Not Selling to SaaS
Welcome back everybody. Another episode of Bootstrap Web. Brian, nice to see you.
Brian Casel:Yes, sir. I am I'm back in town. I I got back late on Wednesday night from our mini vacation down to the Florida Keys. It was a it's a good time. Good time with some friends at a wedding and then and then a couple days on the beach at a nice resort down there.
Brian Casel:So can't can't argue with that.
Jordan Gal:No. That sounds nice.
Brian Casel:We had a we had a delay in the flight getting getting back which kinda sucked but but once we got through that, know, just back at it. I feel like this was the first time first vacation in a while where I didn't really feel obligated to work while I was there.
Jordan Gal:Okay. You didn't have that nagging guilt? You just Yeah. Just chilled?
Brian Casel:Well, I did have the guilt. Okay.
Jordan Gal:Just a bit. Yeah.
Brian Casel:You know, I went back and forth between like the guilt and and just like, hey, no, you're on vacation. Enjoy vacation. Yeah. But it was also like, I actually don't have any projects that I could have really done a lot of work on
Jordan Gal:while Waiting I was down on you so they could move forward or
Brian Casel:Yeah. I'm I'm do I have some consulting stuff but that was on pause during this week while I was away. And then, the one thing that I did a little bit of work on was some writing for like like writing for for script Like like scripting some content for some upcoming videos that I'm working on. But even that was like not not that much. Most of it was just kinda chilling and letting my mind and body relax a little bit for a couple days.
Brian Casel:And I really really needed that. Good for you. Yeah. Feeling good. Good.
Brian Casel:And you know, now now I'm pretty psyched to get back into into the grind and and push on things.
Jordan Gal:There you go. Friday afternoon, you're ready to roll.
Brian Casel:That's right. That's right. It also helps that, you know, on on the Clarity Flow front. I will I will say the the one thing that I did still get pulled into about, I would say like an hour here, an hour there during during vacation was, know, answering questions from my team on Clarity Flow to to unblock them. Which it's not just a quick question.
Brian Casel:It's like a question plus like, alright, I gotta dig into this for fifteen minutes and then then all of a sudden I'm sitting there for an hour. But overall on Clarity Flow, now that Kat is in the customer support, customer success role and she's really like solidly like in that role now. There are all sorts of customer emails in the inbox that I'm not even that are not reaching me which is beautiful. She's still escalating a lot to me but even the escalations are like not urgent. So like she'll get back to the person with like half the answer and then, alright, I'll check on that.
Brian Casel:I'll get back to you with the Or or a lot of stuff is just feature request and she writes it up instead of me and stuff like that.
Jordan Gal:So I just wanna point out that you just successfully transitioned from I built it, I know everything, I have to answer everything to, hey, went on vacation. Didn't even think about it.
Brian Casel:Yeah. You know, not a 100%, of course. Like, I would say I think it's
Jordan Gal:a good example for everyone listening that that has that hurdle up artificially for themselves that say, how could I ever let go of this? How's everyone How's anyone ever gonna know enough
Brian Casel:to answer It's it's been interesting with Clarity Flow because and working with Kat specifically because I worked with her before in Audience Ops and it was exactly the same It was very A very different business. Yeah. But it was exactly the same progression. Like she started as a client manager and then she became the manager of the team. And and the whole purpose of that role back in audience ops was to remove me from all that stuff.
Brian Casel:And and back then and and again now with Clarity Flow, it's a it's several weeks and months of okay. Every day, there's gonna be a lot of stuff that she escalates to me and I answer and and I transfer this knowledge bit by bit, case by case. And within and and I'm starting to definitely notice it now. Like you know, it like I'm starting to literally notice the reduction in hours of me needing to handle customer support, customer service and customer success success kind of work in that business. And it's just like a gradual like chipping away at those hours by and and just replacing that work with like transferring it to her and she's starting to take it over.
Brian Casel:So that that's been awesome. You know, while still keeping my role in that business which is like head of product. You know. So she'll she'll escalate stuff and then it's like, okay. Now I decide like where in our road map are we gonna fit that in if we're gonna do it at all.
Brian Casel:Mhmm. You know. And working with the developer and stuff. So Yeah.
Jordan Gal:That that makes me think of one of the conversations I had this week with a founder who has a it's a it's a in a pretty good spot in terms of like revenue level. Mhmm. But it hasn't grown that much over the last six, twelve months. And the conclusion or at least the feeling that he started coming to was there's no need for me to work on this for eight hours a day. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:It's still good. It's gonna be a good business without me and I and and instead of getting up and feeling guilty like I have to do something, in reality, he's probably better off doing something else.
Brian Casel:I mean, that was I came to the same thing this earlier this year. It's like, look, this thing is it's doing its thing. It's it's at a it's at an okay MRR level. It's not where I would want it to be, but it's still growing kinda slowly. And I and I've tried for over three years trying to accelerate that growth.
Brian Casel:And I don't have the financial runway to do. I'm not gonna rehash the same thing I've been talking about for months here. But you know, yeah. Like the the point for me this year is to let the thing do what it's gonna do, which is slow steady growth. Give it the resources by putting a really great customer success person in, and then and then I'm spent So so now I can move on to something that like better opportunities to Yeah.
Brian Casel:To grow. Arguably Overall. And and look the thing I I can I can pull off a little chunk of profit with minimal cost, a very small team and another sort of update just like catching up from the last two or three weeks on Clarity Flow? You know, I'm still making like tweaks to the funnel to improve around the edges that I think are actually starting to reflect in upticks in MRR. So like one thing that I did about two weeks ago was I recorded an all new demo video.
Brian Casel:And what I wanted to do because I had for a while, I had a big self serve series of videos on the marketing side that you would do an email opt in and and see like like seven like a series of seven videos like five minutes each to give you like everything that you need to see and and walk through. It was basically the onboarding series but we were putting it up front like a marketing demo. Mhmm. And and then what I noticed was that we're there were a lot of people who were opting in and viewing that stuff but but a whole bunch of them didn't actually go on to start a trial. So it was like that was a that was a drop off in our funnel.
Brian Casel:And then for a few days, I I killed that altogether. Like we'd move I just removed it from from the marketing site for like two or three weeks just to push all those people straight to a to a trial. At least start your trial and then you can get to those videos once you're inside.
Jordan Gal:Okay.
Brian Casel:So I tried I tried that but then we got some weird emails from customers being like, where's the demo? You're telling me I have to sign up just to just to see it. Alright. Okay. So I so I recorded an all new just a two minute
Jordan Gal:overview. A
Brian Casel:demo. Super high level like here are the big benefits, big bullet points. Let me give you a taste. Here's a video that you can watch and and this works with our cold outreach too. It's like something that we can just send to people.
Brian Casel:They could see it and then that's enough for them to get into the demo. So that's been a good little improvement I think on getting converting more of those visitors into trialers. And then one other thing and this is part of like I'm trying to to help Kat be successful as the customer success person. And this is one of those things that's like, it's so easy and I can't believe we haven't had something like this in place for forever. But, okay.
Brian Casel:So when someone is in their trial and then they enter their credit card to activate their plan. And that's not For us, it's not always at the end of their trial. A lot of times they do that earlier on in their trial in order to unlock certain features. Right? Okay.
Brian Casel:We call it like activating their plan. They they put their credit card, but they're they're not actually charged until the end of their trial. But when they do that, we just redirect them to the home dashboard with a little message that says, thank you. Then off on on your merry way, know, keep going.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Okay. Like that
Brian Casel:is such a missed opportunity. So now we have Okay.
Jordan Gal:That that's not enough.
Brian Casel:Well, now we have a legit like success thank you page. Like it's a we redirect them to a dedicated page inside the app that that says like it starts with like, hey, you're awesome. Like thanks for activating your plan. Alright. Number one, you're gonna wanna book your free strategy session with our customer success person, Kat.
Brian Casel:And and here and you know, click here to go to go to Clarity Flow and send your first message to Kat, then and then you see a video from Kat, and and it's like, that's great. Like, set her up. Because because it's definitely people who have entered their credit card, we wanna do everything we can to make them successful. They're they're ready to convert. And then number two on that page is like, hey, and by the way, you can refer other people to Clarity Flow with our affiliate program.
Brian Casel:And we have a really generous lifetime you know, commissions referral program. So that's So we wanna make sure you're aware of that. And as a Clarity Flow customer, you're you know, we we find that those are the best The the most successful affiliate. So like like boom boom. Like one two, you've just activated.
Brian Casel:Let's do everything we can to convert you. So I think I think So, you know, I spent like two days before my trip on on that Two or three days on on that kind of stuff. And and then I just kinda put that in place and then back to, alright. 20% time on on Clarity Flow. And Mhmm.
Brian Casel:And I'm working on the other stuff. The consulting stuff with instrumental products. Doing a lot with YouTube right now. And back at it. So, yeah.
Brian Casel:I'm I'm psyched to be back. Psyched to keep driving on it.
Jordan Gal:Hell yeah. Well, this week was full of Zoom conversations with SaaS founders.
Brian Casel:That was my So so last last we heard, you were going down the rabbit hole of maybe exploring products to sell to SaaS. Yes. And I think you have an update on that.
Jordan Gal:Okay. So so if I go back to the origin. So before this week, my focus has been mostly on on AI products. I just really like the idea of getting in relatively early on on something and it feels like a lot of these new product categories are early. Coming from ecommerce where there are a ton of great products in almost every category, the idea of less competition and something new where you can kind of become a leader in is is really exciting.
Jordan Gal:And I just like the arbitrage between we are very technical and we're on the Internet all the time and we know everything that's happening and we see this magic in front of us. And most of the economy just has no idea the magic is even I mean, they they hear some things on news stories about OpenAI, that kind of thing. So that distance between where things are and where the rest of the economy is, I just like that a lot bringing tech down. So that's where the majority of my time has been spent in these new new ideas to pursue. Then all of a sudden about two weeks ago or week and a half, whatever it was, a friend pings me.
Jordan Gal:He's got a new SaaS going and he's like, what do you think about email for SaaS? Because I'm setting up a new SaaS and I don't like any of the options.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:So that's just good to hear directly from a potential customer kind of like a real some really experiencing the pain. And that just led me to think about SaaS as a market and and how SaaS markets itself. Mhmm. That was a lot of SaaS markets but you know what
Brian Casel:I mean.
Jordan Gal:Yep. So I put out a tweet and I said, hey, anyone running a SaaS, you know, will you talk to me about your marketing? And that turned into about fifteen fifteen or 16 Zoom calls. Here's the interesting thing. Right?
Jordan Gal:You got your calendar, you got your five days in the week, and on Monday I have like four calls, and then Tuesday I have like six scheduled, and then Wednesday more. Okay. By the end of the first day, I basically have maybe my maybe not my mind totally made up, but I I see where it's going. Yeah. And it was not going in the right direction.
Brennan Dunn:Right. I I was giving you a lot
Brian Casel:of a lot of thoughts on especially email marketing for SaaS. I I've got I I have so many so much experience with all these different tools and Yeah. For me, it's like mostly red flags. I I wouldn't wanna get into it.
Jordan Gal:So a lot of the conversations were characterized by a lot of opinions. Everyone's got a different opinion. Everyone has a different way to do it. So my experience was let's think about marketing. Let's think about email marketing more specifically.
Jordan Gal:And what I learned pretty quickly and and you know we have friends who are in that space, have built companies in that space.
Brian Casel:I reach
Jordan Gal:out to all the people that it would be obvious to reach out to. Yep. Everyone was super helpful. So thank you to anyone who spoke with me. Was awesome.
Jordan Gal:What I realized pretty quickly was that there's a range going from the top of the funnel all the way to transactional emails. And Yeah. We I I have a
Brian Casel:take on that too. I think we talked about it but anyway.
Jordan Gal:Yes. Within a few conversations, it became very obvious to me that I don't want anything to do with transactional. If you're going into your database and you're setting triggers based on events in your database to then talk to my service, I I don't want anything to do with that. That sounds like onboarding friction. It sounds like very high level of support.
Jordan Gal:It sounds like very sensitive tech in general that's susceptible to errors. It just it immediately made me focus further up the funnel toward the marketing.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And just just on that point, it's part of it is like the the naming of things and the terminology for these things that that starts to annoy me, but also from a product perspective like I just don't really get it. Okay? Like most of these email marketing tools that cater to SaaS, they usually have the dual like like the like there's this part of our product which is quote unquote marketing emails and this Mhmm. Part of the product is quote unquote transactional emails.
Jordan Gal:Right. Those are the bucket terms.
Brian Casel:Now, I think of transactional emails as password resets and maybe receipts after you purchase or No. It could be transactional. Maybe notifications and stuff like that. All that stuff is to me like transactional, like app related. Event based, app based.
Brian Casel:Now, based is a different thing though. But but like the transactional stuff like I Okay. Like I use customer IO for my email marketing for my SaaS product. Right? Mhmm.
Brian Casel:I've used it for years and I you know, generally like it. I've got a few little complaints and whatnot but it mostly works. I don't you I don't do any what I think of as transactional email in there. Even though that's like a big thing for them. I just don't understand why a SaaS company would send like password resets and and whatnot through a customer IO.
Brian Casel:You're gonna use a postmark or a send grid or or you know, or a mail gun. Like, I don't understand that. Those are two very different types of things.
Jordan Gal:Everyone does differently. So some people What we found
Brian Casel:Marketing email Like onboarding emails like, hey, you've started a trial. Now let's nurture you through your onboarding. That's the big use case for an email marketing tool in SaaS and sending like broadcast newsletters. And But those You can still send events. Like we send you Like activation events.
Brian Casel:The the user has activated. So let's not send this promotional email to that user. Like we do stuff like that and send events to customer IO but
Jordan Gal:Yeah. People have a range. Almost no one had one system. Everyone had multiple systems. So they might be using SendGrid inside of the app for truly transactional.
Jordan Gal:They might be using customer IO or user list or something else for activation, and that's based on events in the database. And then maybe they sign up for Mailchimp when they started so they still use that for newsletters. And
Brian Casel:I didn't common Yeah. Sorry.
Jordan Gal:Go ahead. Very common theme was as I my attention moved further up the funnel because I I was not interested in the transactional side nor the activation side, a very common theme was we know we should be doing more email marketing but we aren't. Mhmm. And so that was a pretty clear indication that even if you know it's a problem, it doesn't hurt you that much because you've been in business for three years and you still barely send any email marketing.
Brian Casel:Yeah. So that's that's where I get to like two sort of dead ends on this whole prop like idea for for a startup in this year, in this time. Right? Yep. Like one is like you're saying, it's like, okay.
Brian Casel:If they If if if they've become successful without caring so much about email marketing, what makes us think that they're going to value it highly to to feel like it's a it's an Right. It's a take action on like Yeah. But then the other side of it is like, okay. We've been successful enough using email marketing or at least we've like for me, like I've installed in my It works. I have my complaints about it but it works.
Brian Casel:And I've already invested so many dev hours in sending these events to the to the customer IO API that if like I can't switch. I'm not gonna switch anytime soon. Like it would it would cost us so much just in development time Mhmm. To to make a switch, you know. Yeah.
Brian Casel:Like that like the switching cost in SaaS is That's killer.
Jordan Gal:That's right. Especially once you're in the database, which again was another reason to stay away from transactional things that happen after the sign up and everything else. The the most interesting thing that came out of it in terms of like an idea or a thing to pursue, I basically concluded the only product that I would be interested in actually building is is a b to b newsletter software. So basically like Convertkit with b to b features, and then you look over at Beehive and you're like, that's really good. And and the ultimate conclusion that I came to overall like outside of the okay, the SaaS market isn't that big and all fragmented, all this other stuff.
Jordan Gal:The bottom line was I don't see what we could build that's like better.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:It would just be the same thing with slightly different positioning or you know, it it didn't feel exciting because I didn't see what we could contribute.
Brian Casel:What we
Jordan Gal:can build something so different that people were like, that's amazing. I wanna use it. And for that, I'm out.
Brian Casel:Mhmm. And but okay. So okay. We know email marketing as a SaaS option is out. But were you looking at any other product categories to sell to SaaS?
Brian Casel:Have you like ruled out other stuff?
Jordan Gal:It was like a hunch to to go towards SaaS and then toward marketing and then email was like the focus. Mhmm. So I wasn't like religious about, you know, exactly what we were gonna do. But the week convinced me on both fronts. Don't do email.
Jordan Gal:Don't sell to SaaS. Mhmm. That that's what I walked away from. And what it did is it made the other ideas that I was working on in the AI category seemed so much more attractive that over the last few days coming back to it, I feel super energized. And I feel like I it's almost like I I checked out a different option.
Jordan Gal:I went on another date with someone else and was like, nope. This is actually right for me.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:So back on that with Augusto, I have an idea that I feel really good about. I I just did a call before this podcast with basically the key service provider that would enable us to accomplish what we want with this idea. Mhmm. And now I'm gonna try to get in touch with the market next week the same way I did with SaaS. I think I'll have a much harder time.
Brian Casel:Yeah. That was gonna be my next question. Was like, okay. So this, as I understand it, this this market I guess there's several options for who the the final target market for this will be. Yes.
Brian Casel:But all of them are not your direct contacts in your network. Like you're gonna have to go out and so how how are you thinking about doing that?
Jordan Gal:You know what I see right now? I I see the situation where the tech that we wanna build, the service that we wanna build, there are only a handful of competitors because it's very very new category. And those competitors are early stage developer focused like attempts at marketing to these types of companies. So you go to their websites, the websites don't look good and it's like backed by Y Combinator. Like no one in the market even knows what Y Combinator is.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm. So it feels like there's a real mismatch. So I'm I'm pretty focused on like using our, I mean, business savvy, let's call it, to figure out how to get in touch with these with these different markets. Yeah. It is very much what I talked about a few weeks ago where there's the all these really big horizontal solutions and they're getting verticalized.
Jordan Gal:I mean, that that is very literally what we're talking about here. Like, there there's a bunch of cool tech happening in this area. Generally, it's AI voice agents. That's kind of all I'm comfortable saying at this point, but it's it's related to AI, but but speech to text and text to speech. Basically conversational AI.
Jordan Gal:And choosing the right vertical is is kind of maybe not make or break the business but it makes or break the first the first few months. Yeah. Like how receptive, how easily can you get in touch with them. So now it's shifting to I gotta figure out how to get in touch with these people. I I have some ideas but but not easy.
Brian Casel:I think the other interesting thing about this will be how do you sell it in terms of like how do you how do you position the key benefit? And I think that I think what you're saying like the and I'm just glancing at some of these competitors that you were sending me like these YC companies like, I think to me my hunch is that like too many of these tech startups focus on the AI piece of it.
Jordan Gal:Right? Like that's the
Brian Casel:AI in the solution but it doesn't have to be in the h one.
Jordan Gal:Right. Who Who cares?
Brian Casel:And and that might detract from the that that might make it harder to to get customers.
Jordan Gal:Is Right.
Brian Casel:Right. Because these because these customers are offline. They're in the Yes. They're in the real world. Main Street is scared of AI.
Brian Casel:Let's not Right.
Jordan Gal:You know, it doesn't care, worry, like, It's just I think the better
Brian Casel:value proposition is the cost. Like, compare this to the cost of hiring people to man the phones.
Jordan Gal:Right. Or what you're currently doing cost you x. So that is a little
Brian Casel:maybe the stigma of outsourcing call centers overseas. Maybe they don't they don't wanna do that. This is an alternative.
Jordan Gal:That's right. So the that's worrying to a degree. The fact that these people are offline, you gotta go find them, figure out how to do it. But at the same time, if you look at the competition right now, I feel better equipped to do that than like these two kids out of MIT type of a thing. Yep.
Jordan Gal:So it's also an opportunity to be like, no. We're gonna get our hands dirty and figure out like, we work with this this like virtual assistant company called TaskMidians. They're really good. Mhmm. We've used them in the past for like data enrichment.
Jordan Gal:Right? So we give them a list of Salesforce Commerce Cloud merchants and they and they come back to us with contact info, LinkedIn info, phone number, all that.
Brian Casel:I have a BA in India who does that that for me. One Okay. Just one person.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. So I'm that's what I'm thinking like how do I like get my hands dirty? How do I leverage this? How do I look at task minions and get a 100 of each vertical and reach out like what can I do that these two kids from MIT are probably not gonna do?
Brian Casel:Right. I like it. Yes. I I I I was skeptical of the of the SaaS email thing and this one, I'm the opposite. I I'm with you.
Brian Casel:I'm I'm Cool. More excited about this for you.
Jordan Gal:Cool. It was it was a really interesting week of conversations. A lot of it with like friends and a lot of it with just like SaaS founders.
Brian Casel:Yeah. It seems like it It Yeah. It does. But but this direction, without getting too you know, detailed about what you're thinking about building. It seems like the main challenges just got looking at it like are are You you can see how you could overcome them.
Brian Casel:Like, but the main Like, one of them is like like, how ready is Main Street? How ready are they to actually adopt a fully AI solution? You know? And like, they might believe in the benefits. They might get through a sales process but like, are they gonna stumble with the onboarding and the activation and and are they really Are are the people in their office really gonna actually put it into use and
Jordan Gal:Yes.
Brian Casel:There Yes. There's there's that challenge but that can be overcome, you know?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Well, a lot of the marketing is overcoming exactly that. If you assume that your audience is skeptical, then what what do you need to do in that marketing process? They're not looking around for a solution that they don't really know exists but they are interested but very skeptical. So it's like you to address that.
Brian Casel:I think another one would be like just marketing to them. Getting to them is gonna be harder. They're not necessarily online. More more sales, more in person, you know.
Jordan Gal:Yes. And and some of those
Brian Casel:Which is also like Like we we talked about it in a previous pocket like like going for like like a self serve. Yeah. You could get that to a certain extent with with ads and whatnot. But like, I think for this there's gonna be an element of like people on the phone. People going out to conferences, you know.
Jordan Gal:Yes. I agree. And I think that's one of the one of the characteristics that I like the least in terms of like not being able to self serve but it's also like.
Brian Casel:But you're not gonna get everything on the checklist and that's a that's a solvable problem anyway. Yes. That's
Jordan Gal:right. That's right. That's part of the deal. One of the things that I wanna share that I I was I found very helpful in thinking about AI like ideas for businesses. I saw a small like one minute clip of Sam Altman.
Jordan Gal:And the interviewer was asking him how he feels about the criticism that whenever OpenAI comes out with their newest model or a next set of features that it kills off a bunch of startups. And his answer I thought was really important for people in our situation. His answer was that any business that roots against the improvement of LLM models is is not putting themselves in a good spot. So if you are worried that a new feature is gonna come out from OpenAI or or one of these other models that that's gonna kill your business, you're not in a great business. Right.
Jordan Gal:The the best businesses are the ones that are cheerleading and can't wait for the next model because that will make their service more valuable.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I I completely agree with that.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I kinda that was very helpful to be like, we don't wanna get run over by the bulldozer. We wanna be on the bulldozer. We wanna be cheerleading. Keep going, keep going, go faster.
Brian Casel:And just from a realism point of view, like you can't just like operate like, oh, let's hope there's no progress in the world and
Jordan Gal:Right.
Brian Casel:And hope we
Jordan Gal:don't like better. It's definitely
Brian Casel:gonna better. Like it's going to get better. That's why like, you know, I I have these debates with like friends and family like, you know, who are not plugged into the tech. Like, oh, is it is it right or wrong for the world to keep pushing on pushing AI forward? Is that is that good for humanity?
Brian Casel:It's like, look, you could think whatever you wanna think, but it's but it's happening. It's not going to stop. So let's operate in a world where it is moving forward and Yes. You know.
Jordan Gal:And I think one of the things I like around voice is that it is currently not really good enough. Mhmm. You know, it's good but it's you you know you're talking to a machine and that I feel like is the perfect spot to start because you know within a year or two
Brian Casel:better. Indistinguishable. Yes. But it's also like again like about picking the market like, well, let's find the most repeatable, the most predictable use case for this where we where it's okay if it's like, it doesn't it's it's not gonna think and act like a real human and like consult with you but it could do you know.
Jordan Gal:Yes. So that I feel like the neck my job now is to understand who has the highest version of this pain Mhmm. That that we can work with.
Brian Casel:Yep.
Jordan Gal:Yes.
Brian Casel:Sort of a little segue that's sort of related to this find like for me, I'm not like on this like hunt for for product market fit right now. But in a way in a way, I sort of am in in some of the things that I'm working on. So Instrumentl Products is my consultancy and I've had a couple of pretty good consulting projects and engagements happening this year and a couple that are ongoing right now. And I've been learning a few things. So in terms of like dialing in, what is the ideal version of this service both for me and for clients and for growing this as as a business.
Brian Casel:I've talked about like there there have been like two potential services that I can offer to clients that I have offered and and that I have some clients paying for. One is working with established SaaS companies and I'm coming in to do UI and UX. Specifically like redesigning parts of their app or their onboarding or a new feature and then delivering that in Figma and then actually coding it up in like HTML and like tail and CSS and giving them like really dialed in like like nice like mobile responsive refreshed UI and thinking through the UX side of it and the and the business case and then delivering those UI templates to their team or their developers and they can implement them as they build out these features or or redesign a part of their app. That's one service that I've been offering and doing as like an ongoing basis for some established SaaS companies. And then the other is like building entirely new apps from the ground up.
Brian Casel:Like think like, let's go from zero to MVP and you know, and ship a new product as quickly and efficiently as possible. And I'm happy to do both of those things. Either of those things for clients. And when I started this consultancy, was leaning more toward the latter. Like, let's be like an app delivery service.
Brian Casel:Like building your v one.
Jordan Gal:Zero to one. Okay.
Brian Casel:Zero to one. What I'm learning is that that thing is harder to sell or harder to make work in the way that I want it to work. Whereas the UI UX, I think has more promise in terms of a service offering. And if I'm gonna lean more on one or the other, I think I'm leaning more toward selling the UI UX service. And for a few reasons.
Brian Casel:Like number one, I I think like yeah, I'm full stack and I could design and build and ship. But I'm My my strongest thing is the UI UX, the front end. That's where I come from my whole career and and especially now like I'm deep into like tailwind CSS and delivering stuff in that. So that's where I'm best. Like I could actually offer the most value and I'm fastest and most efficient.
Brian Casel:But then I'm I'm I'm also noticing literally like there there's just so many more SaaS companies with that need and budget for that need versus the Yeah. Totally new. Yeah. Totally new. Yeah.
Brian Casel:I have one one app that I'm building with a client right now and that's been a good fit. But most of the proposals that I've sent for building a new app from the ground up, like they were rejected because of a lack of budget. Or they just couldn't make the numbers work because it's a totally new startup idea. They're trying to get an MVP built as cheaply as possible and that's just difficult to make work on a repeated consistent basis. Know, with without offering my services for in exchange for equity for like no cash.
Brian Casel:Like I'm not doing that. So so that's that's why it just seems like a better fit Like more efficient and sorta easier to sell the UI UX thing. It's just been like an interesting learning. I Like I've pivoted this a couple of times as I've been getting in into consulting this this year. Like, I I I thought like I would just be like a full stack app developer with clients and that would be fun to do and good money and Right.
Brian Casel:But the but the reality is like there's just not enough that like check the boxes of like somebody who has good budget available and has a totally new product to start from the ground up and doesn't already have some like developer or something like that. You know, and I'm not looking to like plug in in to an existing app and just you know, code on on something. It's better to just But but I'm finding that there are more SaaS Exit Established SaaS with budgets who sort of lack the designer, talent, front end UI, UX stuff at their disposal and and it's kinda fun to kinda plug in on that, you know?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. That makes sense. It's it's amazing how even new software is not built well or well thought out. Yeah. Because it's so easy to make a mistake.
Jordan Gal:You just build according to what you think makes sense, and then you kinda get trapped into the original framework that you built in and the logic where fit in and how they link to each other. Then next where I've
Brian Casel:been coming in. Like like with with the clients that I've been working with, they've been pretty successful with with like a a back end developer only built app. Like they've gone for years and they built up a customer base and they're profitable and and it's a beautiful bootstrapped business. Right. But it's it's got a lot of UI UX.
Brian Casel:And I've seen this with multiple SaaS companies that I've been working with where it's like, yeah, they've been successful like despite the lack of front end design. But now they're they've grown to a level where it's like, in order to keep keep competing, in order to develop where they wanna go with their product, they need to up their game on the UI UX. And that's that's where it makes sense. And and it's sort of like a no brainer budget wise for someone like me to come in at a fraction of like instead of like hiring a full time salary person, you know. That's been that's been kinda cool.
Brian Casel:It it like right now, I I have have I mean, I'm booked right now. But you know, taking on like two of these consulting things at a time is is good. And balancing that with the YouTube stuff and Clarity Flow and then booking out the rest of the year. I'm thinking about ways to scale this out, you know, beyond beyond just me. But Yeah.
Jordan Gal:I I can't help but see the DesignJoy model becoming more popular all of a sudden. Yeah. I feel like someone from the Bootstrap community Arvind? Is is that his name?
Brian Casel:I don't know.
Jordan Gal:I I feel like he's like doing you know, he's very good at like public building. I feel like he just started a service like this but very very public. Like here's how I'm doing it.
Brian Casel:Yeah. The design joy thing like the productized service where where it's like you get x deliver or you get like quote unquote unlimited deliverables for x dollars a month. Yes. I've always loved that model. And I start and you know, now that I'm sort of leaning more towards like like this isn't the ideal service for me to offer.
Brian Casel:I've been billing it as like, this is my weekly rate for that. And I I like that billing model right now. I don't know if I will go to anything more like productized than what I have now. Mhmm. But I I like the idea of like, I have a weekly rate right now and it's It works for me right now.
Brian Casel:I expect I'll raise it you know, by the end of the year. But but it I like how it works where I could just work with a new Like a new client and say like, alright, here's a two week sprint that we could start with and we can we can do a bunch of stuff in two weeks. And that's my weekly rate. Let's start with that. And then we just continue.
Brian Casel:We can continue indefinitely. We can just do another two weeks. You can you can pause me and then I come back in three months down the road.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Yeah.
Brian Casel:That's another couple sprints.
Jordan Gal:That could be nice. Just If people people underestimate how people underestimate the company's point of view. So for you and I to be like, you know, $2,500 a month for like UI UX stuff, it's a decent amount of money. And people discount from the company's point of view how cheap $2,500 a month is compared to hiring someone full time. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Especially going out looking for someone, them to change their life for your company, and then being worried about well three months now we we may not need their help and then what then I have to fire this person that I just hired?
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:So it's people underestimate the strain on the company side and how that impacts how affordable and attractive that type of pricing is. And by the way, I screwed up it's Arvid and he's doing a software so I must be thinking of someone
Brian Casel:else. Alright. I I you know, I've in my career of doing consulting, I I started out doing consulting and then I did productized services and then SaaS and now I'm back to consulting. And I've and I've experimented with all the pricing models. I I did hourly building billing.
Brian Casel:I did big project quotes. I did productized, you know, pricing. And I'm right now, in what I'm doing now on the consulting stuff, I like the price per week. The the weekly rate. You know?
Brian Casel:It's it's the right mix of here's a number, predictable, simple, and we don't have to get into the weeds of like tracking hour by hour. And I can still say to you, hey, in this week or in this two week sprint, we're gonna ship x y z. Like here's here's a solid list of like, we we can both feel good about like making Here's a list of progress that we When when two weeks is up, that that's gonna be done. And and it's flexible enough to say like, okay. Now, on this list, this thing happens to be big and hairy so it's gonna require a lot more.
Brian Casel:So that's just gonna extend into another week or another week and we can talk about that and like plan for it, you know. It's just it's nice and flexible in that way. It's you know, whereas like the productized model, you have to know like we are always delivering this for this price and as long as like with audience ops, it was like we're always selling articles and as long as you wanna buy that many articles then that works for our pricing. With this it's like, yeah. We've we've got a couple things on the list.
Brian Casel:Let's let's pack it into a two or a four week sprint, know.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. You know what you're gonna get. Cool.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And it's nice and efficient for me. You know, working all async. I like it.
Jordan Gal:Very nice. What else you got going on? I'm I'm ready for the weekend. I'm going to Florida quickly. I was in New York last weekend.
Jordan Gal:That was fun and tiring. Then Florida this weekend, that's gonna be tiring.
Brian Casel:And I
Jordan Gal:get home Monday morning and then and my kitchen is done dude. I will be Oh, that's hoping for Passover in my new kitchen.
Brian Casel:Oh, you're doing it at your place?
Jordan Gal:It's been like four or five months. We're working on a hot plate and an air fryer in in my basement. Oh. And we turned into like a studio apartment down there once it was finished.
Brian Casel:Oh, wow.
Jordan Gal:And now now right after this actually, I'm gonna go down and and move all the kitchen stuff up.
Brian Casel:Very good. We've got the NBA playoffs starting up, the Knicks. I'm pretty excited about that. But the the only other thing, I I feel like it's not gonna be super interesting on this podcast, but I'm I am spending a lot of time and effort on YouTube. And I'm in the I'm in like the early phase of trying to get serious about YouTube.
Brian Casel:And what that means is a lot of experimentation. You know? Mostly on like just trying to publish something new every single week. And Mhmm. Lots of different topics.
Brian Casel:Lots of different formats. Lots of different script techniques. A lot a lot of different ways to position each video. And so there's a lot of variance on the channel right now. And just to see like, alright, this this thing sorta worked and alright, these videos did not work.
Brian Casel:And that's where like I think the the the big learning on YouTube right now is like, yeah, it is about quantity and it's not because we wanna publish a lot of stuff for YouTube. It's more about quantity so that we can learn faster. Like learn learn what's what's working and what's not. And and it's it's also a mix between I I'm trying to get more and more efficient and like amount of time it takes me to write and record and edit and publish a video. I want I want that to be as quick and efficient as possible.
Brian Casel:But at the same time optimize the script, optimize the topic selection, optimize and give it the best chance of doing well on on the algorithm.
Jordan Gal:How do you measure if it's working? Is it just views? Is it amount of time spent and like
Brian Casel:Views and so so views is the thing that you're after. Right. And that's a function of time spent on well, that's a function of like click through rate from your thumbnail.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Thumbnail seems to be a
Brian Casel:and then and then the the the watch time. And so, like, how how long do they stay on your video? And if if those numbers are good, then YouTube is gonna continue to promote your video to algorithm
Jordan Gal:you YouTube are looking at the same thing in terms of what's working.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And and it's, you know, the time spent on video is a function of like how interesting is your video. And and that's also a function of like script writing, frankly, you know. I I feel like there's a lot of debate. And this is a a learning that I've had.
Brian Casel:Like, I've I've published I think like 11 videos this year already. Okay. And the first four or so were highly scripted. Right? Like like literally word like I wrote the whole thing word for word scripted.
Brian Casel:And and then the next like six were not scripted. I just went off bullet points and I just talked to the camera. Okay. Now, it's interesting the trade offs. Right?
Brian Casel:Because the scripted ones did do a lot better views wise. Like, they the the algorithm promoted them more. Like, they got like four or five x the the number of views compared to the next six which did not do very well with with the views. And those were the bullet point talking points. But the scripted ones took me like five times longer to create each video because I had to write it.
Brian Casel:I had a thousand takes of trying to trying to say it. And then I had to edit it all down. Whereas the bullet points, it took me like an hour to just talk and then quickly edit and then Mhmm. Publish. So now, the next batch, I'm trying to do a mix and get the best of both worlds.
Brian Casel:I'm going back to scripted. I just bought a fancy teleprompter.
Brennan Dunn:Okay.
Brian Casel:So I'm I'm doing the scripted thing but instead of having a thousand takes, I'm just gonna read it off the teleprompter so that so that should cut down on the amount of editing that I need to do afterward. And so then it's like I get the the benefits of being able to script the video and guide the viewer and and and create suspense and make you wanna stay until the end and and and really put a lot of quality into the writing without the trade off of like having to spend hours editing it. So that's that's where I'm currently at with it. It's it's still, you know, I'm just packing and experimenting and it hasn't like taken off by any means yet. But I feel like if this is a project that I wanna keep investing in every week for the rest of the year and by the end of the year, it should be it should either grow or it won't and then I'll just give up.
Brian Casel:So that's where I'm at.
Jordan Gal:Cool. Reminds me I I gotta send you a tool I saw that takes the video and helps your eyes look at the camera, but you can read the teleprompter and it alters the video. So you can just read teleprompter, but it makes it look like you're looking at the camera. So you don't worry Yeah. About Cool little
Brian Casel:I haven't done I I have it set up. I haven't like done a recording with it yet, but the idea with the teleprompter is that the camera is like behind the glass. So so I am looking at the at the lens, but I'm breathing it. As possible. So yeah.
Brian Casel:That'll be interesting.
Jordan Gal:Cool. Alright, homie. I'm gonna go set up my new kitchen.
Brian Casel:Yeah. There you go. Cook cook something up tonight.
Jordan Gal:Hell yeah. Alright.
Brian Casel:Good to see you. Alright. Later, folks.
