Product in Market (Is How We Learn)
Welcome back, everybody. It's Bootstrap Web. I'm Jordan. Brian, let's talk some shit.
Brian Casel:Yeah, dude. Alright. It's How we doing? It's Friday, and I'm I'm I'm just finishing up just I hustled my ass off this week to we we shipped a big feature, sub threads and zip message, which was, like, a long time coming, but I am hitting the road to Stowe, Vermont on Sunday now. I was gonna for Big Snow Tiny Conf next week.
Brian Casel:You know, sometimes I have an upcoming vacation and I start to take it easy days before and other times, most of the time, I like hustle a lot to to ship something before I I go away and that was definitely the case this week.
Jordan Gal:Okay. Cool. Yeah. I'm I mean, it's Friday. This is like the one last day to redeem myself to myself.
Jordan Gal:I need a $4.00 9 a valuation, which sounds like don't know what
Brian Casel:that is. I don't know if I wanna know about it.
Jordan Gal:You know, if you have investors, you need a $4.00 9 a valuation from time to time, which helps set the internal valuation of your equity. You know, maybe you've heard like a news story or two where you're like, this company readjusts its internal valuation. So a lot of that comes from doing a four zero nine a, which is important around like individual financing events, And I think it actually needs to be done on like an annual basis. And Carta does it. So you gotta go through there and like fill out all this information.
Jordan Gal:It's not that hard. But it's like this annoying daunting thing that I that I've been putting off. And now I'm finally doing it this week. Yeah. But it's very important thing I
Brian Casel:would put off.
Jordan Gal:It's Yes, exactly right. Like I want other things to do. I don't want do other things, but it has a very big impact on stock options, and all that stuff. So it's not like for me, it's really more for employees and investors secondarily. Yeah.
Brian Casel:Okay. Alright. So what what do we got going on? I I got a couple, you know, big picture ideas that we could talk through. I I feel like I'm still, especially because I'm just heading off to two big snow tiny comps.
Brian Casel:I'm still in the mode of like turn of the year, reflection, planning. Yeah. And one of my I I talked about it before, but like one one of my routines this time of year is to literally create a a short slide deck that I present to just 10 friends at these trips, you know, like mastermind style, like but I take some time to think through and reflect and and present some some findings or some analysis or whatever. So I have like two big ideas that I'm gonna share. I won't share all the details, but the two big ideas I will
Nathan Barry:share here. So that's what I got.
Brian Casel:Okay. Cool. Yeah. I I What do got going on?
Jordan Gal:So like you, right, this is a few weeks into January. I really started January on the ninth because we went away while the kids were out of school. So everything feels very new and fresh still. What we're trying to do is get as much momentum as possible. So like the setting, the context in the company is like, we have what we need.
Jordan Gal:We don't need to go hire more. There's no like external excuse. Oh, if we only had this, if we only had like, we have what we need. We got the resources. We got the people.
Jordan Gal:Look around. We can get to the next level, the next plateau, the next step with the people around us right now. So like buddy up, you know, hold hands and let's go. So that's kind of been like the mindset. And now the only role we're hiring for is an SDR.
Jordan Gal:And an SDR is very straightforward, like help us fill the pipeline.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Definitely wanna pick your brain about that on air here to hear what that's all about.
Jordan Gal:Sure. Yeah. We're we're doing a few things, and and we can talk about it because it's we we actually have a contractor on board as an SDR and are now hiring a full time SDR.
Brian Casel:So we're The same person or or different?
Jordan Gal:Different people. Okay. And different goals in in many ways. And when I've spoken about this contract SDR, I don't even know if it's an SDR. It's like a salesperson.
Jordan Gal:He's he's actually, you know, very experienced. When I've explained that to other people, like the Portland crew, everyone's been very interested in that version of things. So this guy, this is what he does. He takes on, like, these six month projects, and he works with, like, three or so companies at a time. And what he does is he helps the function get up and running.
Jordan Gal:And for us specifically, it's enterprise. We don't have a lot of experience in the company selling and closing deals with much larger companies. And so that is it's different. So we have a few enterprise merchants in the pipeline. And a lot of this stuff like you just don't even know what to do next.
Jordan Gal:You don't even know what they're expecting. You don't know what these certain acronyms mean. It's it's a it's a learning curve.
Brian Casel:I'm totally with you. I have I have really no experience selling to enterprise and I don't know the process whatsoever. And occasionally I get it. I literally got an email yesterday and I get this maybe once a month or so. You know what's interesting about enterprise leads?
Brian Casel:They often identify themselves as enterprise leads. Like they'll say something in the
Jordan Gal:email Almost like apologetic about it. Yeah. They'll just say something like, Sorry to make you sign this NDA.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Or like, do do you have an enterprise salesperson that I can talk to? Or like or, you know, do you offer single sign on? Or whatever it is that they're asking about, which is like clearly an enterprise thing that they want. Or they ask about like privacy policies and Yes.
Brian Casel:Security policies and all this different Yes. Yes. And I have no idea how to handle that.
Jordan Gal:Right. We're we're not I've done it before, but we're not good at it.
Brian Casel:I think the big gap that I wanna ask about, you know, because I have done sales quite a bit. Like Audience Ops was all sales driven. Every single client I spoke to on sales calls and then we had a salesperson. So I did work out a sales process before and I have some experience with that in multiple businesses. But all the leads were organic and inbound.
Brian Casel:The gap in my understanding that in terms of like, okay, a strategy this year is we wanna build out a sales process where we are doing more in person demos. Maybe not necessarily enterprise, maybe some enterprise, but but more just like some people will be self serve, some people will be they need to talk on a demo. Maybe we do some onboardings. I know how to work out the process for the demos and the follow-up and the onboardings. How do we fill that pipeline?
Brian Casel:What does the SDR literally do? You know, I've I've toyed around with cold email outreach. We get some organic inbound leads, but like how do you just drive how do you put your foot to the pedal on that?
Jordan Gal:Yes. So I'm no pro and what worked for me when I, you know, had my own SDR head on, you know, six plus years ago, no longer works. So I can only give a certain amount of like knowledge that I'm getting from our process. One thing though, that is very, very straightforward and from the people I've spoken to, the big secret is that the phone is the only thing that works.
Brian Casel:You said that before. Yes. And that remains. Maybe that speaks to like how saturated cold email has become, right? Because that used to be the game.
Brian Casel:I mean, it still is obviously.
Jordan Gal:It's part of it, but you have to call.
Brian Casel:But like now it's like they get so many emails, you, you gotta be the one email who actually calls them.
Jordan Gal:Yes. And and now phone calls are getting saturated too and they're pretty annoying. And I don't pick up the phone if I don't recognize the number. I'm assuming that's what most people do. So it is a it is a challenge.
Jordan Gal:We're doing our best. Right? We're we're learning and experimenting, and we're also feeding off of what's happening out in the market. So our our biggest competitor, we got wind from customers that of theirs that are talking to us about switching that they just got an email with their prices going up in March. I saw
Brian Casel:your tweet about that. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Hell yeah. Hell yeah. I'm YOLO ing a little bit on Twitter. Fuck it.
Jordan Gal:So of course, what that tells us is, alright, the time is ripe. So now we're looking at the list of those merchants that use that competitor, and we're gonna cold email but with context, right around that price increase. So basically nothing generic works, and if you just do emails without including phone calls into the process, it also doesn't work. Beyond that, I'm happy to share what we learn along the way over the next few, you know, months. What else?
Jordan Gal:From there, the actual topic that I wanted to talk about there was around leverage. And what I mean by leverage is like when you're early stage, if we break it down into some math, for every unit of effort that you put in, you're getting like a quarter of a unit of of results. Right? It's just really hard work to get stuff back. And then as things get better and as you get closer to product market fit and as people start to know you better, it gets better.
Jordan Gal:You get more leverage, right? Like every unit of effort gets you one unit of results. And then all of a sudden, when your reputation is great and there's a bunch of word-of-mouth, every unit of effort, all of sudden you're getting more than one unit of result.
Brian Casel:Right. I guess what you're saying is like, it's when you're brand new, unknown, there's just more to overcome. There's more objection. Have to You think of You don't don't know have like word-of-mouth working in your favor and all that.
Jordan Gal:And 75% of things you do that you haven't discovered don't work yet just do zero for you, and then you have to figure out. So anyway, so I look at it that way, and and one of the biggest things that I've as I'm no longer focused on fundraising, I'm thinking, well, what can I do to contribute? And the thing that I've determined that I can do to contribute is to help provide more leverage to the go to market efforts. So that means more Twitter, more LinkedIn, more podcasts, more content. So anything that I can do that can help amplify and ideally, when the sales team reaches out, they're more likely to have heard of us.
Jordan Gal:When the marketing hits, they're more likely to have seen it more recently, like anything that can help that leverage number.
Brian Casel:I love it man because it's like I do the podcast with you for years and I've done my newsletter and Twitter and blogging for years, which I don't do as much anymore. But I I do those a, because I actually enjoy it and I just like to create content and share it and I go through seasons with that. But it's, you know, I think a lot of people look at that whole strategy of like, audience, like should you build an audience or should audience be your strategy? I don't think that that's the strategy but it is the multiplier. Right?
Brian Casel:You should be doing the mechanics of marketing and product work and talking to customers and all that. But when you have the network effects of audience and it can be small, you know, that's a multiplier. Like it makes it just makes a lot of things easier. That's that's right.
Jordan Gal:That's helping me justify the effort because if I were looking for direct ROI from the efforts, it would deter me from like writing a tweet thread. Like, am I gonna get customers from the tweet thread? No. So then you shouldn't do it, but that's not actually right. So instead of looking for direct ROI and results, it's almost like the go to market team.
Jordan Gal:That's what they're doing every day. But if I can help in making it more likely to succeed with that multiplier around, you know, attention basically, then I should do it. And so what we've done is started to identify topics that I should talk about. The people who listen to this probably follow me on Twitter, and you've seen me more active. I'm like experimenting on both Twitter and LinkedIn.
Jordan Gal:I've ignored LinkedIn for a very long time. It's actually incredibly active over there. Woah. And now what we're trying to do is figure out how to make it consistent. So over the next like week or two, you'll probably see new stuff for me And I have like a list of things that I wanna talk about in my general approach right now.
Jordan Gal:Let me know if you have any feedback for it. And then of course, real life will be the best feedback. I think I'm just gonna make videos with the things that I talk about in private a lot. I find myself Like YouTube videos? I think I'm just gonna make videos for Twitter.
Brian Casel:Yeah. So just technically on Twitter, when I share new features, we just launched this big sub threads in Zip Message. And usually for these major new features, I record a video and I do post it on Twitter because right now and this is probably not the best way to do it, but right now that's the place where the first video of a new feature lives for us and I actually like point everything to that. But I don't think videos do well on Twitter. Like whatever their algorithm is like they don't they just don't perform well.
Brian Casel:Just text and images tend to work better I think.
Jordan Gal:Yeah, and I think threads actually work better than anything. My I think threads are hit
Brian Casel:and miss too. Like sometimes, I think threads are so overused now that some I don't know if it's the algorithm or just our audiences, they start to tune them out.
Jordan Gal:Yes. I mean, it's like a it's like a meme. Right? It's like, oh, another thread like Thread Boy is like an actual word now. But my goal isn't so much to get the absolute most bang for every single post.
Jordan Gal:My goal is to be able to make it consistent. So if I like, I find myself coming up with like a way to say something. And like, let's say for example, like this leverage on on go to market efforts, because I'm struggling to articulate it internally and to myself. And then I have a few conversations and then I hit on a way to say it. That ends up being a bit of an original phrase or point of view on it.
Jordan Gal:And then I just don't share those. And I have a lot of those because I end up being forced to articulate things all the time.
Brian Casel:Right now I have a lot of that stuff too. I've spent a lot of time recently working on some branding and copywriting for the upcoming website design. And I've been giving it to to the guy that I'm I'm working with on that and like so there's a lot of like development of copy and headlines and the way that I describe key benefits and how we're repositioning and all that kind of stuff. And it's all like locked up in Notion And like just barely in some of my tweets now, I'm starting to work in like parts of these phrases. And it
Jordan Gal:just takes It's original thought.
Brian Casel:You know what, I found it just takes repetitive rewriting of copy in different, you know, like I never found that I came up with the best headline or the best copy ideas on the first go. It's always like rewriting landing pages and rewriting emails and tweets
Jordan Gal:That's where you
Brian Casel:find Repetitively for months, sometimes years on the same business until you just hone in on, like, the best way to phrase something.
Jordan Gal:Right. Okay. So I do that verbally. I I like Zoom calls, and I like meeting people, and I like talking. So it's almost like, you know, if you've done sales as you have, you find yourself improving the way you say something because you're actively forced to articulate it.
Brian Casel:Sales is crazy because it's like, I mean, hot. And I just remember, like, literally my wife would say like, I've heard you say the same phrases like hundreds of times because she like overhear these audience op sales calls, you know?
Jordan Gal:Yes. Oh my God. During fundraising, oh my God. You know, just same intonation. Every once in a while, I would have the thought in my head as I was saying the line of, if this person has already heard me say this line, they're gonna think I'm an absolute psychopath.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:So my goal is to take those and just get it out. And I think the easiest way for me to get it out is the video on Twitter, and then maybe write a thread below it, basically explaining the concept. And the goal is for then the marketing team to be able to say, okay, got it. Now we're gonna take that. We're gonna post it to YouTube.
Jordan Gal:We're gonna post it on LinkedIn. We're gonna take screenshots of the tweets, go to LinkedIn, make one of those carousel posts. Then we'll jam it into the newsletter next week. Then we'll put it, break it up and send it over to TikTok.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I like that. I do really like the idea of like the raw material is you creating the video that has a bunch of nuggets of insight in there. And then yeah, they repurpose it. I'm planning the same kind of thing at some point soon, I'm gonna be starting a new podcast specific for our brand.
Brian Casel:I'll be interviewing coaches. So I'm gonna just do a series of interviews, hand it to my editor, she she makes it into a podcast and then we can turn that into reusable pieces. And some of them are customers so we can, you know, use them as like case studies and stuff like that.
Jordan Gal:Yes. So that's my plan. Anyway, I got a few other things but what about you?
Brian Casel:What do you got going on? Yeah, all right. So I did put together this this slide that we're gonna shift gears here. We're gonna get back into the mode of You know what? When when we did our end of year episode, I really didn't spend any time looking back on 2022.
Brian Casel:I was only thinking about goals for 2023. And as I was prepping the slides for Big Snow, I did do more reflection, looking backward a little bit. This is more about just the lifespan of Zip Message so far, which has been two years. I started it at the very beginning of 2021. And so now I have like two full years to look back on.
Brian Casel:And as we've talked about the last couple of episodes, you know, I don't feel like we've hit product market fit yet. I'm making this whole transition effort to to reposition the company, the brand, everything in the next couple of months and we're shipping all these new features that are really really gonna change what we are. And the reason why I'm working on all that is because I definitely look back and see now in hindsight, there was a series of strategic decisions. And this happens I think in every business, but you know, right now I'm focused on on the Zip Message business. And one thing that I'm doing in this in this little talk is like just listing out about five or six.
Brian Casel:These were like key strategic decisions that I made along the way sometime in the last twenty four months and I can look back on them now and see why most of these decisions were wrong and didn't have the intended effect or the outcome that I was hoping for at the time that I made the decision. I'm not gonna go into what those are. That's more detailed, more private that I only share with advisors. But what I wanna talk about with that is like, it's I'm just being more honest and really taking the time to think through like, okay, I remember back when I made the decision to do this or to do that or to go in this direction. And I remember what I was thinking back then and I'm analyzing it now and I see why that that particular decision did not pan out and there are very specific reasons or conditions that are only visible to me now.
Brian Casel:But looking back at the time, what I'm saying is it's really easy to go back and say What was I thinking? Or I made a huge mistake or I don't know what I'm doing
Jordan Gal:How could I make such a mistake?
Brian Casel:But the truth is, if I look back, I would make the same decisions again. It's
Speaker 4:not like
Jordan Gal:this big regrettable, oh, how could I make these mistakes along the way?
Brian Casel:No. What are you trying
Jordan Gal:to learn?
Brian Casel:Exactly. And it's what it is is like I had a set of information in front of me at the time. And I had variables that I was playing with at the time. And I had a set of evidence at the time that I was basing that decision on. And if I if I had that same dataset now, I probably would make the same call today.
Brian Casel:But now I have a lot more data and, you know, a lot more to work off of. And so now I instead of using everything that I know now to make the future decisions, which I am, that's a whole other thing, I think it's good to really reflect on like exactly why something didn't work. And I know I'm being vague. I'm not getting into the details on on certain things, but I'm I'm finding it to be a a helpful exercise to actually list it out. And and again, like the act of putting it into a slide deck and having to verbally explain it to a group of peers is a really good and helpful exercise.
Brian Casel:I recommend other people do that in some form. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:It's tough. I don't know how to think about a lot of those things. Spent very little time regretting. Right? It feels totally pointless.
Jordan Gal:Yeah, lately I've been thinking much more along traditional product market fit search lines around experiments, how quickly can we like listing out experiments, seeing which ones are related to one another, which ones are separate, and then looking at them in the amount of effort each one requires to run, the amount of time, the potential upside.
Brian Casel:Actually on that on that same note, the other big idea that I'm that that is in this slide deck for me is I wrote down you can't learn without a real product. And again, we're talking about this like this search tour or effort to get toward product market fit. As people know, I've started and run multiple businesses over the years and looking back on all of them, before you start a business, before you start a new product, you can and you should do some market research. You should talk to potential customers. You should analyze the market.
Brian Casel:You should look at the opportunity but none of that is gonna give you all the information that you're gonna need to finally hit product market fit. I mean we know plenty of people who did start something and and nail that thing right out of the gate, but and which is fantastic. Dada? Hi.
Speaker 4:If you do snacks, can we watch your show?
Jordan Gal:Yes. Just be good. Don't eat too many snacks.
Speaker 4:Yay.
Jordan Gal:That's And we
Brian Casel:got a guest appearance on Yeah.
Speaker 4:That's Wait, daddy.
Jordan Gal:That's our six year old whirlwind.
Speaker 4:Daddy?
Jordan Gal:You do see what we're in the middle of something, right?
Speaker 4:Yes, I do.
Brian Casel:Yeah. That doesn't matter.
Speaker 4:High five, dad.
Jordan Gal:Okay.
Speaker 4:And can I have
Jordan Gal:a bag
Speaker 4:of cookies?
Jordan Gal:A bag of cookies, yes.
Speaker 4:It's one of
Jordan Gal:our snacks. Yes. We're gonna watch Princess Bride this weekend?
Brian Casel:Yes. Loves that. Bag of cookies, instant yes, I love it.
Jordan Gal:A little six year old, you know, born in 2016 quoting Princess Bride Lands. A beautiful thing.
Speaker 4:Well, when half of that, I don't know how to do it. Sorry
Jordan Gal:about that.
Brian Casel:Love it. We gotta keep Should that we go
Speaker 4:with Ellis?
Jordan Gal:No. Not yet. Let me finish up, then I'll come downstairs.
Speaker 4:Please, I was asking Ella.
Brian Casel:Is great.
Jordan Gal:Ask Laura to text me. And if Ella wants wants
Brian Casel:you to
Jordan Gal:come over to us. I see My who runs that wife's not home and so they just come upstairs and just like run me over. I'm getting cookies, I'm getting snacks, I'm going to my friend's house.
Brian Casel:Love it. Alright. You can't learn without a real product. Look, you could do pre market research, but I just found that like the only way to really learn and and to get the insights that that I need is I have to have a real product that functions that somebody can use today. Not like a not a fake, like no code, like, you know.
Jordan Gal:Right. Screenshots or Figma prototype or something.
Brian Casel:Yeah. No, no prototypes like real, like, I'm gonna charge money for this. Somebody's gonna pay money for this and they're going to attempt to use it to get some value out of it. And we have many customers on our product today and I can only learn from those real customers. We have real customers, real metrics to look back on, two years of metrics.
Brian Casel:We have real usage patterns and then real insights. I've talked about how I've done so many customer interviews. You can do interviews with potential customers before you have a product and maybe you should. That'll give you some insights. But those are nothing compared to the insights that you will get from your actual paying customers or people who have tried and maybe canceled your product before.
Brian Casel:Because they are talking from their real experience of like, yeah, I had this problem and I took out my credit card and I wanted to pay for your product because of this. Because I was like, or I was trying to achieve this or I'm, you know, like anything before you have a real product to center that conversation around is just theoretical.
Jordan Gal:Okay. Let's get into this a little bit because a lot of people listening have products that are in the market. I'm gonna guess most of the people like you and I, things aren't up into the right constantly, and they can be able to hang on for dear life. Any of you out there who have that, bless, love to see it. But most people are looking for that and making adjustments toward it.
Jordan Gal:One of the things that happens when you have a product out in the market, people use it is it can narrow your focus to the people who are in the product that you're talking to, that they're paying, they're giving you feedback right now. One of my biggest struggles is how much that feels linear. That feels incremental in improvement. What you're talking about right now in terms of like a new direction, that's not so incremental. You are taking the knowledge of having a product in the market and then you're kind of making a bigger bet to change your path from this linear incremental growth to, no, no, no.
Jordan Gal:Think if I get the product more right, then the growth will be not linear to what it is right now. It'll be on a completely different trajectory.
Brian Casel:Yeah, I think that's right. But I just think that like yes, we're we're gonna be making some major bets. I'm making some decisions right now that are some of the biggest, hardest, biggest bet decisions that I've made in my career for sure. We'll know more about those later in the year. I'll talk about them.
Brian Casel:But like I have more confidence in making these calls because I've had so many customer interviews. And again, like talking to these customers is just a higher signal to noise ratio than talking to theoretical customers. You know, those are still good to do but like and there are so many new insights that I just there's no way I would have ever even known about certain opportunities in the market or certain gaps or certain very specific needs had I not shipped a version one of our product that resonated in a certain way that I was not even aware of until it started resonating in a certain way. It's like one thing snowballs into another and these opportunities for you know, a lot of people talk there are a lot of like new, bootstrappers who are trying to break out of that client work or a job and maybe launch their first thing but they're struggling to get an idea for a product. I mean a lot of times like these ideas don't don't just come from like watching the whole world or watching a whole industry.
Brian Casel:They kind of come from like you launch one product then you iterate then you iterate, then you then you identify something that you had no idea even existed and then that that's the product.
Jordan Gal:That that feels right. And and and maybe that moment of acknowledging that thing you originally set out to build wasn't quite the right thing, but now that you have the insight, you do build the right thing. That transition feels really scary because you are you you have momentum in a particular direction. Right? I got like 28 people working in a particular direction, and they're building features, and there's a roadmap as far as the eye can see.
Jordan Gal:Like, we're we're not gonna get everything on the roadmap. It's just prioritization. I worry a lot about trying to do both at the same time, like this incremental, let's add this feature and then this feature and then this feature and maybe each individual feature won't be the breakout, but if we put six months into this roadmap, the product will be much more appealing. Six months from today than it is now. Right?
Jordan Gal:I I don't buy the one more feature is gonna change everything for you, but I can be convinced that adding 10 major features over the span of six months can change the trajectory of your business. Honey, not gonna get mad. Not gonna get mad. Honey, when I'm in the middle of a call, you can't come in.
Speaker 4:But dad. Yes. Mother was really nice to me today and she didn't get to see Ella at recess. So could she go over to Ella?
Jordan Gal:She sent you to ask for her? Delegation, man. Come on.
Brian Casel:This is a very efficient household we got going on here.
Jordan Gal:Yes. She can go to Ella's, but as long as like Laura's there and she knows she's coming.
Speaker 4:Okay.
Jordan Gal:And look both ways.
Speaker 4:What do you mean? I'm not going.
Jordan Gal:Good and don't come in again until I'm done.
Brian Casel:At
Jordan Gal:least I think I paused enough so we can edit without
Brian Casel:I hope we keep it all in.
Jordan Gal:You just keep it all in, whatever. It's all good. That's Daphne. That's our youngest.
Brian Casel:So I just feel good that we finally this threads was a really big one for us to to launch. It was so technic it was such a technical challenge to get it built and shipped and I'm I'm just really happy that we got that one out the door before my two trips. We have another one workflows that's coming that we'll have to push until probably next week or or the week after. That's another huge one. But, like, these two have been I think they're gonna be really big important features, but they're also like bottlenecks in our roadmap.
Brian Casel:Like we can't there's so much more that we have to get to. Like even like strategically, have to get to to to unlock certain customer needs and other things that were bottlenecked with getting these two big features out the door. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:That's gotta feel good. Yeah. Yeah. We are we are marching along the path. I just can't help but try to do like on one hand.
Jordan Gal:And this is okay. So here's something to kind of ask you about. I get worried that I am messing with the focus of the company. This is like it's it's been an ongoing fear for me because it's part of my like management style that I like coming up with ideas and testing them and talking about them. So, you know, Rock and Jessica, who I work with most closely, they know this is just part of the process for me.
Jordan Gal:And so when I have an idea, I'm like, I'm seriously considering the conversation and the debate around it. I'm not seriously considering asking people to go out and build it. So that way I have a layer that I can go to and be unfiltered without them being like, oh my God, another big idea.
Brian Casel:It makes me think of this Jason Fried quote from a few years back. He wrote about this. It was something to the effect of like, as the founder or as the CEO, you have to be so careful with what you say out loud because people can mistake that for actual directions Yes. Or or like actual priorities when you're really just spitballing or or or thinking out loud.
Pippin Williamson:Like Yes.
Brian Casel:So you gotta be careful about thinking out loud.
Jordan Gal:Yes. So I like to think out loud. So I I know that I go to Rock and Jess who expect it and like it. And we have this like open conversation around it. So I don't ever feel stymied in my desire to hash out an idea.
Jordan Gal:It's good, but it I do worry at the same time that I'm like messing up by I'm messing up the focus of the company. Because we seem to have we seem to have a lot of concepts and big goals that we want to achieve. And I worry sometimes that I mess up the focus on like the product and the roadmap because I'm trying to achieve things that are like bigger than what the product does right now. Right? Like an example would be, we want to help promote headless commerce as an alternative to platforms like Shopify.
Jordan Gal:That's not what the checkout does. That's not what our product does, but our product and company would benefit greatly from the increased adoption of headless as a way to build for e commerce. And I really enjoy hanging out there, you know, maybe more so than the individual features that are happening right now. And I'm like, I try to build for the future and I'm I get worried that I'm screwing up the focus on like what needs to happen next. Like no, this week we're doing this and this week we're doing that and I don't know if that's like a
Brian Casel:One thing that like whenever I get in these cycles, is like all the time of like, are we doing the right thing? Have I listed out the priorities in the correct order for the business? The only thing that that has ever helped relieve the stress that comes with that is talking to customers. And right now, I feel overdue. So like I'm pushing through this big roadmap right now and I have a small group of about 10 coaches who are customers, who I'm closely contacting with like mock ups and roadmap directions and specific specifically like how things are working and they're gonna be like the very first users on on these new features we're building.
Brian Casel:And I've been going back to them using Zip Message about once a month. Really it's been stretching to about every six weeks with an update on what we've built and what we're building next. Sort of like checking back in. Here's that feature that I talked about last time. We've shipped that.
Brian Casel:Now here's what we're gonna be working on next, like the next one, two, three features that we're working on. And I'm overdue for doing my next one of those. I gotta do it probably next week. To literally get back in touch with the small group of customers to check-in and get their confirmation or new questions or new feedback on the literally the details of how these features are working. Because whenever I get in touch with them, I feel this like this like breath of fresh air where it feels like, Ah, confirmation.
Brian Casel:Like we're building the right things I see clearly now that this thing is even more important than I thought it was back then, and so I'll shift the priority around in terms of the order of what we're gonna build next.
Jordan Gal:It helps your confidence level on your decision making. The confidence level.
Brian Casel:If I go too many weeks without having that cycle and having those active conversations where I'm getting new messages back from people and where they're giving me feedback, which currently I'm, you know, it's been several weeks. I start to question it and like, do I really have enough data points to go on these big bets that I'm taking? Are we building the right things in the right order? Is this gonna pan out the way that I hope it will? But then once I get the feedback back, it's like usually, it's like, yes.
Brian Casel:They're showing me very specific things like, well, I see where you're building. I could totally see how I would use that. And I ask them for things like, show me like your coaching programs that you're currently running. What are you actually trying to sell? How do you how do you want to run it?
Brian Casel:What tools are are you currently using? And they literally show me and tell me, I've got these tools going. I'm paying this much for them. I need I need them to be doing this, I can't actually achieve what I wanna do because of this and this, and what you're building solves that problem. So, like, I'm getting stuff back like that where it's like, okay, this feels good.
Brian Casel:But building stuff takes a long time. You know, like I said, like we're bottlenecked on these two features and it's stressful because it's like that just adds more not only just delays the roadmap and delays us shipping things that I wanna ship, but it extends this mental state where where I start to cycle back. It's it's like a slingshot or like the more weeks go by, I'm I'm getting more and more attention, more and more attention and I do a round of customer feedback. I'm like, okay, we're good, we're good.
Jordan Gal:Wow. That that's that's a that's a lot to bounce.
Brian Casel:Anyway, what you're saying about headless and stuff, what comes to mind is if the current product and the current customers and leads, this goes back to like the SDR stuff, what I think about is like if if you can be talking to the people who are actively engaged in in wanting to build with headless. Like, maybe they're not necessarily ready to be a customer today even if you have the product ready, but like this is what you do best is like, you know, become buddies with a group of people who because like, I I just mean like talking to people who who look exactly like your ideal customer for the headless product stuff, you know, like and I and I would be wanting to know literally what are you building right now. Like tell me about your e commerce store or tell me about your client's e commerce stores that you're building. What are they? What do they sell?
Brian Casel:What are their what are the technical requirements? What tools are you currently using? What are you paying for them? What's been your impression of them? Have they worked good or bad?
Brian Casel:I I wanna know all that stuff.
Jordan Gal:I know. It's it feels almost like I'm I'm overshooting the market. And I'm trying to anticipate where those people are, where they will conclude, like where their process is gonna take them, and therefore where the market, where more and more people will like end up as a conclusion. Right?
Brian Casel:So so, like So if there's set of people who who maybe are are not thinking about even the term headless today Yeah. But you can see a pattern that will probably lead them there at some point.
Jordan Gal:Yes. And then then we have to actually set up the pattern. It's it's it's a bit of struggle
Brian Casel:people, to but, like, understand, like, alright. Well, what are you trying to do?
Jordan Gal:Right. How far away are you from that conclusion?
Brian Casel:Or really just like what are you trying to do today? What are you trying to buy? What are you trying to build? And what are the options that you're looking at? Why are you looking at those options?
Brian Casel:What options have you tried? You know, like evidence of like behaviors that because a lot of times just asking those questions gets them talking. This is more for our audience. I know you know this stuff, but like just asking the questions like, gets them starting to talk about their problems and their pain points in a way that they probably never even expressed to anybody before. And then that starts a series of like light bulb moments where where it's like, well, I I considered this or that but I but I ran into this blocker because I'm trying to do this and I can't do that.
Brian Casel:Well, why is that important? Like, why do you have to do it that way? Well, because this or that. And then you start to hear like them realize something that that's like deeply important and then and then that uncovers a whole new path or a pain point that you that can lead you to other new people to talk to, you know. So that's that's what I'd be thinking about.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I mean, it's tough because this conversation introduces doubt into the way I'm going about it, into my version of the process.
Brian Casel:I've always been solo and that that makes it also really tough. You're you're a solo founder now but you have a team and and these close executive
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Well, Rock's a co founder.
Brian Casel:Well, mean actually, no, you're Jessica.
Jordan Gal:Right. Jessica's Jessica's quite close to founding team, whatever you wanna call it. It's really the three of us there.
Brian Casel:So that's what I don't really have the experience with, is like taking all these insights and then batting them around with my partners, right? Because
Jordan Gal:Yeah. And it's also just because I'm not talking to customers doesn't mean the company isn't talking to customers every day, right? So there's like a level of trust there and then I also need a level of trust around the synthesis, like in the information that comes back to me. But it does it does give me this opportunity to kind of sit around thinking and planning out into the future, and then I and then I come up with a few experiments around where I think things are going in the future, and then I go back to the sales and marketing teams and say, this area, how how often does this come up? Right?
Jordan Gal:One of the things that happened over the last few months was we started hearing from customers that they thought of checkout and fraud and chargeback protection all in the same like space. And it's because our competitor, BALT, offers it together. And FAST, when FAST launched, they also offered it together, and now people just think of it together, and we were just selling checkout, and we're going about thinking, hey, we'll just do an integration with your fraud protection, whatever. But we kept hearing merchants say, well, can I just buy it together? I was gonna pay you and get both.
Jordan Gal:So then, you know, that makes its way up to me and I go out and I talk to a bunch of fraud companies and we create a partnership, and now we're going back out and selling a bundle. We're going out and emailing customers and saying, hey, we now offer this together. Do you wanna talk about that? So there's still a level of talking to customers, but it's not nearly as close as what you're experiencing and then walking away with like this new concept because around it the
Brian Casel:speaks to like, well, they they must have felt the pain with fraud too. Must be like, that's a real problem and we need to solve both and we don't want two different tools, right?
Jordan Gal:Yes, that's right. So that's like, I think it's an example of an incremental improvement directly from customer feedback. But what I can't help but do, in many ways I almost feel like this is the point of raising a bunch of money, is to try to take this bigger swing and that bigger swing feels like it's less incremental, right? So right now, I think the biggest opportunity we have, the absolute biggest version of the opportunity that Rally has is to impact the total cost of payment processing for a merchant. There's a really good Twitter thread from Alex Rample.
Jordan Gal:He's like a payments guy on a 16 z. He goes through a tweet thread explaining how Target uses their credit and debit card products to convince about 20% of their total payments to use those Target Red cards. And what that does, because it's a closed loop branded card network, you don't pay the 3%. So they've convinced 20% of their, whatever it is, a $100,000,000,000 in sales, so significant volumes, to use a lower cost payment processing rail. And that is actually the biggest version of what we can do.
Jordan Gal:If we can bring that benefit to customers because it's a rally network instead of a target network, right, not everyone's target. Like I love Buck Mason. I don't need a Buck Mason credit card. I just not only do I not need one, I actually don't want one. Don't want another credit card.
Jordan Gal:But if you can use a checkout and our checkout can convince roughly 20% of merchants to use Rallypay rails, whether it's through ACH or crypto or something that avoids the 3%, that's actually the single biggest opportunity we have. That's the biggest, biggest impact we can have. No one's asking us for that. No one's even thinking it's possible. That will never come out of an interview with a merchant or very unlikely to come out.
Brian Casel:Right, but that can go in a headline, an H1, right? Cut your processing costs by 66%, whatever it is.
Jordan Gal:Right, right. But that's like, you know, it is multiple features away. It's months and months and more realistically a year away from actually breakthrough. But then I start to go backwards and I say, you know what the first step is? Plaid integration.
Jordan Gal:ACH.
Brian Casel:You gotta get like the basic like Yes. Building blocks in place Yes. In order to get there.
Jordan Gal:If if there's anything that Jessica has taught me in software, it's that you do not need the full feature that you have in mind. You don't need that in order to get information and add value. That it can all be broken down incrementally and there's no reason to not do it just because it feels gigantic. Let's just do an ACH integration and see if we can convince x amount of shoppers to use ACH instead of credit cards. And that's just step one.
Jordan Gal:That that's much more digestible.
Brian Casel:The only other thing that comes to mind when you talk about like sharing these insights with Rock and Jessica or anyone else that you're working like so one thing that I do, I've talked about all these customer interviews that I do but like every one of those was recorded. I got a whole Dropbox folder of like fifty minute customer interview recordings. I logged all those in Notion. And and I also like, you know, starred or or set aside the ones that were like really useful, really insightful. So maybe 20% of the interviews were like these were like the best.
Brian Casel:But still that's like a lot of content that like nobody's gonna go and listen. Nobody else like besides me, like I listen to them, but like other people that I work with like marketing contractors or product people that I work with, you know, how do I share the information that was gathered? One thing is like I have a list of like, again, out of out of these like 50 interviews, like, just listen to like these three or four because they're these were like the best, most insightful. Then the other thing that Claire Emerson really helped out with, I mean, she listened to all of them and she jotted down voice of customer research. So she had she created a whole spreadsheet and like these are pain points and these are the words that they use to express them.
Brian Casel:These are aspirations and these are, you know, a bunch of different categories of types of words and phrases that customers are saying. And she was just like pulling out these these tidbits from my calls. I also jotted down some notes and stuff. So I just have like all that stuff logged in Notion. And then I have a lot of like zip message threads where everything that we say is logged and transcribed and easy to easy to link back to.
Brian Casel:So, like, just having it all recorded and logged is is a big one. It so that it's not just like, I was talking to this guy the other day and and here's what I took away from that. Like, just take my word for it, you know. Or here here's like the one or two things that I sort of remember about what we talked about, but everything else was buried in a Zoom call. Like just having it all recorded, I think is kind of important, you know.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Anything that can avoid the recency bias of a fresh conversation in your mind. Yes. Well
Brian Casel:All right. We got it in.
Jordan Gal:That might do it for us. We hung out with my six year old. She came in and disrupted things a few times.
Brian Casel:A podcast debut from the young, is she your youngest?
Jordan Gal:She's our youngest, she's six. She's our Tasmanian devil party girl. Does whatever she wants. Yeah. Well, got any weekend plans?
Jordan Gal:You're gonna get ready, you're hang with the famine and then you go off to,
Brian Casel:Hang tomorrow and you know it's so I was looking at the snow report for snow next week and like two days ago, the website said they're expecting 22 inches of snow on Monday. So we're like a blizzard is coming and that's our, that's everybody's travel day. I was like, all right.
Jordan Gal:Might work out, might not.
Brian Casel:Yeah. So, so then me and, and a bunch of others were now planning on driving up on Sunday. And then I look at the snow report yesterday, that 22 inches has been changed to two inches. It's like, what?
Jordan Gal:No big deal.
Brian Casel:But I'm still going on Sunday. So yeah.
Jordan Gal:I went skiing in the, world famous slopes of Traverse City, Michigan.
Brian Casel:I saw your tweet. It sounded painful. It
Jordan Gal:was comically bad. Comically. I mean, the truth is the mountain was great. You know, it's not a big mountain, but the snow machines were pumping. Everything's soft, beautiful.
Jordan Gal:My kids had a great time. I just happened to have such a miserable relationship to any snow sports. It's bordering on like funny. Like, at some point, you know, when you find yourself as, like, a dad so frustrated, you kinda have to laugh at yourself. That's where I'm at with skiing.
Brian Casel:Just
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Comical in my hatred.
Brian Casel:Can I okay? Before we go, if you have I I gotta do a quick rant with ski resorts, but I'm going to connect it to SaaS. Okay?
Jordan Gal:Oh, okay.
Brian Casel:All right.
Jordan Gal:Let's see We
Brian Casel:all think about designing the best SaaS solutions for these small businesses to use to operational, to streamline your operations, plug in our niche SaaS product for ski resorts to book lessons or to book tickets and and all this different stuff. Right? So I have two kids. We're we're trying to book private lessons or group lessons for our kids at at the ski resorts in the Northeast. I go on the on most ski resorts websites.
Brian Casel:I wanna book a lesson for next weekend or two weeks from now or whenever it is. I I use their website which has this super slick online booking system. I was like this is great. I could just go on their calendar picker and and choose an availability. I'm gonna book and put in my credit card like they implemented some some fancy pants SaaS solution to do their online booking.
Brian Casel:Awesome. I'm I'm psyched. Super easy. I go on there. I and they're like, okay.
Brian Casel:We have one availability left for Sunday, January 31. Book it. Put the credit card in. Great. I get an email from their people like the day before.
Brian Casel:We've already booked a hotel, like we're going on on this Sunday. I get an email the day before, oh, we don't have that availability for that for that private lesson that you booked online. Okay, you tell me this now and so now everything else is booked, now we gotta go cancel our hotel and all this different stuff. And they were like, yeah, that online booking was just a request for a lesson. Even though you put your credit card in, even though it showed you that we had the specific availability that you booked, but it's like, okay, even if even if they have to work on this like manual request system, they don't have anybody like manning the email inbox to give me a a response like so all this to say is like you can design and build and ship the best functioning SaaS that runs the operations for these offline businesses.
Brian Casel:But if the people there are not gonna actually use them in the way that they're designed, even if they're paying for the product and they have it installed, the people there still need to run it and they still need to give their customers the benefit of having it in place. And that is not the case at literally, I mean literally every ski resort operates that way now. And it's like, it's the most frustrating thing ever, you know. Because like now I have to like just call up these places and they don't answer the phone and it's just like, oh my god.
Speaker 4:Mhmm. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:I mean, I I I could go on for a while about skiing. But my my kids had a good time. Family was happy. You know how how like ridiculous it was for me? First thing, literally the first interaction with a ski.
Jordan Gal:Right? So we get our rentals, kids are getting all set up, everyone's fucking stressed out, and there's a line behind us, and everyone's looking at you. You know, first thing you
Brian Casel:walk in Just getting from the car to the chairlift as a whole.
Speaker 4:Yes.
Jordan Gal:Just horror show of a first encounter with this sport. I touch the ski. I literally, the first time my skin makes contact, I get this gigantic fiberglass splinter right, right in my finger. I've never even heard of it before. So the first thing I look at my wife and I'm like, I have to go and figure out how to get this thing out of my finger.
Brian Casel:Yeah. That I can be
Jordan Gal:like, be helpful or helpful instead of like, like whining every time I touch something with my index finger. That was my first interaction and I should have known that's how the day was going to go and that's exactly how
Brian Casel:the day went. My little one went on the chairlift with me last week and we get off the chairlift at the end and she falls falls onto me and her ski gets caught on my snowboard. So now I'm like dragging my six year old and her ski like down this little hill. And they had to like stop the lift
Nathan Barry:and all that. That was all. That was pretty fun.
Jordan Gal:Oh yeah. But I know, I know it's great once you get there. It's like five years of
Brian Casel:Five years of just total pain. And
Jordan Gal:then your kids finally can can get there. Yep. Alright, brother. Well, look. Have a great weekend and have a great time at Tiny Snow and come back with all the answers, please.
Brian Casel:That's the goal. We'll see. Later, folks.
Jordan Gal:Thanks for listening.
