High status vs. low status customers
Bootstrapped Web. Jordan, how's it going, buddy?
Jordan Gal:Hey, Brian. I just walked in the door. Yeah. I just got off a flight. Just got off a flight, walked in the door, pinged you.
Jordan Gal:I'm, like, a little drunk with travel. Yeah. Full message.
Brian Casel:I'm in this, I'm in this, like, hyper work mode right now for the next, about two weeks or so because June, we are getting on a plane and going to the other side of the world for two weeks. I Oh. My family and I are head to to Asia, gonna jump around The Philippines a little bit. My my wife's family is there, and then we're
Jordan Gal:Wow. Big trip.
Brian Casel:Heading over to to Cambodia for two days.
Jordan Gal:Wow. Big trip. That's exciting.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Should be fun.
Jordan Gal:Well, summer's here, so it's it's about that time. It's officially June.
Brian Casel:Yeah. June is like our month. We're doing like a big family trip every year. And right after they get off school, we're we're gonna drag these these kids on some pretty long flight. It'll be fun.
Jordan Gal:We're gonna ship ours off to sleepaway camp, all three of them. So that's gonna a sleepaway camp. Alright.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Very cool. Yep. Yeah. I'm a and so, like, this always happens when I have, like, a big trip coming up.
Brian Casel:And we're gonna be away for, I think, little bit more than two weeks. So, like and I I mean, I'm sure I'll do some work while I'm on the trip, but it's it's always like a hustle phase for me in, like, the lead up to to a big trip. And we have a lot a lot going on right now. So just trying to get through it. Oh,
Jordan Gal:yes. Cool. Well, I also ran into a podcast listener of ours in New York at the Happilyard that we sponsored. Patrick
Brian Casel:Oh, wow. What up? Awesome. Were you in the city?
Jordan Gal:I was in the city, and we sponsored an event with Locate. That's l o q a t e. They're like, an address verification service that works with, like, mid market and and large ecommerce businesses. So we got together with them. They're in New York.
Jordan Gal:We sponsored an event, hung out on a rooftop, had a few drinks, met some people.
Brian Casel:Oh, yeah.
Jordan Gal:It was great.
Brian Casel:Nice. We're headed to actually, we're going down to Long Island tomorrow to hang out, with my old man tomorrow. And then next weekend, my wife and I are gonna do our anniversary in the city, see some comedy. Nice. And then and then we do the trip the week after.
Jordan Gal:So Oh, yeah.
Brian Casel:You know, I've been talking to a few friends in the Northeast area, some some friends in Boston, some some around, like, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island. And, man, yo, Northeast folks, we gotta get some meetups going on. A lot
Jordan Gal:of people, but
Brian Casel:some I feel like there there are definitely a lot of people within a two to three hour driving distance of each other. Like, I could name at least five to 10 people, and we're not meeting up enough. We we gotta make it happen, especially in the summer. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:True. I I I miss that. I'm still searching for my people in the Chicago area.
Brian Casel:Yep. Okay. Alright. What do we got going on today?
Jordan Gal:So big big topics for my side of things. The biggest one is learning the mid market sales process. We are Okay. We are building new muscle, and all indications are that we are on the right track. Right?
Jordan Gal:We I think I talked about it here on the last time, maybe two weeks ago, but more and more of our focus is on the mid market. The the way I put it internally is we are done experimenting, and we've got our
Brian Casel:Let's go all go all in on this. We're we're
Jordan Gal:all in on it. We're building integrations for Magento and Salesforce Commerce Cloud. We've got BigCommerce done. We've got someone doing SAP. We just launched commerce tools.
Jordan Gal:It's all a different type of customer.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:And we have a lot to learn. So far so good, but plenty to learn. So that that's the big topic for me. Yeah. And most of the subtopics happen around that larger one.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I have so many questions for you on that. We we start you know, we started to, like, unpack this before before we got on air, so we just started recording here. I've got on my end, the first one is, like, what does, quote, unquote, feature complete mean? Because I'm in a push right now to get Clarity Flow to what I consider feature complete.
Brian Casel:And really no SaaS is ever feature complete, but I I do have a line in the sand that I that I'm kinda stressing out about, like, hitting. So I wanna talk about that. I got another open question here, and that is, should AI change our thinking on marketing strategy?
Jordan Gal:Okay. On marketing specifically, not like product or business people.
Brian Casel:There's plenty of stuff to think about on the product side, but, like, I'm really thinking about marketing on this. I mean, this is more of a question for, like, the open industry, like, not just my company, but, like, I I think it's gonna have an impact. I mean, especially around, like, content and SEO. That's where we see the most happening. And and internally, I've been talking about, and we're continuing to do this right now.
Brian Casel:Like, we are investing my my time my time and my team's time on getting really good at using AI to generate content. Okay. And and, you know, hybrid approach with, like, human content with some AI assisted. I can get more into, like, our internal experiments, which are they're going pretty pretty good. But then it I think there's also a strategic question, like, you know, because the search engines are going to be changing, like, big time.
Brian Casel:Right. You assume every big
Jordan Gal:question changes.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Like, the open question is, like, when and what what are is the impact? And, like, should we be thinking about investing in SEO the same way we always have given where the where the landscape is going? I don't know. These are
Jordan Gal:interesting questions. Detectable versus not. Yeah. Yeah. I I don't spend I I end up thinking about AI on the product, and I just wanna challenge ourselves.
Jordan Gal:Because there's always I remember this I I it's a pretty random investor pitch. I was in Miami at the time when we were living there for a few months. I met someone. They were like, that's really interesting. Can you come in and talk to my team about a potential investment?
Jordan Gal:And one of the people there, I asked a question. It must be seven years ago. Who knows how long? But he said, everything that you're talking about makes the assumption that the checkout process itself doesn't change. What if there's no checkout page?
Jordan Gal:What do you do then? And that just lodged itself in my head. And so when I think of AI, that's what I think of. I think what if there is no checkout process? What if it changes the approach, the buying?
Brian Casel:Yes. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:So, you know
Brian Casel:Yeah. I mean, I've got I was just chatting with a friend about this too. Like, I've got a whole list of AI features that I I think we will eventually do in in Clarity Flow, which make a lot of sense from from our user standpoint. But we're just we we first gotta get to this feature complete thing, and that that's the first thing on the list. Last thing, I don't know if we'll we'll really get to it today, but just the like, pleasing individual customers and keeping myself sane.
Brian Casel:And, you know, it does take sort of like an emotional toll when you're when you're the founder and you're on the front lines of support every day. And it's not just support. It's it's it is customer research. It's sales demos. It's support.
Brian Casel:It's feature requests. And then just filtering through or or sit or, like, you know, there are some that I'm that I'm super eager to to help, and I and I want us to have the perfect product for them because they're the perfect customer for us. Then there's others who maybe at first, they present themselves as a perfect customer, but after multiple interactions, I start to realize, like, oh, your use case is different, and I should not be spending as much stress and time and energy on you as I have been. Like, that that has come up from time to time, and it you know, I I think it's I think it's start it's actually like a muscle that I'm trying to or or that I'm having to, like, develop. It's like it's not only, like, thick skin.
Brian Casel:Like, sometimes customers can just say some weird shit, you know, and you just gotta get over it. But but, like, but other times, it's just like, alright. Don't let this throw me off my game. I have other stuff that I have to ship today. This is just one customer, and whatever their situation may be, let's compartmentalize that and put it aside.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Let let's let's try to make sure we touch on that because that that's universal.
Brian Casel:Yep.
Jordan Gal:It happens in different flavors. For us well, for me specifically, I worry about my team members' interaction with customers because I am worried that they don't feel empowered to have boundaries. Yes. Because they they, you know, they wanna make the company happy. And if that means making the customer happy, then they start bending over backwards to accommodate every single thing and
Brian Casel:It's interesting. That was very much me in audience ops. Like even since the early days of audience ops, I was like Permission. I designed that whole business to shield me from talking to the customers. So my managers were talking to the customers, and and, like, I was constantly the one, like, trying to coach my managers.
Brian Casel:I'm like, look. This is how you how we gotta set boundaries because, like, sometimes they they go beyond them. You know?
Jordan Gal:Yes. Yes. And, yes, some people are better at it than others. Some positions Jessica on our team has a much better perspective on it. We we have I don't even know if tension is the right word.
Jordan Gal:I think it's healthy tension overall. But between the three of us, between Rock and Jess and myself, we we try to figure out, okay, this prospect is a great opportunity, but they're asking for x, y, or z. What do we do? It's only a day or two of work. Yep.
Jordan Gal:It throws us off the sprint, but they haven't signed the contract yet. It's it's not even
Brian Casel:is this is your first thing. Let let's get into that. I mean okay. So like tell us more about what what you can share about your these like. Yes.
Brian Casel:Mid market, like large contract deals and what's all in there? What are the moving parts?
Jordan Gal:Yes, so I'm happy to share a lot of stuff because it feels like I am back in learning mode. If I'm being honest with myself, I'm a bit disappointed in my mindset over the last six months that I wasn't curious enough and I wasn't hungry enough to learn. And I, you know, we all want things to work out in the easier path and that's natural. And at Cardhook and in the past with smaller merchants, we get a lot of inbound and then we qualify them to make sure they're a good fit. And then it moves forward because they want the product, we want to provide it to them, we're just working things out to get them launched.
Jordan Gal:We are now doing something very different and I feel less prepared than we should be. So I'm I'm I'm sprinting to fix that. So what what does that really mean? If if I could almost, like, start at the end. Yesterday, while I was in New York, I woke up in the morning and the the most important task for me before doing anything, before leaving the hotel room, was to send out a contract through SignWell, shout out to Ruben, love your product, to get a contract signed for a a 6 figure annual contract.
Jordan Gal:So that is the culmination of the process. Right? Almost. I mean, that's a it's almost a it's the culmination of the sales process, then the delivery process begins in in some ways, and there is an overlap. Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:But in order to get there, on the way there, it became very apparent. All of our shortcomings, all of the things we need to fix, improve, create along the way so that we can do that on a regular basis.
Brian Casel:When you say shortcomings, do do those come up as, like, the these could be deal breakers or objections that we have to get over in a sales process? So if they were if they were issues in this sales process, they're gonna be issues in in most of these deals?
Jordan Gal:Yes. Yes. So it felt like a lot of it was repeatable. Like, this is going to come up in every one of these sales processes. Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:And, you know, I have, like, that founder shame of, like, oh, we're not prepared for that. So one really important thing that we did. First we identified that this is the direction we're going to go and we kind of shut down all the other experiments and we started to orient ourselves the way we talk, way we think, the way we're prioritizing in that direction. That was almost like the mindset was like step one. Then we started to identify those merchants, the prospects in our pipeline that were the right fit.
Jordan Gal:So for example, one merchant we're talking to did a little over $30,000,000 last year. That is our ideal customer. That's mid market. It's not gigantic. It's not going to take a year to go through the procurement process.
Jordan Gal:You're talking to the director of e commerce and they're talking directly to the CEO to get approvals. So it's not very complicated. But there's a lot of back and forth. In the beginning of the sales process, it goes from the first interaction. And now in hindsight, at the end of the process, you look back and you can see the mistakes you made.
Jordan Gal:So the things that we promised early on in the first demo, they they kind of haunt you throughout the process because you don't wanna go back on your word, but you realize at the end that you you gave up too much leverage by promising that at the very, very beginning. And so that then you start to look at the emails that your team is sending to the to the to the prospect and you realize, oh, we are putting ourselves in a low status place in the communication. We are overly accommodating. We're overly eager. We're not coming off as confident as we should.
Brian Casel:How are you how does what's the who who's involved here? So you have salespeople talking to them, or are you talking directly to the prospect and and you're talking to your sales team? How how is this all coming together?
Jordan Gal:So so there's there's an SDR that is doing the outreach that's setting up the demo. And then the demo gets scheduled. And for clarity's sake, like, some of this stuff is a little messy because it it started before we really focus on this and is ending now. But in a typical deal, like, let's say, you know, this week, on the demo is is the SDR, so there's a feeling of continuity. Hi.
Jordan Gal:Right. I'm Drake. We spoke. And then I'm on that call along with our solutions engineer and and Sam, who in this case is playing the role of an AE. So Okay.
Jordan Gal:Okay. So so
Brian Casel:Who's, like, who's who's, like, driving it at this point? Is are are they talking to you as the founder, or is it the AE? Or
Jordan Gal:So that was one of the mistakes that came up. So one of the things that we were not doing properly is that we didn't have one person driving it and driving the communication. So we we had this great experience, with Forder. Fortr is an enterprise fraud protection company and we just did a deal with Fortr to power our fraud protection. Now when someone uses Rally as their checkout, they can add on Fortr fraud protection very easily and very efficiently in terms of cost.
Jordan Gal:Because we are buying Fortr for our network and then we're selling it individually to the merchant. It's like we're buying wholesale and selling retail. So we can give them a great deal and they're happy with it because they can get it bundled And Fortier is an amazing service and some of these merchants almost like don't qualify because they're not enterprise enough.
Brian Casel:Right.
Jordan Gal:Okay. So we went through the sales process. We bought from Fortier. We were the customer and they are a well developed company. You know, I don't know where they are, series c or or so on.
Jordan Gal:And we share investors. March Capital also invested in them. I think Felix Capital also. So we're close with them and they're like an Israeli company. So there's like a lot of DNA matching.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm. So we learned so much from their sales process, we kept looking back at the differences between our process and theirs. And the comparison was not favorable for us.
Brian Casel:So That's really cool, though, that you could learn from that, like and you have it like a firsthand experience.
Jordan Gal:Yes. We almost diagnose how did this make us feel? What did this make us think? How did that influence our decision process?
Brian Casel:I'm constantly doing that now with SaaS tools onboardings. Anytime I'm starting up on a new product, I'm super attentive to exactly what I'm seeing as the first time user because I'm constantly thinking about that from my customers.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. And at the same time, a friend of mine in the Portland Slack group, John, was going through a sales process with another company that sells just like us. And he was coming in and saying, they're offering me this. How should I negotiate? And it was like watching the other side again.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:We we have The other thing that I that just like a little sidebar here. Like, the other thing that I really like to try to pay attention to in my own behavior is, like, why am I making a buying decision right now? Like, what put what pushed me over the line to put the credit card in? Like, what was the thing? And there there have been a few tools lately that I recently bought, you know, and and, like, one or two of them was, something that I, like, tried a year ago and didn't quite convert, and then now I am because situation changed or they shipped a feature or, like I always try to understand, like, what was it that made me convert?
Brian Casel:And Mhmm. You know, because I I that's that's the thing to really understand. And I'm every customer I talk to, I'm trying to understand, like, what why am I at the top of their list right now of the options that they're considering?
Jordan Gal:Yes. You know? Yes. So so similar similar thing. This happens to be in, the the the multistage sales process compared to the self serve, but you there's always something to learn from it.
Jordan Gal:So one of the mistakes that we made, we we saw we looked back at the process, and it was SDR emailing them, then demo, then Sam following up, then them asking a question, and then Rock at providing a technical answer. And so you start to see they don't know who the point of contact is. Mhmm. Because they're talking to one, then the other, then the CTO, then this. So it's not it's not as it's not what it should be.
Jordan Gal:And I look back at our experience with Fortier and my man Nathan over there, that's the point of
Brian Casel:Yep. Yep.
Jordan Gal:Yep. And then I go on a call and he brings in the solutions engineer if it's a technical call. And then the next call, so it's like this organized Yes. Repeatable if you think about every step from the initial outreach to scheduling the demo to running the demo to the follow-up of the demo, all these individual things, you start you start to see all the warts. You start to see, oh, we this needs to be better and that needs to be better.
Brian Casel:What I'm what I'm interested in is the product side, and maybe maybe this is where Rock comes into the picture during the negotiation. Right? You know, because these are these are big deals, and it's not just a self serve, like, alright. Our product is perfect. Let's just sign this contract, and you're off and running.
Brian Casel:It's you're you're negotiating scope of, like, things that that you and your team will be committing time to and resources to. How do you negotiate I mean, you're negotiating that with a prospect, but then how are you negotiating that with Rock and with the team and managing a road map?
Jordan Gal:Yes. Yes. And and there are everyone plays their role appropriately.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:And and Jessica, right, at as VP of product, she's the one that that needs to kind of stand and and hold her ground a little. Because you you can't just have the engineering team just thrown left and right based on the whims of a prospect. And we have to respect that. So we have to get more commitment from the prospect before we go off and change our sprints.
Brian Casel:Yep.
Jordan Gal:But then there's all there's always a little bit of room because the the customer, especially in 2023, if they're gonna sign a contract that's over a 100 k, they rightfully expect some accommodation, especially before they have to fully decide. So that is part of the negotiation. When a merchant comes to us and says, can you handle this much traffic? Can you handle this much revenue? What happens if this goes wrong?
Jordan Gal:Like, we we should be spending time answering those questions. Then it gets harder when they come in and they say, Can you make our checkout look exactly like this? Then it becomes engineering resources as part of the sales process. And then when all bets are off because you it's impossible to know what what to do.
Brian Casel:What's interesting here is is if if you play this you know, you guys are doubling down on the mid market Yep. Whatever. Call it enterprise. Call it mid mid market.
Jordan Gal:Yes. Yes.
Brian Casel:You're doubling down on the strategy. Right? But it it this does not have to mean like, you it doesn't mean that you're just becoming a services company. But I think that in the in the earlier days, these earlier contracts, there's there's a lot more service being done because, know, you still have to build out these things. But over time, like what's really interesting to me as the business plays out, a few friends of mine have been doing sort of a similar type of model where every customer purchases a couple thousand dollar or $10,000 setup service.
Brian Casel:And sometimes it even involves building a custom integration for them, but then that's an integration that they can reuse on like a 100 more prospects in the future. Yep. You know? So, like, every everything that you're building now is a thing that can be redeployed for the next prospect that needs a a very similar or the same thing.
Jordan Gal:Yes.
Brian Casel:So, like, theoretically, like, over time, the the same size deal gets more and more profitable because you're reusing your your component.
Jordan Gal:A 100%. And and everyone everyone kind of acknowledges that and and says, that that's partly what makes the additional work justifiable.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:And and based on where we are in our journey on revenue, it makes sense to do the work. The way I what I call it what I called it okay. Remember the the ice wall in Game of Thrones?
Brian Casel:Oh, yeah.
Jordan Gal:I I say that North. Yes. The North. That's right. So I tell the team that we we are scaling the credibility wall.
Jordan Gal:That there is no I took I took a little photo of, like, four people, like, scaling that wall. You know? And I was like, that's us right now. Because we can't get to the promised land of repeatable big deals without the credibility of the smaller and a little bit bigger a little bit bigger a little bit bigger. Right?
Jordan Gal:We've had some very recognizable brands come into the sales process and and just hesitate on we don't wanna be the first big one. We would love to see you develop with a few other larger merchants, and then we're more comfortable because the bigger, the more risk averse. So fun.
Brian Casel:And they're used to going through that process with every one of their vendors. So And they they know what to look for.
Jordan Gal:And we have a weird factor. Our our big competitor has wrecked people. They have done huge deals, twelve month deployments, and then failure in the integration and the deployment. So people have gotten burned and that reputation has been established. And so checkout products are looked at skeptically.
Jordan Gal:They're highly desired because everybody wants to improve their conversion rate. But because of the failures of other companies in in that regard, there's skepticism and an an additional hurdle to get over on their credibility.
Brian Casel:I hear that.
Jordan Gal:Yep. So I forgot where we were on the on that journey, but the biggest thing that we did, the most important thing Well, most important thing was making the decision and focusing.
Brian Casel:Yep.
Jordan Gal:Once we did that and I tried to keep, so I've been doing demos. I've been, I put the hat, you know, put the sales hat on and I've been doing the demos. And then as soon as I started doing that, I'm like, oh my God, I'm rusty. I'm just talking instead of having a goal and discovery and, you know, that whole thing.
Brian Casel:I I've been having a few demos lately that are I'm just like, yeah. I'm just winging it here. You know?
Jordan Gal:Yes. And and you can't wing it. I mean, you can, but it's not gonna work out as well. Yep. So as we as along with that shame of not feeling prepared, I got a little lucky and I found someone who was just leaving a leadership, like go to market role in a similar company, in a similar space, and hired her as a consultant.
Jordan Gal:And that just created this resource for us to just be able to ping and say, here are the details of the deal. Here's where we are. This is the critical moment on whether or not we're gonna be willing to do this or what we can ask for in exchange. How should we handle it? And now we just have someone there.
Jordan Gal:It it is it is honestly, it's embarrassing because given how long the company's been around, I feel embarrassed that that all this stuff isn't in place. But I I think that's okay. Right?
Brian Casel:That's Yeah. Why Well, I mean, whatever. The the company has been around for a a little while, but you you just started this new strategy
Jordan Gal:weeks ago,
Brian Casel:not years ago.
Jordan Gal:Yes. So whatever it is, I don't necessarily think of the shame as necessarily bad because it's very motivating.
Brian Casel:So
Jordan Gal:now it feels like we have these ingredients in place. And instead of a deal like this popping up and it meaning absolutely everything to us, of course it's important, but now what we're seeing is that there are more on the way in the early stages of the pipeline.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:So I am like more optimistic and confident in our health as a company than than I've ever been. It feels amazing.
Brian Casel:I love it.
Jordan Gal:Now I'm like motivated to like, alright. This is the moment. This is it.
Brian Casel:It's so it's so like freeing once you like get that like zeroed in like focus. Like this is what we are. This is who we are. This is who we're for. Now let's just go.
Brian Casel:Yes. I love it.
Jordan Gal:Plenty of work to do, but but it feels great.
Brian Casel:And and I could see how it it would especially from the on the product side, it's like we we need to be you know, your your company needs to be structured in a way to be able to deploy dev resources when these contracts come along because they're gonna be coming along. Like, so, like Mhmm. That that's gotta be really because I'm I'm constantly managing my road map, my feature road map, and, like, where am I allocating my team's time and my time. That's And all just based on getting to this feature complete idea. Yeah, let's transition to that.
Jordan Gal:For us what's happened is we feel feature complete enough. Now what we're doing is basically saying, all our sprint, all right, of our sprints, they're basically going to be roughly 50% doing work for prospects. But as long as the contract is worth it and our go to market team is appropriately using those engineering resources to help close those deals and deliver on those deals instead of just asking for work to be done without certainty, then that's the phase we're in. So it feels like feature complete ish and now it's integrations and payment processors that they need and this other thing. What about my loyalty points?
Jordan Gal:So it's additional work for prospects and customers.
Brian Casel:I mean, that's the thing is there's always gonna be the the product is never complete. But I I do think and, you know, because there's always gonna be, like, little little things that are, like, the a certain segment of customers kind of want, and we should build it at some point. Or or this experience, we already have the feature, but we just need to improve it, enhance it, make it better. But in the earlier days, which is where I still consider Clarity Flow to be, we I don't even consider us feature complete yet. And and this goes back to the transition from ZipMessage to Clarity And and for me personally, this is this is turned from excitement over like, I I've learned so much about these customers and what they want.
Brian Casel:And and I'm and I'm continued to be excited about we constantly have inbound requests, and we're we're still growing MRR and sign ups and everything. But, like, it that is that excitement has also turned more and more into frustration in just the time frame the the time the length of time it's taking us to ship the features that get us to this feature complete point. And, I mean, the rebrand definitely pushed this back. You know, like because literally, if I think back to I think it was around September or October 2022. That by that point, I started to get a really clear picture of, okay.
Brian Casel:I know we're going for coaches at that point. Mhmm. And I and I started to form the picture of, like, what the ultimate product needs to be and what the pricing will be on this on this new revisioned product. And I made a a list of about eight, nine, maybe 10 big features that we needed to build starting from September '22.
Jordan Gal:You do have, like, a line that, like, above this is feature complete necessary and below it is extraneous? Yeah. Like Epics or however you organize.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Like, I'm talking about, like, again, like, we rewind to twenty twenty two. We we were ZipMessage then. Were just asynchronous messaging. Okay.
Brian Casel:Video, audio, text, you can go back and forth, conversations, that's what we were. And and we are that's still the core of our product. Mhmm. But as we start to focus on coaches and I started to really understand that market a lot better, I realized, like, there's a much bigger product here. It's not it it's it's taking the conversational stuff.
Brian Casel:It's adding in courses, community spaces, payments, mobile apps. Yeah. So these are all big pieces. Right? And and we and and in my mind, back in the '22, I was like, we can start working on this stuff now.
Brian Casel:We can have it all completed by '23. But then by '23, it was like, we gotta do the rebrand. So that that and and, you know, that, the billing updates, the domain updates, the new brand, all of that pushed. And now here we are in June, and we still haven't shipped, some of these big features, programs, spaces, payments, and mobile apps. And and now here as I sit here, we are active we're we're finally actively working on all of those things.
Brian Casel:I have people working on all of them, and I'm at we're varying stages of progress on those features. But it's it is a frustration that that has been building now where it's like, we're we're coming up on like almost a year of literally telling customers every day, that thing is coming soon, that's coming soon, and now we're the type of product that's attracting inbound sales demo requests. Because the previous one was not, that was just a self serve type of product that nobody even wanted to do a demo. Now it's like, oh, this is a bigger product. It costs more.
Brian Casel:It means more to my business. I wanna talk to someone about it. I have a few of these every week now, and I'm not even really promoting that. I I plan to really embrace the sales demo approach, but, like, right now, I'm I'm definitely talking to anyone who wants to talk about the product. But when I get on these calls, I have to I have to spend a lot of the the time telling them, yeah.
Brian Casel:So this is gonna this is gonna be doing like, once you're once we ship the programs feature, you'll be able to do this and this. And then once we ship the payments feature, you'll be able to hook this in. It's just constantly like, we will. We will. We will.
Brian Casel:It's coming. It's coming. It's like, oh.
Jordan Gal:It's Mhmm.
Brian Casel:It's driving me nuts.
Jordan Gal:Feel you. I feel you on the frustration. Now, where are you?
Brian Casel:The line on the sand to me Yeah. Is Well, the line it's literally like the if you look at our pricing page, there's a three or four features on there that say coming soon or it's Easy to
Jordan Gal:knock need to knock those out.
Brian Casel:When we no longer have the word coming soon on our pricing page, meaning that the things that we put right in in the pricing tiers that we show like, this is why you would upgrade from 49 to 99. It's to get these features. And most of those have coming soon on them. You know, like, that's that's what I consider feature complete. And I think that we're see, that that's the thing is like, I keep thinking more optimistically than our than our real world pace is.
Jordan Gal:Keep
Brian Casel:saying like, a month ago, was like, oh, we're gonna be shipping that in May. And then and then it and now I'm like and and then it was like, oh, we're gonna be shipping that in June. But the reality is we're gonna be shipping a lot of this stuff in July, you know? And then who knows what it's gonna look like three or four weeks from now. But we're we're working on it.
Brian Casel:I and I think that that line in the sand, like, it's it's in sight. It's it's within reach. I really think that by July, we should have shipped these features. And because what happens to me what happens here strategically is that, like, shipping this final set of features unlocks a few things that are very important to the business. Alright?
Brian Casel:So, like like, you know, eliminating that coming soon thing on the on the pricing page. Number one, I I believe that we can just start going hard on marketing and on sales demos.
Jordan Gal:And pushing those convos. And and just and just being like,
Brian Casel:this is the like, this is what you've come in looking for. We have it. Let me show you how how it works and why it's great.
Jordan Gal:And Okay.
Brian Casel:Let's get you on board. Let's work together and get and and make it happen. Like, we can start doing that every single day. Instead of me talking to them and be like, this is what we're building. It's coming in June.
Brian Casel:Just sit tight. That's number one. And then, of course, we can, like, drive marketing, like, you know, a lot of channel and investments on know? Start running
Jordan Gal:with that.
Brian Casel:Then the other big piece is our legacy customers. We you know, we've got a a whole bunch of customers who who were on ZipMessage, you know, before we moved to Clarity Flow. And they're they're still on legacy plans, You know? And we've been replacing them with higher priced plans, the new people coming in now. But I have not really done any communication work or promotional work to those legacy customers to sit to tell them like, hey.
Brian Casel:You can upgrade to these new plans. And the reason I haven't done that yet is because there is no compelling reason for them to upgrade yet. We don't have the compelling features.
Jordan Gal:But you haven't earned the right to kinda
Brian Casel:I haven't I haven't earned the right to say, like, you can pay more and look at what you get for that. Like, right now, it's you know, you you get a little bit more. Like, we we do have some new features in there that that legacy customers don't get. But like the big stuff, programs, spaces, payments, you know, that once that comes out in July, that that's when I can start the process. It'll and that'll be a multi month process going from July through the end of the year where it's like, legacy customers, here's here's a schedule on when prices are gonna increase.
Brian Casel:You can, you know, you can upgrade now and get access to these features, but that's coming. And so that's a whole other component here that we can't do any of that unless we ship. And then that boils down to I'm doing some stuff on marketing, but that's taking a back seat. I'm doing there are other things on the product that need improvements, UX improvements, onboarding improvements, help documentation. But that too is taking a back seat.
Brian Casel:The number one thing that the business still needs is we need to ship. We need to eliminate those those coming soon labels on our pricing page. And It's a lot of pressure. It's it's just that's the thing is, like, I I feel really excited about the business, and we're literate and MR, we we just had the best growth month in over eighteen months.
Jordan Gal:I I love that that's an afterthought after all the stress.
Brian Casel:It's it's seriously a weird feeling. We literally just had we've had three straight months of growth, and this past month in May was the highest growth in over a year and a half in in MRR.
Jordan Gal:First of all, congratulations on that. I hope you're finding, you know, motivation and satisfaction from that along That's along with everything
Brian Casel:the thing is that, like, feel I feel great about refreshing ChartMogul, but when I'm but when it's, like, on the product and and these conversations with customers, and I'm like, it's I I could see and I could feel it just not clicking yet. Like, even though the MRR is growing, I know that there are gaps that they're asking for that we can't deliver yet. And and so that is my number one focus. It's like we gotta ship. And so that that means, you know, more work hours for myself.
Brian Casel:I'm I'm really trying to be as focused as possible with my team and make sure that every person is is assigned the, you know, the in in the most efficient queue and and things like that. And that's been a challenge. But I think we're we're getting close. So the in terms of order, we have mobile apps are getting close. It was kind of fun to I I finally started actually testing our mobile app, like, on on the devices and stuff this week.
Brian Casel:We're we're only a couple weeks away from releasing those. Custom domains are pretty close. And then programs and spaces are are coming along. Payments have just started.
Jordan Gal:Is that mobile app is that that's part of your feature complete list? Yeah. Is it at the tail end? Right that
Brian Casel:I thought it was gonna be later, but it the request just kept piling up, especially once once we started talking to all coaches. They they need mobile apps. And and it's like a big feature check mark against competitors.
Jordan Gal:Or or or companies that services that they're currently using or that one that you mentioned that went out of business.
Brian Casel:Yeah. So it's it's
Jordan Gal:a big gap.
Brian Casel:And it's not just like because you could use our app on mobile just fine. But there are some functional things like recording and and uploading and doing audio recordings on mobile is tricky. So this is this is already in my testing. It's like way better on on mobile using the using the new app that's coming. And and we did a pretty scaled down, like, v one of this mobile app, like only the critical functions, which is basically the recording and the notifications.
Brian Casel:Yeah. But, you know, and and I've been talking to some different people, like, about, like, well, should I how do we move the fastest? Right? Like, I have four developers now on the team plus myself. And how do how do we move the fastest?
Brian Casel:Do I put all four on one feature and we and we just do that? Or do I split them up and put every person is making progress on different features? And people may disagree with this, but I split it up so that we can be running on multiple tracks, making progress on multiple features. I mean, I'm the front end UI product person on on everything. And then I scope it out, design it, work a little bit on the Rails, stuff, and and then kind of delegate it for them to, to to knock out.
Brian Casel:And, I mean, I I think that's been working pretty pretty well. Also, a lot of these features are, like, intertwined, so it helps to ship them not all on the same day, but, like because I I think if if I just put, like, two or three developers on a single feature, and then we're only gonna be shipping one feature. And then and then we have to start the next one. Now now we're, like, months down the line. It's just it's not gonna work.
Jordan Gal:So so in the the marketing and product seesaw, you still have almost all of the weight on on the product.
Brian Casel:Yeah. There's yeah. I mean, it's like 80% plus product. There's also a lot of me talking to customers doing these sales demos. I mean, I even hesitate to call them demos.
Brian Casel:They they they request what they think is a demo. Okay. Then and then I and then I get on a call with them, and I I show them around what I you know? But I am totally winging it on these things. I'm I'm, like, clicking through our current product, and then and then I'm trying to, like, explain to them, like, picture over here in the near future.
Brian Casel:We're gonna have these features. And it's it's rough. You know?
Jordan Gal:Interesting. But maybe maybe on on the next podcast, we can kinda talk through that. We were doing more winging it than we should, and it's amazing what a little structure can do.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:For for us, the biggest thing missing was the discovery and really understanding what the prospect wanted, what success looked like, what would prevent them from being able to say yes, who's involved in it, all that stuff that we were glossing over to say, Hey, come check out our amazing product.
Brian Casel:That's why I'm taking these calls is because it's more research for me than anything else. I'm exactly that. I'm trying to understand what are the key things that you're looking for, what are the other tools that you're considering, where are you coming from, you know, all that.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm. What are you currently doing? All all the good stuff.
Brian Casel:Yep. Yep. It's really, really helpful. Even, like, just a couple of the recent ones, like, actually helped like, within each of those features, there's there's little tiny design choices. Like, oh, we they actually need the sidebar to be positioned in this way because that that's what they're sort of looking for in a product list.
Brian Casel:So like the the they're sales calls, but they're really helpful for me to understand like, okay, if we're gonna ship this feature, it has to be perfect for them. And it's gonna be perfect for many more users just like them. So
Jordan Gal:can we can we finish off with the part of the conversation? My side of it was around high status, low status communication. Yeah. And and your version of it was how do you know when to accommodate a customer and when to, you know, either not or help them conclude that it's the wrong product for them or that
Brian Casel:Yep.
Jordan Gal:It's it's it's really hard. It's what's your version of it? And I'm happy to talk about what what our version of it.
Brian Casel:Yeah. So okay. I'm just trying to be more aware of my own attention and like stress.
Jordan Gal:Mind share.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Stress levels and mind share and and literal and literal time investment on on individual customers. Mhmm. So the I'm trying to think how how to describe the situation here. So, like, there there are every day, I'm talking to customers
Jordan Gal:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:And they and they look, in in a variety of ways. Most of them now are almost all of them are coaches of some sort. But even under that umbrella, there's still many levels and nuances and differences among them. So if if if it's a coach and they are running a and and they have, like, an active, like like, thriving coaching business with paying clients, and especially if they have, like, a coaching program that's a little bit more productized, like maybe a course plus coaching, and there's a lot of those, or they often have, like, a community with their with their coaching clients. Like, that is the perfect kind of customer for us.
Brian Casel:And I you know, we're also seeing, like, coaching companies where there's, like, a company and and they have multiple coaches, and it and it's a larger operation. They have a large audience. These are all perfect, perfect customers for us. So when I'm talking to them, like, I am super engaged, interested. I will stop everything and hop on a call with you.
Brian Casel:Like, you're important to me. Let's talk. And and that's happening pretty regularly. And I'm psyched to talk to them because it's like, this is just more and more knowledge and and especially when they get excited about it. And then you get some who are maybe like, one flavor of it is, like, they're just aspirational.
Brian Casel:Like, they, oh, I'm gonna launch my coaching program soon. Maybe go for my first client. And, like, you know, that that's that's fine. But they are they'll have varying levels of success with with the product. Like and that's probably similar to to a lot of aspirational customers out there All for different
Jordan Gal:the things that go with it. You want to help them. You identify with that position. They're also the lowest paying and most likely to churn. It's Yep.
Jordan Gal:It's a tough bargain as the business owner on how to handle that.
Brian Casel:Yeah. There's another flavor that's like, maybe they consider what they do to be coaching, but really the way that they intend to use the product is a little bit different from how most coaches use it. And and that's where it starts to become like that that's where, like, they might look like a coach in their in their early communications. But then the more I talk to them, the more I start to realize, like, they're different. And and I need to stop I I I need to, like, spend less energy.
Brian Casel:Not that I I I wouldn't blow them off or anything like that, but they're I I need to start to understand, like, okay, their requests don't need to go to the top of our queue Yeah. If ever.
Jordan Gal:Can you can you also map that? Or maybe said another way, do you map that to revenue? Because it is different if the smallest customer asks for something compared to one of your biggest customers that pays
Brian Casel:Well, other interesting thing that I haven't quite had this dynamic in in previous businesses, but some of some of our best customers also have large audiences, and some of them have audiences of other coaches. And so, like, we we have
Jordan Gal:So it's like power and opportunity.
Brian Casel:Well, yeah. Like, there there's one who who's, like, one of these, like, perfect, know you know, perfect customer types. Like I said, like, they're they're sort of like a a coaching company. They've got multiple coaches. They've got a large audience.
Brian Casel:Yep. Okay. So so they're paying account, and they're a perfect fit, and they're an affiliate for us. And they've done webinars to their audience, and they've sent us customers.
Brennan Dunn:Okay.
Brian Casel:So Right. Like, they they have clearly generated more customer accounts than just themselves.
Jordan Gal:Right. We we
Brian Casel:And call them we have multiple accounts like that too. Yep. So like We
Jordan Gal:have a VIP tag in both our sales pipeline and also our support.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Like literally today, we shipped, an update, like a small update to our Zapier integration to accommodate that customer. I mean, was a feature that we should have had anyway, but like it was one of those things where like they asked for it and we were able to ship it in two days. And I and I did pull off one of my developers off of what he was doing just to get that out there. Okay.
Brian Casel:So because they're awesome and we did it, you know. Okay. There you go. So It
Jordan Gal:I think it's an it's an ongoing problem and it I at at Cardhook, we had we had a few big customers that were difficult. And we learned along the way. And it feels like now we need to relearn on how to stand your ground appropriately to be a customer centric company, but not be pushovers and not just do whatever someone tells you. And we are relearning that now. The the way I hear it talked about is is in a conversation, you can take a low status or a high status approach or or that dynamic exists.
Jordan Gal:It doesn't mean if you're high, they're low or vice versa. It just depends on how you are approaching and how confidently. And there are some very, very, difficult things to learn, especially if you are an employee in a company and you want to do a good job at your role because you wanna do good for the company. And what that ends up putting you into this position where you're overeager and you're overly accommodating and that's actually counterproductive because that doesn't project confidence to the prospect or to the customer and then they end up thinking about your company in that way. That company just kinda will do whatever we ask them.
Jordan Gal:And that is not that's not attractive.
Brian Casel:Yep.
Jordan Gal:It's not attractive to business, not attractive to personal life, all of that. So I have been trying to trying to educate our people in that way in terms of right. If let's say for example, an email comes in of a prospect. Right? They're not a customer yet.
Jordan Gal:And they're saying, can you do x? For for us to email ten seconds later and say, we're gonna figure that out. We'll we'll get right back to you. And then thirty minutes later so we talked to three of our developers and we tested this and it's possible and we're ready to do it for you whenever you need. That looks like good customer service.
Brian Casel:Yeah. But I'm aware. I think about that too. I'm like, I should not reply to this person so quickly right now.
Jordan Gal:Yes. It's a little counterintuitive. It's almost it's hard to get or whatever this weird dynamic is.
Brian Casel:I know it.
Jordan Gal:But it is really better off for you, for the team, for the prospect, for the possibility of closing them as customers to say, thank you so much for that suggestion. We'll take a look at it and get back to you in the next one to two business days. Back up, put into an async channel, let that thing flow through the process. Don't disturb anyone in what they're doing. Get an answer, reply back.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Totally. And and that is difficult to do in a difficult economy, in an early stage company. Everyone's ambitious. Everyone needs to make more money.
Jordan Gal:Everyone's looking at these, like, deadlines and fundraising.
Brian Casel:But Yeah. Because, like, the thing the thing to remember, I think, for everyone is, like, they're not gonna make their buying decision based on how quickly you reply to their email. They're gonna make their buying decision on whether or not you have their solution.
Jordan Gal:That's that's right. That's that's right.
Brian Casel:I mean, might help that you're responsive, but, like, that that'll just make them like you more. Then that but, ultimately, if if you don't solve their problem, they won't buy it.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm. Yeah. So we But, like,
Brian Casel:you know, another another weird challenge, at least for me personally, is, like, just wanting to please people,
Nathan Barry:you know,
Brian Casel:and and especially when when they're great customer. Like, alright. Once once a customer starts being a dick, like, I I stop wanting to please them. Right? Mhmm.
Brian Casel:But but once but, you know, in more most cases, 99% of the cases, like, they're really cool, great professional people that I really like to serve. I really like to work with them. Plus, they they fit that perfect customer profile. But the and I see this a lot right now. You know, I talked about the priorities.
Brian Casel:You know, there might be a UX thing in our in our product that is frustrating the customer right now. Oh, like like they might tell me, oh, my client was confused by this part of it. And that's that's that's like the ultimate like, oh, like I my product made you look bad to your client. Like, oh, I hate that. I hate to hear that, You know?
Brian Casel:And we do have UX gaps right now that need to be improved and smoothed out. But the number one priority for the business is shipping these features to get those coming soon labels off of our pricing page because I talked about it earlier. Like, that's that's what the business priorities have to be right now. That and I have I have a list of other UX improvements that are gonna happen, but they're gonna happen later in in a couple weeks. You know?
Brian Casel:And and and then I have to, like like, these are still happy paying customers, but, like, I'm the one on email, and and it's like, I'd I'd want like, you you know what it is? A part of it is like, I I aspire to have a product that our customers just love. They're just like, oh, it's it's perfect. It's it's just it works. Every word of mouth going.
Brian Casel:That's that's the word-of-mouth. Like, oh, you guys have to use Clarity Flow because it's it's it's by far the best option on on the market.
Jordan Gal:Like leverage you have.
Brian Casel:Like that's where we gotta be. And and anytime we fall short of that, you know, it's it's it's sort of painful to like tell customers like, know we're not as good as we can be right now. I I probably sound super negative on this podcast. Things Why? I don't think because I don't know.
Brian Casel:I feel I I'm I I keep talking about it like how bad our product is, but the the reality is I have to keep reminding myself like, we have paying customers, and they use it every day. And they're there. And and we're growing. And, also, you know, the the other thing to keep in mind is that the happiest customers, they're usually the quietest customers. I and I tend to hear you know, I think this is probably the case in most businesses.
Brian Casel:The, you know, the squeaky wheel gets you know? So, like, the more of most of the inbox are complaints or issues or bugs or you know?
Jordan Gal:That's what you hear.
Brian Casel:But the and and actually that like, this is, again, like, something that I wanna add at some point. There's an idea I got from our friend, Ben Orenstein. I think they've been doing this a long time in tuple where, in their case, like, after you do a tuple call or whatever, they they have, like, a pop up. Like, how how did it go? Like, good like like, poor, good, great, awesome.
Brian Casel:Like and they could just rate, like like, oh, that that was a great call. Like, it like, the connection was really good, and and it all everything worked. Right? So they just have like a feed and they probably like log all that feedback. We should be doing something like that in Clarity Flow where at least I have some data point.
Brian Casel:I could look at our usage metrics and stuff like that, but like at least I'm seeing customers, like, check the box. Like, yeah. That was good. That was good. That was good.
Brian Casel:Like because because there are customers that are not gonna be contacting support. They're just happily using the product. And maybe just for my own sanity, like, just to be reminded that there are customers that a little
Jordan Gal:bit. Right.
Brian Casel:Yeah. That's right.
Jordan Gal:No. I I look. It's the growth shows that you're on the right track, and it is understandable the frustration around, you know, the continued focus that has to be on the product. Yep. That and it always takes longer longer than you want it to.
Jordan Gal:And to be the person doing the the product and the sales and the support, you can understand how you you kinda are looking forward to not being in that same very stressed pressure space.
Brian Casel:Yeah. But it it you know, I I do feel again, like, just trying to step back and reflect on it. It's like, I think the end is in sight. Like, I could I could literally like, these are features that we are already 50% built on. Like, they're gonna be shipped in the next month or two.
Brian Casel:So it's like, we're almost there. Like, this this summer is gonna be, like, you know, really, like, a turning point in in my in my mind. But, like, it's it's a crunch right now.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I I I feel you. It's it's exciting. I I I feel a pressure. If I'm being honest, I feel a pressure on the next board meeting.
Jordan Gal:The the next So
Brian Casel:you just had one. So one is your
Jordan Gal:You just had one. So that basically means I need I got three months.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:And I wanna show that this new focus on bid market that we talked about in the board meeting is working. And that if it certainly feels like it is, and if these deal these two, like, big deals close from this week, that is huge progress. And if we can do another few between now and then, then we could, you know, basically add, call it, you know, a few 100 k in ARR between one board meeting and the next through this new focus. Yeah. And then I think the the mood around, like, really having a very clear direction on where to go Yep.
Jordan Gal:Will intensify. And then I feel like that's when you look over at your bank account and you say, there's firepower there for a reason. Yep. Now that it's working, now we deploy the firepower. We're not like trying to take it slow to see how things go.
Brian Casel:That's how I've been well, I mean, I'm deploying it now on product and but, yeah, there's a lot that I that I wanna Right. On the on the marketing side.
Jordan Gal:Right. Maybe it's not capital to deploy as firepower, but it's focus and energy and time spent toward marketing that's a similar thing. Like, okay. Now I got this in place. Yeah.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Cool.
Jordan Gal:It's Friday.
Brian Casel:I think, I think we got a good one there.
Jordan Gal:I'm gonna go I'm gonna go splash some water on my face to, you know, get out of this airplane funk.
Brian Casel:Getting getting hot out here.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Hallelujah.
Brian Casel:Have a have a good weekend.
Jordan Gal:Thanks so much. Thanks for listening, everybody.
Brian Casel:Alright. Later, folks. See you.
