Bootstrapped Web

Hello, everybody. Welcome back. Another episode of Bootstrap Web with myself, Jordan, and Brian. How the hell are you?

Jordan, doing good, buddy. Back at it.

Back at it. Friday. We went by quick as usual. Hope you had a good

one. It's kind of a short week for me. So today's Friday, but on one like Tuesday night, we got back from a second snowboarding trip this month, the '3. I'll be going again snowboarding next week.

Yeah. You you really just on one ski trip with with some interruptions for work.

Yeah. Every now and I gotta check-in for work, but, you know, my main focus this month is being on a snowboard on a mountain somewhere. Alright. But No. Yeah.

Was kinda cool. It was with family, my brother and his wife, and my mom, my my wife and kids. So, got a little house in Vermont, and we got a second massive snowstorm in in the East Coast, and we were right in the thick of it. So there was already about two feet of snow on the ground and then we got like another two feet of snow while we were up Okay. Okay.

So

yeah. Just kinda We we are swimming in in some Portland rain these days.

Just day

after day. It's it's cool. It's cool. Yep. Alright.

Cool, man. Well, look. I got a few I got a few things going on. Just some general stuff to talk about.

Yeah. What are you working on? What's up?

Alright. So alright. I got a few things written down here. So I had a very interesting experience in public speaking the other day. You know, I'm I'm part of this, like, this incubator accelerator thing here in Portland I've talked about that that's been great.

It's called Star Vups. So they had a Portland startup week, and they asked me to speak at one of the events and basically just like, it's almost like a pitch to the community. Like, what are you working on? How can the community help you? It's just like an opportunity to show what you're working on and for other people to see what other people are working on.

So it like a quick fifteen minute thing. And I had a very interesting experience in in I I screwed up basically, and I I like speaking in public, and and that that went well. But I had a strange mixed experience where I finished and then, you know, people come up to you and they're like, that's awesome what you're working on. This is really cool. You know, how how'd you get started?

You know? And it's like all this positive feedback. But then I got like, my mentor in in the startups thing. He basically came up to me. He was like, so just so you know

You're my some people. No.

Some people some people were offended by by something you said. It's like, Okay. So so it was it was two things. A, I didn't realize that it was gonna be recorded, and and you should assume things like that are gonna be recorded and you should act accordingly. And so the the content of the presentation, would have been different if I had if I had kind of put my game face on.

I don't wanna go too far into that, but I I wouldn't have talked in such specifics. How about that?

What was offense what was offensive?

Okay. And then the second part is the offensive thing. So when I talk about Shopify as like the hot platform, sometimes what I say is I use the analogy of Shopify as like the hot chick at the bar. She gets all the attention. Okay?

And and you know what? Maybe I say that in conversation and it's like a little funny and whatever. It's actually it's not the most sensitive way to say it, but because I say it very casually, like, to friends, and they know I'm not, like, being sexist. That's just I'm just saying it. When I was on the spot, I also used that because that was in my mind as one of the ways that I put it.

And I'm in Portland super sensitively. Yeah. And some some people didn't like it, you know, and and like think it's that.

I mean Look. Look. I'm I'm a guy, maybe maybe it's more offensive than I think, but I don't

I I don't think it's offensive, especially if you if you read my the context and all that. Yeah. I agree. But the truth is what it what it made me feel like I it was like I got I got a lesson without much pain. Right?

I didn't say anything terribly offensive, and I didn't reveal things that were that sensitive, but I kinda got the feeling that I like learned the lesson, but I didn't pay much of a price. I I almost feel lucky. Right? Like I had this public speaking thing and and you have to kinda just I I think what it what it taught me was, yo, if you wanna, like, play the big game, if you hope to one day be on stage in front of thousands of people talking about your business, then, get into the habits now that you want to have then. That's what I mean by learning the lessons without much much pain.

Like, nothing bad happened. It wasn't like I was on CNBC, and I said something terrible. Now I have to, like, hire a PR company and apologize. It's not that.

It's not like you're the president of The United States.

Well, jeez.

I think you need to do the opposite. I think anybody who wants to get better at public speaking needs to especially like early on in in in that journey, like they need to be less self conscious of what they're saying and how they sound and how they're coming off. You know, and I think I think those those things happen. Like people might might be mildly offended by some by some but you know what? At at the end of the day, the best public speakers let their true selves come out, and they're vulnerable to the audience, and people make that personal connection.

And I suck with with public speaking. I I just don't have enough experience with it, and and I get like like anyone else, I think I get nervous on on stage and all that. But like with podcasting, I think I've become much more comfortable here on the mic than I was very early on. I mean, you can literally go back to like the first 10 episodes of Bootstrapped Web and it's it's just cringe worthy. Like and and As it should be.

Looking back always.

Yeah. You know, just, not really knowing what to say, like, silences. And and I think all of that is overthinking what I'm about to say in the moment. When when really like, now today, it's like like, we literally just started this call, like, twenty seconds before we hit record. We're like, hey.

We you know, we don't have much time today. Let's just record.

Week. Actually, let's just record.

Let's just record. Like, let's just talk on the air, and that's this is literally us talking. Yeah.

So so I I hear you, and and a lot of times, you know, people in our in our positions, we we look up to the big guys and we see the, you know, the founder of Airbnb on stage and talking, and you're like, man, you're like a politician. You're like, well, you won't say anything out of the box, but I got a little taste of it and a little taste at a very small scale of why it happens because it felt like I shot myself in the foot, but it's not my foot. It's like my co founder's foot is underneath there. My employees feet are underneath there. My kids, my wife.

It's and so I hear you on the skepticism. I'm like, no, man. Be more open. Yes. Be more open and more personal and more vulnerable, but don't needlessly handicap yourself.

Yeah. But I think what you said was not a big deal.

I I I I agree. I agree. But it it I almost got like a little bit of backlash on like such a low level where I I can say, okay. Wasn't a terrible thing to say, but I I understand what could happen if you say something worse. It was a mixed experience, and I was very I was very thankful to my mentor there who said something.

Because he could have just let it slide and I could have just walked away feeling all good about myself and people come up to me and, oh my God, what are you working? You know? I could have just had that experience and he said he just kind of burst the bubble just a little bit And he knew he like, yo, just so you know, I don't think it's a big deal, but he he basically let me figure out the lesson for myself. Like, you wanna be a big time founder, get used to it. When you talk in front of people, you have you have a magnifying lens on you.

Yes. And I don't know that guy. I don't know the group, but that could just be one guy's opinion.

Yeah. It was. It was just one one person's opinion. Everyone else and I I I asked I asked other women who are in the starve ups. I was like, yo, were you offended by that?

Because if you were, I'm I'm really sorry. And she was like, what? I don't know what you're talking about. That's not offensive at all. So I I got a little confirmation that I wasn't being a terrible person.

But anyway, so it was it was it was a mixed interesting kind of experience.

Well, so so one thing I worked on this week, and I'm actually pretty so okay. I don't really have results to show for it yet, but I'm happy with the fact that I got a couple of Facebook ad campaigns up and running and launched. And and again, I was traveling, so I only had like two days here this week to to do this basically from start to finish. But in the past, every time I get into launching Facebook ad campaigns, Mhmm. It's like, just fire up some Facebook ad campaigns.

It'll take an hour. Then it's like, oh, wait. But I need a I need a lead magnet. I need the ad creative. I need to write some copy for this.

I need to figure out the targeting. I need to figure out the funnel, and I gotta track it all, and I gotta do all the and then all of a sudden, like a week goes by, and it's not even launched yet. And then you you still need another week to to test it and get get data and all that stuff. So I think I've been through that that loop of hell enough times in the in the past few years of of testing Facebook ads and failing miserably and and trying it again and failing again, that I think this time around, I I knew the shortcuts and I knew exactly what I needed to to build. And there were still some things that I was trying out for the first time.

Like, one of the things I set up was Facebook lead ads for the first time. If you're not familiar with those, it's I think it's a new Facebook feature, like, within the past year where you can have an ad, they click the button, and they don't leave Facebook. And and they stay on Facebook, and they and they put and and and their email address that's tied to their Facebook account is, prefilled in the form, and then you you know, they can opt in that way.

Oh, very nice.

Which is it's pretty cool, but it's and it's only been running for like twenty four less than twenty four hours right now and already, you know, I think five or six leads have have come through it. So that's a good start, and it's not a terribly high cost per per lead. Yeah.

We're gonna try.

It's it's less than a day. So I'm sure, like, after a full twenty four hours, that cost per lead can definitely go up. But but I I'm just happy with the fact that, like, I was able to just bang right through, like, I know that I need these pieces in, and I know that these are the settings that I that I need to set up, and I'm just gonna go with it, throw a budget on it, and and press go. And and I so basically, I set up two different campaigns. One the first one, which I worked on Wednesday, from start to finish, I built this on Wednesday, was a retargeting campaign.

Okay. So let me step back. By the way, the the goal right now for these campaigns is basically to promote the service, our our done for you content service. And initially, was gonna run these ads for AuditOps calendar, but it's just not ready yet to to throw campaigns at it. So I'm gonna start with just organically, like, early access list, get those customers in, and then later on, do more campaigns for that.

But for now, the goal is to just drive more leads through a funnel for the content service and just keep that engine turning. Like, we get a baseline organic level of leads, but I I really need to just have something that I can say, alright. I know that I throw x dollars a month. It's gonna turn out x extra leads, and that keeps the service growing and and profitable and so that I could take that and pump it back into the software.

So that's the master plan.

That's good.

So the the first like, kinda low hanging fruit as I as I see it is retarget people who visited the service page. And by the way, I hope as I just broadcast this on the podcast, you all don't just go go there and start driving up my ad spend.

You only pay on click or you you pay an impression?

I think for the retargeting campaign, you pay per click.

Yeah. That makes sense.

And what I did there

the audience upside, just just don't click on the ads.

Yeah. Yeah. Pretty much. By the way, set that up as a video ad. And I created the video that day too.

So

Screen share or your beautiful mug on the screen?

No. I it it was I was looking for the easiest, quickest way to create like an engaging video to use as a Facebook ad video. And I tested out a couple different services, but the one that I landed on ended up using is Animoto.

Are familiar

with that one? Yeah. I know. This one didn't have stock for stock video footage. I went over to, one of the Envato sites.

I got I got like a stock video footage of somebody like typing on a keyboard. So that's like the initial thing. And then an Animoto makes it easy to just add some text and some big headlines. And, I think they had

some

stock music that you could throw behind it. And then I what I also like about it is that I could put my voice over really, really easily. I don't have to even, like, edit this video. Like, Animoto is just like like, you know, slide number one, put your voice over. Slide number two, voice over, set the number of seconds, export it.

Like, I literally created this, like, fifty second video. Like, it took me like less than, like, maybe like an hour to do that, like an hour and a half, something like that. Nice.

That's pretty good. Yeah. Video supposedly performs a lot better.

Yeah. You know, I I think I think it helps. So so that's the video ad and then that basically just says like it's it goes straight to the service. It's like done for you content service. That's kind of like the big headline.

I've got some copy on there and then it it basically links them back to the service page with the which they've previously visited because they're Right. Getting retargeted.

Good place to start instead of saying, oh, now I need to go build a landing page, and I need to build the thank you page, and I need to build a lead magnet. Like, you can you can work that stuff in.

Yeah. Yeah. So the only things I created were were the video, the video ad, set set up the the custom audience, and put a budget in and let it go. So that's just retargeting. That's not necessarily driving new traffic to the site.

So so that was Wednesday. And then Thursday, yesterday, I set up I spent basically the day working on setting up a cold email or cold Facebook campaign. This is where I used the Facebook lead ad. The give like, I wanted to give have some sort of like free lead magnet content. We're currently working on a new lead magnet on on the audience house blog, but that's not gonna be ready for a couple of weeks.

So I just spent about maybe an hour putting together a I wrote like a like a five page guide. And it's like a little downloadable ebook. And for this I used for the formatting of it, I used a tool called Beacon. Beacon.buy. So b eacon.by.

And this is a really this is a really cool little tool. We're starting to use it in in the audience app service too. It does a few things that are kinda cool. You could convert WordPress posts into a nicely formatted downloadable ebook. Really?

Yeah. So that's kinda cool.

That is cool. What's it called? Beacon?

Yeah. Beacon.buy.by.

Beacon, beacon?

Yeah. .By.

Our new sponsor by the way.

Yeah. Pretty much. Is probably

not there.

And like I bought them on a I bought the the license on an AppSumo thing like over a year ago, and and now we're using it in audience apps where after a number of weeks, we we repurpose our clients articles into a downloadable ebook with these, like, this resource held model that we're doing. Anyway, I used this tool yesterday to create a little down like a five or six page downloadable ebook. I just wrote the content for it right there, kinda talking about like it's called like content action plan or something. And and I created a cold ad shown to three different groups, like targeting targeting groups. And the opt in is to get get access to this cold ad or to to this downloadable ebook.

They enter their their email address, their name, they get it. That automatically integrates with Drip. So Drip has a nice integration between Facebook lead ads and Drip. You don't have to do any fancy, like, Zapier or anything. Just

Oh, very nice.

Directly from that Facebook lead ad form into Drip. So that's set up. And then I have a workflow in Drip that basically gives them the downloadable ebook and then drops them into and then there's like one more sales email three days later that's about trying to drive up a lead for the service, and then it drops them into our content emails that they get every week.

Nice. I'm curious to see how that works. I don't know as we're thinking more about marketing, I don't know which way to go on lead magnets and and that sort of thing. Because I'm like, I don't I don't know what works these days.

I mean, I think I'm I'm probably gonna change that a number of times in the in the next few months, but like, I just wanted to get something launched

Yep.

By the end of yesterday.

You can you can swap out the lead magnet Yeah. At any point in the future.

Yeah. Yeah.

Cool, man. I like it. I hate Facebook pic tracking right now. Facebook ads right now are the enemy of cart hook.

Why is that?

The face the Facebook pixel tracking is the one thing that has just eluded us. It is so complicated, and there's no one to talk to. There's a million different approaches. There's no one at Facebook to talk to. Everyone we talk to wants something different, and and then we we start to look around.

You mean your customers want it integrated?

Our customers are just like, but it's not giving me this information. And we we we don't know.

But isn't it like they

Is it our or is it theirs?

But Facebook Pixel is just one Pixel now.

Not yes. But our use case is just relatively unique because we have to trigger purchase events not only on the checkout page, but also on the upsell. That's right. So we have we have this relatively unique flow of, sure, you add to cart, and then you go to the

checkout page. Like, when you do an upsell, doesn't you don't go to a unique page URL.

Right. Because the page URL is dependent on on the funnel URL and all this. So we it's just really complicated, and once you get into it, you find yourself, like, underwater. Like, where am I? What am I supposed to be doing again?

What where did I start? How did I end up here? So we looked around at some similar type products that have the same types of issues, and we found a common theme. Go to Leadpages, plenty of resources, plenty of development power. You go to their like, tracking, and it's just a field for scripts, and underneath it says, we do not support this.

Period. Like, you can add whatever tracking you want, but we do not support it. That's what we

did in our WordPress plugins. We we have a landing page WordPress plugin and content upgrades field to throw whatever scripts you want on the page.

It's your problem. Yeah. Right. And then I looked at ClickFunnels who, you know, everyone using ClickFunnels uses paid advertising. That's a generalization, but it's not it's not far off.

And same thing, just a field and a a docs article on how to do it, which is basically go to Facebook, copy, and then paste. And if you want custom events, add them in yourself. And then again, we do not support this. Do not ask our support about this. And so it's like, oh, that's why they ended up there because it's it's a nightmare.

We've been working on it for two weeks.

Yeah.

We're, you know, and we're working

But that's really the best way to do it because they might be using Facebook. They might be using Mixpanel. They might be using AdRoll. Like, there are all these different tracking services that they might need different pixels for.

We we thought because of our unique situation where we have to trigger multiple events and multiple purchases from the same person, all this other stuff, we thought, you know what we're gonna do? We're gonna we're gonna make it super easy for people. All we're gonna do is ask for the pixel ID and we will populate everything and trigger all events. And people were like, oh my god, that's amazing. Thank you so much.

And then once we started getting into with people who do some heavier paid traffic, and we started working with some some well known like optimization shops, and then they're like, we need it we need it perfect. So we so we're in the weeds on that. Yep. Yep. But we'll we'll we'll get there.

The custom

service add on.

Custom service add. That's right. It's like,

that's our,

that's our higher tier.

Yeah.

Alright. Let's see what else I got. This might be a little bit on the personal side, but last night, I was such an adult, man. My wife and I, we went to the local elementary school to see where our daughter's, set to go to kindergarten next year. So You guys are better parents than us.

What do you mean? You gotta go. Well orientation, whatever else.

We oh, okay. So she's enrolled and and you're like the orientation?

Now she's in pre k, and we have this really we got super lucky. There's a school here, that is inside of the Children's Museum of Portland. It is a fantasy pre k. It is literally in the museum. It is the coolest place for a kid ever.

So we got lucky we got into the lottery and and she got in there. But now it's time for kindergarten. So it's we're we're we both come from public schools and our default is send them to public school. And then you go and you're like, oh, man. This is it was a little jarring.

Public school is its own thing, man. It's it's this monster system that sucks out all individuality and personality and like you

could just worry about that too. Yeah.

Like the principal these people were good, nice people, and they knew what they were doing, but you could just see and feel the system has just sucked out all creativity. It's so rigid.

I I'm thinking about this too. And my daughter's only turning three, like, next week, but, and actually, she didn't get make it through the lottery to get our public preschool. So we have to find a different preschool for her to go to. But then the next step, when she gets to kindergarten, we specifically moved to this town, Orange, Connecticut, because it's one of the highest rated school districts in Connecticut.

Right. We we talked a lot about the schools in Connecticut last night.

And But good

they are.

But, you know, you you guys are better parents than us because we just basically trusted the Internet. We're like, alright. The Internet is telling us it's a good school district. I guess we'll we'll move there. We didn't like, some like, we could have gone and checked out the schools a little bit and talked to people.

We we didn't do any of that.

It it's also when they're three, you've it's not it doesn't feel as pressing.

No. But we're like, we bought a house here. We're gonna be here through through that, you know, to raise them. I think about that too. And and also I'm just wondering, alright.

So got a school a good school district rating. What does that even really mean?

Right. Is that test scores and where they go to college? It's it's that's not quite the same thing. The thing that we found jarring was these kids are gonna be five. They're little kids.

And people were asking like, so is there like recess? Like, yeah. There's twenty minutes for lunch and a twenty minute recess. Like, so you're gonna have these five year olds sitting in a desk for five hours a day? Like, what about music class?

Like, yeah, once a week. I'm like, guys, they're five. Like, you you you know, they're gonna they've talked about, like, hand grip of the pencil that they're gonna work on. I'm like, really guys? They're gonna figure out how to read and write.

Like, I I I didn't expect the transition from, like, this, like, super hippie child led school that we're in right now to public school to be that jarring. I thought kindergarten would be a transitionary thing and it feels like first grade. It feels like, you know, reading and really try to plan your vacations around school because if they miss a week, they're really gonna fall behind. I'm like, really guys? They're fucking five years old.

And I don't I don't really know what school is like these days. I'm sure it's so different from when we

went No, to dude. It's the exact same.

Oh, that's even scarier.

Nothing has changed. Nothing. The only thing that's changed

Well, how it felt when when we were kids. It it felt like the schools haven't changed in thirty years before us. You know?

Yeah. Exactly. The only thing that's changed is that the testing and the the system is even stronger. It is even like they're they're talking about tests in second grade that they're preparing for in kindergarten. Know?

And then and then as an entrepreneur, look around and I'm like, so I don't like this option. What other options do I have? Right? Because every day what you do is what option would I like to take? I don't like this option.

I wanna figure out a different option. And then you look around and you're like, so I'm just gonna have to pay up? Is is that what I'm gonna do? Am I still send my my kid to to private? Is is that what I want?

I don't wanna do that, but the options are are not you don't have that many options.

My I don't really have any data to go on this yet, but just my personal experience going through school when I was a kid, my worry is that they're not gonna teach them problem solving skills. It's in general, it's learning the book, preparing for the test, taking the test, and getting a passing grade. And it's it's not so much take this engine, take it apart, put it back together. There's this problem you you need to figure out a couple different solutions and be creative. And I there needs to be some some of that somehow, somewhere.

And my wife and I have talked taught to try to do as much extracurricular stuff and not just, like, pack the kid's schedule with fucking soccer practice and all all this different crap, but, like, just try to do other things out in addition to to school, whether it's projects, traveling, you know, build building stuff, whatever it is.

Yeah. Yeah. That was that was heavy. What else, man?

Don't I feel like that being entrepreneurs, raising kids, and going through that whole process, it's like heading into a world of frustration.

Yeah. I I totally agree.

Like, I feel like I feel like

I'm gonna lose my mind. And I cannot I cannot imagine when when there's something, like, actually negative. Like, oh, there's a problem, kid, and they're picking on your child. I'm like, I'm gonna I'm gonna kill someone. Right?

I don't know how I'm gonna be able to just play along. I I know. You know? Alright. That's it.

Alright. So I know look. We don't have a lot of time today because because I messed up. I got a demo scheduled in fifteen minutes, my friend. Got four demos today and two podcasts.

How about that for just talking all day? Just talk all day.

Yeah. That's another thing on my to do list. I wanna I wanna do more, getting on podcast, do a little podcast tour and get that kinda ramping up over the next month or two, three months as I'm getting ready to really roll out Audience Hops calendar. Another thing that I started working on just briefly was Cora question answering yesterday, and I found a couple of relevant questions that I could write a a good answer to. I might try to make a habit of that, but there there aren't like you could find a couple of really good ones with a lot of activity, but then after that, the you know, it's not like a regular thing that you could just keep finding more opportunities.

Right. Only only what's his name? Jason Lemkin? I I don't know. He has like 10,000 posts on Quora.

Yeah. I don't know. It's like if you're gonna go all in on it, otherwise, I think it's just good some SEO juice.

But, you know, on on the SaaS, like, we're getting pretty close at this point. Like, a lot of the key features are are in or almost in, and we started building like the performance tracking where you can track traffic and conversions. Wordpress like two way WordPress syncing is now built. So if you have post in WordPress and you've got post organized in your calendar, you change the date in the calendar, it changes in WordPress. You change the date in WordPress, it changes in the calendar.

So that's basically working. We're rolling that out today. I've been having a couple more calls with with beta customers and getting a lot of really good feedback. I'm starting to notice some trends and some feature requests that are that's pretty much clarifying where we need to set the priorities. So that's really good.

And my goal is still sometime in March to start inviting more customers from the early access list

to

to sign up

and That's around

the corner. Start, like, official free trials and then get into paid. We need to build that trial system just and we're and the developer's working on that right now, so that's coming along.

Yeah. I owe you an email response on the the credit card thing.

Oh, yeah. I forgot about that. Yep. Yep. Yep.

Me too. Oh, so what I'm trying to figure out actually is, I know Rob and Mike did a episode about this recently, but like, I need to be emailing those early access people, and try to kind of warm them up again. Like,

I Yeah. I think I

think I've done a pretty good job of, like, not spending forever on development. So it's only been, I think, less than six months since we broke ground on code. And we're getting pretty close. And then, you know, a lot of the the people who signed up, you know, some some have signed up as as recently as this week or or last week. So, basically, what happens is when they sign up for early access, they they put in their email, the next thing they see is the survey, they fill out that survey, I get that as an email, and I respond to every single one personally.

Okay. And a lot of times I'll I'll respond to specific things that they said or questions. And

Well, that's a good way to start things off.

Yeah. And so I always get into at least like a one or two back and forth Mhmm. With every person. But then after that, it's like, okay. So we're gonna roll it out in a couple more weeks.

I'll keep you posted.

Right.

And and then and then it's just like kinda it's been basically radio silence. I I think they might get some of our content emails, but they're nothing about the app. Yeah. So what I'm trying to figure out now is, like, I I know I wanna create a couple of videos that high that highlight some of the key features and the and the problems that we solve, and I might start to roll those out as I as I create them. But yeah.

Like, I'm trying to figure out, like, how to warm them up, and then I have an idea of how I'm gonna prioritize and figure out like the the best people to invite first. Yeah.

But I hear you. It's like, we're having a Twitter conversation the other day about raising prices. Oh, yeah. What did what did we come up with? The ratio of

Oh, yeah.

Know know what's right, but still don't do it. Right. Right. It's that that's that's kind of our lives.

I know. Yeah. I have been Yeah. Ben Orangstein at at at Big Snow attending a conference is like, I think my I think he's kinda serious about this. Like, I wanna start some sort of service where I basically hold your hand while we raise your prices together.

With his screen share, a

few of us together, like, ready on three. Yep. That's good. I like that.

I can raise your prices Being as a

in touch, I have I got a few 100 people on that list, and I have been so bad. So bad at it. And and I and you know, like, look, just send an email with a screenshot of the new feature and be like, this is gonna be great. Coming up soon. I'll be in touch.

Like, that every three weeks would be so much better than nothing. It would probably take about thirty minutes to do. Yeah. But you still don't do it.

It's because that work like so in the weeds of developing these features or working with the developers, designing them, and it's like, yeah.

Know. But what's the point in spending all your time developing if if you're not gonna have a receptive audience? So it's like it's like we we already know this, but it's still hard to do. It's it's rare when you see it done well. Yesterday, got an email from someone I have seriously no idea what this business even does.

They were like, we're almost ready for you. And I was like, Jesus, that's me, man.

Yeah. There have been I've been on like somewhere like SaaS that I actually signed up and tried like two years ago. Haven't heard from them since. And now it's like, hey, we just released a new version. Like, oh.

It's like also known as we just hired someone to finally do this. Yeah. So here here's my thinking on it.

I think I'm gonna hire a junior marketer.

That's that's my new my new thing right now. We're pulling back on spending money on on outbound because we just have we just have we have enough inbound coming in that we we just don't we don't need any more right now anyway. So I think I'm gonna take that part of the budget, and

I think I'm gonna I think I'm gonna hire a junior marketer. And

What would they do? Okay.

So they would do those things that I know I should be doing, but don't do. That that's my that's literally my goal. Because I have I have Trello lists of things that would be beneficial to the company. Our recovery app, that thing is so ignored and it's growing nicely. And we are, we have become the default recovery app for subscription businesses.

We own that market and we just get sign up after sign up after sign up. We say, hey, I heard about you in our Facebook group and we just have so much buzz going there. And yet, I mean, I cannot tell you. We we have maybe a dozen potential case studies of people crushing it, adding thousand, 2,000, $5,000 in recurring revenue every month to their subscription box just from abandoned carts. And how hard would it be for a marketer, a junior person 25 years old that wants to get into marketing to just spend three hours creating a three page case study?

And and that that's it. And and I look at that, and I'm like, never gonna happen. Right. Never.

Yeah. There's a lot

of little things you can give them. You know?

Yeah. So that's that's that's my my new thing, and I wanna do it here in Portland locally because I need the kick in the ass that is not the slack. Hey. We said we were gonna do this. No.

I need the the, hey. I'm here today, and we said we're gonna work on this today, so let me know when you're ready to work it. Yeah. And right next to me and I'm paying them and I'm paying their rent and and that that's like, feel like that's the only thing that's gonna work for me.

Yeah. It could it could be good to have someone like that, like, really spent every single week like engaging in I guess you kinda do this too, but like engaging in communities, Facebook groups, Quora.

Yeah. And and I need help on the customer support, and that's the best way to learn the product. Yep. Because people are like, I'm having this weird problem, you have to figure out what's connected to that problem. Yeah.

So I think I'm gonna do it. If anyone listening to this knows someone in Portland that might be the right fit, I think I I'm gonna do

it. So you wanna work with them in person? I do. I do.

I think that's the best way to have like that that knowledge transfer for, you know, if a customer support ticket comes in and and and they ping me on Slack, hey, how should I get back to this? Then it's annoying.

Right.

But if if it's in person, then I can just say it out loud, and then they learn, and then just the osmosis, I just think that that is yeah. We're like super remote, and everyone's all over the world, but our tech team is all together in Slovenia, and and I want someone in person. So it's it's like this little bit of a of a hybrid. I don't think I personally don't have the discipline to do the purely remote thing for for everything.

Yeah. I've always been purely remote just because I I don't know why. I I mean, part of it is the market. Like, there's not a lot of people with the specific skills that I need right around locally here.

Yeah. But I I think you'd be surprised. I know I'm surprised. I had lunch with Keith Perhak yesterday. We had a nice Poke Bowl, and he he told me he's hired four people in Portland.

Yeah. But you're in Portland. I'm in Suburban Connecticut.

I I still I still wouldn't wouldn't assume. But, yes. Yeah. It's easier to measure. Part of it

for me though is also that, like, I love the flexibility of setting my own schedule, working wherever I want. And I've I've always felt like when I when I used

to Yeah. Like a like a normal person and I'm a stoner slacker.

I don't know. I mean, like, but but I used to have a a office that I rented in in Norwalk.

Yeah. Remember.

And like three three four days a week, I would just not go there. I would just either work from home or or work from the coffee shop or, you know, if I had a an employee coming in on a regular schedule, I would feel obligated to come in on those days too.

Yeah. I think I need that. I need I need to feel obligation. Yeah. Alright, homie.

I I gotta go triple s, baby.

Alright, man.

All day. All day. There you go. Oh, great catching up with you, my man. Alright.

Have a good one. See you, everybody. See you.