FOMO, Focus, and AI
Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of Bootstrap Web. Brian, my chair is broken. It's gonna make some sound during this recording. Are ready?
Brian Casel:Hey. Hey. There's a click. Alright. Are you gonna get to that recording where you, like, like, float up and down because of the the height of the chair?
Brian Casel:I don't know.
Jordan Gal:I don't I found, like, a piece of metal on the floor the other day that's clearly from the chair, and I didn't I could not find where to put it back, And I thought it was okay. It appears to not be okay, but I'll get a new chair. It's gonna be alright.
Brian Casel:I'm sitting on the Aaron chair, which for for anyone who I a lot of people love the Aaron chair, the Herman Miller. The hack that you need to do is go find an office that is that is, like, laid off their whole office, and they're just, like, giving away or selling for very cheap these used Aeron chairs. And I'm I'm sitting in one that's probably well over 10 or 15 years old, and it's amazing. These things don't wear and tear. I've tried all the chairs, all of them.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I've tried the expensive ones, the cheaper ones. I've bought them, I've returned them. I I come back to this, and it's it it works the best on my back and posture and all that.
Jordan Gal:So Brian says the Aeron is worth it. Okay.
Brian Casel:Okay. But you can but you can get it for, $300 or $400. You don't have to spend a thousand bucks for it new. Like, they are literally just as good used. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. That's that's that's good to know. And, unfortunately, there are still companies going out of business these days.
Brian Casel:Yep.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I don't think things are gonna get easier anytime soon. This, my chair, is from the Cart Hook office in Portland. It it's just like a little IKEA conference room chair, but I it's I love it.
Brian Casel:It's so simple. My previous chair was just like that, like very low back, like easy to recline.
Jordan Gal:Just a good shape. Yep. Alright. So now we're get
Brian Casel:our posture talk out of the way. Let's Yeah. You know? What do we got
Jordan Gal:going on today?
Brian Casel:I thought I thought this this week, I would start to be a bit more open about everything that I've, like, been planning and plotting. And I think part of the stress that I've had was, like, not being public about stuff. So I'm just gonna go public with everything that I've been planning and and and, like, piecing together for my twenty twenty four and everything. Because I always find that, like, I could I could tweak things in private. I could share them with a few friends in private, but you don't really know what's what until you put it out there and and get feedback from a larger group of folks, but especially, like, potential, you know, buyers for a new thing.
Brian Casel:So, that's I I'm I'm up to that point now where it's like, okay. I could I could stop, like, tweaking and just start putting it out there and then and then work from there and learn. You know?
Jordan Gal:Great. That hopefully, that feels liberating, and not having to hold hold things back.
Brian Casel:Yes. I get some feedback. Hell yeah. I'll just get into it, if you don't mind.
Jordan Gal:I do not.
Brian Casel:So, you know, I've been talking about Clarity Flow a lot and of course that's gonna continue. We have no plans to, slow down our efforts there. You know, got a a bunch of good things cooking right now that are frankly just taking longer than I was hoping. Like, our our Clarity Flow Commerce feature is still in the works. I'm hoping sometime this month, we've got some marketing stuff, some, like, onboarding stuff that I'm trying to ship.
Brian Casel:But bigger picture, you know, I've talked about this in the last few weeks. Like, it it Clarity Flow is on its own runway. And, in order to keep Clarity Flow sort of sustaining long term, like beyond its current financial runway, I'm gonna need to figure something else out. And I've already kind of ruled out the idea of raising more. I'm just not interested in that for multiple reasons, and I just don't think it's super wise at this point.
Brian Casel:So I need to find other ways to sustain myself and sort of stay in the game, but also, ways to find to to keep Clarity Flow running long term without the urgency of it, like, getting through its its limited financial runway.
Jordan Gal:It it sounds to me like all you're really doing is shifting from a single bet approach to a portfolio approach. That's well done. Resources, time, attention, all this stuff. It's really like managing a portfolio of efforts as opposed to a single effort.
Brian Casel:That's exactly it. You articulated that perfectly. Because it's I do when I think strategically about about things like this, getting if you rise above the products themselves and this metric or that metric or what you can do to improve conversions on this or that or whatever tactic, if you rise above all that, you have to if you're an entrepreneur, you have to think like an investor. You have to think about, like, is this, like, continuing my investment in at at the level that it that I'm currently putting at risk? Because I'm not only putting, like, dollars in terms of, like, literally money from our savings into this business to to sustain it.
Brian Casel:There's definitely that. But it's also years of my career. That's the other thing that you're that that's actually different from investors. If you're the entrepreneur, if you're the founder, you're you are betting years of your career to make a business happen.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. When- We have fewer bets that way.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And there's all sorts of ways to be successful in this career path as a founder, right? And I feel like I've had a few wins. I've had plenty of challenges, plenty of fails. But I'm at the point now where, like three years in, I'm still very motivated to hold and run and improve Clarity Flow long term.
Brian Casel:And we're gonna continue doing that and giving its small team the resources that it has, keep keeping that going for for as long as it can sustain. But I'm but I'm, at this point, three years in, like, my calculation on my personal investment has has come to, like a a fork in the road where it's like, I I can't I can't give it all. I can't be personally all in on this specific one singular SaaS idea. You know?
Jordan Gal:You know, it
Brian Casel:just didn't grow as as as much as I would have hoped by this point in its timeline. You know? So so that's gonna be sort of like downgraded to sort of a side business for a while in in more of a portfolio approach. And the main thing that I need to get back to is like getting back to my roots of like bootstrapping a self funded, self funding, like a profit first mindset type of business. And, you know, that is gonna have to mean like not starting another SaaS business as like the main thing to try to depend on and and build a profitable thing.
Brian Casel:So I thought I could share a little bit about, I shared this link with you. I passed it around to some folks in DMs this morning. The site is instrumentlproducts.com. And this is basically the start of a new, I guess I'd call it just a new brand that I'll be developing over the foreseeable future into 2024. In a nutshell or in one liner, and this is really needs, like, development over time as it as it starts to come together.
Brian Casel:But I describe it as this is gonna be about product strategy for nontechnical and semitechnical founders. So if we start there in terms of the the focus, like, this whole brand and company and product line around you know, from from this brand called that I'm calling Instrumentl Products, It's gonna be about helping founders with product strategy. And so one of the priorities here is it has to be fast to start generating revenue and profit, right? So it's gonna start out with a coaching offer. And what you'll see on instrumentlproducts.com is basically the first offer from this brand, which is my coaching offer.
Brian Casel:Like I'm actually, for the first time in a while, I'm gonna open myself up for some private one on one coaching, with with some founders. And, I mean, you can sort of see how I laid it out there. I'm I'm I'm toying with different ideas on structure on on this coaching thing. I actually have one client right now and a second call coming up. Then if I can bring in a few more, there's going be limited spots that I can take on.
Brian Casel:But it's going to be mostly asynchronous coaching. Obviously, we're going to be using Clarity Flow for that. There's going be an option where I'll be available for live sessions either with you or even include me with your team. But I'm sort of hesitating even calling it coaching because I think of it more like I can bring I can sort of plug in and collaborate with you and or your team on your product. So that can mean strategic planning on on the product.
Brian Casel:That can mean technical design architecture planning, helping to make these product decisions for your business. And if I'm If I'm working with a non technical founder, full stack. I'm a product person, I can build full stack and I'm a founder. I can take these, like, technical product considerations and help to, make business decisions off of those or maybe find shortcuts, find faster ways to bring a product or bring a feature to market, you know, mapping customer needs to actual features and shaping up roadmaps and things like that. That would be like one general area where I can offer value.
Brian Casel:The other one would actually be getting sort of helping to, like, get my hands dirty in the actual design, the code, the the UI, the architecture. Not necessarily, like, being assigned projects or tickets or things to deliver on that end, but I can help to coach, advise. If you're trying to learn how to code and and make the transition that I did, I can be the the coach or adviser in that whole journey, which I really benefited from when I was learning. And just helping people kind of like bootstrap and build their SaaS. So like there's sort of two focuses there, but the one that I've laid out in terms of the coaching is more of like the strategy.
Brian Casel:That's like phase one. That's like the, you know, because like the fastest way to start earning revenue would just be go direct service, some sort of like coaching advising service, right?
Jordan Gal:Right. Handful of customers.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Get to know them, get to know the product, get to know the team, add value. Yep. And right, I assume you don't want to turn that into like a cohort of coaching. Like that might be later on, but this is one one.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I think this is more like I I wouldn't call it temporary. I think this will be sort of some some form of a long term offer from this entity that I'm starting. But it's but the coaching specifically, it's it's not like I'm trying to grow a productized service around this, that will grow with a team. This is more of just like a step one in the evolution of of what I'm looking to build here.
Brian Casel:The other big piece that I'm thinking a lot about right now, and I wanna start taking action on as soon as I can, probably in January, is just getting back to audience growth, and building like a creator type business. What that
Jordan Gal:see that as directly linked as part of like a value ladder with with this? Right. Like, different entry points where free content than something smaller than something Yeah. Asynchronous and then ultimately?
Brian Casel:Yeah. So coaching offer is really, a, just to sort of bring revenue in the door, but but b, to start to really help founders and also for me to learn a lot about just I think there's a lot of things that I can learn, by becoming, like, embedded in in these in other people's product companies. So that's like the raw material, the the early, revenue generator. Right? But then the then the audience growth is really about just just getting back into the mindset of taking that seriously, I've sort of backed off from audience growth the last several years.
Brian Casel:It hasn't been important to me as much as I was focused on SaaS. I think now if I can build this audience driven business, which is sort of my roots, what I did years ago with, like, the productized course and whatnot. Now heading into 2024, I'm actually thinking a lot more about YouTube and going hard in that direction, putting a lot more effort into video based content. YouTube has been something that I've been interested in for a long time. And and the last few years, I I thought about starting like, serious about growing a YouTube channel, but I but I didn't because I didn't wanna get distracted.
Brian Casel:I wanted to stay focused on Clarity Flow. But now that I'm looking at 2024 is like, okay, I wanna get serious about growing an audience. I think I can grow an audience in this space. I already have a little bit of a starting point there. Then it then it it sort of comes down to, like, a decision between, like, which channel to get serious about.
Brian Casel:And one thing that I've been doing a lot of, like, sort of learning, in general about, like, the science of growing an audience is there are these discovery channels versus relationship channels. And so a relationship channel would be like our podcast or my other podcast, OpenThreads, or my email newsletter. Okay. And those are relationship channels where somebody who already follows me is subscribed and we can go deep and gets to know me and my content and we develop this relationship long
Jordan Gal:term. Right, unlikely that someone discovers you by typing in your podcast name into Spotify. Very unlikely. Yeah.
Brian Casel:Okay. Yeah. Okay. Discovery channels.
Jordan Gal:The discovery comes first.
Brian Casel:Discovery channels are where you grow the audience. You gain exposure to more and more people at scale on a regular basis. And so Okay.
Jordan Gal:And is that what we see people doing from their long form content and turning it into snippets and putting it into different discovery platforms?
Brian Casel:Yeah. Mean, discovery platforms are your social media platforms. So like Twitter Your boredom platforms. Instagram. Instagram and then YouTube is very, and so when I assess all these channels, right?
Brian Casel:Like I can go hard on Twitter or I can go hard on like LinkedIn, or I can go hard on like Medium or or even, like, SEO and, like, blogging. But YouTube is the is the one that I see has the most direct potential to to grow. And I think sort of plays to my strengths. Need a lot of effort to put into it. It's a lot of time investment and a lot of work into quality and connecting with an audience.
Brian Casel:But the whole idea behind any discovery channel, discovery platform is the more effort that you put into not only just production quality, but, like, topic and connection with a potential audience, the platform rewards you with serving you up to their audience through through their algorithm. YouTube does that. Twitter does that. LinkedIn does that. You know?
Brian Casel:It's just it's just a matter of, like, which one plays to your strengths and which one do you see as the fastest way to grow audience numbers? And
Jordan Gal:This is what we see our friend Aaron Francis doing on Twitter and talking about it publicly and saying, okay. I'm investing effort, money, time into the production quality of my videos, how I do screencasts, what my camera looks like, my equipment, the background, because I see him sharing a lot of the results. He's actually focused on his YouTube channel, but he's talking about it on Twitter.
Brian Casel:Yes. Yeah. And that's sort of what I'm thinking as well. The thing is I haven't started putting effort into this yet. I'm more in like the research mode, learning mode right now, but plan
Jordan Gal:to understand it before you start
Brian Casel:doing I have to understand it. I'm gonna be investing in my office and everything. Like Mhmm. But the you know, I do see a lot of potential on on YouTube. I mean, it's nothing new.
Brian Casel:Obviously, it's been around forever. But the, like, the creator economy or or, like, algorithm system on on YouTube just seems so optimal for for growth. If If you can get really comfortable in video, which I've done some video work several times in my career, and I've got a little bit of a starting point on my channel. It's not much, but I think it's something to build on. And especially if you can focus on topic and connection first and how you package your content ideas.
Jordan Gal:Okay. Obviously, YouTube is as wide of a channel as it gets when it comes to topics, but it does need to match right? The topic with the audience. Like if I were a chef and I wanted to grow an audience around my cooking, TikTok and Instagram is where I should Maybe YouTube also. But do you feel a good direct connection between the people and the audience and the content and, like,
Brian Casel:the world's producing? I do. Yeah. And I think that part of it is just gonna be getting into the rhythm of producing videos every week. And then as I get into more volume, then I can start to see where the points of what's resonating, what's actually tracking and producing results, and then just keep iterating and improving on that.
Brian Casel:But there definitely is already evidence of like, there's a there's a massive space on YouTube for, like, coding and programming and software development and design and tooling and and building software products. That's a huge area on YouTube with a ton of activity. Same thing with startups and business and bootstrapping and venture and marketing in general, that's also a big area. But different pockets have different gaps. And I've been doing a lot of research in these kind of spaces, and that's where I'm going to be focusing a lot of effort.
Brian Casel:But one other concept that I'm getting excited about as I think more about it is the idea of treating every single video or even every single, like, tweet, if you will, or blog posts, but I'm thinking a lot more about video right now, treat every single one like its own little product. Like, time you're planning a new video, even if it's a new one every single week, you gotta think about it like, who is this product for? Who's the target customer? What problem does it solve for them? How do we how do we attract them with with a with a good thumbnail and a and a good positioning and and a good hook?
Brian Casel:How do we keep them? How do we, like, activate them and and keep them without without hitting the back button? You know? How do we and then how do we actually deliver on the promise of of that, of of what this video is all about? Like, that's how it it needs to work when you're when you're producing content as it like, I'm thinking about it, like, if if this were a full time job, how what what kind of what kind of, like, playbook would you need to run?
Brian Casel:And that's that's what that would sort of look like. You know? So anyway, like, that, I think, is where a lot of my effort and energy is gonna start going into in in 2024. It's like, first, like, get some coaching clients in the door. Second, start to build get the audience engine back up and running.
Brian Casel:That'll be a sort of a long term ongoing effort. And then third is, like, develop multiple revenue streams. So transition from just coaching revenue into things that come about when you have a growing audience. So I think courses is the obvious one, but I'm actually less interested in doing courses. I'm more interested in maybe getting into some sort of community product, like a tight, small limited number membership group, maybe coupling that with some small conference events.
Brian Casel:So that would be one potential idea for a revenue product at some point. Another one that obviously comes about when you have a growing audience would be sponsorships, like direct sponsorships, especially on YouTube. That could be another channel of revenue. And maybe some form of courses, like technical teaching courses could come about as well. I don't know when these things will come about, maybe later sometime next year.
Brian Casel:But it's like, again, boiling it down, step one, quick, fast revenue with coaching. Step two, focus on audience. Step three, expand into other revenue areas. That's it. Okay.
Jordan Gal:I'm I'm interested. You're gonna you're gonna, you know I I have FOMO because I have no other option but to focus on what I'm doing. And I think these days, it's there's a lot of FOMO out there because there's just a bunch of interesting things happening. Yeah. The ability to build audience, these different types of channels, different ways to monetize.
Jordan Gal:I feel like I read a post about paid communities pretty recently, coaching tried and true, the cohort type of coaching.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Really interesting. I wanna learn from you.
Brian Casel:I wanna I I've been really going deep on Jay Klaus' content, and I just spoke to him on my other podcast.
Jordan Gal:Oh, I remember talking to him. He's he's really good at it.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah. He's got his site is called Creator Science.
Jordan Gal:Yes. That's
Brian Casel:right. Think, like, from a distance, a lot of this, like, creator content or creator education seems like, oh, that's so obvious or simple or not interesting. But, like, once I started getting into it, especially his stuff, like, he's really good at breaking it down and and go and having, like, really more advanced insights and and experts talking about how this stuff fits together. So I've been really enjoying his stuff. Yeah.
Brian Casel:I wanted to say one more thing. I I guess, like, again, just like you were talking about, like, FOMO and everything. Going back to, like, Clarity Flow, again, all this effort that I just described is really about getting to a place where I can keep sustaining Clarity Flow long term, you know, but removing the urgency and and just and and getting into, like, the opportunity to just build a more valuable business without just resorting to straight consulting or getting a part time remote job or something like that to pay the bills. That will be fine just to earn an income, but I gotta stay in the game and earning an income is not enough. It has to be earn profit now, but you have to be building for the long term, assets that can grow.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. That there's the portfolio type mentality or approach. Yep. Because some things are meant for immediate revenue and some things are meant for longer term value.
Brian Casel:Yep. Yep. What do you got going on, dude?
Jordan Gal:So I'm very excited about a transition that is underway where I am going to be moving my focus away from the sales process. Well, me being the sales process and being the AE and sitting in that seat and moving toward a combination of marketing and partnerships and investor relations, let's say. So our first AE is starting next week on Monday. And then the second AE, AE equals account executive, basically salesperson, starts on November 20, so a week from Monday. So within the next ten days, we'll have two salespeople on board.
Jordan Gal:And then I'll see the go to market team as complete in the sense that there are people in every seat. We have two people at the SDR seats that's to go out and generate opportunities. We have two account executives that do their own prospecting in addition to the SDRs. And the goal there is they get so busy into the sales process that they stop doing their own prospecting and and then everyone can focus. So the SDRs can focus on prospecting while the AEs focus on deals.
Jordan Gal:We have a partnerships person. We have like someone in customer success that has a lot of experience in the sales process. And then we have like a sales leader in the consultant, G. And then all those people will be far better at those jobs than I am. So it makes sense for us to basically bring in professionals and then I can start to move my focus elsewhere.
Jordan Gal:So for the last six months, it's really been at the individual contributor level of doing demos, doing deals, trying to get things closed, moving things forward. And I am I'm not a pro at that. Yeah.
Brian Casel:That was a good breakdown of all the different roles. So is there is there, like, a a manager or, like, leader of of that whole, like, department of the business, or or is that basically you still? Like, you
Jordan Gal:So it's a it's a combination.
Brian Casel:You're putting the people, like, the AEs and the SDRs, like, in in the places and
Jordan Gal:Yeah. So it did not make sense to me to bring in someone at the management level there because we need individual contribution. We need deals. We need prospects and opportunities and deals and partnerships and leads and all that stuff. And it is important for that team to be able to look up to someone for guidance, help, questions, coordination, communication, all that stuff.
Jordan Gal:And it's really a combination. It's it's I'm the person they report to directly, but gee, the consultant has a lot more sales experience. So that's almost like their sales leader when they're like
Brian Casel:I I like this approach. I think we talked about this like months ago when you were going through it a little bit, but like the yeah. Like like, don't don't hire the manager first. Hire the frontline people first.
Jordan Gal:Yes. And
Brian Casel:then build build the engine and then, you know, bring in the leadership later on.
Jordan Gal:You know? Yep. Or maybe something that was
Brian Casel:to the leadership.
Jordan Gal:That that's exactly right. So in in the interviewing process, it was very, very clear that we are looking for people to come in because we met a lot of people who were very accomplished and much more suitable for, like, a VP of sales role. And some of them were really good and also very convincing that they can jump into the individual contribution role and do deals and then move up to management later. But I was worried to bring in anyone who hasn't, like, been actively selling. Right?
Jordan Gal:Like, the people that we hired, like, two weeks ago were selling somewhere else. Like, this is what they do. They are at that level. They're hungry. They they wanna crush.
Brian Casel:And I mean, ultimately, what's even the thing that they would need from a leader is market positioning, what you know about the customer and the product and the opportunity. And that's you. Know that better than anyone. Right?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. There's a combination.
Brian Casel:Bringing in an outside leader, and then you've got the expertise in the process from g. But bringing in an outside leader, I think, would be more valuable after the ship is is up and running, and they can come in and find ways to improve. But
Jordan Gal:And that's really the the focus of the next twelve months is to prove that we have the ability to effectively pay salespeople x and have them bring in four x in ARR. That that's effectively the argument to be made to the capital markets, to investors, is the product works, people stick around, they're getting value from it. We can go to market, we can close deals in this way with these numbers. Therefore, if you just add more salespeople and more resources, then more growth. And the enterprise value of that growth is more valuable than the dollars invested in, therefore, good return.
Jordan Gal:Now there is a combination of things that are needed from those people. A lot of it is for me. Jordan, where do where do we want to aim? We don't want to go from 1,000,000 a year to 1,000,000,000 a year And on every platform, no matter what and say yes to everybody. That's like a recipe for a mess.
Jordan Gal:So where should we look? Why? How is our relationship with Salesforce? How's our so there's a lot of things there. Do we want to go after the marketing team?
Jordan Gal:Do we want to talk to the technique? How do we position this? What should our outbound messaging say? Like, what should we experiment with next? But there are also sales situations that require experience and that's where I'm lacking and where GE is extremely useful.
Jordan Gal:So sometimes you will get into a position where you kind of have to make a choice. You have to make a decision on what to do next. What should our proposal be? I remembered this, I screwed it up with a great merchant. They were doing a $100,000,000 a year and I didn't quite know what to do.
Jordan Gal:And I felt good about the confidence to make a big offer. And I put out a big number and it felt awesome that the company was at a place that we were willing to make that offer at that much money. What I didn't know because I don't have the experience is, you know what's much easier? Put it below $2.50 ks a year and you'll get approval much more easily. You worry about getting to that big number two, three years from today.
Jordan Gal:I just didn't know that. So there are a lot of things like that that come up that is really useful to have someone who just has a lot more experience than I do with enterprise sales.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Sure.
Jordan Gal:But what I'm excited about is the ability to focus on you know, I want I say marketing, but it's really marketing with a lever. And that lever is this new marketing agency that we brought on.
Brian Casel:Yeah. You were talking about, like, the content stuff. Like, what's what's what's happening over there?
Jordan Gal:Well, they are this is the first time that we're working with a a full service agency that has 200 people. So Oh, wow. Yes. So so they right. It's a it's like good and bad.
Jordan Gal:Right? Like, they're onboarding sheets. I I sent them over to Rock and he was like, tell these people to never ask us for a password in a Google Doc ever again. Like, you know, that's fair. That's fair.
Jordan Gal:So that's a fair criticism. But it's also true that if when I go to them and I say, Hey, can you help us with X? Their answer is, We have a team that does that. Let me introduce you to the right So I am excited to be able to like flex in these different areas around like we're going to do a campaign around this new feature. Let's create a video, write a blog post and launch four ads on LinkedIn, all talking about the video that all leads back to a landing page.
Jordan Gal:Can you build all of those for us? Yes. Let's do that.
Brian Casel:Yeah. So they so they handle all the creative, all
Jordan Gal:all of that? Like Yes. Yes. So, and they're like an augmentation. So we have a great designer.
Jordan Gal:And if we wanna say, hey, we'll handle the landing page, you do everything else, then we can do that. Or we can just say, just you just do everything because it makes sense for right now.
Brian Casel:Are there, like, certain channels or like, these campaigns, like, is there, like, alright. This quarter, we're focusing on this campaign or this channel, and then how are you organ organizing the experiments, if you will?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. The organizing force is an account based approach. And so it really starts from our account target lists, Right? It's not let's let's go wide and see who comes into the funnel. It's not that at all.
Brian Casel:It's like these 100 accounts are perfect. Yes. Where where are they gonna reach them?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. That's right. Here are these 6,000 companies, right? Between BigCommerce and Adobe Commerce and Salesforce Commerce Cloud. And we are working with a company that does research.
Jordan Gal:So we send that list and then they qualify like, is it what we think it is? Is it US based? Is it US dollars? Is it predominantly e commerce? Just to confirm that we're going after the right people.
Jordan Gal:Then they'll go off and find five or six individual people involved in those companies. And then that ends up as the basis for our marketing targeting. So in LinkedIn, can upload lists of emails and say, these are the people that we want to see ads and that's it. So it's an account based approach to the marketing because the only goal is to get them into the pipeline and into the opportunities and into the sales process. So we don't want anyone jumping into the sales process that makes no sense for us.
Jordan Gal:Of course it will happen in some inbound and random stuff and you go to a panel on a conference and people will just come in, but the marketing dollars spent have a finite circle that the targets are all in.
Brian Casel:And like, I guess, like the SDRs, they they stay in sync with with what's happening on marketing. Like, alright. So these Yes. These accounts are seeing ads this month, so they should be receiving some outreach.
Jordan Gal:So that feels like where it is my job to coordinate because in the ideal sense, SDRs I just had the SDR stand up. Looks like we have one on Monday. We have one on Friday. So on Monday we say, all right, here are our goals. On Friday we say, how do we do?
Jordan Gal:So on Friday, right now I got some information that one of the campaigns is getting good feedback, which means responses. And it happens to be a campaign focused on offering a video. This is what we do. Would you mind it or would you like me to send you a quick video showing you how your checkout would look? And people are like, okay, I'll see the video.
Jordan Gal:To me, that's an experiment and it sounds like a little opening. All right, little glimmer of light. Maybe we should walk through it. Yep. So let's just say, let's go with that example.
Jordan Gal:Let's say that works. And next week we do another few 100 emails about that and we get a 5% response rate and each video takes five minutes and it's not a big deal. And then all of a sudden, hey, that gets people into the, okay. So let's just say we get that bit of information from the SDR team. That information needs to be distributed to the AEs so that when they're in conversation, maybe they should go forward with, hey, we'll put together a quick five minute video for you.
Jordan Gal:And then what it needs to leap out of our company and over to the marketing agency and say, hey, this messaging is working. Let's run ads showing videos of other people's checkouts and then making the offer. Do you want your own checkout video? Click here.
Brian Casel:Yep.
Jordan Gal:Right? Random example, but, like, that coordination ideally all comes together.
Brian Casel:Like, those resources are all, like, they're ready to, you know, ready to produce when when you needed them.
Jordan Gal:Right. And if, for example, it has to flow the other way also. If if the LinkedIn ad that offers a very harsh critique of how awful old checkouts are, if that is resonating, then we should experiment with that in our SDR messaging as well, because it's the same people. It's the same 10,000 people. So if we can find a right approach to our messaging and our positioning, then it should spread itself out through all of our efforts and ideally continue to to work.
Jordan Gal:So that that's like the the general approach to the to the marketing.
Brian Casel:Nice. Yeah. I mean Yep. Since since we've since we've, like, niched down on coaches for Clarity Flow, the the two channels that we have campaigns running in, one is cold email outreach and the other is SEO. And it it just makes it so much easier when you know exactly who is a perfect fit for for this product, you know, and what they look like and literally where to find them.
Brian Casel:And we're doing a very that that example there is exactly what we're doing essentially with with cold outreach. It's like, we we have lists of coaches, and we're sending them outreach messages saying, do you do you want a quick video to show you, clarity flow? And that's that's essentially yeah. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:When I think of coaching, there's there's oh, man. I don't remember the guy's name. Russ something? He's kind of a I don't know how to describe it. Aggressive marketer.
Brian Casel:Yeah. What yeah.
Jordan Gal:What's Very,
Brian Casel:very good at it.
Jordan Gal:Clients on demand or something like that.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yep.
Jordan Gal:Russ something or other. But I I there's a lot to learn from his marketing. It's it's really good. It's not like my style, but but he's really good at
Brian Casel:Yep. Yep. Same thing with the SEO thing. We we've got a whole new approach. We're we're getting more into, like, programmatic SEO with we've been doing stuff with AI and and content.
Brian Casel:Now we're really starting to dial it in because, like, you can build, like, a tree of of keywords that just stack down from, like, category to subcategory to subcategory plus specificity and then use case and job to be done and all these things, like, map to specific keywords that we can just sort of like generate a bunch of content around. So we're doing a big effort there and working through like piecing together the engine for that so that I can hand it off to my VA to keep it running. Okay. It's been, it's been actually pretty like fascinating technically to see how that stuff comes together. And that's, that's the current marketing pro like the, the cold outreach is now up and running.
Brian Casel:So I'm, I'm not my only input is just like checking the results on that. The, the SEO is sort of the project, the marketing project that I'm like giving input on this month and next month. And then that should be like sort of up and running with my VA by January. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:So interesting. Oh, what else you seen out there? Are you interested in buying an AI wearable, I you know, the hand
Brian Casel:pocket thing. Everybody keeps talking about how ridiculous this video was, and I haven't even watched it yet. I I wanna watch it.
Jordan Gal:I didn't like the video. It looks cool, but I'm, yes, I I guess maybe I'm joining the criticism, if if anything. I like the ambition, but I'm a I'm a little confused in general. But what I like is the new form factor. Like So you All
Brian Casel:I understand from from a distant surface level, I haven't really looked at it yet, it it's a PIN that does does it have is it their own AI service, or is it connecting to, like, ChatGPT and the other ones? I
Jordan Gal:I think it's their own. It looks like a it's like a wearable Alexa. Look, I I don't kinda see the point. Like, you can ask it questions like you can other devices. But what I like is the is the, the interaction that happens on your hand.
Jordan Gal:So you hold your hand out in front of you and it projects out an image onto your hand. So I'm showing my hands on Zoom as if anyone can see it. But on your hand, you can see let's just say you listen to music, like the pause buttons in the middle of your hand, and then you can, like, move your right finger to go forward or your or your thumb to, like, go back.
Brian Casel:Right.
Jordan Gal:So it it is it is interesting in that way where it is a new way to interact with tech that you're wearing and you're not on a screen and you don't click a button. Like, that that part's cool.
Brian Casel:I I like yeah. I like I guess I'm excited about the innovation in terms of the interface, but I don't see the problem that it's solving. I mean, either either you can hold the play button in your hand with your iPhone, or you can do it from your Apple Watch, or soon soon enough it'll be much more like voice act you can do it voice activated.
Jordan Gal:Yeah.
Brian Casel:Don't don't see.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Where's it going? I don't know. I don't know if there are business applications. I I I don't know.
Brian Casel:And even like Alexa and and I never use Siri, but like, you know, we've we've got a little Alexa and now it's sitting it's been it hasn't left our drawer for like two years. Like, just don't like, alright. You can use it to like set a timer and play a song. But do I need AI everywhere in my life all the time? I don't I don't know.
Brian Casel:You know? I don't know. I feel like the the big opportunity with AI is in work. Like, use it every day at work, like on my computer when I'm when I'm looking at my computer, when I'm working in code, or when I'm creating something. That's where AI is is a is a monster game changer.
Brian Casel:But, like, at that point, I'm already interacting with my computer. I don't need a PIN to do that. You know? Mhmm. I don't know.
Jordan Gal:I don't know. I have no idea where it's all going. I was on a panel last week. I went to Austin. Interesting city.
Jordan Gal:And every freaking question was about AI. And I want to be like, guys, there there is no AI. What what are we doing here? What are we talking about? But I was up there with, like, people from, like, big corporates, like Southwest Airlines and so on.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. They're just enamored, obsessed.
Brian Casel:There there is an obsess and I see it in every single product that I ever I'm liter you and I are talking right now on Zoom, and I see a a new little button. I just noticed it the other day. Says AI companion. I don't I don't know what that does, but
Jordan Gal:I I Can click it? See what happens? Someone else shows up. Hey, guys.
Brian Casel:Yep. Like, single product is, like, is trying to embed AI. And sometimes it's cool and innovative, but sometimes it's just like, this is like I think every company is trying to race so hard to becoming an AI tool that it's like, alright. It still has to be useful and it still has to fit my use case.
Jordan Gal:You know? And make it better and easier, more effect, something. Yeah, I called it a marketing arms race on the panel. I was like, in software land, everyone just is saying the words AI. And then if you're a software company that isn't saying it, you feel like you're getting left behind, but you know there's no AI in Rally, guys.
Jordan Gal:It's not there. What what what are we talking about?
Brian Casel:Yep. But we'll see where it goes. I was looking at at a I opened up a Google Doc yesterday. And at the top of the Google Doc, but it's a blank page. At the top, it floats something right into the middle of the page, like in the content area.
Brian Casel:It was like two it was two or three buttons. One button was write an email. The other button was draft or write meeting notes, make an agenda, and may I forgot if there was even a third button. But I was sitting there. I was like, I don't wanna do either of those things.
Brian Casel:I wanna write a Google Doc about something else. Like, why are you forcing me to use AI for some specific use case that, like, I did not ask for this? You know?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Yeah. Kinda weird. But I but here's
Brian Casel:the thing. I just see examples of that everywhere now.
Jordan Gal:You know?
Brian Casel:Like, click the AI button to do this thing. That's alright. Well, I didn't really ask to do that.
Jordan Gal:Okay. I'm just gonna con contradict myself 180 degrees for a sec. Okay? As I am very focused and very committed to Rally, my FOMO, a lot of the FOMO is driven by the growth of AI companies. Not not the OpenAI.
Jordan Gal:God bless them. You know, that's beautiful what they're doing. It's amazing. And trillions of dollars.
Brian Casel:I I did watch the Sam Altman keynote, and it's pretty exciting to me right right now to see an this is the first company, I think, since Apple and Steve Jobs where everyone sort of pays attention to their keynote.
Jordan Gal:Yes. Know? It's cool.
Brian Casel:Google and Amazon and Microsoft, I'm sure they all have their own keynote events, but nobody cares.
Jordan Gal:Old and boring and horrible and risk averse and all of the things that
Brian Casel:you expect to Everyone's excited to see what they announced, And they announced some pretty cool stuff this week. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:And and right. And it's not like this disappointing, like, roll your eyes thing. Yeah.
Brian Casel:Like Alright. But tell me about your FOMO. What what what
Jordan Gal:do you wanna what do wanna do?
Brian Casel:Like,
Jordan Gal:that that moment of him just, like, putting together a custom GPT in, four minutes.
Brian Casel:You're like, okay.
Jordan Gal:That's why it's gangster right there. So those companies were cool. But as, like, an individual, like, you know, hanging out on Twitter in between work, the combination of, like, Bootstrap, like maybe Solo Founder, that mindset combined with these AI tools is really freaking interesting. So I see, you know, speaking of creators, Josh Pickford still at it. Just just a fountain of energy.
Brian Casel:Stuff at the wall. I love it.
Jordan Gal:I mean, right, he's going at it. Zero shame about backtracking this, and and I do respect it.
Brian Casel:Love it. I'm I'm afraid.
Jordan Gal:Yes. So we we talked about, like, the difficulty that you we find ourselves in once we start saying things publicly and you wanna like, you're worried about what people think. Josh is like fucking YOLO. Just let's just go. And Yeah.
Jordan Gal:It's beautiful. So what he's doing with Detangle, I don't know if it's gonna work. I hope it really works. If it does work, these like one, two, three person companies are growing much faster than normal software companies. Yes.
Jordan Gal:And that's interesting from a not change the world billion dollar exit thing, but to make a multimillion dollar software company with a handful of people remotely work wherever you want. Like, if that's the new version of the four hour work week, sign me up. That that's pretty damn interesting.
Brian Casel:I don't think, like, just putting a a very basic wrapper on on AI APIs is is enough to say, like, you're gonna have a fast growing SaaS business. You still have to have distribution. You still have to literally be solving a painful problem for a target customer. Like that has to be true. But I definitely don't agree with the widespread criticism of these AI SaaS tools that you see on Twitter.
Brian Casel:They're like, Oh, it's just an AI wrapper. And OpenAI just announced some stuff. I guess they just killed off all these SaaS companies. Isn't that funny? Meanwhile, the scenes, growing like crazy Yes.
Brian Casel:Because their customers don't know anything about Sam Altman's keynote. They just they're just lawyers who want to buy a solution to read their documents.
Jordan Gal:You know? Yes. Amen. Amen. That that to me sounds like a great opportunity.
Jordan Gal:I I always look at this stuff as a nontechnical person. And in that scenario, you do want to take tech and translate it over to nontechnical people that don't know about OpenAI and don't care who Sam Altman is and don't care about some new feature in ChatDPT. They just know that for $99 a month, their job is made easier and better. Yep. That's it.
Jordan Gal:And then if the launch of features and the press around it generates more search for the same category, you still win. Yep. Maybe you're not venture fundable and it's gonna be amazing and you're not you don't have a moat and all the other bullshit terms, but you can make some money.
Brian Casel:You could. Yep.
Jordan Gal:I I like it.
Brian Casel:And you and you can even still build a a small SaaS that has value in itself that can also be sold for a for for many founders, a life changing sum of money. You know? Yep. Yep.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I was gonna say a lot of us forget what that means. I I think people listen to this podcast, they know $5,000,000 change your life, my friends.
Brian Casel:Absolutely. It does.
Jordan Gal:Absolutely. Absolutely.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And in terms of that FOMO, for me, I don't wish that I was doing an AI SaaS instead of Clarity Flow right now. But I do have the FOMO of essentially, like, what what Josh Pigford does and anyone else who has the financial space and freedom to be able to go tinker.
Jordan Gal:The exploration?
Brian Casel:To be able to go explore and tinker at will. I I don't have that right now because I have to Yeah. Currently, this month, I'm focusing on Clarity Flow, but but next year, it's about, like, reestablish the income and get back on a good footing as an entrepreneur. But once you have that as a as a self funded bootstrapped entrepreneur and you're technical and you and you can build products, like, you, you know, you you can take a take a week or two to go tinker with something and see what see what it's all about and put put out a little side project, side product Mhmm. You know, just for the hell of it because you have the time and space and financial, you know, sustainability to be able to do those things.
Brian Casel:And then you never know. Like, that's like, you look at someone like him and I I fucking hate these these debates over like, oh, you have to focus on one thing versus having a portfolio or or splitting your focus, this and that. Like, of course, a, you don't have to do anything, but b, like, look at each person has their own history of, like, their own personal history of wins and losses. And you look at something like Josh, like, one of his little side tinkerings, explorations among a long list of them for him, one of them turned into bear metrics. And you just never know when one of these things is going to really hit a nerve at exactly the right time.
Brian Casel:And putting all your eggs in a single SaaS basket for for the in the name of, like, oh, you have to focus on one for you know, like, some of that is just so painfully obvious, but it but it leaves out, like, personal experience and circumstance of where you're at. And anyway, I'll I'll stop that rant right there. So I I hear you.
Jordan Gal:Alright, homie. It's time.
Brian Casel:Alright, dude. Yeah. Friday. It's time for
Jordan Gal:time for a diploma.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I'm gonna get into the weekend. I'm gonna bring my my daughter to her first Knicks game at Madison Square Garden this weekend.
Jordan Gal:Oh, that's that's fun. Nice. We went to see Hamilton last week.
Brian Casel:It was Oh, did you?
Jordan Gal:So beautiful. Yep. It was fantastic.
Brian Casel:I only saw the one on TV and on Disney, but it looked like it it's awesome.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Yeah. But that that's beautiful because it I mean, it's the play. Right? It's not like some dramatization movie thing.
Jordan Gal:It's really just the play. But seeing in person was beautiful. It was the the antidote to all the horrible stuff that we are seeing in in the world. It was beauty and art and history and music. And I was like, I was in I was in in heaven there with with with the kids.
Brian Casel:That's great. Have so many, like I have so many great memories of, like, going to MSG and watching the Knicks in the nineties. And, like, those are some of my favorite all time sports memories. And and I I just think that that building is is pretty magical for sports. Yeah.
Brian Casel:I'm pretty I'm pretty psychic. It is cool. And she's like and she's like playing basketball yeah. In LSE. And
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's fun.
Brian Casel:Oh, wow. Yeah. When you
Jordan Gal:have multiple kids, the the experiences, like, one on one are rare.
Brian Casel:Oh, yeah. That's a thing, man.
Jordan Gal:I I You try to do, like, dates?
Brian Casel:Yeah. We do we do dates, and and we do this one's just gonna be a day trip into the city, but we one thing that I try to do with both my kids at least once or twice a year is take each of them on an individual, like, overnight trip somewhere.
Jordan Gal:An outing?
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Cool. That's fun. Yeah. It's tough with three.
Brian Casel:Yeah. It's it's
Jordan Gal:a lot. We're we're starting to do once a week, Regan and I go out with one of the girls.
Brian Casel:Oh. And then
Jordan Gal:the other the other two get to stay home and and hang out and, you know, play video games. So everyone's happy, and everyone knows that they have something coming up, like, the next week.
Brian Casel:That's great.
Jordan Gal:Tonight, my wife is going out with her friends, which means I get a party night with the girls. There you go. Get get some get some takeout and watch a movie. Yep. Good stuff.
Jordan Gal:Listen, everyone.
Brian Casel:Alright. Later, folks.
