cool.

Cool. Alright, homie. It's Friday. Yeah. Good update.

Good weekend over there.

Yeah. You too.

Alright. Cheers, man. See you guys.