Charging for Onboarding
Welcome back everybody. Another episode of Bootstrap Web. It's Friday, it's Sunny out, it's daddy daughter dance in a few hours. Brian Castle, how are you?
Brian Casel:Doing good. You're gonna you're gonna look sharp? You're gonna you're gonna go out there with with your kid?
Jordan Gal:The the theme is sequins and sneakers, which is perfect. So I I'm gonna wear a suit with sneakers, which is the ideal.
Brian Casel:Your your sequins suit, of course.
Jordan Gal:Well, the sequins will be my daughter's more so than myself.
Brian Casel:And I think I have mine mine of those like in a couple weeks,
Jordan Gal:I It's so fun. So two of my daughters, the two younger ones, both go to this elementary school. So I got two of them with me tonight. One of them is not into dresses, is not into girly stuff. So she's I don't know what she's gonna do.
Jordan Gal:I think she's got a sequence plan.
Brian Casel:The other My older one is is sort of in that boat and she didn't even wanna do the the dance. So I so I didn't do it with her when it when it was her year. Okay. My younger one is very is super into it. Okay.
Brian Casel:It's coming.
Jordan Gal:That's my younger one. Whatever is fancy, whatever is shiny, whatever is girly, that's what she's into. Unfortunately, broke her ankle. Oh. She the the fibula, the little the little bone on the outside of the leg all the way down by the ankle, she busted it at a trampoline park last week.
Brian Casel:Those things are chaos by the The worst.
Jordan Gal:The worst. Hate them. God God damn it.
Brian Casel:I mean, in and and there's yeah. There's a few around here, and of course, like, every kid in the in the class all has the birthday party there. So I'm going there, like, every weekend for a year.
Jordan Gal:Spoken on special socks. Yes. We have a trampoline that we bought during the pandemic, and I did all my research. I got the safest one, the spring free, all this insane, and it's still I can barely watch. I know.
Jordan Gal:I can barely watch. One kid here in town hit their head on their knee so hard he stopped breathing.
Brian Casel:Oh my god.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. So chaos. Anyway, back on track. She is gonna be in crutches and her boot tonight. So I got I gotta bring my daddy a game to this daughter.
Brian Casel:Mhmm. This daughter.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. For real.
Brian Casel:Wow. Alright.
Brennan Dunn:You you
Brian Casel:got your hands full.
Brennan Dunn:Yep. How about you? What do you
Jordan Gal:got going on?
Brian Casel:Yeah. We did a quick day of skiing last weekend. Next week, we're doing we're we're taking the girls up to an Airbnb in Vermont for Wednesday to Friday. So we're all sort of taken off work and taken them out of school. It's my older daughter's birthday and we're gonna do two days in Vermont of skiing and a little ski on ski off Airbnb thing.
Brian Casel:Should be should be pretty fun.
Jordan Gal:Cool. This last weekend was my my birthday weekend. And we were in beautiful Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Actually lovely place. And everyone we went up there to ski.
Jordan Gal:This is my wife's idea of a sick joke to go for my birthday. But because Daphne had her busted foot, she couldn't ski. So she and I hung out for my entire birthday, just the two of
Brian Casel:us. Oh, it's the best.
Jordan Gal:We went got pancakes. We had ice cream for lunch. We hung out at the big like great room at the at the hotel. She was on her iPad watching TV. I'm on my phone and my Kindle.
Jordan Gal:It was glorious. Perfect.
Brian Casel:That's great.
Brennan Dunn:Yep.
Brian Casel:Awesome.
Jordan Gal:Well Speaking of money Yeah. What are we doing here? How are making money?
Brian Casel:That's a good question. Today, I launched another website in in in an effort in the in the career long effort of trying to make some money here. It's called it's called instrumentalproducts.com. I've it's it's like the second or third iteration of what I've been doing with this domain. But it's finally up there.
Brian Casel:This is I'm putting like a wrapper. I'm putting like a like a landing page up into the world to sort of encapsulate this consultancy that I've And been and I've been like actively consulting with clients for since the beginning of of the year. And this is starting to like take a bunch of those learnings of who I've been working for and the best type of offering that I can put together as a consultancy and put it on a page and something to form into some kind of like value proposition and so I go into it. It's not super long but it's like, what's the unique value that I bring as like a full stack product designer developer with founder experience. And who is this for?
Brian Casel:I kinda lay out a couple of like avatars of like, if if you're in this position I I think I talked about this on the last Yeah. Is this you? You know, like, I right now, I'm I'm working mostly with SaaS companies who want to bring me in to, start up a new product or a big new feature in their product without disrupting their existing team.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm. Or
Brian Casel:like, kinda bring me on to like kinda fire something up, take something from zero to or like from concept to launch, if you will. And so I I go into that and then I I'm packaging up like some services which essentially look like one the the main one is like doing a big product project, a big product build. That's, you know, that'll that'll be a couple of months. And and you know, it's like a big project and I'll bring on like a a developer or two to work with me and we do our thing where we ship and and concept the whole thing. Another one that I've been doing with some clients is like this, planning sprint sort of thing.
Brian Casel:And so I've been working with some of those clients, I have a couple that I'm talking to now about booking in the next couple of weeks, and then the rest of the year is, this site is basically V one of what this consultancy business looks like. Mhmm. So, right now, I'm in this interesting position where it's not really theoretical, because I'm already like kinda up and running with with clients on it. But I am trying to like go from I'm trying to take the If the first step is like, okay, let's experiment and get some very first paying clients, that was the first step which I did over the last three, four months. And I did different iterations, I went from like coaching into like more of a consulting model.
Brian Casel:And now it's like step two, which is like, okay, I've got some early contacts in, I've got some early revenue in, now let's form this into what looks like a real business. And that's the website, and now I turn to like lead pipeline. Right? Like my next goal here is to move beyond like just friends and industry contacts who are talking to me about these kind of engagements to I want a consistent flow of leads in the pipeline that I can book into this consultancy. Or at least or or, you know, maybe it comes to like some sort of like waiting list and and booking things out into the year.
Brian Casel:But I just wanna have that consistency where I'm not like kinda clawing and and scraping for for customers on this thing. So
Jordan Gal:how do you think about Ray, it sounds like you're you're now starting to focus on what channel or channels are gonna generate that type of opportunity pipeline?
Brian Casel:Yeah, and like the the beauty of of a consultancy really is that like, you don't need a super high volume of That's right. Customer flows to to make it work, but I do want I do want a healthy flow of leads to to kinda whittle down to a few really good clients, you know, that that come through that funnel. The way that I'm thinking about it is, I I guess, starting is is like still just working my my network. I haven't even really fully done this in earnest other than talking about it on this podcast, but like and and a tweet that I put out today. But like, I plan to sort of like make a list of like all contacts that I have in the industry.
Brian Casel:So like, SaaS company founders who either are a good fit or could refer me to others. People who are connected to like communities or funds or or things that are in touch with lots of companies that would fit my ideal customer. Like, you know, good like referral partners. The the other one that I still think about is are like creators who have large audiences. Mhmm.
Brian Casel:Because I have spoken to some of them who do want to launch software products to their audience. And I have some connections to people in that realm as well. That's probably my next step. And then just the other the other one would be getting back into like the content game of, you know, on the YouTube channel, my newsletter, thinking through doing some series of pillar content about how I think about products and strategies and some concepts that come up in my work on products and stuff that I can put out on LinkedIn and YouTube and Twitter and just And so that's kinda all I have in terms of like thinking through like where the pipeline comes from. I mean, beyond that, you can get into more like, more scaled out things like cold outreach to companies and stuff like that.
Jordan Gal:But I
Brian Casel:think I can get pretty far along just based on the network effects. And again, like, in a good consultancy where we just need a handful of really good projects in the year to make this a good year one or year two, like don't need a high volume. I just need a couple of good wins in there, you know.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. That does lend itself very well to showing who you are and how you think about this stuff. To attract the people who wanna work in that same way.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah. And it's like, it's it's this like right now I'm talking to two I've I've like two I have one proposal that's out and one that I'm talking to next week for the like a big product build. Okay. Both each of them.
Jordan Gal:And So you're so you're in the market. You can get a deal signed at at any minute.
Brian Casel:It's Yeah. So so it's that it's this thing where it's like I am actually trying to to build that sort of tension. I think we've talked about this a bunch Mhmm. Where it's like, I want that that good tension where it's like, I just have a bunch of leads and customers and then I need to figure because I I feel like I know how to do the other stuff. Like Okay.
Brian Casel:I have I I have people on on staff and and access to developers that I could hire to help with things. I have built out systems and processes and teams with project managers and stuff. Obviously, that stuff wouldn't turn on a dime, but I also think that I'm pretty good with time management and project management and I can take on one or two or three projects and make it work while I figure out the systems and the people and the team. And in the past, I have done wait list things. Like in the early days of Audience Ops, I developed an early lead flow, served some good first accounts, and then put it on pause and made a waiting list, and booked out more as as I figured out the team and the processes.
Jordan Gal:So it's not the delivery that's your primary concern. It's who's gonna come in? Are they the ideal person? Is it the ideal amount? Is it the ideal scenario?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. And how
Brian Casel:do I that the thing that most like freelancers and most like just general consultants tend to not do a good job of is like they they get afraid of booking out too much work, so they stop marketing. And they stop
Jordan Gal:Yeah, the feast or famine problem, right?
Brian Casel:Yeah, that that's what lends itself to the feast or famine thing, you know? I'm I'm not even trying to build like a a big high volume consultancy here. I wanna keep it like a small like studio, just work with a couple of like really high caliber people. But but it's still a a better situation to have like too many leads coming through Absolutely. And you could
Jordan Gal:on the waiting
Brian Casel:list, you know. Okay. I mean that that other That also begs the other question that's on my mind. And this one's gonna be a little bit more difficult for me, think, is is if I if I do book a couple of these big projects, and maybe the timing of them will work out where I can sort of slot them at different times in the year, but hopefully I have this good tension going in the next couple of months where I do have a bunch of good projects on the plate. I have developers that I would bring on to work under my direction, but I think at some point, the way that this type of consultancy moves from literally just me personally to working on like multiple big product projects, like multiple big product projects simultaneously, is I'm gonna need another like really good full stack designer developer to like work with me on stuff.
Brian Casel:Mhmm. Like some somebody who's like a higher level than the developers that I just hire to to work under my direction. Like, you know, but somebody with like design and dev skills. Maybe a little bit more on the on the technical back end side than to sort of balance out my my strengths a little bit. Mhmm.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Like, I I don't know what that looks like. And and and that type of person is probably harder to hire. They're they come with a higher rate. They they're probably US or Europe based or some something like that.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. They might be in a similar situation where they do this and they're doing something else and building something on on the side.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah. It would it would probably look like that.
Brennan Dunn:Yeah. Yeah.
Brian Casel:At least for a while.
Jordan Gal:That's a good way to do it. So I'm very interested to see how you handle the feast famine situation. Yeah. It's like you you know it's coming. You can see directly in front of you.
Jordan Gal:You you know it's on the way. It does not mean it's easy to deal with. So I I think we'll we'll all learn on on how you deal with that.
Brian Casel:And that and that's sort of like the the the thing that's driving me right now. It's like how do I get to a point where I just have confidence that every month I know that there's a there's a pipeline coming.
Jordan Gal:You can't wait to get to that next problem. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Okay.
Jordan Gal:Well, congrats on getting it up. I saw you on Twitter talking about the logo and like having fun with it. Yeah. Yeah. Cool.
Brian Casel:I I think it I think it's like, you know, we can hop over to one of your things here, but like maybe to tease the next big thing that I have on my mind here is like, moving from starting stuff up, like, you know, this this year has been, for me, been defined by like exploring and experimenting and sort of like trying a bit of this, trying a bit of that. V one of this didn't quite work. Let's move on to V two of this idea. And then landing page and researching a market and getting clawing for those very first customers and revenue, I wanna move beyond that and get to the point where I have just the business is running, this is what it is.
Jordan Gal:Yeah, then just consistency.
Brian Casel:Let's just do the consistent work, the doing the projects, and doing content, you know, and just letting it do its thing. But And I Clarity Flow is sort of on that level where it's like, we just do work on projects and it has its flow of customers coming in and I have a person on that. But Yeah. It's I'm I'm trying to like Like now that I have Clarity Flow running, instrumentalproducts.com is is up and launched, and, you know, Fullstack Founder with the YouTube, like, that's basically set up for me to get back into content. So I've got the properties out there.
Brian Casel:Now I just gotta like Yeah. Exit up
Jordan Gal:your project. And start and start just doing it consistently. Okay. Very cool.
Brian Casel:Anyway, what's on your end?
Jordan Gal:Okay. So so we spoke last week about pivoting, about communicating with the board, about communicating with the investor base. That investor update really hit everyone the right way, which feels great. The feedback was really good and very positive and kind of like it just helped to put me at ease around that tension of like what are they gonna think. Right?
Jordan Gal:That that like totally washed away from after after last week. So one of the things that I have been talking to the team about in relation to the pivot is the challenge that all of us have that have been at the company for a long time to reset a lot of our assumptions. We we talked about this on a previous episode. What I have found over the last few days, this week, is that while I was preaching that, and that is is correct to point out to everyone, I don't think I quite realized how many assumptions and and the difficulty that I had personally to do that. It was almost like I was coaching myself by saying that out loud.
Jordan Gal:It was also the right thing to tell people because it's true. But as the days go by, I'm I'm finding I'm limited by the set of assumptions that I'm carrying around also. And as those start to be washed away and I actually start to overcome them, all these new ideas starting to pop up. And I find myself like super energized Because right now, after the pivot, it's not like we moved from checkout to this like personalized offers marketing type of a tool. It's like we gave ourselves this new start at looking for product market fit.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm. And that requires a tricky balance between not looking outwardly too much. Meaning, what we have right now, we have people interested. Like you, we have a contract out through SignWell. Shout out to Ruben.
Jordan Gal:And so that signature can come back any day. Right? Come back while we're talking right now or might be next week and that'll be our first closed deal with that like five k upfront element. So we don't need to do anything new in order to hit our short term goals. Like the projections that we've set out, the expectations that we've set, our internal plans, all of it.
Jordan Gal:We don't need to change anything about the product, and we don't need to change anything about who we're going after.
Brian Casel:What what were some of those like limiting beliefs or things that you that that you were kinda carrying around that that's like that like your whole world view has changed?
Jordan Gal:Okay. I'll I'll give you maybe the most extreme example. The most extreme example is industry. I have been staring at e commerce for ten years. So one of those huge assumptions that I thought was basically in stone and that I didn't even have to bother challenging it was e commerce.
Jordan Gal:That's that's where we're aimed. So what I'm saying right now is our current product that works on Salesforce Commerce Cloud and Magento and Commerce Tools and BigCommerce, we don't need to add any new features in order to close deals. At the same time, that doesn't necessarily mean that that's where product market fit is is gonna click. And so one of the one of the most basic assumptions of the industry and the type of customer that we're going after, I thought that was in stone. And all of a sudden along comes a completely different opportunity from a national scale fortune 500 franchise that says to us, hey, we are interested because we have services being booked throughout the country, but we make a tremendous amount of our margin, of our actual revenue that ends up as as profit from upselling and cross selling at the point of checkout when someone books our service.
Jordan Gal:We sell these products and we can mark them up because of our relationship with the customer at that point in time, we're really interested in what you're doing around the checkout. And that is that is dangerous.
Brian Casel:Because you can't different, but like in a way, I mean, definitely industry wise it's different. It's like it's kinda sidestepping to selling the same product to different types of customers. But in a way, it's solving the same core problem. What you're describing here, without getting into specifics, is the main thing that you're solving now with Rally is these post purchase upsells and these drive additional revenue through the checkout.
Jordan Gal:Yes. Right? And it's almost like a
Brian Casel:Targeting businesses that really really care about that that additional revenue capture, and like that's like core to them, that that makes it like like it it just drives the pain level up that
Jordan Gal:Yes. That's that's right. Right. They're focused on margin at that point in time. And those products that are much more high margin
Brian Casel:than Like it's main the difference between like, I don't know about the if this is a correct example in your world, but like like a clothing store who like somebody's shopping for for clothing and then they they might want to add like an accessory, but that's sort of like a nice to have thing. Whereas like a business where most of their revenue is driven by these like upsells in in the shopping cart, like
Jordan Gal:Yes. We we see it in different in different ways in ecommerce. We see a hero product that costs $50 that they're making $5 on in margin, and then selling something that goes along with it for $10 that they make $8 in margin.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:So so your different products have these different margins. This contribution margin type of approach is much more popular ecommerce. I think what you're describing is like going up one level from from what does the product do to what does the business do. So the the product helps you add new revenue and average order value at the point of checkout in your ecommerce, you know, online retailer store. But what does the business do?
Jordan Gal:It helps generate new revenue from existing customers. Right? That's like more general. So the reason and and I don't wanna go too deep into this because it's like my next topic to talk about. But the reason this came up for me is because we are now we are now hiring a new SDR.
Jordan Gal:So we we decided to eliminate the senior SDR position and that meant letting go of two people. And now we are looking for more junior SDR. Right? We still wanna do outbound, but it didn't make sense. And there was one element.
Jordan Gal:I'm having a bunch of conversations. Right? We're interviewing people. We're also talking to outsourced vendors to just see what's out there and learn more. In my conversation with an outsourced SDR vendor, he said something, the founder came on.
Jordan Gal:We had a few calls with them and then they kinda brought me in and and the CEO was like, wanna join. You know, this sounds like a good opportunity for us. So in in his explanation of his journey, like how did he end up running an SDR vendor, he talked about the previous company that he ran the SDR program for. And it got to 70 SDRs. And he was talking about things that went right and things that went wrong, and how his new outsourced SDR company is trying to learn from that experience.
Jordan Gal:The thing that struck me is 70 SDRs? Yeah. Because
Brian Casel:What kind of volume do you have to
Jordan Gal:It's okay, volume is one question. But but the the question adjacent to volume is how big is your goddamn market? That you can have 70 people full time banging the phones and email. I want that. I want that.
Jordan Gal:Right. That's that's what yes. Yes.
Brian Casel:Wait. So he was giving you the example of of his previous business where he was using that to sell something else, not sell the SDR.
Jordan Gal:Correct. They they were selling, I think it was software or service or something on it. It doesn't even really really matter. But it stuck with me as I'm thinking through these assumptions, and through these industry things, and it, you know, the these you kinda go about your day and you get these little tidbits of information that you kind of like are synthesizing. Right?
Jordan Gal:You're you're you're walking away from your desk, and you're gonna do dinner, and you're washing dishes, and these things are just like synthesizing. Like swirling around to give you these new ideas and insights based on all these things that you're pulling in during the day into your brain.
Brian Casel:I think that there this is this is still an underappreciated success factor from what I can tell from where I sit in terms of like one business compared to all other businesses. And I hate these sort of generalizations, but this is just one that I keep Okay. Seeing year after year all the time is high demand, high high volume, high demand, like, businesses versus Yeah. Ones that that like sell and have a lot of, like, consistent customers, but like, there's just not enough people in the world to make it to to to fill 70 seats with SDRs.
Jordan Gal:Yes. You know? And there are there are not enough online retailers to have 70 SDRs. And and something about that truth made me uncomfortable. I didn't I don't like that factor.
Brennan Dunn:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:That that there is never a big enough market with
Brian Casel:an option. Just feel like, again, I feel like Satisfied there is all this all this like advice around our circles around getting to product market fit, I feel like it doesn't do that question justice enough. I really think that a huge, huge success factor in most businesses is like choosing the initial market and the initial customer really, really well before you get to anything else. You know?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. It it's tough once you're already in business and then you're on the hunt for
Brian Casel:it and you That's don't the super tough thing is because because it's it's Easy is definitely the wrong word, but it's easy enough to build a business to couple 100 customers of whatever you're selling. It's a lot harder to be in the right business that's just gonna have thousands upon thousands of volume every single month.
Jordan Gal:Yes. Yes. So, yeah. The the this week has felt like an opening up of my mind a little bit as the investor communication is out of the way, as we're kinda settling into this thing. It's so funny to to have a huge sense of urgency and still need to remain patient.
Jordan Gal:The the the product's not out. Next week is the release where the product now works in this way that I'm describing. A standalone product.
Brian Casel:Where are you at on the on the SDR thing? Is it like, you're you've let them go, but you're you're filling that position, like, you're you're looking at different options, and and how is your actual sales process changing? Maybe maybe you're gonna get into this later on, but like
Jordan Gal:Oh, yeah. Well, let's just jump into it now. Don't mind. Then then you go. Okay.
Jordan Gal:So here's my initial set of assumptions. My initial set of assumptions is we need someone more junior. We need someone with a fresh set of eyes and assumptions instead of you know, we we confused our SDRs. They came in, they started pushing one product, then we pivoted, then we're going this way, then it's both, then it's just one. And by the end, they had been with the company for a little while.
Brian Casel:I see. So it's it's sort of like you need Junior because because there are still gonna be changes.
Jordan Gal:We've had.
Brian Casel:So it's like you or whoever's in leadership is leading this exploration into different directions, different industries to sell to, and the junior level SDR role should be able to sort of like plug You should be able to plug that process in and adapt it as you go. Whereas like you bring in the hot The big guns, the higher the higher level SDRs when it's like this machine works, let's let's blow it out.
Jordan Gal:The the that's one element of it. When I think junior instead of more senior, the real issue there was was less thinking, less strategy, less operation Yeah.
Brian Casel:That's what I mean. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Systems. Yes.
Brian Casel:Because because that that strategy, that adapting is like you and your your leadership team. Right?
Jordan Gal:Yes. So so this is what we went in and then and then this the assumptions around hiring in house was how is someone outsourced possibly gonna know our product? How are they gonna understand the industry? How are they gonna understand our customers? We need someone with us day to day, super tight with the team, loves the company, loves the product, understands what's happening, communicates, tight feedback circles, messaging, all of that.
Jordan Gal:So this is the set of assumptions that I I was walking around with. And and half my mind still thinks that way. I went into a conversation with an outsourced SDR company, the the one that I'm I'm alluding to. Someone that I really respect that consultant, that go to marketing consultant that like transformed the whole company. She recommended them.
Jordan Gal:So she recommends them. We're open to it. Cool. Because we we know she knows her stuff. Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:So I was very skeptical and I told Sam on our team who was leading the effort to look into it. So I guess, Sam, you you have a mountain of skepticism to get over with me. Feel free to talk to them, but whatever. So he eventually says, cool. Jordan, these guys are pretty impressive.
Jordan Gal:Let's set up a call for you so you can kind of dig in. And I'm like, this is a waste of time. In my mind, I'm like, this is a complete waste of time. There's no way I'm doing this. It doesn't make sense to me.
Brian Casel:So your your assumption is like going into this is that like they're outsourced so how could they possibly be as as ingrained as I need them to be in in my company?
Jordan Gal:Yes. How are they gonna be soaked in our culture and the understanding of our market, all these things that in my mind matter. I jump on a call with these guys. The founder, the CEO there was really impressive. And my approach to these things is is not, I don't think it's the typical American approach to conversations like this.
Jordan Gal:So my approach is is more Israeli than than not. I come into that conversation, everyone does their intros, and I go, here is my skepticism, like directly head on. Like this is what you need to address in order for me to have any Okay. So I gave it to them completely directly and he was like, awesome. We're talking turkey.
Brian Casel:I was just gonna say like that like doing a sales call, you you want that. You want that level of honesty. Like, I I just remembered so many like that where it was like, I could tell they're sort of like dancing around something, but it's hard for me to pinpoint what their what is their real question or objection. But when they're when they're super direct like that, it makes it easy. And maybe it's maybe it's easy to be like, okay, maybe we're not gonna be a good fit for you, but like, at least we know exactly where to focus on our conversation, you know.
Jordan Gal:Yes. And and why why need to look back at the conversation conversation and and analyze analyze and read between the lines to get the answer to the things that you're most skeptical about. So my approach is like, I don't like x. I don't think this is gonna work. Here's y.
Jordan Gal:Like just address it head on. And the things that he listed, I could not do anything other than admit that were they were real factors. One of them is you run a remote company. That's awesome for you and your engineering team and the efficiency. Cool.
Jordan Gal:You know what's miserable? Doing cold calling by yourself in a bedroom. That's miserable. We have an office full of a 100 people and it's gamified and they're going out to lunch together, and they're asking each other what what what's working, and what are you doing, and what are you saying when someone says this objection. And there's energy, and they come in and they're competing, and good good luck beating that.
Jordan Gal:Okay. Point taken. Yeah. And what are you doing for training? And I'm like, I don't know.
Jordan Gal:I hope that they're trained from their previous job. Yeah. That's that's honest. Right? That we we don't know how to train an SDR.
Jordan Gal:We don't have that muscle. Yeah. He's like, okay. Here's what we do. We do 80 of training, and I hear you on your other skepticism that they're not gonna know the market as well.
Jordan Gal:Here's the counter intuitive thing. You don't wanna know the market. You don't want your SDRs to know details about the soul and emotion and dreams of your customer.
Brian Casel:Wrong. Get over to that. Yes.
Jordan Gal:Right. So the thing is SDR is an engineered process.
Brian Casel:Yeah. They're they're working the process. They're
Jordan Gal:They're working the process. The second you come off of the process and look into the soul of your customer, things stop working. When you come back to the process, things go better. So you as the CEO talking to the SDR, here's the thing, here's the reasoning, here's the motivation, here's how it relates to return on ad spend, and that how that how he's like total disaster.
Brian Casel:That's why it's like a beautiful thing to sell this service, the the SDR services. Because like you're They're selling the basically the middle person in in the funnel. Right? Like the top of funnel like you you and your company and your marketing and your you know, you're you're in the market driving, like, getting exposure. And then and then the SDR is like kinda taking that exposure and turning it into like like a process to to, you know, put put the appointments in the books and then and then the closer does the
Jordan Gal:The closer looks into the soul and the dreams of of the prospect. Right? Yeah. But the SER, and this is where the training comes in, there are one of seven different types of objections in the initial entry point of the conversation. Someone picks up the phone and there's one of seven varieties and each of those have a rebuttal.
Jordan Gal:And you need to train your SDR to the point where they completely memorize and internalize, I know that objection. Here's my line. Yep. And we just don't do that. We don't think that way.
Jordan Gal:If it's
Brian Casel:it's a process.
Jordan Gal:It's it's it's a process. And by the end of the conversation I was like, here's my problem now. My problem is that I have to admit that they are gonna do a far far better job of training, hiring, motivating, and maintaining an SDR. And if I'm gonna go hire in in house, I'm gonna I have to I have to overcome that fact that I now need to admit. And so now I'm fifty fifty.
Jordan Gal:It's either we hire someone in house that is a trained machine or we admit we're not gonna do a good job at this.
Brian Casel:I still have a bit of skepticism but may maybe there's other Okay. More more to it than than what I know so far. So like, I The training piece and the process piece and and the answering those objections, you're still figuring out this product market fit and the sales process. So all of that stuff is gonna change. Like, do do they have a process for readapting the training as as you guys sidestep to from this industry to that industry to this let's focus on this element in the problem solution instead of that element because we're this is what we're learning this month.
Brian Casel:Like, are they gonna roll with those changes as you as you learn?
Jordan Gal:So that you know, that's like a logical place to go next. And what that's what I said was, here's the thing, we don't have it down. Mhmm. We don't know exactly what works and then we hand it off to you and all of a sudden you just increase the volume of the thing that already works. And you know what he laid out was okay, here's how that works.
Jordan Gal:You come back to us and say this type of lead, this type of appointment was no good, here's why. This appointment was really good, here's why. What we are hearing is x. Let's change the messaging so the way they do it is two week sprints. For two weeks they keep everything exactly the same, then they take your feedback and they tweak one or two factors, and they later run for two more weeks and see if things got better or worse.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. So it's like
Brian Casel:Pretty cool.
Jordan Gal:It is it was cool. It's like, okay. I I I have to admit.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Super interesting, man. I got one more thing here. It's Clarity Flow customer success.
Jordan Gal:Okay.
Brian Casel:This is something that I'm in the This is a big project that I'm in the middle of. I just brought on a new customer success person at Clarity Flow. I have not really figured this one out. Like, don't I feel like this is a this is a big project and hire and goal that I have not figured out in a previous business before. And I'm and it's a little tricky on what the next steps are.
Brian Casel:So, then basically the goal is having her take over most of the customer support, but mainly taking new customers who are in their trial and converting them through calls. Like, we do a lot of async, we do email, we do Clarity Flow. And lately I've been doing more and more calls with customers. And it's our, we're continuously improving the product to make it easier and more streamlined to use and shipping all the features that people ask for. We've shipped most of them.
Brian Casel:And like now we have really good technical answers to all the things that coaches need when they're using Clarity Flow. But it's still super super overwhelming for a totally new coach to Even them seeing my videos that I've recorded a whole bunch of onboarding videos. They watch those, and it's weird how they watch those, and that has raised the level of excitement, and it actually has improved conversions of trial to paid. But it almost raises it to a point where they feel even more like like a higher level of frustrations. Like, saw it all on the screen when I watched the video, but when I need to do it, I don't know how to do it myself.
Brian Casel:Mhmm. And there's still yeah, so there's still a gap that needs to be filled there. And I can really feel the emotion and hear the emotion in people's voice because they're like, I really love what you're building with Clarity Flow. I really, really want this to work. And I can see them like like, I've I've looked at all these other tools and they don't do all the things that you guys have put together.
Brian Casel:It's perfect for what I want and what you're showing me on the video is perfect.
Jordan Gal:But But they don't have the confidence that they're
Brian Casel:gonna But I can see them like like being like frustrated and like almost like not angry at me, not angry at my product or my company or anything. It's almost like angry in themselves. Like why can't I figure this out? It should be easier, you know.
Jordan Gal:Can I give you
Brian Casel:And I see that like again and again, you know?
Jordan Gal:I'll give you a weird analogy that immediately comes to mind as you say this. Ten years ago, remember how awesome WooThemes was? Yeah. WooThemes broke your heart. Because when you bought from them, you were buying this beautiful demo.
Brian Casel:Right. Yeah. Yeah. The the WordPress theme that like falls apart when you install it.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Forget falls apart. It was the ugliest blank slate you've ever seen. I could not believe that they didn't just set it up for you to upload onto a WordPress instance the way it looked on the demo. Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:So
Brian Casel:for analogy. Liter it's so funny. Literally today, like this morning Okay. Somebody sent me an email. They're like, hey, do you have like a live demo version of Clarity Flow?
Brian Casel:We actually do have one, but we it's not one that like customers can log themselves into. They just see it on on our videos. Okay. But but yeah, like like somebody's and I've had this question come up several times where they're like, I wanna see like an up and running
Jordan Gal:They're of coaching business. They're scared of the of the the blank slate
Brian Casel:The blank slate.
Jordan Gal:Starting point.
Brian Casel:And and then and then during their trial, when they're when they're in there with a blank slate, they can click the button and see my video on how to fill this blank slate
Jordan Gal:with And you're breaking their heart even more. Okay.
Brian Casel:Okay. And so, you know, what we what we really need is a consultant. Like a a customer success person to consult or to advise and work directly with the coach. And like, the ones who really convert and do really well on Clarity Flow, like at this point, I know them. I know most of them by name because they're in my inbox every single day for thirty days straight with questions and like, how do I do this?
Brian Casel:I just tested it out with this client. I ran into this bug, this and that. Like it happens every day for thirty days. And shouldn't, a, it shouldn't be that many messages. And B, if only I would make myself available for a second or third call, and we can just get it all knocked out.
Brian Casel:And then put a process together like, okay, you're a coach and you do courses and community and okay, you have these needs and we know how to We have a recipe for building that out. Here here it is. Like, that's the kind of thing that this customer success person, Kat, will will need to be able to do. And so I'm just trying to figure it out. Like, the first thing that I had her do was create her own demo account.
Brian Casel:Like I have a demo account on Clarity Flow that I build out as like a fictional coaching business. And it has like all the things that a coach would typically have. Okay. And I use that in my videos, I use it for testing things and stuff like that. My first task for her in our first week was like, create your version of that.
Brian Casel:Like, get your hands dirty with using all of our features to build out a fictional coaching business on Clarity Flow. And she did really well with that. And now she's like reviewing my calls and reviewing my emails with customers. So she's sort of like shadowing with that. And I'm still trying to figure out, alright, I need to I need to like bridge the gap between her just watching me take and field all these questions to like her having the confidence to like Right.
Brian Casel:Go into a thirty minute call with a coach and to like set them up, you know.
Jordan Gal:Okay. Okay. So I'm gonna answer your like question by talking about myself. No. Just kidding.
Jordan Gal:Please. So, okay. We we have a similar issue. And I'll you the the my stab at it at the solution. We'll see we'll see how right or wrong I am.
Jordan Gal:My solution is we're gonna do it for them.
Brian Casel:Well, that's essentially what we need to do, but I but I can't be the one doing it.
Jordan Gal:Yes. So so here's the here's the maybe I don't know if it's a difference or like a thing. My team thinks we're gonna do it for them to get them set up and started, and then they're gonna be happy. And I am starting to tell my team, guys, we're do it for them forever. That's truth.
Brian Casel:That's the service.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Yes.
Brian Casel:You know, we have an advantage here that Clarity Flow doesn't quite have, but I've seen it in like like Restaurant Engine, that's exactly what we did. Was we
Jordan Gal:What event are you talking about?
Brian Casel:You could offer that as a as a done for you service forever.
Jordan Gal:Because?
Brian Casel:Because it because, theoretically, like, you you you set up their checkout and you and you and you and you configure it, and you customize it all the ways that they need, and they and and you and your like, your support team can service their each account's checkout forever. Right?
Jordan Gal:Right. But why do you think that I have that advantage or Rally has that advantage over Clarity Flow? Is it a price thing? Is it an ongoing
Brian Casel:No. It's the use it's the way that it's used. So with Clarity Flow, yes, we we could set up their course for them, their interactive drip course for them. We could set up their community space for them to use with their clients, but they are the coach. They communicate with their clients.
Brian Casel:They invite their clients, and they use Clarity Flow day to day with their clients. So what when we're onboarding them, not only do we have to, like, set set up their account and help them custom brand their Clarity Flow. That that stuff is actually pretty easy to do, and we we could do it for them. What they really need help with is, like, help me understand this tool. Train me on this tool.
Brian Casel:Get me comfortable with this tool so that I have a level of comfort in inviting my client every single week to this tool and using it every single day in my inbox with these clients. Like, they need to use it every like, they're personally using it. So so they need to feel comfortable with how how all the functionality works so that when they're and they they offer support to their clients because their clients use Clarity Flow with them.
Brennan Dunn:Right. They're
Jordan Gal:asking questions about it.
Brian Casel:So so their client is asking like, hey, where did that video go that's inside our private space? How do I access that? Like, our customer needs to be confident in answering their client on how to access stuff. Okay. From
Jordan Gal:from the way you described a little bit, I I thought a large portion of it was on setting it up the way you want it to work, and like making it look the way you want it to work, organizing it the way you need it.
Brian Casel:The the setup stuff is actually super easy and like customers pick that up on day one, like no problem. Like every customer maps their own domain, they they put in their custom colors, they slap their logo on it. Easy. They watch my my videos on setting up spaces and programs and and things like that. And they might create a test one, and they test it out with their own email address, or they send it to their assistant, and they test it out with their assistant.
Brian Casel:And then they run into a hitch, or this or that doesn't doesn't work, or or they're or they took the wrong route to get somewhere. And and then their their level of confidence goes down a level. They're like, oh, I just ran into some confusion. If I'm confused, my clients will really be confused.
Jordan Gal:So they have that extra layer of stress
Brian Casel:of my opinion. Then they have this anxiety and then they're like, alright, let me test it again. Let me test it a third or fourth, fifth time so that I get really comfortable with it. And if they were on a call with me, I can walk through all these common use cases that they're gonna use every single day with their clients. Here, let me show you how you should invite a client to a private group cohort.
Brian Casel:Okay. And you're gonna you're gonna do this first. You're gonna send them this invitation. Here's what your client is gonna see. And now they're in your cohort.
Brian Casel:Let's do that again. Let let me let let me get you comfortable with that, you know? Mhmm. And and that's the kinda like support and success that cause that's the bit, you know, people talk about like, what's the thing that gets a customer activated? What's the step that every active customer eventually does?
Brian Casel:It's not just creating a course. It's not just creating your first message. For our customers, it's getting to this level of confidence Mhmm. In in using the tool. Like, oh, I'm I'm confident like, I'm confidently using this tool and I'm confident to start inviting my clients to it.
Jordan Gal:Right, like then I'm confident enough to run my business on
Brian Casel:Yeah, like I've put it through its paces, I've tested it all, all the different angles, I've got it custom branded, Now I can launch my big new version of my coaching offers through this thing. Yeah. You know?
Jordan Gal:Okay. So it's not it's not as tightly analogous as I thought. But you know, I I my response to that is, it's just a different success process because of the nature. Right. Yep.
Jordan Gal:So if we abstract the elements of the success process, what what we're trying to do is insist on skin in the game upfront, to focus the mind.
Brennan Dunn:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:And then admitting the nature of our product is if we want incremental revenue, we want them in it tweaking and improving. And I'm trying to tell my team, that ain't gonna happen. Maybe it will, you know, for 20%, but the 80% is gonna be us knocking on their forehead once a quarter saying, we're gonna go build out new stuff for you and here's what our suggestions are. Tell us which ones you approve and then we'll we'll get it done.
Brian Casel:Yeah. So I think that's love that model. It's like it's like what do they call it? Like software enabled service, if you will. Like Yeah.
Brian Casel:Sort of like I mean, that's essentially what happened with Restaurant Engine back in the day. It was it was like, first, they needed help setting up their their and launching their website. Then they needed to change their menu every month. I was like, just send it to our team and they'll do it
Brennan Dunn:for Yes. It's easy.
Jordan Gal:Yes. Look, why get in the way Yeah. If you don't need to.
Brian Casel:But that I do wanna get into that. I I think I wanna experiment with a paid upfront service. Yeah. We And we don't have that yet. And that's that's sort of an open question.
Brian Casel:Because it's like, the logical thing would would get to a point where every customer pays the fee.
Jordan Gal:That was gonna be my suggestion to look into that as your success person gets a little bit more trained.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:We this this contract that's out right now through Signwell, shout out Ruben, is they push back on the initial. And we could very easily have said, don't worry about the $5, you know. Just just come in. We just we just need this first customer. But so what we do is we do we do $5,000 plus a $2,500 implementation fee.
Jordan Gal:It's almost like dangling out that implementation fee of $2,500 as like, here's your opportunity to get a discount.
Brennan Dunn:Just ask us to remove this.
Brian Casel:We can waive that piece.
Jordan Gal:Yes.
Brian Casel:Yes.
Brennan Dunn:Yes.
Brian Casel:Yeah. For you, yeah. We'll waive it.
Jordan Gal:Yes. So so that's what that's what we did, and then they said, can we just get rid of the five k also? And and we said no, because we think that that skin in the game is essential.
Brian Casel:I Yeah. And and I've seen this I saw this in restaurants. That that was the progression and I've seen it in other SaaS where it's like, we started with totally free self serve onboarding, then we then we went to optional pay us to to onboard you. And then we went to like And then required. Everyone pays it.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Because it because it just produces such better customers in the end.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. And we're we're starting out with five k because it's a round number, and we think our market can absorb it without any issues. It doesn't have to actually be that much money.
Brian Casel:I mean, that's the that's the open question too.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Dollars is a big deal to an individual business owner that runs their their own company. $250 is a big deal.
Brian Casel:Anything. Yeah. Even a $100
Jordan Gal:is skin of the game.
Brian Casel:It's it's still and it's it's not even about the revenue. It's about the commitment. It's like, I'm gonna pay this and by It's literally like The mindset. You know, the Amazon Prime. Like, I pay for Amazon Prime, and the effect of that is whenever I need to buy I don't shop around.
Brian Casel:I go to Amazon.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Know?
Brian Casel:That's right. So but like, the this is this is still in the place where it's a free trial, and and then they convert, hopefully. We don't even we don't even have credit card upfront, but like midway through the trial to unlock certain features, they'll put in their credit card. That's when they implement it, yep. But yeah, it's still there's still gonna be some adapting of our trial process if we introduce I'm still on the fence on should I feel like we need to insert more promotions of like, hey, just book a call with us.
Brian Casel:So that we can talk you through setting up, rather than just
Jordan Gal:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:Putting you out on your own. Get back to talking to them, and I'll do some calls, and then eventually Kat will be doing those calls. But then it's a question of like, well, let's introduce a fee. But should we should we make that fee optional? Should we make that required?
Brian Casel:If we make it optional, then it's like, well, what's the difference between somebody who who pays our $500 fee to to get our deep quote unquote, like deep done with you Oh, sure. Support versus like, just doing the free trial and like sending us emails. Like, we're still gonna answer your questions.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Yeah.
Brian Casel:You know? Yeah. Very interesting.
Jordan Gal:I I think you should you should keep keep experimenting. Yeah. If you if you recall like CartHook, people wanted to get into the product and they and we we wanted to talk to them, so we allowed them to come in and set up, but they couldn't launch without talking to us. So like there are these different points in time in your product that will make the most sense. You can also just make sure you ask for a phone number during sign up and just call them.
Brian Casel:Just call them up. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Just call them. Hi. So you started a free trial. When you wanna set up your call for your initial training to get set up.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:I mean, right. There's so many different ways.
Brian Casel:Yeah. You know.
Jordan Gal:I I love this stuff.
Brian Casel:And it does it does reduce the volume. Like, it's it's strategic, but it it to go to a either a paid onboarding thing that's required, or even even without paid, like, requiring every person to, you can't get started until you book your call for next week. Mhmm. Like, you're gonna reduce your volume of trials.
Jordan Gal:Like, no Yep.
Brian Casel:But you know that, like, it like, even as I think about this right now, like, I can think about, like, the last 10 customers who who became, like, really good customers on Clarity Flow, and just thinking about the the amount of support and questions that they contacted with, and just looking at the types of businesses that they run, like they would have had no problem whatsoever with paying a fee and getting on a call or two. Interesting. They probably would have preferred that over the experience that, over like the level of pain that they went through to get it, to get to where they became, you know?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. When we've been focusing a lot on pricing and packaging and figuring it out, and we had this like hour and a half long conversation. I think it was two weeks ago that really moved things forward. So I think I think I told you I initially created like a spreadsheet, and I made like a good looking table, and I put in all the key inputs. I put in what's the upfront fee, what's the implementation fee, what happens if they're at certain revenue volumes, what about the percentage, what's the effective.
Jordan Gal:I I had it all. And it was almost for me to understand how this pricing model worked. And then we start showing that to customers and we were like, no one knows what we're talking about. So I we then I looked back at it. I had like put it aside and the salesperson was out there sharing with people.
Jordan Gal:And then I she came back to me she was like, I think this is too confusing. I looked at it again, and I was confused over what I had created. Right. And I realized, oh, we need to make it for public consumption, and that forced this hour and a half conversation of like ironing out all these different things. But what about this?
Jordan Gal:What if they say this? Does it make sense? What happens if they come in and they process a lot of revenue? What if they don't? Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Should it be a time commitment? Should be a should be a certain amount of money? At the at the very end of that pricing conversation, we got to the question of, well, how do we do we make this as low friction? How do we make this as no brainer as possible? And that way is all the stuff that we already have with a free trial.
Jordan Gal:But that is where we're paid
Brian Casel:to trial.
Jordan Gal:On purpose. Yes. They were saying, okay, the ideal version of this offer, the no brainer everyone says yes, is with a free trial. That will not be healthy for us right now. So we are purposely explicitly putting in friction at that moment and saying no free trial, actually thousands of dollars.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I don't know if it's right, but that's where we're starting.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah. I I feel like we gotta get there sooner rather than later because it because I do get a lot of excitement even before they start the trial, and then also on day one or two of the trial, I'm getting excitement in the emails, then I could see the frustration build over the course of the trial. But they stick with it. Some percentage gets over those, and some percent some bigger percentage just drifts away, and like, doesn't convert, you know.
Jordan Gal:I think the classic approach to this would basically be to map out the ideal success journey.
Brian Casel:And the other thing about it is that, like, you know, I I feel like a lot of SAS deal with this, is, like, not every we have very similar customers now. They're all coaches, and there's they have a lot of commonalities, but there's still some differences. Like, sometimes they do have a course, and sometimes they don't. Or sometimes they have, like, they do more one on ones than groups, or they do more groups than one on ones, or, you know So I just can handle all those different scenarios and like, just have a handful, like five or six recipes that Kat can go to. Like, oh, alright.
Brian Casel:Tell me about your business. Okay. We've got like three of the five common use cases. Let's let's let's walk through how to set up those things. We've got recipes for each of them, you know.
Jordan Gal:Yes. We've seen this before. How do
Brennan Dunn:you wanna communicate? How are
Jordan Gal:you gonna be charging money? How do you onboard your customers? How often do you do live calls? Like Yeah. What parts of the app are most important to you?
Brian Casel:Yep. Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:Fun stuff. Look at us. Look at us business people.
Brian Casel:Just trying to figure it out, dude.
Jordan Gal:Yep. Playing with Rubik's cubes. Alright, brother. Well, it's I'm I'm going dancing.
Brian Casel:Enjoy that dance. Thanks,
Jordan Gal:man. Alright. See you, everyone. Alright. Later.
