Bootstrapped Web

Doctor.

Marchegiani:

Hello, bootstrapped web. We're back Jordan. How's it going buddy?

Going pretty well. Sunny, beautiful. Feels like summer here in Portland.

Yeah. Getting warm over It's it's warm over here, but it is wet and humid and kinda gross. And I couldn't get my bike ride in this morning, that kinda sucks. But Mhmm. You know?

It's alright.

But it's Friday.

Yep. You know?

We get to look back at the week a little bit, talk about some things on our minds, and then move forward into the weekend. That's right.

That is right. Yes. You know,

we always talk before we go on air about what what our list of of things to talk about is, and there's always like like half of that list we can't talk about on air. So.

Yeah. That's right.

But but, know, we're we're trying to find things that we can talk about. Obviously, I've I've got a bunch of updates, some continuations of of what I've been working on and some some things that are working out well, some things that are stressing me out. Jordan, you're always stressed, that's just a given.

You know, that's what we talked about before recording that I seem to be able to generate stress from, it's like alchemy. It's like, oh, things are going really well. Cool. Let's figure out a way to create stress out of it. There's always a reason to be stressed.

There's always something to worry about and something to think about and something to plan and optimize. Yeah, I have a lot on my mind right now. I have a of it that I can't talk about it. Let's talk about it.

I mean, me, when something stresses me out, it sucks in the moment, but I always find it a little bit motivational to figure out a new thing that I can build into the business to make sure this never pops up again, which sometimes that works, sometimes it still doesn't work, and I think one of those things that I've tried to deal with in the past still cropped up again this week for me. I'll get into that later on. But we also wanted to kind of just talk about stuff that's not happening in our business. I mean, one thing that we actually didn't get to talk about last week is, is the new deal with Joe Rogan on going to Spotify exclusive, which is a pretty huge deal for the for the podcasting industry, for for Spotify.

It was an interesting discussion that happened on Twitter. Right? That's kind of where these discussions happen and then broken out into Slack groups and then other areas, other Yeah. You know, places that people congregate.

I mean, like Spotify making a big move into podcasting is not new. Know? Right. They've been going after this for for a couple years now. Yes.

Think the the previous big deal they did was they they bought the ringer, Bill Simmons content company there.

That's right, brought that exclusive, and that was a big that's a big Although I

think don't know that Simmons podcast is going to be exclusive the way that Rogan's is. I think I think something is different about that, but Spotify does now own the ringer, like their whole blog network and everything.

That that's right. And the production studio and and, you know, the engine of production behind that. I think that's the same thing with, like, Netflix and how they had to build up a studio and all that. That's kind of what they're doing.

Yeah. But Rogan is going exclusive to Spotify.

Yes. And Rogan's Rogan's the biggest. And so that that's why it caught everyone's attention. And then everyone talked about everything ranging from should he have done it? Right?

And Andrew Wilkinson is cleverly inserting himself into the conversation saying, no, he's getting ripped off.

That was a

good read. Yeah.

It was it was a

good read. I don't necessarily agree with it. And the way I view the money side of it from Joe Rogan's perspective individually is that he's very clear. He does not optimize to make maximum money. He optimizes for his own satisfaction, and this is clearly in the f you money range where you really I don't think he cares to make more.

I think he just cares about being able to be creative and untouched by corporate interests, and he can kinda keep doing what he's doing. My assumption is that is that is that that's what he built in and everyone's assuming all these things and saying he's going to be restricted. I think if anything, he would definitely take a discount on the price and protect his freedom. And that is my guess is that's the price that Spotify had to pay in order to have him even interested at all.

Yeah. I mean, we don't know what he actually got from the deal money wise. When the news first dropped, people were like, oh my is this a billion dollar deal for Rogan? And then and then you start to hear rumors of like, it's a 100,000,100

to 300.

Three years or something like that. A 100,000,000 to me feels a little bit I obviously know nothing about this world, but it feels low for Rogan to make this sort of switch because it's like, you're number one as it is, you have complete freedom as it is, you can monetize the way that you've been monetizing with ads and everything. What Andrew Wilkinson is pitching, obviously with his paid podcast product, is that like, if Rogan just had 5% of his audience sign on to some premium subscription for extra content, that's a huge business in itself. Part of his reasoning could be like, look, he's number one today. It's just like a startup, right?

Like you don't know, like we talked last week about taking money off the table. This is a way to just get upfront money for for the next couple of years, guaranteed, regardless of of what happens in the podcasting world in terms of other people. Like, you know, who who knows what's gonna happen? It's like kinda cash in now. Yeah.

Well, while thought.

It did seem surprising. Like, honestly, I don't see any other benefit of just going to Spotify other than they're giving me a ton of money upfront.

All of this, and this is where we get into the other, the next level of the conversation, which I think is where the really interesting stuff happens is at the platform level and at the open web level and RSS feeds and the difference between free and open. Right now, he's not entirely free and open. He's monetizing on YouTube and YouTube has severe restrictions. And if you listen to him, he regularly will say something. Can we play that?

He asks his producer. He says, we'll get taken off YouTube for it. So he he has an overlord right now. As far as he's concerned, he definitely does not like that. But his motivations, like, we don't know.

He can do whatever he wants. You have no idea what's going on in his personal life. Hallelujah. I'm I'm happy to see him succeed in this, gargantuan way. Awesome.

But the interesting part of the conversation I think is in podcasting itself. Podcasting has traditionally been similar to email in an open protocol of these RSS feeds. Correct me if I'm wrong. I don't know if RSS is actually the right term, but

it's basically It is an RSS feed. Okay. Yeah.

Okay. It's just right. It's a feed that you can subscribe to, and the competition has been in the layer on top of it. Do you wanna use Stitcher? Do you wanna use Apple Podcast?

Do you wanna use Spotify? That's similar to email, and that email protocol

is not an artist. Right?

That's that's right.

So Yeah.

While the podcast might be free, the podcast will no longer be open. And I think that's where the debate happens, and that's where a lot of anger starts to happen and a lot of frustration, especially with people who have been around the web for a long time. I think about Marco Arment. I believe that's his name. He runs one of the podcasts, but he's been around the block for a really long Yes, and has always been a proponent of open protocols.

Yep.

This is the big debate, I think, on what's happening in the web where these large platforms accumulate enormous power by providing a better UX. If you just had open protocols, like the centralized platforms, they just provided a better experience. Whether that's Spotify or Facebook or Google or Shopify for that matter, they're just doing a better job, but it is restricting the freedom of the web and its users.

Yeah. And I and I think when it comes to podcasting, it's very similar, I think, to the TV streaming networks. Right? Like like I pay for Netflix because it has a bunch of shows that I really love. And I pay for Amazon.

Well, I also pay for for the packages. But the paying for Hulu, paying for Apple Plus, paying for whatever it is, like like, it's because they have the best shows. I wanna watch those shows, I'm going to pay to go get it. And I think I think that's, at least in the short term, that's that's Spotify's way in is to like, if we can get Rogan exclusive and then try to get a bunch of others after Rogan to go exclusive on Spotify, that will finally get the masses to come up. Like, I I am cure I don't know how anybody could ever get stats on this, but, like, the the share of listenership of people who are actually listening to podcasts on Spotify versus not, like RSS based Yeah.

Stuff. I have never listened to one podcast episode on Spotify.

Same. But I will And I'm trying to think start listening to it on on Spotify.

And I'm not an everyday listener of Rogan. I subscribe, but I but usually only and I actually do catch him more on on the YouTube clips, you know, the the fifteen minute, like, that was an interesting part of the of the two hour conversation, you know? Right. I wonder, like, what would it take for me to if I was a diehard Rogan fan, I would start listening now, guess, but or whenever he switches over. And, know, I think about Howard Stern too, because it's like, I I'm not a Sirius subscriber now, but there was a time a few years back where I I did pay for Sirius almost exclusively to tune into Stern.

You know? I like some of the other channels, but that was the draw. And my my dad is a longtime Stern fan, like his whole, you know, for going back decades, like like he'd go over? Oh, absolutely. Like the the day he went to Sirius.

Yes. He got his car set up with Sirius and Right. And started paying for it.

I'm Like the same way with Rogan and Spotify. I will I will absolutely switch over. I've been using Stitcher for a long time because it's just what I set up my feeds on and my favorites. Mhmm.

But I will switch over

to Spotify. It's, you know, it's it's the HBO model. If you have the best content and you are investing in the best content, you have the right to say it's exclusive. That's that's the reason you're investing is so that people have a reason to use your service over others. It's just that TV has historically been that way.

Right? This studio takes a bet on this show and then they benefit and that's why they continue to make bets. Right. When you cross over into the web and start applying those same dynamics, you're gonna start to ruffle feathers in a in a very different way. And I think all of us are just starting to come to terms with the fact that these very large companies have a lot of power, and the web is not is vulnerable to it the same way.

I continue to be amazed at how much Apple has dropped the ball on. I mean, as great as the open podcast directory is right now, I just feel like, don't even exactly know what the opportunity is, but whatever it is, they squandered it a couple of years ago. They're sort of letting Spotify come in. Even just managing the free and open podcast directory, that is clunky in itself. The Apple Podcast app sucks.

Nobody uses it. Everybody uses these third party apps. There are other opportunities Apple could have capitalized on here, and they're just kinda letting it. Or or better tools for podcasters, you know? Like Yeah.

Like I was tweaking my productized podcast feed the other day, and it was like a nightmare dealing with iTunes Connect or whatever they call it, you know?

Yeah. I I always assume that that the company is smart and knows what they're doing. Our in our it's the same thing. People complain about Twitter DMs, and you can't search for keywords. I get more value out of Twitter DMs than like my email address.

I mean, almost feel like Apple should have competed on podcasting the way that they've been trying to compete with Apple Music service. Like, leave the music to Spotify. They are they already dominate that. Mhmm. But podcasts, Apple could have come in as the as the leader from day one, like five years ago.

Yeah. Like a premium podcasting, whatever.

Yes. But a, they're focused elsewhere, and b, if they want to turn their attention in that direction, they have effectively an unlimited war chest to do so. Yeah. So they could just look over and just acquire a few studios and all of sudden start producing. And and the good thing about it is that this makes it more likely that podcasts become more valuable and people producing podcasts and putting in that work, can see their value go up significantly.

So like Gimlet and the ringer, and then you have, Rogan, and you start to see, okay. If that that competition might benefit producers and creators, that's that's a good thing.

It's almost like what's taking it so long for private premium podcasts, paid podcasts. Right? Like, you know, Supercast and and I and I know the other, you know, the other podcasting hosting tools, they're they're starting to come out with paid things. But, like, where are the podcasts? Right?

Like, I I know John Gruber and Ben Thompson just came out with Dithering. I think it's like $5 a month. Yeah. I'm considering, you know, paying for that because I'm a fan of both of them. But where where does the rest of them?

What's happening here? Like is that ever gonna become a thing or what?

Well, it it used to be at least I would think that monetization was the the problem. Selling ads doesn't mean anything advertising based is its own universe of hell. Yeah. And then if you do it at a small scale, it starts to fall apart, the math, but that substack is flipping a lot of that on its head where forget advertising, just the content itself can be very valuable. And even if you charge something as low as $5 a month, you can get it to a scale of thousands of people, and all of a sudden, you you have something more significant.

Yeah. Yeah. I think the hard thing is that you still need a baseline level of audience size before it it makes sense to start charging for premium content, You know? So it's it's hard for, like, just anybody to come out and launch a paid podcast. You gotta grow an audience first.

You know?

Yes. And if then if you assume a small percentage will actually turn into paying customers, then Yeah. You you need a larger audience.

Yep.

Anyway.

Well, yeah. So what's what's happening in in our world here?

Okay. So here's my caveat. Ready? Dear SEC, nothing I nothing I say here in any way constitutes solicitation from investors. Okay?

We're just talking about fundraising. Yeah. I'm not soliciting for investments. Okay. That's that's where I'm gonna start.

I can't help but talk about this on the podcast because this is consuming my mind. This is where a lot of that stress comes from. We are considering raising an institutional round of funding and all the things that go into that have me really stressed out. You've been working on something for five years. You put everything into it.

This is all you care about. You love it. You love the job. You love the company. You love the people.

There's so much involved in that. And then how are you supposed to find investors that are going to respect that, that are going to take care of that the right way, it feels so dangerous. That's what it is. It's a lot of fear mixed in with with the stress.

What would be an example of an investor who who who's not respecting the that, you know, to to a level of your satisfaction.

Yeah. So the danger comes in in the VC business model. The business model, generally speaking, requires huge wins because the majority of the bets don't work out at all. The majority just go to zero and then a few, you know, effectively break even for them. And then there's a small percentage that are these huge wins that make up for everything.

Right? Power law returns is is the the concept.

Is it that the investor would have these demands to to get aggressive, like have the business become more aggressive and grow super fast right away. Who cares what happens? That that's that's the fear?

Yeah. The fear is that the interests diverge in the future, that you are trying to grow. I'll speak for myself. I am trying to grow a really profitable, healthy company. I think that's the right way for everything, for longevity, for happiness, for profit, for positioning toward an exit.

All of those things I think are best served by building a healthy, very profitable company. But if you are going for and the math behind your business requires huge wins, you would rather take the chance for a 100x outcome as opposed to a healthy profitable 10x outcome. I can understand that. It's not saying that the people behind it are malicious in any way. It's just that you're walking into a situation that you need to have clear eyes on that you might take on investment from a company and from individuals that immediately have very different interests from what you have.

Right. That's just scary. There's no website, not that I'm aware of, that you can just go to and ask who are good people? Who who are the investors that are that won't do this?

And and is there also a fear of that regardless of whatever terms you get in on paper, there's gonna be surprises after after everybody signs up?

I don't know if it's surprises or it's just the nature of it.

Theoretically, if you if you were to raise or go into this, like, you could have just a baseline set of terms that, okay. If if you could check these boxes, then we can talk. But if if this is a non starter for you, then let's not even talk.

Yes. In in theory, absolutely. But practically speaking, when you're talking to investors, the the dynamic is very much, why don't you pitch me on getting my money? The power dynamics of the situation, 99 times out of a 100 are, I'm the investor. I have the power.

So they're not they're they're just not excited about a 10 x. Like like, if that's what you're pitching of of, like

Yes. And also think about think about the conversation. Hey. I'm looking forward to talking on Thursday. Just you know, here are my baseline things I need you to agree to.

Otherwise, I don't wanna do business with you. Like, that's what Facebook does when it's growing like crazy and they could dictate the terms. You know, Cardhook or the normal company is not in that position to dictate terms in quite that way. So the conclusion you end up reaching is that the only safety you actually have is in the reputation of the investor.

What about, like because and I have zero experience talking to investors, frankly. What about if if it's just as basic as a sales call and and the setup pre sales call? I mean, I approach sales calls by I'm asking questions to understand where they're coming from first. Right? And then and then I can position the rest of the call to may maybe I do say, yeah.

This looks like a fit and here's how, or or it's not. Right? Like, so it's like what like, can you approach this? What's your investment criteria? What types of companies do you look for?

What types of outcomes? Help me learn more about what you're looking for.

Yes, and that is very often on some type of an about page or manifesto or thesis or approach page on the VC's website. And I've read some of those about pages that are very specifically, we don't push founders to go for the home run exit if it doesn't make sense for them. We believe that, you know, a $50,000,000 outcome should be celebrated, not looked down on. Like, people will say the words and and and they're, I assume, being completely honest about it. Mhmm.

The the issue is that what it says on the about page or even what it says in the contract, in the terms themselves, is not nearly as important as the reputational risk for the investor themselves. And that's kind of the conclusion I've come to is I need to find investors with really good reputations because those reputations are the reason new companies come to them. And so one outcome with one company is just not worth risking the reputation. Right? That's why as you get later into the rounds, it gets gnarlier because when you're dealing with gigantic banks that invest a $100,000,000, like there's no there's no reputation here.

This, this is just business, and then it becomes much different. So in the seed series A range is where investors need the reputation to be good so that companies think of them. If, right, if the word gets out that they mistreat startups, then people don't want to go to them. Because really like that seems to be the only safety you have as a company when approaching investors because I'm no longer like enamored with the name. I don't care if the name of the VC is fancy and I can go tell people about it.

Like that doesn't matter.

Right.

The truth is the name brand VCs that you're familiar with, the Andreessen Horowitz's, the benchmarks, they don't want anything but billion dollar outcomes. Yeah. And unless you're prepared to walk into that and say, I'm not going to stop at anything until I go public and say that honestly with conviction, then then then don't go to them. I can't muster up that level of bullshit.

Right. Right. Right.

You know? Like, no. I wanna build a healthy company and there might be opportunities for, you know, for for different outcomes along the way, and we're gonna figure that out on what makes sense depending on the time. Just like what we would accept three years ago as an outcome has changed over the past three years, and I assume it'll change over the next three years also. Yeah.

I don't know what to tell you. I I have my head focused on it, and I'm trying to come up with options, and I'm looking at debt, and I'm looking at equity, and I'm looking at How about the options? Crowdfunding. You know, that is a very

because honestly, I mean, like, just game plan it out of, what are some actual ways that we could achieve the same outcome without it? And factoring in like, you know, you own more equity and creative shortcuts, whatever that may be, you know?

Yeah. So for this conversation, that's the right question, right? Between you and I, the real question is, well, why raise it all? Yeah. So for the sake of what I need in terms of my level of transparency to be, let's just assume that the conclusion that we need more is the right conclusion.

Because I can't get into all the things that make up that decision. So let's just assume, if you assume you do want investment and that is the right path, then here are your set of options.

Yep. Yes. In this world much more than I am, but like it does seem like there there's still that massive gap between the seed rounds and the series a. Right? When you've grown to a certain level and you still need more firepower to grow.

There's so much stress for me around it because this this feels like this is the inflection point. This is the path, the point of no return. If you take this next round of funding, then you are on the VC game and you are that's it. You're off and running. And not that there's anything wrong with that.

It's just that that's a big decision after five years of of not doing that. Mhmm. Right? If you get that started from the from the get go and that's the decision you made and that's the path you're going, I feel like it's easier than if you have done it another way for five years and then are confronting the reality of of doing it now. I'll continue to update, and I I hope I hope I can find either the right way and or the right people to work with that that make me feel good about it.

Yep. Yep.

Brian, you got your own stress. What kind of stress are you working with here?

Well, I'm continuing to work on that course for process kit. It's coming along, but I'm today's Friday, and I thought I would be well into getting close to shipping it, and it's definitely at least another full legal way, because I had a bunch of distractions this week from Audience Hops. Maybe I can talk about it a little bit later. But on the course, did shoot all the videos for the lessons. I wrote all the lessons.

I hired a person in India on Upwork to convert the lessons into HTML. That's that's coming along. That'll be done soon. And now I'm editing the videos. I'm roughly halfway through that, and I'm also still recording some screen cast videos to put those together.

So I think if I can really get some, like, solid hours in next week to knock out the rest of these video edits. It's only twelve videos and I'm already four or five done. The other thing is I feel like I'm actually pretty good now at working really fast and efficiently on projects like these. Because I've done a lot of video projects before, created I've courses before, and I've learned all these little shortcuts and, like, tips and and hacks to to make the workflow really, really fast and efficient. Because it's it's really easy to get hung up on on all the little details and, like, oh, I gotta, like, edit it this way and copy and paste over there.

And then, I gotta reshoot this or reshoot that. And, like, that's that's where you just burn away hours and days, and you gotta redo stuff. And so I I've learned how to, like, set up the camera and the lighting and then take a break and then come back and just shoot and then record the takes in this way so that I know exactly how to edit it really fast later and stick to a template structure for the lessons. Like, there's an intro, the bulk of it, and then in the next lesson, and then just replicate that structure for every lesson. You know?

Like, it it makes it a lot easier and faster to just to just execute. I know what needs to get done. It's just execute it and get the hours in to to get it done. I'm hoping by the June, I can actually get this thing launched. The next thing after that is marketing.

I'll probably turn back to product as well. I mean, now while I'm working on the course, I've got my Indian developer working on a lot of small bug fixes, we're also speeding up some parts of the app and enhancing some things and refactoring some things. That's been good to do, but it's not big splashy features. We'll get back to some big splashy features in the next few months as well. But once this onboarding course is out, I gotta think about a big marketing push to start hitting it in June and July.

And I don't know what that's gonna be yet. I have a bunch of cash stocked away, saved for this, for for, you know, firing off some some marketing tests. And I'm trying to figure out, like like, I'm thinking I'll I'll do some, like, ads. Some some and and of that, maybe Google ads. Start with the most intent based search ads.

Yep, I like

that. Start to kinda grow outward from that, do tests. Maybe not immediately go to a big Facebook ads webinar funnel, but just start with like, people who are searching for process tools, click here and buy a process tool, you know?

Yeah. I I think I would only look to Facebook, that network for retargeting

for

for phase one.

Yep. Yep. Honestly, historically, I've never had pretty good success with ads. Like, know how they work, but I'm not an expert in it. In the past, I've probably not spent enough for for a long enough time to to build up enough data and optimization.

So I'm starting to try to think through, like like, how much money does it take to throw at a test for Google AdWords, and for how long? Like, can I do that for 2,000? Can I do it for 10,000? Is it gonna take two weeks? Do I need to give it six weeks?

Like and there are other smaller questions around, well, what does the creative need to be? But, like and and what does the landing page need to be? I I get all that. That that part's even a little bit, I won't say easier. I'm not that great at it, but I know how that stuff works.

I don't wanna like spend too little on it and like get some false information back, you know?

Yeah. It's it's a tricky thing because it's almost like the the amount of money just accelerates the learning, and so you could spend $20,000 in a month or $20,000 over the span of a year and effectively learn the same thing.

Right.

So, you know, I I would just approach it as not don't put that much pressure on yourself. It's you just gonna get it started and then start to start to learn over time. And so what if it's not perfectly scientific and statistically significant in all this other

I mean, that's so that's that's one thing is thinking about ads. LinkedIn ads is another thing that I always hear about and that I never have done anything about. Mhmm. Or just LinkedIn marketing in general, like outreach through LinkedIn and stuff. The other piece of the marketing thing that I'm giving a lot of thought to, but I'm not really working on quite yet, is marketing partnerships.

I'll probably launch some sort of affiliate program, but then try to, I don't know, I guess try to do some sort of like podcast tour, especially with this course, this free course in hand to talk about joint webinars, guest blog content, get featured in newsletters. Like, do do the things, do the work, do the outreach,

Yes.

Do the follow-up, do the networking to try to get a lot of that activity happening. I'm not really doing much of that right now.

And and do you mean you mean affiliate or referral? Right? Affiliate being anyone who can promote and get paid and referral meaning your existing customers tell us, and rewarded in that way.

I guess I would eventually have systems for both, but what I'm really talking about is affiliates.

Okay. Yeah, we just shut down.

But even like, doesn't have to be an affiliate program, just exposure. Yes. If it's a podcaster who generally needs an affiliate program to make it worth their time, I'm open to that. If it's just interesting content and it's a good audience mix, then I I just wanna get out there more with it, you know?

Yeah. Makes sense. At least there's a lot these days, and we're we're about to we're finally launching that campaign, and we are trying LinkedIn ads for the first time. So that'll that'll be interesting, but I still assume that the Google ads will have the best ROI because of the the intent behind it.

Yeah. Although it's probably the most expensive, probably the most competitive, and it's probably a lot of work to make sure it's all tracked. That'll be really tough to figure out. I could probably track it to the trial sign up, but then it's like which of the trials converted from the ad? You don't really know.

That's hard for everybody, no matter what. Okay. Okay.

Yeah. That's that's sort of on my mind in terms of like what's next in the next few months, know. But right now, I I think in the next week or two, could get this course shipped as long as I can get the hours without these distractions, you

know. Cool. From my side, don't have that much left. I I will I will highlight one thing that happened this week that that was a real highlight. We closed our biggest deal ever, and I never spoke to the prospect.

Nice.

And so that was like that felt like felt amazing. Right? It's like we've gotten to that point where I don't have to be involved at all even at the highest level of opportunity. That's great. So partnerships, that sort of thing, sure, that's still going to be me.

But when a prospect comes in and the whole flow, all the way from negotiating between payment processing options and working with those and then working with the prospect themselves and then onboarding. I just haven't spoken to them at all and it's and it's our our our biggest deal ever. So that that felt like a point of maturity on on the team. So, you know, very happy and very proud of the people involved.

And Yeah.

It's funny when I like highlight it and they're like, yeah, that's how we want it. Like, stay out. Right. Okay.

You kinda you gotta See Jordan, see

what happens when you stay out.

Right? Exactly.

All I did was just check-in, how's that going? You know,

how's How did that it was it a in it like an inbound lead to begin with or did they go out to them?

No. It was inbound. Yep. Inbound and it was kinda like eye popping like how how much do you do you do annually? Woah.

Yeah. Yeah.

And then just kinda went through that process. So that that felt really good in just our ability to to close a deal and and just not have me involved at all. Was that was awesome.

That's great, man.

That's it. All this stuff is boring. Like, should we close our office? You know? All the things everyone's dealing with.

How about you? I think you have something interesting.

I was debating about talking about this on the podcast or not, but

It's up to you.

Give the people the juicy stuff. Right? The once or twice a year in audience ops. Literally, only only that much. Like, this only happens once or twice a year, but it does happen once or twice a year, where we just get a client who is a pain in the ass.

I'm just gonna say it. We love all of our clients. Even though I'm not personally very close to many of them, I really relate to them on like business owner level, and I actually really enjoy doing sales calls with people and stuff like that. Occasionally, we get a client who comes in and it's so hard to discover this during the sales process. They seem all cool and just like every other lead who comes through our sales process, but a different side of them reveals themselves after they've become a client and they start working with us.

And that can manifest itself in a few different ways. The most common is they just get extremely, extremely picky with their content, and seeing what we've delivered and wanting to pick it apart, I mean word by word, sentence by sentence. If anybody has worked with Audience Ops before, you know, first of all, we're not cheap, and second of all, we are not hiring junior level writers or overseas writers or anything like that. These are professional, highly talented content people. And I completely set the expectation with every single client that we're not gonna hit it out of the park on the first couple of articles.

A big problem that we solve for clients is that we work with them directly. We interview them and their team and their customers to be able to write confidently for each individual niche. 99% of clients understand that, and they commit to giving us really helpful guidance and materials and research that our team can work off of. And so then by the second or third month, we're off and running. We've hit a pretty good groove.

But then occasionally, once or twice a year, get a client who just clearly is not caught out for outsourcing their content. They just can't let go of the voice. It's a completely well written article. It's completely factually accurate. It's just like, oh, I wouldn't use that style of phrasing.

Things like that. And then it's also the workflow of just working with them, where it's like, Okay, the writer spent the normal amount of time, and now they need to spend two, three, five X the number of hours just reworking the content to try to get it to what they need. Then the client is asking for extra phone calls, and now both the manager and the writer have to get on these extra hour long plus phone calls. I'm thankful that I'm not in any of that. I'm out of the weeds.

I've never pulled into any of the client calls or anything like that, but when it becomes a problem for the team, that's when it gets escalated to me. Hey, we're spending a lot of time with this client. It's just being really picky and all this stuff. Then it becomes a really big challenge for me to manage my team's expectations. Because with Audience Ops, the value proposition is as much for the customer as it is for my team.

I pay them a set retainer and per deliverable kind of stuff, and it's like when they have to put in all these extra hours, just, understandably, it just doesn't become worth it for them. So then they get frustrated. And then the tricky thing is the financial part of it. AudienceOps offers both monthly and quarterly billing options. More than 50% of our clients pay on a quarterly basis, which makes sense because it's a long term investment and you're not going to sign up for one month anyway.

That wouldn't be worth it. And they get a little bit of discount for going for the quarterly. And everything is paid upfront. So every quarter, every month, you're paying upfront, and then we deliver the content. And it's just an ongoing recurring thing.

The tricky part of it is when we realize that a client is like one of these once or twice a year clients that is a complete pain, but we're in the middle of month two, or we're in week four, week five of a quarterly engagement. Yeah. So we're far enough along where my team has already written two or three pieces, so no matter what, I'm paying my team. There's never a time when I don't pay them for work

to Right, that's not optional.

Not an option. And this is the type of client that I would frankly just like to just be like, look, we're not a fit.

Here's part ways.

Here's some other options, you can go check these other out. We're really just not far enough along to say like, okay, we're not gonna refund you for the first part because we've delivered some work, but if it were me and I'm being fired as a client, I would demand a full refund. Know? Because it was, rightfully or wrongfully, though, I I would expect that they would probably demand that.

Right. If you're changing your mind, then basically give me my money back. But you're already too deep in. You've already invested money and time and effort.

Yeah. And and then it's also, like, back to the team costs. It's it's Not only am I paying my team regardless, but sometimes I have to pay them extra for these extra revisions, or sometimes a writer says, I'm not working with that client anymore, and I need to switch a writer and then pay the new writer to rework the previous one. That's where one of these nightmare scenarios comes in. The business is is large enough now, and I'm in a good enough position cash wise and systems wise and and health wise that I sort of don't care what ends up happening, even if it means I have to Honestly, I can count on less than one hand the number of times I've actually had to issue a refund to a client.

Like it happens that few times in the history, in the five plus year history of Audience Ops.

I assume it's not the finances, it's the issue, it's the stress injected into people's lives that you have to be defensive over.

Yeah. I guess my top priority is that I wanna keep my team happy. And I mean, there have been times where it was a little bit of a rocky start with a client, but then we make it through and then they continue on as a great client for years. Sometimes we can make it through these early weeks, but sometimes it's like, let's just make it through the quarter.

Call it a day, And that's

it's a distraction that I was not planning on having this week. Like I said, like I was trying to ship this course for Process Kit and I'm being pulled into all these email chains and conversations with my team about how to handle this, and then I've gotta go reset the expectations with the client and deal with whatever fallout comes from that, and think through all these scenarios of like, well, if we paid the team this or if I have to give a partial refund here or a full refund, what does that look like? And so, you know, like this is not the kind of thing that happens all the time, but it, again, it happens like maybe once a year. So, it's happened before. So like, how can I make it so that this doesn't happen again?

I hate it when this happens. Right. I don't have a good answer for that other than that. Because part of it is that audience apps work so well, you know, like Our processes work. They are the best that they've ever been.

And the team is the best that it's ever been. Honestly, all the team members involved here have been on the team for four plus years. Then I was thinking through ways to mitigate this in the future. Then the question is, well, how necessary is it to change what's working so well for 99% just to avoid this 1% issue from happening? Like one thought would be get rid of the quarterly plans or no, not get rid of it, but just don't offer it to new clients.

Every new client has to start on monthly. And then maybe like three months in, that's when we can reach out and say, Hey, you know, been a great work with you. Do you wanna switch to quarterly? You'll save a little bit.

Yeah, it's, that doesn't seem like there's much downside to that, right? I always think about the concept of scar tissue that Basecamp brought up in. I don't know if it was rework or a few books ago, whatever it is, but just changing all of your systems, processes, guidelines because of a bad experience. Then that scar tissue adds up and then things don't make sense when you just look at them in isolation. That doesn't seem like that bad of one, just not offering quarterly right away because you could also put something in around partial refund.

If the contract is for six pieces of content over a quarter, then you could basically say refunds are prorated based on even that though, that's tough because what if they don't want to publish it?

Refunds are not something that we offer. Ambiguity. Don't offer re this is a service. People do work and we're paid for our time. We don't offer a thirty day money back guarantee or anything like that.

It's just in these sticky situations where this hasn't even happened with this client. They're still a client right now. And we're working through some of these revisions to try to smooth it out. Like, maybe we can get through it. Again, like, we've had clients who started off pretty rocky and then ended up being great for three plus years.

It kinda is just like one of those things that like, I am out of audience ops day to day until this happens once or twice a year. You know?

Yeah. Hey, I think you're gonna have to get better at it, and we're rooting for you and for the client. So hopefully, further updates. It is, hey, it turned around and became one of those good customers once we got settled in. And if not, what are you gonna do?

You're do? Yep.

Alright, man. I think that's it. It's time to ride off into the sunset, take bike rides, eat ice cream.

Yes. I think I

think it's

finally breaking out over here.

So stay away from the news. God's sake. People, what is happening?

It's tough, man.

It is tough. It's tough. You know, when when the whole crisis first hit, I just told my wife. I said, hon, as long as we have water and electricity, we're good. The last thing that we need to avoid is riots.

Now now we have ourselves some riots. Yeah, man. Not good. Not good.

Alright, Alright.

Later. Thanks for listening.