Product Hunting
Bootstrapped Web. Jordan, what do we got this weekend? It's Mother's Day this weekend. Are you are you prepared?
Jordan Gal:I I put my flower order in. Shout out to someone that I follow on Twitter who wrote it, like, ten days ago. He was just wrote a tweet like, order the flowers now. Just do it now. And I just Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:I just looked at it and was like, I'm gonna forget. I'm ordering the flowers. So I got that.
Brian Casel:Smart move. Smart now.
Jordan Gal:Yep. My wife generally does not want to go out on Mother's Day. She's like too cool for that. You know? So we'll probably we'll we'll we'll make breakfast for her and the kids have a bunch of plans and they like to make crafts and stuff.
Jordan Gal:So I I think we're in good shape.
Brian Casel:It's funny. I'm kind of like the opposite here. Like my wife is a is a is a big plant expert, plant nerd. We've got all sorts She collects like crazy. We've got plants all over the house.
Jordan Gal:No way.
Brian Casel:Oh yeah. Like every room except for This is my room, but every other room is filled with plants. But it makes her She likes flowers but she's not like a big flower person. So so that's not on the menu but we are going out. We're we're doing some wine tasting.
Brian Casel:We're gonna meet up with with my mom as well and and yeah. Should be a good time.
Jordan Gal:Okay. Very nice. Yeah. Fortunately, I have my younger brother who's just kind of on top of everything. So he always orders for my mom.
Jordan Gal:You know, for the three of us, we just send the money. So the the irony is, like, my bit of comedy to start the podcast off was what I'm looking forward to most today is my indoor plant consultation that I have at the local nursery here. Because Yeah. I love plants. And we just got our house redone and the construction, and it's finally done.
Jordan Gal:So now I'm like, get some plants in here. Let's do this.
Brian Casel:Oh, yeah.
Jordan Gal:Yes. So my my wife and I have like this ongoing thing. I always bring a plant. You know, I'm always like the you know what really tie this room together?
Brian Casel:A couple plants. Yep.
Jordan Gal:So I think your your wife and I are on the same wavelength on the
Brian Casel:Oh, yeah. Edition. Oh, mean, she's like next level. Know, I mean, we we have like hundreds of plants around here
Jordan Gal:and it's That's amazing.
Brian Casel:I mean, she's on YouTube. She she orders them like from all over the world and we we go to plant shows and we travel. It's it's it's a whole Yeah.
Jordan Gal:I love it. I am looking for hobbies because so what my therapist says. I have I have these paths that I follow very often. And right now, I feel like I have a business path, and I have, like, a politics news path. And the politics news path makes me upset.
Jordan Gal:Right. So I I need, like, a new path to go down. I need, like, a hobby. I I get into cooking sometimes and I watch videos and I read stuff. So that helps.
Jordan Gal:But I'm always on the lookout. I think it's great.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Lately, I've been I've been finally like picking back up on the music thing and and making some music and writing some some songs and stuff which is has been like a lifelong passion of mine. And I I kinda re put together my my music studio upstairs. I'm kind of excited about that. I feel like sports for me has become like a really big like like hobby obsession sort of thing.
Brian Casel:Especially New York sports, Knicks and Mets. Yeah. It's fun.
Jordan Gal:I I think that's how most people
Brian Casel:use it.
Jordan Gal:It it fills a part of your life that's kind of fun, and you can get into it, and it it's you get educated on it. You become Yeah. Spread in it. You talk to people about it.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I I have found that it that it is it has also replaced a lot of my news politics. I I still I I still have a steady flow of like news and politics stuff. I always have. Mhmm.
Brian Casel:But I have definitely replaced a lot of like my podcasts and news reading with like instead of going to places like, I don't know, like Politico or Axios or one of those, I'm going to like Bleacher Report or you know, Metz Pod and things like that, you know. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:I I I I can understand that. I think that's that's good many ways. I I don't seem to be able to get that into sports. I just don't think about it. So, you know, Sunday comes along in the fall.
Jordan Gal:I don't actually remember that there's football on. I, you know, I just it's disconnected for me. I watch I watch I sit down and I laugh about this with my kids. They're like, this is daddy's hour. This is I get one hour per week to sit on the couch and do nothing.
Jordan Gal:And that's I watch the Premier League highlights. That's about it.
Brian Casel:Nice. Nice.
Jordan Gal:Speaking of hobbies, what I'm holding up right now is things called Neurogum. Clearly, I'm on the search for performance enhancing drugs.
Brian Casel:Okay.
Jordan Gal:I'm one tiny step away from zin just like straight nicotine packets. I think I'm gonna get there. This is this is this is my gateway.
Brian Casel:NeuroGum. And you don't even smoke. Like
Jordan Gal:I don't smoke. I don't I don't think that's the point of ZYN. It's just the nicotine. I don't
Brian Casel:even know what that is.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. So ZYN is this really, you know, very very big product, very very popular. But my understanding of it, I might be completely wrong, my understanding is that it separated out the nicotine from the tobacco. Whereas you smoke a cigarette, like, there are these weird benefits, like, you're sharper. That comes from the nicotine.
Jordan Gal:I really hope I'm not completely talking out of my ass, but I think I have it right. So if you separate it from tobacco and smoke and tarred, all these toxins, you just get that straight nicotine. Turns out that's like a really strong, like, neuro drug.
Brian Casel:People That sort of make yeah. So there's is there caffeine in that too? Like, I'm not sure. Lose little bit
Jordan Gal:of gum would maybe that's why I can barely catch my breath in between words, but there's definitely caffeine and l theanine in in these. And I figured, hey, let me let me try this first before I wander over to a gas station because you can't buy zina on
Pippin Williamson:a ham, son.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I'm still I'm I'm just hardcore on the on the espressos. I just had my second one. I'm good to go. I'm a little jittery at this point.
Brian Casel:Yeah. A little weird. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:It's Friday afternoon. At least you can take this directly to having a beer after work. Exactly.
Brian Casel:I like I cut out beer at home like over a year ago. We we just stopped buying it. But now now that we're it's like nice weather season, it's grilling season
Jordan Gal:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:I was talking to my wife. I was like, we gotta get some beers back in here. I I can't grill and not have a beer in my hand. That's I right.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I hear you. I I I keep a little beer. I I I do the the high noons. They're so it's so slight.
Jordan Gal:It's like it's like half a drink. And then I do these ranch waters. It's like it's basically like High Noon but tequila. And it's like tequila and soda water. Again, like not very strong.
Jordan Gal:And the I don't like wine very much.
Brian Casel:But Yeah. And that's like all we have in the house now is just wine and I'm not a big wine fan.
Jordan Gal:The only way I really enjoy it is red wine chilled. I just find Oh, yeah. Delicious. Yep. So I just keep all red wine in the fridge and that's actually delicious.
Jordan Gal:It's like, I don't I don't know what it does to it or you know, maybe it's psychosomatic or whatever it is but that
Brian Casel:That's why I I usually just drink like white wine because that's what's chilled, you know.
Jordan Gal:Try try the red chilled.
Brian Casel:Interesting.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Well, my father-in-law, his whole career was in the liquor business. But he had this way of just brushing away any of the stupid formality about wine and how snobby it is. He just like he was like, that's all not it's all marketing. Literally, it's
Brian Casel:what we do. Oh, of course.
Jordan Gal:The whole thing is marketing. Yep. So he he he was very
Brian Casel:They don't they just say don't pick a bottle based on the label. I totally pick it based on what label looks cool. Everyone does.
Jordan Gal:It's it's normal. And the price, you're like, this is $18. It must be better than this thing. That's $12. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:So Yeah. Yes. All of us are guilty of that. But he was very good about like basically giving people permission of like this nonsense. This like $20 bottle is unbelievably good.
Jordan Gal:You don't need to go beyond this. Yeah. And one of those things was I was like, John, I like red wine chilled. Is that like not supposed to be like that? Who gives a shit what anyone Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Yes. And now I go to restaurants like, what red wine do you have chilled? And it's always none.
Brian Casel:Yep. Yep. Alright, brother.
Jordan Gal:We can talk some biz.
Brian Casel:Yeah. We got I I don't know about you. I have I feel like this week, I changed my mind on a bunch of things and refocusing.
Jordan Gal:Okay. Speaking of no rules, doing whatever you want.
Brian Casel:Yes. What do you got going? I've got two updates. We can unpack them whenever you want on this episode. The number the the first one is I'm done caring about growing my audience and the the whole YouTube investment of my time and energy, I think I'm just gonna take that suitcase and set it down and take that take that time and energy and invest it in other places.
Brian Casel:That that's number one. The the number two is I'm looking for a new product to start in the near future. So that whole story is starting again.
Jordan Gal:Okay. So Yeah. The the second one feels like it's, you know, relatively connected to Yep. Last week's conversation about you're dividing your time. It looks Yes.
Jordan Gal:Like you wanna devote some of your time instead of audience building toward product building.
Brian Casel:Yes. Yeah. Exactly. I last time, I think I was talking about I have this like pie chart that is my time, that is my week. Roughly 20% of my time goes to Clarity Flow.
Brian Casel:I I would say that that continues to decrease now that Kat is is more and more comfortable and in command of the customer support inbox. That's been really great to see. And also my developer just keeps knocking through her queue. And I'm just everyday I check-in on on the tasks and I delegate some new tasks and and I'll check-in on things but I'm it it's just it's about 20% but I it feels like it's decreasing every week and the MRR continues to just you know inch up very slowly. But that that's gonna do what it's gonna do.
Brian Casel:Then the other big chunk of my week now is consulting and that you know, I do some like UI UX work for some SaaS companies and then the third chunk has been a lot of YouTube work, a lot of content work, a lot of trying to grow my audience again. But I have reversed course on the whole decision to even invest in that. Okay.
Jordan Gal:Can we can we start pulling that thread a little bit or
Brian Casel:around Yeah. I think
Jordan Gal:What's the reasoning?
Brian Casel:I Earlier this year, you know, around the turn of the year is when I made the decision that I'm no longer gonna be focused full time on on one single SaaS product at the end. And part of it was also like, I need to get back to a time when things were working well for me, especially like on the on the income side and the opportunity side. And and a few years back, I had a growing audience and that sort of worked for me. I had the productized course. I had audience ops and I had different opportunities coming my way.
Brian Casel:And and the thinking and I and I think I realize now that this is kind of flawed for me, but the thinking a few months ago was let me re because like let me let me get back into the the business of growing my audience. Sure. And if I can make that work, then eventually good things will happen. And that's basically as far as I as I it could lead to product. It could it could lead to opportunities.
Brian Casel:It could lead to products. It it mainly it's like let's focus on growing an audience so that I have a distribution channel to eventually do more products. But and and I also decided along with that that like the best way to grow an audience in 2024 is through YouTube. So I went deep on video production and YouTube content and learning a lot about that which I'm glad I did. But it started to occur to me like, you know what?
Brian Casel:I don't know why I'm really doing that. Especially the audience that I was trying to grow like through my YouTube channel and whatnot. Like the only content that I really feel comfortable as a authentic creator is around products and entrepreneurship and bootstrapping and Mhmm. And you know, design and development and things like that. And I don't I don't know that like that's the right audience for me.
Brian Casel:Like Yeah. It it could result in leads coming to my consultancy and it does do that. But I don't need that many leads for for the consultancy. I'm already booked out through the through the summer. I I only work with about one or two clients at any given time.
Brian Casel:So Mhmm. I don't need a high volume of that. I I've I've got an okay network that works just fine for that.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. The word-of-mouth channel might might do it. Yeah.
Brian Casel:And and you know, the other thing that I'm starting to really be more aware of for myself at this stage is it's just not healthy for me to to be thinking so much about audience. Like, I'm not changing my mind in terms of like the value of having an audience. Those who have a large audience, all power to you. I mean, it's there's a lot of people who say like, oh, audience doesn't matter. That may or may not be true with SaaS but I think it does give you a huge advantage especially for early, like launching new products.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:You have you have instant reach and and distribution. And I thought that I could build up to something like that. Sure. But yeah. For me, it's just not a healthy use of my time and especially my attention.
Brian Casel:I I just found myself constantly looking at like, how many YouTube views did did this get?
Jordan Gal:By unhealthy, like focusing on wrong things and
Brian Casel:Yeah. It's just it's just like an unhealthy use of my time and attention. I don't I don't feel good when I'm focused on that kind of stuff.
Jordan Gal:Okay.
Brian Casel:And and also the content that I found my that I constantly found myself consuming. I mean, you know, we were just talking about how like sports and politics, but like when it comes to work content Mhmm. I found my feeds constantly filled with stuff about like how to grow a YouTube channel or how to grow your audience or how to grow your newsletter and and and how to how to be a how to build a creator business. I think these are great businesses, but I think for me at this age, at this season of my career, that's not for me. I I I just decided like I don't need to be doing that.
Brian Casel:I think I somehow wrongly convinced myself a few months ago that like I could invest in audience and work on products and then use the audience to feed the products. Yeah. But but what I found was, if I'm working on audience, I don't have any time or energy left to actually work on products. And what I really need to be doing, what what I'm most interested in doing is products. I'm I'm a product person, I'm a product builder, product designer.
Brian Casel:I need to be doing that like five or six days a week and not spend those extra days writing YouTube scripts, shooting, editing videos.
Jordan Gal:If you really enjoyed it Yeah. I think you'd keep doing doing it. So in in many ways, in theory, something can look a certain way. And then when you start doing it, if it if it really doesn't make you happy, it might be that simple. If it makes you
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Unhappy to just focus on it and deal with it, like are you really gonna just do it anyway for a year? I don't think And
Brian Casel:like when it comes to YouTube, I don't think I was great at it, but I don't think I was very bad at it. Like I think I had some chops. I I Like I have I have a background in like music production Right. And and and I think I'm okay like on camera and I could I could speak and I think I'm a good writer when it comes to like writing content, writing scripts. Mhmm.
Brian Casel:So I think I could keep honing that muscle and keep building that up but but I got to the point this week where I'm just like, I don't I don't want like, that's a means to an end and I'm not interested in that end. I'm more interested in just getting to products, You know?
Jordan Gal:You just you just paying attention to yourself. Yeah. I I see it. I feel it myself now where I see what goes on in the ecommerce Shopify universe on Twitter and just am so happy to have nothing to do with it. Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:It it feels like, you know, this area that it would make me happy to try to be out there and grow that audience and put on that front. It just look it feels like exhausting. It works for
Pippin Williamson:the people.
Jordan Gal:Same as you. It's like, it doesn't doesn't mean it's a bad business model or strategy. You just gotta be honest with yourself if you wanna deal with anything.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And you know, I I and it's like, it's I feel like for the first time in years, it's a it's a huge weight that I'm just setting down. I'm not interested in it anymore. You know, I I'll Obviously, I'm I still very much wanna keep doing this podcast, and I'm sure I will have things that I will write. Maybe I'll make a video here or there.
Brian Casel:Maybe I'll do tweets. But it's like, only when I have something to say about something.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. If I
Brian Casel:have if I have an opinion that I think I need to get out or or if I need to share some work, build in public, like, I'll just do that. But it's not You know, I I also found myself the last few months like, oh, every week, every Monday, I have to have a new video in production because I have to be publishing every week. Mhmm. Because that's a train, that that's that's the Like those are the reps that you have to put in if you wanna grow an audience. Sure.
Jordan Gal:Get better
Brian Casel:and grow. And I I just don't like that feeling of urgency. I wanna Like if I if I have something to say, if I'm fired up about something, then I'll share it but that's it. And It's
Jordan Gal:still a very valuable skill set. Just doesn't mean you have to spend 30% of your time doing it.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. And and also just the frustration of like, I don't have any I I feel like I I'm ready to get back into products and there's a lot and we can get into that. I wanna hop over to your stuff but there's just so much research and and exploration that I need to be doing and I feel like that's the better use of that third of my time is research and planning and get back into the game.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. It is it is a funny like process of like spying, researching, digging around, gauging your emotional reaction to the things you're coming across, what looks good but doesn't sound good. What set you know, all these different things to to decide what you're gonna work on for anywhere between six months and
Brian Casel:Could a month. Could be five, ten years. Like, you don't know. Yeah. But the for me, it's always been course correcting.
Brian Casel:Every every new product, every new business that I've ever started, it's always been what what did I learn on the last few ones that that didn't go so well and what what am I gonna correct or change this time around. I've I've got a list of those things that we can get into but Cool. Well What's up with on your end?
Jordan Gal:That's a good transition because Yeah. What we've been talking about lately internally is just how different this approach, this product is to to the previous one to Rally.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:And it's it's course correction but literally like on every single thing. It's like Mhmm. You know, enterprise sales process versus self serve. Like high ticket versus relatively low. It's like very sophisticated audience to nontechnical audience.
Jordan Gal:All all these different things. And it's fun. I don't know which of them will be right, which corrections will be right, which corrections will be wrong, but it does feel like a very different experience.
Brian Casel:Can you yeah. So like what are what's like the top of mind things that you've changed or course corrected most recently?
Jordan Gal:Let's see. Okay. A really big one is is competition. So one of the things that's most exciting is there's just relatively very little competition in these AI categories.
Brian Casel:Interesting.
Jordan Gal:Which is which is different. Right? Think about the web. Right now, we assume, man, this competition everywhere. There are great companies.
Jordan Gal:There are funded companies. There are enterprise companies. Every category you think of has a range of competition. But in the some of these AI categories, the one worth looking at voice, it's it is it's it's not at zero, but it's at the early forming stages of category and an ecosystem.
Brian Casel:How do you Oh, go ahead. How I was actually just reading something yesterday about about categories within AI. Like, do you define what are the big buckets of AI categories? Like, because I know that there is like AI technologies, but like, how do we think of those as product categories at this point?
Jordan Gal:I don't know. I I I do not I cannot claim any expertise other than, you know, a few weeks of research and, like, the beginnings of of a a world view on it. Yeah. But but generally speaking, there seems to be a pretty big separation between the underlying foundational technology and the application layer of that technology. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:So right now, we just have absolutely no interest, plans, or ability to compete at the foundational level.
Brian Casel:No. Yeah. Nobody nobody does.
Jordan Gal:Effectively, no one does. Right? There's OpenAI, there's Facebook with Llama, there's Anthropic, and there are a few
Brian Casel:Google. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Right. So that's like a handful of companies that can invest literally tens of billions of dollars over the next few years. And that that's just a reality.
Brian Casel:Like, you Yeah. You're not gonna Then off of that, I think that there are like okay. So like there's a whole range. It's so there's some big categories and then you break them up into into more niche categories. So
Jordan Gal:like Yes.
Brian Casel:So I feel like one big one would be like like content creation. Like using AI to generate content. Like Right. Another one might be analyzing or like summarizing content or pulling from existing content? Yes.
Brian Casel:And And then like is there I I is there like a third that would be like more like AI based automation of like like Workflows. Yeah. Like like processing lots of data that humans can't do.
Jordan Gal:That that's right. So if if we just like look at one of those. Right? So generative AI, like the creation
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Of or using a a language model to generate new stuff. If you just think about that as a concept, and then you can start to break it up into an infinite number of individual categories and So one of the first things that the Internet did was, woah, this thing can write words, therefore, SEO. Right. Right? So content creation, generative AI products began to proliferate, and now that is a more established category than it was two years ago.
Brian Casel:And then you can break that up into there's like email writing, and there's blog writing, and there's That's right.
Jordan Gal:So so a tiny little subcategory that I came across this week was in the medical field.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:So if you're working with Medicare, you have to fill out forms before Medicare will pay you. Those forms often take an hour plus to fill out. But if the provider could talk into their phone and give the standard information and the language model can then populate the forms, all of a sudden you've taken something that takes an hour that you gotta go home and and do after dinner that you don't get paid for to something you can do on your car when you're driving away from the appointment.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:So like that's tiny random example and that can be applicable to like 10 different industries. So those are all individual categories and individual industries and individual products and then an ecosystem of competitors inside of each one of those. So that's just starting to happen because it's technology that literally wasn't available. And now that it is available, you have a bunch of hungry ambitious entrepreneurs saying, what can I do with this thing? Whose problem can I solve?
Brian Casel:Yeah. See that that's the thing is I'm I'm starting to we'll we'll get back into my stuff in a minute. But like how like, I still I still have trouble with the idea of like, okay, like, yeah, probably AI would be involved in whatever startup I'm doing, but it's not I'm not just like looking for like what can I do with AI? I I I still fundamentally first wanna find like what's the target customer, what's the problem that I'm solving. And then if there's an application for AI, great.
Brian Casel:But like
Jordan Gal:I I hear you. I maybe am a bit more cynical in that. I I think there's a lot of advantage to actually looking at the tech first and saying, what can this new technology, which problem can this solve in such a way that would be unfair to the current solutions on the market? Yeah. Right.
Jordan Gal:So think about what we're doing with voice. We wanna answer the phone for people.
Brian Casel:But so so but like Okay. You know, you you talk about it like technology first, but you're you are still going to the problem first.
Jordan Gal:Sure.
Brian Casel:You're you're saying like, you're identifying like there are businesses that really care about inbound phone calls.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:That's we're we're targeting that. Now now what can we do with AI on that? Like Yes. So I'm I'm still I'm still like a few steps even before you on that. Like, I'm wide open.
Brian Casel:Like, what what types of businesses, what types what are the best problems to be focused on and then then figure out like what can we do with AI there.
Jordan Gal:I I hear you. They're concurrent in some ways. But because the tech is new, it does introduce it introduces a new like cost reality if you're gonna go to the math. Right now our ideal customers have two choices. Their voicemail or a call center.
Jordan Gal:Voicemail perform voicemail is very cheap but performs very poorly. An awful conversion rate of phone call to lead. The alternative is a call center and that performs better but significantly higher on cost. So if you can come in and use tech to just disrupt that calculation entirely, that presents an interesting opportunity where your target customers have a totally new option that was not available to them. And in these individual categories that's happening it's happening all over the place.
Jordan Gal:And I the reason I think that's attractive to entrepreneurs like in in our position is that it gives you a shot at coming in really early into something and it's not gonna be early forever and there will be competition because it's it's almost like self evident. Like of course this is gonna be a category. It performs better and it's cheaper. It doesn't mean call centers are gonna go away entirely but there will be a space for this type of a solution. You get a chance now to come in and establish your brand and your SEO and your name so that as that category grows, you benefit from that growth.
Brian Casel:You know, the other thing I'm that's on my mind, I'm it I think I understand how you think about it, is like go go to market strategy. I feel like that's something that I want to one of those things I wanna correct from earlier businesses is like have a concept of how I intend to get the first customers before I even get into building something. Mhmm. And it seems like you are like you you've identified like like local businesses who who take inbound calls like those are targetable businesses that we can target with ads or outreach. I guess that makes sense.
Brian Casel:I I
Jordan Gal:think And and it's a big potential audience which is really important.
Brian Casel:But yeah.
Jordan Gal:In commerce, I kind of felt very stuck. If we weren't selling in Shopify, the universe of potential customers just felt
Brian Casel:Yeah. Huge volume. Yep. Yep. I've been starting to like, you know, look around and and tool around with these tools for spotting trends.
Brian Casel:Like Okay. You know, like tracking trends and and and market growth and and there are some tools that like analyze Reddit for people who are voicing pain points for potential products and things like that. I'm starting to like look at these and there are these tools that claim to to to find search keywords that have high volume and low competition and the more I click into these things, it's like nothing has low competition anymore. Like everything is but like and and also I question how how real SEO is anymore. Like
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Interesting you say that because I I'm I'm convinced that we should be investing in SEO for this significantly more than for Rally.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I mean, I I I think that's right. And I think there there's I think that's still true for any any new startup. But So I'm I'm kinda like circling around like, do I do I look for product ideas that have natural inbound demand that we can win with with search or and or products that like, at least I can identify the target buyers so that we can target them with cold outreach or ads or both. And and and I think at the end of the day, like, you have to be okay with like choosing products and product categories where there is some competition.
Brian Casel:Yeah. In AI, there might be It might be fewer than than others, but like, there there is gonna be 10 plus other SaaS
Jordan Gal:Absolutely.
Brian Casel:Out there. You're not gonna find something that like just hasn't been done before.
Jordan Gal:If you are, then the problem might not be as you
Brian Casel:want it to be. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. How are you doing with with that?
Brian Casel:Like like outreach or like talking to potential first users? Because I because you're completely shifting your target customer.
Jordan Gal:Right? Yeah. It's it's kind of a trip. It's it's a lot of fun because it feels it feels exciting to learn about new problems and new people and new markets. It has not been difficult to find people to talk to.
Brian Casel:Really? So so Like like potential actual customers.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. It's almost like one degree away from potential customers. Like, for example, this week, I got introduced to the founder of a company that powers software for moving companies. Mhmm. So I'm I'm talking to him about how he reaches moving companies.
Jordan Gal:Do they have this problem? So it's it's once removed. What it has convinced me this is kind of an interesting experience. Okay. So I talked to this founder, and I talked to another founder in a similar space with like software for another vertical.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm. And they both had the same reaction. They both had this very, not envious, greed, this like very excited like, yo, you're on to something. You know, it was almost like this like founder to founder like, oh, I think, you know, you you you got something cooking here.
Brian Casel:Yep.
Jordan Gal:And what it made me feel was that it's very possible that that person in that position selling software to moving companies, they might be ahead of the curve on our type of a product than their customer, our end customers are. Because they're in tech, they're software people, they're they see what's going on, they feel a sense of inevitability much more so than their customer cares about.
Brian Casel:That would be my biggest concern with almost any like, that's the thing that I'm I'm still currently like kinda hung up on as I'm starting to I'm just starting to look around for potential ideas. Mhmm. Like what you were just describing, founder to founder, other founders getting excited about your I I've had that with every single one of the businesses that I've done before.
Jordan Gal:Yeah.
Brian Casel:It's I I've had I've had way too much like positive reinforcement from other founders, but then when I'm getting to direct customers, like that's that's where it just becomes a lot more challenging. I wanna see so much more proof or or like evidence that I can reach and then and that that there is like active demand for the problem to be solved. That's what I'm sort of looking for. And I'm I'm trying to find the best like patterns or frameworks to to think about these days.
Jordan Gal:You know, I I think there's there's a pretty significant difference in in our approach to what will make sense for you because our bet is that the demand today is not strong, but it in twelve months, it will be very strong. And to to make that kind of a bet, you basically just have to be willing to just eat shit aka burn $2,000,000 over the next year and just
Brian Casel:Yeah. I don't like the sound of
Jordan Gal:do that with that. Yeah. But we're we're taking the big swing bet in that
Brian Casel:But mean, but but but I mean, like, even so, like, if there's evidence of, like, small businesses are hiring solutions to handle sales, and those solutions can be anything. They're like like, maybe they're hiring salespeople like crazy. Maybe they're hiring virtual like like chat or like call centers like crazy. Like Okay. That's still proven demand that like Okay.
Brian Casel:That people are actively hiring solutions for.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:If you just insert yourself into the into that category, your your solution might be a little bit better because it's AI driven. Yeah. But the but the demand is already there. There's still transactions happening.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Yeah. It's it's it's tricky. It's tricky because a lot of problems have current solutions and you can see how you can convince yourself that you're gonna be better than that solution, but that doesn't mean people are gonna change their behavior and change what they've been doing for the past twenty years. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. There's there's just risk there for sure.
Brian Casel:Yeah, man.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. For for me, this next two weeks is entirely focused on get something up on the web.
Brian Casel:Alright. So we're building a
Jordan Gal:new website with new pages and copywriting and it's kinda I find that to be difficult.
Brian Casel:Yeah. So where are you at in that process? Who are you working with? What's your step one?
Jordan Gal:So we have so I have been debating step one. I think this is a bit of like a philosophical, you know, question on do you launch ugly or do you launch more polished? And I think I want something in between the two. I I don't think launching super ugly makes sense. When I look around at our competitors, it feels very much tech tech driven.
Jordan Gal:So, you know, two people from MIT get money from Y Combinator and launch a website and it looks like it feels like it's for technical people. And we wanna go right to the end customer and make it really easy for them to onboard. And that's like an opportunity for us to come out with a better looking brand, with better looking positioning, and so on. So I don't wanna launch ugly. I I want to leapfrog when it comes to the positioning and the marketing.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I don't think anything has to be I think making it not ugly is sort of easy.
Jordan Gal:I I agree. I agree. So we have two designers that we work with. So that's the plan. Right now, have a Google Doc and it's literally hero section.
Jordan Gal:Right? Headline, sub headline, CTA, image is gonna be a video of us showing off the the product. We we got some phone numbers now. So I'm I can call and play around and see different implementations
Brian Casel:Oh, that's cool.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. It's fun. It's fun. Nice. We we're doing like a bake off between two infrastructure providers.
Jordan Gal:I don't know what you wanna call them but like the main tech that we're gonna build on.
Brian Casel:You mean like like like two developers are working on like two versions of the of the thing, see which one works better?
Jordan Gal:We have two services that we're using and we're we signed like a one month pilot with both. And we're doing everything side by side with all the same settings, all the same voices, with the same language models, with the same transcriber.
Brian Casel:Oh, interesting.
Jordan Gal:And being able to compare. Because we we've had a big debate internally. This is what I think I talked about last week that Rock and I were fighting. Because I want us to go in very unbiased, which is very difficult cause you just everyone comes in with their own bias. Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:So the next month on the tech side is a bake off. Almost like, let's see which one wins and and really not which one wins, which one are which ones our developers think is and like You asked all these different things. The support, the responsiveness, is it open source versus hosted, like all these different questions to understand what's right for us. I like that. And on the marketing side, it's or it gets something up on the web and then start the SEO and then I don't know if you saw me on Twitter.
Jordan Gal:Dot.. Customers. Yeah. Profit. So what I did I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna do two things at the same time.
Jordan Gal:And the what's in my mind is that we're searching for one channel. Mhmm. And so we're just gonna experiment with a few channels and then as soon as one shows promise, I'm gonna drop the other channels. Yeah. SEO feels like a relatively passive channel.
Jordan Gal:Right? It's basically just send someone money every month and they get you backlinks. Cool. The direct outbound, what I did is I went to Twitter and I said, how do I get lists of local businesses like this? And then someone who listens to the pod or one of my follow someone basically raised their hand was and was like, I scrape sites for a living.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:And I have a list of Angie's list, and I have 285,000 businesses for you. And I was like
Brian Casel:Nice. You
Jordan Gal:know, done. Tell me where to send the money.
Brian Casel:That's something that I've been thinking a lot about too. Because like I I I spent so much time developing that playbook for Clarity Flow. We do that. We like we scrape and we send emails. Mhmm.
Brian Casel:And and so now like we have that down as a playbook and I'm like, what can what other industries can I apply that to? Know?
Jordan Gal:Yes. So that's the that's one direction, the direct outbound and I think I think partners are gonna be the thing for us. That that same dynamic that we talked about where the guy from the moving company software is more aware of technology and of what's available, having that company introduce our product to their end customers is basically top down. And so even if those end customers are not aware, if we try to make them aware, that's one version. That's basically the outbound.
Jordan Gal:Let's see if that works. The other version is what if their service provider, the person that they're running their business on, introduces them to this new tech? Do they view it differently? Are they more likely to do it? Should we do a reseller agreement?
Jordan Gal:Is there an affiliate component with a rev share? Is it white labeled? Like, I don't know what that is, but those are like the different forms of the channel Mhmm. That I'm looking for.
Brian Casel:Nice. I feel like that's always been your strength when it comes to go to market. It's like these integrations, these these these partnerships. I've never made that work for whatever reason. I I just feel like there's too many moving parts and it's too too much of relying on other people to sell and they have their own interests which aren't always aligned with with mine and I can't just depend on them to sell the product.
Brian Casel:But
Jordan Gal:Yes.
Brian Casel:That I feel like that's a limitation of mine that I've that I wish I didn't have but I that's been my reality.
Jordan Gal:It might be situational because I I think generally speaking, it doesn't work very well for early stage companies. Yeah. It worked really well for us at Cardhook. I think maybe it works well for me because I am good at understanding the other person's incentive.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:And how to position it. Maybe I'm so selfish and self interested that I can be aware of the other person's self interest and I understand their point of view because I just assume everyone is extremely self interested and selfish.
Brian Casel:Mean, it's
Jordan Gal:true. That's I think maybe that's how I go into it. So I'm like, mister moving company software, this is how it's gonna help you.
Brian Casel:Mhmm. Maybe It's gotta be a win
Jordan Gal:I hope it'll work. In general, this thing one of the things about AI is it is a bit of a non technical founder's dream. Because the tech is magical and matters less.
Brian Casel:Yeah. It matters less. You're approaching a company that is not tech heavy, not not tech focused, and you're yeah. You're coming in with a with a sort of a magic solution that can superpower their their thing. Yes.
Brian Casel:Yeah. For sure.
Jordan Gal:Cool. Alright. We gotta talk about number two on
Brian Casel:your You know, we we talked about this a few weeks ago. Like the criteria that that you went through or like which boxes does a does a new product idea need to check. And I'm starting, just starting to revisit that for myself. And again, a lot of this is like learning from my past mistakes or past challenges that I've had with other businesses. I've got the beginnings of this list here and the way that I start to think about key criteria is mapping them to metrics.
Brian Casel:Right? So Okay. So like, for for a SaaS to work really well, you've gotta be able to prevent churn. And it's gotta like inherently have that like churn prevention thing going on. And and we talked about the idea of like set it and forget it.
Brian Casel:Yep. Like a tool that that you can sell, plug in and they're getting value today and they're getting value long term even during the times where they're not actively touching the tool or using it. It's just And and it It's like actually really costly for them to stop using the tool. I I feel like that's a big Like it doesn't have to be completely set it and forget it, like, never look at the tool. Although, that's like the dream.
Brian Casel:But like, there are different there are different degrees of this, you know? Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:Right. Product management tool, people logging in every day, moving things around, checking off boxes, adding things, different level of
Brian Casel:Very very active like that you have to be actively using using it. Otherwise And once you stop actively using it, it's like, why am I paying for this? Easy to easy to drop, you know, too easy to churn. And I look back at some of my past products and I going all the way back, like Restaurant Engine, I think was probably one of the best ones that I've had in that category because it was hosted. Like we were hosting their website and we had low churn I feel like hosting providers of any form, whether it's website hosting or podcast hosting or things like that, you right out of the gate, you have that advantage because if you Yeah.
Brian Casel:Like, even right now, I pay I pay for two different podcast hosting platforms because I have a couple of podcasts and I'm not even actively posting to them. But I don't want them to go offline. So I'm gonna keep going.
Jordan Gal:You know? When you go out of business. Yeah. When you quit, look, that's it. Then you turn off.
Brian Casel:Yeah. So that's one that I have in mind. Like, I I don't know what form that's gonna take. Like, even looking looking back on Restaurant Engine, I I had I was selling the website hosting and the website design. We were providing their whole website.
Brian Casel:And then eventually, restaurants started to ask for online ordering. Right? And what I did back then, looking back on this, I think this was a missed opportunity. I just partnered with an online ordering company and I resold their online ordering solution to my customers and just so that I can check that really big for my customers but I I didn't make a lot of money on it and it was somebody else's SaaS. What I should have done was I should have built one of the early online ordering services or some some solution for that.
Pippin Williamson:Okay.
Brian Casel:That was back in like 2012, you know. So I And that was when online ordering was just being So I'm I'm not going after restaurants this time, like definitely not, but that sort of thing, like like maybe one angle at this, I I don't this is just an idea. I don't know. But as as like an example, maybe the angle is like website hosting and something else that gets close to the dollar. Whether it's like how they how they make sales or how they do invoicing or like some other tool that's like we Like come for the website, stay for the really high value thing.
Brian Casel:Mhmm. You know, that that's just one mental model to to think about. Alright. So like going down the list of criteria, the next thing and this is a big one that I haven't thought so much about in previous tools. I'm thinking a lot about it now, and that is the path to activation.
Brian Casel:There has to be just one way to use the tool. Buy the tool, set like onboard, like step one, click this button. Step two, do that. Step three, go. You're you're up you're you're good to go.
Brian Casel:Like Okay. No. I I wanna eliminate the the situation which which I've had with like almost all my businesses which is like, oh, this customer has these needs so you can you can use our product this way. Oh, and that customer has those needs so you can do use our product in a different way and we've got these features that are good for some customers, but these features are good for other customers. Like, no.
Brian Casel:None of that. None of this if this then that stuff. Just simple, does one like like solves one problem and and you only use it to solve one problem and there's only way that you can possibly use it, you you use it this way. You you follow our guides or you you you click our one two three and you're in. And like that is the path to activation, I think.
Brian Casel:Con converting So so if the first one was about preventing churn, the next one is about conversion. Like taking trial users and converting them because the path to activation is so clear, you know.
Jordan Gal:Okay. So I I thought at first that you were talking about like onboarding risk.
Brian Casel:Yeah. That is sort of what
Jordan Gal:I'm talking about. Right. In in some ways but it it sound like you went more into positioning of the product than what it what problem it solves
Brian Casel:and That for too. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:So that that whole line of thinking of, you have this problem, you wanna solve it in this way, you come online, you come on board,
Brian Casel:and it's But even like even Clarity Flow has niched down to the point where it's like we're we're selling to coaches and we're selling to coaches who really care about embracing asynchronous. Right? So yes, that's focused. But once they're in, there's still a lot of there's still a lot of branching of use cases. Right?
Brian Casel:Like we have a lot of coaches who really care about our courses features. But then a lot of coaches who don't care about that at all and they just care about the one to one async stuff. And then we have other coaches who care about selling products through our commerce thing, but other coaches who don't. So it's like we we can't just drive you down one path when you're on board that, you know. Yeah.
Brian Casel:So like making that just you're you're funneling through one path that I think that's an important one. Another one that I have here, and this goes to what you were talking about like with your website. Whatever the thing ends like, starting with a really compelling h one headline. Like, as I'm evaluating different product ideas and different cat product categories to go after, I wanna be thinking from from day zero, like, ultimately, what's the h one gonna be? Like, it has to be a super compelling and super simple, like, oh, that is valuable.
Jordan Gal:Like, you wanna be able to just nail exactly
Brian Casel:Like
Jordan Gal:the benefit that you're
Brian Casel:yeah. Like, I don't have to have the exact words down from day one but the if if the h one is gonna be like, cut your hiring cost by 60%.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm. Yeah. Like ours is never miss another sales call.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Exactly. Like start with something like that. Like, I don't know. Like like double your conversion rate or or reduce churn by 200% because
Jordan Gal:And and and how does that help you? Is it just like clarity of what the problem is, what the solution is, what the promise you wanna is?
Brian Casel:Clarity and and the the problem is so painful or like it would be so valuable if if this problem was if this metric was was improved in some way. I don't know if it's like literally like a a numeric like percentage like we will double this or or half that or whatever it is but like something that's just so clear. You know, it it can't just be like, this is a nicer way to do stuff or like Okay. You could do this or you can do that or or or for different use cases, we're gonna have different h ones like no. Like just one h Everything
Jordan Gal:you need to run your coaching business is is a difficult Exactly. Thing to get across and nail and bring people in with.
Brian Casel:Yeah. It it sort of works with the thing I was talking about earlier. It's like, you you use it to solve one problem in one way and you're sold on that from the h one from day one, you know. Again, like, I'm going into this like I'm wide open. I have no idea Yeah.
Brian Casel:Yeah. What product it's gonna be but I feel like it it has to have all these things or or, you know, most of them. I I guess the last one that I have right now, there's gonna be more as I as I think more about this but, know, you were just talking about it too. Like, something with high volume, like a like a category, a a market, an industry vertical where it's just so huge that we can even find like sub niches to get into. I It it it does need to be niched down.
Brian Casel:Yeah. But like like easy to target, easy to reach knowing exactly who the customer is. Like I said, like we have a playbook for like scraping lots of contacts off of the internet, off of LinkedIn, off of websites and and if I can find a market where there I can clearly point to lots and like thousands and thousands of contacts that I know that we can scrape and those are the people who would buy this type of solution, then Mhmm. That's an interesting thing to me.
Jordan Gal:I I I like that. I remember feeling very frustrated that the people we needed to reach to sell to, you know, an ecommerce checkout, they were hidden behind multiple layers.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:They were Yeah. You could find them on LinkedIn, but you weren't sure if they were the person or someone else in the organization was the right person. They were so inundated that they wouldn't respond to anything. And if you try too hard, then you would fall out of favor. It was like this game of, like, how do I get these people to respond?
Jordan Gal:How do they how do I find them to begin with? And then how do I call them out of their basically, out of their bubble of, like, responsibility? Like, they've already got a bunch of stuff to do. Yeah. I'm really hoping that this the nature of the right.
Jordan Gal:The linkage between you literally want your phone number published as much as possible because you want phone calls Right. And the solution is directly connected to that. I'm hoping that that makes it easier to reach people and deliver the message.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I I like that that you could target that, like, that smoke signal of, like, these are targetable people. You know?
Jordan Gal:Right. There there is, an obvious you know, it's, like, kinda begging for us to just call them with our AI.
Brian Casel:I was literally just thinking that. Like if you could have the salesperson be AI. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I don't know if we'll do that.
Brian Casel:Should do that. I I want to throw out here again, you know, I've I've been open to it for for years throughout my career, but I've been a solo founder for everything. I just wanna throw out like I am open to the idea of partnering with someone. I'm I'm operating under the assumption that I I'll just continue to be solo because I just haven't had a good opportunity to partners with someone. But if if I were to partner with someone, it would be great if I had someone who was focused on the marketing and distribution side of things, so that I can focus on the product side of things.
Brian Casel:I like talking to customers and doing the customer research and development and jobs to be done and tying that back into product, but the distribution and marketing and top of funnel and growth has always been my weak side of of the startup stack. And Mhmm. And the product side, the full stack design development job to be done. Like that's that's where I wanna be. When I come into this office and sit at this desk, like that's what I wanna be working on every single day.
Brian Casel:And and if I had someone who And like a a partner who would be ID I have no idea who this would be if if I would ever find someone like that. But like it's The ideal is like someone who is already well connected to some industry or like has an inroad or has has an audience or has a distribution channel and is looking for a next thing to to invest in. I mean, that's that's the ideal. I'm I'm assuming that I'm I am gonna be solo on this so so I'll I'll have to do it all just like I usually do but like it would be great if if if if that came along, you know.
Jordan Gal:I have I have someone in mind that we need to take offline.
Brian Casel:Oh, okay.
Pippin Williamson:I do.
Brian Casel:Well, there we go.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. The this one of the things one of the channels that we want to explore is BPO, business process outsourcing. Basically, resellers. Yep. So it that is almost like a like a marketing cofounder in some ways.
Jordan Gal:It's financial nature and not, you know, equity and ownership in nature, but it's pretty similar.
Brian Casel:Interesting. Yeah. I I remember being in touch with a bunch of people like that when I was doing process kit. There there were quite a few of these like BPO consultants who were interested in using process kit with their clients. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:I have felt a a surprising level of interest around AI products because they want to introduce new things to their base. And they, you know, they're not gonna touch that tech. They're not gonna go build an AI product. Yep. Regardless of what how difficult it is or not, they see it as this impossible, like, magic thing.
Jordan Gal:Like, there's no way a BPO is gonna go off and build their own AI product.
Brian Casel:Yep.
Jordan Gal:But they want introduced so there's a bit of demand there.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I mean, you know, I'm also going into this like so wide open and doing it on new terms this time, like really like low urgency. Like I've I've got my income and work covered with consulting and stuff, I could take as long as I want with this. But, know, I'm also just like looking back through the list of of product that I worked on in the past and like like with with a fresh set of eyes, like how would I do this differently or how would how would I do that same idea again but a little bit differently. Like I said, even even going all the way back to restaurant engine like some sort of hosting solution but you know, there there have been other SaaS attempts.
Brian Casel:I I I wouldn't do like process kit again in in its form but like I I did a thing called Sunrise KPI. I've been thinking about an an a new iteration of that. You know, different ideas. I I don't wanna just like jump into an idea because I liked it. I I still wanna do this like market research and and you know, hit that criteria that I was talking about first.
Brian Casel:But yeah. I'm just kinda kinda like, it it's kinda fun and scary at the same time to be like wide open to to whatever. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:It's it's a crazy moment. But over the next few weeks, I'm sure you'll start to willow it down into certain things that you are genuinely interested.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:But it makes sense to start wide. I mean, I remember I literally went to like product hunt,
Brian Casel:you know. I'm a lot of that right now. I'm I'm I'm doing these like product sites. I'm I'm also just like looking at these like little tools for tracking trends and like, there are all these like like, I don't know, like business idea finder tools Sure. Like 99% crap.
Brian Casel:But it's like, oh, that's that's a concept I hadn't thought about before.
Jordan Gal:Alright. Well, it's Friday. It's sunny here. Cool. I don't know what I got going on this weekend but not too much.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I've got a I some chilling and then some wine tasting. Should be fun.
Jordan Gal:Oh, that sounds nice. Well, right now, I gotta get to my plant consultation. So very serious.
Brian Casel:I've got a game three of the Knicks Patriots series tonight. The starting to build. There's there's just a few more few more hours tonight. Alright. Thanks for listening.
Brian Casel:Later, folks.
