Operating a Media Company
Hey. It's Bootstrap Web. We are back. It's been a couple of weeks. So, you know, we we took a break for Thanksgiving.
Brian Casel:There's been probably a bunch of things happening in our lives and in the world over the last two weeks. There there's a OpenAI almost blew up there for a second.
Jordan Gal:That was exciting. For that. That was that was high entertainment
Brian Casel:for Oh, god. That was It's so funny how, you know, when that was breaking, and then for, like, the five days that that whole saga lasted, like, I would, you know, of course, like, I'm glued to the to Twitter and to and to all the tech news stuff. And I'm, like, trying to share this news with, like, my wife and my kids at the dinner table, and I'm like, do you get do you understand how crazy this thing is? And they're like, yeah, we don't we don't care.
Jordan Gal:You're talking to us about about a ward of a random private tech company in San Francisco that matters at all?
Brian Casel:Talked to my brother about it at Thanksgiving, and and they're just like, yeah. I just don't give a shit.
Jordan Gal:It's like, no. No. No. It's it's the d accelerators and the e accelerators that it matters for the future.
Brian Casel:It's incredible.
Jordan Gal:Oh, yes. That was entertaining. It happened on, a Friday, so it really was, like, an entertaining weekend.
Brian Casel:Yeah. It really was.
Jordan Gal:Yep. And we had Black Friday, Cyber Monday.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:So that that's our Super Bowl in in ecommerce land. Yep. And just watching all that happen around, you know, Shopify and then Stripe came out with their dashboard this year, and that was cool. And
Brian Casel:Yeah. I ran a Black Friday sort of coupon for Clarity Flow, and that's been that's it. It it was a nice little jolt. It wasn't huge. And I I don't generally do a big discount.
Brian Casel:I certainly don't do, like, long term or lifetime discounts for for SaaS products on on Black Friday. But I also use this as a because one of my efforts that's going on now, like, now through the end of the year and into next year, is to is to make a concerted effort at getting our legacy customers to upgrade themselves to our newer, higher priced plan
Jordan Gal:Okay.
Brian Casel:Which get which when they do that, they get access to a ton of new features that we've shipped this year, which which have not been available to the legacy customers. Like, you know, the program like, running courses in Clarity Flow, running groups, workflows, all these different things. And then this month, we're we're actually, like, two weeks away from shipping the commerce feature. So all that stuff Mhmm. Is on the is on the new plans.
Brian Casel:And and those customers have been receiving the product updates, so so they may or may not see these updates. But, like, now I'm doing, like, a dedicated, like, hey. Like, you should probably upgrade, and here's why you should like, dedicated emails just to legacy customers, and I extended the Black Friday discount to them. Normally, that's only available to, like, new customers coming in. So, yeah.
Brian Casel:Kinda interesting. Okay. Cool. Yeah. I had a kind of a sad week this week too.
Brian Casel:We we let go of my my dog, Trey. He's he was he was an old old boy.
Jordan Gal:And Did did you have him from the start?
Brian Casel:Yeah. We had him since he was, like, four four or five weeks old. Wow. It was a it a rough thing, and it was it was the first time as an adult to to to let go of our of our dog. I did when I was a kid, but, you know, it's a different thing.
Brian Casel:And and I think I was pretty like, I I had a pretty good bond with him, like, especially since, like, I work alone at home every day for the last thirteen years, and he he's the dude in here. You know?
Jordan Gal:You can walk him.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Walking and just, like and literally, like, in my office, like, one of the things that I always remember is, like, when I'm When I get frustrated with business and stuff, like, I I'm I'm all alone in my house during the day, so I'll just, like, curse and yell at the computer screen and shit like that, Yes. You Hell yeah. And he would, like, wake up from his nap and come over here and, like, just like, plop his head on my he knows, like, something's up. Yeah.
Brian Casel:You know? Yeah. And so, yeah, that was that was kinda rough. Kinda kinda weird emotions all week. But
Jordan Gal:Of course. Well, condolences. Sorry to hear that. We we we said goodbye to our dog after fifteen years right before we left Portland. And there is nothing that will crumble, like, grown man, like like that relationship.
Jordan Gal:It's just this unique thing, if you you almost become a man with them. Like, you're, like, from, like, you're 25 to 35 or 25 to 40. You go from, you know, being young to all of a sudden, you know, the the the final act of responsibility of dog ownership is knowing when when to to end.
Brian Casel:Yeah. That's what you said to me, and I I really appreciated that. Because, you know, that's that's a tough thing because he he was getting old. Like, we we knew it was coming in the in the over the last couple of months. He's starting to deteriorate and everything.
Brian Casel:But Mhmm. Yeah. At some point, I just sorta I like it it does come down to me. Like, I'm the one who, like, makes the call. Like, alright.
Brian Casel:We gotta make
Jordan Gal:Nature's not gonna do it. Yes. Nature's not gonna do it the way you want it to happen. So it really you have to play you have to play God in in that. Now, you you you only had the one dog, so you went from having dogs to not having dogs.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Correct. Like, right now, we don't.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Yes. Now, some people rush out and go get another dog.
Brian Casel:Yeah. No. That's not happening.
Jordan Gal:I went the other way. I'm like, I have no capacity to take that on.
Brian Casel:No. I I mean, I I would like to again at some point. We probably will, but but it's not gonna be anytime soon. It's a a big difficulty is traveling for us, like like like dealing with him and getting him taken care of or or or take him with us. And at and at this point, like, he's way too old to come with us anywhere.
Brian Casel:So
Jordan Gal:Then you have to. Yes. Yes. Every time you wanna go away, it's it's a thing. Well, we're we're sorry to hear that.
Jordan Gal:Hopefully, you are, you know, able to to remember all the fun stuff. You know, I I have, I don't know if anyone uses the the photos tile
Brian Casel:on their iPhone? Is the single greatest feature of the iPhone to come out in the last couple of years. I I I I really I I say this all the time to to friends and stuff. Like, that tile, it's like a dynamic widget or whatever on your iPhone home screen.
Jordan Gal:Yes. You put it on your home screen. It
Brian Casel:has because I I'm I don't go through, like, old photos, like Like, that's not something I normally do, but this just surfaces old photos, and, you know, one comes up every day, and I'll and I'll text it to my wife. And, like, that's our whole conversation.
Jordan Gal:Yes. Yes. And and it has, like, this the the technology now that it makes, slideshows?
Brian Casel:Yes. Yep.
Jordan Gal:Yes. So every once in a while, it'll be a slideshow. Yesterday, it created a slideshow of pictures of my dad. So I sent it to my family. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:It's incredible. And it makes the well, no one's ever gonna look at these photos anyway. It makes that actually irrelevant. Totally. Because it it does.
Jordan Gal:You actually do get
Brian Casel:to see Exactly. Like, that's why it's actually worth snapping a lot of photos Yes. All the actually, just just this week, so I'm in my I'm in my office, which I've been redesigning. I got a whole new desk here and everything. I've been seeing that.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:What's going on in the background
Brian Casel:of the iPhone thing, I just got a new desk charger, so I could put the iPhone horizontal and use that new feature. So I'm looking at my iPhone right now. I've got a clock and that photos widget, like, on my desk. So Oh, interesting. New new feature of iOS So that just came if you put it horizontal, and then you close the iPhone, like, lock it Oh.
Brian Casel:You you see it. Is this?
Jordan Gal:Oh, what a trip. It's just, for me, it's a clock and the calendar. You can switch what those widgets are.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Oh, fascinating. Did not know that. Well, what are we up to? What do we got So, going
Brian Casel:I know you got a bunch of stuff. I've got a bunch of stuff today. You know what? Because I've been talking about over the last several weeks how I'm transitioning into 2024, and part of this is a transition into like, going from a single business, Clarity Flow, to I think of this as having two businesses now. I'm I'm entering this new phase where I am gonna have to be splitting my time.
Brian Casel:And I would say right now into December is when I've begun actually structuring my week around roughly fifty fifty of my hours are spent on Clarity Flow tasks, and 50% of my time is on this new business, which I'm calling Instrumental Products. And I'm thinking of it very much like a media company, so I can get more into that maybe later in the episode. I've got some I've got you know, so I think, like, first half of this episode, I got some updates on Clarity Flow, and then and then I can get into some stuff that I'm that's developing with with Instrumentl product.
Jordan Gal:Cool. So the show will reflect your
Brian Casel:Yeah. Week. Or or yeah.
Jordan Gal:Focus. Yeah. What do got? Cool. For so what do we got?
Jordan Gal:Black Friday, Cyber Monday, always high stress, and always fun because the numbers just kind of, you know, go 10x or whatever, 5x, what they normally are. For us, the stress is around infrastructure and things going wrong. Fortunately, it was smooth sailing, which was a relief and a challenge because we just launched our first Salesforce Commerce Cloud merchant. So first merchant on a new platform, and they're high volume.
Brian Casel:So this is And they launched, like, before right before Blackbauding?
Jordan Gal:They launched, like, Community Week before. We got to see some stuff, and their team was very good about testing and QA and coming up with different scenarios. And, you know, they worked with our QA team. It was great, but it but it's still stressful. So first Salesforce Commerce Cloud Merchant, PopSockets, you know, that thing on the back of the phone that a lot of people have where they you put through your fingers, you can hold your phone in that way.
Jordan Gal:And so that was exciting. It went well. And and with it, our revenue for the month is is great because the the volume goes up. Hell, yeah. The the other thing for me is that I wanna talk about is one website.
Jordan Gal:I have a website problem that I'm trying to solve. And then working with two new account executives. We now have two salespeople that started. They're onboarded, and I'm making mistakes all over the place and learning. Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:So we can laugh at and learn from
Brian Casel:it as well. Cool. Yeah. Sounds that's fun. I've got this alright.
Brian Casel:So here's I I already talked about Clarity Flow Commerce. That's it's it's like the the finish line is in sight now. We're we're, like, finishing up the final details on that. So that's like a big Stripe integration with selling subscriptions, selling one time products, give coaches giving their clients, like, a billing portal all all inside of Clarity Flow. It's pretty slick, and you can do a lot of pretty cool stuff with it.
Brian Casel:We're probably, like, two weeks away from launch on that. I would say we're next week, we're gonna get into, like, final testing and probably get it out the week after. One thing that's sort of exciting and super frustrating at the same time, I talked about Cold Outreach. That is a channel that I've started testing about a month ago. It's been we've been building and working on it for, like, three months at this point, but it took us a really long
Jordan Gal:It took some time to
Brian Casel:build a time to build a machine. We built up a huge prospects list, but also, like, the infrastructure, the the email sending domains, multiple, you know, Google Workspace accounts, domains, DNS, sending tools, warm ups. If if you've done this sort of thing, you you know how complicated it gets. I've been getting a lot of
Jordan Gal:You gotta worry about domains.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Domains, all that all that stuff. Yep. Finally, got after two months of of grinding on that, got it all set up, got the tooling all set up, put the live campaign oh, and and, like, there's a big there's a massive process of, like, even once we have the big list, we have to do all these all these verifications and cleaning of the list, make sure that you're you're only sending me good emails. And and we we go through an exhaustive set of checks on that.
Brian Casel:So we start sending the live emails about four weeks ago. I would say three weeks now of, like, of, like, live emails, and they're working. Like, first multiple weeks now of definitely more trials and several new paying customers directly from cold email.
Jordan Gal:Okay. Without talking to you as a conversation. We
Brian Casel:have a recorded demo that they are coming into. Okay. Great. They are self signing up and self converting, and that is super exciting to me.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. That's pretty exciting.
Brian Casel:And then in week two, things start to break down technically on the infrastructure that I talked about. So, like Domain prompts? Like, don't like, despite all all the verification checks, like like, thirty, forty percent of these emails are not getting delivered, even though they've they've already passed through multiple verifications. And we do, like, a bounce checking campaign, all all this different stuff. And then, a bunch of the domains, with, you know, using, like, Google Workspace accounts, like, the the authentication on those broke down, and Google sees me as owning, like, two way too many Google accounts for one cell phone number, and, you know, you can't use a a throwaway cell phone number to verify them.
Brian Casel:And then and so so then I get, like, locked out, and it's just, a total so it's, like Yes. It's most frustrating thing ever because it's, this channel is starting to work. Oh my god. And then it and then it starts to break. It's, like, ugh.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:That's that's wild. We use a tool called Smart Leads. I think it's smartlead.ai. That is kinda what what helped us deal with seasoning email of different domains, knowing how long to send limited number of emails before sending out more, like because it's the same issue, but we have two people who are full time. This is this is what they do.
Jordan Gal:So we, like, have no choice but to throw money at it and figure out I got a of to
Brian Casel:good advice from some friends on this stuff and using a lot of different tools. And then, now, I'm actually in the I don't wanna, like, I don't wanna name companies yet because it's too early to to Sure. To to say, like, whether they're good or not. But there's there's one one company from that cold emailed me and broke through. They, I don't know, they have some detection system on, like, they they noticed that I just recently started up some some cold email campaigns, and this company is an out they must be like a they're probably like an SEO backlink outreach company.
Brian Casel:They do that as a service. Interesting. But I think that they're spinning off a side business where they what do you call it? Like, they replace the need to have domains running through Google Workspace account.
Jordan Gal:This is such a big problem First that it of all, it's
Brian Casel:like a huge cost for the Like, most of the cost in running these campaigns is just paying for all these different Google accounts. It's insanely hard to get that stuff, like, to not break down because of the authentication. So they're, like, sort of, like, outsourcing their own infrastructure as a server.
Jordan Gal:Okay.
Brian Casel:So I'm I'm maybe getting started up with them. We'll we'll see. But, yeah. So you gotta you gotta taste, though. You got a little bit of proof that it's working.
Brian Casel:So it is working, but there's, like, a portion of the emails that are not working. So, yeah, that's that's always fun. And then the other the other thing my only other update on Clarity Flow is this programmatic SEO system is worse. Now, you know, I talked about how cold email was, like, two months of, like, building before we could actually do get it going. I'm in, like, month two of building on on this channel.
Brian Casel:So a lot of automation stuff, a lot of ChatGPT, a lot of make workflows, and and we basically got that all mapped out and set up, and now I handed off some tasks to my assistant to to do some competitive research. And and so, like, most of that is, like, delegated, but still in the construction phase. And probably by January, we should be able to have some new, like, SEO content campaigns sort of deployed. But, you know, for the most part, like, these are like, by design, this bill this business, Clarity Flow, is I've got these two main channels, Cold Outreach and SEO, which are sort of working, and SEO has been historically working for us. But most of the work and the tasks are delegated.
Brian Casel:Like, I give a little bit of input on these from time to time. Sometimes it's like a a sprint of input from me, and then it's like weeks where my assistant or or someone is is handling it. And then on the product, right now, it's pretty intense with getting commerce out the door, so I spend a good number of my hours every week, like, reviewing their work, doing a bit of product work myself, and getting things ready to ship. But I would say by January, that's gonna start to calm down because our roadmap is calming down. So so I'm I'm starting to, like, be really aware of exactly where I'm needed, how many hours I'm needed on everything, but but while keeping the my small team, like, running efficiently.
Brian Casel:You know?
Jordan Gal:Commerce the last of the big features that you kind of identified as feature Yep. Yeah. That's the one. Because that's what allows a coach to no longer need an external system to, like, go take payment here and then join my portal. It puts it all together.
Jordan Gal:Right.
Brian Casel:So so the we're we're setting it up so, like, you connect your own Stripe account. And but other than that, everything else is fully integrated inside Clarity Flow. And, yeah. And we and we had to do Commerce last because a lot of the features that we built this year are the things that you would sell through Commerce. You know?
Brian Casel:Okay. Or sell access to. Damn. So like, you know, it's not just like you know, of course, you you could use Stripe to just, like Stripe gives you a payment page. Stripe gives you a payment button.
Brian Casel:You you could just do that. But our integration makes it possible so that you can say, like, when someone buys, automatically set up a conversation for them or automatically give them a membership to your group space or automatically enroll them in a course in Clarity Flow. And then when their subscription ends, automatically revoke membership or automatically close their conversations or, you know, so it's it's tightly integrated with everything that you do in Clarity Flow. So the other the other cool thing about it is, like, you're in an async conversation with a client, or maybe it's like a prospect or like a potential new client. So you're going back and forth, you're discussing, then you can, like, pop up a payment request right in line in the conversation to say, like, okay, we just discussed this.
Brian Casel:You're ready to pay. Here's the link. You can pay it, and let's continue our conversation. You know? Okay.
Brian Casel:Okay.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I I get it. I mean, this is all shaping up to to to be where you put a ton of work on getting the product where it is, identifying how what it needs to do. And then if you can get this relatively passive outbound plus SEO to grow, then, you know, then you're a genius. Right?
Jordan Gal:You got it all set up, then it, you know, can grow. So now
Brian Casel:We've we've talked so much about this, like, like, with, like, product market fit. One of the one of the things that I'm that I'm I I I don't I don't know that I'm gonna sit here and claim that we have product market fit. I I don't I don't think that we do. Our our MRR certainly doesn't doesn't look like a company that has product market fit. But I I do think that, especially with coaches, especially with us with with coaches that that structure their business in a certain way, which many of them do, Clarity Flow is a perfect fit for those customers.
Brian Casel:And they get and those customers do get really, really excited about Clarity Flow when they discover it for the first time. And I'm getting a lot of really positive messages, like, really love it. That's why I just converted. Like, a lot of a lot of good signs from coaches. But Mhmm.
Brian Casel:It there's still the time frame. So just thinking about, like, SaaS in general, bootstrapping a SaaS in general, I I I don't know how how we would describe this, but, like, I think that there is I think you and I have talked about how, like, degrees of product market fit. It's not like a binary yes or no. And I think that you can have it, or you can have a version of product market fit, but there's still the time frame aspect. Like, just because you have customers who love your product, just because there are many of those customers in the world, and just because you have built the perfect product for all those customers in the world, does not mean you have the mechanisms to reach all the customers that you need to reach in a timeframe to meet your runway, your financial runway needs, you know?
Jordan Gal:That's right. Yeah. I don't think much about product market fit. I don't think it's that useful other than just shorthand for We built the right thing, people are paying for it, getting value out of it. On that, it's like I can see how in a venture investing framework, product market fit helps to understand what's happening here, how much money is being spent, how much effort.
Jordan Gal:Is this like at a moment where it's going to make sense that if we shove more money into the front of this process, lot more value will come out the back than the amount of money put in the front. I could kind of see that in an hour or the everyday universe, there are so many other factors and constraints around marketing budget. Like, how many people can you get to the site? Can you get to your campaigns? Can you
Brian Casel:Yeah, and also just
Jordan Gal:Yeah, profitability is probably a much better metric.
Brian Casel:Yeah, profitability. I mean, of course, people talk about this, you shift from push versus pull, right? Like, like, market the the demand is just so heavy, so acute that people are just gonna be banging down your door. But of but, of course, we all know that, like, you it's not just, like, if you build it, they will come. I there you know?
Brian Casel:If you like, they they still might exist. That just because they're not banging down your door naturally does not mean that the market is not there. And so it's, you know, it it's it's an equation, and, like, you still need to get, you know, x number of many, many customers within x time frame where you know? So that that's why I'm I'm still on this, like, mindset of, like, you know what? SaaS just really, really takes a long time to become viable and profitable.
Brian Casel:And not not every company is just gonna hit it within, like, an eighteen month time frame. You know?
Jordan Gal:No. No. Yeah. So it it's very similar in the venture context, and it looks different because what people see is revenue, but that is not the same thing as sustainability. So bootstrapping and putting, you know, a 100 k into the company and then it taking eighteen months to get to $10.15 k a year is really not that dissimilar from raise $10,000,000, and then, sure, you might be at $300,000 a month, but you are not sustainable yet.
Jordan Gal:You still need to get to a different mark. Yeah. Yeah. It's good that fundamentals are cool. Right.
Jordan Gal:And everyone's thinking about them, and everyone's kind of focused
Brian Casel:on that. For sure. What do you got going on?
Jordan Gal:So speaking of, yeah, on my side of things, right, let's my life right now and my focus at work is sales first, and then I know I need to get to marketing. So let's talk about sales first, and then we can talk about website marketing problem I have. Both of our new AEs are now they've started. Onboarding. One started two weeks ago, and one started last week.
Jordan Gal:I don't even I I think it was last week. But both are now officially in the company. And what's coming up is I'm having a mix of emotions. I'm really excited to have two really motivated, ambitious, accomplished people in the company. At the same time, I'm getting that impostor syndrome of they're gonna find out, don't know what I'm talking about when it comes to enterprise sales, And then they're gonna wanna run away, and they're gonna think they made a mistake in joining the company.
Jordan Gal:Like, all that stuff, like that fear around being exposed or whatever. And I don't usually get that, but that comes out when you are in a section of business, an area of business that you're just not familiar with. So that's kind of what I've been dealing with on my side.
Brian Casel:What does their onboarding look like into the company? What does their first week, first two weeks look like?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I I have a little checklist here. So it's some simple stuff. Right? Get a laptop, get them the accounts, and then and then meet the team.
Jordan Gal:Right? And then we start to go in with And
Brian Casel:they're they're
Jordan Gal:Now in remote?
Brian Casel:Or I forgot. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:They're remote. Yep. One is in North Carolina. One is in the Los Angeles area, Southern California, Laguna Beach, I believe. So they came into the company, and now they have been doing trainings with g, the sales consultant.
Jordan Gal:And she has been bringing them through things like discovery and what that means for us, demo and pitching and what that means for us, and then pricing and packaging. Right? So these, like, distinct trainings. And then we start to get into them viewing previous demo recordings so they can hear how I'm pitching the product and the questions that are coming up. Right?
Jordan Gal:All of this is to get to the goal of them being able to do sales conversations on their own. Right? So it's like these training wheels until that point, and we wanna get there. My goal is, like, by the January. So then they've been joining some sales conversations that have happened over the last two weeks, and then we look at the existing pipeline.
Jordan Gal:And I am taking the existing pipeline and divvying up who gets which deal. Right? Some deals are so far along that it there's no work to do, so it doesn't make sense to assign
Brian Casel:to Right?
Jordan Gal:Some of them still have work to be done, but it's great to have them come into the company and basically hand them three or four deals like, hey, these are decent chances of closing, and let's introduce you to the prospect. And all of sudden, if if you can close this, you get a nice win on the board. Like, we we might get a win on the board either today or Monday. So we have an order form, like a contract out. And that sales it's not a big deal, but if we can get a win on the board with one of these salespeople in the first, like, week or two, that that's just gonna feel good.
Jordan Gal:So along with that, there's always a like, an ongoing review of tools. What have you used? What do you like? What what do we not have that you need? One of them is Gong.
Jordan Gal:So we're looking at Gong to do recordings and also put it puts, like, a layer on top of the CRM. So you don't actually have to go into HubSpot. You can just live in Gong and have all your tasks there.
Brian Casel:Alright. Cool.
Jordan Gal:Yep. I which which I didn't know. Right now, we just use Meet Record, which is just recordings and transcripts. And then we start to get into some some nuts and bolts. So this this role is really different from all other roles.
Jordan Gal:This role is directly connected to a quota and the pressure that goes with hitting that quota and the compensation, the reward that goes with hitting that quota. So this is what these people do. They come in and they're basically like, what do I need to do to hit my quota? Because that's how I make my money. And everything points in that direction.
Brian Casel:What are they I'm curious, like, what comes from from them during the first week or two? What are they asking lots of questions? What what do they what do you think they need? What are they asking for? What do they need?
Jordan Gal:They want to understand who the right customer is. They want to understand pricing and how that works. They want to understand the process of someone being interested and bringing them through. They want to understand what they are responsible for in terms of their own efforts compared to what the company brings their way. Right?
Jordan Gal:So the way we do it right now, we're trying to go as vanilla as possible and then adjusting from there. So right now, we are based on territory. So one of them is West Coast, one of them is East Coast. Literally, Mississippi River, East, West. What that refers to is the accounts that you're going after yourself.
Jordan Gal:Like, you have a list of Salesforce Commerce Cloud merchants. Where is that merchant based? If it's in my territory, I can go reach out to that customer. Those, like, specific accounts, And then there are additional sources of leads. One is inbound, like, just came to the site and filled out a form.
Jordan Gal:Another one is the SDRs. So we have two people who do outbound all day. And so if a lead comes in through them, that's another source. And then the third one is partnerships. So you have territories, east and west, that you are going out to yourself with your own efforts.
Jordan Gal:And then the company, right, SDRs, partnerships, and inbound, that goes by round robin. You get one, I get one. You get one, I get one. You get one, I get one. So all of these systems need, like, tracking because this matters
Brian Casel:Yeah. Like, terms of their group leadership, where do they come from? Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Yes. And so, I feel relatively stressed because I don't wanna I don't wanna screw up. Because when you screw up, you're like, yo, you kinda screwed me over. You made a mistake, but it can cost me, you know, $50,000 because this person got the deal when I was supposed to get the deal, and that deal closed, and I'm not happy with you. So I feel a bit stressed around making mistakes because I haven't really done
Brian Casel:this before. That sounds like a project management workflow thing. Like, somebody is figuring that out. Is that you?
Jordan Gal:I mean So so, yeah. Well, Gee really helped. So so what Gee did is she created a go to market command center for me. Mhmm. It's it's a it's a Google spreadsheet.
Jordan Gal:And I can see from a top level my AEs, what their quota is in each quarter, and where they are currently in terms of pipeline and closed deals, and then an SDR sheet that goes with it on who is generating leads and how many emails are going out and everything, and then a partnerships and what his quota is in terms of generating pipeline. So I have, like, this overview. And then one level deeper is the individual salesperson's comp plan. So their comp plan and their quota, you wanna help them understand where they are. So we have a Google spreadsheet that basically shows this is your base salary.
Jordan Gal:This is your on target earnings. These are your kickers. Kickers are additional incentives. So if you get someone to sign for three years instead of one, you should make more money because the company wants that to happen more often. If you get them to pay upfront annually, the company wants that to happen.
Jordan Gal:Therefore, we should incentivize that. So you get, you know, another kicker there. And then some scenarios, an average year, a good year, and a bad year, and what you should expect to make in each. And then the second tab of that spreadsheet is a bunch of rows where you can put in an individual deal. How many years is it?
Jordan Gal:Are they paying up front? Are they doing an implementation fee? Just all that stuff, and then that flows into a calculator that shows them where they stand. It it's great. And then what that needs to do is that needs to basically get printed out as a PDF, and we sign it.
Jordan Gal:So, it's like, we agree this is how Like our model
Brian Casel:a contract, basically.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Yes. And so, all of that feels like, you know, it's a little high stress for me because I want to get it right, and I don't want to feel like an amateur. I don't want to you know, all this stuff. Psychologically.
Brian Casel:I'm also wondering about I don't know how much of this you currently do, but like, what about qualification of the leads? So, a
Jordan Gal:k.
Brian Casel:Yeah. On the front end, a lead looks good on the surface. But once you get into it, once you get into a discovery call or this or that, like, something something maybe either disqualifies them or, like, they they might pass the qualifications, but they could turn into some sort of problem. Like Mhmm. How does that play out?
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Yes. So so so, right, all this stuff that we've been talking about so far is the theory. This is how it's going to work. And it's been about a week of of practical, actual experience, and already, the strange things come up like what you're talking about. So we had one thing come up where we got a lead through a partner, and because it was a demo with a real merchant, like, right when these AE started, of course, they should both join and both learn.
Jordan Gal:I was not on that call, and then when I went to the CRM Who's lead is it? Exactly right. And I gave it to the wrong person. There's
Brian Casel:a
Jordan Gal:lot of stuff that requires like rules. What you're talking about is a scenario that we just confronted where, okay, so if you get a deal signed, when do you get paid? So let's just say for example, we just later. Right. Exactly right.
Jordan Gal:Okay. So, right, this is a good deal. It got signed. Amazing. $50,000 for the year.
Jordan Gal:Great. Everyone's happy. When should the salesperson get paid their commission? So if we wanna do it generously, let's just say we do thirty days after they sign, that means a few things. That means we need to make sure that the merchant starts to pay thirty days after they sign, not when they launch, because when they launch might be two months after they right?
Jordan Gal:And then at the same time And it's should that contract if you
Brian Casel:can use it out this way, but isn't it or should be part of the sales executive's job to collect payment too? Like, no.
Jordan Gal:Okay. No. It shouldn't be part of their job to onboard, and it shouldn't be part of their job to collect. We should incentivize them to do what they are best at, which is going out, finding people, talking to them, identifying if they're good or not, getting them into
Brian Casel:a contract. But if there's a problem with their delivery, and the and the and they've been working with them through the sales process, like
Jordan Gal:Yes. Because you have to you have to admit that human nature will do what is incentivized to do. So if you simply incentivize to close deals and get contracts signed, maybe, oh, the fraud protection app that we don't have an integration for, maybe that just never comes up. And it's okay if it didn't come up if you're incentivized to get the deal closed. Right?
Jordan Gal:So this isn't about, like, dishonesty. This is about incentive alignment. So it's like, cool. Before you send a contract out, I need to approve it because then it's on If we find something out that we didn't know about, it's not the salesperson's fault because I signed off
Brian Casel:on So
Jordan Gal:it's like it's like a So you're you're signing off on, like,
Brian Casel:what was promised and what what the expectations are with this.
Jordan Gal:I'm committing that the company is going to pay you what the company said it was going to pay you. I'm approving that. I mean, was promised to
Brian Casel:your customers.
Jordan Gal:That that's well, right. Both. It's it's it's can we fulfill what we promise to the customer? Can we fulfill what we promise to the salesperson? And so there's, you know, there's some there's some maturity and growth required in the organization to be able to handle this stuff, and get it down now before it gets out of control and we're starting to juggle 30 different leads at at the
Brian Casel:same time.
Jordan Gal:So, yeah, it's exciting and a
Brian Casel:little It's like, everyone wants to move fast and to, like, just get the sales flowing. But but, yeah, you're this is, like, the type of thing that could, like, crop up into, like, real disputes over money and that, you know, you you do gotta get it figured out. Right? Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Yes. And right. Because the last thing you want is the thing to work, the process to work, and then have the salesperson be unhappy because you messed something But it but
Brian Casel:I'm also like, it also seems like little, you know, you have a team around. You you've got g. You've you've you've got infrastructure who who should be equally, like, involved in the project management and the tracking and the documentation of things. Right?
Jordan Gal:Yes. Yes. So it's cool. It's it's eat more new stuff on go to market and on sales. More than anything, just really really exciting to have things come together on the SDR.
Jordan Gal:We would just did what you did. We just built the machine to go outbound, and now we have those hundreds of emails going out. Took a few weeks to kinda get it there and figure out all that stuff. But now all of a sudden, things were real quiet in November, and now all of a sudden, all the calendars are starting to fill up. We're starting to get things on the calendar for January where I I feel relieved that it's it's Alright.
Jordan Gal:Coming
Brian Casel:So instrumental products is that's where I'm spending it's it's I would say it's not yet, like, the majority of my hours. I'm still putting the majority on Clarity Flow, but I would say it's, like, the majority of my headspace. And and I'm starting to devote some hours and actual work toward this thing that I'm that I'm really thinking of now as starting up a media company.
Jordan Gal:Okay. Ex explain more, please.
Brian Casel:So, you know, this is over over every week now, over the last two months and and continuing ongoing, I'm getting more and more clarity on what I'm building here. You know? And it's it's like the earliest days of of a new company is essentially what it is. Right? And so and so that means there's a lot of, like I'm not, like, bouncing around, like, different directions.
Brian Casel:It's more of, like, zeroing in on what I'm doing and and and crafting the the the direction and the operation and, like, figuring it all out. So so I'm thinking of this like a media company. Of course, it's, you know, built around me, personal brand, audience, that that sort of stuff. Like, I talked about, like, a creator type business. I did start with this coaching offer.
Brian Casel:I picked up a couple of coaching clients for the first time. That that's been an interesting learning experience. But that was really just like a step one. Really, the the bigger push here is to build this into a media operation. What that means is, like, operationalizing, content as our core business.
Brian Casel:I I was on a podcast the other day, and and I was asked, like, what do you think about, like, using content marketing in in your business as as a strategy? And the way I think about it in in this business, instrumental product, is, like, it's not content marketing. Like, content is our business. Like, that's the the the thing that we do. We make content.
Brian Casel:Right? So so that means, like, figuring out what a weekly production schedule looks like of, like, creating, researching, writing scripts for for YouTube videos, recording recording the like, doing video shoots, doing an editing process of post production, planning out content calendars, writing email newsletters, repurposing content into social media content, and so a whole weekly operation. And that's like a production schedule, what what I'm responsible for, what other team members will I need to hire, and and when will it make sense to hire those team members. I I'm I'm in the middle here of this, like, whole office redesign, which is about halfway done. Like, you know, painted the walls, got all new furniture.
Brian Casel:Now I have, like, a second desk over there that I'm setting up as, a filming desk. You know, this week, I'm spending a lot of time on tools, like, finally really learning, like, Descript, which apparently acquired Squadcast, so I'm starting to use that. And I'm firing back up my OpenThreads podcast that sort of falls under the umbrella of instrumental product, learning about, like, DaVinci Resolve for for video editing. Doing it I've I've been doing a ton of research on on YouTube. That's where a lot of this effort is gonna be really focused.
Jordan Gal:Okay. Right. You're not gonna do every type of media post.
Brian Casel:There's gonna be some repurposing of, like, you know, going from YouTube to Twitter to LinkedIn and email newsletters. But I would say it's like YouTube is like the tip of the spear where where every week I'm responsible for producing a really, really high quality video piece of content.
Jordan Gal:Is that ultimately the goal on where to get subscribers? I'm thinking about this letter.
Brian Casel:Previously, where it's, like, there are these exposure channels or, like, audience growth channels, and then there's, like, these relationship channels. The growth channel is number one for me gonna be YouTube. Secondary would be Twitter and LinkedIn because those are things where you can post content and their algorithms will serve them up to new people to so that those people can discover you. And then the relationship channels are, like, get those people who discover you to join your email list or subscribe to your podcast or both. And that's where you can go deep and really build trust over a long period of time.
Brian Casel:And from from there, the the funnel leads into products, whether it's courses, community, membership. You know, there's with a media company, there's also the opportunity to do, like, sponsorship revenue streams and things like that. So all all of the revenue and and stuff, with with the exception of this, like, coaching stuff that I just recently launched, all the other, like, revenue generating stuff is being pushed to next year. Right now, my main focus is build the distribution engine, and that's Audience. And so I'm I'm Mhmm.
Brian Casel:I'm putting together that engine now, and I'm starting to drive that engine, hopefully, by the December. And and, like, by the end of this month, before the year is out, I I wanna start to be publishing and producing weekly new content coming from from me, from from this instrumental products brand. There's a lot of moving parts that need to be launched, essentially. Or, really, it's like taking my existing, like, beginnings of an audience and, like, reviving it and and cleaning it up and putting some new pieces in place. But So that's all the logistics and the operations.
Brian Casel:I'm spending a lot of time mapping it out, and machine building.
Pippin Williamson:Machine building.
Brian Casel:But the other thing is strategy, and that is audience.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. You wanna be known for, like, one I
Brian Casel:talked a bit about, like, when I started this journey, it started just with the word, like, I wanna focus on product strategy. I wanna be in the product realm. And so think about it, like, just in terms of how this is developing, it starts, like, super broad and wide. And I'm and the more I'm working on this, the more I'm trying to narrow and and niche down. And it's still gonna be an ongoing process.
Brian Casel:I think that there's gonna be an element of, like, I just gotta publish a bunch of content and start to see where the points resonate, and then double down and niche down from there. But I'm I'm starting to to to carve down even further now where it's like, I really wanna focus on product building and and the creative and technical side of creating, launching, ideating, architecting, and literally, like, coding and launching products. And and so, you know, because, like, I like, there's certain areas of of this whole tree of of potential topic areas that you can go down in in the world of, like, startups and software and products and even non software, like productized services or courses, coaching, info products. Like, there there's a huge tree that you can go down. I I don't wanna do everything.
Brian Casel:And I I also wanna not get too too much involved in, like, the marketing and lead gen, and how to get customers, and how to and and growth hacks, and stuff like that. Like, that's just never been my strong point. I'm much more stronger on what people think of as product, like building and shipping and launching product. Of course, there's still gonna be customer strategy and customer research and finding product market fit and validation and stuff like that. But Yeah.
Brian Casel:There's gotta be a line somewhere. I really wanna start to dial into helping you build a product. And I think that's gonna get into the realm of, like, how to learning how to code. Like, I I went through that process of, like, going from designer, marketer, front end person to full stack, helping people make that transition, and build and ship a product. So, like, one way that one little tactic that's helping me start to narrow down my focus is to think about the most important part of an audience funnel, and that, I think, is, like, the page or the headline where you're asking someone to enter their email address to join your email newsletter.
Brian Casel:Right? So, you know, the Okay.
Jordan Gal:Promise you're making there.
Brian Casel:There. Like like, please enter your email to come into my audience because you are perfect, and you want to achieve this very specific result. So that's what my that's what I'm offering. Know? Because most people Mhmm.
Brian Casel:Make the mistake, or they're not very effective with audience because they're just like, hey. Join my newsletter, and I'll get and and I'll share some ideas and tips and and just follow my stuff, please. Like, that's not specific enough. You know? It's gotta be much more, you know, just crunchy.
Brian Casel:Like, I was I was just looking at three people who I've been really a a fan of, especially recently. Justin Welch. I really liked his course recently, and and he he he runs his main newsletter. I was just I'm just looking at it now. He's got the Saturday Solopreneur.
Brian Casel:The headline is practical tips guiding you from first dollar to first time solopreneur. So his big thing is, like, building, like, one person, like, creator, content driven businesses. Like, you know, enter your email address, that that's what he's going to teach you to do. That's the the journey that you're on. And, you know, Jay Klaus, I've I've been really getting into his stuff lately.
Brian Casel:It's sort of a similar vein. Like, his landing page to subscribe to Creator Science is become a smarter creator in just ten minutes per week into your email address.
Jordan Gal:Okay. It's like the what you will be like after the transformation that join this community newsletter, YouTube
Brian Casel:channel, more in this, like, sort of a different space, but Drew Riley, he runs trends.vc, incredible business, which on the front end, all you really is this weekly newsletter. But on the back end, he's got a really great membership product, and he does sponsorships and everything. But his homepage for trends.vc is, like, dive into new markets and ideas with 62,000 like minded founders. And they they send a really great weekly newsletter about, you know, trends in in start up land. So, you know, I'm just, like, getting inspiration from those, and I'm just, like, thinking through I I don't know what my final version of this is gonna be, but it's, you know, it's it's something along the lines of, like, you know, join my audience to to learn how to build and ship a a product.
Brian Casel:And and really, the transformation that I think I I could help people with is, like, transition into a products based business, especially if you're coming from, like, selling your time for selling billable hours or coming from a job.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:There's a really big mindset shift that changes when you start to think of, like, how can I build a business around a product, instead of, like, going one to one with clients? I mean, that's a big part of what I was connecting with when I was doing the productized stuff. But now, I'm I'm I'm just not pigeonholed specifically to productized services or, you know I think for for me, a big part of the transformation was, like, when I learned how to code and go full stack, and I and I gained the ability to build and ship a SaaS product entirely myself, that opened up a whole new world and a whole new mindset shift. And it opened my eyes a lot to, like, what the potential possibilities for product businesses are now that I gained that ability to actually build and ship. So Okay.
Brian Casel:That's sort of a that's what's getting, like, me, like, really excited. I I think there's still a lot of work to do to, like, dial that in and just just start publishing on a weekly basis and and then dial that in even more. You know?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Very cool. Well, I'm I'm excited to see it. I I have I have so many questions around the monetization and what comes next and all this other stuff, but, you know, we'll start
Brian Casel:You know, it's it's interesting. With monetization, I I have a lot of ideas and things that I'm thinking through of, like, potential products and and product lines. But I think my biggest goal and this is gonna be, you know, whenever we start talking about 2024 goals. For this business, I I think that the most important thing is audience growth and distribution. And and if I can look at all of my previous businesses, that's always been the biggest challenge is getting the distribution channel figured out and dialed in.
Brian Casel:And if and and so this time around, I just really wanna focus on, like, distribution first. And and I think with a concerted effort and building this operation, this engine around content production and getting really consistent with it, like, now through the year, I think that by sometime next year, second half of next year, like, I'll definitely be in a good position audience wise to start to think about, like, alright, what kind of products make sense to offer this audience? I, you know, I Right now, my mind is going to some form of a membership, maybe small conferences, and and mixing in, like, sponsorship revenue.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. And and people do paid newsletters too. I mean, there's there's there's a lot of options, but can't help but think seeing which newsletters resonate, which videos get the most views, like, just understanding more around you know, if you're taking a it's not overly wide, but if you're talking about product, there still are multiple categories inside of that. And one might just present itself as more attractive than the others, or at least from a monetization point of view and maybe from an entry And
Brian Casel:I'm also gonna I think for the first time in my career of of being I I've been public, I've taught things in the past, and I've done the productized course in the past and stuff. But all of that stuff, and even on, like, this podcast and everything, it's always been about, like, business strategy. But so much of my what I do is actually in the design and code and technical things. And I've and one thing I have not done yet in my career is really teach technical concepts. And I was talking to, like, Aaron Francis about this a couple weeks ago, where it was like, I need I I I need to gain some comfort with with it's sort of like getting over, like, an impostor syndrome about, like, being being willing and able to teach people how to code or how to learn a technology or how to be effective at at shipping with a technology when when I know that there are people in the industry who are much more talented and experienced with these things, but I know how to build and ship a product.
Brian Casel:And that's what I can help you get. Right. Yeah. So that'll be an interesting Very interesting. Learning experience for I mean, you know, it's also an opportunity for me to learn a lot more on, like, product shops.
Brian Casel:You know, my my mother was a career teacher for for for many years, and one of the things that she taught me was, like, you don't really learn something until you have to teach it. You know? And so I think this is this will be kind of an interesting, fun way for me to gain new product skills, learn new technologies, frameworks, tools, and things for the purpose of teaching them to an audience. But then I also learned them, and I can use them to ship stuff of my own. So, you know, because, like, I I've I've learned a lot over the last, like, six years being, like, full stack rails and tailwind and stuff and and using that to ship process kit and then and then Clarity Flow and Zip Message.
Brian Casel:But one of the frustrating things with me with for all that was, like, I'm only working on one product every single day for years. And that means, like, I'm not being I I don't have a good project on my on my plate to be able to expand my skill set. Like, there there are things that, like, it just does not make sense for me to go learn Laravel because Clarity Flow is not on Laravel, you know, or whatever whatever tech it might be. That's just an example. But, like, this gives me a whole new opportunity to to learn a wider range of skills and and then teach them.
Brian Casel:So we'll we'll see. That's what I got.
Jordan Gal:Cool. We'll we'll see what you come out with. I mean, real quick for me, the the I have been really focused on sales, and marketing has been languishing. And now when I, like, go and look at our website, I'm like, this this needs a lot of work. It it doesn't do the product justice not on where where the product the
Brian Casel:were DM ing about your site this week, and like, just looking at it, you really changed it since the last time I saw rallyon.com.
Jordan Gal:So what happened was we were in a project, and I did not like the way it was going. And so what I basically did was I just said, Just publish what you have and give it to us, and we'll get it to a place where, you know, we're happy with it. And that's what we did. It got published. Okay.
Jordan Gal:It's pretty new. Yeah. It was like it was like a facelift. It wasn't totally all new. And then we we did enough work so that I'm not crying embarrassed of it, but it is not it's not good enough.
Jordan Gal:It doesn't do the product justice on where the product is right now. It doesn't build up the credibility that we've built up with these great merchants and all this revenue process and all these new features and everything. I wanna add a pricing page. You know, there's there's a whole bunch of stuff. Like, the blog looks great.
Jordan Gal:The demo form looks great, but we are doing a lot more marketing now. We're about to start spending money on LinkedIn ads. And what I found myself was you can either do a total new website design, which I don't wanna do. That takes too long, and I don't think it's necessary. And I can try to do it myself, meaning, like, I drive the project, and I found myself in this spot where, like, I I need I need someone with experience to come in and focus on it with me.
Jordan Gal:I've been looking for that solution and that type of fit. So my hope is that I found the right person to work with today, who's a designer and business minded and can take what we have right now and just improve it, not reinvent everything from scratch, but just get it a
Brian Casel:lot faster Yeah. Was than one the I key things that I was looking for when I was looking for a designer to work with me on clarityflow.com. Like, number one, obviously, you're looking for design chops. But for me, the most important thing was like somebody who, in an ideal world, somebody who has actually owned their own products business and designed really awesome sites for their own products. And and so, like, they they know what's important.
Brian Casel:Because there there are some fantastic designers in the world, but they don't really know how to, like, sell through through a design. You know?
Jordan Gal:Right. And you you don't you don't wanna explain You know? And and price is not directly correlated. You can go get a $50,000 website from one of these agencies and they will not get things right from a marketing and sales point of view. There's a bunch of stuff that's low hanging fruit for us from an initial entry point, like give us your email for something valuable or a demo or something.
Jordan Gal:So it's not just the only way the only entry point into our sales process right now I guess we have chat, but I don't love it. And it's filling out a demo form. And our buyer is hesitant to fill out demo forms.
Brian Casel:Yeah. They want they want to learn a bunch on their own, just just clicking around, and it's got to look awesome.
Jordan Gal:Yes. Yes. And it is a you know, you have to think about the goal, and the goal is demo and sales process and information and contacting us. It's not trial. And so there's just a bunch of work that needs to be done around
Brian Casel:I feel like still there's this, like, think misguided notion that, like, oh, design doesn't matter. Look and feel doesn't matter. I think it totally matters. It all matters, but especially because really does lend a level of credibility. And I and I and word-of-mouth is still, I think, the most important thing for a product to start spreading.
Brian Casel:Like, like, people have to be so excited that they that they are going to share it with their colleague or or share it with their boss, and they are not gonna do that if the thing looks looks janky. You know? Even if they believe in the product, if the if the website that they share with their boss is not impressive, they're not gonna share it. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. And I think we have a real opportunity because our big competitor, I think they just went the completely wrong direction with their site. They went toward the consumer, and I think it leaves the lane open for us to go really hard toward the merchant and their problems and payments and trust and and that angle. You know, our our business like theirs has two sides to it, the merchants and then the shoppers because of the the vault mechanism. Our vault is smaller, and that's just not part of our calculation right now.
Jordan Gal:We're not monetizing. We're not even looking to monetize that anytime soon. And I think they are, but I think they did it prematurely. So now if you go to their site, it doesn't feel like it's meant for a $100,000,000 a year merchant that has payment issues and checkout problems. And I'm very happy about
Brian Casel:that.
Jordan Gal:So I want to go really hard at that and the problems that those people deal with around conversion rate and average. All stuff that's boring to the shopper, but who cares about
Brian Casel:the You
Jordan Gal:know, was like, like,
Brian Casel:we're doing, like, a website redesign. Working with agencies, just in in my experience have I earlier in my career, I worked at web design agencies, like, ones that that were serving, like, nationally recognized brands and everything like that. And, like, oh my god. The bloat is insane. It is be insane.
Brian Casel:It even at the at, lower levels of working with small businesses. Like, if it's an agency with a team, man, they are there is so much first of all, cost is bloated, but just the actual cycles of work is like, ugh. So much of that is like, you're just spinning wheels, you know? Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Approval like,
Brian Casel:the key style guides that that they they will sell you on. Like, how you know, they'll give you this 20 page style guide that, like, you're you really just need the first two pages of that thing. You know? Or, like, to to me, the most the most useful thing when I when I, you know, worked with a designer on Clarity Flow, the the most useful thing is getting the homepage really, really dialed in. Like, the look and feel.
Brian Casel:Because then I
Jordan Gal:Never did
Brian Casel:close that. Like, I designed all the other pages, You know? And yeah. But that that defines it all. And then a little bit of, like, brand style stuff to to know how to set up buttons and text and stuff, but, like, colors.
Brian Casel:That's it. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:So I'll I'll update on that as as it progresses. My my hope is that by, like, January, we, you know, we we have in hand what what we need. Alright, dude. Well, it's Friday. It's, you know, 25 degrees out here.
Jordan Gal:So that means that for me, that's fire season for me. I I got a fireplace. One of my joys in life is making fires.
Brian Casel:Yeah. We have one in house. We have one in the room over there, but we never that's like the kids' playroom. We never hang out there. But last summer, we built a fire pit in our backyard.
Brian Casel:So we're we're firing that up. Okay. Cool. Alright, folks. Alright.
Brian Casel:Later.
Jordan Gal:Good to see you, brother.
