Bootstrapped Web

Hello, and welcome back to Bootstrap Web. I'm Jordan. And

I am Brian.

What's up, man? Nice to talk with you again.

Yeah. Good to be back on. I know we're we're we're taking a few weeks off in between episodes, but that's how it goes when we're when we're both busy and it's summertime and

yeah.

It's it's good to be able to pack a little bit more into each episode too.

Yeah. I agree. Nice, man. So yeah. Where where are you at?

I'm I'm heading to Europe tomorrow, baby.

Are you really?

Yeah. A week with the dev team. Nice. Oh, yeah. Our our annual trip, we head out to Slovenia where they are.

So Ben is already there. I'm jealous.

Sweet. How how long are you gonna be out there?

Oh, they're for a week. So what we do is we get an Airbnb in Croatia, which is like a three hour drive away in a cool town called Zadar. So it's like on the ocean, but like a cool, cool spot. And we basically just, during the day, we'll wake up, we'll go get some breakfast, go to the beach. At some point, every day there, I must have calamari at one point during the day.

I think it's totally reasonable. And then we get back to the house. And basically from like two, 3PM to like two, 3AM, we just hack. We just work. So I have like a strong to do list of things that I wanna do in, you know, in person when we're all together.

That's awesome. Well, I am going nowhere. I am staying put here in Connecticut. We're finally getting some some beach weather around here.

Nice.

And I feel like I'm working my ass off here, but I'm also trying to work a lot less than I usually do, you know. Taking off work earlier than usual, doing a lot of half days, days off, staying away from the computer on the weekends, you know.

Good. That's healthy. I haven't done anything like that for a long time.

But but those but those windows of of the like the the hours that I am working, I am hustling. I'm I'm just going as fast as I can to ship whatever that I can in in the hours that I'm sitting here in the office.

Oh, that's good. I I feel I feel like I'm pretty inefficient in those hours. And I think hiring with two new employees also has made me less efficient because I end up talking through things with them a lot. And I really enjoy doing that, but you don't get that much done when you're just talking. You make progress because you're, the whole knowledge transfer is really important, but for the actual to do list, it's inefficient.

And lately what I've been doing is I just look during the day and I say, what actually needs to get done during the day? What can I do tonight? And I just have like a second session planned at night, which is not a good habit.

Oh, I can't. I used to in my twenties. There's I just cannot work at night anymore. Like, I I have no motivation, no interest in working. Nighttime is for Netflix and HBO shows and Yeah.

And reading, you know.

I mean, that I ideally, I think what happens to me is two things. First, the the energy in the company right now is just like on fire. So the growth and along with it, all the stuff that, you know, that comes with it, the support tickets and and some of the customers, you just kind of love, you know, and you want to get back to them right away, and you want to help them. And someone signs up and they have a legit question, and you, it's just more exciting, so it's easier to be motivated on that front. And then the other thing that happens is the guys in Slovenia wake up sometime around 11:00 at night for me.

And then they get online, we start talking and I get reenergized and I start doing more stuff with them. It's not the healthiest thing and it can't go on forever, but it's kind of fun for now.

Yeah. Actually, on on the personal front, I've been, in the last three weeks, been getting a lot healthier. My wife and I have been really trying to commit to this kind of like a paleo, I would say, like, paleo ish diet, kind of like bulletproof paleo kind of thing. And that's been huge for me for in terms of focus and productivity. That's that's always the pattern.

Like, when I during the months when I'm eating like shit and not exercising

You you don't feel like it.

I'm slow and I'm not focused and I'm making stupid decisions. And this month, I definitely feel a lot better and and more focused and

That's good. You go to the gym?

Not at all.

Okay.

But I am trying

to That's

I I am trying to do something every day, like I'm I'm actually making an effort to get out there and and hike with the dog at least, you know, three, four times a week, you know, around lunchtime. And and, like, I mean, that's a good little exercise thing, but for me, it's it's also to, like, to break up the day. Again, like, trying to work a little bit less. And I realized, like, I went about a year through through the course of, like, getting back from the trip and then moving to the new house. That's a that's that used to be a daily routine, that lunch break walk with the dog that I kinda cut out for the past year, and I never I didn't realize how important that was to, like, just clear my head and, you know, frankly, away from the the the the two girls, like, the the little kids and the work and just get outside a little bit and clear the head, and then I feel a little bit more refreshed to get a few more things done in the afternoon and then, call it a day.

Yeah. The the ideal I found is the combination of the two. It's it's if I'm going to the gym and I get the diet right for a few days, And it's such a strange thing that happens. Yesterday, I did like a, like a fuck it lunch. I just, I walked past this restaurant a few days ago and it's, it's got this amazing fried chicken sandwich.

So it just lodged, lodged itself in my mind. And, and so yesterday it popped up in my mind. I was like, screw this. I'm going by myself. I'm eating a terrible fried chicken sandwich.

It's gonna feel great. And then I ate it and was like, I just paid $12 to feel terrible for a few hours. That's, that's all I did. And so it's like the exercise leads into wanting to eat healthy and eating healthy leads into more. It's definitely, they work together.

Lately what I'm doing is not having breakfast, I just have a smoothie. I used to have the smoothie with the breakfast, and now I just cut out the breakfast, and I feel no difference other than like losing weight.

Yeah, and that's kind of like intermittent fasting. I mean, I've been doing bulletproof coffee for breakfast and no food for really for for years on weekdays and now this month I'm doing it like every day and that's just been huge.

Yeah. It's good for you. And it helps on the biz front. Speaking of the biz front, what's happening, man?

Let's get into it.

What's going on? Yep.

So I guess so my updates for today, I'm gonna talk a bit about the personal content stuff that I'm doing with the productize podcast and starting up some YouTube videos. I'll start off with that. And then later on, I'll talk about this kind of like a automated recorded webinar thing that I'm trying to launch for audience ops as a some some lead gen there. And then if we have time, I'll I'll talk about some project management, trying to hire and pull myself out of that. That's been one of the one of the more painful things of getting too bogged down in that side of the of the work.

So I'll start off on the content stuff. It's been about three weeks or so now that I've been recording new episodes for the Productize podcast, and that was a that was a podcast that I did last year. It was kind of like a season based thing, and it ended around October. I'm starting that back up again. I don't know if this is gonna be like a season two or just a just ongoing.

It stays in the same feed, but it's taking kind of a new direction. It's it's more of a general interview podcast now. It's not always specifically about productized services. I'm just interviewing, you know, people I find interesting. I'm trying to do a mix of, you know, folks that I know, entrepreneurs and and whatnot, but also people who I get introduced to who I don't know so well.

And that's been a little bit challenging for me to interview them without knowing their backstory too much. And I you know, I've always just been a really big fan of of listening to interviews, especially really good interviewers, you know, like Andrew Warner, I mean, like Howard Stern, Charlie Rose, like, just I I've always just been kind of fascinated with people who are really good at interviewing. I'm trying to make it kind of like a mix of give me the the backstory, like your your life story. How'd you start out? How'd you get into entrepreneurship?

Mixed with, you know, actionable takeaways if they're especially if they specialize in something or they're doing something really badass and, you know, take us behind the scenes. So that's kind of the focus there. And what I've been doing, you know, like to keep it consistent is I just blocked off Tuesday afternoons. So in Calendly, guests can book one of two spots. So I'm always trying to record two episodes every Tuesday afternoon.

And I'm only gonna publish one episode a week, but by recording two a day You get ahead? I get way ahead. And and that's been working out. So right now, I have something like six or seven episodes in the can. They're not edited yet.

I I'm hiring an editor. Like, for this show, we've been using Podcast Motor, and they've been awesome. I I think for the prioritized podcast, I'm I'm gonna hire a like a solo editor, partly to to you know, because I don't have as much of a budget for it, but also I'd rather just have, like, kinda one person to knock through us a very specific process for not only editing the audio and and publishing the the thing, but getting the show notes and, like, listening in and getting all the links and and posting those and scheduling out social media. And, like, I'm gonna give him a whole process that all I need to do is record the episode, drop it in Dropbox, and then he he just, you know, puts the gears in motion. And it was interesting.

I I mentioned this to my newsletter a couple weeks back that I'm starting to record these episodes, and a guy replied to me. He's down in Brazil, and I think I'm probably gonna gonna reach out to him like today or tomorrow and let him know, you know, that he could start editing. Because what he did was he he yeah. He replied and he was like, you know, I'm I'm trying to get into podcast editing as a service. I don't have a ton of like, I don't have a huge portfolio of clients right now, but it's something that I'm trying to get into.

And just to show you what I could do, he actually created a video for me, like a five minute YouTube video. He's like and on the video, he's like, hey hey, Brian. Like, I wanna show you what I could do. He grabbed, he grabbed a a previous episode from the prototype podcast, and he, like, showed me on the video, shared his screen, like, here here's me, like, removing some background noise and cleaning up some some extra spaces and, like, here's some extra music, like, let me show you how I would do this. And then he gave me, like, he gave me, like, an example of show notes that he would write up and I was like, boom.

This is this is Wow. Crafty. Very nice.

Yeah. It's like, how could I not hire this guy? Yep. Then on kind of a related note, I'm also trying to do more video, which I haven't posted these yet. But again, I'm trying to record two videos a week.

Basically just answering questions. So I've been getting questions from the from the newsletter and and just taking it like eight to ten minutes on each video, just kind of talking through some thoughts or experiences on on that question.

And it's just you on camera just answering it?

Yep. Selfie videos, you know, trying to I'm trying to get more comfortable with that and trying to get more focused to, like, nail down the answer without rambling and and all that. I bought a this, like, fancy, like, selfie stick because I I did I did a couple videos when I was outside walking with the dog, and I realized after the fact that they were shaky as hell. And I did a couple videos in the car while I was driving my daughter or going to pick up my daughter from daycare.

The car thing is all the rage in the e commerce world. It's all about e commerce in your car, man. And it it it's very efficient. Very It's very very It's efficient.

I know. You know, like, I I watched it and, like, I was, like, like, I was totally safe when I was driving and and doing this, you know. I'm not saying I'm the slowest driver out there, but, on the video, like, I was not driving very fast, but on the video, it looks like you are flying. Like, it's it it looks super like, way more dangerous than it really is, you know?

Yeah. There are a few guys that do it. A few guys that do it. It makes sense. It's very efficient.

You you must have like a red steering wheel and like some custom leather seats in order to do it. In the e commerce world though, you have to otherwise.

Yeah. Gotta show up.

You're not taking it seriously. Yeah. I that that's actually touches on a topic that we'll talk about later.

Alright. I mean, I spent way too much time, like, getting the perfect, like, lodging the the camera up on, like, up on the corner of the card so that it doesn't shake and it's the right angle, and then do a test recording after test recording, and like, yeah. Spent way too much time on that. But so but I'm also looking to hire a video editor, and I threw up an ad on Upwork for that. Again, I'm I'm probably looking, like, not US based, trying to save a little money on that.

Don't don't wanna spend a ton of cash on, like, you know, like, a local video editor. But but, again, the idea is just to get get them off my iPhone into Dropbox, and somebody just edits them, add some music, add some text and stuff, does the show notes, puts it up on YouTube, publishes it. I have like six or seven of these recorded and I wanna keep that routine up by two a week and I'm hoping to start getting these published out there in the next like two or three weeks. So, yeah, that's you know, part part of the effort now is is to just ramp up the content on the personal side and, you know, drive that email list and and and keep and just get that back back up and running, because I kinda took off a few months from from doing that. So

Alright. You're back. Cool, man. Over to you. Let's see.

Well, so obviously, big thing is the trip to to Slovenia. And it's it's funny. I'm just looking at I have a list. Right? In Trello, I have a board for the trip, and I have a checklist of things that I want to do or I want us to do together when we're there.

And it's kind of funny the difference of the things that are on that list from what I do day to day. So I could just like run through that list. So first is sign up and use a competing product to get the full experience of a competitor product. So I I outlined an email sequence, but for like a lead magnet email sequence, but I actually wanna create the lead magnet email sequence. And there's something that happens when we're all together, where you get like this insane energy, and you just, we can just, you just do so much in a twenty four hour period.

So much more than you normally do, because it's, it almost feels like people are watching you and you wanna like impress them. So I feel like I could be like, I'll be back in two hours with a fully written email sequence and I will actually do it, because it actually only takes two hours. But for some reason, it will take four weeks to do here. I have no idea why. So, you know, some lack of discipline or

think whatever it's that what what do they call it? Like like, whatever time box you you give yourself, that's the amount of time you're gonna take on on a thing. And I I think trips especially, and this has definitely been the case for me. If I'm on a trip, like, when I was in The Philippines, I knew there was, like, five or six things that I wanted to get done during that month while we were there. But also when I have a trip coming up in the calendar, and there's that like deadline, alright, this weekend, getting on a flight, I gotta get all this stuff done before Friday.

And Yeah. Like, it's a it's a good pressure to have.

Yeah. So we we try to create that artificially, but it's it's very hard to do. The the the way I do it is, though, one of the guys I hired works more closely with me. So Mike is kind of more on the marketing and sales side than me. And so we try to like, we try to like have meetings.

It sounds inefficient, but it actually forces us to do stuff. So we will just simply go off to a conference room for two hours, and do one thing, and we'll make a lot more progress on it than if we just said separately, okay, you do this, and I do this, and we'll talk at the end of the day. For some weird reason, we just get into a room together, and we're we're not like talking the whole time, but we're consciously working on the same thing, and

it's What's just an example of something you worked on, like, together like that?

Re oh, I wanna say retargeting ad, but that we just we just did yesterday. I'm trying to think of a different example that he and I worked on. I think it might have been the the the mapping, the email sequence. So basically, oh, no. Excuse me.

It was the onboarding review. That's what it was. It was let's let's look at our app and just stick a finger like right here, this is wrong. And right here, that doesn't make sense. And after you click this button, you really should go to the next page.

Otherwise, how was anyone supposed to know that they're supposed to go to the funnels page after the setup? So we just kinda looked at a computer screen together for like two hours and just wrote notes and wrote notes and created a big Google Doc, and then handed that over to Ben and the tech team. So it was like focused work, and then we just had this product, right? We just had this Google Doc that said, if you implement these changes, things will improve in our onboarding, and that makes a big difference in the conversion rate of trial to paid. So we kind of try to do that at least once a day, once every other day.

We're like, alright, that two hour stretch, that's what we're talking about this email sequence. This two hour stretch is where we're gonna talk about the lead back then. Yeah. And then we like look at we create like an ideal week, and then on Friday, so today, in a few hours, this afternoon, he and I will grab a beer. Thank you, we work for having a keg for free.

We'll grab a beer, and we will map out, not exactly what's going to happen next week, but what are the priorities, and what days are we going to focus on each priority. So it's like, if we have like a two hour session, five days a week, what are we gonna focus on on Monday's session, Tuesday's session, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday? And that way we just kind of approach it as, no, we don't have a million things to do. We just have one big thing to do today. Yeah.

So it's it's it's been helping, but it's it's definitely not a 100% there, but we're we're trying.

I've been trying to think the same way, like working solo, and and I always try to plan my week like that, and I'm constantly just writing lists after list after list in my in my personal, like, journal app thing. And, you know, this week, it's focusing on this, this, and this. And today, I'm getting one thing done, and things get pushed back, and distractions happen. And it's like, in your case, it's awesome to have somebody to kinda keep you accountable, because you're kinda both accountable to each other to deliver this stuff. And Yep.

Yeah. And I I told him that when when I hired him. I said, so I don't get things done unless I owe them to someone. And so you need to be kinda strong enough to say to the boss, hey, we were supposed to get that done on Wednesday, it's Thursday, what can I do to help? Like, let's get let's get it done.

Otherwise otherwise, it's it's not gonna improve things. Alright. Next thing. Okay. I'm gonna write a webinar presentation.

So I have it in my head. I know the arc and the narrative, but now I need to make the slides. So fortunately, I I have some slides from some talks and stuff. So it's just a matter of kinda writing up the script and then doing the slides to match it. So again, it's a few hours, but I feel like that's something I can do from like 8PM to 2AM one night and have fun with it.

I I did exactly that last week for this webinar, and I was like, that's something I could do in half a day. It took me all week and into the weekend.

It's it's hard, but I at least I've you've done a few too. It it it's just a hard thing. It requires extended focus on one thing, and you kinda have to push through. Yeah. But I I think it's our biggest opportunity for revenue in the short term, so it's it's worth it.

Oh, totally. Yeah.

Yep. A public roadmap. Like, we we might expose our public roadmap, so people know what's coming up instead of just like what's just been released.

I did that with with ops calendar. Doesn't have a ton of activity on it right now, but I I made a public Trello board.

You made it public?

Yeah. Yeah.

I I like that.

And they have Trello has a, like, a voting feature that you could turn on. So so I had so all the people like, the people in the beta group, like, they could go in there and and upvote features in in the

Oh, that's nice. Yeah. I've seen that with, like, user voice. Yeah. So we're we're looking at that.

The other big thing that we did last year that was really successful is a feature matrix. So so Ben basically sits us all down, and we put the features that are either on the roadmap, or people asked about, or we can think of, and we put it on this big matrix of impact on one access, and dev time on the other access. So, right, so it's like, you get to see what we think has the highest impact and requires the least amount of dev time. Like that's probably what should be done first. And so we kind of, it just sets everything up.

It makes it really clear and objective. Because if you get a request for a feature, like two or three times within a one or two day period, all of a sudden you think in your head that it's a really important feature. But so it affects you. So when we put on this matrix and we like have to objectively say, that's a cool feature, but it is gnarly to actually get done, then it objectively puts it the priority list, like into this visual matrix of, we really should do that because it's going to have a big impact. So that's a big one.

And then documentation. This has been a big focus. We've built up our documentation maybe from like 10 articles to about 50 articles in the past two weeks. And we just still have a bunch to go, and a lot of them rely on me to make videos and screen share videos. So I think that's something that's really, really helpful.

Just like the top five or six biggest things that people have questions about. And then what we plan to do is surface them inside the app. If you look at we look, we end up looking at BearMetrix a lot. Their their product is just well done. The design's well done.

It's it's really it's really impressive. BearMetrix has this really interesting thing they do next to a feature inside their app. They just have a little button. So right now we have these little tiny question marks that if you hover over, it just gives you a little pop up. And and we've kind of wrestled that that's not enough.

We're we're trying to convey too much. It's like two paragraphs. Yeah. When you hover over a question mark, you you can't do that.

I've I've done that in in my apps too.

Right. You like, you need to convey what this means and what it is and how to use it. And you anyway, so what Baremetrics does, they just have this little icon and a little button that just says, like, learn. And then you click on that, it just opens up the dock. So it's like if we're gonna create

all the same window, like in a pop

up or No. No. No. It opens a new window. It's almost like if it's if it's easy to explain, you could use the hover.

But if it's if it's complex, then then let's use the documentation asset that we created and surface it instead of just saying, well, if they're confused, then they'll just go to documentation. Because the truth is, they don't even know that they're confused. Yeah. Like we have these little features that are like, allow you to change the price of the upsell without changing it on Shopify. But they just look at that and they're like, what am I supposed to do with that?

This is just like a field. But I don't know. I don't understand why that's valuable.

And I feel like there's a there's a difference between instructions, like how does something function? Like what like how does this functionality work? There's a difference between that and just best practices, you know? And like teaching a methodology. And right now, I'm I'm I'm reworking a bunch of my drip automation workflows.

And this that's one of those things where it's like, you know, they've got some technical documentation and they do have some, like, blueprints and stuff. And I'm part of Brennan's, like, drip mastery Facebook group, which is a a good I mean, it's a great program that he's putting together, but great community there too. Like, people talking about advanced stuff. But I I feel like company like most SaaS apps, there's like, this is how you get it set up and this is how you really get the most out of it. Like, those are two separate things.

Mhmm. You know, like.

Yeah. The education piece is Yeah. Yeah. It's it's tough tough to get to because you you need to do so much work on making sure people know how to use it first. Anyway, and that's so that's that's the list.

There's some things on the list that I can't talk about. Yeah. But that's it's it's it's fun to look at what I set aside for myself that for some reason I think I can get done there better than I can get done here. I hope to report back.

Yeah. It'll be good to hear next episode. Yes. Yes.

Let's hold me accountable. Let's do it. So if, you know, if I come out of it with no webinar and not much documentation done and and so forth, and I just talked for a week, that that won't be as good.

Yep. Well, speaking of webinars, that has been it's been on my to do list to ship like a week ago, and now it's Friday of the following week, it's still not shipped. But it's close. And so basically, my goal for this month is to I don't know, just put a a a much bigger effort into driving new leads for audience ops. And so last month, I I talked about how I I started some Facebook ads, and those are still running today.

I think they're looking a little bit promising. Definitely, the the best cost per click that we've seen is driving ads, like cold ads to a big evergreen article. You know, not sending them to a landing page, not not trying to sell anything, not going to a webinar or anything like just get them to a free article. And then on the article, have content upgrades and then and then do a follow-up sequence from there. That actually worked pretty well last month.

It's running this month. I I know that it it resulted in some leads and actually, I think two paying clients from those ads. So that's that's looking promising. It's profitable. This month, I'm trying to put more juice into that.

And at first, I thought that what I was gonna do was write another one of those evergreen articles and just double that up. But in instead like, maybe I'll do that a little bit later. Instead, I'm gonna stick with the same article as, like, the very top of funnel. But now I'm launching this webinar as, like, to help convert more email subscribers into leads or or have or have something to to promote with retargeting ads. And so the way that I'm doing so the this webinar is called sell to strangers.

And I spent some time kind of writing out the the content and the script for it in a doc, and then I converted that into slides. And then I recorded it as a as like a recorded webinar. It comes out to something like twenty three minutes. It's actually a little bit shorter than I expected that it would be, but I I think I packed in some pretty good information. And like the concept of like sell to strangers, I'm I'm trying to target the end goal that someone would have when you're trying to invest into content marketing.

Like, it's easy enough to build and launch a great product. It's pretty easy to to sell it to friends and contacts and warm referrals, your personal network. But if you're ever gonna grow your business, you basically have to figure out how to sell it to complete strangers and do that and do that systematically at scale. And the way to do that is to build a content based sales funnel. You know, we learned about like at at micro comp with like Tofu, MoFu, and BoFu and having those content assets in place.

So I kinda do a deep dive into that or like a condensed deep dive into that in in this, like, twenty minute lesson. You know, making that point that I just said, but then, like, these are the key content assets that you need to build and establish and where they fit into the mix. And then at the end, of course, it leads into you don't wanna spend time on that, you don't wanna outsource it and get poor quality, so AudienceOp solves that problem. Okay.

So you talked about the concept and what it can do for you, and then if you've bought into that concept, you can go off and use the information on your own

Exactly.

Or or some people will will be interested in having someone do it for them. Right. Yeah.

And so I have I haven't launched it yet. I'm hoping to launch it, like, in the next day or two is on the site, we've got a slot like a pop like a slide up on the footer call to action. It's like after you've been on the page for like fifteen seconds, you'll see that. And there's also an exit intent pop up. And and that's, you know, enter your email address and then instantly go see this video workshop.

And then I I'm working in inside drip to have some follow-up sequences in place. And the like the, you know, the idea is to drive more consultation requests, and so I have some follow-up emails to help with that. And once I get this launched, I think it'll be good to just drive because we get a lot of organic traffic coming through and and and drive them in into the sequence and integrate it with our follow-up. But then I'll drive retargeting ads to it and and get that into the mix. So that's I'm hoping to get that out the door in the next couple days.

Nice, Ben. I I wanna alright. So let's let's go from there into into the next thing I want to talk about. What I have felt lately, is I felt like a boy scout man, when it comes to marketing. That I don't make enough claims, that I don't, I don't want to say you need to be sleazier, that's like lazy way to describe it.

I need to create more desire. How about that?

Yeah. Is that right?

That that's more fair? So that's so even yesterday, I did a q and a on Facebook live with someone who runs a Shopify group with 5,000 people. So we probably have, we had about 40 people on the call, and then it gets posted to the group, and then it lives on there like with with a link back to our site and everything. So it's it's an opportunity to kind of get people interested. And I found myself talking like, you know, a freaking Ivy League, like, don't get your hands dirty, just talk about the features and like, and make no claims.

And I was like, man, that's weak. You just look around at the other offers and at the other positioning and all that. I feel like I need to not skip over that piece of it. For a long time, we've relied on just the fact that there's built in demand for our product. It's not our doing, it's the market's doing.

People know about upsells and they want to do it. And then they look around for a solution, and we exist, so we get some of that demand. But because we've been in that position, we forgot that we need to create some demand too. We need to get people interested. We need to make people excited.

So we've kind of stepped away from that. And we've also, we have the added excuse. I call it an excuse specifically because we, our pricing is higher. And so we try to come off as more professional. So that kind of excuse combined with the laziness of not needing to do it, I feel like we've gotten our marketing into this weird place where it's super standoffish.

It creates no heat. It creates no desire and you want to take action now because it's gonna do something for you.

Well, so what are you thinking? Like what do you want to do more of? How do you want to change it?

So for a long time we've been waiting, until we had impressive numbers. So we've always wanted to be able to say, look, I remember very specifically, ClickFunnels grew off the back of one webinar. And the name of that webinar was steal my $17,000 a day funnel. Okay? So real straightforward dollar amount per day, eye popping, like that is desire.

And then the webinar was, let me show you how I make $17,000 a day. Right? Everyone watching is like, I want to make $17,000 a day. Right? So it was a good match between the product and the audience, and it did not beat around the bush.

It was, here's how I make $17,000 a day. Don't you wanna do that too? I'll show you how. And and I've always kind of admired that, and I also think that it makes sense for our space. Right?

Our market is not the traditional retailers who are kind of slower and more grounded and more professional. Our market is the marketers. And the marketers, this how they think. They think fast and hard, and that's how they operate. That's how they spend, and that's what they buy.

And so we've been waiting a long time until our numbers were, had that eye popping effect, and we finally have that. So we have people using our platform that are making kind of eye popping amounts of money. And so now we can use that as like, I think what we need to do is lead with one eye popping case study. So it's not, we don't have the added benefit of I'm the founder and here's how I make $17,000 a day. I wish I could say that.

But we can say, here is a real customer and here's how they make, you know, $17,000 a day. And and see how they do it and how you can do it too. So it's real similar, but we need we need to put that upfront.

I need to do the same thing with Audience Ops. We did do a series of case study articles a couple months back, where actually you you were one of them. And where one of our writers interview and we do this for clients pretty routinely too, where where they connect us with one of their customers, our writers interview them, and then we turn it into, like, a 1,500 word written case study about the story of, like, how they have the problem and and how they think about the solution and why they chose the solution and the benefits and the and the results that that they've seen. So we we did a series of those a while back, but but we have, like, so many other clients who who've been on board with us for, like, a year, year and a half, two years, and they're just like quietly kind of doing their thing. And I I need to do I need to do the same thing.

I'm I'm thinking about, like, some point doing a short series of of interviews where I'll just interview our clients and and kinda dig into some wins and and like, really like specific actionable about like, where where they fit content into their marketing funnel and and and a little bit of the story and then

So

You know?

I'm sorry. I'm interjecting because I wanna push back on that. And that sounds a lot like what we've done, where we're like, this is what you can accomplish with our service. But what we don't talk about and what I didn't hear in that was, here's the result of our service.

Yeah. Well, I mean-

And the result can be a happy founder who feels good about what's happening in their company. But you're asking the prospect to make the connection themselves. And I think that that's what we we kind of shy away from that other people don't. We don't make the connection. We don't say we are responsible for x amount of money.

Right? We we we leave that last part up because we feel icky about it.

Yep. It's true. I I I a lot it's I I have the same hesitation and, you know, I mean, but I it's it's like I do look at a lot of those webinars, like the $17,000 a day. And it's like

Doesn't feel right or what?

Look, I know that this is sometimes true and sometimes not true, but like, of course, you can make $17,000 a day when you're selling how to get rich products. I'm not saying that ClickFunnels is one of those. You know, like you you see a lot of these case studies from marketers and and they're selling like weight loss products, or they're selling how to how to make money online. And that does not apply to every business or product or industry. That That applies to a really huge market of consumers, you know, and it's not the same when you're selling to businesses or just other industries.

And so I, like I totally get it and I respect it, But

It still has to match it has to match the audience.

It it has to match the audience and, like, you kinda have to be up I try to be as upfront as I can about, like, look, you can apply this in different ways and in different situations. Obviously, that that muddles the message and that it kinda I I hear what you're saying about that, but I don't know. That's the hesitation that I think most

Yeah. People

I I look. I I sympathize. I I have the same situation. I I think what's pushing me in that direction is we weren't sure which segment of the market was gonna be right for us. If it was gonna be what what we call a retailer, right, someone who cares about their brand for the next ten years, and then the other segment that we call marketer.

And marketer is someone who does Facebook arbitrage. That's that's really all they do. They they don't care what products they're selling. They're just trying to match Facebook ad spend to revenue, and using physical products as the vehicle. Right?

It's a completely different thing from I'm building Chubby's shorts, and I want it to be this brand that lasts a generation. It's just a different thing. But over the past few, I guess, maybe two months, it's just solidified. It our our segment is the marketers. That's who wants our product much more.

Maybe the retailers, they come along, but but the heat and the energy is all the marketers. So maybe what I'm doing is projecting onto you, but really what I'm what I'm coming to terms with is my audience needs something different than what I'm giving them. Yep. Yep. Alright.

Good talk there.

Cool. So good about that. I just had one more thing on my on my list here, and it's just something that's been kind of, I'll say, bugging me, but is at the same time been a little bit productive for the business, and that's the project management side of audience ops. Right now, we have two really great project managers on board. And I actually have an ad out to hire a third project manager in the next week or two.

Got some really good candidates in there already. I'll I'll be holding interviews in the next couple of weeks. And it's a it's like a part time, ongoing long term position. But the frustration that I've had is that I get pulled into project management questions and issues too often still. And I feel like, I don't know, like it shouldn't happen this as often as it does this late in the like, having been doing this two and a half years.

And we've got really solid processes, but project management is a different role than everything else on the team because it's like, not only do you have to follow the process, but you also have to be, like, situationally aware and, like, you have to be able to just deal with issues so and make them go away or or just make in in a really smooth way. And also but it's also about, like, prevent being proactive and and and recognizing when there's a pet like a potential fire that might start a week from now or two weeks from now and taking the steps today to prevent that. And, I've been trying to to work with our project managers and also work with our processes to build some of that stuff in. And and and just right now, aside from working on this on all this marketing stuff and the webinar stuff, I'm also working on reducing the amount of time that I have to get pulled into stuff. And I'm not saying to them like, hey, don't pull me into stuff, just figure it out on your own.

I definitely don't want that because that obviously causes more problems and we have a very nailed down system here and I don't wanna keep it that way. So what I've I've been working with them on like, here's some best practices on how to escalate stuff to me. You know? So when when you do escalate something to me, don't just say, here's a quick question, like, how how do I handle this? Give me the backstory.

Like, tell me, like, this is this is a client who, if you remember a week ago, they

Don't make me investigate.

Don't make me investigate. Like, give me the link to the relevant help scout conversations, give me the Trello cards, tell me who's working on what, and and a lot of times they just kind of like assume that I remember all those details because I was the original salesperson on that call and I handed them off, but like, I don't remember those details, like you have to give me the the backstory, that's that's number one. And then number two, I've been telling them, you know, you they they most likely have an idea of how they should handle something. They're usually just escalating to, like, get a confirmation from me.

Yes. It's the decision making.

Yeah. So I'm like I'm like, suggest your way forward. Like, how do you wanna deal with this or or if you're unsure between option a and option b, just lay those out for me so that I can just reply like, yep, you got it. Go with that. Or Yes.

Or yes, do that, but tweak it this way. And like, just and and like that'll make it faster for me to get back to them, faster for them to get back to the client, and just smoother for everybody.

Yeah. You gotta you gotta tee it up. Right. And ideally, the trust increases over time for them to just make the decision on their own. But sometimes, if you need to escalate it, don't make me run through everything you just went through.

Like, give the background and then like two options. I'm thinking that we should do x. Does that sound right to you?

Exactly. Exactly. And and a lot of our issues are technical, like like WordPress plugins are not working with the client's certain weird host that they're using or or like a drip workflow is is something different with this client than than what we usually do. And so one of our assistants, he's been kind of like the like the rock star on the team, and he's been really good with technical stuff. So I kind of I actually did this a while back, but I've been get I I promoted him and and made him kind of the technical lead on the team.

So he's in charge of all technical issues, and and and so I'm still involved in in troubleshooting some some things like that when they come up, but he's getting better and better at at understanding the ins and outs of that, and to be able to be the go to guy instead of me.

Nice. Yeah. We we we need the same thing. Like, we we have an amazing support personnel, but so much of it is technical, that it ends up getting escalated anyway, and he's doing a good job in the way he escalates. But it's almost like it's almost like we need a junior developer to do the technical investigation.

Right? It it it doesn't help that much to have Ben, our CTO, doing that much of the investigating of technical issues, because then he just ends up spending a lot of time on that. It just takes just takes a lot of time. You could spend an hour just to figure out why something happened.

Yeah. Yep. It's tricky. Yeah. And I get I actually wrote an article about this week or two ago about like turning these distractions into opportunities.

And it as distracting as they are and it's frustrating and it's slowing me down on on the marketing stuff that I'm working on, you know, like getting spending it like an hour, a couple hours a week on these escalated issues. It's also an opportunity to re revisit our processes, see where things are breaking down, how can we put the right people in the right places to to to be able to be self sufficient and all that. And and also as our project managers are getting filled up with their capacity, I'm getting ready to hire the third person now. So I need to make sure that our training material is is is bulletproof for that new person. And so I I worked on this like training program and so like turning these distractions into opportunities is something that I've been trying to

Right. So so they don't just continuously happen.

Yeah. Like don't don't just deal with it. They will. Right. Like the idea is just like don't just deal with it.

You have to deal with it so you don't have to deal with it again.

Right. Fully deal with it. Yeah. Cool, man. Well, that's that's it for me.

I gotta call in a few minutes. Cool. Then, you know, have a full day and pack and try to enjoy the nice weather here in Portland and all that.

So Awesome.

Yeah. I'll look back. I look forward to talking again when back from Europe. Yeah. In the meantime, thanks everybody for joining us.

Yeah. Enjoy the trip. Thanks, man.

Talk to you soon.

Alright. Later.