Enough Time
Bootstrap Web, Jordan 2024 is now rolling along. How are we doing, buddy?
Jordan Gal:We are good. We closed a nice big two year deal yesterday.
Brian Casel:Oh, two years.
Jordan Gal:Yes. Two years, twenty four month deal, a little under 6 figures, but damn. You know what? I really wanted to get out of the gate the right way in January. So Yeah.
Jordan Gal:So we we're celebrating here. We're psyched twelve days between first contact and closed deal. It's like
Brian Casel:Oh, wow. That's that's the dream.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I think it's our our our our fastest ever. Nice. It was like cold email outreach into a demo, into, you know, pricing conversation, and then signed deal. I and I could talk about some pitfalls that we're gonna gonna deal with because of the speed of that process.
Jordan Gal:But hell yeah, it feels great.
Brian Casel:That's awesome. I'm I'm two days away from heading up to Montreal for big for the first of two big snow tiny comps tiny comps for me. Gonna do some snowboarding, so I'm hanging out with some founder friends. Should be a should be a really good time. I'm pretty psyched.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. That sounds that sounds nice. Speaking of skiing, I really enjoyed Ian and Aaron, their podcast.
Brian Casel:I gotta hear this. Crack me up. I got I gotta hear this one. It's funny. Two days ago, I took my younger daughter on a on on a quick ski trip up to Massachusetts, and it snowed a bit, but it was so cold that it turned everything to ice.
Brian Casel:And Oh, yeah. We we had a good time together, like, you know, doing the doing the trip, but, yeah, she did not have a great time on that on that mountain.
Jordan Gal:Yeah.
Brian Casel:And I didn't have a great time putting those boots on and and all that Mhmm. All all the schlep.
Jordan Gal:Yes. I'm Aaron, I'm with you. Too much schlepping. I think the way Aaron put it was if he could be just gently dropped at the top of the mountain and able to ski down, then he would like skiing, which is how I feel. It's all the stuff getting up there and
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And all that. Well, that's what that's why I got, like, the adult trips that we do, like, big snows, you know, we've we've got these, like, super nice condos, ski on, ski off, private chef, you know.
Brian Casel:Okay. Walk out the back door, you're going down the mountain. It's it's pretty great.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. So unfortunately, money makes even skiing better. So it goes.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yep. Yeah. I mean, let's let's get into it, you know.
Jordan Gal:Speaking of money.
Brian Casel:You know, I I'm I'm struggling with the with the time, with with the with the pie chart that is my week, that is my time. And I feel like I see some paths and I'm working and and I have some things that I'm putting in place to deal with this problem, but it is definitely a problem. I'm not finishing the work that I intend to finish every week. And, yeah, it doesn't feel great.
Jordan Gal:Is it is it actually not great, or does it just feel not great? Like, you if you've fallen behind, are you able to at least
Brian Casel:prioritize is running with the team. Like, the team executes the things that we're executing. So that's there's nothing really falling behind. Well, I I am I I mentioned last week that I'm hiring a customer success person at Clarity Flow, and I feel like I got really lucky. Somebody that I worked with for a long time in a previous business reached out after my tweet, and and she's gonna be coming on board in February to be the first customer success person.
Brian Casel:So that that's one thing. And I I I wanna talk more about investing in customer success as a strategy for Clarity Flow. That's a big strategic thing we can get into. But the in terms of the time form the the time equation here, that's one area that I feel like does take a bunch of my time that I would love to that I that I'm excited to get off my plate. The the customer support, it's like writing emails, but it's also like sending a lot of video messages to customers.
Brian Casel:And frankly, a lot of customers need to have a call, and I don't want to do all these extra calls Okay. Even though I still do them. And then that's just really disruptive to to my week. So it'll be really nice to it'll take a while to kind of ramp her up into that role, but that's part of the equation with bringing her on. There's there's more to it than that, though.
Jordan Gal:It is it is amazing. I I often discount how disruptive a thirty minute call can actually be.
Brian Casel:Oh, it's way more than thirty minutes.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. It's pretty tough. The last two weeks, I have had fewer calls and larger stretches in my calendar without a call. And it not only there's there's like a there's a practical element in terms of like the the work you can do in that time. And also when I wake up so the way the way I operate is the night before when I'm going to bed, I open my phone and I open the alarm window and the calendar window.
Jordan Gal:And I then set alarms ahead of my meetings for the next day. I set an alarm to wake up, either it's 05:30 for a workout day
Brian Casel:I noticed you're a big alarm guy. Yeah. Every time we're on a on a call or hanging out, like, you've
Jordan Gal:got alarms going on every thirty minutes. That sucks. First of whoever at Apple redesigned that window, what are you doing? It was perfect the way it was.
Brian Casel:And now I'm anti alarm. I I gotta say. I I don't I I naturally wake up early, and if I stay up late, then I'm just gonna sleep late. Like, that's I I don't care. I don't wanna wake up to an alarm.
Brian Casel:Okay. Good for you.
Jordan Gal:I just go to sleep late, and then I need an alarm no matter what. Also, a 05:30 wake up for a workout. I don't know about you. I need an alarm for that. The other alarm, my kids will wake me up.
Jordan Gal:That that's fine. But then I will go through my day, and I'll set an alarm either five or fifteen minutes before each call so that I don't I don't miss the call. I don't I don't wanna rely on the notification from the app in on on my computer. I want you know, I might be eating lunch or whatever it is. So the the days that I just have fewer things, I'm more motivated to get worked on.
Jordan Gal:And the days that are full of calls, I'm like, I'm just not gonna get worked on today. I'm just gonna do a good job on my calls.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:I like give up. But I'm like, I'll check some email and blah blah blah. Maybe I'll knock out this one or two tasks, but I I it's tough to get work done.
Brian Casel:I definitely have way less calls than than you. Sure. You know? Like, at the most, two in one day. Like, at at at the most.
Brian Casel:And and so on those days, like, I know, like, oh, this is an afternoon where I have a call versus don't have a call. And so and so then
Jordan Gal:Today's a call day. Literally. Because I like, half
Brian Casel:of my days are are absolutely no calls, and that's that's the dream. And then, you know, and then and then it's like I know that I have one call at three, so I I'm basically structuring my whole day around that. Like, when when am I getting my workout in? When am I doing this project? I gotta do it before that because I've got this thing at three and then, you know
Jordan Gal:That's funny. I'm like, it's Friday and it is 02:00 and I'm happy I don't have any calls later today.
Brian Casel:Yeah. No. This is definitely my my last call for the day.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I saw you send out a tweet with like a screenshot of someone's calendar, you're like, if it ever looks like
Brian Casel:That was the new Notion calendar. I I was in Notion, just normal day to day, and and they're promoting their new calendar product.
Jordan Gal:Okay.
Brian Casel:And and that was a screenshot of the thing that they're that's in their own product marketing. And I'm like, why is this a benefit? This looks terrible. You know?
Jordan Gal:I don't know. Maybe they're not talking to you or they they wanna go I
Brian Casel:mean, they're they're talking to, I guess, to, the salesperson or the project manager or something. But Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Or it looks better with more events on it.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yep. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Notion. Notion's still added. I I like I don't use that product anymore, but I I like their vibe.
Brian Casel:I you know, there's some things I don't love about it, but I have moved all my stuff into or at least the the team project management stuff is all in there for sure. Cool. Cool.
Jordan Gal:It makes me think of the other stuff that we've seen on Twitter the last few days is the the Basecamp launching the first ONES product for $299. What
Brian Casel:I found in
Jordan Gal:Cash App, they've had that product for ten years. Right. What's it called? Campfire.
Brian Casel:Campfire. Yep. I've used that
Jordan Gal:in the past.
Brian Casel:It super super super Selling the byproducts. I love it.
Jordan Gal:Yep. What are they doing? If my company was kicking off like $20,000,000 a year in profits, you know what? I was gonna say maybe I I wouldn't be launching stuff and maybe I would just be doing whatever the hell I want and that turns out to be what they wanna do.
Brian Casel:I think that's that seems to me like what they're what they're doing, and they're just like, let's just do some stuff that we wanna do. It doesn't seem like I was surprised that it's, like, $2.02 99, I think, is the price point. That seems pretty low for I don't know. Like like, why and and why is that why would that make a meaningful business for them? I don't I don't understand that math.
Brian Casel:But but again, maybe it's like I don't know. Maybe it's sort of just for fun.
Jordan Gal:I think it's a bit ideological. I which I like. Yeah. If you're trying to screw up the system a little bit, you know, and just roll a grenade out into the sass living room and just see what happens and see what it see what that does.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:I I like that. I I like that.
Brian Casel:Yep. Yeah, man. Cool. Yeah. What what do you got?
Jordan Gal:Okay. We talked last week about this new product line. We've got a name for it. It's called Rally Offers. I might have said that last week, but I'm not sure, but now it's kind of in stone.
Jordan Gal:And we are we're doing this a little, like, dirty the the the right way. I think we are working on a new website and instead of waiting to launch that, we're just building the solutions page for Rally offers and then we're just gonna publish that next week. And it will not look like the rest of the site and who can It's a way
Brian Casel:to do it. I
Nathan Barry:love it.
Jordan Gal:Yes. And we're just gonna be able to share it with people and then turn basically the elements of that page into a PDF so we can send it out to people. And our team put together a few assets like here's what it looks like on a Magento store, here's what looks like on a Salesforce store commerce tool. Right? So we're basically just arming the sales and marketing side with stuff to talk about.
Jordan Gal:Because if you send someone an email or ping someone on LinkedIn with two sentences, it doesn't work nearly as well as two sentences plus a screenshot.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yep.
Jordan Gal:So so we wanna give them that. So that will get published, I think, Tuesday of next week. And what we are lining up is just a a lot of things all at the same time because my goal on this is to learn as much as possible as quickly as possible. So we have landing page launching, then all those assets being used by people in one on one conversations along with some one to many type social posts. But then we're also launching we launched today LinkedIn ads.
Jordan Gal:So this will be the first time we spend a few thousand bucks a month, at least first time in a long time, where we will be running ads and those ads are a little bit more provocative than what what they were in the past. I'm I'm laughing because I pushed the agents
Brian Casel:I feel like ads need to be provocative.
Jordan Gal:They need to.
Brian Casel:I agree. Ads are so much more expensive and people tune them out now, so they gotta be different.
Jordan Gal:Right. Like, this cool looking thing is maybe it works if you have brand recognition and you're just getting in front of people. But if you actually wanna get someone to stop scrolling and be like, what?
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:So I pushed the marketing agency. They came back first with, like, a vanilla set of
Nathan Barry:ads. Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:You know, rally offers. Now you can do x y z. And I was like, no. No. No.
Jordan Gal:I want I want emotional response.
Brian Casel:Yep.
Jordan Gal:I I have to give them credit. They found the line and then they went past it
Brian Casel:and they came back to me. They they tipped their their toe past it to see.
Jordan Gal:Dude, I I think their copy was something Rally Checkout, the only time she'll brag about you finishing fast. I'm like, alright, guys. I think I think that's too far. You know, I don't I think I think Checkout would, like, finishing might might be a little, you know, not right. So but I was proud of them.
Jordan Gal:I was like, you, you know, you you you listen
Brian Casel:But it's worth an AB test.
Jordan Gal:Yes. And we we we dialed it back with a touch. And and now it's basically like, your checkout sucks. Learn more about Rally. It's basically what it says in so many words.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm. Alright. Then what we're doing on the underside, I guess, the the so that's the ads that's like external. Right? That lives in LinkedIn.
Jordan Gal:Then once someone clicks and goes there, we have we have three things in place that we just put in place. We have a product called Sixth Sense. So we looked at Clearbit, we looked at a bunch of other options that detect IP addresses and then give our sales team notifications on who's visiting the site. And we ended up going with Sixth Sense over Clearbit and others because it just had the stuff that we were looking for, including like intent markers. So when we launch a pricing page, like how long are they on the site, basically send me an email with anyone who's been on the site for x amount of time or has visited the pricing page more than once or whatever those intent things are that can be useful for us.
Brian Casel:So that so someone clicks a a LinkedIn ad, they come to your site and that that tracks like, it it, like, identify it gives you, like, identifying information of, like, the organization of where they're from or who they are.
Jordan Gal:Yes. It's like this IP address belongs to Toys R Us. So it gives you who they are and then some contact info. It doesn't give you that much info on the individual visitor. Yep.
Jordan Gal:That's what retention.com does. They're gonna get sued into oblivion. Right. Yes. And then we we are layering in Gong on top of HubSpot, and that is just giving us a a better way to manage our HubSpot pipeline.
Jordan Gal:And then and then very simple tech, we are adding a chat to the page. So if we're gonna spend a few thousand bucks a month to get people there, we should be talking to people whoever, like, goes through that chat.
Brian Casel:It pains me to think about how many I I spent so many hours in I guess this was 2021, 2022 on wiring up tracking on it was ZipMessage then on, you know, mapping first visitor, where they came from, getting that data into Mixpanel and Chartmogul and Stripe and Analytics and just mapping that funnel and and make and I I I really stressed out about it over the time at that time because then and continuing all these years has has been like I've been, like, running these experiments and trying to analyze customer segments and all this stuff. And I stressed out over, like, having all of this period of time where where we're running blind without that kind of data. But it just it the it's such a pain to wire that stuff up and it's like it it's so not plug and play. It's you gotta get deep into your own code base, set cookies, you gotta track this and that, create build out custom dashboards. It's such a mess.
Jordan Gal:It it's a mess. It's it's not it's not the way it should be. And maybe someone on Twitter tagged us and asked like, hey. How are you tracking your marketing? And everyone's like, tracking what?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. You you can't. You can track some marketing but not not the way you want. We are using Framer for this new site, and that thing's amazing. We we've been on Webflow, and we're moving off of Webflow to Framer.
Brian Casel:I this is like the the the new hotness that I'm starting to hear the name Framer more and more. And I I haven't, like, checked it out myself, but I but I'm clearly seeing that name come up a lot more.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I am, you know, not the one designing or building, but we've worked with these designers for years and and love them and trust them. And when I came to them and said, hey. We wanna do this site with you. We were gonna hire an agency and all that stuff.
Jordan Gal:We ended up just doing it, well, with with these guys that we've been working with for years that do our product design. And he was like, can we please use Framer instead of Webflow? So when I asked why, he said it's basically allows us to design directly into the browser, into the tool. And there just isn't that much separation between going into Figma and then trying to get what you have in Figma into Webflow is a very difficult process.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:And it appears that they're able to do it much more easily.
Brian Casel:That's basically that's my same again, I don't know Framer much, but I I chose Static. And and I I used Static on the Clarity Flow marketing site, and now I just used it again on the new fullstackfounder.co site that I launched last week. So Static now for me is is like my go to CMS, and it's for that same reason. It's like, to me, it gives me it's it's the closest thing to a pure static site where I can get my hands dirty as much as I want with designing Tailwind CSS, like, you know, organizing the the templates and the markup exactly how I want it. And then and it gives me a really, like, a a really solid user interface CMS that I can give to my assistant, my writer, my VA, whoever needs to log in and manage content.
Brian Casel:Because most static sites don't have a solid actual CMS. You gotta actually use code, and and StaticMic is, like, the best of both worlds.
Jordan Gal:Cool. Well, I'm I'm hoping so far, so good. We're about to launch with one page, and they're excited about it. And the speed is there in terms of, like, how quickly they're working. So Sweet.
Brian Casel:Love it. I'm gonna talk about something that I have not talked about in many years at this point. Okay. And and that is consulting. Okay.
Brian Casel:I I have started to do a bit of product strategy consulting with some SaaS companies for the first time in, like I I literally don't remember how many years it's been since I worked with a paying client that was not, like, one of my customers of a product. And Okay. And I and I'm excluding, like, Audience Ops clients because that those are, like, customers of that service that wasn't, like, me personally consulting with my time. Right? Right.
Jordan Gal:And your expertise and, like, your
Brian Casel:Yeah. So
Jordan Gal:K. How how is it?
Brian Casel:It's interesting. You know? I'm not trying to build a big consultancy here. This is really just like a step one in getting some early revenue for my new Fullstack Founder brand. The quickest way to revenue is to offer my time while I start to build up the audience with the YouTube channel and stuff like that.
Brian Casel:And I'll get into more products later in the year. But for right now, I have, like, a services page on Fullstack Founder. And it's been interesting to sort of iterate a little bit on how I'm offering these these services. So I started actually back in November, December. I first launched it as as, like, a coaching service where I I actually took on a few coaching clients.
Brian Casel:It was sort of like an ongoing monthly subscription where where they get async access to me, and I'm using Clarity Flow to to do it. But I actually didn't didn't love that model for me. I had a like, the the clients themselves were were cool, but, like, I just didn't love the idea of, like, constantly getting questions sent to me, and I and I and I'm, like, sort of obligated to respond within a day or two Okay. On, like, an ongoing basis. So I I I tabled that version of the offer, and then I and now I'm offering well, there's that where you can just purchase, a one time Q and A with me.
Brian Casel:Like, ask one question, we'll go back and forth for for one week. But what's interesting now is I'm working with SaaS companies in what I'm calling like a planning sprint. Right? And I only book one of these a month. I'm I'm working on with with one SaaS company now, I've got another one booked for February, and then March is open.
Brian Casel:But the the idea is, like, I work with you, the founder, or you and your product team. And if you're planning a big new feature or if you're planning, like, a new product, like an MVP, but in in these cases, these are, like, established SaaS companies that are planning like a big extension of their product or a big new feature. We'll spend two weeks and I'll work with you on scoping it out, shaping it up, technical architecture, technical decision making, sketching out some some UI workflows, some some wireframes, debating with you in a constructive way between like, alright, we can try this approach or we can implement it that way or maybe we'll use this off the shelf solution or we'll build a custom or we'll do this. And then as we wrap up this two week sprint, we get know, you end up at a point where, okay, we have the road map. We have the issues all technically scoped out and specced out, like, ready to hand off to to our developers, and they can run with it.
Brian Casel:And and it's like a time boxed, like, two in in one case, it's a two week sprint. In another one, we're doing a three week sprint. And it's it's interesting to I I like this version of it. It it's still time consuming because I'm I'm really like, this week, like, two of my mornings this week, I I basically went deep on on this other SaaS businesses endeavor here that they're building out, and I spent a lot of time, like, researching and writing docs in Notion and and planning it out. But it's interest like, I've never really offered my consulting service in this way.
Brian Casel:Like, my role is just to be like, look. If if this were my company and my product, here's how I would be thinking about these Yeah. Product decisions. And
Jordan Gal:I'm curious what, like, what's the core value. Is it advice? Is it, like, comfort that they're on the right track? Is it a combination of, like, design and, like, watch out for these things that might pop up? Like, you know, what's the core?
Brian Casel:I think that these particular SaaS companies, like, while they're very successful on their own, like, they're well established, they've got a great customer base, I think that they identified that, like, alright. We know that we need to build this big new thing, like, this big feature. It's it's important for our product, for our customers, for our market position. But I think that they identified that, like, even though they have developers on the team, they're they're missing some aspects of the product stack. And and I think what they see in me is someone who brings some design user interface, user experience chops, some product product strategy, meaning, like, choosing the the best like like scoping down, like like pairing down the scope so that we can ship this efficiently and and fast without shipping something that's garbage, but actually solving the real underlying customer problem.
Brian Casel:You know, that kind of thought process is like, in in some teams, like, that's that's sort of a hole for them. Yeah. Even though they have people who actually, like, work in code and they've got some designers, they're you know, but, like, they're I think that they see in me that like I am a fellow founder and I've worked on my own products for years and I've made these kinds of product strategy decisions. I know what goes into them. And I know the priorities in terms of like we need to ship, we need to solve customers' problems.
Brian Casel:So I try to bring clarity to that. And and it's it's just been interesting for me because it's like, this is sort of the first time where I'm consulting in in a type of role where it's like, look. I'm just gonna sort of, like, tell tell you how it is. What what like, whether it's news that you wanna hear or not, like, this is how I would be thinking about this.
Jordan Gal:Right. You're bringing an outside perspective
Brian Casel:for I'm I'm here to bring in the outsider's perspective.
Jordan Gal:Yeah.
Brian Casel:You know? Whereas, like, in pre like, years ago when I was doing consulting or, like, you know, web design, freelance web design services, essentially, or or working for web design agencies, the game is you just kinda make the client happy. You you you deliver what they want. You know? You you make your recommendations, but at the end of the day, you're gonna ship what they want.
Brian Casel:And and in this, this is true truly consulting where it's like, I'm gonna give you, like, my my best creative analytical thinking on this and put it together for you. It's also been interesting for me to deliver these things to them. Like, usually deliver it in the form of a Clarity Flow message or we're on a call or something. And I'm like, here's my thinking on this, but like, please poke holes in this and tell me where you disagree so that so that I can then think through that as the next step. Right?
Brian Casel:Like, you know, I I think it's constructive. It's just been interesting and kind of a fun, interesting exercise. It it's probably not something that I wanna do for years and years, but but for this year, I'm I'm actually kind
Jordan Gal:of into it. I don't know. Yeah. I sometimes I feel I feel like we we all get stuck in individual businesses for for a long time.
Brian Casel:You know what I mean? You know what I think? I I think you're right. I think that's sort of what what has me a little bit excited about this. It's like when I go to Big Snow or when I'm in my mastermind group, I had a call this morning with them, it's fun to dig into other people's businesses.
Brian Casel:Mhmm. You know? And it's refreshing. It's it's like it's a break from dealing with my own crap. You know?
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:And also allows you to use your expertise and experience in more than one context. I that context is one of the things that drives me nuts about experience, expertise, product, business model. If you just applied it into a slightly different context, it can be worth so much more. I think about that in in the, like, in private equity. That's what I think about.
Jordan Gal:And and what I mean by private equity is I remember oh, it's a long time ago. Fifteen years ago, I was in Connecticut in Westport, and I had a friend come over and his sister lived in town. So we go over to her house and I'm like, damn. This shit is it was gorgeous. It wasn't even like a mansion, like a big house.
Jordan Gal:It was just so well done. Yeah. Just a beautiful
Brian Casel:Westport's a nice area down there.
Jordan Gal:Yes. You know, it was one of those houses. It was really modern, gorgeous house. So my, you know, capitalist juices are like, what is going on? How did you do this?
Jordan Gal:So we meet her husband, and we get into a conversation. And it was one of the first times I saw private equity in a different context. So this guy, like, I don't know, he made a few bucks, like, just doing normal work, like, you know, being financed, something. And then he he bought a cybersecurity company and just changed, know, went in there and fixed it, basically improved it.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:And and using the expertise that he had from finance, working with these like more established, more buttoned up, more professional companies, He just bought a company for a few million bucks and applied his expertise on how to actually run this type of a company, who to hire, what type of people to bring in.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And probably to add a ton of value to to sell it, you know.
Jordan Gal:Right. It was just on in one context, he was making a salary, and maybe he was making a lot of money. He was making half million bucks a year. You know? Good for him.
Jordan Gal:But he just moved that same thing into a different context where he owned the equity of the company, and he made millions from it. And that type of thing always kinda drives me nuts.
Brian Casel:Yep.
Jordan Gal:I'm like, I've been in business in one form or another and understood the entrepreneurial world for like thirty years. Like, since I was a teenager And if that expertise could be applied in different context, I I I I
Nathan Barry:think about it all the
Jordan Gal:time because of the Cardhook versus Rally context. I'm like Totally. You know, these different different contexts make a big difference.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And and kinda along those same lines, this year in 2024, I've talked I've been talking about this for the last several months here is that, you know, I'm what hey. There's one of your alarms.
Jordan Gal:Dude, that was a phone call. It wasn't an alarm. It was spam.
Brian Casel:I'm sorry.
Brennan Dunn:Thought something. Damn it. Damn it.
Brian Casel:So, you know, like, I am finding some, I think, some some new, like, mental peace by by thinking differently about success as as an entrepreneur, as as a business owner. You know? Like, I'm redefining it now. I've I've gone through many years and multiple businesses aiming for one version of success in as a software entrepreneur.
Jordan Gal:Right.
Brian Casel:And in 2024 and going forward, I'm of the mindset of, like, there are other ways to be successful in this industry, and they don't have to be making one SaaS product work.
Pippin Williamson:That's that
Brian Casel:for for me, that's my bottom line at this point. You
Jordan Gal:know? Okay.
Brian Casel:And and so and so that's why this year is I'm cobbling together. I I I do have one SaaS product. I'm doing a a bit of this product consulting, and I'm starting I'm doing the the audience thing with with the YouTube channel. And later in the year, I'll probably do some courses or or community or something else that that I can leverage off of that. I'm still working in products.
Brian Casel:I'm still working in software. In in fact, I'm going even deeper into it because I'm teaching it now. Mhmm. And and I'm consulting on it now. And to me, that's act in in some ways, it's even more enjoyable while I'm while I'm still I'm I'm basically acting as an investor at this point in Clarity Flow.
Brian Casel:It's it's one thing in my portfolio. Yep. And I can learn and build and cobble together revenue streams from different places going forward. That's that's the plan.
Jordan Gal:You know? I think
Brian Casel:that's It's not it's not easy. It's I I wish I'd I had a lot more success by this point in my in my age and career, but but I I think I think there's still a lot of good stuff to come. At at at least that's my mindset.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I I That's the that's
Brian Casel:the rosy side of the mindset.
Jordan Gal:No. Look. It's it's pretty sober. You know. I one thing that we all fall victim to is is projecting onto versions of success that we see, that we literally come across.
Jordan Gal:And it's such a limited worldview, and it's often, often incorrect. So I don't see across the street from me is a family friend, her father crushed it in real estate. He's not on Twitter. He's not writing blog posts.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:You don't see it. And because of that, it's not as present in your mindset of your version of success or what's possible or what you should be doing. And what we all see, like, on Twitter and among peers and all that, it's such a tiny, tiny, tiny worldview. And often the things that we're seeing are either untrue or incomplete or incorrect or whatever assumptions. And avoiding that as your North Star and what success should be to you is so hard.
Jordan Gal:It's so it's really you have to, like, trick yourself. You have to, like,
Brian Casel:It took me I'm I'm I still deal with it, of course, but it it took me a long time to get my mental headspace to this point and a lot of hard work, I think. Because I you know, it's not just, oh, that person on Twitter from afar or that that Internet celebrity on stage. It's people that I'm close friends with that I go snowboarding with that you know, that I know, that like, see people like, I see again and again the the model or the pathway of this person started a SaaS business and it grew. It it nailed product market fit and insanely profitable or they sold it for an insane amount. And and and I've seen that again and again and again with people that I and and I've seen the behind the scenes story of that again and again.
Brian Casel:Like, you know, so so it's it's it's hard to look at that and say, like, like, I I've been at this game for for over a decade. How come I haven't had the same outcome? But it's just like yeah. I of course, there are things that I can point back to and think, well, maybe this or that decision could have been done different differently. Maybe that didn't serve me well.
Brian Casel:But at the end of the day, like, this is where we're at, and and I think that there are still ways to stay positive and actually have a a great time building a business that doesn't have to look like that version of success. There there so there really are so many different ways to to win. It doesn't it doesn't have to be a single SaaS product. You know?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I I agree a 100. And I even I even challenge you on seeing it again and again because I don't think I could name 10 people that I actually know as opposed to, like, you know, heard about on Twitter type of thing or, like, you know, read an article about some founder that sold their company for 511, good good for them. But the people that I actually know and interact with I don't know if I could name you 10 people that have had a straightforward successful outcome.
Brian Casel:Oh, 100%.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. And and You know, it's it's a handful. Almost everyone else
Brian Casel:But even them, eve even the most successful ones, you especially if you know them behind the scenes, you know, like, they are not always happy and the path is not always rosy or easy or even if the numbers are large. And in in many cases, that that brings all sorts of challenges that most people don't see.
Jordan Gal:Sure. And and and and pre outcome is full of bullshit. It is, you know, this was one of my biggest problems with the Shopify ecosystem and and part of why I'm so happy that I'm not there anymore. And I just look at it from the outside being like, oh my god. No.
Jordan Gal:Thanks. It was so full of this hype of everything's going amazing and everything's going well. And then when you actually know about it, you're like, you have from the outside an amazing business. And then it is so rare when the actual outcome arrives and the people that worked on it for five, six, eight years actually get an awesome financial reward. It is rare.
Jordan Gal:I'm I'm in touch with a guy now. My man grinded for five years. Just layoffs, then cobbling together a few more bucks, then layoffs, then trying, then repivoting, then trying something else. And over the last two years, this thing hit. Hell yes.
Jordan Gal:And he's like, I hope we can sell it over the next two years so that it works out. And he is he's adding, like, a 100 k in MRR every month for the past, like, two years straight. You know, just spectacular success. Yep. And it still doesn't so, like, that shit means nothing.
Jordan Gal:The only thing that means is, like, what's in front of your desk and what your priorities are.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And there's and there's always, like, weighing, like, how how many years am I willing to spend on this one idea, you know, before before it's like, okay. That might have an outcome, but there are other there are other things that that I could be spending my time on. You know?
Jordan Gal:Yes. Yes.
Brian Casel:Speaking of time, you know, getting back down to, like, the ground level. So this new business, that I'm doing called Fullstack Founder, it's the the business model or the strategy is very much built around YouTube as, like, the tip of the spear, the top of the funnel. And I in my mind, this is how bad I am at, like, estimating how much time and effort it is to get to get something off the ground. But, my my thought is, like, I'm gonna bootstrap and do everything myself on YouTube, from scripting to recording to the editing, designing the thumbnail, put putting out YouTube videos. I wanna do a a new one every single week.
Brian Casel:And I got to my third video, and I'm like, I absolutely need to outsource the video editing a lot Okay. A lot sooner than I than I thought I would because that is I such a mean, I've I've recorded five videos, and I've only published two of them because the the editing is such a bottleneck. You know? And and I've even and I've I've gone down the rabbit hole learning like DaVinci Resolve and and it's fun and creative to get in into that. And I've gotten pretty fast keyboard shortcuts and all all these different stuff.
Brian Casel:Even with that, like, video editing is is such a different beast, especially for YouTube, than, like, than, like, just podcast editing. Like, this podcast, we're gonna finish, and I'm gonna publish it in, like, ten minutes. Like, I Right. We we basically do no editing.
Jordan Gal:Right. We're at the we're at the that end of the spectrum.
Brian Casel:Yeah. But but most podcast like, not most podcast, but, like, the tooling for podcast editing now is so good that you could get away with a lot of, like, minimal, like, automated stuff. You come across
Jordan Gal:greatly produced broadcasts, and there is a difference.
Brian Casel:Sure. But with video, like, no no matter how great the tools are, you still gotta have the cuts be right, have the lighting and the color and the and the titles and the transitions and and the mastering and all all this different stuff. So it's it's like an eight minute video is like four, five, six hours of work. You know? And so and and not to mention the the research and the prep and the scripting and all that and the recording.
Brian Casel:So I, you know, I have this, like, bootstrappers mentality where it's like, oh, this is a new business. I I can't invest in hiring someone until I've got revenue coming in. But I very, very quickly came to that conclusion where it's like
Jordan Gal:Can't do it.
Brian Casel:If I want this business to work and if that requires publishing YouTubes on a regular basis and that is the distribution strategy, then I have to hire this out. It it that's the only way I'm I'm actually able to execute that strategy, and it's worth the investment. So I'm going to be doing that. I I'm I'm just gonna continue working with the same assistant who's been working with me on on on Clarity Flow. She's coming over to my personal stuff.
Brian Casel:And and, yeah, she's been doing podcast and video editing. And I've got my templates and workflow that I can give to her. But it's it's it's definitely worth, like, x dollars for yeah. Like, to cover her cost for the year in in terms of, like, investing that into growing my audience this way. And and if that allows me to publish on a regular schedule, that's gonna be the plan.
Jordan Gal:So Mhmm. Okay. Cool. It what it makes me think of is the difference between that pain that you're encountering and what I see my daughter do with CapCut.
Brian Casel:I that's another one I I keep hearing about, like, how, Yeah.
Jordan Gal:So so CapCut, it's it's mobile. I don't know if they have a desktop, but and so we don't allow her to have TikTok.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Not yet. So her way around that was, I just need this Cap cut. It's just like for making videos and editing. And of course, it has a feed. So it's like TikTok lite.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Yeah. So she she got us on that one. But she likes to do the type of format videos that, you know, these kids like to do. They do get ready with me.
Jordan Gal:Right? You know, she's of that age where she's, like, close with friends, so now they are, like, doing FaceTime when they're doing, like, their nighttime skin routine. Okay. Like Okay. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:But sometimes she'll do a video on her own and she uses CapCut and what she does, no one taught her, I didn't teach her anything, maybe she has some friends or something but it's very intuitive enough and then she'll show me the video that she made about like us arriving at the hotel in Hawaii or something like, you know, they're like they like understand this language.
Brian Casel:It's it's incredible, the art class, man. My my I got my one daughter on I introduced her to Canva, you know, the the graphics? Yeah. And she loves it, and she goes in there. And, I mean, I barely use Canva, but she she's like, creating and and Canva has all these, like, AI tools now.
Brian Casel:Like Okay. She's not only creating graphics. Like, she she creates, like, stories, like animated stories in there. Now they're both both my daughters are not only playing Roblox, they're using Roblox Studio to create Roblox games, and they publish stuff in in Roblox world. Okay.
Brian Casel:It's it's just incredible. And and a lot of it is, like, story based. Like, they're they're creating, like, mini movies, mini, like, comic strips kind of stuff. It's just incredible, man. And, like and and, like, just the other literally, the other day, my seven year old showed me, like, little shortcuts on the iPad that I never knew existed.
Brian Casel:Like, on the keyboard, like, I don't know, like, you hold a button and then you get to the number and it's like, wait. What? I've been using this since iPads came out before you were born and you're showing me shortcuts? Like, these kids, man. I don't
Jordan Gal:It's So I I if I were you, I would look at CapCut. I also can't help but think, the pain you're encountering, I think that's the first, like, idea for a business that you're encountering as you are becoming a creator.
Brian Casel:What? Like, video editing stuff? Yeah. I
Jordan Gal:don't know about that.
Brian Casel:Maybe. I don't know. I mean I've
Jordan Gal:I've heard it in the ecommerce context in terms of, like, creators who are on TikTok and wanna do stuff.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Oh, there's definitely a huge business for someone to do in terms of, like yeah, offering video editing services. Yeah. I'm I'm I look at it much more as, like, a means to an end, and and the content that I'm putting out is more in software development and software product strategy. And I have thought through, like, what would it look like to build out, like, a software dev shop as a as a mini agency model that's, like, interesting, but that's not gonna happen, or I'm not intending that to happen.
Jordan Gal:I
Brian Casel:don't know. There there's all sorts of random shiny object ideas that that come about. But, like, I'll I'll just say, like, the the idea is, like, software development services for creators who have large audiences and they want to sell software of their own, but they don't have the the product development muscle. Mhmm. That's an interesting
Jordan Gal:Like a little partnership model. Yes. Like like, they're they bring distribution to the table.
Brian Casel:Yep. Because they have that advantage and they yeah. So that the they're through through my through this consulting work and through getting into the YouTube stuff like that, I I actually have had some discussions with with people in that realm, like and and that sort of opened my eyes to a to some opportunity in that sort of service lane, but I don't I don't know if or when that might come about.
Jordan Gal:I I think you're gonna come across more and more the deeper you go. Yep. I, on the other hand, will be selling shit to ecommerce merchants
Brian Casel:There you go.
Jordan Gal:For a while.
Brian Casel:There you go. Alright, dude. Friday. Yeah, man. I'm gonna try I've again, like, I have so much shit that I that I hoped that I would have done and shipped by now, but the reality is the weekend is here and I'm get getting on a flight on Sunday to go to Big Snow and that's that.
Brian Casel:Some stuff is just gonna have to wait.
Jordan Gal:In that stuff in that situation, I like to map out one or two things and say, I just wanna get these done by the time I leave. And then usually that gives me enough motivation to at night while we're watching TV in bed, I'm like, this only takes half an hour. And then and then I get it done and I go to sleep feeling good. That that's that's
Brian Casel:it. Yeah. My thing is like I've got two unedited YouTube videos and that's that's not a half an hour at night thing. That's a that's I need I need a full day and and I don't have another full day. So yeah.
Brian Casel:True. Alright, man. Alright.
Jordan Gal:Happy weekend. Talk to you soon. I will not be around next week. I'm in Vienna. Oh.
Jordan Gal:With my brother's and my dad. A boy's trip to Austria.
Brian Casel:Hell, yeah. Damn, dude.
Jordan Gal:Basically, schnitzel and cake. That's that's the whole that's whole Beautiful.
Brian Casel:Alright. Alright, dude. Be good. Later, bro.
