Staring Reality In The Face
Welcome back. Brian, another episode of Bootstrap Web. It's been a minute.
Brian Casel:It has. I I was just looking at, when the last episode was. I think it was, like, over six weeks ago.
Jordan Gal:So is that right?
Brian Casel:This is quite a a little break we had, but
Jordan Gal:Yeah. It wasn't, it wasn't planned. You know, we've we figured the end end of the summer was gonna be messy and this and that. And
Brian Casel:Yeah. We always have, like, a kinda like the checkerboard of of trips. Like, I had some trips, and then you had some trips on different weeks. And
Jordan Gal:yeah. Yeah. I had I had a few weeks in a row that I was out of office on Friday. Yeah. And I was was also in a in a difficult spot personally over the last few weeks.
Jordan Gal:I just wanna say a a few words on this. If anyone doesn't know who listens, I I was born in Israel. I'm Jewish. My birth name is Hanuk Gal. I was born on a kibbutz in Israel.
Jordan Gal:And what happened a few weeks ago was pretty devastating for me. Very difficult. A lot of anger. And I have a ton of family there. I have about forty first cousins.
Jordan Gal:I have aunts and uncles, and I'm in touch with all of them. And it is very, very difficult situation over there right now. And I am 100% behind Israel, and I am very grateful, for this country and to be a dual citizen with America.
Brian Casel:Yeah. It's, it it is some pretty tough times around all around the world at this point. But, yeah, the the last several weeks of what's what's happening over there has just been devastating. And, man, you know, thanks thanks for sharing that. Obviously, it does it does hit a lot closer to home for you.
Brian Casel:I didn't know until we were talking today that you you had so many relatives there and and, like, actively in you know, some in the military and everything. So
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Yeah. I have a big, big family on on both sides and a lot of first cousins, and I've, you know, been there maybe a dozen times or so over the last ten years. So I'm close with them. And, you know, I I have that bit of, like, survivor's guilt and gratitude at the same
Brian Casel:time because my life in general has been much easier and freer here to pursue the things that I want to pursue. And the credit for that goes to my parents who made, you know, the big leap that a lot
Jordan Gal:of people make toward America. Yeah. So that is not lost on
Brian Casel:You were born there. When did you come over?
Jordan Gal:In 1986. So I was six years old.
Nathan Barry:Okay.
Jordan Gal:And my family moved to New York, to Long Island, and everyone thought my dad was crazy. And my dad and mom, they came here for opportunity, but they felt like they didn't like where things were going in Israel. And my dad was in the army and he had a pretty bad experience in the Lebanon war in the interaction between him leading his men and the politicians and their goals, and that really kind of, like, soured him on on things. And that's when it kinda opened up his mind on, hey. May maybe America is the spot along with all the opportunity and everything for my kids.
Jordan Gal:So, yeah, so that's why we're here, and my cousins are there. And, you know, my well, it's been a relatively strange experience for me to walk around, you know, this beautiful, peaceful, quiet suburb. Unfortunately, as we've all seen, the conflict is regional, but in ideology, it's global. We've all been pretty disturbed by things we've seen here in The US and that is you know, that's disappointing, for sure.
Brian Casel:Yeah. For sure. I mean, it's like, if if the atrocities and and of these events aren't bad enough, then you just have, just frankly so much extra bullshit lay layered on top of it, especially coming from from this part of the world. But, you know, I mean, I mean, what what more can you say? It's like you know, I I did did feel I did feel kind of proud as an American knowing knowing that our president came right out and and really kinda doubled down on on our support for Israel, pretty pretty forcefully.
Brian Casel:And
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Straightforward. No equivocation. That was Yeah. Fantastic.
Brian Casel:Message to the world. This is where we stand. So that's that. You know?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. And that's, you know, that's kinda how how I see things. Relatively straightforward even if it's complex. Some things are not complex. But I I have found myself very unwilling to talk about it publicly on social media.
Jordan Gal:I know I appreciate what a lot of people are doing bring it up and speaking loudly and kind of fighting on Twitter and all that. I have found myself kind of going very personal in my grief and anger. And yeah. So I I you know? And then at the same it's it's like this this irony.
Jordan Gal:I had this whole plan to start talking about the business and and trying to drive leads and all that. Know, I had, like, in mind, like, I had this whole plan on what I'm gonna do on LinkedIn.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:And then it happened that weekend, and I was like, I can't even I can't talk about the business in my day to day. Yeah, let alone just operate
Brian Casel:normally, let alone do a public thing, right? Yeah. Yes. Yeah, I mean, there is always that tension for us, especially for folks in our industry, because we are all on social media, and it and it is part of our I don't know. Like, it the the tension is, like, how how do you operate normally in public when when these big terrible world events are happening?
Brian Casel:And and I feel like this has happened more often in the last couple of years. This was one of them. It's like, how how do I act normal? Do should I be normally normal?
Jordan Gal:What's appropriate? What's not?
Brian Casel:Should I have my normal day to day tweets and whatnot about about code or or silly jokes or this or that?
Jordan Gal:Or Right. Right. And and some of it felt some of it felt in, you know, like, a day later and people are talking about, like, this new feature they're releasing. That felt pretty tone deaf.
Brennan Dunn:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:But now all of us are starting to get into a place where we have to control the information consumption. Yeah. You know? And how much attention to pay. It feels irresponsible not to pay attention.
Jordan Gal:And at the same time, feels irresponsible to pay so much attention that it's like screwing up your life and your family. The first few weeks, I feel like, you know, understandably.
Brian Casel:Yeah. It sucks. And all the happiness
Jordan Gal:from my from my house, you know, entirety.
Brian Casel:Yeah. You know, and and I but I also, there's there's just the reality, rightly or wrongly, that so many people are actually tuned out. Like, people even if they're even if they do follow the news, they still tune themselves out on a day to day basis. And like just one example of that, just the other day, I didn't even catch it when it happened live, President Biden did an Oval Office address, I think, the days after.
Jordan Gal:Yes.
Brian Casel:Calling for funding for for support for Israel. Right? Yeah. And I didn't know that that happened. I only found out about it a few days after after it happened.
Jordan Gal:Right. We we don't watch TV in that way.
Brian Casel:Yeah. But if this were, like, the nineties or the eighties, an Oval Office address, I mean, 90% of the country would be tuned in watching it live. Yes. You know? And I And I was just thinking, like, there's there's a legit chance that, like, less than 20% of the country even knew that it happened, let alone seen it.
Brian Casel:You know?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Yeah. It is you know, it's understandable that I'm gonna pay a lot more attention than other people, the same way Ukrainian immigrant family is gonna pay attention a lot more closely to what's happening there. Mhmm. So it's it's almost like an important right to be able to just tune out and live your own life.
Jordan Gal:You know, I respect that. It's just not possible on on this one for me.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yep. Well, let's do the awkward transition into a regular business life here.
Jordan Gal:You know, the awkward transition is kinda what it's been for everyone. Because everyone's working their personal life, and then you kinda sit down at at the desk during the day and you say, okay. I do I do have to carry on and move forward and do do my work and not get lost. You know, I definitely had a few days where I was like, I just am not gonna do work because I can't. I'm not even gonna feel guilty about it, obviously.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:But we're a few weeks in now and we have responsibilities. Yep. I know for me, it's kind of I've, like, blended it in into my justification on I don't have a lot of power. You know what brings me more power to do more good? Money.
Jordan Gal:Yep. Let's get let's get to freaking work. Let's do good work for people. Let's grow the team. Let's grow the business.
Jordan Gal:Let's let's make money. And that can lead to being able to do more things that you wanna do, you know, beyond that.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Well said, brother. Alright. So, I mean, it has been about, what, six six weeks or so since we last recorded. Yeah.
Brian Casel:I feel like it happened to this little break of ours happened to happen over a time when, at least in my mind, on the business front, and this has not been super public yet, and and I'm not gonna get fully public about it yet. But the but I feel like I I've been going deep down the rabbit hole of planning and plotting and big picture thinking. And, you know, I think it sort of kicked off when I came back from Cabo Press, which I went to about four weeks ago. Amazing event put on by Chris Lema and down in Cabo. And this was in the few days before ten:seven.
Brian Casel:So it was like, I think I came home on the day before ten:seven or something like that. And it was just a fantastic time. You know, we're talking business. We're in the pools. We're at this amazing resort.
Brian Casel:So it was a great break, but I think it was coming back from that that that sort of kicked my mind into big they they, like, pulled me out of the day to day, heads down, focused, grinding work of of working on clarity flow, you know, full time every day to, okay, where is this going? And it brought me right back into running my spreadsheets of of looking at the projections of like, okay, we we are operating on a runway. This is a a slow, steady SaaS business that is at a certain level right now. And the question is, where are we going to where is this level going to be six to twelve months from now? Because that is the runway time frame.
Brian Casel:That's just the hard reality of the business. Yep. And and and we have some slow growth happening. We've got several big projects happening as we always do both on the, like, growth projects, some product projects, some marketing investments, people up working on different things. All these things are happening.
Brian Casel:I've been full time focused on this business for the last this this will coming up on the end of three years on this business. And every projection that I look at is, like, even if some of these growth projects tend to work, they're probably not gonna get us there fast enough. Like, they need to do better than just work. They we we need to see more, like, something closer to hockey stick growth in the in the next four to six months if we're gonna reach profitability ten to twelve months from now.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. It's better to just look at those spreadsheets and look at it right in the eye and not, you know, just kind of hope for this and maybe if this, like, nah, man. Look at the math.
Brian Casel:Like, there's a there's a real case that we just plateau and some of these projects don't work. There's a good case that that we will see more of the same, which is, like, slow, like, some some growth. But the only case that actually gets us to where we would need to be financially to survive as a as a stand alone business, has to be, like, way better than that. And that means every single metric is improving. Every single growth thing just clicks within the next three to five, six months.
Brian Casel:Depends on the different projects it is. But profitability looks like not only paying for the small team, but also paying for my minimum viable salary, if you will. And, and frankly, we're just not very close to that right now. And so the the hard reality is what what I what the hard reality of that is, and I and I think this is some I don't know what it was about coming like, flying home that day from Cabo Press. It was I have been, like, heads down on doing everything I possibly can to to make our growth projects work.
Brian Casel:I have to start to question, like, what do I do if these don't? Mhmm. What what are the actual options? And and it was sort I don't know what it was. It was some some sort of, like, wake up call where it was like, I can't just keep focusing on this business and get it get to a point where we're, like, one or two months away from the runway, you know, running out.
Brian Casel:Because then then we're in, like, a desperate situation where I what would happen that's, like, literally the worst case scenario. And we're looking at,
Jordan Gal:like You restrict your options.
Brian Casel:And and and, you know, that that point will be somewhere in the middle to to late twenty twenty four where I would have to lay off the entire team, you know, all the developers, my marketing assistant, all of them. And then I would also not only would I then have to run the business solo, I would also have to immediately find consulting work or even resort to just getting a job while keep while trying to put keep the lights on on Clarity Flow myself. Like, that is just an unsustainable worst case scenario. Can't do it. Right?
Brian Casel:No. So my so the logical thing is, like, I have to act now and not like, act now while I still have room and runway to maneuver and be strategic and plan out and and take some steps slowly and and all that. So
Jordan Gal:I think I think a majority of companies are doing all the exact same things. All the same Everyone is looking at, all right, let's not rest on optimism and the best case scenario as our plan. That just does not seem like a good way to go about things, not a responsible way to go about things.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Because the reality is, call it ten months of runway left. That's a good chunk of time where where a lot of different things could happen in that time. Like, we we could nail it on some of these growth projects, and we could and we could make it through and just become profitable. But I I just can't bank on that.
Brian Casel:And and I don't think it's wise to bank on that. And I think by act by starting to act now, and by now, I mean, like, now as we get into, the beginning of 2024 is when Mhmm. That's when I start to have to think about, like, what are the actual changes and what are my actual options that I can think strategically and actually maneuver here? So just like real quick, I'll be a little bit transparent about where my mindset is at. I'm not gonna share much about what I'm actually gonna be doing.
Brian Casel:I'll share more of that as the weeks come out ahead, as the weeks go on here. But first option is just do nothing, keep my head down, and just hope that for faster growth. I can't bank on that. Next option is just to raise more, find more investment. Again, I I took a little bit of angel investment early on, from, Calm Company Fund, and then the rest was self funded out of out of savings.
Brian Casel:That it has been that case for the last three years. I don't love the idea of trying to find more investors, A, in this current investment market, but there's also a different calculus that I have mentally. I'm like, okay, I do care about this business. I see long term value, but I'm not I don't think I'm ready to really commit to another extension of runway have that mindset again. Another option, like, people listening might be wondering, like, oh, he's gonna sell the business again.
Brian Casel:Like, definitely not. I I'm definitely of the mindset of, like, I do not want to sell anytime soon. I I really believe that the Clarity Flow business has a lot of value. We've got a lot of great customers. I think the product is is great, and we're only making it better.
Brian Casel:We're actually pretty close. We're we're about to launch, Clarity Flow Commerce next month. Mhmm. So I'm really excited, and I want to keep the business and the product going with our small team, and I wanna keep working on it. A lot of things I wanna do on Clarity Flow.
Brian Casel:So a lot of what I'm thinking about for next year is like, how do I enable that to happen? How do I enable the people to stay in place, the business to keep going long term in my portfolio? One other option that know a lot of founders do this from time to time is they just take some part time consulting work. I'm a I'm a designer developer, so I could go, you know, seek some, like, product design dev work, with other companies. I don't love that idea because it obviously, it it's just really time draining and energy draining on on on my time.
Brian Casel:It's a good way to to make some, like, short term income, short term cash, if if we needed it. But but it also takes me away from the business. Because, like, if I'm doing consulting work, that's, you know, more or less a full time thing.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. More trade off for time.
Brian Casel:So then then it's like I'm trading my time, and I'm and I'm I'm sacrificing my time that I could be putting into a a business. So it's like the only benefit there is I'm getting some cash value.
Jordan Gal:Right. Straightforward.
Brian Casel:It's like short term.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. You don't have to build anything before getting started. Yep.
Brian Casel:Yeah. The the final option, and this is basically where I'm where I'm heading, is I'm calling it like, quote unquote, like, back to my roots. And that is I'm I'm gonna get more into it as the next few weeks and months go on. But all this really means is I need to get back to this, like, profit first mindset. You know?
Brian Casel:And in my career so far, I've been out out of my own fifteen years now as as an entrepreneur. And, like, the first twelve of those years, everything that I did was essentially profitable. Like Mhmm. It was self funded, completely bootstrapped. You know, I did have multiple things going on.
Brian Casel:But especially from the years, like, 2015 through 2021, I had, you know, audience ops and the productized course and a couple other random things. But those were profitable, self sustaining businesses that funded my other ventures into SaaS products. And that was literally my my thinking when I launched Audience Ops. Was like, what's the what kind of business do I need to to sustain cash flow? Mhmm.
Brian Casel:I'm not saying I'm gonna go build another Audience Ops, type business again, not not restarting those same businesses. But I need to get back to that sort of situation for myself where I have a long term profitable business venture that is basically like the core profit engine that can then help to that can self sustain all these other investments in products. So like the idea is to like basically just reestablish my income and build a valuable asset for the future that can then enable things like Clarity Flow to to keep running. You know? Right.
Jordan Gal:If it can allow you to not sell Clarity Flow Exactly. And wait another two years, you know, like, you can just get to a very different place.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And in my mind, would be far, even far beyond two more years. I say a really long lifespan for Clarity Flow.
Jordan Gal:Right. But if it gets sustainable in two years, then all of sudden you have far more options.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so I mean, that's sort of where my head is at. I have some big ideas some starting to shape up. I've been working a lot with a coach lately, and I've been sharing some thoughts privately with a few folks and starting to get some clarity on what this is all gonna shape up and look like.
Brian Casel:I'll share more about that later. But yeah, that's been my, I'm still, like, as of today, I'm still full time focused on Clarity Flow, working on multiple projects right now. But in all the waking hours outside of working on these projects, I'm going down rabbit holes.
Pippin Williamson:You're digging.
Brian Casel:And going and planning and plotting and learning and all that. So that's been fun.
Jordan Gal:I'm not surprised to hear that the trip and the travel and Cabo Press and talking with other people and thinking about the business for a few days while traveling, I feel like that usually results in these types of business epiphanies, strategies, realizations, come to Jesus moments, like wake up call, whatever you wanna call that. It's often triggered by travel, by changing your scenery and mindset and point of view. Yeah. I'm not not surprised.
Brian Casel:Yeah, man. And I get, yeah. Definitely. Especially a trip like that where it's like it's both business. I'm talking to a lot of really, really awesome other founders, and we're in pools, and we're holding drinks, and we're in this beautiful resort.
Brian Casel:It it was a that that was a really good getaway.
Nathan Barry:But I would say, like, the the one thing
Brian Casel:that I'm pretty excited about right now is that this whole mindset and strategic shift and everything happened this month in October 2023, because I wasn't planning on it. I wasn't saying like October is gonna be the month that I that I decide on what what the long term future is gonna hold. But somehow, I knocked myself into it, and I'm I'm glad that that happened now and not six to eight months from now. Because I because that's what's exciting to me is, like, now I have space to start to take strategic steps in this direction without feeling a sense of urgency.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Well, good for you for acting early. We have undergone a lot of similar thinking. We have been looking at what our plans look like and what's optimistic, pessimistic, realistic, what's runway look like, what's our ability to raise more money. And we've made some shifts also over the last few weeks.
Jordan Gal:What can you We tell shifted resources, think is the most accurate way to say it.
Brian Casel:We
Jordan Gal:did a riff. We did a reduction in force and we let go several people on the same day. First time I've ever done that. It was really difficult and we didn't take it lightly. And we tried our best to plan it out in such a way that respected the people that were directly impacted and respected the importance of how things felt in the company, including the people who were not impacted.
Jordan Gal:Right? So you're right. You have kind of multiple audiences that you are responsible to in that setting. First and foremost, the people that you're telling them that they no longer have a job. And then doing that multiple times in a day was, it's nerve wracking and sad and difficult and all that stuff.
Jordan Gal:And so what we did was we timed it for a day that we had all hands and made sure that we minimize the amount of time between the announcement of the decision and everyone being able to get together and see each other and ask questions directly. So that's why we notified people about half an hour before all hands. And what we did was we brought all the team leads and we got the team leads on a call and we said, okay, this is not gonna be a normal all hands day. And what is about to happen is we are about to notify the team that this is happening. And what we need you to do as the team leads is as soon as you see Jordan's message go out to notify people that this is happening, myself and the other people in leadership are going to DM the people who are impacted.
Jordan Gal:And you, as the team leads are going to reach out to your teams of the people who are not impacted. And here are messages that we basically pre wrote these messages and said, okay, here's the general direction. You make it your own. And then we notified people. We got in touch with the people who were impacted.
Jordan Gal:And then half an hour later, had all hands, in which case it wasn't a normal all hands. It was basically me with a deck and saying, what just happened? Why it happened? What's next?
Brian Casel:Yeah. I I would I'd imagine that that whole announcement and rollout of messages is like it's a it's a dual challenge, right? It's like you've tell the the people who are impacted, and that's insanely hard to do, especially when it's a group of them. But it's also like you you gotta you gotta keep the the team that remains to, like, still buy into the vision and, like like, security and, like like, you know, don't get freaked out.
Jordan Gal:That that's right. And part of what they're watching is how you treat the people that are impacted
Brian Casel:Yep.
Jordan Gal:And how compassionate you are with them because these are your colleagues and friends. So it it it really is a you know, it's a complicated, delicate thing.
Brian Casel:I'm curious to know I wanna backtrack a little bit. Alright. So, like, I don't know. Can you take us through any sort of timeline, like, going backwards to when you decided that this is even just a possibility that might happen? Like, what what triggered that?
Brian Casel:And then, like, what was your process for just you coming to, like, okay. It's time for action.
Jordan Gal:So the when we start we started talking about this, what I said was we shifted resources. And that is an honest way to put it because what we're doing now is hiring salespeople. So it's not that we're cutting back on burn period. It's that we are ready to hire go to market people. And what we need in order to make 2024 successful is we need a strong go to market push.
Jordan Gal:And I was not willing to increase the burn in order to do that. I kinda demanded out of us and out of our, you know, financials that the burn stay pretty much the same or go down a little bit, and we also invest in go to market. And in order to do that, there you know, there's only only two levers, revenue and expenses. That's it. Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:Have done a good job on revenue. It has grown pretty well this year, and we just signed a few deals this month, which was kind of like the ideal thing to happen after the shift. But it wasn't cutting into burn the way I wanted it to. And so we did have expenses to cut. So revenue went up, but we still needed expenses to come down.
Jordan Gal:It's good that revenue made up for some of the potential instead of expenses. But I was not willing. It felt undisciplined and a bit irresponsible to just add the expenses on top of what we were burning in order to go to market the way we want. And so we made the decision to do both, cut and hire. And so that was that was a very transparent explanation by me because I just didn't want I just wanted everyone to get a very clear idea of what the thinking was and what the strategy is.
Brian Casel:And what's the time frame? Like like, okay. Like, you start to think about 2024. Is it, like, a week later? Is it three weeks later that you, like, deliberate on, like, what are the what are the different options?
Brian Casel:And then, like, this is the the most obvious straightforward.
Jordan Gal:It it it coincided with our seasonality. So in the mid market and enterprise where we are currently aimed, there is significant seasonality in ecommerce in the way merchants purchase software. They make their budget decisions in January, February, and they enact on those budget decisions throughout q two and a little bit into q three. Then you start to get into September and October and everything starts to slow down. That's where we are right now.
Jordan Gal:It is late October and all the deals that we have going, the ones that are closing are closed. Now there's like a lull between now and Q1. There's a really important timeframe right now between now and the end of the year to get in touch with merchants and SIs and agencies and site assessments and all this stuff that sets up those budget conversations in January. And so the timing is right now to bring on we just hired a new SDR. She started two weeks ago.
Jordan Gal:We're we just right before this podcast, actually, I got the verbal commit for the second account executive that we hired. So now we have these two AEs coming on board and we need them on board in November so that they can ramp up and get everything in place and learn the product and the company and the team and all that stuff in November, December so that when January 1 hits, it is hit the ground running, not now you're on board and here's your computer. We burn a month that way because we we can't burn January because the selling season is like this six months, and that's where the growth needs to happen.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah, man. Got it.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. So it's all it's like you. You just have to stare this thing right in the face and do whether it's hard or not. You just have to do the thing that makes sense for the business.
Brian Casel:I think one of That's the it. Yeah. I mean, it makes sense, man. And and I think it you're right. It does sort of like it does coincide with, like, the natural timing of of your business, you know, here in q four.
Brian Casel:So that makes sense.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. And at the same time, I'm I'm just like you. I look at all these different options, different contingencies. I'm working with banks that want startups, and I'm talking to banks about lines of credit and backup plans and talking to investors and saying, what do you need to see in order to you know, what milestones do we need to hit? So all of this is like twelve or so months out, and the only responsible thing is to take action now.
Brian Casel:You need to shift, Decide how
Jordan Gal:aggressive you wanna be. Yeah. So it's it's it is a strange thing because there's, like, a risk acknowledgment. And at the same time, we are hiring AEs that make a lot more money than I do.
Brian Casel:Yeah. You know? By with with this move, I I know that you're that you're investing in go to market and, you know, bringing on AEs. But, like Yeah. What what is actually lost with with the team that that that is growing?
Brian Casel:Like like like, capacity and, like like, are are there thing are are you thinking about, like, what kind of things are you going to have to cut back on or go slower on because of this?
Jordan Gal:There will come a moment of of real tension, and and it's not here yet, but I know it's coming in the future. So right now, we we've done a great job on the product. We built the integrations for Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Commerce Tools, Magento. So now we are in those environments. Our app is now in the Salesforce app exchange.
Jordan Gal:We're in the Magento extension store. Like both of those platforms have taken the look, we got to where we needed to be. Now the product is in a good place. It's processing now millions a month. And when a new merchant comes in, we have the capacity to build stuff for them.
Jordan Gal:That impacts our roadmap overall and our speed there. So we have a few months now in this code freeze time to do a bunch of stuff. And the moment of tension is going to be when these AEs hit their stride and they bring in two, three deals a month and all of a sudden we don't have the capacity to service, then we'll have to seesaw back, but it'll be at a lot lower risk because we know where the revenue's coming from. So that is like, that's just the reality. I just was not willing to just, you know, shut my eyes and say, oh, hopefully it works out.
Jordan Gal:I just wasn't willing to do that.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:It's it's been a really interesting process with the AE hiring. So we hired a recruiter, which means it's really expensive. But as soon as we did that, the quality of candidates just went through the roof because before that, we were capturing the interest of people who didn't have jobs. The recruiter goes out and touches people who currently have jobs right now at exactly the companies that we want them to have jobs and pulls them into our process.
Brian Casel:Yeah. That makes sense.
Jordan Gal:Yep. So that has been fascinating. And what I've concluded is that as complex as the business is with all these different things going on between people and systems and software, right now my job is really straightforward. Can our business hire an account executive that makes a few $100,000 a year? And can that account executive add a million in ARR to the business?
Jordan Gal:That's it. If you can do that, we can go out and raise more money and then hire 10 more salespeople. So it has been complex, but I'm trying to keep it real Just just
Brian Casel:boil it down.
Jordan Gal:Really what it comes down to. That's it. That's it.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah, man. I it's so helpful to think in those terms. You know? And that that's how I think too about it.
Brian Casel:In different we have much super different operations and people involved, but, like, I'm at a point where it's like, this business is probably not going to you know, or I'd say there's a I don't know. I don't know what percentage chance of of it, but it's it's business is not going to get to a point that it consist that it can pay for my salary in the in the near term. It can pay for this the team that I have, and I want it to. But it's, you know, but it's it's like it's a question of, like, what what does it take for this business to to keep going? But the, you know, on the, where your team is gonna feel that tension and the seesawing back as you get into next year, like, I'm thinking about like, how am I actually gonna make the moves that I'm planning on making make those work?
Brian Casel:And more for like me like, my time,
Jordan Gal:you
Brian Casel:know, allocating my time and and focus. Because I I do have, you know, a couple developers working on the product. I do have a a couple of assistants who work on marketing projects with me. So I do, like, delegate I I I work a lot on those projects, and I manage all these projects, but I end up delegating a lot of the work to them. But I'm still, like I I still today, I I still feel like always, always, like, underwater on all the projects that I have to manage and and put and give my input into.
Brian Casel:I mean, it's it's kind of insane when I list them out. Like, I listed a a few on my notes for this episode, but, like, there's even more that I haven't even listed here. But, like, I've got a a major feature, Clarity Flow Commerce, which is, like, more than 50% shipped, or ready to ship. We've got other product work that that's also happening. I'm I'm currently overhauling our self serve demos and onboarding process.
Brian Casel:That's a lot of product and video recording work that I'm doing literally today. Then we I'm doing cold email outreach, and I've got assistants working on that, building lists. I've got tools that I need to work and and get going. I've got programmatic SEO, which is like a whole new overhaul in our process for for running, you know, organic traffic, interviewing coaches. I mean, it's and that's not even all of it.
Brian Casel:Like, there there's more shit. And and it's like, I don't know how if like, I'm still trying to fig I I have ideas for what I wanna do in 2024 in terms of, like, you know, the the the profitable business and then keeping to to run Clarity Flow, but I'm I still have not yet figured out, like, how am I gonna manage my time effectively? And how are we gonna get to a point where where we can work more efficiently and more slowly and and and let these projects drag out longer on Clarity Flow? You know, when when I remove the urgency of, like, trying to hit runway.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. You're probably end up doing less.
Brian Casel:I I it's just like no no right thing. Yeah. No ifs, ands are are about it. It's just we're gonna have to be able to work slowly, more slowly, and and deliver things more. And also, like, there are some like, I still wanna do most things that we were planning on doing in terms of the features we're building, even in terms of the the marketing investments that we're doing.
Brian Casel:I want all that stuff to continue. And I think it can, especially since most of that is delegated to team members. But one of the things that I had been getting more into was doing a lot of sales demo. I'm still doing a lot of sales demos. Like, we are getting organic sales demo requests through the website.
Brian Casel:I get a bunch of them on just plop onto my calendar every single week. I'm the only salesperson.
Jordan Gal:My You original wanna keep that up or you wanna automate or
Brian Casel:That's gonna be one change. And I'm actually automating that now. I'm starting to do that in the next two, three weeks where, well, I'm recording it today. It could be done by next week. But I'm moving to a recorded demo.
Brian Casel:And I wasn't going to do this, but now that this new directional change is happening, this is one of the first things. And frankly, I'm getting into this, I think I should have been doing this because I've been doing a lot of sales demos now. They're starting to become very, very repetitive in terms of
Jordan Gal:like Okay. You're not learning new things on every call and
Brian Casel:Not I I did have a lot of really good learnings in terms of questions asked about the product, feature requests, and that did make it into our product roadmap. It's making the product better. But I am finding that, like, actually, by me delivering these sales demos live one to one, it's not as effective as a a recorded rollout of, like, here's here's everything you need to understand in in an order that I wanna lay it out in an optimally recorded sequence. You know, because when I'm giving it live, I sort of follow that sequence, but then they'll interject with these questions. And then they Yeah.
Brian Casel:And then we throw and then we go off in a different tangent. Then we do it out of order, and then it's a little bit confusing. You know? So I'm I the the this morning, I recorded, about six different, like, pieces of the demo in different, like, four or five minute chunks that they're gonna be able to navigate through a list of videos, and they can go sort of go in order, or they can skip around to what they want. It's going to give them a link to be able to ask questions asynchronously using Clarity Flow.
Brian Casel:So then we can get into a little bit of, like, dog food in the product. And and that immediate once I launch this, that immediately removes the need for me to have, like, an extra three to five random phone calls just showing up on my calendar.
Jordan Gal:I mean, this is my hope. My hope is that you are it's do you remember Tim Ferriss' writing four hour work week book? Sure. If you remember, he made his business successful and then lost it because he couldn't keep up with the stress. And then when he was forced to become more efficient, he realized, oh, man, I was the bottleneck for half this stuff anyway.
Jordan Gal:It's working just fine with them. That's that's my my hope that you're because you're forced to give it less time, that you do the eighty twenty thing and that
Brian Casel:That's how I'm
Jordan Gal:thinking about don't really have much repercussions negatively.
Brian Casel:You know, that that is how I'm thinking about it. So like that so on the sales front, like, yeah, like, let's just have a really great self serve sales process. And that's not that hard to do. It's just having really well done videos with an option to ask questions where I can still engage. And frankly, async I I used to do all the sales asynchronously on the early years of of Zip Message before it was Clarity Flow.
Brian Casel:And those actually went really well because people are using the tool to ask questions and getting my responses, and it worked pretty well. So so that that's that's number one. On the product side, we're finishing up Clarity Flow Commerce, is the final big piece of our huge roadmap this year. And I think that after we ship that, the roadmap is going to naturally calm down a little bit to a point where I can probably have, like, one or two developers at all times just always working on improvements and and bug fixes on the product. But I'm also talking to my team there about trying to hire someone who's who's much more, like, front end focused and can do a lot of the the stuff that I'm usually tasked with doing, which is, like, finishing up the interfaces and cleaning it up and making sure it looks good and it's ready to ship.
Brian Casel:I'm sure I'm I'll I'll still do some of that work. I'll I'll still have to put in, you know, days per week as we go forward on on Clarity Flow. I'm not completely exiting the business. But I have to get it to a point where the product team can build and get these features like as close to ship ready with as few of my hours being required on every single thing. So I'm trying to find ways to be more efficient there too.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. We're gonna we're gonna root for you as you just kinda slowly make this thing efficient and make it work. Yeah. And I I I'm still very hopeful on the the commerce front and and seeing what what that does when you start to market that feature.
Brian Casel:Yeah, man. I'm I'm already getting a lot of because we we basically advertise it on the on our homepage even though we don't have it
Jordan Gal:yet. Right.
Brian Casel:So I already I already get a lot of, like, questions and requests about it, and I've been having some really good conversations. So pretty excited about it. Cool. Good.
Jordan Gal:All right, man. Well, we are back
Brian Casel:on track.
Jordan Gal:Did cover a lot. I'm gonna pick up my daughter from, I don't know, I think it's sewing class today in my church. But
Brian Casel:We've got some some Halloween parties going on this weekend, and and I'm geared up for that.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. It begins. It begins. Yeah. Next week, I'm in Austin.
Jordan Gal:Treating. I'm psyched to go to Austin for for I think it's just a day and a half or so, but I'm psyched.
Brian Casel:Very cool.
Jordan Gal:Alright, dude. Thanks for listening, everyone.
Brian Casel:Alright. Later, poker. See you.
