[38] Building an Audience-Based Business with Justin Jackson
This is Bootstrapped Web episode 38, where we'll chat today with Justin Jackson about building an audience based business. Welcome back to the podcast for you, the founder who learns by doing as you bootstrap your business online. I am Jordan.
Brian Casel:And I'm Brian.
Jordan Gal:And let's get this done.
Brian Casel:Alright, Jordan. Well, you know, I'm really we we just had a really great chat with with Justin Jackson and, know, we covered so much in it. Can't wait to dive right into it. But let's start out with a couple of updates.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. What's going on? Tell me what you've been up to in the past week.
Brian Casel:Yeah. So, well, the past week, I mean, really this this first update has been going on for like the last two months. I've been in this like never ending or kind of planning this migration from mail from Mailchimp into Drip. I'm really excited to get started with Drip, you know, the company built by Rob Walling. And it's this week, my goal was to launch Drip at least on my cashjam.com site.
Brian Casel:I plan to use it for all for Cash Jam as well as Restaurant Engine and Hotel Propeller. Hoping to get this hoping to go live with it, you know, by next week. Actually, it's it's gonna turn out to be. But I've been working with with Rob quite a bit on it over the last few weeks and really the last two months. They've been helping out with creating a Gravity Forms integration for for DRIP.
Brian Casel:Because all of my forms on my site are are Gravity Forms and a couple of other people have been requesting that feature. So, I've been helping them. I'm I'm kind of like their first test user of this Gravity Forms integration. But, know, I I really love Drip. If you guys are interested in getting into email automation, I I highly recommend getdrip.com.
Brian Casel:They're not paying me to say that or anything like that. You you know, I I decided to go with Drip because of these the the new automation features that they're building in, you know, like, if a user does a certain action on the site, get them into a certain campaign and and change, you know, based on their behavior. That stuff is really powerful. But now that I'm actually using it, I'm noticing like all these little side features in drip that are just awesome. Like, they have this basic analytics dashboard right, you know, right on the front page of your account and shows it shows you like your top referring sites, conversion rates, you know, opt in rates.
Brian Casel:I mean, this is stuff that you can get in in Google Analytics and and what I'll put. Like, I really like having it packaged into Drip because Drip is so focused on on the marketing side of this stuff. Whereas, you look at like a customer IO or or some of these other tools and it's really more transactional. Drip does that transactional kind of stuff as well, but I really like how the whole package or the whole dashboard is focused around the marketing side of things. So trying to get things moved over there.
Brian Casel:My other big update right now is I've mentioned it a couple times before, but Brad Tunar, you know, well known plug in developer in WordPress, he and I are organizing our second annual Big Snow Tiny Conf. And you can get more information about that at bigsnowtinyconf.com. This month in September we are releasing the the very first early bird tickets. By the way, the conference is happening in January. I I call it a conference, but it's really more of like a kind of like a mastermind group where a bunch of people were, you know, renting a house at Sugarbush, Vermont, spent half the day on the slopes skiing, snowboarding, and then the other half of the day into the night just kind of talking business.
Brian Casel:And we did it last year. It was a blast. And what I actually really loved about it was that it happens in January. So everything that we're talking about, it's like we're making plans for the upcoming year. You know, last week, Jordan, you and I talked about thinking big and and making, you know, big setting big goals for the year.
Brian Casel:And I kinda treat this trip and this mastermind at, you know, up at up at Sugar Rush, Vermont as like my opportunity to give that some hard thought and and talk to some fellow business owners and bootstrappers. Get a little bit of snowboarding in there while we're at it too. So head over to bigsnowbigsnowtinyconf.com to get more information about that. We're we're releasing details in the next week or two.
Jordan Gal:Jordan, what's
Brian Casel:up with you?
Jordan Gal:I mean, everybody loves a good ski trip. Yeah. That sounds sounds like fun. I like the the timing in January as well to kind of plan out the the year along with other people in in the same boat.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Cool. Do you do you ski or snowboard?
Jordan Gal:I don't. I've tried it repeatedly. I find I find it very painful, and then I associate it with pain, and then I stop liking it. I wanna go inside.
Brian Casel:Oh, you should come out anyway, you know. Just
Jordan Gal:I think my problem is that I I surfed growing up and skateboarded. So I keep trying snowboarding, and snowboarding is just horrible on the East Coast. It's just pain and very little pleasure. And so next time I go, I'm just gonna, you know, I'm just gonna ski. I think it's just gonna be a lot more fun.
Jordan Gal:Yep. And now that I'm on the West Coast, I'm hoping that that that adds to the the fun factor. So let's see what's been going on over the past past few weeks. I've got a lot brewing right now with CartHook. I got new, I have new features.
Jordan Gal:We're adding reporting and analytics and a lot more features on the inside. And at the same time, redoing the marketing side and adding marketing funnel to that. So that's coming along nicely and looks like it'll all be ready right around mid September. Along with that, the sales funnel course that I'm teaching currently is in its last week. So that is almost done.
Jordan Gal:I'm excited wrap that up and do a great job on that last module. Last week I spoke about clearing my plate and that's starting to happen. So I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I've got some client projects that are wrapping up. I feel very much like, I guess the analogy I'd use is like a crossbow with its string drawn all the way back.
Jordan Gal:So it's kind of been getting more and more tense as I go. And now as my plate gets cleared, just have so much pent up energy that I just wanna shoot out there in September with all the marketing initiatives and a few different things. I'm really looking forward to sharing those over the next few weeks. What I'm gonna do to get clients on the consulting side, what I'll do to get Cart Hook clients, where I'm gonna go with the info product. So this is kind of the last weekend where I'm brewing on strategy.
Jordan Gal:And then in September, it's time for action. The last thing I just wanted to tie an experience I had this week back to what we talked about in the previous episode about thinking big. So I have I have a friend, Doug, good smart smart dude in New York and we we've we've done we haven't done business but we've talked a lot of business previously. So he calls me up and he says, Jordan, I've got a client that I'm doing some work for and I think they would be a perfect, you know, perfect client of yours for the sales funnel service for you to build out. You know, they do they do pretty well for themselves, but they don't have any email marketing.
Jordan Gal:They don't have any lead capture. They're running like $25,000 a month on AdWords to their homepage. And they're still doing well, so okay, great. Let's get in touch with these guys. So we get on the conference call, Doug, myself, and the company, and we go through the whole spiel, I give them my opinions, we go back and forth.
Jordan Gal:I quote them the price, how the process works. Okay, they're interested, good. We hang up the phone. We hang up the phone, ten seconds later I get a phone call from Doug And Doug and I, you know, we've, you know, we've been talking biz for for a long time. We're we're, you know, we're good buddies and honest with each other at this point.
Jordan Gal:So what he says to me is, Jordan sounds awesome. I'm glad, you know, we might be able to work this thing out. You might get a client. I'll be, you know, adding more value. All good.
Jordan Gal:But I have to be honest with you. What are you doing charging that little? These guys are used to paying. You know, these guys are making, you know, millions and millions of dollars. I don't know if they're gonna take you as seriously as they should because your price is so low.
Jordan Gal:So, you know, I'm charging $2,500 right now or $3,500 for the service where I'll build out your sales funnel, Right? And that that's already I've doubled it in the past month. Just once I had it validated at a price point, I went up to 2,500. And then all of a sudden, have an experience like this in in the real world and I have a good friend of mine who's on the inside in this situation saying, dude, $10.15 grand, easy. If you do that for them, they're gonna make double, triple that within the first month.
Jordan Gal:And that kinda, you know, I think just reinforced a lot of what we talked about last week in terms of not pricing for people in our situation, pricing based on value. Yeah. So it's just another eye opening experience out in the real world that kind of helps push you toward thinking bigger and you know, pricing yourself appropriately and acknowledging how valuable your your services are. Yeah. So it was it was just a it was a great experience and, you know, the first thing I thought of was the the episode we recorded last week about about the exact same topic.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Absolutely. And I I think that also that just plays into to consulting in general. If you're if you're freelancing and consulting and doing it for a number of years, I mean, you you've only been doing this particular service for a couple of months and you've already doubled and and tripled your your pricing. I I definitely ran into that a few times over the years where number one, I I've I know for a fact that I won that I won certain projects because I know that I was the highest bidder.
Brian Casel:They they decided to go with me because I was chart I quoted them like three times as much as as everyone else.
Jordan Gal:Right. Counterintuitive, but that's that's what we associate with quality.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And I and I've also had, you know, clients telling me like, look, let's let's double this quote and let's do it,
Jordan Gal:you know. Funny. Funny. Excellent. Well, now, let's switch gears and talk about, you know, our ongoing running conversation on audience building and where the value is in that.
Jordan Gal:And today, we're lucky enough to have a bona fide expert, talented, handsome, yet humble Canadian, Justin Jackson. So let's let's stop here and let's jump over into the interview. And let's let people hear Justin's point of view on what he's done and what he's doing and what he plans to do in the future.
Brian Casel:Let's it. Alright. We're here with mister Justin Jackson. Justin, thanks for joining us today.
Justin Jackson:Hey. Thanks for having me. I'm glad to be here.
Brian Casel:Cool. So, you know, we, you know, we've been really looking for we've been really looking forward to this one. You know, listeners of this podcast probably hear Jordan and I go back and forth on this on this question of building an audience, how valuable is it, should we focus more on the organic audience building, or should we focus more on the paid acquisition? So we're gonna dig all you know, do a deep dive on this in this episode, and you're, like, the perfect person to bring on for this because you're all about building the audience, and I think we're we're all in your audience as well. So
Justin Jackson:Cool. Well, yeah. I think it's a good topic and I've been thinking about the other part of that too because I have focused so much on building an audience. But there's this other side which is paid acquisition and SEO and things like that. So, yeah, I'm I'm game.
Justin Jackson:I think this is a good conversation to have. And, you know, maybe there's a line between those two and maybe there's not. We'll we'll see.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Yes. I'm I'm looking forward to that. Brian and I kind of argue back and forth on it. It's not so much argue.
Jordan Gal:You know, we're we're strategizing as we go. But I'm a I'm a halfway convert to the audience building. And so I I think it'll be a great opportunity for the listeners to kinda if they're in my situation where they're just about to start building an audience, to really hear how you would go through that process as someone who doesn't quite have an audience yet, in addition to why you think it's valuable. Yeah. Looking forward to it.
Jordan Gal:Let's do it.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Totally. So, you know, before we really dive into all that, Justin, why don't you tell folks, you know, who you are and what you do for for those of us who haven't been they should be listening to your awesome podcast product people, but, you know, if they're not, who are you? What what do you do?
Justin Jackson:Sure. So I've been doing building an audience and building products on the side for probably two or three years now. Something like that. And I think one thing that makes me unique is that I still work full time. So there's some folks that quit their day job and go full time on products.
Justin Jackson:And I might do that someday, but my wife and I have owned our own business in the past. So when I was in college, I had a web design company. And then when I graduated and we got married, we started a couple of snowboard shops.
Jordan Gal:Awesome.
Justin Jackson:And at the same time, I was I was working on my master's degree and we also produced a couple of kids in that time and now we have four. And so we realized that running a business full time and having a family is pretty challenging. And so since that time, we've kind of said, you know, we're going to hold off running a full time business until we can really dedicate some time and energy to that, and still, in the meantime, take care of our kids. So I work full time right now as a product manager sorry, a product marketing manager for Sprint. Ly.
Justin Jackson:Sprint. Ly. And that just happened. And if any of you have listened to my podcast, you'll know I've been talking about Sprintly for a long time. They were a sponsor of the podcast.
Justin Jackson:And before that, I've been a customer of theirs for, I don't know, four years or something like that.
Brian Casel:So before before your job at Sprintly, weren't you working full time as well before that? Or okay. In the
Jordan Gal:same industry or or or something?
Justin Jackson:Was working as a product manager for email service provider called Industry Mailout. And they're kind of like Mailchimp, but for big Canadian banks and hospitals and non profits. And so I worked with them for six years. And I think that actually, again, there's two sides to this. I think there's definitely an advantage to being full time running your own business and building your own products.
Justin Jackson:On the other side, for those of us that are working full time, you get a unique perspective on the actual struggles that a team has, the actual struggles that a business has. And if you're building products, for example, for people running software companies, you get an interesting perspective on that too. And so I've really appreciated that perspective. I think there's a lot of value to that when you can be in the trenches every single day and see, know, these are the things we really struggle with. These are the things we pay money for.
Justin Jackson:These are the things that I take my company credit card out of my wallet for and spend. And Yeah.
Brian Casel:That is interesting. Especially, you know, since you are working at, like, a software startup. You know, so many of us in this little bubble, we we write content and we create products and we create SaaS tools for our peers, right, in in this or, you know, online online business owners. So.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. And and you know what's funny, though, is I think we don't realize actually I don't think we realize who exactly is buying our products all the time. And let me give you an example. My friend Jared Drysdale wrote a book called Bootstrapping Design at bootstrappingdesign.com. It was the first e book I ever purchased, ever.
Justin Jackson:And I purchased it on the company credit card. The reason I purchased it was because I was managing the development process for SaaS business. And we had a bottleneck when it came to design. We always had to wait for the designer to come around to build a mock up or to come around and build, you know, the actual page in .net. I don't know if any of you have developed in .net before, but if you're using web forms, the developer kind of owns the process.
Justin Jackson:And it got messy because we were always waiting for these designers. And so I bought the book because I thought, well, if our developers could at least put together a basic page, you know, understand the principles of design and put together a basic page, that would help us move forward, and we can always have the designer come back, clean things up later. But if we want to ship faster, we need to remove this bottleneck. So that's why I purchased the book. That was the pain I was trying to solve.
Justin Jackson:That was the job to be done that I was hiring it for. And in some ways, Jared could say, well, Justin bought my book, and he's in the kind of product people community. But the the real reason I bought it was to solve a problem for a business, you know, a 15 person software company.
Brian Casel:And I'm not
Justin Jackson:sure if we always realize that, that there's actually a lot of people with company credit cards buying these products. And if you are working for a company and you spend money on the company credit card, you have an interesting insight into what that process is like, who you have to talk to, what kind of championing you have to do internally, all those internal dynamics. And I think it gives us maybe an advantage if you're selling products to, you know, businesses and teams.
Brian Casel:It's true. You know, it it is so interesting to kinda because, you know, we get so focused on the product itself and even like the feature set and how those impact a specific challenge in in like a workflow. But then you have all these, like, offshoots, like like you said, you know, like, businesses are buying it for a team or or Jordan, you know, you and I were talking about how you you launched an an info product, and you thought the sales funnel would kind of impact the business owners themselves, but a lot of your students are trying to sell that service to their clients. Right. There's that angle as well.
Jordan Gal:I think we always assume the person on the other end buying is just like us with the same budget that we have and the same issues and the same issue, you know, all and so we price according to that and we market according to that and and being in touch with the actual market or being a part of it does sound like something very interesting. But beyond just the admiring the long game that you played with Sprinterly, what I really wanna know is how do you get everything done?
Justin Jackson:How do you do all this stuff if you
Jordan Gal:have full time plus four kids, which is like an additional full time job?
Brian Casel:Yeah. I mean, you know, you do the blog and you do the podcast, the newsletter. I mean, it goes out every week. So where is this time coming from?
Justin Jackson:So I used to answer this question with kind of like a preformatted, perfectly, you know, like I would say, I have a really good habit of writing every week at this time and I don't watch television and all these other things. And that is part of the answer, is that I have good habits. Part of the answer is I also have bad habits. Which means sometimes it's Friday night and the kids are in bed and it's one in the morning and I go, I gotta write this newsletter and I'll just, like, hammer through it and be up until five. So the the most of the place I find the time is just scheduling it in my calendar and saying, you know, every usually I try to have a draft written by and by draft, mean just a few notes in I just use the Apple Notes app.
Justin Jackson:I'll just write a simple outline in there. Try to have that done by Wednesday. And then Thursday, Friday, try to start writing it. And then, yeah, schedule the newsletter and the post for Saturday morning. So, I mean, that's an example of one thing that I'm doing and how I schedule it.
Justin Jackson:So there's, yeah, there's some habits there.
Brian Casel:I mean, I I think it it's it also sounds like you are you're fully committed to this thing. Like, it's a weekly responsibility to your subscribers and your audience that this thing has to get sent on Saturday. Yeah. And and it's it's just like your full time job. You've gotta show up.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. Actually, that's a good point. I I should mention that I I was very inconsistent before I committed myself to writing this newsletter. And for me, newsletter means I'm going to write a blog post and I'm going to send something to all these folks. And as soon as I committed myself to that, and as soon as I chose a day, I see a lot of people coming up with newsletters, and none of them want to commit.
Justin Jackson:They all want to put, I'll send an occasional, maybe, newsletter every once in a while. And I think doesn't inspire confidence when people are trying to sign up for something like that. A big part of this whole racket is trust. And that's one way you can definitely get people to trust you more is saying, you know, I'm going to commit to this every single week. Every Saturday morning you're going to get one.
Justin Jackson:And I I have missed a few days, so it's not like I'm perfect. But kind of setting up that expectation beforehand, personally, has helped me ship, and I think it also inspires confidence for the people that are trying to you're trying to get to sign up.
Brian Casel:I really like that. Just pick a day. Like, say on your newsletter, on your opt in form, you know, newsletters every Saturday morning or every Monday afternoon or whatever it is, you know.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. It
Jordan Gal:adds a layer of I mean, for lack of a better word, professionalism to the whole thing and and sets people's expectations to to the way you do things and how you promise things and then deliver on them. You know, it's the same reason that a lot of franchises are so successful because regardless of where you go, the expectations are the same. And so with with this type of thing, if you say every Friday and then you actually do it, people take you more seriously.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And I I remember Brennan Dunn kind of describing his newsletter as a product. Like, the newsletter itself is a product. You know? Yeah.
Brian Casel:And and I think that that also plays into it. It's like you're you're paying for this product by providing your email, and what you get is a reliable source of information every Saturday morning or every whatever.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. Exactly. And and if you think about that, it it also means that you have to create that landing page as if you're marketing a product. Mhmm. So, you know, headline should tell me who is this for and what is your pain?
Justin Jackson:And then the next kind of supporting bits should say, This is what you're going to get. This is the benefit for you. Or, This is the vision of your life once you've had this newsletter. And then a really clear call to action. And see some people shooting themselves in the foot by not covering those things, by not saying very clearly, Who is this for?
Justin Jackson:You know, in the beginning when I started blogging in 2008, my blog was for everybody. Like, if you go to justinjackson.ca and you scroll to the very bottom, you'll see I'm writing about all sorts of garbage, you know, like Apple TV and events that I thought were cool and television programs I liked. And it wasn't until I kind of started narrowing, and I keep you know, deciding, you know, how narrow is this niche. But, you know, I narrowed it down to, you know, entrepreneurs or business people and then I narrowed it again to product people. And the the response has been better each time I've done that.
Justin Jackson:So Yeah. Yeah. I think I think there's something about treating your newsletter as a product that's just great advice.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Absolutely.
Jordan Gal:No. I think I think it's a good time here to almost take a step back and and ask you to write almost a philosophy behind this. I I think a lot of people, they look at people like yourself that have an audience and and they hear you talking about the importance of building an audience. But it almost seems to us like you guys are these these mythical creatures, and you're and you're special in some way that you have this thing, and it sounds great, but how in the hell am I ever gonna do that? Right?
Jordan Gal:We know that's not the case. We know it's consistency and it's work and dedication and and, you know, just the balls to put yourself out there. But help us understand what what's the process? What are the practical steps to start building an audience and and why should we, you know, start putting in that work?
Justin Jackson:Yeah. Wow. There's a lot there. So just to to start simply, I think one reason I like this idea of creating a landing page for your newsletter to start so like, if someone doesn't have an audience, I think the first thing they should do is get a blank document in Notepad, some simple text editor. Don't open up your And not even HTML.
Justin Jackson:Just a text editor. And then the first line is, okay, who is my audience? And just to think about that a little bit right off the bat. And it doesn't have to be perfect. Like I said, I started with small business people and I eventually kind of narrowed it down.
Justin Jackson:But just to at least get started and say, This isn't for the world. This is for Who is this for? And to really think through that and wrestle through, Okay, who am I going to focus on? And then to go out and do some homework and actually figure out what are these people struggling with. So obviously there's a lot of work behind all of these.
Justin Jackson:Like choosing your audience, there's a lot of work. And then actually researching them and figuring out, you know, where the heck are they at? Like, who are these people? What what gets them excited? What are the trends in my audience?
Justin Jackson:What are the pain points? What are the things that delight them? What are the things that upset them?
Brian Casel:I think, you know, I I think those are really great points in terms of like and and I've I've found the same thing for myself is is when I used to write for myself as like a kind of a therapeutic thing on my blog, nobody read it. And it it was it was more like a journal. Yeah. And then, you know, a year ago when I so when I started really teaching and thinking about who I'm writing for and what do they need, yeah, you see the traction right away. But, you know, I I think to Jordan's question, I I guess what what you're what you're asking really is why?
Brian Casel:Why why should we do this? Why why should we care about building an audience?
Jordan Gal:Sounds sounds like like a lot of work. And yeah. And I I think that I think that's the first big question. Why why build an audience? What what what does it do for you?
Jordan Gal:And what why is it worth, you know, all that work?
Justin Jackson:I think that going through that struggle of deciding who am I going to focus on and what is their biggest pain, I think once you've done that, you're setting yourself up for success in a couple ways. First, the decision to choose who you're going to focus on means that you're actually in motion going towards somebody as opposed to just saying, I'm making a tool that's for everybody. It's a lot harder to start. You at least have one kind of destination in terms of, I am going to take care of those people. It also helps you to think about, what does that look like?
Justin Jackson:So if I choose real estate agents, do I want to talk to real estate agents every single day for the rest of my life? Do I want to read their support emails? Do I want to go to their conferences? Do I want to hang out with them at cocktail parties? Like, are these the people I really want to focus on?
Justin Jackson:And what I found for myself and the other founders I've talked to, often you'll choose you can choose an audience that you don't really like and it just becomes really hard to serve that group. This might not be true for everybody. For example, Rob Walling started off with some products and some audiences that I don't think he was particularly passionate about, like yourbeachtowels.com. You know, it's not like he got out of bed every day saying, you know, I can't wait to do this. But it's interesting to look at his kind of evolution and see, you know, his current product, Get Drip, is founders and people like him, people he's really excited about, people in his community.
Justin Jackson:And this is you can tell, you know, Drip is his kind of big thing. This is the one he's thinking he's going to go a long ways with. Whereas if you'd asked him about just beachtowels.com, he would say, well, I'm not going to do this forever. This is just, you know, me building Yeah. Things And so, I think that's the challenge.
Justin Jackson:And I've heard other people echo this, too. You know, when I talk to Patrick McKenzie, he says the same thing. He's done this twice now. He's chosen an audience that he wasn't particularly well, he was passionate about teachers, that was his first one. The problem was that they don't pay for things.
Justin Jackson:His second audience is like, you know, big hospitals and things like that. And he's said on multiple occasions that he wishes he'd chosen a group that he was more passionate about. Because you have to get out of bed every single day and look at a 100 emails from these people or come up with content for these people or, you know, all these things. And I like the work that you have to go through and say, okay, who is my audience? Like, first of all, do I like this group?
Justin Jackson:Second of all, do I have anything to offer to this group? And third of all, like Patrick says, if I produced anything, would this group pay for it? And it helps you identify, maybe even answer some hard questions about not just why are you building an audience, but why are you even wanting to do any of this? Why do you want to build a product in the first place? And I like all of that struggle.
Justin Jackson:You know, I was someone that really struggled for a long time in trying to figure out who my audience was. And at the time, it was just frustrating. And, you know, I wished I could just have someone give me a magic answer like, you know, bing. Your your audience is these people. You know, that
Brian Casel:I mean, that's interesting. How did it work out for you? You said you've you've been working on building your audience for the last, you know, one or two years, you know, at at least as actively as you are. Was there kind of a certain turning point when can you think of some kind of change or event where you went from writing about Apple TV or whatever to all of a sudden, I'm getting traction. People are reading.
Brian Casel:People are sending me feedback. This thing this seems to be catching on. Like, was there a turning point?
Justin Jackson:Yeah. I think when I started the podcast, I I I started it with a cohost named Kyle Fox. And I remember us, you know, doing the first couple episodes. And the first couple episodes were just us talk we didn't have guests at the time. It was just us talking about products.
Justin Jackson:And I just remember the response, you know, people emailing and tweeting and things. And I remember thinking, wow, there's something here. You know, there's something There's something going on here. And then, at the same time my blog was starting to get more traction and I had some interesting experiences. One, I wrote my first kind of blog post that got more than a thousand views.
Justin Jackson:And that was a post called Things I've Quit Doing at My Desk. And so I had this thought of like, oh, maybe my audience is productivity people. You know, maybe I could be a productivity guy. And then, you know, I was also writing posts about building products and things like that. And then I wrote a third kind of big post called This is a Web Page, which was this essay about the importance of words on the web.
Brian Casel:Yeah. That was fantastic. Just just text on a white page.
Jordan Gal:I think that's how I found you to begin with. Yep.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. And so that attracted a bunch of different audiences. So everyone a lot of writers, a lot of content strategists, a lot of product people, a big international audience. Like, the the joke about that is it actually went big in Japan. Like, the first day I published it, it had like it had like 80,000 views or something like that.
Justin Jackson:And then it kinda goes down like, you know, most big popular things. And then a month later, it shot back up again and I had another 80,000 visitors and it was all from Japan. So I had all these audiences I could pursue. Right? I could become the guy that writes for Japan, you know?
Justin Jackson:Like, that could have been my thing. I was getting, you know, invitations from people to, contribute to things or go to events. So I had all these options. I could be the productivity guy. I could be the guy for writers.
Justin Jackson:I could be the guy for content strategists. I could be the guy for product people. And to tell you the truth, those are all still options. Like, maybe one day I will switch. But at the time, I just felt like the one there was a few things.
Justin Jackson:Felt like I really resonated with product people. I liked I was excited about that. Like when I got together with product people, was really just I just loved talking to them and asking questions. If you look at a lot of the risks I took in my life, a lot of it was around product. So, like I applied for 37 to work at thirty seven Signals and they actually hired me and I ended up not taking the job because it's a long story, but, you know, I was taking these risks of Not believable.
Justin Jackson:of going and hanging out with these people, and I was also, you know, when I looked at my past and things, you know, I've been building little products in the past as well. And it just seemed like at the time, this has the most traction. It's kind of a burgeoning community. It's starting out. So I'm just going to choose this.
Justin Jackson:And like I said, I might change. Like I might become the product marketing people guy. Or I might be you know, I it's I might right now, actually, the product people space, like the people that are talking and blogging and creating products for product people, is getting more crowded. And so I might decide, you know what? It's a little bit crowded here.
Justin Jackson:Maybe I will either niche it down again or, you know, switch a little bit. So that was kind of I know it's kind of messy, but those were some of the things I was asking. I think the final thing was that at the time I realized, you know, I had a clear advantage because was also and I had this podcast that was getting traction. And so, you know, my kind of unfair advantage was I already had this head start with an audience. Right?
Justin Jackson:People were listening, people were subscribing, and then when I wrote on my blog, those people were expecting me to write about products.
Brian Casel:And I think to go back to Jordan's question, I think that's that's that's a big reason here. Why why invest in an audience, why why do this. It kinda gives you that unfair advantage. I I feel like, you know, you you can come up with the the paid acquisition strategies and those have their place for sure. But having that audience, you know, it it does it does give you a a leg up and and and also has this, like, long tail over time.
Brian Casel:Like you said, you had that that site that that that post that went viral once, and then, like, a month later, it kinda goes viral again. So it's you you just invested that time once when you wrote the post, but all of a sudden, it has these benefits for months and years afterward.
Justin Jackson:You know? That's right. That's right. And the cool thing about that is that I had an email sign up form. And if you look at my email subscribe subscriptions, it goes like, whoop, like crazy up after that post.
Justin Jackson:And then after like three or four issues, it drops by, you know, it was like dropping by three or 400 at a time. You know? And my list isn't huge right now. It's about 5,000 people. So to lose like you know, at the time, to lose three or 400 people was like, oh, man.
Justin Jackson:But I just realized these are folks that just don't they they connected with that one thing, but they're not connecting with what I'm kinda talking about now. And, you know, a lot of them were like science fiction writers and stuff like And, like, they're they were just not the people that were going to especially purchase products that I was gonna be building. You know? Like, I had one thing to say to science fiction writers, and I think I'm done. You know?
Justin Jackson:I I couldn't keep I couldn't
Brian Casel:keep that kinda plays back into the idea of, like, choosing an audience that that you're passionate about, that you're kind of a part of, and and that you can have empathy for. You know, you you had a great piece, I think, come out last week talking about having empathy for your audience, for the people on the other end. Can you talk a little a little bit about that? And, I mean, what what does that kinda mean to you? How how do you empathize with your audience?
Brian Casel:And then what is the result of of have of, like, focusing on that empathy for your audience? Like, how does that actually help your content go further?
Justin Jackson:Yeah. One thing I'm realizing is that how different we all are in terms of what motivates us. And so I've tried to be careful now as I talk about some of this stuff because I've realized one thing that really motivates me is relationships. And my friend Bob, who's like one of my mentors, he's quite a bit older than me, He keeps saying, Justin, like, you're probably a relational person first and a creator second. And if you read my post, you can actually see a lot of this kind of play itself out.
Justin Jackson:Even the topic of my podcast is product people. It's not, you know, I'm always focusing on people. So, I want to put a little disclaimer to say, clearly, like, I'm recognizing more and more I'm motivated by relationships, and not everyone is going to be like that. And so, if you're a listener and you're kind of thinking, well, you know, this probably has something there might be something in here for you, but you might be motivated by something else that and that might be more helpful for you as you kind of explore Yeah.
Brian Casel:But you know what? I do think that this is something that everyone can benefit from because it it goes back to that that classic idea, you know, focus on features or focus on benefits. And when you're focusing on benefits, you're putting yourself in the shoe of your customer or of your audience. You know, what what like,
Justin Jackson:what's in
Brian Casel:it for them? And I think that's really what having empathy is all about.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. And that sounds sounds like it comes naturally to you. Right? And I and I think, you know, when when you give out that lesson that you've learned in terms of picking the right audience, I think it does two things. It it sets you up to be happy, to be among those people, and to be a leader of those people and talk to them.
Jordan Gal:And it also sets you up for for success on the business side because if especially if you're more interested in it and like it, the things you create for them, they just have a much better chance of connecting and a much better chance of helping them and providing value. And It's definitely It's it's a kind of a double edged and that's kind of what we all want. We don't just want financial success. We don't want just freedom. We we we we want both.
Jordan Gal:Sounds like a good good recipe for it.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. So the reason I think empathy is important is because we are dealing with real human beings. And, you know, right now, a lot of us are used to looking at analytics packages. And analytics packages generally show you one of two things. They show you these anonymous visitors that are like they have an ID number.
Justin Jackson:And it's hard for us to remember that that ID number is a living, breathing human being with blood flowing through their veins who have dreams of their own, who have problems, who go home and have kids to feed and things to do. These are real people. And that idea to me is very, very powerful. It was actually one of the motivators for writing This is a Web page, is I just can't get over how freaking cool this is that I can write something, you know, here at my desk in Vernon, British Columbia, which you guys have never been to, and I just click publish and then it just magically goes out into the world and it connects with real people. Some of whom have come here to visit me.
Justin Jackson:Like a guy from Japan came here to visit me because of that post. What And a creepy outfit. I loved I loved it because it was like, this is real. Like, this guy is a real person, you know? And I I spent the whole day with him because I was just I I just couldn't believe that he was there.
Justin Jackson:And to me, it just embodied this idea that I'm not just pushing things out to, like, anonymous avatars. Like, these are real human beings. And the other challenge I think we have as makers is we're so focused on ourselves. It's like the first thing you think about when you make something is like, oh, I hope people like my thing. No, I hope no one makes fun of it.
Justin Jackson:Or we're always like focused on we got all this insecurity about ourselves. And having empathy for people gets us out of that like self focused shell. Like helps us just push out and think, okay, no, it's not about me. This is about Caitlyn. You know?
Justin Jackson:Caitlyn wrote me. She's got this problem. I'm doing this for her. I'm not doing this for me. I've to get over my own self doubt.
Justin Jackson:I've to get over my own self centeredness. I've just got to focus on her. And I think it helps move us forward. It helps us ship things instead of just sitting on them all the time and being, you know, worried about what people think. It's like, screw it.
Justin Jackson:I gotta do this. Like, I gotta do this for Caitlin and, you know, John and everyone else on in my audience. These are real people. I've got something that's going to help them. I I need to do this.
Justin Jackson:I need to ship. I need
Brian Casel:to get it think that sorry. Go on.
Justin Jackson:No. Go ahead. Well, go ahead.
Brian Casel:I think that is a really great point. I I definitely experienced that myself, especially like, the thing that comes to mind is is public speaking. About a year or so ago, I I got a little bit more into speaking at local meetups, did a few conferences here and there. And I remember talking to to my mom about it. She she's a a college professor.
Brian Casel:She she was a college professor for many years, and she gave me a really great word of advice, which was, you know, if you just focus on on the students in the room and the questions that they have, all the all those nerves that come when you when you I always had a a fear of public speaking. I would when I'm up there on my very first time, I was like shaking and I couldn't even get the words out. I was thinking about like my slides, how do I sound, how do I look, you know. And once people started asking questions, you know, like the q and a section afterward, I, like, instantly became so much more relaxed because I'm just answering their questions, and I'm and I'm up there, and I feel like I have a responsibility to give them something that like, they need to they need this information to help them in their job or help them move forward with something. And so now I have that approach with everything, whether I'm writing or podcasting or speaking.
Brian Casel:I just I I I just try to think about, you know, there are people in this audience who are depending on on this information. They have questions in their head that need answers. So it's it's really about them, and and it really helps me relax. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm. I I have to add to this and say that it's it's really an incredibly powerful insight that that you're touching on there. I usually come at things from a more, like, cynical financial cold approach. And while my touchy feely radar wants to go off, my my experience in the business world is that, you know, if people don't take anything away from this podcast besides that point, it's it's if you are a software company, you should be talking and thinking about and writing about what it does for people, not what you're capable of doing. If you have a fencing company, your website shouldn't say we've been around since 1984.
Jordan Gal:It should talk about what people actually get out of using your your your service. Yeah. If you're it it goes down to everything and it makes it changes the whole game. I used to run an ecommerce business. And when we first started out, one of the biggest things that led to our success was using the phone.
Jordan Gal:We encourage people to call us on the phone. And the words and the problems people expressed over the phone that we then took and put on the site changed everything. And while, yes, what that changed is a conversion rate. So now a 100 anonymous people, you know, instead of four of them buying, six of them would buy and that affected the business tremendously. But it only happened because you actually talked and listened and cared about an actual person who called you and said, I have a flagpole in my front yard.
Jordan Gal:I need your solar light to light my flagpole. And that seems completely irrelevant to your business, but it's at the end of day, it's kind of everything at the same time. So I I think that was, yeah, a very powerful insight that that you touched on.
Brian Casel:Totally. So so, Justin, can we get a little bit more into your your process? Like, the actual step by step, how do you go about producing content? You know, your let let's look at a blog post and your Saturday newsletter. Right?
Brian Casel:Because I it does look like you you put a lot of thought into this stuff, and and I'm assuming that you go through a pretty tough editing process. But yeah. So, like, how does, like, a new blog post come together? And how long do you spend? Like, how many days, how many weeks are you working on it?
Justin Jackson:Yeah. So first of all, I agonize about this all the time. Like, it there's a lot of stuff that I write and I and I'm, probably pretty insecure about it. Just thinking, Is this going to connect with anybody? Is anyone going to like this?
Justin Jackson:You know, like if you could talk to my wife, would say that Fridays are sometimes a very hard day in my house. Because I'm just agonizing over these things and saying, I don't know if anyone's going to like this. And this is probably not that good. And even questioning like, Is this all about me or is this all about them? It's hard sometimes to figure out where that line is.
Justin Jackson:Most blog posts, I think about the idea and I write the post in the same week. So I the idea
Brian Casel:based on a question or something that you've heard from the audience or is it
Justin Jackson:Yeah. So in terms of where it's coming from, it'll either come from the places I'm hanging out. So the communities and forums and sites where I'm hanging out. And like my best example like if I was a designer right now and I was logging into designer news at Layer Vault, you know, every day, one trend you would see for sure is that almost every two or three days someone's talking about Sketch. Switching to Sketch, how do I use Sketch?
Justin Jackson:I was using Photoshop and now I want to use Sketch, plug ins for Sketch. And so there's a clear trend there. And for me, I would capture that idea either in Notes, like I said. I like Notes because it's simple. It's like on every Apple device I have and it syncs with everything.
Justin Jackson:So I'd literally just write like one or two lines about, you know, there's something about sketch. I should write that for my audience.
Brian Casel:Do you so also keep like a running list of ideas that you might get to later?
Justin Jackson:Yeah. Yeah. Like, Notes is filled with ideas. And actually, I should go through it more often because I sometimes I'll generate a lot of ideas. Yeah.
Justin Jackson:And I found that a lot of these ideas like, sometimes I'll have a night where I can't sleep, for example, and I'll have 10 or 20 ideas in a night. And so I'll just capture them all. The the idea is that you're capturing the things that are going on with your audience in their community. So whether that's on the forums, whether it's the email responses that they're giving you. You you mentioned earlier, like you were talking on the phone with people and that their struggles became your headlines.
Justin Jackson:That's very true. The feedback you're getting from people, the questions you're getting from people, those often become the topics for my blog post. I'm going to write about the different types of pain people have this week. So it's Friday. I have not written my blog post or my newsletter for today, so I'm going do it today.
Justin Jackson:And part of the feedback from that is people on Twitter and on the email list saying, I really want to understand this more. Like, What is a pain that I should be focusing on? How do I Is there different types of pain, etcetera? So that's usually the process in terms of where the ideas come from. And then, like I said, I usually try to start writing some sort of outline by Wednesday.
Justin Jackson:And then by Friday, if I haven't written anything, Friday is the day I write. And I'll usually just bang bang it out as quickly as I can. Like, I'll just write, write, write. And then one thing I'll do is I'll I'll share the draft link on Twitter sometimes that night. So like, hey, I'm up late working on this post for tomorrow.
Justin Jackson:And just let people read it in draft form and give me feedback. If I've had a lot of if I finish the post by Wednesday or Thursday, I'll usually send it to some friends. Like Nate Cottney has actually been really helpful in providing good feedback on my posts.
Brian Casel:That's really cool. I I gotta do more of that. It's it's getting feedback before it publishes, you know. But for writing as as well as, you know, designing stuff. I I've never been good about, you know, seeking feedback before it goes
Justin Jackson:live. So Yeah.
Jordan Gal:I hate to disturb the force, but Justin, if you could just give a little wiggle to your your headset or maybe plug it in a little stronger. Think it's got
Justin Jackson:a a
Jordan Gal:touch of of static.
Justin Jackson:Oh, really?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. When you're speaking.
Justin Jackson:Hold on here.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And we also definitely wanna touch on your your recent course launch for for building an audience. And I think that that goes to this question of okay. We've been talking a lot about why build an audience, how we build an audience, but how do we monetize it? How how does this lead to a business?
Brian Casel:You know, I I think that's really what everyone kinda cares who especially in in this entrepreneurship community. Right? So but so, like, you're you're building your audience for, one or two years, and then when does it get to the point where it's like, okay, how do we turn this into a business?
Justin Jackson:Yeah. So for me, I think it was around 700 to a thousand people on my mailing list. That just felt like a good kind of number. And I thought, Okay, I'm just going to release something really small. And that was a downloadable book called Amplification.
Justin Jackson:And it was basically, I was just like, Okay, what can I help my audience with? What are they asking me questions about? And a lot of people just wanted to know about my experience of writing that essay. This is a web page. And just like, What happened?
Justin Jackson:How did you do that? And what did you learn from that? And so I just thought, Okay, I have something to teach here. I'm going to tell the story and I'm going to teach people what I learned. And so, for me, getting to that number of about, like I said, 700 to a thousand people on the mailing list, and then saying, okay, well what is kind of the strongest signal and what can I actually create?
Justin Jackson:And that's how I did it. That was my first kind of anonymous anonymous like, my first product that you could buy on the Internet and, you know, when I say anonymous, like, just people were going to the site and clicking buy. Like, that was my first
Brian Casel:Can you talk a little bit about what happened? What were the results? That was your first product for for the amplification?
Justin Jackson:Yeah. So like I said, from it was probably about 700 people on the list. I didn't really promote it outside of the mailing list. I still haven't, actually. I just, like, created it.
Justin Jackson:It started off as I think it was, like, $19. And then I added the Hacker News handbook on top, and then some other videos and worksheets, and then I I think it's $40 now.
Jordan Gal:And and what was the difference? Right? You you you provide a lot of great free content. And so what's the difference between that, what you normally do, and something paid? Is it just very specific?
Jordan Gal:Is it more in-depth? Is it right? How how did you know where to take that line and say, this is more valuable than free? And so right?
Justin Jackson:What what? I think there's there's a lot of value in just in just organizing the content. So blog posts are like kind of spread out all over the place, and you're doing people a service by just organizing sometimes that stuff in a way that they can consume and learn from in a kind of really easy way. So I think part of the difference is just organization. Just the fact that you're putting it all into one package.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I agree.
Justin Jackson:The other the other kind of funny thing is in terms of like the job to be done here is sometimes people just want to own the thing. And it seems ridiculous, but sometimes people are just like, man, I love your writing. I love all your advice. I just want to have that with me on my Kindle or on my hard drive in the folder that's called books and PDFs. Like, I just wanna have that.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I think I think there's definitely, a consumer mentality, especially within this, you know, this world that that we're in. You know?
Jordan Gal:I I think it's more powerful than that. I think it's it's, like, emotional and and relational. And I think people wanna be more like the people that they're following online, and they wanna associate themselves closer. And, yeah, and and paying, it almost puts you into, like, the elite circle along with that person. I mean, I I'm when I first started out, was a thirty seven signals fanboy also.
Jordan Gal:I looked for excuses to use their product. Like, can I fit this into Basecamp because then I could be, you know it
Justin Jackson:Part of a club?
Jordan Gal:It's exactly. Part of the club. This is the same reason that webinars are so powerful because you make this relationship. So, yeah, I think I think that's a testament to the trust that you built with the audience that there are people that, yes, they want it and they want the value out of it. And some people also just, like, wanna continue the relationship with you and, yeah, just take that take that next step when when you offer something of the next level.
Brian Casel:And, you know, I I think a lot of folks are out there maybe have have been building their audience or trying to build their audience. They're at that point around 700 subscribers. I mean, what can you expect in terms of results and and sales if if you're willing to share that kind of stuff for for a small ebook is like a first time product with an audience of that size.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. I I'm actually really I I wanna talk about this because I think one of the the dangers in our community, as we're used to hearing about really big launches, and I think the the danger in that is my you know, do you guys know who Dan Martell is? Yeah. He's the founder of Yep. I mean, Dan is, by every measure, more successful than any of us may ever be.
Justin Jackson:Like, he you know, he's a millionaire multiple times over. He's done very very well. And the way Dan puts it is he goes, man, if you can get anyone to show up on the Internet and pay you a dollar, you've made it. Like, that's his perspective. And I think sometimes we you know, as people that have never built and sold anything on the web before, they've got this expectation that they're going to be hitting these huge numbers.
Justin Jackson:And I wanna say if it's, like, your first or second or third thing, if you make a dollar, that's amazing. You got someone on the Internet that trusted you enough to pay you for that thing? Like, that's unreal.
Brian Casel:Such a huge leap to go from zero customers to one customer. It's a it's a massive
Jordan Gal:It's addicting. It's a it's a high. It's it's a the feedback that motivates you.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. So, I mean, when amplification launched, it probably did, you know, 2 or $3 or something like that. And I think since then, haven't really promoted it that much. It's probably done $6 or something. And that's to me, that's still incredible.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. Like, you've got this thing. And to be clear, too, it's very short. It's like, maybe now it's 60 pages long or something like that, but it's not very big. And so, for the amount of effort I put in and for the sales I got out, I feel good about that.
Justin Jackson:I felt like that was really great. And just the fact that anybody, for my first thing, showed up and paid for it was was really exciting.
Brian Casel:You know, I I do wanna kinda, like, fast forward to to more recently in the last few months as, you know, as you've built out your kind of like, I guess it's kinda your second product. Right? Your your recent course on on building an audience. So how did that go? And well, first of all, how did you validate that idea?
Brian Casel:I guess it kinda goes along with everything that we've been talking about here. It's just another tool that can help your audience.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. Yeah. So
Brian Casel:I know you also ran a couple of webinars as well. How did those kind of play into it and how did they impact?
Justin Jackson:Yeah. Yeah. What I did next sorry, actually, I did next was I actually I have another product or community or whatever you want to call it called Product People Club. And that's actually where I make most of my revenue. But as I was running that and as I was looking at the feedback I was getting from my audience and all these things, I just kept seeing the hardest people were having a hard time with this idea of not just audience building, but choosing an audience, going through the work of finding patterns and finding pain or finding trends.
Justin Jackson:And those things just kept coming up over and over again. And a lot of folks were also thinking like asking the same questions as you were. Like, Why should I do this? Is it worth doing? And I felt like, you know, there's a lot of people that had things to say about that.
Justin Jackson:Like, Fried has had stuff to say about that. Derek Sivers has had stuff to say about that. Amy Hoy has had stuff to say about that. Nathan Barry has had stuff to say about that. And I felt like I had a different perspective that incorporated some of that, but was also unique to the way I approach things.
Justin Jackson:And I felt like I should share that. And so, that was the validation process. And to really validate it, because the only validation that really matters is will people pay money for it, is I ran a and this Brennan Dunn recommended I do this. He said, just run a webinar, you know, book two hours on a Saturday and you can charge for it, whatever you want, and, you know, limit it to a certain amount of people and just see how it goes. I I highly recommend that anybody that's thinking about building their first product, do a webinar first.
Justin Jackson:I wish I'd done it I wish a webinar was the first thing I ever did. And if I was just starting out, I would start with a free webinar and then follow it up with a paid webinar. The free webinar, I would say I would explain this is why this is important. And then the paid webinar that I followed up with, I would explain how you do this. So answer the why in the free webinar, and then ask people to pay for, you know, the step by step on how you can actually get that done.
Brian Casel:And so you did that. You did the webinar the the paid webinar. I think you did a couple of them. Right?
Justin Jackson:Yeah. Yeah. So I charged off
Brian Casel:yeah. Well, okay. So, like, what was, like, the pricing for that?
Jordan Gal:And and Can we just pause one second? Because I wanna know this. I think other people do also. You're talking about two webinars for the same people. Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:So you say, I'm holding two webinars. The first one is free and the second one is paid? Yeah. It's like people get to find out the the why and and people who really wanna dig even deeper pay for the for the second webinar?
Justin Jackson:Yeah. Yeah. And you don't even have to talk about the second one until the first one's done, but it's a great way to end the first one. So let's say you get, you know, 50, a 100 people to show up for the first one. Mhmm.
Justin Jackson:You say, okay. So in this session I explained why this is important. If you want to know how you can put this into practice, I'm doing a paid class on this next week. Same time, same place. You can register right here.
Justin Jackson:It's $100 a ticket. I charged $100 for two hours. It was like a one hour presentation and then one hour of Q and A. And I just did it on a Saturday, so from ten a. M.
Justin Jackson:Till noon. And I I did it all through Gumroad. So don't even buy a domain or build your own landing page just on Gumroad. Just set up the landing page on there and pre sell tickets just that way.
Jordan Gal:Awesome. Very very interesting sales funnel. So, yeah, let's let's get back, but I really wanted almost clarification on that on that strategy, that the two steps.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. So what I did next is I so it was fairly successful. So then I did another one. So I had two times, and I'd recorded them both. Right?
Justin Jackson:The real advantage to doing this is I had to set a date. So I had to say May 29, I'm doing this. That really kicked my butt into gear to say, okay, I've to come up with the outline, the content, everything. So that I think it also helps us as product people get over that hump of actually building the thing. Cause it's like, I gotta deliver this on, you know, May 29.
Brian Casel:I have a question about this. So you did a a second paid webinar. Right? And Yeah. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Brian Casel:This is promoted solely to your list. You're not doing any kind of paid acquisition for these?
Justin Jackson:That's right.
Brian Casel:So you're you're sending the same offer to roughly the same people except for the new people who joined your list recently. Yep. Same people saw webinar number one. They're also getting promoted for webinar number two. Can you talk a little little bit about that?
Brian Casel:I mean, like, how does how does doing a second offer to the same people work? Right?
Justin Jackson:Oh, because
Jordan Gal:If Brian's really nice, he doesn't wanna be We
Justin Jackson:are so No. But I mean, it's So bad.
Brian Casel:I I can understand how if you're running PPC ads, you know, everybody's seeing it for the first time. You know?
Justin Jackson:Yeah. I I just wrote about this. I I think we don't realize how long it takes people to sometimes make a decision. Or even, like, this idea that there might have been people that missed the first one and would like to still have the opportunity to go to the second one. Or people that thought about the first one and they weren't quite ready, but now they're ready.
Justin Jackson:And even the second one, for example, I sent out kind of a really loose, really safe offer to say, you know, kind of like the, if you want to come to this, you might want to think about clicking this link here. Know, it was like and sold, you know, maybe two seats. And I was like, in my head, I'm like, what happened? Like, sold out the last one. You know, went home to my wife and I was all depressed.
Justin Jackson:Like, nobody likes me. Everyone thinks I'm garbage, you know. And then I I said, You know what? I'm going to send out another one. And I made it much more explicit, and then I sold out.
Justin Jackson:And so, you know, we go through these things of being safe and polite and all those things. But if your whole purpose is to empathize with the audience and really care for them and really provide something that's going be helpful, it's okay to ask them a couple of times. It's like, if you hold a party, the whole key to holding a good party is to invite to remind your guests multiple times. Right? Because people forget.
Justin Jackson:People haven't put it on the calendar. People just miss it, So you it's okay to do that. And with the second webinar, that's what I did. And I'm glad I did it because it helped me practice that material again, it helped me improve it again. And then it was also an extra you know, thousand bucks for that day.
Justin Jackson:I didn't have to write or build anything new. All the framework was there. Like, I could do this again anytime. I could just set a date and and hold the webinar. Right?
Brian Casel:Very cool. So so I think from there, it was just a month or two after that that you launched the Build Your Audience course.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. And so that came from two things. One, I was just itching to ship something again. I felt like I I was I've been working on this book called Marketing for Developers, and I'd been stuck for a while. And I just felt like I need to get something out something small.
Justin Jackson:Also, was getting feedback from people that were saying, Could I just purchase your recorded webinar? Could I just buy that? And actually, both times I did the live webinar, about two to three people each time they've paid for a live webinar where they can ask me questions. Two to three people didn't show up and just purchased the ability to download the video after. So they're paying $125 just to do that.
Justin Jackson:So I realized there's probably something there. And literally, all I did is I chopped up the webinar into different lessons and put it on Pathright and added some other content and just started selling it like that. And so on launch, I think we did about $6,000 that day, something like that. So I imagine I'll probably get to 10 pretty quick. And it was just reusing that content that I already had.
Justin Jackson:And reason I actually haven't promoted it since is as a PathRight can be very expensive if you use pathright.com for your your thing. I I didn't realize how expensive it was for ongoing use. They basically charge you every time a a student logs in. So if they bought the course for a $100
Brian Casel:same person can't playing the videos here.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. Yeah. So I've gotta change platforms or at least give them some feedback to say, you know, for me, their pricing model doesn't work. So I I've stopped promoting it, where I'm at right now because I don't wanna keep losing money. But eventually, I'll, you know, relaunch it on a different platform and start promoting it again.
Justin Jackson:Wow.
Jordan Gal:So It's amazing. The launch did that well. I mean, you know, the technical and password issues aside, the webinars validated that there was something there, then the paid webinars validated that people were willing to pay for it. People asking you for the recordings, right, it almost pushes you into the right direction.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. The other cool thing is for the launch, I had all of this social proof, right, from people that had taken the webinar. So the VP of marketing for a really big antivirus software company had given me feedback to say, This is great. So I was able to use that to say, You know, we've had these kind of people take the course, yeah, which helped with the the sales process. Very nice.
Jordan Gal:So I have to ask you. Now it's my my turn to play my role again as as the cynic. How did you come up with the with the pricing? I mean, what I'm really asking is why why don't you charge more?
Justin Jackson:Yeah. Maybe I will. I figured people were willing I knew people were willing to pay, you know, a 100, $125 just to download the video. And so I thought, okay. Well, if I add on some more, like, I add on some video interviews with some people I've done I've I've talked to, like Nathan Barry and all those folks, and if I add a little bit more, like, the ability to download all the content, That seems like if we doubled the price to $200, that seems like about right.
Justin Jackson:And and then I thought, well and if I offered just a little bit under what I offered for the the webinar, that seems like about $85. And then I thought, I really wanna have an entry level. Like, what would be the equivalent of an e book? And so I chose $39. That ratio is actually based on Ryan Delks from Gumroad.
Justin Jackson:He did a talk on, like, the the perfect kind of pricing tier ratio. It's based on that it's based on that So
Brian Casel:micro comp. It was a it was one x, like, 2.2 x, five x. Right?
Justin Jackson:Yeah. Yeah. It's something like that. So that's what I based it on. And, you know, maybe the the other thing is that you can always increase the price later.
Justin Jackson:Like, I if I add more stuff tomorrow, it's okay for me to increase the price if I want to. So I felt good about those those tiers and yeah. Maybe maybe one day I will increase the price.
Brian Casel:Cool. So, you know, we we are going a little bit long here, but, you know, we we covered a lot of ground. But, you know, Jordan Justin, I mean, what's next? What what are you working on right now? Where do you see this heading in the future?
Brian Casel:Well, I'm curious about the course, though. After you relaunched on a new platform, do you plan to, you know, push this as your I I hate the word push, but but, like, promote this as as the flagship product or come out with new products? Or
Justin Jackson:Yeah. I think I mean, right now, I'm really just experimenting. And I like the online course format. I think that's a good format for me. So, you know, I think I will do other things.
Justin Jackson:There's already been follow-up questions. Like, there's people interested in the other side now too. So what about retargeting, SEO, paid advertising, those kinds of things? And I'm running a bunch of experiments right now on those things, so I'll be able to speak to that soon. So that's a natural follow-up.
Justin Jackson:It's like, Okay, well you've done this side. Now let's talk about this side over here. So I think that'll be something I'll follow-up with. There's also people that want me to do bigger, deeper dives on some of these topics. Especially the research one.
Justin Jackson:That's the longest module in the course. And that was the one that people really resonated with. It's also the one that changes quite a bit. There's some tricks that I talk about in the course that actually changed. Google deprecated some functionality that I had to then figure out new ways of doing that.
Justin Jackson:So, you know, I could follow-up with that. The big focus for me right now is Product People Club. I've been running that for a year in kind of like a closed beta with about a 100 members. And I think we're we're ready to to launch that to more people. So we haven't onboarded anyone new in like six months.
Justin Jackson:And, yeah, we're getting ready to start kind of slowly rolling that out to the the waiting Awesome.
Brian Casel:Can you briefly kind of tell tell us what that is? What what it's all about?
Justin Jackson:Yeah. The it came just from hearing from people, solopreneurs, product people that are building stuff by themselves in their cold, dark basements. And they're lonely. And it's not like in an office where you can say, hey, look at this mock up or what do you think about this? Or, you know, you might need to vent a little bit or, you know, you just want to have like a daily stand up and have some other people you're accountable to.
Justin Jackson:And so the the new Product People Club is actually based around this idea of a daily stand up and logging in every day and saying, Okay, this is what I'm going to do today. And then it's social because people can comment, they can provide feedback, they can provide help. And the results that our audience that our members have been getting over this past year have been really, really great. I'd say I think about 80% have shipped something. And so yeah.
Justin Jackson:Now we're gonna start inviting other people to be a part of that too. And, you know, actually ship something.
Brian Casel:What's the price point on Proud of People Club?
Justin Jackson:It'll be just over for an annual membership, it'll be probably around $240. And if you decide to go monthly, it'll be, I think, somewhere around 29 to 39 a month. I'm still kind of figuring that out. But you definitely get a discount if you do the annual subscription. And anyone that does the annual subscription also gets a copy of some right now I'm doing get a free copy of Starting and Sustaining by Garrett Diamond.
Justin Jackson:So it's like a I think an $80 package or something like that. Nice. So there's a few added benefits for for annual people too.
Brian Casel:Cool. Yeah. I mean, it it it sounds like a really great concept and community to be a part of. I mean, Jordan and I have have been in a mastermind together. We had an episode a couple couple weeks back talking about mastermind groups.
Brian Casel:It is so valuable for for so many of us who are working on our own. Even even working at a coworking space, you don't know the people sitting next to you. So it's, you know, just having a group of of trusted advisers. And and there's so so many things that you can't bring to your spouse and your friends who aren't entrepreneurs and stuff. So, you know yeah.
Brian Casel:I mean, building like a internal community is is so great.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. Yeah. It's it's been really great. I I think everyone should have some sort of I just call it back channel, like a back channel of the Internet, you know. Somewhere to talk about, like, what's really going It's really helpful.
Brian Casel:Very cool.
Jordan Gal:Excellent. Thank you very much, Justin, for for coming on. Big thanks from myself and Brian and people in the audience. Really inspiring stuff and insightful and motivated by the right thing. So great to have you on.
Jordan Gal:Thanks for giving us your knowledge and we're looking forward to seeing what you do over the next few months and years.
Justin Jackson:Cool. Thanks, guys. I really enjoyed talking with you. We gotta do this again sometime.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Definitely. Justin, it's great having you on.
Justin Jackson:Cool. Goodbye.
Brian Casel:Alright. That wraps it up. And man, it's it it was awesome, you know, finally meeting Justin. I I haven't spoke to him before and I've been a fan of his stuff for a while. But, you know, I I certainly, you know, learned a lot as always.
Brian Casel:I know a lot of you will as well. So that was great. To dig into the backlog of episodes, head over to bootstrappedweb.com. By the way, we just migrated the site to its own site on bootstrappedweb.com. And as always, if you're enjoying this show, please head over to iTunes and leave us a five star review.
Brian Casel:We always appreciate it.
Jordan Gal:Speaking of five star reviews on iTunes, we have to give a little shout out. Brian, tell us tell us a little bit about it.
Brian Casel:Yep. We got a new one this week. It's from Rob R. He gave five stars and he said, Brian does a great job. I love his whole approach.
Brian Casel:The guests are relevant and the topics are perfect for a fellow bootstrapper like myself. I'm only a few episodes in and can't wait to catch up on all the past episodes. So, I mean, I'm guessing that he was listening to some of the older ones before you joined up, Jordan. But
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I was gonna say thank you very much, Rob. But, you know, I'm feeling I'm feeling I'm feeling lonely over here. Yeah.
Brian Casel:Thanks. But no thanks. No.
Jordan Gal:Right. But thank you very much. We we appreciate that. Tell tell your friends. Tweet it.
Jordan Gal:Email it. Talk about it. Until next time. Thanks, guys, and talk to you soon.
Brian Casel:Yep. See you, guys.
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