Artificial Intelligent Business
Welcome back, everybody. Another episode of Bootstrapped Web, mister Brian Castle. Mister Jordan Fry.
Brian Casel:It's Friday. Going Hawaii. What?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Tomorrow? Tomorrow morning. Oh, man. I'm already checked in, bro.
Jordan Gal:It's ready.
Brian Casel:You're checked in, but the question is, are you checked out yet?
Jordan Gal:I'm not checked out yet, but I am almost there. I I the truth is we had a demo this morning with, like, a fantasy customer. Mhmm. So that was awesome. And then got a few things done, and I I'm actually done with, like, responsibilities for for the week.
Jordan Gal:So I'm almost checked out after this podcast. How about that?
Brian Casel:Beautiful. Beautiful. So what's the plan? Like, how many days? Yeah.
Jordan Gal:We are staying at one hotel the whole time for seven nights.
Brian Casel:Perfect.
Jordan Gal:Last time we went, we did, like, an Airbnb condo half the time and then the hotel, but we had such a good time at this hotel that we were like, we just want that on repeat.
Brian Casel:Oh, so just going right back.
Jordan Gal:Yep. Going right back.
Brian Casel:So Love it.
Jordan Gal:Yep. Yep. So that's extremely exciting. I am I am sad to miss Shop Talk, which is a conference in Vegas because last year when we went, we got an enormous amount of value from that. But we have two people on the team that are still going.
Jordan Gal:And, you know, I'm not about to not go away with the fam just for that, so it's okay. Yeah. Whole week away.
Brian Casel:And is your plan how to how disconnected do you plan to be? Are you gonna be checking in? Are you gonna actually open your laptop?
Jordan Gal:I don't think I'll open the laptop unless it's nest. I consider just not bringing the laptop, but that's probably more stressful than just dragging it along. Yeah. Yeah. So we have we have enough going on, and there's, you know, a big effort at Chop Talk to get things done.
Jordan Gal:So we hired a new biz dev partnerships person. He's going with Sam. So Rob is our new team member. He just joined like two weeks ago and he is he's a force. So he's like got a big network and is going out there and they're going to meet like 30 people.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm. So that's really exciting, and I wanna be there to support them on you know, my my point of view on that stuff is helpful because I have, like, intel. They're like, oh, we just met this person, and I can usually add some context on that company did this thing with that company, and they raised money from this person and this, like you know, that that helps on the relationship front. Right. But I'm really I'm gonna try to check out.
Jordan Gal:What I have found myself is I'm in like a moment right now where I have an enormous amount of energy for the business. I'm pumped up. And because of that, get last night, I got an idea. I got out of bed, went to the computer, created, a screenshot the way, like, my nontechnical, like, clunky way to do it, and then shared it with the team. And I was like, this is where this feature can go.
Jordan Gal:This is, like, where I see it going.
Brian Casel:You know, there there is so much, like, whatever, like, hate on, like, hustle culture and, like and and really working your ass off and all that. But, like, man, sometimes work is, like, so much fun and inspiring that you just wanna get in. And, dude, I have those nights too. I come in here. I work for, like, four hours in the middle of the night for for no reason.
Jordan Gal:It's not it's not a hustle thing. It's not a dragging yourself, and I'm I feel guilty about it, or I gotta I gotta, you know, put in the hours. It's not actually that. It's it's joy. It's enjoyment.
Jordan Gal:Creativity.
Brian Casel:We we get to do this for it's it's amazing. You know? Yeah. That's right. And, you know, with with vacationing and I have two trips coming up in April.
Brian Casel:One is a family trip for, like, four days. We're gonna drive down to Myrtle Beach. And then the the week after that, I fly to MicroComp. And, you know, lately, or the last several trips, I I have not done the fully disconnect thing. I still find, like, it's I'm plenty disconnected, you know?
Brian Casel:Mhmm. Especially with the ones with the family where it's like, we're just, there's a lot of relaxation, a lot of just doing fun activities, a lot of travel days, but there is still, like, natural downtime. Yes. Even at home on weekends and stuff like, you know, we we'll have a great Saturday or we'll have a great day on on a vacation, but there's still, three, four hours in there where we're just chilling out after after a long morning of doing activities or something. That's right.
Brian Casel:And that and that's you know, I'm fine with checking in and and doing some stuff. The the only thing that I try to avoid is, like, actually doing any projects or having any goal to like, I'm not trying to ship anything.
Jordan Gal:Right. You're not looking at the to do list.
Brian Casel:Yeah. There's no to do list, but my computer is there. If I've got nothing else to do, I'll I'll pick it up. You know?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Yeah. I'm I'm you know, we have a new factor. Our our oldest daughter has an iPhone now. Oh.
Jordan Gal:So so we are, you know, we are now in a phase where we are always in danger of being hypocrites if if we ask her to, you know, behave a certain way with the phone. And so one of the things that we're finding is like we are more inspired to basically not be hypocrites and say, the damn thing away. Don't pick it up. We're eating. We're this.
Jordan Gal:We're that. So I think that will actually help. It'll basically help me pick up the Kindle instead of the iPhone. It's such a strange thing that those are two electronic devices with screens, but the message that it sends to you, yourself, your spouse, your kids, it's a very different message.
Brian Casel:Yes.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Strange thing. That's what
Brian Casel:is? Yeah. My kids are still on on iPads, but they do have their, Apple username, so we text all the time and stuff. Mhmm. My older is you know, she's getting into using the Mac and creating and doing all these projects on on the Mac now.
Brian Casel:And it's been really cool to see her get into that because, you know and I and I I I show her certain things, like so she's really into, like, creating games on Roblox. Like, she actually, like, uses Roblox Studio on the Mac and, like and publishes games and stuff like that. Wow. And and so I showed her, like, well, you know, she need need to make some of title graphics. I was like, well, this is Canva.
Brian Casel:You use this app. It's a simple way to create graphics. You know, she uses some some apps to do some, like, three d printing. We we started doing that. And the latest one this week, I just opened up, and and this gets into what we should probably talk about is AI.
Brian Casel:Okay. Bing, you know, Microsoft Bing, they won the race to image creation in its So, simplest you know, we we've known that there's been, like, Dolly and Mhmm. Midjourney and all these things. But, like, those things are weird. Right?
Brian Casel:Like, Midjourney, you gotta, like, sign up for Discord and
Jordan Gal:and Yeah.
Brian Casel:Type type a prompt into this random like, join a chat room and, like, authenticate and all this weird weird workflow stuff that only, like, tech geeks are gonna understand.
Jordan Gal:Right. How is it in Bing?
Brian Casel:Bing launched bing.com/create. You go there, you type it in you type in a prompt into a box, it spits back an AI generated image using Okay. Using the OpenAI's thing, which I think is is Dolly. It's it's the simplest form of accessing that version of the the image generation on the AI. Right?
Brian Casel:So so now my my kids are in there, like, doing, you know, doing me a a dog, like, dancing on a planet made of tacos and all all this random stuff. You know? And, know, but they they just get creative with it, and they and they build stuff with it, and it's really cool.
Jordan Gal:Very cool. Do do we wanna we wanna segue into AI?
Brian Casel:It's a perfect segue. Yeah. I mean That's right. But, like, that's one of the things that I've been I've been so interested in watching this as everyone else. One of the interesting things is these huge companies, Microsoft
Jordan Gal:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:Google. I I don't know what Apple's up to.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Apple, Facebook. These it's all circling.
Brian Casel:But watching this thing between Microsoft and Google, they are they are both rate and then, of course, OpenAI. Right. They're both racing to ship. And I've I've never seen huge companies like this ship so so quickly. I mean, obviously, especially Microsoft has been working on this for probably a long time before anyone knew about it.
Brian Casel:But the you don't you don't see this kind of speed in terms of shipping new new features, new products. And, clearly, Google is playing catch up. And, like, you know, you just don't see this kind of stuff. It just Yeah. Google is catch up.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Right?
Jordan Gal:That's that's odd. Yeah. It scares the hell out of me because it feels like so much of this is dominated by the biggest companies and also the biggest startups. So even even the companies that are not, you know, massive publicly traded behemoths, it's still the the intercoms of the world that are launching these features. And Yeah.
Jordan Gal:I don't know.
Brian Casel:I now.
Jordan Gal:Yep. Yep. I I'm I'm getting pretty worried about what smaller companies can do about this, but the the speed is the speed is pretty wild. It's pretty tough to discern what's happening. It's cool to see the big companies battling.
Jordan Gal:It's also very strange to to have a good understanding of like, where's the value in in this stack? Does everything get commoditized because everything's available from the same source? Does all the value accrue to OpenAI? It's confusing. It doesn't
Brian Casel:feel And there are competing underlying. I mean, OpenAI is is probably the most popular and and most well known one. They've they've got ChatGPT and everything, and they're partnered up with Microsoft. So everything that Bing is doing is on is using, you know, OpenAI stuff. But Google has its own engine.
Brian Casel:Mhmm. And then I I believe that the one that's in Notion is not either of those. I think it's this other one. I forgot the name now.
Jordan Gal:Right. There are right. Even even that, even the model starts to get commoditized. Yeah. But then it starts to depend on it's it's kind of hard to understand because there doesn't feel like a great analogy.
Jordan Gal:Right? People are like, this is a shift like web to mobile. I'm like, okay. I I hear you, but I can wrap my mind around. The different screen and the device.
Jordan Gal:But
Brian Casel:I mean, I I do think that we are seeing something major here. This is not you know? And and I've heard a few people say, like, oh, it's it's overblown. It's overhyped. This is just a a trend.
Brian Casel:Like, uh-uh. Like, this is not a first of all, you don't see these huge companies shifting on a dime like this for just a
Jordan Gal:Yes. Scrambling.
Brian Casel:Number number two, I mean, the use cases and and and the speed of advancement are just so obvious. And and, I mean, I start to see it in my I use it multiple times a day for multiple different things from coding to writing to, you know, marketing and and stuff like that.
Jordan Gal:There is also
Brian Casel:Yeah. Okay. I
Jordan Gal:was gonna say the one of the most exciting parts elements of this is that it's not just tech in in much the same way that, like, blockchain and crypto was new tech. The issue with blockchain and crypto was there wasn't that much demand from, like, the outside market outside of that initial use case of speculation.
Brian Casel:Right.
Jordan Gal:This is an enormous amount of demand. So these companies that are launching are growing, like, amazing.
Brian Casel:It it really is a good analogy, like crypto to to AI because, like, AI, the the use the applications of it, to me, just seems so obvious. And you and you already start to see it with with a thousand different startups coming up right now around all these different use cases. I mean, that's that's the difference to me. That was the the disconnect for me with with, quote, unquote, web three, or maybe this will be the web three. Right?
Brian Casel:But, you know, crypto was interesting. May maybe there's some sort of future for it, but I just don't see how it actually connects to the real world the way that
Jordan Gal:AI Yeah. It's I mean, it's a different issue, a different topic because, you know, I'm very upset about what's happening there. And I think the US government's making crazy mistakes, but they're half understandable. Anyway, that's like a different thing. But Yeah.
Jordan Gal:We we know of people also in in our worlds launching startups, and we see, like, the the build in public type people, the demand is wild. People want this stuff and they wanna pay for it. They want the value that it generates. And so that that's exciting. It's not just tech.
Jordan Gal:Right? We talked about Bing going to create, you know, pictures of worlds made of tacos is cool and it is a toy, But it's pretty clear that there are a lot of business applications and a lot of demand for those applications.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And, I mean, I don't know. Maybe we'll get into it later in the show, but, like, I've I I spent the week working on marketing stuff and overhauling our SEO process, our content strategy, a lot of SOPs for for me and my assistant. And part of that is incorporating AI to streamline our our processes. Right?
Brian Casel:Like, it's definitely making its way into actually how we do our work. And I've been using it in in development as as a tool, as an assistant, as a tool in in the toolbox. And that's how I see it just in terms of, like, day to day usage. Like, it's it's an assistant. And I think that's actually how you start to see the Googles and Microsoft starting to brand it.
Brian Casel:It's like, look. This is not a do it for you. It is a a do it with you. It's it's an assistant. It's a collaborator.
Brian Casel:Right? You you you bounce ideas off of it. That's literally how I've been using it. I I wrote copy for a bunch of new pages this week. I would draft the copy first.
Brian Casel:I plug it into ChatGPT, and and it helps me make it better.
Jordan Gal:You know?
Brian Casel:It's the bicycle analogy. Yeah. It's I mean
Jordan Gal:It's humans with a bicycle. It doesn't mean the human gets replaced. It means the human has a superpower to go much faster than they could without it.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And and I'm you know, we're building out a a process for how we prepare, like, article briefs for for articles that we develop. Right? And I I'm making this SOP for my assistant, and part of it is, like, okay. So, like, build out a couple of, like, title ideas and, like, outlines, and then, you know, plug that into ChatGPT and see see what other ideas you might have missed to make it even better.
Brian Casel:And, you know, just like like stuff, like, just sprinkling it in. We're not asking it to write the whole thing for us. We're not asking it to generate articles. It's it's just Where But, like, where are, like, the opportunities in terms of, like because this gets to what Justin Jackson was tweeting about this week. Justin, I think I wanna maybe try to debate your your Twitter thing here on the podcast a little bit.
Jordan Gal:Well well okay. So why don't you read the tweet so everyone gets the orientation on it? And then Okay. And then let let's let's let's talk about it.
Brian Casel:And I think I agree with parts of it, and I think part of it I maybe don't agree with. Alright. So it's a thread, but but his his first one is I'm seeing more this is from Justin. He he says, I'm seeing more DMs from founders launching standalone products built on top of ChatGPT. They ask me for my advice, and honestly, I don't know what to tell them.
Brian Casel:Differentiate differentiation will be challenging. Many of the products that I'm seeing are similar to each other, which that's
Jordan Gal:Yep. For
Brian Casel:sure. I mean, we we see, like, a a bunch of the same stuff popping up. Because there's a bunch of, like, obvious use cases. Right? Like, it's building chatbots or, you know, AI writing your emails and stuff like that.
Brian Casel:I'm just sort of, like, skimming through the rest of this thread. There there is some good stuff in here. The biggest risk, is that ChatGPT enabled apps are just implementing these features directly in their apps, who profits OpenAI. It goes on to like it it's like the ultimate form of platform risk, if you will, which is an interesting take. Mhmm.
Brian Casel:I think there's a lot of truth to to what he's saying in here, but I do still think that there are opportunities, especially right now how early we are, for smaller indie companies. And there probably are are opportunities for the bigger players as well, or those who are trying to take a bigger swing. And I actually think that what Justin is saying here in terms of, like, the risk factors probably apply more to the bigger swings. But I I tend to think that there are more opportunities here for the smaller swings that can still be life changing for folks like us.
Jordan Gal:You know, do you see that as so one of the things he's saying there is around adding it into your feature set compared to building an entire company and product around it. This this form of risk Took on a new a new reality with the release of their of their plug in their app store. So if you are
Brian Casel:super if you're
Jordan Gal:right, if you're kind of building on top of open AI and you're saying our service provides, you know, AI with x, and then all of a sudden, the App Store opens up and it's much, much easier to start plugging things in. Like, does that mean you don't have a business, or does that mean you have a different type of business?
Brian Casel:I mean, there are so many different angles to look at this, but, like, people talk about this thing of platform risk. And believe me, I get it. Like, I tend to try to avoid platform risk when I can, but everyone talks about it as as this, like, major downside, like risk factor, like avoid it at all costs. But, I mean, talk to any anyone who runs a WordPress business. They are built on a platform, and there are some incredible businesses built on top of it.
Brian Casel:Know? It's it's not always a bad thing. And especially if you get in early, like, there is a a you know, if I don't know what this plug in thing with OpenAI is gonna turn into, but to be one of the first players with a with tools in this ecosystem. Yeah. You're gonna build a good business on that.
Brian Casel:Yeah. That's right.
Jordan Gal:That's right.
Brian Casel:But the thing that I really think about though is it's not all that different from just Bootstrap SaaS in general. Like, you go back several years, five, ten years, you know, software for kitchen countertop installers, software for lawyers, software for house cleaners,
Jordan Gal:you know, Right. Software Very for vertical.
Brian Casel:Very vertical. You can leverage AI in new way. And it's just like building on top of Ruby on Rails. To some degree, right.
Jordan Gal:Or build a Shopify app or a WordPress app.
Brian Casel:It's a framework that enables rapid development of really great tools that that you can absolutely sell to vertical markets. I mean
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Just nail a pain point that people I mean, right now, like, one of the first pain points being solved is around writing. Right? That's what ChatGPT focuses on, language. And
Brian Casel:I mean, I I that's when when we talk about prop platform risk, like, yes, chat OpenAI kinda controls that technology, but I see it as much bigger than just their company. Right? Like, I think building on top of something like Shopify or maybe even WordPress, like, there's opportunities there, but there's also a lot of risk. Yeah. But I think of the just building with AI in general and using the what OpenAI has, like, it's much more, to me, like, closer to, like, just tech stacks.
Brian Casel:Like, I'm building on Ruby. Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:And I'm I'm not worried about that platform risk.
Brian Casel:I'm not worried about it. But, like, I don't know. In a couple years, maybe Ruby will be completely obliterated from the scene, and we won't be able to hire developers. I don't know. Whatever.
Brian Casel:Right.
Jordan Gal:But, like, that's a different form.
Brian Casel:But I I just think that, like, technology like this is is so so much bigger than that. And there are such smaller business ideas that can be had that, you know, you and, like, another angle to think about this is, like, if I were running audience ops today, or any sort of content business or any marketing agency type business, I mean, you can't not think about how AI plugs into this business model and think about all the ways that it can help streamline the process. That doesn't necessarily mean even replacing people, but it can absolutely help writers write faster, help editors edit faster. You know? And that that can mean delivering the service faster, cheaper, you know, or more more profitable.
Brian Casel:Like, there's definitely opportunities here. I I wouldn't write it all off in my opinion.
Jordan Gal:I I agree. The the bigger danger in terms of a platform risk seems to be from competition because it's such a superpower that you're building on top of, but you're not the only one. It's open so other people can build it also. And that that's a much healthier version of of capitalism and and risk than the platform itself trying to intrude on your territory or whatever else happens.
Brian Casel:Yep. Yep.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. We we look at it as we look at it from like a data point of view. Like, what can what value can we add leveraging an AI service? Because we're not going to build that. What data do we have that we can add value to our customers with uniquely?
Jordan Gal:Is it right? So for us, is think about what we do, right? Check out with post purchase offer. So what should we do? We should use AI models to help create recommendations for post purchase offers on an ongoing basis that optimizes over time.
Jordan Gal:Right, for example, or go back over the last twelve months, look at a bunch of data and see what is bought most often with other things. And then, you know, if we built the algorithm, it's like what products are bought together. If we leverage an AI model, it's what time of day, what geography, what you know, the different factors that can that can be digested in a way that we're we're just not gonna do that. We're not gonna build that model.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah. Totally. And, I mean, there there are plenty of, like, feature ideas that I could definitely see coming into Clarity Flow in the next, who knows, next next couple of years. I mean, I mean, there are some obvious ones.
Brian Casel:But, like, one is, like, you could take cues from how these big companies are are implementing AI in their products. Right? Because you you see how you know, so Microsoft and it's so funny how it's Microsoft, like, kinda leading the the way right now.
Jordan Gal:Love it. I love it.
Brian Casel:Ian Ian had a had a great tweet the other day. He was like and it's so it's so Microsoft y, the way that they present their I thought that was funny.
Jordan Gal:I mean, their videos are their videos are hot, though. The videos they're making for the products are really good.
Brian Casel:Totally. So they they're incorporating it into their whole Office suite. Right? Mhmm. And, like, one of the one of the interesting aspects of that is that, like, I I guess, in Microsoft Teams or or Microsoft whatever their their version of of of Zoom is.
Brian Casel:Mhmm. Yeah. It's Yeah. So you can be in there, and then the AI, like, summarizes what what's been said in this meeting so far. Right?
Brian Casel:And it and it even says, oh, Jordan was excited about this point, and and it'll, like, summarize that if I come to the meeting late, just in real time, you know, using AI. You know, just things like that. And and I start to think about, like, well, in in in Clarity Flow, we, you know, we have a lot of messages. A of people record really long messages. And we already transcribe it, but it would be great if, like, an AI can kinda pull out the key points between a coach and their client.
Brian Casel:And, you know, there's that, or you can have it have it, like, auto generate a a response. We can work it right into our workflows. Like, there there's all little little areas where we can start to implement it as as features.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. So That's gonna be everywhere.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Exactly.
Jordan Gal:That's gonna be everywhere.
Brian Casel:Like, part parts of apps that are just standard. Yes. And I I mean and you hear that as, like, general advice too for for founders. Right? And think that's part of what Justin was talking about, how, like, it's it's more about AI features than products.
Brian Casel:But the thing that I would say to that is it's it depends on what what your current goal is as a founder. Right? Like, I'm already, you know, in the thick of this business with with Clarity Flow. Right? I'm not gonna turn on a dime with with AI.
Brian Casel:I'm not gonna Okay.
Jordan Gal:I was gonna
Brian Casel:ask you about that.
Jordan Gal:How much fun would
Brian Casel:you have? No. But, like and and I'm not I'm just in this phase of of this business in my career where I I don't need but if I'm you know, talk about, like, the stair step approach, and if you're looking for your first time thing to get your very first customers paying for your very first product, I mean, there's absolutely things that you can build. You know? The other day, this guy had a had a Twitter thing that went viral that it's like a Chrome extension to to have, like, an AI prompt in any field on the web.
Brian Casel:Like, I prepurchased that, like, you know, just because it look it it looks super useful. Right? Yeah. And and, like, this guy just just got, like, the his first 10 customers as as a as an indie hacker.
Jordan Gal:You know? Mhmm. I love it.
Brian Casel:There's stuff like that. You know?
Jordan Gal:Alright. Well, we're gonna we're gonna see. Yeah. Anyway let let let's see what happens over the next six months because it's only been a few months since this really hit the scene, and we'll see what happens. We'll see what what comes next that blows our mind because we we know we had some mind blowing moments over the last few months around just how accurate and how good the writing was.
Jordan Gal:And now all a sudden, the imagery, then you'll get the voice, then you get the video, then you get, like, this artificial reality type of a aspect when all those things come together, and we'll see where we'll start.
Brian Casel:Lot of scary stuff too, you know, like, what
Jordan Gal:Oh, hell yeah.
Brian Casel:Might be used for. But, like, but and just the the pace of the I mean, we're literally in a matter of weeks going from, like, GPT three to GPT four has just been kinda crazy. And I I've been playing with GPT four, and it is definitely better. Like, clearly, the the words are better. Like, anyway.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Alright.
Jordan Gal:Well What else we got
Brian Casel:going on? Happening back back on ground level?
Jordan Gal:Back on ground level. Besides nursing my root canal and looking forward to Hawaii, this week was really busy for us. I think we talked about this experiment that we're running. We're switching to self serve free trials. That means you'd no longer have to do a demo and talk to us before you can create an account.
Jordan Gal:We did version one of the experiment in just one very small channel. Through the BigCommerce app store, you can now create an account on your own. And it's the only channel that you can do that in. So it's like this very limited experiment at first. Yeah.
Brian Casel:And only for BigCommerce.
Jordan Gal:Only for big it's just that one link from the BigCommerce app store, you can go to a page where you can create an account. So that's the first time account creation has been made public. And that has just been a really interesting learning experience because what we are finding is that having the exact same sales conversation with almost the same sales process, right, you can't launch on your own. It's not fully self serve. But having that sales conversation from the point of view where the user already has an account and has done their own exploring has changed the nature of the conversation.
Jordan Gal:They're just like, yeah, I get it. What do I need to do to get started? It's almost like they they went and they explored how our product fit their expectations or not. Mhmm. And then they kind of make a decision on their own already.
Jordan Gal:They're like, alright, I want to try. What do I need to do next? Yeah. So we've had a few merchants go live from that process very, very quickly. You know, come in, create a free trial, do a call the next day, go live later on that day.
Jordan Gal:And that's obviously we want more of that. So now we're turning it into the site itself. So at sometime next week, you'll be able to just go on and create that, and that's also part of an effort for developers to do that along with documentation. So we're just kinda moving in that direction overall.
Brian Casel:I I love to hear it, man, because it's like, you know, there are these things of, like like, in terms of, like, prequalifying sales leads. Right? Like, you wanna sort of prequalify on on price. You don't wanna get onto a a demo call if if it's completely out of their price range. But prequalifying on product, you know, getting they're they're already in there.
Brian Casel:They've they've toyed around with it, but then they, you know, then then they're ready for a conversation means, like, it's, you know, pretty close to closed.
Jordan Gal:Right. It's almost like, okay. What do we need to do to get out of your way, help you out, make sure everything's set up? It is it's one of these things that's lingering in my mind. One, I'm really excited to see what happens.
Jordan Gal:And then there's another little part of me like, why did we do this six months ago? You know? But but in many ways, we we weren't quite ready for it. We're much more ready now to be able to just, like, create account and get live very, very quickly. We have multiple people on the team.
Jordan Gal:Rock doesn't need to be involved in the onboarding. We have solutions engineers. Kinda we're more mature.
Brian Casel:Yeah. That's that's my next question is how how are you handling onboarding? Right? Like, did this change the flow? Like, what do they see as they get in there?
Jordan Gal:Well, we we got our new solutions engineer, Francisco, up to speed. So he joined. I don't remember when he joined, but pretty recently. And then there was a period of knowledge transfer from Rock, who was, you know, the architect of the system and wanted to also learn from merchants. So he would do the onboarding and he would do the implementation.
Jordan Gal:Alright. Here's this piece of JavaScript on your theme. Let's save a copy of your theme in case anything goes wrong. Just that whole process. Once he handed it over to Francisco, we now have Francisco and we have Aaron who does our customer success, and they can just onboard someone on their own now.
Jordan Gal:That has changed the nature of things. And so there's no Thursday we have an opening for an onboarding. It's like, what are you doing this afternoon? So that is just much that capability has got built up over the last few months. Yep.
Jordan Gal:So we now have people that can do demos. We have people that can do onboarding and they can kind of do it on their own in a US time zone basis.
Brian Casel:And what's like the main driver of like these trials, like, coming from BigCommerce or wherever? Like, what's the what what are they mainly expecting or searching for to to even get to it?
Jordan Gal:It's it's like everyone comes at it. Everyone wants better conversion. That's what they want. Ultimately, you like the job to be done. The actual end point of their journey is I want to convert better and everyone comes at it from a slightly different angle.
Jordan Gal:One person used fast and wanted that functionality and heard that we got it cool. The other one is looking at Bolt and decided that they don't want the pop up. They want the full checkout replacement. So they come to us. Another person is doing a search for better checkout and they come in that way.
Jordan Gal:So it's all these different angles on how do I get a better checkout and the platform has a huge impact on the customer's point of view. So people on BigCommerce don't love the traditional checkout. So they want to upgrade to like a different, more modern checkout. When we talk to some big merchant this morning on Magento, they're like, we just don't want to do any more development on our checkout. Like we just keep doing work on it and we don't feel like it's going to get that much better.
Jordan Gal:So we're ready to just go to a service that does it for a living. Makes it makes it pretty hard actually, because it's not one type of customer with one mindset. It's it's very
Brian Casel:surface level from what I can gather, what you've said, it seems like and and I know that you're getting into enterprise sales too. Yep. It seems like the non enterprise sales, the more self serve, are probably going for a better checkout. Like, that's the main thing. Like like, improve or upgrade my checkout to something much better, higher converting.
Brian Casel:Yep. And then
Jordan Gal:That's right.
Brian Casel:It's it's almost like the enterprise, maybe the play there is, like you said, like, oh, we've been on this Magento thing, or we've been on this legacy system. We gotta get off of it. We need something more modern.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. And from there, we're we're figuring out what our enterprise sales process looks like because it is a slightly unnatural sales process for people like you and I. We make our decisions ourselves. Maybe we talk to another person or two, and then we decide we pull up the credit card and we go. And that allows you to look at the site, ask some friends, maybe do a demo, maybe not, and then try the product in the enterprise world because that's so different.
Jordan Gal:You kind of have to match their expectations with the process. I don't have a ton of experience with that. Fortunately, Rob on the team does. So we're we're now kind of laying out our playbook on here's what we need to cover in call one. Here's what call two looks like.
Jordan Gal:We will not give a pricing quote until we have this information because that information has an impact on what we can do for pricing. This is how we talk about an integration cost. And where I'm really focused is in molding the product toward success of that enterprise sales process. Right now, you only have one option. That option is to replace your checkout.
Jordan Gal:And for a $3,000,000 a year BigCommerce merchant, no problem. For a $300,000,000 a year Salesforce merchant, you just can't do that. And because you can't do that and because it's so high risk, are building features to be able to be more incremental in nature. So we can say, here is one version of the checkout. It's not your main store.
Jordan Gal:You can put a link to our checkout in your abandoned cart emails and we'll prove to you that conversion is better in our checkout than yours. And then we can kind of keep moving our way up toward the main store.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I like it.
Jordan Gal:And it turns out that is where I really like to focus. I'm kind of being made more aware of this by our investors where they're like, you are doing a great job with the team and you're doing a great job focusing on the product. Don't forget about go to market and and the obsession there. And it's almost like I'm I'm realizing now I'm not as obsessed with go to market as I am with the positioning and strategy around the product itself. Mhmm.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I mean, I I definitely wanna hear more in the next, you know, few weeks and stuff at the the enterprise process. Right?
Jordan Gal:The playbook?
Brian Casel:Yeah. Like, what what do you do? Like like, the the call 1, the call 2, call 3,
Jordan Gal:and then
Brian Casel:and and I've I've had, like, inquiries that are clearly enterprise inquiries for all my products, including, you know, Zip Message up until now. And I sort of just never know what to do with them. Like, I know that I'm just gonna
Jordan Gal:That's right.
Brian Casel:I'm just gonna drop the ball on them because I don't know how to how
Jordan Gal:to Yes. That's what it feels like. Because you're like, if you don't match their expectations of the process, they don't even know what to do with you. They don't know where to go next.
Brian Casel:Yep.
Jordan Gal:So we have a bunch of calls when I get back from Hawaii to map out that playbook. Once that's put together, we can do like a session on the podcast around like, this is this is how we're doing it, and this is why call one needs to go a certain way and call 2 needs to go and call 3 and where pricing comes into play and where proof of concepts come into play and so on.
Brian Casel:And then I and, you know, then there's, like, security audits and all this crap. You know?
Jordan Gal:All all the stuff. Alright. How about you? You deeper into Clarity Flow and being out in public. So what are
Brian Casel:working on? It's out in public. I'm I always just put the natural pressure on myself to get it moving and shipped. And, you know, we're we're shipping incrementally at in in pieces. Right?
Brian Casel:It's not like one big Mhmm. Shipping day. Like, so far, we've just announced the name. We we've put a one page preview out there. But this past week so today's Friday.
Brian Casel:Like, Monday to Friday this week, I've been 90% work of my time has been worked more than that, working on marketing projects. It sort of feels good because I've been so focused on the product for so many months this year to to finally, like because I felt like our progress on marketing was sort of stalled while while I got really inundated in the in the planning and logistics of moving to ClarityFlow. Now I'm really trying to get the ball rolling on both marketing, but but keeping the foot on the pedal on the product side because we still have so much to ship. Okay.
Jordan Gal:We you still have to do both.
Brian Casel:Have to do both. And that's really that's really challenging. But I I had a tweet out today. Maybe maybe I'll turn this into, like, a regular thing where I sort of just recap the week in terms of, you know, what this is like a mental model that I've had for years in terms of managing my really small team, but it it applies really heavily right now for us, which is, like, I need every week to count. Like, we cannot every day counts, but really every week, we need to be shipping.
Brian Casel:And by shipping, I don't necessarily mean, like, launching publicly new features, but, like, there are multiple tracks that need that we need to be making mean like, high impact progress on to get to where we need to be as quickly as possible. And, like, that's, like, the website. That's, the product, getting getting these major features shipped. That's pricing, getting that out the door. And then, of course, marketing and getting getting those, like, engines up and running, getting top of funnel moving again.
Brian Casel:All those things have to happen all at the same time. So luckily, my developers have been just cranking on the product road map. One of them has been really working on the pricing updates, and there's a lot of billing logic update updates we had to make. We're really close on that. We're probably gonna be launching the new pricing in April.
Brian Casel:And then my other developer is pushing on, some he has two new features in his queue, but the one that's closest is, and this came out of a collaboration with one of our one of our customers. But, really, all of our customers need a better way to onboard their clients to Clarity Flow. Okay. Right? So so you can, of course, like, invite someone to any conversation in the product, but, like, that's still a little bit clunky, especially if it's a coach and a client.
Brian Casel:Like, they need a more direct and, like, intentional onboarding flow.
Jordan Gal:And Mhmm.
Brian Casel:And we're gonna actually set up a system where you can design your own onboarding flows for your clients and insert your own welcome videos and then automatically route them to their conversation with you or their program with you or you know? So, like and you can design that for every client. And then the other cool thing about this is and we're sort of, like, fit like, solving two problems with one stone here, killing two birds with one stone, which is part of that onboarding flow, sends them through into a page where they enable their devices, their camera, their microphone, test them out, test your level. Your browser saves that information. So, like, they're good to go.
Brian Casel:Right.
Jordan Gal:Like, this is does the user hold
Brian Casel:you through the technical onboard. Because right now, it's it's it's super easy. And and, again, this goes back to, like, one of those, like, fundamental product assumptions from the Zip Message days going to the Clarity Flow days. The Zip Message idea was, like, it's gotta be just send a link to someone, they can reply to you. Easy.
Brian Casel:Right? Right.
Jordan Gal:And
Brian Casel:it still operates that way. It still will. But when it's your client and they've paid thousands of dollars to join your coaching program, you don't want them running into, like, oh, I didn't authorize my camera correctly. Or how do how does this tool work? I need to be oriented and and properly welcomed.
Brian Casel:And I I you know, it needs to be smoother. And Mhmm. That may mean a couple of more steps for their client to to go through, but it's fully tailored for them. Right? It's like rolling out the red carpet for each client.
Brian Casel:Like, we didn't design it that way from day one. Day one, it was more about, like, quick, fast, send a link. This is like, okay. You have a serious client relationship here. Let's Mhmm.
Brian Casel:Treat it with care and give them a welcome sequence. You know?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. The the right. The it sounds like the big difference is that initially, someone who received a Zip message didn't have to be inside of the Zip message system in any way in order to benefit from it. And now is is the end user do they end up with, like, a login and password and, like, into, like, a portal, right, like, where they can find their material?
Brian Casel:They they do. And that's one of the thing we've we've always had this structure, but it was confusing for the end users. Right? So we have account holders or account owners, and they can invite team members. But then we also have respondent users.
Brian Casel:Right? That's somebody who has replied to a Zip message.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm. Okay.
Brian Casel:And they did create a username and password, but they don't actually own their own account. They you know? And then we, like, generate a password for them. We send it to them via email. And that's all, like, kinda confusing right now.
Brian Casel:We're giving them a way to, like, really tailor that whole experience and get them set up, let them set their password, let them set their camera, and then give them a welcome video and then route them to where they need to go, whether that's a conversation or a coaching program or something like that.
Jordan Gal:And then they have an account, effectively a subaccount with Clarity Flow underneath the, like, panel owner?
Brian Casel:They're still registering as a respondent user, and they they just become a contact in the in the account owner's Mhmm. Account. Yep. But now they have a login, and they could use that even if they interact with, like, multiple different accounts, they could they could still use that same login, you know. Okay.
Brian Casel:So, you know, I so that that should be coming in April. But all that has been in progress. Like, I spent my hours on that two, three weeks ago, specking it out, designing it, giving it to my developer. He's been running on that, and now I'm working on marketing. So, yeah, I don't I don't know.
Brian Casel:I mean, I don't know if you wanna jump back to something you got. No.
Jordan Gal:I I I feel like
Brian Casel:I talked
Jordan Gal:I feel like I talked for a while. I I wanna see what what initial steps you're taking on marketing that
Brian Casel:Someone asked about this on Twitter today. I wanna so I I've talked a little bit of this year about I'm moving you know, I've I've talked about how I hire contractors for different roles. But there I still have a few people who I consider to be core team teammates team members. Those are my developers. And right now, I have one marketing assistant.
Brian Casel:She kinda started as a VA, but she's she's more skilled and talented and and smart and capable than that. So she's grow she's grow she she's eager to grow, and I want her to grow into more of a marketing creator, marketing assistant, marketing manager. But, you know, she she can she can really execute on marketing projects really well, but she needs sort of training on the skills and experience in, our product, especially as we move into Clarity Flow with a whole new positioning. And so what I spent this week doing is, first of all, just completely overhauling from scratch the way that we even think about SEO and keyword research and, and and, like, the game plan going forward. So that means, like, just like, basically, I took that in house.
Brian Casel:I I I used to hire contractors for that stuff, and I and I ran into a lot of challenges, frankly, with, like, just out trying to outsource that kind of that kind of work. And I wanted to take it in house so that, first of all, me, but, ultimately, my assistant can can have that in house deep knowledge, expertise of Clarity Flow, of who our best customers are, how they use our product, and then how to connect those dots to the content that we have produced, and how we position our con our, you know, connect you know, just like connecting all these dots, we need somebody in house to to have that. So and that and that even comes down to, like, choosing which keywords we go after and which topics we write about, in which order. And so I worked on the process for keyword research, and then I also worked on the process for article briefs, like writing up a really strong brief that we can hand to a writer. And we're incorporating some AI, like sprinkled into parts of the of that stuff.
Brian Casel:I won't get into the weeds on it, but Mhmm. Ultimately, it's like deep documentation in Notion for these SOPs. I I did it myself a few times. I recorded some videos in it's still Zip Message, sending it to her, and she's gonna continue to run that, like, month after month. And, you know, and then I I'm putting a budget on it.
Brian Casel:Like, we're we wanna be producing, like, x number of new articles and tracking it with Ahrefs and analytics, and we've got processes and reports for that. She's sort of and and I'm setting up all the operations for that so that she can run it every month, and I'm putting in those hours on it right now to ultimately get you know, remove myself. She runs it. She reports back to me, and then I can spend most of my hours on product again.
Jordan Gal:So so it sounds like the the majority of the effort is around content publishing, keyword, SEO, inbound. Right? So it's nothing too out of the ordinary for you in terms of like going out and I don't know, doing like an AppSumo deal or like webinars or something too too out of the out of the normal?
Brian Casel:That I think about it is there's gonna be multiple tracks, multiple channels on marketing, but there's a few, like, core engines that we just have to have up and running or, you know, or overhauling or improving. One of them is SEO content. That's definitely a channel for us. It's it's been working pretty well for us, but we gotta we gotta perform a lot better on that. So that's that's what this was.
Brian Casel:Like, get this engine finely tuned and up and running again. And but, like, layered on top of that, like, I've I've got another outside contractor who would be running PPC ads for us. That'll probably come in the next few months. But then when it comes to, like, webinars and influencers and and we do have an affiliate program, that stuff that, like, I've I have tried last year to, like, actively push on that. And I did some webinars, did some integrations, did some different things.
Brian Casel:Like, those are all good to do, and I'm happy to do them anytime they come up. Right? It doesn't take much time or effort to to hop on a webinar with someone. I have slide decks already created, ready to go. Yep.
Brian Casel:But they are hit and miss.
Jordan Gal:Yes. Not as repeatable and steady.
Brian Casel:It it's all and it's also not as repeatable. Like, number one, like, sometimes they might drive a lot of customers. Sometimes they might drive drive none. Second of all, like, I just can't guarantee that I am going to book three webinars every single month. Like, it just doesn't work that way.
Brian Casel:Yep. That's right. So, yeah, there there's that. But, you know, so there are those other things that I wanna, like, layer on. I I I would also like to attend more conferences where coaches are hanging out.
Brian Casel:That's another thing that I would like to
Jordan Gal:attend to. I was about to say, and I just realized that I I have to go in just two minutes. Yeah. But in I know in our world, it's very true that the top people in the industry, everyone looking at, everyone's paying attention to, and everyone is pretty closely monitoring what they're doing, what tech they use and so on. So for us, a few large landmark lighthouse customers are a breakthrough.
Jordan Gal:Right. So I look at your situation. I have to assume that aspiring and coaches in whatever successful degree, they're looking at the most successful people in the industry. And if you can get some of them onboard, that will that will tip things over.
Brian Casel:100%. That that's definitely on my mind. It's just getting to more conferences where not only coaches are hanging out, but really influential coaches are hanging out. Mhmm. Or influential people or products that influence coaches.
Brian Casel:And there's Yeah. There's a bunch of you know, because I've I've only attended conferences that, like, I I'm interested in hanging out with.
Jordan Gal:You gotta go beyond. Yeah.
Brian Casel:You know, founder summit. But, like, yeah. I'm I'm starting to open up to, like, other conference ideas.
Jordan Gal:You will you will not be too surprised that in venture world, that is acknowledged as so important that startups that raise money will just pay those customers. I know for a fact, our competitors offer large amounts of money, like use our product that we will give you like $100,000 things like that. Because those are so it's like it's like, would you spend $100,000 on a really successful marketing campaign if you've raised $30,000,000 Yes, you would. So you know what the most successful campaign is? A really successful customer that loves you and talks about you, and you could use as a logo.
Jordan Gal:So it's kind of very understandable that that it's done.
Brian Casel:100%. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Yo. Yo. I got a boogie. I'm not around next week. I'm at the pool with my Mai Tais and a tan.
Jordan Gal:That's where I'm at on Friday
Brian Casel:night. I better not see any tweets from you or DMs or any work happening.
Jordan Gal:I mean, there might be some shit posting. There might be some shit posting. It's fine. Alright, brother.
Brian Casel:Have a
Jordan Gal:good weekend. Thanks for listening. Have trip. A
