Blank Canvas
Bootstrapped Web 2024. Jordan, happy New Year, buddy.
Jordan Gal:Happy New Year to you. We've got a a blank canvas ahead of us.
Brian Casel:A new start, if you will.
Jordan Gal:A new start. A new day.
Brian Casel:Another year. Oh, man.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. So I just got back last night.
Brian Casel:Where were you?
Jordan Gal:I was in Washington DC with my sister-in-law and her family, and then we were in New York with my brothers and their families and my mom.
Brian Casel:Very
Jordan Gal:nice. Our school district has off this week.
Brian Casel:Oh, that's right. You got that
Jordan Gal:crazy school district. We were fully off and and it has made for a pretty awkward transition for me because everyone's pumped up at the company. Everyone's ready to, you know, get out of the gate. But I'm I'm the only one with kids that are off this week. So I'm still traveling, so I feel guilty.
Jordan Gal:And today is my first day back at work, which is Friday. And so it's really just a bunch of meetings and getting caught up. So I'm a little out of sync with everyone else. They got back on Tuesday
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:On the second and started going, and now I'm catching up. And I it feels pretty awkward, but I gotta just go through it.
Brennan Dunn:How about you? That's cool.
Brian Casel:Yeah. You know, back to full time work just like everyone else around January 2, but we did a quick family trip up to Vermont in between Christmas and New Year's to try to go ski we we did go skiing for half a day in the foggy, rainy, not enough snow weather in the Northeast. But you know, my kids, they only really need like half the mountain anyway. So that that worked just fine. They they still had a blast.
Brian Casel:And the Airbnb had a Nintendo Wii and they were they were thrilled about that.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. They're all good.
Brian Casel:Great. Yeah. But I mean other than that pretty low key. Working my ass off trying to Tried to take a little bit of time off around the holidays and I did with the road trip but you know, grinding. That's that's the story.
Jordan Gal:Still grinding. It's another year but
Brian Casel:it feels like just another week. Just but you know what? I I we we we'll get into it but I really did feel like I turned the corner in terms of which business I'm focusing more time on now.
Jordan Gal:Okay. You you feel a little more sorted in your head on where the energy and priorities and that that's what the last two weeks for me felt like this like a calming and then as I get more energy to go into this month, just trying to go at it from a an organized mind
Brian Casel:Yep. Same
Jordan Gal:as here. Opposed to the the chaos that, you know, the end of the year just everything just starts falling apart and and then I and then I wasn't home and and I I still have some things to do from the time, you know, that I wanted to wrap things up, but it feels like an an organized focused mind was the really important thing for me.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Definitely the same thing. And also like the 2023 marked the end of three full years of working on the Clarity Flow business full time with no other things in my portfolio during that time. And we launched Clarity Flow Commerce like a few days before Christmas in December. Which was a big big deal for the roadmap.
Brian Casel:I had been talking about that. It's been like you know, that's our big Stripe integration. It lets coaches like sell products through Clarity Flow. Works really well. We spent many months on it and it just felt great to get that out right before the end of the year.
Brian Casel:But that marks in my mind like a big milestone in in this business which is like that takes us to quote unquote feature complete. There's little things that we're gonna keep shipping throughout the the year coming up. But, you know, it it also met a pretty good response from customers. We had a bunch of new sign ups like happen right around Christmas and New Year's as a result of Clarity Flow, so Clarity Flow Commerce. So like despite the holidays people were still signing up which I think should spill into a nice little bump in here in January but it'll be really interesting to see, like I'm already seeing here in the January, like, you know, responses to our outreach campaigns and things and people are signing up and people are much more engaged with with the product, which results in more onboarding support for me and things like that.
Brian Casel:But but all that to say, I'm I'm actively still in the mindset of like, okay, Clarity Flow is now becoming one SaaS business that is sort of a side focus for me now. I'm now, for all intents and purposes, like full time focused on a new business. And that's the plan in 2024. Start up something new. And I get much more into it.
Brian Casel:I actually came up with a new name for this business and everything and that we can get into it. But the challenge and the pressure that I'm feeling is sort of as expected. It's still managing multiple businesses and I have a couple hours a day that I do have to attend to some Clarity Flow work. But I'm trying to put the majority of my hours into YouTube content and and planning and building out this new brand and and the game plan on this business. And and part of this is is bringing in some first revenue through some advising.
Brian Casel:I'm doing some like product strategy advising with some SaaS companies now. And and so that's that's on the plate as well. So it's like it's it's really a a matter of managing my time day to day. And that's it's a it's a big challenge to be honest. But but it's that's that's where I've ended up.
Brian Casel:That that's what sort of has to be done. I I don't see another path forward other than doing this. And it's like I know exactly what I'm doing. It's it's not like I I've I've moved through the strategic decision making and choices and option a, option b. That that all happened over the last three months.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:I've settled on a direction. Now it's just execute time. Just go.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Which is a better place to be than a bunch of uncertainty.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Okay. Yeah. For for my side of things, I I feel a pretty significant amount of pressure internally. You know, like self generated pressure. It's not it's not the market.
Jordan Gal:It's not investors. It's the company and the people and the goals internally. It could also I mean, definitely has something to do with today's the first day I'm back at work in, like, two weeks. And that just so it's a bit of a hectic day in terms of, you know, trying to get the to do list sorted. I'll definitely do some work this weekend to make progress, to almost make myself feel better that I I'm I'm getting further along.
Jordan Gal:But when I when I talk to people on the team, everyone's very, very excited and everyone's very focused and everyone wants to get out of the gate the right way. But the best that we can do for ourselves is have a good January. That's that's the best thing we can do. So we don't feel like we're behind right away. Feels like we're ahead right away.
Brennan Dunn:But I got a quick
Brian Casel:maybe it's like a therapy question for you. You you talked about like this you you put this pressure on yourself. And the way that you deal with that is by putting in some extra hours this weekend. Is that is that your because I that very much resonates with my struggle that I always I always feel like I'm I'm behind and and I put a ton of pressure on myself and I usually deal with that by putting in more hours than I would like to in general. And that looks like putting in hours during the weekends, putting hours while we're at an Airbnb on vacation.
Brian Casel:It looks like not like like I would love to have a business where I could just take a month off or a week off and and feel like, oh, the business is steady going, but I that's not a reality. So I feel like I have to work those extra nights or extra days. Is that is that your how do you think about that?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. That that's not my typical response. But it feels like now what I want is to be at peace with the pressure and allow it to bring out good work. Mhmm. Right?
Jordan Gal:As opposed to feeling that pressure and feeling bad about not doing enough or whatever the negative version of the responses, I want it to be the positive version. I wanna say, hey, the salespeople are pumped up. The SDR, you know, product, everyone's really excited and everyone has their role and I am not outside of that individual contribution. Which means I have pressure from my colleagues. And it's not pressure they're not looking at me saying like hurry up and do this.
Jordan Gal:I just don't wanna I don't wanna let them down. So that gets me into a place where I want to go beyond the normal hours and dip into the weekend and whatever else. My my normal response is let me confine it to the workday. Mhmm. And if I need pressure, it's to be more effective during the day.
Jordan Gal:It's not to let it leak out all over the place. I did that for a while where it leaked out into the evenings. Yeah. And what I found myself doing was effectively putting things off until the evening. I'd say this is a task that requires twenty to thirty minutes of straight focus and I can do that better when in the evening than now, so let me add it to my tonight list.
Jordan Gal:And that became unhealthy because then I was just constantly tired and constantly feeling guilty and constantly moving things from one list to another and that that just
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Did not work well for me.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I I hear that. I mean, I don't I don't really generally don't let things bleed into the night that is usually like dinnertime and onward is relaxation time usually. But the I think the thing that I'm dealing with now that that's generally just how I deal with that that sort of pressure is like, I just set these like arbitrary deadlines for for all these different things that I like, oh, but because I have a trip come I've got Big Snow Tiny Conf coming up in like two weeks from now. And I'm thinking about like, actually, two back to back trips.
Brian Casel:It like starting two weeks from now. And so I'm just thinking about all the things that I wanna have either shipped or produced or ready to go before I head on these trips. And and that then then I just start to set like, alright. Well, if I'm gonna ship these things in two weeks, then I need to be shipping this this week. And that means every day counts here and I can't finish my day until I do this or that.
Brian Casel:And and the and also the challenge again is that I'm I've got Clarity Flow work. I've got this new business work. I've got, you know, things going on that I still set deadlines as if I have a single business. It's almost like when I set deadlines for this new business, like I wanna I wanna produce x number of YouTube videos or I wanna launch this site by next Tuesday or something like that. I'm I'm just looking at that in the confines of this one business but I'm like just ignoring the fact that like, oh, but there's gonna be this support task on Clarity Flow or this Or I gotta give my developer something to do for the rest of the week.
Brian Casel:That's gonna take me a couple hours. Like, I'm just ignoring all these extra responsibilities and that's that's where things start to pile up. It's really annoying.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I I I I think that's, you know, normal regardless of of what happens in terms of how many businesses or different projects or anything like that. There are always a very small handful of the most important things and then a dozen or two dozen or more other things conspiring to get in the way.
Brian Casel:Yep. The
Jordan Gal:the way I'm looking at that is like I I'm almost thinking of myself as an individual contributor on certain things where I'm saying that's my primary job. I have secondary jobs. Right now, I happen to be a marketer. So the most important thing that I can do in the company is work with the designer to refresh the website so that it more accurately describes what we're offering. Getting things into the hands of the go to market team like PDFs and landing pages of these new things that we're offering.
Jordan Gal:Working with the marketing agency to get LinkedIn ads running. So that that I feel like is like, you have to do your primary job before you go off and do any side project, side quest, side tasks.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:And that's when I say pressure from the team, it's really like, well, what we've identified the most important thing for us to get out of the gate in a in a strong way is to increase pipeline. Right? Not not like just deals closed or something like that. Just new opportunities in the pipeline.
Brian Casel:What does that look like? What what are you doing?
Jordan Gal:Right. So so right there's you have to think through, look at, well, what efforts, like, can you wanna hire, you know, four SDRs at once or look to an outsourced team that, you know, that allows you to hire SDRs very quickly. Right? That's one way to do it. I don't think we're gonna do that.
Jordan Gal:I I I'm not at success with that. There's different channels. So one of the ways that we can increase pipeline and opportunities is to have our AEs do more prospecting this month.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I was gonna say like maybe like instead of just like is it like what is the limiting factor? Is it like it it doesn't seem like one like one SDR is maxed out. Right? Like it's it's like how can we get more pipeline out of each person who's already doing this?
Jordan Gal:Right. Out of each one or do we wanna hire another one? You know, I'm I'm generally feeling an aggressive stance is right in terms of spending money and resources. So there are events. There are a lot of events in the first half of the year around ecommerce.
Jordan Gal:So there's NRF that's in two weeks, then we we're sponsoring a few more. One that's in Phoenix and another one after that. I don't know if it's Minneapolis or somewhere else, but we have like six of those coming up for the year. Then there's Shop Talk. So that's another that's one channel.
Jordan Gal:And then a channel that I'm very interested in is is the LinkedIn ads and increasing budget is a very efficient way. I don't yet know the results, so I don't know Mhmm. What comes back from that, but at least that's a channel that we can just say, you know what? Add 50 to the budget. Hopefully, that adds So that is my my primary focus is okay.
Jordan Gal:If everyone around me is saying we want more opportunities where, you know, we did a demo today felt so good like first day back, do a demo and the prospect is like, I'm good. I'm ready to buy. Like Yeah. I don't need any more. Tell me what you need to know, what questions you have, here's how it works, the CEO is on board.
Jordan Gal:The CEO is actually the person that forward me the email and asked me to look into it. So the CEO is already on board. Like, I just need price. So that right. That's like as many of those conversations as possible, please.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. So it feels like we have a good opportunity to get a deal closed in the next, you know, call it two weeks or so to actually get something signed. Nice. But everything is focused on pipeline. So there are things that must be done immediately on the to do list.
Jordan Gal:And then a little bit beyond that, it's thinking creatively around like, okay. Should we go to events? Should we sponsor dinner at the event? Should we like, what other things can we do? There are only so many levers to pull.
Brian Casel:Yep. Yeah. Good stuff, man. Let me talk about this brand name thing.
Jordan Gal:Okay. Okay. Cool.
Brian Casel:So I think I had mentioned in previous episodes my new content business that I'm starting up. I had I had been working with the brand name that I I had used called Instrumental Products.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:I'm actually gonna be ditching that name. And I came up with with a new one, the new name going forward. And and I I'm gonna say it here, and I have a domain for it, but I don't have a website up. So and we plan to publish this episode today. So when you if if if you listen today or tomorrow
Jordan Gal:This is how it works.
Brian Casel:There there is not gonna be a website there. You're gonna see the the the GoDaddy parked domain name that I just bought two days ago. That domain is fullstackfounder.co.
Jordan Gal:Okay.
Brian Casel:And so full stack founder is the brand name that I'm gonna be going with. I I also inquired about the.com. I'm waiting to see if there's a response about that. The So the name fullfull Yeah. So the name fullfullstackfounder is you know, I'm I'm helping people become a full stack founder.
Brian Casel:And what How this came about was I started drafting copy for what what's gonna be the new website. But when I started drafting, I I was still thinking like it would still live on instrumentalproducts.com. But as I started writing the copy, it just started to like kinda flow out of me. What like the first headline is full stack founders are the new superheroes. And and just this idea of like being a full stack founder gives you this unfair advantage to be able to talk to customers, design a product, build and code and ship a product, launch it, bootstrap it without the need to spend a ton of ton of money on outsourcing or needing to partner or needing to raise a lot of investment just just to be able to build and ship a product.
Brian Casel:Right? So you know, that's that's the journey that I went on. I I transitioned from just a designer and marketer to full stack product developer, full stack founder. I made that transition about six or seven years ago and have been building on that skill set ever since. And you know, this was this all As I started writing I I think just writing the copy for a homepage of a marketing site is such a great exercise in
Jordan Gal:It's hard.
Brian Casel:In zeroing in on who you're writing to, who your who your target customer is. And that's exactly what happened for me. I knew that this direction should be The starting point was like product strategy, building products. The product side of businesses is where I'm most interested in spent in in focusing this business. But as the weeks and months went on in in starting to work on this, and through a bit of coaching, I I started taking on some coaching clients and I started bringing in some consultant, some like consulting and advising gigs on product strategy.
Brian Casel:Through all that all that stuff started to filter in like, alright, where do I wanna focus my time? And especially since I'm building a YouTube channel now, it's got like what is that thing that I'm teaching? What is the journey that I'm taking you on? And I feel like the thing that that's most interesting to me and and has the most legs is helping people become a full stack founder. And so that and a lot of that is built around the idea of like learning to code.
Brian Casel:So that's gonna be the focus and and like writing writing that copy and then landing on that name is helping me zero in even more. Like that's, so, you know, and I like the name because it it can It fits so many It it fits all the different potential
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Can do You
Brian Casel:can do whatever. So like the the new website, it's starting off when I when I launch it a few days from now, you're gonna see like three ways that I can help you. One is like free videos on my YouTube channel that I'm doing and or you can get the free full stack founder newsletter or work with me and I can bring my founder skills to your SaaS company. And pretty soon, like later in the year, there could be a Fullstack founder courses and maybe a Fullstack founder community. I don't know.
Brian Casel:Maybe that that could be like the name of a book someday. Like, it could there there are so many different ways that this brand name can be applied, you know.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. It it feels very authentic to you.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:And that feels right in terms of, you know, you can just you can just talk about what you're genuinely most interested in. And what and I I think was a Yeah. Clarifies for the person reading it immediately if it's right for them or not.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Exactly. I think a big A key factor when when you're doing this like creator type business is to start to really zero in on a on a theme. Not not only a target customer, but like a theme. Like, you know, a couple years back, like I sort of built a whole thing around productized services.
Brian Casel:Like the word productize started to become associated with what I'm doing and I think I'm trying to do that same sort of playbook here where it's like full stack founder is the concept, the theme that I that I want you to think of when you think of this brand that I'm building, you know. And YouTube, man.
Jordan Gal:Can you tell me a little bit about YouTube? What's going on?
Brian Casel:It's I I've been learning so much. I actually just published the first two videos on my YouTube channel which I got the name YouTube slash full stack founder. That's my channel.
Brennan Dunn:Okay.
Brian Casel:I I still have a lot of work to do on sprucing up this channel and putting the brand stuff on it and everything. But two two videos, half published two days ago. I've got two or three more coming next week. I you know, they're my first videos of this of this new run. So they're kinda I I feel like they're they're actually pretty good but they're I there are so many things I wanna improve in in future videos.
Brian Casel:Learning a ton about production. You know, about getting the lighting right, the camera, the editing, and all of that and the script writing. But I gotta I just gotta tell you, like, this this is why I'm excited about investing in YouTube. I published like, literally all I did before just talking about it here on this podcast, I did zero promotion of these two videos that I published about twenty four hours ago.
Jordan Gal:So literally just published
Brian Casel:into I did not tweet them. I did not send them to any email newsletter.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:Just hit publish on YouTube. That's all I did. And in the last twenty four hours, they they both accumulated like they accumulated like 60 views each. It's like a hunt you know, 120 new people watching my content. All I did was click publish on YouTube.
Jordan Gal:And after twenty four hours?
Brian Casel:No. For YouTube that's not very many of course. Sure. But you cannot say the same thing about like if I publish a tweet, I gonna get a 120 new people? Or if or if I publish a blog post on my website, am I gonna get a 120 new visitors just by publishing?
Brian Casel:Like absolutely not. No. Know. You know, that does not happen. Mhmm.
Brian Casel:You know, you're spending thousands of dollars on ads or SEO or newsletter or promotion or links to to get that many eyeballs on your content in twenty four hours. On YouTube, it's click publish. YouTube serves it to their audience. Obviously, the only the only way that happens of course is if you invest in getting the topic right, getting the thumbnail right, getting the content right and so that takes a lot of work of course but but the the the the idea is that like if you can put put the effort in into the creation side then YouTube's algorithm does its thing. That's the thing, you know.
Jordan Gal:And and it is more you're going for the more polished approach
Brian Casel:I am. Approach.
Jordan Gal:That's just what feels right for you in the audience and the target.
Brian Casel:Yeah. You know, I'm not trying to do it do it you know, I there's always the argument to me like, oh, just throw your iPhone on and do a rough MVP of this thing. And I don't know. I I I just wanted I I like going all in on the creative side.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. You know? Continue with the authenticity.
Brian Casel:Yeah. It's I I like it that way and it's the the way that the production line looks that I'm trying to build up toward right now is like every week I'm writing a new script. I'm shooting. I'm editing that for for YouTube. I'm taking that script.
Brian Casel:I'm I'm publishing it as an article on fullstackfounder.co. I'm sending it to the newsletter. I'm sending it as a couple tweets like that's the production engine and it all starts with concepts for videos and shooting them as videos and then it like repurposes out from there. That's the that's the production so. And and and like big big picture, it's like if I can get this engine up and running now which I'm doing.
Brian Casel:This is just gonna That this is gonna be at the core of this business is this content top of funnel distribution audience thing. And then hopefully by the By midway through the year, by q three, I would like to see some audience growth, see who's resonating with with which topics and see how that translates into some first products to start offering. My guess right now is they'll they'll probably be some form of courses. But like, you know, later in the year, it's like, let's see how we can monetize this. For for now, let's just get the distribution engine started.
Brian Casel:Mhmm. You know?
Jordan Gal:Fascinating. I'm psyched that we get to talk about this regularly because I I am very interested in that. Yeah. And it feels like it's it's different. YouTube feels a bit more legit than like a you know, if I if you did the same thing on TikTok and it showed you had a few 100 views, I don't know if I would believe any of them.
Brian Casel:Right. Right. And there's there's also the question of like do I start getting into YouTube shorts which is like their version of TikTok? So far, I'm I'm not. Maybe at some point but right now I'm focusing on what they call long form videos which are in my case between eight and twelve minutes long, each one.
Brian Casel:And that's what I'm doing, you
Jordan Gal:know. Okay.
Brian Casel:Very cool. My other podcast has been OpenThreads. I'm gonna be renaming that to to be the the Fullstack Founder podcast. Okay. Same concept for the podcast.
Brian Casel:I'm just gonna rename it, keep it all under the same brand and that'll be that.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I wonder if you end up having categories of content between, know, marketing, sales, product, design, development, outsourcing.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I'm I mean, I'm already think like I'm already making a a big list of topics that I wanna do videos about and and they definitely fall into different buckets. There's like the learn how to code bucket that which might do better with like YouTube SEO, people searching for for technical topics like learn how to code topics. And then there's like the whole bucket of like bootstrapping and and entrepreneurship and starting up products. There's just the idea of should I learn to code or not and and and inspiration and and energizing people to decide to to learn to code.
Brian Casel:There's there's a lot of that type of content in there. Yeah. It's I mean and then there's the another bucket, of course, would be like design too. How to how to like kinda hack your way through Figma. So you might even have some technical skills, but you wanna get better on the design side.
Brian Casel:Or there's gonna be designers who just wanna learn the technical skills or and all of them learn about how to get first customers, how to talk to customers, and how to Yeah. Anyone who
Jordan Gal:to become a more full stack founder is gonna be walking in with their specific skill set. Yeah. And then we'll have gaps that they need to address.
Brian Casel:Exactly. That's the that's the the thinking. And and the other angle for for me and and by landing on this name full stack founder, it's like there's there's a lot of content on like how to learn to code ranging from beginner to advanced level content out there.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I assume you're not trying to compete with that but more
Brian Casel:so Really not. No. The difference like I will be teaching a lot of that stuff but it's from the angle of like, let me teach you just enough to be able to build and ship your own products and bootstrapping over and not go get hired at at a tech company. Right. Right.
Jordan Gal:And maybe recommending places to learn certain things and tools to use and yeah. Basically, all the stuff that you would have to go and research yourself, you're just bringing that directly to the person.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Giving giving you the shortcuts, giving you like, here's what's important to learn and here's what's you can just get get by with just enough and and and here's how to like kinda fill in the gaps or yeah, go use these tools or or or how to how to hire and and outsource while knowing enough to to be able to manage them well and things like that, you know.
Jordan Gal:Cool. Well to, you know, to go in a very different direction. Yeah, one of the things on on my mind is really working backwards from a fundraising effort and looking ahead, call it twelve months and then thinking through, alright. What do we need to do to get to a place that leads to a successful fundraise? And when I do that, when I because we're not ready for it now.
Jordan Gal:Right? We need to get ready for it. And when I work backwards from where we wanna be to where we are today, it's a it's a good amount of pressure. It's really
Brian Casel:What's what's the time frame that you're thinking of here?
Jordan Gal:Just call Do you have a timer?
Brian Casel:Call 12
Jordan Gal:because if what we wanna do is make sure that we are going to market at the optimal time. And that is a combination of when our metrics look good, the natural cycle of the market. Right? So there are probably two opportunities to do that. One is, like, in the fall, right, when VCs get back from their winter excuse me, from their summer breaks.
Jordan Gal:So September, October. Right? Before Thanksgiving especially between September 1 and, like, the November. Mhmm. Right?
Jordan Gal:Like, that slot you can fit a fundraise into. You don't wanna creep into the holidays. And the first six months of the year is when people buy and sign. And so you could see how in September you're like, okay. Here's how things are going and it looks like it's on an upswing.
Jordan Gal:That's one potential. The other potential is right around this time of year where our November and December were by far our best revenue months ever. And it's because we did a bunch of selling, we did a bunch of signing and onboarding, and then everything booms for the entire industry in November and December and everything looks great. So right around now in q one, call it between like January 15 and the end of the quarter, you could slot a fundraise in there. So my goal is to make sure that we go to market in one of those two time frames from a position of strength.
Jordan Gal:So, you know, I want a little bit of wiggle room. I don't wanna just say, hey, whenever we have three months of money left in the bank, that's when we go fundraising. I would like to avoid that and try to go more on our own terms. Yeah. But it it starts to lead back into a good amount of pressure on monthly goals.
Jordan Gal:I think this might be one of the really big differences between the bootstrapped and the funded route where sure you wanna grow and maybe you set metrics and you set targets when you're bootstrapped and there's no one looking at those targets besides you and your team. But it does feel different when those targets are talked about openly at the board level and then are identified as, what you need to hit in order to fundraise successfully. And very often the people on your board are directly the people that you're gonna be pitching also. So you're you're performing in public for for the people on the board that are making investment decisions at the same time. I think that level of pressure around metrics and performance on a monthly and quarterly basis is is very different.
Jordan Gal:At Cardhook, I just looked at it as, is the company healthy? Are we going in the right direction? Is cash good? Is profitability good? You know, it was just these health metrics more so than the growth metrics.
Brian Casel:Do you like, when it comes to, like, hitting these these aggressive monthly growth metrics, you know, I feel like there there are two big ingredients that either one or both of them have to be there. One is there's just kind of so much demand that that like marketing and distribution is easy or you just have a huge marketing and distribution advantage. You know, and how do you think about that? Like, do you see like is there is there demand that gives you like the the headwinds to to meet? But you also have this like firepower to go sort of on on like the the demand generation side and the and Yeah.
Brian Casel:How how do you like kind of Yeah. Like like make that formula work. Because I've because obviously like that's that's what I've always struggled with and that's why I end up kinda reverting back to my bootstrapping roots. It's like Like there is demand and people literally while we're recording here, somebody just signed up and paid for Clarity Flow. And so it's like somebody almost everyday like finds it and converts.
Brian Casel:But it's just like the quantity and the flow is not it it it you know, it just it's a matter of time and we need more more of that time for more of those people to to find it and convert, you know?
Jordan Gal:Yes. Or or or you have to spend, you know, to create that and waste some on the way you know, often not in
Brian Casel:a position. But in my case, I whatever people might listen to this and think whatever you wanna think but like I feel like I have spent a lot. Yeah. Okay. Dollars and time and and and we have campaigns running.
Brian Casel:And they and they generally work. But again, like they they work one, two, or three conversions a day, not 20 a day. You know? So it's like Right. It it's a matter of time.
Jordan Gal:Most companies I think I think most companies, ours included, are not in a position where everything's easy and there's a ton of demand and everything's working and you're hitting these aggressive metrics because of that. Like, you know, I think for the most part, it's a very small percentage of companies that have that and they're trying to manage that. That's a different form of challenge. But I think most companies, Bootstrap funded, whatever else, is a grind of a a number of different things and trying to figure out what works best and and every month and every quarter is uncertain. Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:For for us, Right? Today, the call we had today that looks like a deal that is pretty likely to close, that was an outbound email sent maybe two months ago.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:And what that means to us is, okay. Let's that's not the first time that's happened, and it's working, so let's stick with it. And we do more of it. It doesn't make things easy. It just means, okay.
Jordan Gal:We have something, some bread crumb to follow that this thing works, and let's keep dialing it in, changing the message, and increase the this, and change the data source, and whatever else. But that's not enough. So what I see I see my role as responsible for two elements of demand at the same time. One, to grind, To go out and hire SDRs and hire AEs and buy the data sources and the software to get people to be able to reach out and then do the partnership thing and then, you know, have a biz dev person that's reaching out to agencies and reaching out to platforms, and that feels like the grind. That is what has to be done on a weekly basis to claw toward progress.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:And then at the same time, what can you do that compounds the efforts that makes the one x effort equal two x impact.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:And on that front, it is what does the messaging say on the ads. Don't just give me this generic, hey, you need a better checkout. Like, how do we look at that and challenge ourselves to be more hard hitting on the messaging and the positioning. Right? That's like where the
Brennan Dunn:Our great
Jordan Gal:check out sucks, but it's not your fault type of a message. And right now, we have we have an x factor. I didn't really mean to talk about this on on this podcast, but, you know, why not? We're gonna get into it this month anyway. What what we what we found a few weeks ago, we had a bit of a product breakthrough.
Jordan Gal:And what that what that meant is that we have figured out a way to offer the marketing features of our product without the adoption of the entire checkout platform. So we have people that we talk to, and there's a direct relationship with the size of the merchant. The bigger the merchant, the more complex.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:What that often means is they they're interested in what we're doing, but they have difficulty adopting the entire checkout platform and replacing their checkout.
Brian Casel:Like getting their whole tech team on board and all that.
Jordan Gal:And finance and payments and fraud and the business side and tech and everything else. It's it's a big hurdle to get over. Mhmm. They're still interested in our marketing feature, specifically our order bumps, which are the offers that show themselves on the checkout page, and the post purchase offers, which are the offers that show up after the shopper clicks the buy button. So we have figured out a way to separate those two from one another, not those two.
Jordan Gal:The marketing features from the checkout page.
Brian Casel:Yep.
Jordan Gal:And so what we have now is the ability to sell just the marketing features while the merchant can keep using their existing checkout page.
Brian Casel:I love it.
Jordan Gal:That was not the original vision of the company. The original vision of the company is outsource your checkout to us. Here's why. And Yep. The merchant today on that sales call that I'm talking to, they came to us and said, we wish we could go to Shopify.
Jordan Gal:We sell into a category that is banned from Shopify, and we can't go there and we hate our checkout on Magento, and we saw yours and it looks just like Shopify's and and that's what we want. Just tell us how much. Cool. Other times we talk to merchants, oftentimes the bigger merchants. If you're doing $500,000,000 a year to switch your checkout is is massive.
Jordan Gal:So we wanna be able and we now have figured out how to tell that merchant, here are the marketing features that will increase your revenue. You don't need to change anything. It'll just work with your existing checkout, your existing payments, existing fraud tracking, whatever else. And then the the thinking is that's a much easier sell and a much easier onboard. And then it also create land and expand.
Jordan Gal:That's right. It creates a pool for potential upselling over the next six, twelve, eighteen months.
Brennan Dunn:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:So that's the type of thing that falls into the second bucket. It's not the grind of every week. It's the rock, how do we do it? Jess, how can we figure it out? Why isn't this working?
Jordan Gal:What can we do? Let's think differently. And then there's like a breakthrough, and now how do we bring that to the go to market team with the, assets that they need? A landing page, a video, and a PDF to go out and get five beta customers, get results, and then expand from there.
Brian Casel:I love that. I mean, that's that's literally like responding to what what you and your team are hearing from prospects. It's like the the this is what brought us here. This this is what we actually want to implement and then then doing I mean, you know, and and then, yeah, that that land and expand, man.
Jordan Gal:It's Yeah. It's it's a bit of a look. It is it compromise is from the original vision. Who who cares?
Brian Casel:I feel like almost every Right. Every business needs to needs to pivot in some way to it's not even a is the wrong word, but like dial in the thing that that's going to result in more conversions. Know? Like that was that was the whole zip message to Clarity Flow thing, especially the Clarity Flow Commerce thing, which is like every customer is asking, alright. Well, how do I connect this to my payments or can I do payments through here?
Jordan Gal:Yeah.
Brian Casel:It's It was it was no. Not yet. It was no. Not yet. And now it's like, now you can.
Jordan Gal:Yes. Yes. So it's it's in the realm of pivot. It's not pivot. It's adjustment or feedback or whatever you you know, this learning cycle.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:I I had such a interesting experience with it. I have a a VC who led our seed round, and we have a great relationship. And they're a seed fund, so they might, you know, throw in a few bucks, but they're kind of not relevant moving forward into the life cycle of our of our investment stages. Right? They're not gonna lead the round like they're a seed fund.
Jordan Gal:That that's their focus. Mhmm. And because of that, it it allows he and I to have these very open conversations because I'm not I'm not dancing. Right? And he's also from Israel, so we connect and we've talked a lot since October 7.
Jordan Gal:So we're we're in a good place in terms of, like, trust and communication. Mhmm. And I was having a bit of a down day at some point in December. When we talked, he and he said, how are you? You don't seem great.
Jordan Gal:I we explained everything and and at the end of the conversation, what he said was, look, what I can tell you sitting where I'm sitting, right where you are with about the runway that you have left and about the revenue and of all this stuff right now is when I see companies come up with their next idea that turns into the actual thing.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:And at that point, I didn't we didn't have this. We didn't have the breakthrough yet. So I was like, you know, sounds cool. And then I swear to
Brian Casel:you Yeah.
Jordan Gal:The next the next day.
Brian Casel:Oh, it was the next day.
Jordan Gal:Next day.
Brian Casel:Isn't that incredible? Like, it's like some some trigger like opens some door just to just to start to and and all that it doesn't give you the idea right away. It's just it just opens a door to that that something new can enter into. You know?
Jordan Gal:Slightly different point of view. Yep. Slightly in in in the, you know, the irony not the irony. What whatever. We have thought about this for months because we we get the feedback from merchants.
Jordan Gal:And then we would go to tech and product and we'd say, can we do this? And they would come back to us and say, look, that's like a different product. It takes months to build. That's too risky given where we are. And so, no, we can't do it.
Jordan Gal:And then and then it took my being slightly more open to it and really what triggered it was one of our salespeople went off and spoke to one of their existing contacts from a big merchant and they said, hey, they love it. They wanna do it. They're ready to try. But is there any way you could separate this out? Because going the whole way right now is like a big thing for them.
Jordan Gal:If you could just do this, they can get started right away.
Brian Casel:And I brought that The dots connect.
Jordan Gal:Yes. And I brought that back to Rock and for whatever reason, Rock was thinking slightly differently on it and said, oh, what if we tried x and it ended up working. And so that mid December and I, you know, I kinda freaked out but I didn't wanna tell the whole team until we were really sure. So it was just Rock and I being like, is this real? Can we do it?
Jordan Gal:Like, what things do we need to test out? Who do we need to get involved? How much is there to do?
Brian Casel:I love this whole this gets into like a deeper mental game sort of thing. But the I've been really reflecting on this. I I just wrote it was it started to be just my 2023 recap blog post. It turned into like a couple of, know, reflection Okay. Post.
Brian Casel:And one of them It's just this idea of like opening Like something triggering your mind to open up to thinking about things differently. Like that's what leads to a new direction, a new idea that that you were not not necessarily like close to before, but you were just not in the mindset to to come into that concept before. So like like what like back in around October or so is when I really started to analyze the runway on on Clarity Flow and and see and assess all the options from raising more money to selling the business, which I'm not doing, to making sure that we're doing everything on on that we can on growth to like to to finally landing on on the concept of like, look, this thing just needs more time to slowly grow and I need to find a way to to to put it on on like a side business that can keep growing and give it what it needs to go long and slow and so and that was like the triggering event for like, alright but what does that mean for me? What do I do now? And then Mhmm.
Brian Casel:And then it started to open my mind to the idea of, well, I I think I need to start something new and and like because I I had I before that point in October, I had not been thinking about doing YouTube every day or or course businesses or or newsletter or creator businesses. But I but I started to open my mind to like what is the most efficient way to grow to to getting back on a sustainable path? And so it's like one triggering realization leads to a couple of weeks of of opening up the mind and then and then being open to new ideas. You know?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I I when people say, you know, talk to customers, I I think a lot of the magic around talking to customers is because you you that's a hack toward To get new insights.
Brian Casel:Yes. This exact same thing happened with the going from Zip Message to Clarity Flow, you know. And like I I came I I talked to a ton of customers and then that led to okay. Coaches is the thing is is the target customer. But then even that I I I still hadn't I was still closed off to the idea of changing the name.
Brian Casel:It took a couple more months of I got some advice from people suggesting that I changed the name. I was still resistant to it but yeah, you you just hear comments from customers and and how customers are are interacting with it. And then it's like, well, what if? You know? And then and then it starts to make total sense.
Brian Casel:You know?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Yeah. And then, yeah, you kick yourself a little bit, but but it's important that that you got there regardless. I got pretty lucky on the timing because we just started this website refresh.
Brian Casel:I wanted to hear more about that. I mean Yeah. Where where are you at with the website?
Jordan Gal:So so it's really it's a challenge. I I don't do this often. I don't I don't have that same muscle as you do in terms of like, I write a homepage and it'll be annoying. It'll take me two days. It it takes me longer.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm. So it's been a challenge overall. But it a, it has to get done. B, people are waiting on it. And so those two things combined make me do my best work.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:The the challenge and I've been I've been struggling looking for examples to to look to too.
Brian Casel:Like like getting inspiration like other sites to look at. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I don't have a big roll of decks of
Brian Casel:Whenever I wanna do it, I wish that I had been collecting them for the past year, and I and I haven't.
Jordan Gal:So Yes. So now I have, like, you know, I I have multiple windows on my machine, and and so one of them is, like, a Chrome window with, like, 40 tabs open Mhmm. Of like, I like this homepage. I like this pricing page. I like this feature section.
Jordan Gal:I'll exactly. So right now my challenge is how do you present an offer that shows that people people have an option. They can use our checkout platform as a whole or they can use our marketing features with their existing checkout page. Right? And and you've done this stuff before so you know that's kind of a tricky challenge.
Brian Casel:It is.
Jordan Gal:Because you're you're stepping on your own foot.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:Right? You're you're saying you're diluting your message. You're saying, here's this amazing thing, but you don't have to use the whole thing. But you have an option. But this is a a a sweet or a full solution or this.
Jordan Gal:So I'm looking for examples
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:Around that. And I'm we're trying to come up with a visual way of representing like this particular feature is for the checkout platform. This feature works on the platform or on your checkout. Like, on the pricing page, it's easy.
Brian Casel:Feel like page one
Jordan Gal:plan is like on your checkout and the other one is on hours, But the other pages are trickier.
Brian Casel:I've dealt with this a little bit before and I've seen it done a bunch of ways and I think where where I end up coming to is that visitors to the website are going to find their own path to what they need and it's gonna look different from one visitor to the next. Mhmm. And so in so in your case, you know, you got the marketing tools and the and the and the platform features or whatever terminology you use. There can be like two different ways to communicate that and I think probably both can't should work on the website. So like one way would be like solutions.
Brian Casel:Do do you want our marketing solutions or the full checkout solution? So somebody might be might be more feature focused, so they're gonna open up the solutions drop down and and and navigate to the solutions page for each of those. Or the other way to do it would be users, like use like like who are you? Hey. I'm I'm a big enterprise.
Brian Casel:Okay. I Marketing. I'm I'm buying for a big enterprise organization. So like Rally for enterprise. And then a page for like Rally for marketers.
Brian Casel:And that that's showing the marketing tools. And those are like dedicated pages that speak to somebody somebody's clicking around and and they you want every click that they choose to click on to be like, okay, I'm getting closer. I'm getting closer Yeah. To what I But like, you know, and like those are like two different paths but they both lead to the same endpoint, you know.
Jordan Gal:Yes. We do have that advantage where the endpoint is communication with us.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And that's that's the other thing. It's like even once you get to the pricing page and the sign up, like even if that like you don't have to you don't have to make the make them make any decisions right there. All you need to is is them to get the demo, you know.
Jordan Gal:That that's right. You really just need to communicate that you do have the option Yeah. Of getting this without switching your checkout. And that's enough to get in touch where yeah. That when when people reach out to us, they usually reference something from the site or from some form of information that they got.
Jordan Gal:And they say I'm interested in that or I read that and I wanna know more or I heard that you can do x. Yeah. Yeah. I'm trying to become a bit less precious on it because it really it shouldn't take it shouldn't take as long as I I know it.
Brian Casel:Also, to me and I think this takes more time of gauging the rollout of these marketing tools for you to see how they resonate but it sounds super promising to me. So I could sort of see a world where you start to really lean in to marketing tools as like that's the thing.
Jordan Gal:It's a wedge.
Brian Casel:You know? It's like And if if that if that is truly the thing that like sells and and you could still have the expansion strategy for after they're in in, they can expand to the full thing. But like, then it's like, okay, we can really gear the homepage. The rally.com to or rally on to to to the marketing tools. Like lead with that and then Yeah.
Brian Casel:There's there's there's more once you once you go deeper, but lead
Jordan Gal:with that. I feel lucky that we're I'm in the middle of of it right now. And like by the end of this month, we'll have the new site up and running and it'll be accurate as opposed to coming up with this and then having to restart everything.
Brian Casel:It's also Yeah. Like worth again, like like kinda finding ways to open those open your mind, open those doors. Like, it's worth like just write a homepage as if you're only selling the marketing tools. Just it it might seem too extreme but like just just write it just to get it out and just to and then and then maybe backtrack a little bit. But like Mhmm.
Brian Casel:It's it's it's a good exercise to just say like, if this thing looked like this? Just go through that and then maybe do a different version. You know?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. It is a is a bit paralyzing to try to be like, how do you do everything at once? And the biggest challenge we've had and the the challenge I'm putting to individual people in the team, some of the people in the team are just finding out about this this week. Because when we looked into it, it was the December and people were starting to head out.
Brian Casel:I struggled that too.
Jordan Gal:Confused him.
Brian Casel:Like like doing all this work upfront to like strategize and make all these decisions and then like, oh, I I haven't told any of any of my team about this and then they just like drop it on them. It's like
Jordan Gal:Yes. So yes. So some of it feels a bit crazy and trying to look. We okay. Here's an example of an assumption that we need to challenge.
Jordan Gal:One of our assumptions is that the bigger the merchant, the more complicated the sale. And when we think about a $500,000,000 a year merchant, we look at that as very attractive for the checkout product, but also very high risk because onboarding is a three month endeavor, and negotiations and getting the deal done is like a six to twelve month thing. That might not be true at all with this version of the of the sales process where a $500,000,000 merchant is still the same like one day onboarding as a $20,000,000 merchant. And so while we assumed, hey, we we don't wanna exclusively go after big merchants because that's too risky. That assumption might no longer hold.
Jordan Gal:So the people who have been around the longest are actually in the most danger of making the wrong assumptions. Yeah. Yeah. So we'll we'll we'll see. We'll probably aim to get a few beta merchants on board as soon as possible before we make any big crazy changes in our approach and our messaging and and and all all that.
Brian Casel:Good stuff, man. I'm psyched for you.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Do do you see something similar in your world in terms of like an entry point? Like the first product to interact with?
Brian Casel:With Clarity Flow, they I I do have multiple entry points I think in terms of what they resonate with first. We are selling it as one big product and you just choose which plan you want which include most of them go to that middle plan which basically gives you everything. The the upper plan is like just a little bit more unlimited but it like I think I think we have shifted from people coming just for async communication. That's that's what it was sort of earlier in the year and in the Zip Message days. And now people are like, they do need the async communication but they are coming a lot for courses.
Brian Casel:Like they have courses that they need to deploy. They have coaching groups, usually they refer to them as cohorts. So that's been a really popular feature so far is like coaches who coach groups and and those groups receive a combination of self serve like course like content and personalized coaching but organized in these like self contained cohort private groups with like ten twenty members in them each. That They're they're already doing that sort of thing on other platforms but those other platforms really lack the communication stuff that we give with with video, async, mobile app, like all that kind of stuff. And then and then as like a set so that's like they they're they're trying to put that puzzle together and that's what leads them to us or resonates when when we send them a cold email or something like that.
Brian Casel:But then after they're like, oh, that's that's cool. That checks all my boxes there. The the next logical question that they need to get over is like, but how do I take the money? How do I sell? Mhmm.
Brian Casel:And that's where commerce comes in, you know? And that And and I I really believe that that was a blocker for not all of them. We had customers before we launched commerce but it it it was a blocker for them to like actually look hard at like canceling the other platform that they're paying for. That where they take money. You know?
Brian Casel:And doing that instead with us. Like that's So that that's why I'm really excited about like q one here for for Clarity Flows. Finally. Because like we we really check all the boxes that they actually need. So Well, we I mean, but you know, it's still that it's still that challenge of like just because we shipped it does not mean it's done.
Brian Casel:Like Mhmm. You know, we do we do get people churning still where it's like, it it checks those boxes but there was some friction here or it didn't work the way I expected over there. And I was just missing this little thing over here. And so, you know, now now it's a a lot like a long list of small improvements game. But the but the big meat and potatoes, they're all there now.
Brian Casel:You know?
Jordan Gal:Well, we've been watching you work on it. So congrats on getting it launched.
Brian Casel:Feels good. Feels good.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Let's let's have a good start to the year.
Brian Casel:Yes, sir. Alright. Alright. See you. Later, folks.
