Hangovers & Chaos
Bootstrapped Web, two weeks in a row. We're back. How's it going, Jordan?
Jordan Gal:I love the streets. What's happening, man?
Brian Casel:Yeah, man. Alright. We're Friday. The the fun thing with a little programming note on Bootstrap Web, I don't know if anyone has noticed or not, in the in the last several episodes, you know, we we've basically moved to like no editor. Yep.
Brian Casel:We're just we're just recording and I'm actually using my friend my friend Colin's SaaS called Elitu to we're using that to record and, like, really rapidly edit. And by by that, I mean, like, we're not editing. It's like just it just slaps on the the music on the front and the back, and it integrates with Castos, our our podcast host. And so that actually lets me, like, publish it today. Like, we'll record this, and within a half an hour after that, I'll just have it published.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Last week, I was psyched about our episode, so I tweeted something about, like, you know, great episode, something like that. And then twenty minutes later, you just ping the link. Here you go. It's done.
Jordan Gal:Yep. Oh, that's didn't used to be like that. That's nice.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And even, like, for, like, for the first few weeks of that, I was like, well, maybe I'll just, like, publish it next week like we always do.
Jordan Gal:Right. On schedule.
Brian Casel:And then I was like, why am I making a task for myself next week? I could just press publish now. So Yep. Yeah. That's what I'm gonna do.
Jordan Gal:I like it. Alitu, alitu.com.
Brian Casel:Yes. Yeah. Colin and and I are in a new mastermind group together, couple other folks, and, yeah, that's been good.
Jordan Gal:Nice, man. Well, it is Friday. It's the April. So April's almost done in a few days.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:How are things going? How was the week?
Brian Casel:Going good. It's been you know, it it continues to be this this chaotic mess as as we were talking offline just now. You know, it it it's a really weird thing right now because, generally, things are good. We're having actually a a really great month. I talked in the last episode about how, like, a competitor shut down, and that's been sending us a lot of customers.
Brian Casel:And, we also just, like, got lucky. Actually, on the same day as that, like, a a, like, an affiliate had a webinar. Somebody that I don't even know who they are, but they have a large audience. They've been sending us customers. And the general news and vibe coming from Clarity Flow is still generating, I think, some buzz that, you know, we're getting a lot of customers and and a lot of interest and a lot of contacts and, like, requests and messages from folks.
Brian Casel:Like, you know? And it's an interesting mix. I can get more into it in this episode, but, like, it's it's I don't know. It's it's like a if it's it's a more hungry customer than than what I've previously dealt with. They're trying to do more things, which is good.
Brian Casel:Like, that that's exactly what I was aiming for with this rebrand and the reposition and everything. But at the same time so that's all good. But then over here, internally, with me and my small team, we are completely swamped with projects and complexity. And and frankly, there there's still confusion because we still have two websites. We have Zip Message and Clarity Flow.
Brian Casel:And I'm hoping that by next week, we will be fully redirected to Clarity Flow, meaning zipmessage.com should very soon start to redirect to clarityflow.com. That's actually the easiest part. And clarity flow dot com is all ready. All the pages are ready. We've already set up all like, migrated all the blog posts and all the pages and created all all the new stuff.
Brian Casel:That's all done. It's the accounts. It's it's the app that we need to, handle. We've been my developer super complicated. And it's it's even more complicated than you might even imagine.
Brian Casel:You know, the I know folks listening to this might might think like, oh, you could just do this or that. Like
Jordan Gal:Right. Right. Half sympathize and half are like, what's
Brian Casel:the big deal? Just redirect this and move this thing over. It's it's not. It's there are publicly shared links that are out there with conversations that are in the that are ongoing, that use the zipmessage.com domain. We're changing domains on accounts.
Brian Casel:We're we're setting up systems so that accounts can continue to use the legacy domain or use the new domain. We're using sub domains with accounts in them. But then even more complex is we we also have this, like, viral flow where you have where you can, like, share a link. That person registers themselves as a respondent, but then that person creates their own account. So all these flows have to keep working, and we're just working through that mess right now.
Brian Casel:And we're and we've been working on that for the last, like, month and a half, and we're right at the tail end of it. And and then, of course, it's all working locally, but then on staging with the new domains and and passing tokens around, and it's just, oh my god.
Jordan Gal:So you're you're in one of those moments where you're doing a lot of work that customers don't really feel and doesn't move the needle on revenue, but you have no choice but to finish it.
Brian Casel:Exactly.
Jordan Gal:Is it a matter
Brian Casel:of Yeah. And and that's the the other painful part of it is that is that my most senior developer is the one working on this.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm. Instead of other things.
Brian Casel:So she cannot be working on any of these other super important features that were you know? I I do have three other developers who are are working on features, but, yeah, she's all tied up.
Jordan Gal:Do you have any perspective yet? I know you're not out of it, but, like, if you could do it over again, you would ignore it and kick the can down the road for six months while like, you know, what what would you do or, you know, people listening that might be either mired in or fearing going into it?
Brian Casel:Well, I talked about this a few weeks ago when I announced the fact that we are rebranding, that I was reluctant to even rebrand. You know, like, for
Jordan Gal:all this stuff, all what it meant.
Brian Casel:Like, for a while there, I I did know so if we rewind to, like, the 2022, fall winter twenty twenty two, by that point, I had done enough customer research to know like, alright, we are going all in on coaches. Yep. But I was not yet sold on the idea of changing from Zip Message to a new name. And I didn't love Zip Message, I but was like, I just know how how much of a mess it would be to change to a new domain name. Yeah.
Brian Casel:And I just wanted to avoid it at all costs. And and that prediction is definitely coming Well,
Jordan Gal:you kinda knew that it was gonna mean pain on the other on the other end.
Brian Casel:Yeah. But, you know, by early twenty three, I knew that was still strategically the right choice to change the name and go with the new domain. And I I do really like Clarity Flow. It it has really sunk in and I feel good about it. And especially with the new website, which looks amazing and Yep.
Brian Casel:Everything. But yeah. And I feel like we're at the tail end of the of the most painful part, which is, like, get the new website launched. And, really, I hope by next week, it's like like, as if we can get ZipMessage in the rearview mirror as as much as possible, I feel like we're just about there. But, yeah, it's it's been I don't know.
Brian Casel:I don't know if I would do anything differently. It would be like because I I had planned a few different approaches to how how to actually transition the domains. Like, my original thought was like, we're just gonna set a date and give everyone plenty of warning and just say like, hey, on this date, your accounts domains are all going to start using the new one and the old one will not work anymore. And again, I know people are listening like, oh, why don't you just redirect the old to the new? Uh-uh.
Brian Casel:It's not that. Yeah. We we decided on on a more technical, seamless approach, and that was more difficult to build. And then, you know, mixed in there, we had a a pricing change. I talked about that.
Brian Casel:And and now we're starting a mobile app and and all this other other stuff. So, yeah, it's it's a lot.
Jordan Gal:Yes. I I wanna hear about the mobile app piece, you know, in this episode on what that what that means. I would be worried about it technically, but what what else does it mean when it comes to working with Apple, publishing, the limitations, the restrictions, the dates, the reviews? It's like a new channel all of a sudden.
Brian Casel:It it is. I'm I'm very new to the whole thing. I've never built or released anything on the Apple or Google App Stores. So I'm learning as we go.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Okay. Okay. I I wanna come back to that because I I I feel like I can just keep going. Like Yeah.
Brian Casel:Alright. What what do got on your end?
Jordan Gal:Necessary, all that. Okay. I have a quick funny story for you. So last week was the funding announcement, and that was a roller coaster high. You get the attention and the love and people reaching out and text message.
Jordan Gal:I'm so happy. You're the man. You know, you feel amazing. So it's not surprising that by Monday morning this week, I was I was hungover emotionally. Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:And I woke up Monday on the wrong side of the founder bed. I was gloomy, depressed, pessimistic. You know, I was in a bad place. It it it happens.
Brian Casel:Okay. Because I get there every Yes. Three times a week. So like, what what do you think that this was, like, a rational thing? Like, you can point to something like, oh, this or that happened or or just like, don't know.
Brian Casel:Like, things are going good, but I still feel like shit.
Jordan Gal:No. I get I get triggered by certain things. I generally get triggered by external stimulus. Something I see, a text message, a bit of news. And I my problem, the thing that I've worked on for many years that I'm much better now than I was, you know, five or ten years ago is that it's often driven by envy.
Jordan Gal:It's driven by someone else's good news, and it's not jealousy. I don't wanna take it away from them kind of a thing. I just want that from myself also, And it usually will trigger some other pattern of memory or something. Right? So, like, I'll hear a little rumor that a company that I'm I'm familiar with in our space got a big acquisition offer, and it was from Shopify.
Jordan Gal:Like, that's a perfect bit of soup for me to deal with. Right? It's all these things mixed in, and and something like that will put me into a dark place. It just happens.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:So I got, you know, I got the therapy. I got the breathing. I got the con you know, awareness, mindfulness. I'm better at it, but you're human and it happens.
Brian Casel:I know that I'm not the only one who resonates with what you're saying here, but I absolutely 100%. I mean, especially the, you know, the the jealousy, the the the envy. Yeah. You know, because that's the thing with this with doing what we do plus being plus having these, like, circles of of friends and and Yep. Who have you know, what's really frustrating about it, I think, is that, like, you know, we all know firsthand that we we all have like more or less similar businesses.
Brian Casel:We run software products. Most of them are SaaS, subscription based software products. Yeah, different industries, different spaces. But technically, it's software. People pay a monthly fee for the software.
Brian Casel:Like, we're all doing the same. Yes. Yes. But but it but, like, every person is on a completely different timeline and trajectory.
Jordan Gal:Yes.
Brian Casel:And and it's just like, I could look at one person and they got, you know, zero to x MRR in twelve months. The another person, very similar business, similar product, went from zero to the same x MRR in three years or five years. Or like and it's just like,
Jordan Gal:Yeah. We try to make sense.
Brian Casel:Which No. The fact timeline you're on. You know?
Jordan Gal:I I had this experience over the I don't wanna be too detailed, but a few years ago, a friend of mine and and myself were having a fun competition. When when Kartik was really growing by like $20.30 k MRR every month, and it was like the most fun, he had a similar business going. And it we had like this fun game because I would go, Our MRR would be higher than his and back and forth. And then what happened with Cardhook, we know Shopify put a stop to it, and he just kept going and then got acquired and rode off into the sunset. And it's like, alright.
Jordan Gal:It's not like one person. It's the factors that we want to matter don't matter nearly as much as we think or want them Whether it's skill, hard work, like all this stuff, we just can't really control all of it. So a lot of it feels very strange from, like, an envy point of view.
Brian Casel:I will say
Jordan Gal:on our we're on our path. We're on we're doing our own thing.
Brian Casel:You know, one thing I started to to notice about my own habits lately, maybe, like, on on a more on on a brighter note Mhmm. Is I I don't know if it's it's because I'm I'm just trying to, like, remove a lot of that stress and anxiety from from my life. Right. Or it's just, like, boredom, and I'm getting into new things. But I'm I'm just finding myself, like, just enjoying and spending more time in in in, like, nonbusiness stuff.
Brian Casel:So for example, like, I've just, like I kinda renewed my love for for following sports in the in the past year or so. I you know, growing up, I've I've always been into sports, but then in in adulthood, I sort of put it down for a while. And Mhmm. Now I'm, like, actually, like, watching Mets games and Knicks games, like, every night of the week and and really following it. And and, like, also the podcast I listen to, like, I would say more than half of them are non business now.
Jordan Gal:Yep. Yep.
Brian Casel:Whether it's sports related or music or comedy or and and I think a lot I think I think part of that is replacing and eliminating just too much business consumption. Yeah. Yeah. And But, mean, also a little bit also, like, replacing some, like, news and politics stuff. I also historically have been really into that, and I've come
Jordan Gal:with that.
Brian Casel:And I've put that down, and I've just kinda lost interest. And, again, just replacing that with, like, just more enjoyable things, like like following sports Yeah. And and getting into, like, exercise and strength training and stuff like that. Like, I wish I had more time for hobbies, like like music and stuff. But Mhmm.
Brian Casel:At least on the stuff that I'm gonna do anyway, like listen to podcasts and and hang out at night, you know. It it's it's definitely helped, like, I think in a healthy way, have some balance in my life. Like, are the things I actually enjoy that are not related to business.
Jordan Gal:I think it's great. And we should all take acknowledge that we have a lot of control over it. So I'm with you. I think a few years ago we talked about I backed away from so many business podcasts because it was like, it was just one envy trigger after another. It's just exhausting because the nature of those things is that you highlight accomplishments, which is cool.
Jordan Gal:But
Brian Casel:Yeah. I would So should all stop tuning into our podcast now and go I don't
Jordan Gal:think podcast is not an envy trigger. Okay?
Brian Casel:Yeah. Exactly. This is like the opposite. Right? Yeah.
Brian Casel:This probably makes people feel great about their business.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. There you go. That's why people listen. Yes. That's
Brian Casel:what we're here for, folks.
Jordan Gal:Yes. Yep. Yep. You're welcome. So Monday morning, I wake up like this, and the funding announcement creates activity.
Jordan Gal:People who are looking for a job, potential customers, investors who wanna get to know the company. So you gotta capitalize on it. So you say yes during that week to a lot of calls the following week. And then you wake up on Monday and you look at your calendar and you're like, my god. Gotta talk to 18 people I don't know this week.
Jordan Gal:So one of those people was a VC at, like, 9AM on Monday. So I'm in I'm in my bad place. I get on a call with this VC, start off the conversation perfectly nice, start talking. Ten minutes in, he goes, Jordan, how's your mental health? I was like, oh, homie saw right through me.
Jordan Gal:Yep. And I was like, man, I'm alright. So from there, we had, like, a better, more real conversation about the market and the challenges and what we need to do. It it so it went from like the charade that I was not up to. I was not up to the charade.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm. And then, of course, I hang up and I'm like, damn, that was a bad call.
Brian Casel:Brutal.
Jordan Gal:Brutal. And then, like, 03:00 that afternoon, I get an email with one of the single biggest opportunities of my career ever. I'm like, goddamn, this freaking game
Brian Casel:is a roller coaster, you know?
Jordan Gal:Yep. Yep. So all good now. It's Friday.
Brian Casel:Amazing. Yep. Yeah. I mean and and just to you know, like, again, like, we're we're coming up on almost almost there, like, in striking distance of a of a pretty good MRR milestone. And I can't help but think, like, I might I like, maybe among my friends, I've I've, like, set the record for, like, period of time it took to reach this milestone.
Brian Casel:But
Jordan Gal:yeah. What are you gonna do? Are you gonna celebrate? You gotta celebrate a little. You know?
Brian Casel:Maybe. Yeah. It's not it's nothing crazy, but
Jordan Gal:it's at least it's Yeah. Whatever. It is what
Brian Casel:it is. That's how
Jordan Gal:I was saying too. I was like, yeah. Series a, but I'm stressed. And then I I got some good advice from someone who's like, yeah. But if you're not gonna celebrate something like this, then what are you doing?
Jordan Gal:At least go go have fun. Totally fine. I hear you. I hear you.
Brian Casel:Last time you were talking about a little bit, go to market. So I don't know. You wanna get into that?
Jordan Gal:Sure. So the big the big thing okay. Here's how I'm thinking about this, and I I wanna dive into more detail around what we're doing on one side. I think last time we talked about two different bets. It feels apparent that we have an opportunity in the enterprise, big merchants.
Jordan Gal:We are building integrations for Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Magento, and Commerce Tools. That is where some really big merchants live, 100,000,000, 500,000,000 and up type brands that we all know that are way too sophisticated to be able to squeeze themselves into a Shopify platform. So our biggest competitor has kind of stumbled and beaten up their own reputation up there. And there is no other real legit checkout product up there. And it feels like that's a big opportunity.
Jordan Gal:So we are heading in that direction. We hired a great biz dev person, Rob, who joined our team, who has a big network in those environments. And all of a sudden that's opening up to us.
Brian Casel:And again, the as I remember it, what we talked about was, like, for those enterprise clients, the the value prop that they see with going and and working with with with Rally would be, like, we are on this legacy system, and there's a lot of complexity that goes back many years. Yep. But we need we need a modern checkout experience, and we can't just, like, rebuild our whole store. This, we can customize and integrate without rebuilding everything. Yes.
Brian Casel:Is that like the the main message?
Jordan Gal:Yes. And our development team is busy enough that we don't want them banging their head up against payments, security, anything having to do with checkout. So if we can outsource that to you, we get better results on the conversion and average order value and our development team doesn't have to think about it anymore, then all of a sudden we're we're interested.
Brian Casel:Nice.
Jordan Gal:Okay? So that's that's one of the two big bets. The other big bet is something that I I have been working on for years, and that is to become the checkout for the composable headless ecosystem. Now the reality is there was a lot of attention and energy and investment put into that concept of a headless ecosystem. So a bunch of commerce enablement investments were made for headless front ends, headless back ends, all all this headless infrastructure.
Jordan Gal:Unfortunately, that ecosystem has not come together the way people wanted and hoped. It just hasn't. It just is what it is. The reputation of the word headless got banged up because Shopify merchants tried to do it and Shopify not only is not meant for it, but has zero interest in it succeeding. And so a lot of people came back with their tail between their legs saying, woah, headless isn't worth it.
Jordan Gal:It's too complex. So that the reputation of going headless has been beaten up. So people like myself and our company and those companies were moving over to a new phrase called composable. It kind of means the same thing, but sometimes branding matters in this terminology.
Brian Casel:Sure.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. So one of the reasons that the ecosystem didn't come together is because companies had difficulty coordinating with one another. So everyone's got their own interests and their own incentives, and it didn't come to we want it to be the the the checkout that connected the all the front ends and all the back ends. And if you want to go headless, you start off by saying, alright. I'm gonna use Rally as my checkout, and then from there, I can easily connect to any front and any back end that I want.
Jordan Gal:Great concept. Might still happen, not happening right now.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:So what we did is we grabbed two partners. We grabbed PAC Digital on the front end, which is a headless front end. It's fantastic. It's built on Vercel and Next. Js and gives a merchant a ton of freedom and flexibility around their front end, gives their engineers a bunch of flexibility on access to what's happening on the front end, and at the same time gives the marketing team a lot of like WYSIWYG, drag and drop, reusable stuff, don't need code.
Jordan Gal:So it's awesome. It's as if you took a storefront, like a Shopify storefront, and ripped it away from the platform and let it exist on its own as a solution that only handles the front end.
Brian Casel:That's for like the design and marketing and like the the layout of of the homepage, the category pages, the product pages, that that kind of stuff.
Jordan Gal:Exactly right. Promotional pages, landing pages, bundles, design, where to put reviews. So yes, the the shopping experience on the storefront.
Brian Casel:Got it.
Jordan Gal:Then we linked up with a backend platform called Swell. So it's Swell. Is. It is a great product, a great API for e commerce. And what we did is we're basically holding hands, all three companies, and we are launching a bundle so that merchants can go composable.
Jordan Gal:But instead of having to do it themselves, these three companies offer you a front end, a checkout and a backend. So it's everything that you need all for one price with one sales process with one conversation basically. So we are going to launch this landing page and a campaign called Go Composable. And it I don't know of any concept like this that exists on in ecommerce. I'm sure it exists somewhere on the web.
Jordan Gal:I'm sure you've seen product bundles, but this is three companies with three different products. Saying if you're a merchant and you wanna go headless, go composable. We will do it for you. You won't have to do any, like, real coding. We'll integrate the integration's actually easy.
Brian Casel:That's what I was actually gonna ask was like, okay. So, like, how technical does a customer need to be to buy this go this go composable package? Right? Like, is it I mean, is it aimed at the, I don't know, like, the typical ecommerce store owner who who who would just go sign up for, say, a Shopify or something like that, where it's like, it's all done for them out of the box? Or but then then how do you balance, like, between it being no code, easy to use versus, like, sort of the point of composable is, like, you want the customizable, you know, customization.
Jordan Gal:Yes. It it depends on the merchant. There's a lot of different points of view based on the merchant needs and their business and their payment processing ability, all that stuff. So merchants will project onto it their needs, which is a bit tricky because it's tough to nail down a a, you know, narrow ideal customer. Because one one merchant will come to you and say, we are a high risk product and Shopify payments won't let us on.
Jordan Gal:And because of that, we're on Shopify and we're paying an additional half a percent on everything just because we can't use Shopify payments And we're sick of spending $10,000 a month on nothing and having a separate subscription app that we spend another $10,000 a month on. And we're kind of sick of it. We we just want we wanna get away from that situation.
Brian Casel:So that's It's almost like your customer is like it it it's like, if you have any sort of Frustration.
Jordan Gal:You know? Complexity, frustration, limitations that you're sick of. Like, there's a lot of frustration in Google e commerce and Shopify.
Brian Casel:But I mean, like, you're not just a bread and butter t shirt shop because you could just take any e commerce thing off the shelf.
Jordan Gal:That's right.
Brian Casel:But you but you have you're selling something that is unique. And not that because there's tons of of unique things that are that are sold in so many different ways. And so, like, that's your customers. Like, if if you just don't fit into the box that the that the that the big popular shop of, you know, shopping carts put you in,
Jordan Gal:then That's right.
Brian Casel:This this that's composable. Right? Like, that's what it means to
Jordan Gal:That's right. Or or you're a Shopify Plus merchant. You're doing $3,040,000,000 dollars a year and you have a development team and you are you'll be getting frustrated by the orchestration of apps that you need to make your business run. So so the the goal of this is to the goal of this really is to get into as many conversations as possible to learn exactly what this pocket of demand wants because there's definitely demand. So it'll it'll it's gonna be an interesting experiment.
Brian Casel:The the partnership is super interesting because it's like it it it seems like it's it's really and and it's crazy that it's like a three way too. So it's
Jordan Gal:like Yes.
Brian Casel:It it just seems really mutually beneficial, and and it's like you you each solve the gap for the other two. Right?
Jordan Gal:That that's right. And everyone wants to make it work, and that does not mean it's easy to make work. So we have logistical issues. So we've got Slack channels, and, you know, our company is going to handle the sales process to have the initial conversation. So this might be, you know, an epic failure or it might be a spectacular success, but it's like this is bet number two.
Jordan Gal:Right? Non enterprise. This is to figure out if there is really a pocket of opportunity in between the Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce world of merchants that don't and can't go to Salesforce. Right? They're not gonna go do that, and they kinda have nowhere else to go but Shopify.
Jordan Gal:And anytime you have a platform with a million customers or whatever the hell they actually have, there's 20% that's just not happy. It's just nature of it.
Brian Casel:How how much of an investment is this? Like, is it is it easy enough just to kinda offer this bundle, or is there like a, like like a v one of this partnership before getting deeper into it? Like, how does that look?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. So we're looking at it incrementally. Phase one is let's launch this landing page. Let's push it out through our channels. Right?
Jordan Gal:It's also kind of interesting that three companies market it.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:Right? Because all three have an interest. So so, yeah, I I like the potential of it. So that is But it's
Brian Casel:just like any other product. Right? It's like prove every step of the
Jordan Gal:Yes. That's right. So it's not don't overbuild. So we have integrations with these partners, but it's not to the point where someone logs in and hits one button and everything magically unfolds. We know that we can get there.
Jordan Gal:We know that it can be one click. You get accounts at all three. You have access to all three products from inside of a dashboard. We know that's just software. We know we can get there, but it makes no sense to build that.
Jordan Gal:So right now, it is launch it, bring in the demand, understand what people are looking for. Because there's a very big difference between a $10,000,000 a year Shopify merchant that wants this and a $500,000 a year merchant that wants it. Like, one is self serve $100 a month, and the other one is custom conversation $50,000 a year contracting. Mhmm. So it's tough to tell exactly where that will go, but I'll definitely report back on.
Jordan Gal:Hopefully, by this time next week, it is up. It'll be at gocomposable.co.
Brian Casel:Okay. Awesome. Yeah. Was gonna ask if you have that domain. Yeah.
Brian Casel:Sweet.
Jordan Gal:Yep. We have a domain, so it's a little a little pressure. At worst, you go there and there's nothing there. And a few days later, there will
Brian Casel:There you go. Yeah. I guess I could talk
Jordan Gal:a little
Brian Casel:bit about this mobile app thing. This has just been a okay. So in terms of, like, why we're doing it now, I feel like we're we're late to this. We we've had the request for a better mobile experience, especially when it comes to recording messages on on mobile. Okay.
Brian Casel:We we've had that request almost since the very beginning of of Zip Message. Right? So, like, well over a year ago. Because it's a mobile app, I just kept pushing it off, pushing it off, saying, like like, promising customers, like, yeah, we're gonna get there. But, like, for now, it's usable on mobile using our mobile web app, all responsive.
Brian Casel:And that's true. You you can use, you know, Clarity Flow completely on mobile in a mobile web browser. But it's true that recording and finishing and uploading your recording when you're on mobile is not as smooth as it could be. And the other interesting limitation when you're on mobile is, like, we have audio only messages in in the app. You can you can just do a mic only recording.
Brian Casel:But on mobile, that's actually a really clunky experience. Recording with your camera is actually easier than doing a mic only on if you're on a mobile device. So so I kept pushing it off for literally two plus years just because I I knew it's like a whole big project. And and there's a lot of unknowns because I've never built a mobile app before. But then as we got more and more into selling to coaches, the the requests just became more like, just more
Jordan Gal:of them.
Brian Casel:Okay. So
Jordan Gal:it felt more pressing. Is it the coaches that want it or they want their clients to have
Brian Casel:Both. Both. Yeah. And there's just a lot of coaches who are like, almost all of my coaching conversations happen on mobile devices. And and that's and and that's a variety of reasons.
Brian Casel:Like, some some people just want that ability to be able to be on your phone and be out and about and and talk Yeah. In your messages. Right?
Jordan Gal:Like, you don't have to
Brian Casel:be sitting
Pippin Williamson:on the
Jordan Gal:It elevates the experience and the commitment from everyone when you use it in a in in an app.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And we also have more, like, sort of, like, performance coaches. So we see, like, guitar teachers and some, like, sports coaches. There's, like, a taekwondo coach. There's a some yoga.
Brian Casel:So so, like, with that stuff, you kinda want a mobile device to be able to record a a video of what you're doing. Okay. So so I and and then the Volley shut down that competitor shut down, and and they were heavily mobile first. So all those customers, like, made the requests for mobile, like, come in, like, 10 x that what it was.
Jordan Gal:Okay. So the the company that shut down had a mobile app? Yeah. So they were almost looking for parity there?
Brian Casel:Yep. Okay. Yeah. So the the big ones have been, like, mobile and payments. And we're working on both of them.
Brian Casel:And and mobile is the one that is in active development now. So so basically, about two, three weeks ago, I I went to my agency, my my Indian dev agency, and and they're like half Ruby on Rails, half mobile app developers. So they they have a lot of good developers, like, ready to go. And so, you know, brought on one. And and so now so now I have a total of four developers plus myself.
Brian Casel:One is just the mobile app developer. The other three are on Rails, but but one of my Rails devs is now working on the APIs to talk to the mobile app that we're building. Okay. So is I can get a little bit technical here because I know some people are technical because I'm learning on this. I, you know, I I can build a SaaS app in Rails, but I've never built a mobile app for iOS or for Android before.
Brian Casel:So the the big popular frameworks for keeping it all in in obviously, you could use something like Swift, which is, like, just for iOS. But you wanna use one of these frameworks that you can have a single code base and deploy both an iOS app and an Android app. Right?
Jordan Gal:Okay.
Brian Casel:And the two provides that. Yeah. The two big options out there are React Native, which I think is Facebook's thing or Meta's thing, and Flutter, which is Google's thing. Okay. We are using Flutter.
Brian Casel:And I actually was not very familiar with that at all. Really neither of them before, but that's the one that that my dev agency just specializes in, and they just got plenty of devs. And they so then I I started, like, reading up on it and learning about it. And it, you know, it seems like a pretty solid platform. I I think the React Native is is what's more popular.
Brian Casel:But Flutter seems to do basically handle all the things that we need to do, and they've got their own, library, ecosystem. So, you know, we're we're using library components for things like recording and and bunch of other stuff in there. So that was a that was sort of an easy obvious decision. Just go with what they you know, they they've built hundreds of these apps using that. So there's gonna be some differences between Apple and Android, but but the goal here is have a single code base that we can deploy them both at the same time.
Brian Casel:And then the another technical or design decision that went into this was, you know, just figuring out, like, okay, exactly what problems are we trying to solve with launching a mobile app? Because, again, like, the app is our existing Rails web app is usable on mobile. Right? So Right. Performance?
Brian Casel:Is is that We we don't wanna just rebuild our entire SaaS app for on on a mobile app. Like, that's first of all, that would just be insane in in terms of time and investment, and it's just not necessary. Like, you can literally access and use every function in our in our web app on mobile. But like I said, it's it's the recording experience that is difficult on mobile.
Jordan Gal:Okay. And so, like Anyway, what though can you strip out for certain features inside of a native app?
Brian Casel:Okay. So what we're gonna do and this might change as we as we get further along, but but it's working out so far, is the mobile app is going to be a shell for our actual web app. So all of it, like like, when you navigate around the app using our mobile app that you'll download from the App Store, it will look and function and feel exactly like our Rails web app because we will literally be serving it in like a web view within the mobile app, except when you click the button that starts a new recording. That's when we will, like, slide up a new, like, mobile only experience for for the recording experience. Like that, you know, so that the the recorder piece is what's native to the app.
Brian Casel:Okay. And everything else in in our web app, from the conversations view to the to the account settings to, you know, even, like, the login form and all that stuff is served by our Rails app into a web view. And that's, you know because there's just no sense in, like, rebuilding
Jordan Gal:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:And and even just, like, building, like, APIs to serve all that stuff to to a mobile app. We don't have to. We could just serve a web view.
Jordan Gal:Right. You get a hundred hundred thousand users on it. You'll you can reconsider exactly how to prioritize that.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And and, I mean, all those views are already designed responsive. You you know, they have responsive layouts already. It's So not like I need to go in and, like, refactor the front end to to make it work. Like, all that has has been that's been the design since day one.
Brian Casel:So so so now it's just a matter of, like, building a a couple of small APIs just to for the recording piece to interact, and the mobile app developers putting the recording piece together. And then the the other problem that we're solving is mobile notifications. That's the other so these are the two requests. This is why people want a mobile app that's not just our web app is number one, they want a smoother recording experience, easier to do audio only recordings as well. And then the other one is they don't want like, we already do email notifications.
Brian Casel:We don't do, like, mobile SMS push notifications. So they wanted that. I know there are there are ways to do that from a web app, but, since we're doing a mobile app, like
Jordan Gal:Right. Then you have to go purely SMS, and it's not the same thing
Brian Casel:as Yeah. So so we already have notifications built into our app. Now we're just adding the option to get them via email and or SMS push. And that's basically just the two things that we are solving with this, which actually pares down the scope quite a bit. Like, we're already, I would say, more than halfway built on this thing, and we're only about three three weeks into it.
Brian Casel:It's gonna be at least another month or two before it's, like, really polished up and ready to start to get up there and into the app stores. But it's it's coming along pretty quickly. And I and I think that by the summer, we'll be able to finally launch this and and just have that that very big check mark checked. Like, yes, we have a we have a first class mobile app experience that Right. Your clients can use.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Do you see that impacting pricing or conversions? Like, can you charge more for that? Or is
Brian Casel:I've definitely have it? Well, I I'm not gonna, like, put it into any specific tiers. It's just gonna be available to everyone. Okay. But I've absolutely had messages telling me, like, hey, like, I had to cancel because mobile sucks or or I didn't sign up because you don't have a mobile app.
Jordan Gal:I need that.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I I've definitely had multiple, messages like that, which which, you know, which also pushed me to to to bump it right up there to the top of the priority list.
Jordan Gal:Right. That that's helpful in in the prioritization. Yeah. People telling you directly, no. Can't sign up.
Jordan Gal:You don't have this thing.
Brian Casel:Yeah. It's and I'm still learning on this front, but it's also interesting to sort of navigate Apple and and Google. So, like, you know, with the app the Apple App Store, my base understanding, and I'm still just in the middle of getting into this now, is, like, we can't sell anything through. So we're not selling this app. It's a free app to download on the App Store.
Brian Casel:Right? We are not doing like in app purchases. Mhmm. We're it's and I I was get I was telling my developers, it's the same as a typical SaaS app that also offers an iOS client. Right?
Brian Casel:Like, so, like, we use HelpScout for our customer support. Yep. HelpScout offers a mobile app that I use all the time.
Jordan Gal:Sure. That links to your account.
Brian Casel:It links to my account. I didn't buy it from the App Store. I didn't subscribe to Help Scout through the App Store. I subscribed through my through their SaaS. Right?
Brian Casel:It needs to be like that. Right? So I I believe that the way that you do this or the way that most most SaaS do this is you just offer the app and you just don't link anywhere to the purchase flows from the app. You you have to purchase
Jordan Gal:through the website. A free user to a paid user inside the app in any way.
Brian Casel:Correct. And there might even be some weirdness, like, you can't even like imply Yeah. You you can't even like tell people that you can go buy them, right? Like but anyway, that's and so so there I was talking about those web views. Like, we're gonna need to probably, like, hide or disable links that point to, like, the the subscription and the upgrade flows and stuff like that.
Jordan Gal:Okay. Well, look. You weren't busy enough and didn't have enough going on. So adding on a mobile app makes perfect sense.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, and I I brought on a separate developer to to do the bulk of that. Yeah. But we, you know, we've and then just the other thing I'll I'll mention real quick is we finally launched something that we should have launched a a long time ago, and that's this new a new client onboarding flow. We we launched that last week or a couple days ago, actually.
Brian Casel:You know, from a product standpoint, this is another another one of those interesting things where it's like the shift from ZipMessage to Clarity flow, the priorities change. Right? So from day one, I designed the product to be to to really emphasize, like, fast, easy easily shared, record, get a link, share it to someone else. They can get it. They can sign up, respond, get their own account.
Brian Casel:Boom. Like, super fast and friction frictionless, gets and and get the gets that viral loop going. We still have that. But the speed and the ease of sharing also is it creates a problem. Right?
Brian Casel:Like, if you're a coach and and and you have a client and they just received this link from you and they sign up, like, yeah, it's really fast and easy for them to reply. But then it's like, okay, do they have a password? Do they have a login? Do they need to go create their own account?
Jordan Gal:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:And so we sort of had some flows around that, but but it was a little bit confusing for the for our customer's client. So we moved to a system that actually slows down that process. And and we do add more steps in the process to to just kind of roll out the red carpet for your client. Right? So now Mhmm.
Brian Casel:We just launched this this system where you can create an invitation and then fully customize the onboarding flow for your client. And and you can configure this for each individual client separately. Right? So you can say, alright, I've I've got this new this new client, Jordan. I'm gonna I'm gonna send him this link.
Brian Casel:But before I send that link, I wanna configure alright. First, I'm gonna want him to create to to set his own password. Then it's gonna send you to the page where it will test out your camera and your microphone. Make sure those get authenticated and tested out and good to go. Then I'm gonna send you to a welcome video, where you can watch my custom welcome video just for you, or you can, set or or else I'll use one of my template videos to show you.
Brian Casel:Or I'm too busy to create all that stuff. So, Clarity Flow has provided me with a with a generic unbranded welcome video that I can show my clients. And then as the final step in the onboarding, I can decide where to send you. I can we can create a new conversation for you and send you into that. We can send you to an existing one, into a coaching program, into a custom URL.
Brian Casel:So, like, this whole flow like, it's multiple steps, but it's just being more intentional and like asking a client to just like click here, set your password, get all set up, rather than just like, boom, you're in. Like, all right, now go figure it out, you know?
Jordan Gal:Different yeah. Different nature of the relationship.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. If I just sign up for someone's course or, like, whatever, however they frame it, I expect an onboarding experience.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And it's like
Jordan Gal:Not the most lightweight communication possible.
Brian Casel:And and again, it's not it's not so much like a it is a big new feature. Like, you can, like, design these onboarding flows for your clients, but it's not the kind of thing where it's like, oh, we're adding a new capability. It's just like, we're really optimizing this flow because it is so important that they are successful. Right? So, like, our our customers, they need to feel like they have control and and customizability over what their clients see.
Brian Casel:Right? They don't wanna just give them this link and hope hope that Zip Message or whatever will will take care of it. But, like, they wanna know exactly what their client is going to experience, and they wanna have that that fine tuned control. They wanna give them a welcome and, you know, we we took cues from from what our customers were actually doing on their own. They they were all creating their own onboarding flows where they would teach their clients how to use Zip Message or something.
Brian Casel:So like Oh. Now now we actually, like, make that, like, a built in first class experience. You know? But like and then if if their clients are successful in a in receiving the invitation, getting themselves onboarded, and now they're they're fully oriented and and they can engage, like, that makes them more successful with the coach, which makes the coach a more successful customer, keeps them longer, and yeah.
Jordan Gal:Are are you finding any time to do, marketing of these these types of features?
Brian Casel:Oh,
Jordan Gal:I feel like you yeah. I mean, look, it's not it's not the worst thing to just basically be getting inbound and rushing to get those people what they want. Ideally, they're the tip of the iceberg, and there are a lot more people behind them.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And if you
Jordan Gal:serve them properly and build features for them, then you're focused on exactly the right thing.
Brian Casel:I mean
Jordan Gal:And there's more behind them.
Brian Casel:That's the thing that's like in the that that is like a a cloud that has been hanging over my head for the last four or five months, which is like, we had a bunch of marketing stuff happening, and all of that has been on pause since we've been going through this transition. I do have a marketing assistant, and she keeps busy with with some things. But I've I like like you said, like, I've been so busy with everything that I talked about on this episode, all these different projects that I have these marketing projects all lined up that I just don't have the bandwidth to to put on them. That's like developing more articles. That's like getting PPC going.
Brian Casel:That's Mhmm. A lot of this stuff is like dependent on the new website being becoming fully launched, which Right. Hopefully we should get there. But like, it's it's also just bandwidth. I it you know?
Brian Casel:And and I would like to be doing more. There's there's more that I've had planned to do, but I just don't you know? And even that that competitor shutdown, like, that came out of nowhere. I did start to do some things like like hunt for contact information to do more outreach campaigns to those people. But, like, I'm getting a lot of organic inbound anyway as it is.
Brian Casel:I don't know.
Jordan Gal:It's And and MR is going up.
Brian Casel:It is. And and it's the it's it's kinda interesting how when you raise your prices, your revenue grows. But, you know, who knew?
Jordan Gal:But, yeah,
Brian Casel:that's that's been seeming to work.
Jordan Gal:So Okay. When when did you raise prices? I'm just trying to think of a marker out in the future on when we can look back on like, alright. On this date, prices changed.
Brian Casel:April 3. Okay. So just about one month ago. So about so almost four weeks ago is when the new prices went live, and two weeks ago is when the those free trials started converting into payments.
Jordan Gal:Yep. And I guess you'll see where where churn goes alongside
Brian Casel:that. Yep.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Cool, man. I think that's it
Brian Casel:for me. Think think we covered enough.
Jordan Gal:I think we covered. It's Friday. It's finally starting to warm up. We are going to something artsy tomorrow in the city. We're gonna see Carrie Brownstein talk with an artist.
Brian Casel:Oh, sweet.
Jordan Gal:Yes. Something outside of work and kids.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah. Think we're gonna we're we're trying to have a low key weekend because we've been traveling so much, but I think we're gonna try to go see that Mario Brothers movie this weekend.
Jordan Gal:There we go. I'm I'm I'm keeping it high brow. You're keeping it Mario Brothers. That's fine. We'll switch.
Brian Casel:Yep. My daughter's softball game, and that'll be it.
Jordan Gal:There you go. Nice, man. Well, you know, everyone, we're thinking about your mental health. Yes. I hope you have a great weekend.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Alright. Later, folks.
