Founder Shadowing
Welcome back, everybody. Another episode of Bootstrap on the Web. Mister Brian Castle, how are you?
Brian Casel:Hey. Here we go. Friday, May 19. I think it's kinda fun to actually say the date now.
Jordan Gal:Because we publish it half an hour.
Brian Casel:I'm gonna publish it later today. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Let me rephrase. You publish it like half an hour afterwards.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I I just throw the music on it and click publish. That that's all we got now.
Jordan Gal:There you go. I like that. I like that.
Brian Casel:Yeah. So so we've got another another good one. We're we're just kicking around ideas of what to talk about. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Got a few things. I got some yeah. So I had an interesting experience this morning. Well, yeah, between yesterday and today. Shopify comes out with a big announcement.
Jordan Gal:Big long post on LinkedIn, on Twitter, the comms engine revving, the whole deal. The big announcement is Shopify did a study and concluded that their checkout converts 36% better than the other platforms, BigCommerce, Salesforce, and Magento specifically called out in the study. So immediately the audience gets split in half. The super pro Shopify boys are, oh my god. Our platform's the best.
Jordan Gal:And then everyone else in the market is saying, hold on a second. If you're gonna make that big of a claim, like, maybe show the data. Maybe tell us if you paid for the study. Maybe tell us who did the study. So then it, you know, creates some controversy.
Jordan Gal:And I I saw some opportunity in it because, obviously, it's talking about Checkout. It's talking about Shopify. And we've talked about this before. There is a thick layer of irony in the fact that we are selling a Shopify like checkout to merchants outside of the Shopify platform. Right?
Jordan Gal:That it's beautiful. It's a beautiful piece of irony Yeah. That we effectively allow merchants on those platforms that they called out to have a great checkout that behaves similarly in terms of the ability to recognize shoppers that come back. So so I did my own retweet thing and lo and behold, it's it's generating leads.
Brian Casel:Yeah. There you go. So yeah. I mean, I'm I'm looking at your tweet. Like, you sort of, like, called it out, and you sort of end it like, your call to action at the bottom of your tweet is if you're a merchant on Commerce Cloud, Adobe, BigCommerce, there's an easy way for you to get an incredible checkout without needing to replatform.
Jordan Gal:Yes. Don't go to Shopify.
Brian Casel:Get on Rally. Yep.
Jordan Gal:Yes. That's that's right. So I thought
Brian Casel:And that and and I mean, just looking at that, like
Jordan Gal:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:Okay. Like, there there's some information in there, but it's clearly a promotional tweet, which most people think might think that, like, oh, that's that's self promotional, and and is is that even worth doing on Twitter? But you saw some business from it. Like, what?
Jordan Gal:Yes. So it is it's inside baseball is what it is. It's not actually promotional.
Brian Casel:Right. It
Jordan Gal:it is talking about a piece of news that our audience knows about. Right? Everyone the the merchants, everyone who's on Twitter and LinkedIn that talks about ecommerce, the agencies, definitely the people and the executives who work at those other platforms, this is a topic of conversation. So I was able to take it for granted that they knew what I was alluding to, that it wasn't self promotional. And the key part of that was the honest analysis.
Jordan Gal:The honest analysis is one, it is completely self serving and you cannot believe a word these people say. However, the truth is everyone knows their checkout is better than BigCommerce, Magento, and Salesforce. And I I I saw that opportunity to come off as credible because I was being a little critical but also honest. And a few minutes after I sent up the tweet, I got a DM from a massive enterprise merchant on Salesforce saying, hey. I wanna talk.
Jordan Gal:So, you know, stirring things up on Twitter.
Brian Casel:You know, it's an it's incredible. I mean, we were just talking about this. Look. Like, a lot of business actually gets done in the DMs of Twitter. You know?
Brian Casel:Mhmm. And it's it's happened it actually happened to me recently. Like, I think a a listener of this podcast I'll I'll just be open. So Carter Briden, founder of Approximated, is this cool little tool for, like, mapping custom domains to your SaaS if you're offering that. And that's actually a a feature that we're building right now.
Brian Casel:We're in the middle of of the technical issues around that.
Jordan Gal:Cool. We do that also. It's pretty pretty common and not not a fun piece of technology.
Brian Casel:Pretty common, and it's very, very complicated to get right and to and to handle it the right and and so Clever. Yeah. So so it's one of these things where I mean and and, you know, just to be fully transparent, we don't know which way we're gonna go yet or whether we're gonna actually use a service like that or or build it in house or or what. But it's just one of these things where it's I I think he was listening to the podcast and DM'd, and, like, now I'm aware that his company exists. And it's actually something that my team and I are closely looking at as a as a possibility.
Brian Casel:You know? So, you know, like, these these things, like, it it helps to to be public about and actually make these announcements or or just share your observation on stuff even if it might come off a little bit promotional or just I I like, to me, it's not really promotional. It's more about, like, being public. Because I think that there's this tension. I I don't know if you
Jordan Gal:Okay. Okay. I wanna get into this because I I don't
Brian Casel:know because I, you know, I I try to be as public and and outward of on the work that I'm doing as possible, and I try not to come off as promotional. But I know that sometimes it probably does come off as promotional. So there's there's always this tension of, oh, should I is that too salesy or too self promotional? Should I even tweet that, or my or my followers gonna find this interesting? You know?
Brian Casel:But, like, I think that too many of us, especially the more technical creative founders, tend to shy away from from being public because it comes off as too self promotional to a fault, to a point where it's like, you actually have something really cool and really interesting and informative to talk about. You know, put it out there. Yeah. You know?
Jordan Gal:It is I look. I think you do it you do it the right way according to what I think is the right way. You you work publicly, and that creates touch points with you as an individual, your company, your product, and the features. And marketing is all about those touch points. You don't actually know which one is gonna work.
Jordan Gal:You don't know what happens inside of a company, inside someone's mind that the one weird message that you just happen to put out there is gonna be the one that triggers them to say, I think it's time I reach out to them. It's impossible. So you do need multiple touch points and working publicly creates those. I think a lot of people have I know I have difficulty. I'm assuming a lot of people listening have difficulty is there is this certain tone in modern one to many communication.
Jordan Gal:Like, I'm by myself in a room writing a post on LinkedIn, hitting publish, a bunch of people see it. There's a tone that used to be like a boring business tone that like as soon as you started writing for a business, like, went into like this very, like, hokey, non conversational tone. Now the tone is just boisterous. It's just wait till you get a load at how incredible this thing is and the team is so incredible and the growth. And that's such a turnoff.
Jordan Gal:It must work to an extent because people just keep doing it. Maybe they're just defaulting to it.
Nathan Barry:But I don't I don't
Jordan Gal:want I don't want my company to sound like that, and I definitely don't want my myself to sound like that. It's like it's freaking embarrassing.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I I guess I guess they're going for, like, creating, an aura of of success and and whether it's true or not. Me, that's just not interesting. And, like and and also just the act of sharing and being public about it, like, obviously, I want to get customers, like but but I don't do it for the purpose of, like, oh, this is a sales channel that I'm trying to double down on.
Brian Casel:I do it for the purpose of, like, just sharing my work because I am interested in in sharing the work, but also seeing the work of what other people are doing. So I I just think that it's people like me who I'm super curious about, like, how people how other people operate, how they create, how they build. Like, I'm fascinated by that stuff. So I try to share what I think other people like me would want to see.
Jordan Gal:Right. I I don't know if either if either of us are right. Right? The I'm definitely hurting my business by not being boisterous and and, like, you know, bragging enough. And you are also but we, you know, we gotta play this game the way it makes sense to.
Brian Casel:I also like, and I also never have a clear sense of, like, okay. My personal followers, like, who follow my personal Twitter and, I guess, people who listen to this podcast, I I I mean, I know that there are actual customers in in that Venn diagram. Mhmm. But I think the vast majority are probably not customers, and they're just following another founder or creator or builder for you know, that's what they're interested in. So Yeah.
Brian Casel:So they're more interested in, like, the behind the scenes case study of of it all.
Brennan Dunn:Right.
Jordan Gal:Right. But then yeah. But they they are marketing touches at the same time. Right? There there is an element
Brian Casel:to There there's still the element of, oh, they and they happen to work at a company who might be
Jordan Gal:Like, I just I just went to LinkedIn real quick to just see if I could find one of those posts, like, quickly. And, like, the third posted It's, all there. Right. I'm not gonna name the company. I I love this founder.
Jordan Gal:We're, like, friends. But the post is tomorrow is a big day for us at x. Okay.
Brian Casel:I think that's probably where ecommerce must be very different from Oh my god. SaaS in general. Like, because I'm I'm just of not plugged in at all Maybe that's
Jordan Gal:the
Brian Casel:shop It's not in my feed. I'm not I'm not in ecommerce.
Jordan Gal:So I don't know. Yeah. The Shopify ecosystem requires this. You have to be seen as on on the inside. Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:And everyone wants to be on the inside, so that's, like, what creates the the desire there. Right? So tomorrow's a big day for us at x. We're sharing something that has been in the works for over a year. We think it's gonna change the way folks think about x.
Jordan Gal:Excited to share the news and how we came to this place tomorrow. Stay tuned.
Brian Casel:Stay tuned.
Jordan Gal:Oh my god.
Brian Casel:Watch this It's it's too much. Yeah. Too much. Yeah. But you know, actually this side this is related to an idea I want to bring Yes.
Brian Casel:Transition. This concept of founder shadowing.
Jordan Gal:Okay. Okay. I you're gonna go with does marketing work? Well, I I wanna I
Brian Casel:wanna get into that too. I feel like that's the theme of, like, the the whole year of this podcast. But anyway True. Alright. I've been thinking about this, like, as a thing I was actually gonna go to some of my friends and just ask them if this is a possibility.
Brian Casel:Don't know what form it would take. Alright. The idea is
Jordan Gal:What do mean by by shadowing?
Brian Casel:Okay. Just to see like, I think that I would benefit from literally being on the inside of someone else's company for, I don't know, like an hour a week, or maybe maybe just call it, like like, a one month stint where where I'm checking in a couple times a week. And if it okay. Let let me tell you where this
Jordan Gal:is coming from. Okay. Okay. I'm into this. Go ahead.
Brian Casel:I am I'm well connected to many other founder friends, and we have really transparent conversations about business and about how we operate. Yep. I also follow podcasts. I'm also on Twitter. All of that stuff and that that all has, like, varying levels of, like, how deep and how transparent you can go.
Brian Casel:But still, it never gets below the surface level where it's like you actually see what the die what the dynamic is, what the operations look like, what the processes look like. You know? You don't get a firsthand look into how somebody else operates their team operates ships a ships a feature, does sales.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. You might get a really good You
Brian Casel:could talk about it. You could describe it Yes. But you're not seeing it.
Jordan Gal:Even then okay. So what you're what you're saying triggers a lot of stuff. Even if you do get a good look, you get a very narrow look at the problem that you're talking about right now. How do you do customer onboarding? Help me.
Jordan Gal:And then get into that.
Brian Casel:And you're only getting a look based on what the other person is telling you. And as as well intentioned as they might be, they might be describing it in detail, but it's still their perspective on it. Mhmm. Alright. So because okay.
Brian Casel:So I got my this started from thinking about, like because I've been looking at our process for scoping, building, shipping features in our software product. Right? And we're constantly trying to improve our processes internally. And think recently, we we've made a few tweaks in terms of how I communicate with my developers, how we handle each feature, how we use pull requests, how we do testing, how we ship it. But for me, in my personal experience, I have this is this, I feel, is like a blind spot in my experience because I've been technical my whole career.
Brian Casel:I started as a web designer, front end design, HTML, CSS, Did a lot of it with WordPress back in the day. And then fast forward a bunch of years, and it wasn't until, like, 2018 that I really started to learn back end Ruby on Rails and full stack SaaS development. But once I got to that point, I only learned the software development cycle and workflows and stacks for my own purpose to build my own products and bootstrap my own products. I was I've never personally been part of a software development team at another company. I've never been hired to do Ruby on Rails development or any sort of soft I I've been hired as web designer, but not as a software developer.
Brian Casel:Those are two pretty different things.
Jordan Gal:Yep.
Brian Casel:So I don't know how, like, larger companies actually actually run product. Even even the role of product manager, like, or head of product, which I am in my company.
Jordan Gal:Right.
Brian Casel:I don't know what that role actually looks like in a more established software company.
Jordan Gal:A lot of that is the special sauce of larger companies that are successful.
Brian Casel:Yeah. But even smaller companies, I I'm I'm more interested in in companies of my size or maybe just slightly bigger. Right? So I've got a team of four developers plus myself. I would love to see what it actually looks like on the inside of a SaaS company that's maybe 10 people.
Brian Casel:Right? Yeah. Small small development.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. You know? I think you would love to see how Jessica runs our product.
Brian Casel:I would absolutely love like
Jordan Gal:How how do you how do you do this? How do you manage all this? I don't I don't understand.
Brian Casel:And and I've got my whole my own process of what I what I think works for me and my small team, and I've been doing it for years.
Jordan Gal:Right. Doesn't mean you adopt the other person's system.
Brian Casel:No. But but like, I've only figured it out on my own. And, you know, and I don't have much to compare it to. And that's the whole point of like the idea of being able to hop in and like shadow. And I think it would, obviously, you would have to have a close friend relationship in order to do that.
Jordan Gal:You have to overcome some shame and some things that are embarrassing.
Brian Casel:That and and privacy issues and Yeah. That's right. You you know? So, like, somebody that you really trust, but and and it's like, I I've got enough, like, on my plate. I don't I don't know when I could realistically fit this in.
Brian Casel:But the but the just the thought in general is, like, if you are developing a a new feature for in in your app, maybe, like and and you're doing, like, calls with your team or you're reviewing pull requests or or you're chatting in Slack or whatever it is, however you communicate throughout that process, like, I would love a firsthand look at that just for a limited window of time just to see what that looks like. And, like, what you know, I I see this discussion. Like, what was the outcome of that review? And then and then where did this go from there? And, like, how did you move the ball from from this point in the field down to the end zone?
Brian Casel:Like, how you know, I just and I and I really believe that everyone's company and their team dynamics and their communications and their operations are wildly different. I Yeah. You know, we can all talk about, like, oh, these are the tools to use. These are the processes to use. This is the the industry standard workflows.
Jordan Gal:Best practices.
Brian Casel:But I think that the way that it looks on the inside is wildly different from one founder to the next.
Jordan Gal:Yes. I'm And I think that we all have, like, a
Brian Casel:ton to, like, learn just from sharing notes and just seeing it firsthand.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. We we so yeah. We all do this on a limited basis. I I think the most interesting part of this concept to me is the things that you would learn that you don't expect to learn. Like, I often go to the Slack group with the Portland, friends that I have, that all run software companies, and I usually go there with a specific problem.
Jordan Gal:I say we are struggling to do, let's just say feature announcements. Like, does anyone have like a good process or blog post or something? And then it'll be, well, we actually do this. What we found is if we do it this way, then if we also put in the in app message and, you know, and you get to learn about one specific thing. But
Brian Casel:And and and I have the same exact thing with with my group. Right. Right. But people look to each other. But still even that is like, okay.
Brian Casel:Well, some one of our friends described their experience and wrote it up as a response to your question, and that's their, like, recap from their perspective.
Jordan Gal:Their interpretation of memory also.
Brian Casel:But I bet that if you were on the not that that person is, lying or misrepresenting, but I bet if you saw that firsthand in the company, you'd pick up on so many details and so many dynamics between the team members and their interaction and how it all comes together that maybe that person's just not even aware of. Mhmm. It's it's like it's just shadowing. It's just like seeing, you know. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:It's like, okay, act natural.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:It's Monday at 9AM. Do do what you normally do.
Brian Casel:And, you know, I I just think this idea might not even be feasible at all, obviously. But, like, I just I just think that it would be, like, a beneficial exercise. I certainly would get benefit out of it. I'd I'd imagine that a lot of other founders would too. You know?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I I have I have confronted this issue recently around our go to market function. And then when you become fixated on learning more about something, it's amazing these things that you start to connect and then reach out to people. And then it's like you realize that you were like color blind. That you were like, Oh my God, what was I doing?
Jordan Gal:At least for us it happened from a narrowing our ICP focus. And then all of a sudden, everything became obvious. We're like, oh my god. Our our this is wrong. It's not it's not meeting the expectations of this ICP.
Jordan Gal:And so no wonder we're having trouble between this step and that step.
Brian Casel:Yep.
Jordan Gal:And then you start to then you start to reach out to people and say, can you help me? How do you do this? I know you're an expert in this. Can you jump on a call with me? And then you start to learn about that that area in a different way.
Brian Casel:Yep. Yeah, man. Let's get into that. What what are you Okay. What are talking about?
Jordan Gal:So over the last few months, we have been running a few experiments. I think I I think I talked about it here as, like, bets on the table. We had a bet with SMB. We had a bet with headless, and we had a bet with I'll use the same terminology that I used back then, which was enterprise. And if there's any mid market.
Jordan Gal:Exactly right. Exactly right. Back then we called it enterprise and that's right. And so it feels for us very much like the time for experimentation is done. We we have our info and we have our conclusion.
Jordan Gal:And that conclusion is to zero in on this mid market ICP that is on those platforms. Right? Magento, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Commerce Tools, SAP, and some some big commerce larger ones there. And as soon as we did that, when I looked over at our go to market function, every step. What we say in our outbound emails, how we respond to them, what the next step is in the process.
Jordan Gal:Is it called a demo? Is it called a consultation? All of the things have to be lined up to meet the expectations of the people you're trying to sell to. It all of a sudden looked chaos. One thing made sense for self serve.
Jordan Gal:One thing made sense for enterprise. One thing made sense for sales driven. The other thing made sense for, you know, commit to the product and start a free trial. It was all over the place. And the clarity of the focused ICP made that very obvious.
Jordan Gal:And so I started reaching out to people. Someone at a company that we work with that I really admire as their go to market leader, I reached out to her. We had a few conversations. We might work together at like advisory basis, but I learned a ton. Right?
Jordan Gal:There's so many things, that seem obvious in hindsight, but then when you learn from someone else, it like hits you the right way and you're like, oh, I forgot about that. So a lot of it feels like I'm relearning lessons from Cardhook. One of the things that we were really successful at in Cardhook was the psychological aspect of our sales process was on the money. We made people want to work with us. And we did it through the process and through confidence and some of it by accident and some of it on purpose.
Jordan Gal:So when we switched from free trial to demo, but we didn't call it a demo, we called it apply to work with us. And then we took that premium position and people were like, that they were begging to work with us, but they were qualifying themselves to us, not the other way around. It's much easier to sell that way.
Brian Casel:Yep.
Jordan Gal:So with Rally, know, when you start off, like, are desperate. It is hard to hide. You're like, yes. Just come on the freaking platform and work with us and tell us give us some feedback. We need, you know, these first customers.
Jordan Gal:And we still have a bit of that residue of desperation, of over eagerness. And so that go to market leader that I spoke to helped like, hey. Don't forget about the psychological aspect, especially when you're selling to larger merchants.
Brian Casel:Yeah. It's counterintuitive. Right? Like, it's it's early stage, so you the the instinct is to, like, remove barriers. We just wanna increase the lead flow.
Jordan Gal:Right? Whatever you want. Yeah. Yes.
Brian Casel:But but you still need to sort of like add barriers to to to kind of funnel into, these are the perfect people.
Jordan Gal:That's right. And qualify and make sure you separate out the people who are ready to buy versus who's just talking. All these different things. So then I spoke to someone else who's a VP of sales type. And then of course he recommends this book that I have on my desk right now called Founding Sales by Peter Kazanji, if I'm pronouncing that right.
Jordan Gal:I think he actually spoke at a microconf Vegas a while back when we were there. And I was like, oh, sales driven. You know, that sucks if you don't have endless years of inbound like we do. And now I'm regretting that mindset and reading this book and kind of like revamping our go to market process. So overall, it's just felt like as soon as we focused in on the ICP, everything started to become obvious.
Jordan Gal:And now I'm like back in like learning mode. I don't know if we're gonna end up hiring a VP of sales type or if we're gonna run this on our own first
Brian Casel:and then This term this term ICP, like, for those
Jordan Gal:Ideal customer profile. Yep. So all the things that make up your ideal customer. Size, you know, buying decisions, geography, demographics, culture Yep. Revenue, all the stuff.
Brian Casel:Are you, are are you zeroing in on that right now? Are you sort of, like, looking at multiple personas of what that might look like? Where where are you at in that process?
Jordan Gal:We are zeroing in much more than we have over the last year. Over the last year was, hey. If you're on a platform that you we have an integration with, let's talk.
Nathan Barry:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:And we needed the first cohort of customers. We needed feedback. We needed revenue, all that stuff. And I you know what? What's happened to us trying to say this the right way.
Jordan Gal:We have customers and they pay us. Right? Like, our average contract value is relatively low because most of our customers are the ones that we caught early on and we're just like, whatever, man. Just pay us whatever the hell you need. We need we need people in the system.
Jordan Gal:And now we have more confidence so we're more strict on pricing. But overall the average contract value, it's not that big. And over the last two, three months as we've started to build integrations for these bigger platforms, we're starting to work with much larger merchants and the average contract value of the proposals that we're sending out is, you know, ten, twenty times as large as the customers we have right now. And that pretty quickly starts to dawn on you like, hey, we should be it's pretty obvious what we should be doing here. We should be gearing everything in our go to market toward these far larger opportunities.
Jordan Gal:Because, you know, signing one customer at a $100,000 a year, it just I mean, you you grow a lot faster and a lot easier and a lot a lot better in many ways, especially if there's an annual contract, in place. So that feels like the obvious way for us to go in in this environment in VC. Like, to get to series b, we are going to need to prove our ability to find, talk to, and close those customers and then get them to make referrals. Like that, the repeatability of doing that with 100 k contracts is that is the surest way for us to raise series
Brian Casel:b Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:And to build a company that has very reliable revenue with people in annual contracts. Yeah. Makes sense. You know? So so you that is a very different sales process than a self serve, someone that comes into the BigCommerce app store and clicks on a button, starts a free trial, and then communicates with us and says, hey.
Jordan Gal:We you know, we're ready to talk. And the average contract value there is, you know, $20,000 a year.
Brian Casel:Yeah. How do you op how do you think about, like, the just the slow nature of that sales process? Obviously, it it it's fantastic once you have, like, volume where you have, like, you know, many leads through the funnel. And, like, at at any given week, you've got leads at different state like, closing every week, but but each one might have taken months. But in the early stages, it's so it's so slow of a process that like, how do you how do you stay sane?
Jordan Gal:So so so it was very important for us to identify mid market and not enterprise. Because enterprise, you know, fortune $500,000,000,000 retailers, that sales cycle is twelve to eighteen months.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And we we
Jordan Gal:are not gonna focus on that. We'll talk to that merchant. Sure. But it's
Brian Casel:almost like a balance of risk. Right? Because it's like you you derisk in a way because you're it's it's a higher value per customer. Right? Like, higher higher revenue opportunity.
Jordan Gal:Right.
Brian Casel:Within But but then like the more time of the sales cycle, like that adds risk.
Jordan Gal:Yes. The the important thing to us was that we were comfortable and our investors were comfortable. And really when I say that it's really just the people on the board. That's who's like really, really involved. That's another thing I'm learning.
Jordan Gal:You know, the people who gave you money are interested and they're reading your investor updates, but they're not involved the same way that people on the board are. So as long as we are comfortable and the board is comfortable with that risk of revenue not growing the same way over the next six months as a sacrifice and investment toward a healthier version of growth, then it's cool. That's why you raise money, you have a few years money in the bank because it allows you to not think about how do we grow revenue next month, but how do we get this thing to become a well oiled machine eighteen months from now that adds 100 ks a month in annual revenue. So there is risk. But I think as long as we go mid market, what we're finding is that those customers are somewhere in the sixty to ninety day range from the time they start talking to us to the time they make a decision.
Jordan Gal:So that's that's doable. We can do that.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Now I wanna take this part of the conversation, transition it to you. Everything I just talked about is sales. Yes. Very little is marketing. And I I wanna stop talking.
Jordan Gal:I want I wanna hear where you are on marketing these days, and then I'll in on what is happening
Brian Casel:in the different things that we could dive into. I think one that's kind of on the marketing side, really the only active project that we have going right now, we're gonna do be doing a lot more on marketing later this year. But the one thing is is figuring out our our s SEO strategy. SEO content. Like, we know that what the what the strategy is.
Brian Casel:It's just how are we producing it? How are we executing it? So I ran a fun experiment this week. We're in the middle of it. My my marketing assistant and I, we we're taking one of our article briefs.
Brian Casel:So so we've already, like, built a a really good process for building out a really strong brief for a new SEO driven article. And part of that leverages, like, some ChatGPT stuff. Some of it is, like, our our own knowledge of the topic and the keyword research and all that. So we've got this really big detailed brief. We we've been producing a lot of them.
Brian Casel:We have them all kind of queued up in Notion. Now the question is, like, how do we turn these briefs into quality articles? 2,000, 3,000 word articles. Okay. And and I I also this we're in a strategy here where it where volume actually does matter.
Brian Casel:We need to we need to grow our library of content. And I I really start I'm starting to believe that, like, it's a little bit ridiculous to do it the traditional way of just hiring a writer for every single article without without acknowledging or really starting to embrace ChatGPT and AI in this process. And so just to start to figure this out, we're running an experiment. The first brief in our in our list, let's hire a writer for that, and let's produce an AI version an assisted To compare? Of the same article.
Brian Casel:Yep. Okay. Yeah. So so to so we've been doing it for the past week. My really, my my assistant has been driving this whole project.
Brian Casel:She came back with her findings today. We we got the draft back from the hired freelance writer, and we've got, like, a first pass of of building the same article using the help of ChatGPT. Both need work, but we both agree that the GPT route is go is actually the more promising route for us, not only for the efficiency, but also for the quality, believe it or not.
Jordan Gal:Like Okay. I was gonna say given the drawback and the ratio of quality to drawback or
Brian Casel:just straight straight
Jordan Gal:up quality?
Brian Casel:I I hate to say this, but it's the it look. This is just the reality, and it's gonna become even more the reality in the next next few months and years. I mean, the there are just it it is just harder to hire out a pure writer and really outsource it. So Mhmm. Number one, if you need to do volume, like the you you gotta keep costs down.
Brian Casel:That that's one. But even if you are spending more for a more expensive, experienced writer, you still run into the issue of, well, that person is not in my company. They're not talking to my customers every single day. They don't know the nuanced use cases for our problem and solution, and then how those relate back to the topic that they're writing an article about, and all these different, like, connections. Right?
Brian Casel:So you sorta need somebody in house to to make those connections. And that's that's what my marketing person is is for. She's she's sort of like our in house person plus myself. But then you get into, like, okay. Well, if we're gonna do, like, this volume of articles, like, we we can't afford thousands of dollars per article.
Jordan Gal:Oh, it makes it makes it impossible. It it makes it a risk. That's the issue. It makes it such a huge risk that you have to then weigh whether or not you wanna invest in SEO.
Brian Casel:Yes. And and the thing is, like, it it's also not exactly like just press a button, get an AI written article done. Right?
Jordan Gal:It's That's right.
Pippin Williamson:That's right.
Brian Casel:That what what we are doing this week is we're figuring out our process for in a workflow for Aliyah, my assistant, to to take a brief. Well, first, she, like, builds the brief with the help of AI her own knowledge and experience of it, and then she builds it out piece by piece. Intro, the next section, the next section, then going back and having it rewrite and change the tone and inserting references to this other article and and then re and so it's a whole it's a whole process and then tweaking the prompting. And and we're learn and she's actually doing a second pass now. Like, oh, I I think if I tweak the prompting in this way, we're gonna get a better result.
Brian Casel:So she's experimenting with all the all this different stuff right now. And we're just dialing in our ChatGPT assisted article production process. And we're actually building really a whole new skill set within the company and and a new process and a new competency. And I and I think that more and more SaaS
Jordan Gal:Yeah.
Brian Casel:Either are doing this or will be doing this very soon. Like, that's how you're gonna start to think about production of content is like, is somebody with a deep understanding of how to manipulate ChatGPT to get the results that you need from a business perspective.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm. This is this is the bicycle analogy. It does not replace SEO work and writing. It just makes it go faster, better, more efficient.
Brian Casel:Yep.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Very, very interesting.
Brian Casel:I mean, we're we're also still I also really liked this Twitter thread from from Nathan Barry this week. He he sort of outlined what ConvertKit has been doing with their brand customer stories cycle where they they interview a customer Mhmm. Turn it into a really great podcast episode into a YouTube video. They they go above and beyond with, a photo shoot and a video shoot, and then they turn it into more stories. So we wanna get into that with with coaches, and and we have a lot of coaches in our network now who we who we should be interviewing and turning into real case studies and interview and and podcast interviews.
Brian Casel:So, like, that's gonna be the more traditional content stuff that we can pull quotes and stories from into our article production with the help of, again, ChatGPT. So it's like a lot of mixing and matching there.
Jordan Gal:Well, I I think you hit on I don't know what to do with marketing.
Brian Casel:But going back to, like, yeah, that question of, like, alright. What are we think how are we thinking about mark like, there these are just, like, engines and and operations that we should be doing to to grow the brand and grow the top of funnel traffic and stuff. Ultimately, I I do think I I've another funny experience happened this week
Jordan Gal:Okay.
Brian Casel:Which made me start to solidify my hunch, which is, you know what? It's 90% product. It's 10% marketing.
Jordan Gal:Overall, in terms of, like
Brian Casel:Overall, in terms of success, in terms of conversions, in terms of growth. Obviously, you this is not 0% marketing, but it's I think that it's so much more about the product and the problem you're solving and who you're solving it for and how well you solve it. And everything else is just periphery. So, like, what what happened is I'm
Jordan Gal:gonna challenge you on that for just a second, though. Because I think I think maybe the success of the company, that's a good way to look at it, Or the ability to convert people into actual revenue. But people have to know about products. You you gotta get them into the funnel Of course. In order to convert them.
Brian Casel:Yes. That I think that is where that's the role of marketing is is to grow.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I just don't I just don't know how to I don't know what works. But, like, there
Brian Casel:If look I think that I think that the way that a lot of us think about marketing and projects that we take on internally and stuff like that, I there is it's not that this stuff is, like, not worth doing and not having these gaps filled, but it matters so much less than we think it does. And I'm talking about stuff like onboarding emails, nurture emails, even onboarding experiences that I I'm a I believe that this stuff is important. But one thing that I noticed this past week was, like, we had a whole bunch of emails queued up and sending out to people who are within their trial period that were completely wrong, still referencing Zip Message, like, pointing to things that are not even there anymore, not even talking about our new features. We we haven't spent time reworking all that stuff for the Clarity Flow stuff yet.
Jordan Gal:Okay.
Brian Casel:We still have people signing up and converting every day. And I don't know and it's somewhat and and it's and once I discovered that like some of these, I can't believe people have been receiving this email. It's, like, totally wrong. You know?
Jordan Gal:Shame.
Brian Casel:And I'm like, yeah. It's, like, part shame. Part of it is, like, I actually did fix it, and then that fix didn't save in in the email tool. I don't know. But Yeah.
Brian Casel:But, like, you know, then then it's like, I'm not saying I'm gonna, like, kill these emails, but they they obviously do need to be fixed. But it's also, like, how much of an impact and how many people are actually reading this stuff anyway? It the people are still making their way to the to the purchase form and and buying, and and we still are having a a great month in terms of growth. So it's like
Nathan Barry:Yeah. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:I mean okay. So I I I think that's true. They don't But I mean, look, we're we're
Brian Casel:not in the promised land yet. Like, obviously, we still need to grow the top of funnel. That's where marketing comes in. That's why we're we are investing in SEO. That's why we are investing in affiliates and influencers and
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I'm having a lot of trouble with the difficulty in measuring attribution to marketing because it's just money goes out and you're just unsure of what comes back. It is it is because it is disconnected from the conversion process. It is not ever they read a blog post, clicked a button to create a demo and turned into a customer.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:So I I have difficulty continuing investment without knowing what the hell is happening. So I had this strange experience this week. You know, I'm I'm in cost conscious mode. My mindset is let's make sure every month I look at these big expenses that are outside of labor, outside of salaries and make sure that they justify themselves every single month. And if not, I should consider cutting it.
Jordan Gal:Right? Because I don't wanna cut people. But if there's anything that's floating out there that's $3,000 a month or $5,000 a month or $10,000 a month that isn't doing its job and we don't need it, then I I should not just let it go for six months and then cut it. I I should be vigilant. So this month, SEO came into my, you know, into my view.
Jordan Gal:And I said, alright. Here's how much we're spending. And I go to our director of marketing and I say, Elizabeth, I'm thinking about cutting this thing. What do you think?
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:And and and the conversation she ended up turning my mindset around. And the difficulty is a lot of it is based on faith. And she's saying, look, it is true that we don't have the attribution. But I can also tell you these big opportunities in our pipeline right now, the ones you're talking about on stand up and the ones that you're focused on right now with the sales team, if I go back and look at them, there are multiple touch points with our marketing. There is a LinkedIn post and the blog article and then a week later there's something else and then another interaction and then they do a demo.
Jordan Gal:And if you wanna cut back on this stuff, it's going to have an impact one way or another. You don't know how bad of an impact it's it's gonna have, but it will definitely negatively hurt growth. So Yeah. Good good luck making a decision based on that.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I mean, when it comes to SEO, like, I I do know that, like, a majority of our traffic and leads do come from Google. So I wanna keep that engine I wanna grow that that model. Keep keep because it's like, that's the thing that's like, know has has been working. We need to make it keep working and double down.
Brian Casel:Right?
Jordan Gal:Right. So if if you're in my situation and sales is the thing that's working, how how much well, I'm sort
Brian Casel:of That's where I I think in your situation, I would maybe start to sort of side with you on that. Like, I don't I don't know if I I don't I don't know the specifics in your
Jordan Gal:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:Situation. But
Jordan Gal:Not until you
Brian Casel:I I would start to question the the investment. But I think that also it's I I I really firmly believe this now. It's so much more about product first and then marketing. One you gotta get the product right. Yeah.
Brian Casel:I I just really believe that it's about figuring out the the customer, their problem, the the product. And and I'm in that phase now I'm back in that phase now where it's like and it's and it's harder because we do have leads coming through, and we are connecting with coaches with, like, the best possible customer for us. But we sort of only have, like, half, 60% of the solution that they are looking for in many cases. And that's the painful part where it's like, ugh. Like, it's we're we're building the things that you're trying to do right now, so just hang tight, or you can do part of it right now.
Brian Casel:I've I've been talking about that. So that that's the challenge. But when it comes to mark and so that's why I I I wanna keep the the marketing engines turning because I know exactly who we're going for, and we gotta keep keep that going. But it's also about resources and bandwidth. I'm like because I I do think it it's just much more important that we get the product completed so that we have the full solution to sell them.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. That's right.
Brian Casel:That like, it because I what it is is I'm becoming more comfortable. I've I've talked about how uncomfortable I am not spending as much time and investment on marketing.
Jordan Gal:Okay. And and settling into that compromise?
Brian Casel:And and heavily and leaning much more heavily on product for an extended period of time.
Jordan Gal:Like Mhmm.
Brian Casel:That's an as much as I love working on the product, that is an uncomfortable balance for me. I know that, like, we are underinvesting in marketing for this period of time. Yeah. But I but I started to become more and more increasingly frustrated with not having the product fully completed because I because it's every single day I get the same requests, or I see customers, like, trying to hobble together Mhmm. The things that we are literally building.
Pippin Williamson:Yeah.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And and being and being unsuccessful because it's because, like, we haven't delivered it to them yet. Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:It it might be
Brian Casel:And so so
Jordan Gal:seasonal in nature too. Six months from today, if you're feeling good about the product and you're shifting over over toward marketing
Brian Casel:Six months today, we should be shifted. We should be fully Okay. Full speed ahead. But I but even now, sitting here in May, like, I feel like we're behind schedule on shipping the things that we've known we need to ship. Because, you know, I've talked about it.
Brian Casel:It's been taking longer. The the rebrand pushed us back. But if I have to choose between where am I spending my hours and dollars today, it's get the product.
Jordan Gal:You get the product. Yeah. It's it's tough. I I might be moving over into a different part of the market where that that it's different. We recently I love these lessons you learn out in the market that challenge your thinking.
Jordan Gal:So we recently partnered with another company, another product, and we got introduced to them. I learned a little bit about them, and they're doing really well. They've they've grown really nicely over the last, like, eighteen months. So, you know, from the outside, that's what everybody wants. So you admire it.
Jordan Gal:You start to build them up in your head. We go to do an integration with them. Product's not good. Product's rough.
Nathan Barry:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:Our engineers are having trouble just getting it to even work. You know, just not what you would expect on the product execution. And then you know, oh, doing a lot better than we are.
Brian Casel:Mhmm. Yeah. So that that begs the questions like, how how did they
Jordan Gal:get
Brian Casel:They what they
Jordan Gal:got really they got good at sales. They got good at closing deals. Sometimes they close a deal, you sign a contract and and you don't even have an account yet. And that's a that's a slight
Brian Casel:I'm still okay. So I'm I'm gonna push back on on the pushback. They got good at sales, but I firmly believe that every sale starts with a need. They some they found somebody's need.
Jordan Gal:Yes. They found
Brian Casel:it more than once. That's true. That's true.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. They That exists. Enough people to have credibility so the next person will sign up. And what that does is it buys them time to improve the product because their revenue is going up and they're attracting investment and they can invest in engineering. So it's a it's a slightly different bargain where you're not living and dying on the product today.
Jordan Gal:Because, like, you are in that's high pressure, man. People are walking to your product and they're making a decision based on the performance of the product right now. And that is, you know, that's high stakes and it forces you to create a better product. And maybe it's better off for the future, but man and that's that's a lot of pressure to deal with.
Brian Casel:It is. Yep. And, I mean, look, we both and a lot of people listening, like, you you're dealing with some some sort of runway and some sort of, like, growth trajectory, and it's like, I I want them both to happen at the same time. I want us to be growing sales and marketing and having the right product in hand ready to sell. But the reality is, like, every day we have to choose.
Brian Casel:And and it's like also, like, even if you have resources, you still have to have you still have you still have limited focus in the company
Jordan Gal:Yeah. That's right.
Brian Casel:Where that energy is going.
Jordan Gal:True.
Brian Casel:You know?
Jordan Gal:Yo, Brian, I got I got to go get a haircut. It's Friday. I'm taking the girls out to a daddy daughter camp thing tomorrow night. Oh, it sounds go out, you know, drive an hour into Wisconsin or something. It's not a real camping thing.
Jordan Gal:It's like cabins since one night. All the kids going around on their own. The dads are, like, drinking by the fire, But I'm looking forward to it.
Brian Casel:Sounds amazing. Yeah. I'm taking my my older daughter out to the Mets game tomorrow, hoping that this window of no rain will, will align with the time of this game. Little longer. Nice.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Baseball game in person. You know? One of the I'm I'm bored of baseball overall, but in person, man, it's a great way to spend a few hours.
Brian Casel:The best. Expensive way, but it but it's still fun.
Jordan Gal:True. Alright. Thanks for listening, everyone.
Brian Casel:Later, folks.
