Bootstrapped Web

Hello, everybody. Welcome back. Another episode of Bootstrap Web. Mister Brian Castle, how are you this week?

Doing alright, doing alright. Yeah, another week. Some Another week. Got some good reviews on the Ian Landsman episode last week.

Yes. Ian, thanks again for coming on. That was fun. Yeah, was fun. And I'm glad people enjoyed it.

Cool. Change up the dynamic a little bit.

Keep us on our toes over here on Boost. Absolutely. What do we got today? What's going on?

I got a deadline man. Usually don't have deadlines. We usually don't really do things by dates and we're going to launch this, you know, by like a very fixed date and it must happen and all that. We have a little bit around Black Friday, obviously big day, that type of thing. But now we have we have like a deadline deadline.

So that has been very interesting and that of course is to get the new Shopify app ready to go, submitted for review and then launched in time to coincide with the release of the API.

So today's Friday, October 9. How many days out are we from your deadlines?

So I I can't be specific about the dates according to, you know, things and lawyers. But what Shopify has stated is that October, that's the timeframe. So it's the ninth, we have one, two, three weeks left and of course how these things work, it can't be done right before. It's got to be submitted for review well in advance, all that. So are right in there in deadline time.

Yep. Yep. Crazy.

Yes. But it's good. It's good. Been an exercise in maintaining the right mindset because a few weeks ago when we signed the agreement, we agreed to not take on any new customers. So that timeframe of no new customers on the existing product and not yet launched with the new product, that timeframe is, you know, that's a one way street.

The truth is we do have some some merchants onboarding who have been working on onboarding for a while, it's not directly downhill on on the revenue.

It's not a state that you like to stay in very long.

Yes. Yes. Over the past six months, you know, month has been a very large increase in revenue and then that stopped. So I'm a little uncomfortable, but I'm very excited. We have beta users and the response from that group has been pretty amazing.

So there's plenty of optimism but I'm looking forward to the revenue come back in.

Yeah. Can't wait to hear like how it rolls out when you get to that point. A couple days ago, ProcessKit, the performance of the app has been, it goes through these phases where we keep adding features and then it starts starts to slow down and slow down, we get more users. And then I task my developers with doing a round of optimization speed improvements and things, and occasionally I've upgraded the servers and stuff. But it's actually still pretty minimal on my server costs for now.

But this week, about three days ago, it basically just came to a screeching halt. We launched a couple of features last week and then it became slower, but then three days ago, for whatever reason that day, everything just really came to a screeching halt. Not completely down, but just you try to load one page and it takes like thirty seconds and times out. It happened for a bunch of users. I started getting emails about it and I started seeing it myself and it's to a point, and I had like a couple of demos scheduled.

I couldn't even do the demo on the call and everything. Was just painful. So I started like opening up everything and looking at like the server logs and everything and started talking to my developers about it. And I have Skylight installed, which is a really cool tool for monitoring, kind of like tracing where in your app, where in the code base things are getting like slow and hung up. So that was very helpful as well.

I had my developer start like, I just drop everything and let's focus on this and get this back stable now. And they've been really good about that. And this was actually really cool because it was the new developer. I talked about how the new guy is stepping in. The old guy is still there and he's kind of advising, but the new guy just this week, including with this server fix, like he basically made that change.

So that really was good sign, reassuring in my eyes that somebody basically brand new to process kit could identify this thing. And it was like a one line thing related to our Zapier integration where Zapier, one of our triggers that points to Zapier basically pulls process kit every five to fifteen minutes. When I found out about it is like, I should have seen that it was coded probably over a year ago. I think it might've been the one developer that I had up for a short time at that time when we started the Zapier integration, but it was basically pulling all completed tasks in ProcessKit for an entire account's history. And now we have a lot of customers who've been around for several months with many, many completed tasks and they use Zapier heavily.

And so every five minutes it's querying for the whole list of all their completed tasks ever when really it should just be getting the ones completed in the last ten minutes. We made that one change, pushed it. He was like, We're going to work on a bunch of speed improvements, but let's just make this one change now. I pushed that live in the morning three days ago, and you just see the server log, the server graph just drop off a cliff and like the app was like instantly so much faster and it's like, ugh. It's like one line like stupid code change, you know.

Yeah. Well, these these are good things to bump into. Yeah. The issue is usually bump into them at the absolute worst time. So it doesn't sound like it was that bad of timing overall.

It wasn't that bad, no. But I'm glad we fixed that and we have like a whole round of like really good speed improvements coming out over the next week and it's kind of nice. Like all of a sudden process kit is like faster than it's ever been. So I'm pretty excited. And I did upgrade the dynos and everything and like, so that's kind of, that was kind of fun to like, you know, I'm still like a newbie when it comes to managing a software code base and a live production app.

Like, actually like dealing with Heroku and everything, like that's still Very new to

different from building features.

Totally different. It's complete Out of all the things when it comes to software development, that's like the area that I'm weakest is like, I really don't know what I'm doing when it comes to allocating server resources and and all that.

It's a different thing entirely. We tortured Jan on our team because he was just one of the one of the engineers that was there the longest and knew a little bit more about it than others. And he had to just he had to just figure it out for a while before we hired a DevOps pro. And that that really changed things. But up until then, Jan was just like, hey, go figure it out.

He had to dig all the way into it, figure out how to scale, how to deal with things as they failed, all of it.

And you know, it's also on my mind a lot now that about how how we are developing every new feature. Almost like this week kind of scared me into this whole new level of trying to be aware of how performant the code is when we ship it, because this was something that we shipped over a year ago We just left it there, and at first it wasn't a problem because over a year ago we didn't have many users, not many Zapier users pulling on this thing, but a year later that starts to build up slowly until it just grinds to a halt. We have really good test coverage on all of our features, but this was the sort of thing that wouldn't have Maybe we could have had some unit tests that would have been built around this sort of thing, but it's not like a functionality that we had to test for. It was just over time, the way that it was querying the database was not optimal at all. So now I'm thinking about, I don't even know what the best way to attack this going forward, but I want to make sure that we're prioritizing performance in how we design our features going forward.

Because we have a lot of stuff that is kind of complex that could easily, if one thing is coded incorrectly, it could cause something like that again.

Think the difficulties in knowing what the balance should be because at the beginning you don't want to optimize for performance when you don't have any customers yet. And then as you move over, I mean, this is part of why software companies get slower as they grow because these things get factored into the existing code base. And it's hard to know. I remember at the beginning before I knew what I was doing with software, I always pushed for speed over performance in terms of like development speed, not, not, you know, performance speed. And that definitely came back to bite us.

Yeah, me too. I still really believe in dedicating time to writing tests, which for us is mostly integration tests, feature tests. Also, I'm willing to spend more on server costs, but my inexperience is also, I don't know when I'm supposed to up the dynos or when we should be looking at the code base. In this case, it was sort of like both. Like, I I instantly, like, increased the dynos and I and we fixed this thing in the code and it fixed it.

Yeah. We've we've hired from Toptal for that sort of thing before, especially when it was Jan and he didn't have the background, but was still responsible for it. Right? One of one of the message that I gave to him that I I gave to a lot of people that went from individual contributor level to manager level, that the shift in mindset, the way I put it was that you don't have to do it, but you are responsible for it, Right? Which which puts a little bit more of an ownership mentality into it where if you come to me and say, I don't know how to do x y or z.

I need budget to hire someone from Toptal that can help us with that. Like that's part of your job. You don't have to be the person who does it, but you are responsible for it getting done. So we had a lot to do on DevOps and infrastructure stuff when it came to that. The other tricky thing that I spoke with Jan about regularly was there's a real danger in having all of these things that are invisible to the customer.

And also frankly, for me as a non technical founder and CEO, also invisible to me. And you have to surface that value. In our all hands right now, we shrunk the number of teams that present, but IT is still there because everyone still needs to know this is a software company and nothing works unless the guts work underneath. And it's not just something we don't know and don't see in it quote just works and we don't worry about it. No, this is at the same level as marketing, sales, growth, engineering, all that stuff.

Because it's really, you get into a dangerous place where you really don't see it. And when you don't see it, you don't think about hiring, you don't think about putting resources toward it because it's invisible to you. So we've had to constantly like lift it up higher than it normally would be because it isn't visible otherwise.

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And then also when you're dealing with like just page speed, user experience, like the speed of the app is so, so important. Like I've, I use process kit all the, all the time and like I, like I get frustrated with, with it sometimes when it, when it just becomes slow to use. And so

yes, expectations these days on the web are, know, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, like these things are preposterously good. I still cannot get over when I have Slack open on my screen and I am using my phone and I type something and I hit send and it shows up at the exact instant on my desk. I do not I don't understand. Yes. So those are the expectations you're dealing with.

You know, your customers don't care that you're a two or three person company. That's what they're used to on the web. Yep. Oh yes.

Well, what What else we got? Okay. What about you?

We'll change the pace here.

All right.

I want to talk about my mornings. I have been having pretty

strange I love the morning by the way. Like I'm obsessed with the morning.

Okay. So help me here because I have negative mornings. For a few weeks in a row, when I wake up, I'm just dark and I just I'm just pessimistic and negative and I basically just want to like go sit on the couch and do nothing. My motivation's gone. My outlook is pessimistic.

I'm not happy. And then have a cup of coffee, I hang out with the kids and I make them breakfast and I get to the desk and I'm completely fine. I feel great.

You think about work when you wake up?

Yeah, I think I'm always thinking about work. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean I'm the same way.

It's not like I'm dreading going to work like that type of thing. I don't really

No, when I say work, mean are you thinking about the business Like when you

Yes. Wake But I've I've tried to teach myself not to really listen to it because it's just this thing. It's just this emotion that's happening and then it like goes by. So it's not like what does it all mean? What am I unhappy?

Should I do something different? I'm not letting it spiral into that because it's just this thing and then it doesn't feel real because it might, in my normal day to day, like right now, I feel great.

I'm just thinking about how I might think of something like this. Get a lot of stress over something when I feel like I have no control over it in my business. If there's just something going wrong that like or not control fast enough. Like, I mean, really, like marketing right now. I'm trying to drive traffic to process kit.

I wish I could just press the traffic button today and and throw traffic at the site. And and it's I just have to work at it or or hire someone, whatever whatever it may be. Either way, it's not gonna happen today or tomorrow. It's it's just gonna it's like I have to and that stresses me out a lot of times. I I wish there's something I could actually actively go do today to go make that happen and it's and I and there's nothing.

And that, that, that's what gets me down. I don't know. I mean, right now you're in this transition to the Shopify thing. Like you're of just waiting for a date. So it's like, there's not a whole lot you could do today.

Yeah, that's possible. Right. What I talked about before about this being in between of can't take on new customers and haven't launched yet. Maybe that's part of it where lack of progress and lack of momentum equals frustration. Right?

Maybe that's that's it. And I've I've tried. I've been experimenting. I haven't had a drink in a few days. I usually just have like a something light like a cider like after work.

So I I have not been drinking much at all. And I've been trying to go to sleep earlier and I'm trying not to have too much sugar at night because I'm, you know, a ball ice cream at the end of the day kind of thing, is regular and I enjoyed that. So I've tried to pull back on both and I've just had headaches instead. So my body's like, where's the sugar? Where's the sugar?

That's what happens when I cut the coffee. I mean, I'm a complete addict at this point.

Yeah, but that's a great addiction and it gives you so much back. Know, it's such a symbiotic relationship with coffee. I have no interest in quitting.

A year ago I got this awesome espresso machine at home and I've been, I make it in the morning, which I love. And then I, and then I make another one like after lunch, like I'm drinking it right now. And like, I'm I'm always conscious of like, like don't drink it too like like one one 01:30 in the afternoon, that's like my cutoff. If I drink it after that, I'm just not sleeping tonight. It's not gonna happen.

Oh, wow. Yeah. Doesn't really mean, I I know like Ben used to like I I don't know how he did it. He would just have a Starbucks coffee at 11:00 and then just just go to sleep. I I just

No way.

I can't I can't do that.

Whatever reason, I've always been, at least in my adult life, I've always been obsessed with the Like I love the morning. I love the feeling of the morning. I love naturally waking up early, going outside. Lately, I've been going down to the coast in Connecticut and walking along the water in the morning and bring my coffee, think about the business, listen to podcasts down there. I just get so energized in the morning.

Then when I get back, after I drive, my daughter to school, get to work, like, love my morning hours. I've talked about this a thousand times. Like, it's I'm I I really feel like superhuman between, like, 8AM and, like, noon. Those are those are my hours to get all my work that that I wanna do done. Afternoon is usually more calls and and a little bit more coding and stuff.

But, like, what you're saying, like, like tend to be the opposite. I'm super optimistic. I love my mornings. Then as the day goes on certain days, if I get to dinner and like either something like distracted me near the end of the day and I couldn't finish the thing I intended to finish today, that completely fucks up my mood. After dinner and then I put my kids to bed and my kids are really young, so like I sit in their room for like a half an hour while I go to sleep and usually that's my time to just sit on my phone and like think about the business or watch Twitter or whatever I'm doing.

Sometimes things aren't going so well and I'm almost like stewing on that around like 08:00 at night and then it's like

No good, no good.

Yeah. Yeah. If I get a good night's sleep, 7AM I'll I'm do a bike ride, I'll get up in the morning, I love it, know?

Yeah, I don't know what it is. It's like these moments of, right, what really happens in the morning is I get up before everybody, I feed the dog, I take him for a walk. Right? Dog's old, always wants to wake up earlier than everyone. In some ways it's just like when

So my dog is up at like 4AM, so I have to like bring him out like when I'm half asleep and then try to get myself back to sleep for another couple hours. A problem.

So I left that out because that's just my problem. But yeah, the dog's 13. He wakes up every single morning at 4AM. Sometimes 3AM, sometimes 2AM and then again at seven.

I feel

you. Is like having a newborn. But it's like in those moments, it's almost like at my weakest. I'm tired, I'm worn out. I kind of haven't gotten anything going.

Just opens up. I'm like weirdly energetic when I wake up even before a coffee. Like I go for a bike ride before I just have a drink of water and I'm on my bike. It's like weird.

Alright then. I'm going to keep working at it. I'm going to work at it and see. I like that I'm that I'm able to not take it too seriously that it's like this huge introspective thing where it's just like, it's a mood, it's an emotion, it's this thing that's just coming and going and I'm watching it, witnessing it, watching go by like, all right, cool. That's where I am right now.

I would guess this is similar to you. We've talked about it. It's definitely a 100% still true for me. It's the revenue graph and my mood graph. They're the same graph.

It's tough. I was just on someone's podcast talking about that and how unhealthy that is and how

It really is, but it's truth.

It's true for me.

And that can change within twenty four hours, for me all the time, you know? That's right. Especially with audience ops, like every customer is worth a lot more than a typical SaaS. So it's like one churn, one sign up. It's like, oh, great.

Oh, shit. You know, but then, then you look at process kit and it's like, all right, just slowly walking up this long ramp like that, that takes toll on my mental thing all the time now, you know?

Yeah. I liked that part of it. Consistency over time. I just right before this podcast, I checked in with someone that I used to do some coaching with like years ago and he's still at it and I'm just really curious if he's just stuck with it for another two years. I'm curious where he is.

I hope it's doing well. But yeah, a lot of these software companies, the ones that are doing well, been at it for a while. But that experience though, that timeframe is pretty rough on the people who actively in it.

Yeah, that's me. Yep. And yes, it is rough. Yes,

it's I feel you. It's rough.

You know what it is? I was talking about, I was talking to some friends about this recently. It's like, I don't have a hard runway that I'm running out of, but it's, I am counting the years basically counting the months and counting the years of You start to do the math of not math, but I I think of it like I've I've invested so far almost two full years into this business. Like, I'm not there's nothing even close to any sort of like ROI on that at this point. It's it's very much in the in the whole, you know, it's like so you you just think about that.

Like, many years am I gonna burn away until this thing becomes like a real thing? And that's that stresses me out a lot. That's that's the main stress point that I that's just always that as time goes on up this ramp, like that cloud gets bigger and bigger, you know? So it's Yeah.

Because the opportunity cost or however you want to frame it. Yeah. Just keeps climbing alongside it And the demands and we're not young anymore. It's kind of it's I I hear the pressure and I'm having a different experience with that now because the business is now far enough along to be meaningful. But it's not my bank account.

It's in equity. It's in value that has not been turned into cash. And we've talked about this before. The thing to keep in mind is after tax money in your personal bank account. Like that's what matters.

If you're trying to have an impact on your family and all that, that's what matters. So the enterprise value of the business, the number of employees, the amount of revenue is like, it's still detached from my bank account. So I often feel this very strange push and pull of like, it's successful. I should feel good. I should feel successful.

Then I'm like, yeah, buddy, this is my bank account, man. Like that part of the journey, mean, it's still going. It's still in the air. There's nothing guaranteed. It feels better and the salary is better, but it hasn't come home.

Right? At some point, at some point you gotta bring it home. You're not done until it's done. I always think about this interview podcast. It was like a combination.

It's Jason Kallikanis, you know, the guy from Launch. I'm still a fan of his. He's loud and all that, but I'm still a fan. He did a podcast once where it was a recording of him talking to a group of students. And he was talking about the moment the transaction went through for Weblogs Inc, his first business.

He sold for something like 25,000,000. This is a long time ago. And he talks about refreshing the page on his bank account. Refresh, refresh, refresh and then you know, and like crying like that. I always have like that's the fucking end.

It's not over until that goddamn refresh changes everything. Until then it's hopes and dreams and energy and dedication and blood and all of it.

Everyone has that has their form of that, like that they're they're driving towards this goal. And once I get there, everything's going to be amazing. But when you get there and then and then you're, at least if you're like me, you're you're immediately looking at whatever the next thing is, you know? And it's like,

I hear you and I agree a million percent, right? If you talk to me a month ago, I was in euphoria. We signed this deal. Oh my God, everything's going be amazing. And now I'm back to stasis.

Okay, what do we do next? What do we struggle with? But the bank account refresh has an objective quality to it. Is not just emotional, is actually different. It actually changed.

Sure, your mood, not necessarily that, but your family's safety and your kids' educational, like the objective part of it is, you know, more clear.

There were years ago where, where literally my business like going ups and downs had an impact on my home life. Like our bills are tight because I'm having a bad month in the business, But now it's it's not that anymore. Like, we've we haven't had issues with that in in a while, but I still feel the same stress over you know what it is? I look at at process kit, I look at it like, if I had to live off of process kit? I can't, you know, it's not a business yet.

I feel very unsafe in that. I'm in that ramp, in period where now I have another business that does provide all the safe D and I've got a really healthy savings at this point, but I'm spending my time on something that is nowhere even close to being that safe business. I have like an MRR number in my head that's like once I get there I'll be like, okay, now I can actually get to work and I know that I'm in a business that is working, you know?

Yeah. It's another layer of safety between personal savings, audience ops. Then I think about it too and I don't, it's not a pretty thought, but between my personal financial situation being in trouble and where we are right now is like there's a lot of bad stuff that happens. There's people getting fired. There's all these salary decreases.

So the more that stretches out, the safer I feel generally. It's a different like you, I'm trying to build the next layer of safety and then like the breakout, hopefully all these things, but getting away from the metal, man, that's a

You bring up a good point there because like one of the things that I don't do a good job of mentally is to think through like like let's get real for a second. What is the worst case scenario here? Yeah. And I mean the thing actually my next next thing on my list here is talking about like hiring versus just bootstrapping it yourself versus just hiring contractors. And I was literally just out to lunch with my wife talking about this.

I don't take enough time to think through like, if I'm going to take a big risk on something, really what's the worst that can happen? We're not even going to come close to being bankrupt or, you know, like, especially if if it's like I have the money or, like, I'm not gonna go into debt over this. I still feel the sense that, like, it still feels like like I would go into Like dire. Yeah. When it when really it's nowhere even close to that.

And like, you know, it's it's so easy to lose sight of like literally every decision is reversible. There's so few things that that that you're gonna complete be completely locked in that you can't back yourself out. And like you said, like there's gonna be sign after sign after sign that this direction is not working. And you know, it's not like you're going to go into a coma for a year and and like not do anything about it if things are going bad, know?

Right. Very, very few decisions lock you into something that you really can't change. But I I think that's that's good of you to include that factor into the decision process. I I like to look at the upside more, but you can't focus exclusively on the upside and at least understanding, okay, the worst thing that happens is we lose $20 or something like that, that it is important.

Well, I think you're a lot better at this than I am. To basically just like pull the trigger taking big bets with the business. The thing that hangs me up is sometimes I should be a lot more aggressive or just pull the trigger on stuff. I need to do a better job of thinking through the worst case scenario more so that I can acknowledge it, be okay with it, and now I can go do it. That's my hang up that I deal with.

My hang up is I want my cake and eat it too. That's my hang up. My hang up is I don't want to make a definitive decision that locks out the other set of options because I try to convince myself that no, I'm clever enough to figure out how to get both. And that that has gotten me into trouble in the past. And it's also gotten me into a position where not a 100% into the decision because I'm kind of just hanging on to this other thing on just in case if this doesn't work, we can always go this way.

We can always back out. We can always change our minds. I feel you. I don't know what the perception is, but I, I, that's my hang up also. When you make a decision, go go harder at it.

Bootstrapped web going deep. I like it.

Oh, that's where that's where things are right now. That's right, man.

That's right.

I think on that note, let me, let me pose this question. We've of danced around this question quite a bit over the over the years here, but on my mind lately is and, you know, we've been talking about on my end, like, am I doing marketing? What am I doing? What do I wanna do? Who is doing the things?

How do I execute this? Do I so the question that that's been on my mind is and I think this applies for most roles, but here I'm basically talking about a market trying to market the business. And so when is it right to not hire anyone and just do the thing yourself? Even though, say, you're a technical co founder, you're focused on the product like I am, you have to just carve out the time to go do some marketing tasks and get the ball rolling. So there's a bootstrapper option.

The next option is to I guess I call it the budget option which is to hire freelance contractors to do targeted

Specific. Yeah.

Like I want to do this thing. Let me hire a contractor for x dollars for a couple of weeks to execute that specific thing that I will direct them to go do. That's the other option. And then I guess there's sort of like a middle ground, which is like a part I would say a part time employee or a part time contractor, but long term working with you x number of days per week, call it six months to a year on end. But it's not their full time thing.

They've got other work, other clients or whatever it is. And the other spectrum is like full time salary employee, forty hours a week. Maybe they've left a full time job to come work for you. Full time, you want to commit to them, they're committing to you.

Yes. Bigger deal. Yeah. That middle ground option, also do you include agency? It's like part time work and it's not full time employment.

Yeah, I would say that the agency could be the part time work. In some cases, depending on what it is, might hire an agency just temporarily, more like a project. So that's on my mind about marketing with ProcessKit. Right now what I've done is I've bootstrapped some things like the cold email outreach campaign. Set that up and I'm running that myself.

A few months back, I created some video courses for ProcessKit. I did that all myself. But then I went the next step of hiring a freelancer, which I'm currently working with her on some content and some guest post outreach stuff that is in progress. And I think it's going fairly well, but I, but I do start to question what do I actually need right now?

Is that what you look at? What you need or what will make the most impact possible?

Well, most impact possible. Part of it is like, look, the mindset of hiring a freelancer or a consultant, and this is no fault of any consultant here, but just the nature of that transaction is I'm a client, I'm an invoice for them, and they have multiple clients, multiple invoices throughout the year to make up their annual income. And so I have a need, they execute the deliverable, they deliver it to me, and they get paid. They don't have a whole lot of incentive to grow my MRR. I know that that's sort of, in effect, what I'm hiring them for.

Yes, I want to see results, but it's not like

If other incentive to keep working with you, to make you happy for that month so you continue on with the engagement, for reputation, for themselves and their pride in their work. It's just a different thing.

But there's there's also still this layer of, okay, like I'm gonna make my best recommendations to the client. I do wanna make this successful. I'm gonna do my best work. I get all that, but there's still like, but look, at the end of the day, I just need this project to go smoothly so that I can get my invoices sent and paid and maybe it does turn into a repeat project.

It's Okay. There's some freelancers out there right now yelling at you, but I generally hear what you're saying. It's of the agreement between the two parties. Is, I'm in and I want to do this work for you, but you're not paying my salary and my healthcare and I'm only dedicated to a certain extent.

No, that's what I'm saying. It's like, wouldn't expect it to be any other way. I'm just talking about like, that's just the nature of, like I've decided to go that route because I think it's, I'm okay with the with that nature of those sorts of trade offs. Because I haven't really gone this route before where it's like hiring a full time call it like a full time marketing person. I know it's the impossible thing of trying to find a jack of all trades type of person, but someone who's just on the team and together we are going to work on a bunch of stuff throughout the year.

And they're just talented to be able to roll with those things. And they probably focus in some areas, but you know what I mean? It's like, what are we working on this month? How we help the business grow this month? They're just here every day anyway, so that's what they're focused on.

It's not like dealing with the whole, Oh, is this request in scope or out of scope? Or do we need to renegotiate our contract here or this or that? Or how many hours? It's like working with my developer, which is basically full time. It's like, all right, this week we got to work on server performance issues because that's a thing.

That's what you're going be working on the next three days.

Yeah. There's everything in between as well. So where are you now on the marketing function specifically? What do you think makes sense for you in this rainbow of options?

So, you know, I'm going to continue to see it through we're basically developing right now a content hub on a particular topic, which is like a batch of a couple of really good articles. And we're starting to do some guest post outreach to to build up links and and content coming back to process kit. That's that's sort of the strategy that I'm executing with this with the contractor. I start to think like bigger picture. There's a lot of things that I would just like to do in general.

Like like I talked about it, like building a really strong community of process kit users who are talking best practices together and consultants around a marketplace around process kit, implementing process templates for clients and building up this whole ecosystem. That's one thing that I would like to be doing. It's really common that a customer who's usually trialing, they're like, What's the best way for me to make this recurring process? I have these sorts of requirements. I wanted to do this and this and this.

I usually reply to that person with a Loom video to show them how to do it in Process Kit. And I always think to myself, like, man, it would be great if I just take this video and publish it to YouTube, which I sometimes do. But it'd be great if there was just somebody who's building up a library of all these hot tips for designing a thing in process kit. We have a whole series of videos on that all the time. Know, doing like monthly webinars to that we could promote with partners, that we could drive traffic with.

Like, these are all things that I wanna be doing but I'm I'm on the product every day. I can't spend the time. We have this Slack group and Facebook group that it would be great if we had this community built up around it. And we talked about last week how I have a lot of needs with customer onboarding. So here's the thought of when I when I start to design like what this person looks like, what what their job description is.

I know people are gonna listen to this and be like, you cannot find a jack of all trades. But here's my thinking on that. If you start if you start at the point of like, I need somebody to work directly with customers to help to like consult with them on how to design their systems, their automations. This person is an expert with no code tools and using Zapier in really creative and unique ways. They love that kind of stuff.

And this person has some experience as an agency owner or a consultant or a freelancer because that's who I'm selling to. So if they can identify with the needs of an agency owner who is trying to grow a client services business. So if you start there, it's like a person who can be like an expert consultant on systems and process and using process kit. And then they take all that knowledge that they work directly with customers and then they do the same thing but publicly in YouTube videos, in podcasts, in webinars, you know. Just extend the content out.

Yeah. Like, just that expert level, but both publicly and one to one with customers and and internally in in our community. Like, somebody to get that tornado going over the course of a year, you know.

I don't know what that role is called, but I don't know. It's like in a success evangelist content. I don't know what that is.

I

think it's okay to want to create something that doesn't fit into a very specific role. That's okay. Nothing wrong with that and people who work early on at the company, part of the job description is, I don't know what your job's going to be exactly. Here's the general idea. We're going figure it out together.

Right. I mean, getting back to taking the risks things, could search for that person and see who's out there and then think about like, well, what would it take to hire this person full time or hire this person part time? That's the thing. It's a question of like, is this business ready to even hire somebody like that? Because I don't think that the MRR justifies it, so it would be like spending before revenue.

Maybe I need to bootstrap some of that work myself to justify it before I hire someone. But at the same time, the more I do that, the longer it takes to ship key features to get the product right. That's trade off.

This is the hardest part, trade off of spending ahead of revenue. But you need to do that in order to get the revenue up. Then you probably shouldn't expect to get out of this for a while. So you almost need to just get used to the idea of operating in this way because let's just say for example, it goes well, you hire someone ahead of where the revenue is and you're burning, let's just say an additional $5 a month and then revenue goes up and you're burning $4 and then 3 and then 2. The way it happened with us is right around the time it got to the point where, Oh, look, we're almost at break even.

Something else in the business was screaming for help. And then we hired a, let's just say, success person. And now all of sudden you're back to burning $5 a month and then 4 and then 3 and then it wants more and it wants more. Breaking that cycle is really, really hard. I mean, that's, that's why some of these things like indie VC and tiny seed popped up.

Because that gap is really, really hard. Sometimes that gap is you and your salary. Sometimes it's, it's that next person's salary.

Yeah. And I mean, you know, with Audience Ops and everything, I'm fine with not taking a salary for a while longer, but my developer is in India. And so obviously the costs are much less less on that. Even if I'm sure at some point I would need to double up over there too, but still that's that's affordable. I could double up now if I want it.

You know? Like, what feels risky now is that this type of marketing person is is not gonna be in India. They're gonna be probably in The US or Canada or Europe or something like that and it's not gonna be lower salary. I could continue to scale the engineering team like overseas and not spend on a super high priced technical leader type person, at least not yet, where I am gonna spend on people, spend it on the marketing side, you know?

You are describing the exact experience that we had. Right? Our engineering is in Europe for exactly that reason. We just did not raise a lot of money and there's no way we could have afforded American engineers. But it's an American focused business and we had no choice but to hire on the customer side of the team in The US.

It's just the reality of this geographic distribution around salaries. Some of the engineers in Europe where normally engineering is far higher paying, they make the same amount as someone on the customer's facing team that would be like more junior. But that's just the requirements. That's just what it is. It costs the company a lot more to hire someone for $50,000 a year here in The US because the real cost with health insurance and benefits and everything else is far higher.

So I ended up in the same boat as you. Like, okay, well engineering can't be expensive or we're just we just can't do it without raising a lot more money. So engineering ended up being overseas and the customer facing team ended up being in The US and each American hire is far more expensive than the engineering hires. And and that balance is why we have more engineers than customer facing people and the cost is about the same between the two teams. It's kind of what else can you do?

You can't hire a customer success person who is in a completely different time zone from where your customers are. So you have no choice but to allocate those resources the way they demand.

What do you think about the just the question of pure hours, like full time versus part time? Let's let's call it like if I found a good person who who is happy to do a very steady engagement and they're only working with me, let's say, two or three days a week, but I don't have them on like Thursdays and Fridays, and they have other clients doing other things on those days versus somebody who's just like full time committed to working with me on on stuff. Like, just in terms of like quality of work, what we could do together in the time span, like, any any thoughts on that? Because I I I've always just defaulted to like keep costs down, hire contractors for basically part time. I don't need full time until I absolutely need it.

You know, but but maybe there's a when you're talking about marketing especially, it's like more of like a It just packs more of a punch when they're there full time and it's their full time focus. I don't know.

I hear you, but the truth is around marketing is that it's not as demanding on time in the same way that something like customer support is. So you can't just not have support Thursday and Friday. Right? So so hiring part time for support is really tricky. Marketing, someone can come in and spend twenty hours a week and significantly increase the amount of marketing activity that you have going on right now.

And they don't need it doesn't matter if they're there Thursday and Friday.

But when I think about, like, all the things that I want to be doing on the marketing front, it to me, it's it is a mix of, like, five, six, eight different projects or initiatives all rolling at the same time. I wish it was as clean as, Let's just do this one test for three weeks and then we'll do this other test for three weeks. Look, the real world doesn't work that way. You have to be doing blog posts over here. You have to be doing videos over there, doing podcasts over here, doing community stuff over here.

Like, that stuff has to happen simultaneously. Like, if you're doing some of that for me and you're doing some of that for other clients and for yourself and your own brand, to me, I just don't know how somebody mentally manages all of that

and let alone is effective at it. You want that, that has multiple projects going on at the same time, that strategic in nature that you are investing in these videos and community, I think that's going to be pretty tough. Anything other than full time employee. If you are looking at it as marketing activity that can increase revenue, then I don't think it necessarily needs to be all of those projects and activities. It's just a decision on your end on, I want to do all these things.

I just can't. So I'm just going choose these two. Yep.

But then it's still like marketing is the type of thing that you could just dabble in these little tactics. But I know you should do a small test to see if you get anything back. But sometimes you can't really know, especially when you're talking about things like content and SEO and stuff. Like it's it's not a small test that you could run for two weeks and know

No. It's consistent effort.

It's consistent effort over a long period of time. And so there's just a lot of a lot of consist things to do consistently over a long period of time, you know?

Yeah. And and and the thing is, it's pretty imprecise to call it all marketing. Right? It's not just advertising and SEO or something like that. It's like a product led type of marketing and content.

And if that's where you want to focus, then I don't know if you're going to be able to really get the impact you want without a full time employee. And I would also say, I don't think it would be as costly as you think it could be. Cause really what you're, what you're actually hiring for is a true believer. Someone to jump in and just build a business with you.

That's it. That's what I'm calling this just a marketing role is not correct. It's it's doing all the other things that are not like I'm working on the product every day and And yeah, probably this person would be collaborating on that too, especially as it relates to the customers, but it's all the other things. It's the public facing, pushing out of content and finding new channels and places where we should be getting exposure and doing the legwork to get that exposure and just hustling and doing stuff that I, it's, it's not, that's not me. That was me ten years ago when I was working on restaurant engine.

I was, I was doing that hustle.

Just do it all.

Yes. You know, but I was in my twenties. I'm not doing that anymore. I

don't know. I, I, I would lay out what your ideal is and I would shoot for the ideal. I'm trying to remember back but I definitely remember certain situations. When I had conversations with people and they were freelancers and my message to them was I simply cannot afford to hire you full time. What I would love to do is start working together and the goal that you and I are going to work on together is to build this into the point where you can join full time.

That's what I want. And so what you really you're saying is, you a true believer? And you can continue on with your freelance customers, but I want you full time and you want to be full time and let's just start where I can afford and we're going to work together over the next few months to be able to afford you full time. And that's going to be now you're aligned in your incentive on exactly what you want to do. And those people exist.

That's good way of putting it.

That are freelancing right now and are looking for something to really believe in and go all the way into for a number of years. And if you can find those people, then you can start off as freelance, but like basically tell them I want to be loyal to you. I want you to be loyal to me. I want to do the whole full time thing together. Help me get there.

I like the way that you put that. And it's like what we were talking about a few weeks ago. It's it's about finding the really talented high caliber people who are basically not known yet. I know that they're out there, you know? But it's but but, like, the people that I happen to maybe know or see online because they're doing interesting things, like, they're already sort of, like, off and running.

It

Part of why you see them online is because that's how they're getting clients and that's where they've gotten themselves too, but there's an enormous amount of talent out there that's looking for something to really commit to and believe in, And that's what you want. You want someone to come in and believe in it with you and then that's how you get the results at this early stage where things are just, it's just a pile of potential and you have to just mold it into something and that's not necessarily where we're going to do ads and we're going to spend $2,000 a month on ads and Facebook and we'll go to LinkedIn and we'll see what works and we'll optimize it. That's just not really right.

Yep. Yep. Alright, lots to think about.

Yes. Alright man, well it is sunny out there. It is Friday. I'm going to get my eyes checked because I'm old and it just keeps getting worse and worse and worse. But it's been a good episode my man.

Yeah, this was fun. Good stuff. I think I will be out next week because we're taking a little trip on Friday so it's gonna be another off week but yeah.

Very nice. I'm gonna have a day drinking Friday next week and then

there you go.

If I'm drinking if I'm drinking it again but we'll

see how my mornings go. I'll be drinking today. Alright.

Alright. Thanks for listening, everybody. See you.