Hey, Rosie
Hello. It is Bootstrapped Web. It's Friday, June 14. Here we are. So House.
Brian Casel:That's right. Rosie. Hey. Alright. Now, I'm getting it wrong.
Brian Casel:It's it's Hello Rosie. Right? Hey Rosie. Sorry. Yes.
Brian Casel:That's right. Hello Rosie.
Jordan Gal:I did get Hello Rosie and Hi Rosie and some other stuff.
Brian Casel:Okay. The so the name is Rosie. The the domain is heyrosie.com.
Jordan Gal:Yes. .Com. Yeah. Didn't wanna stick AI in there. Maybe, I don't know if regret is the right word, but I kinda want the AI in there also.
Jordan Gal:We'll we'll see how things go on the domain.
Brian Casel:No. I like this. Most definitely. I I think your current form is my favorite form of all the options. The with heyrosy.com.
Brian Casel:You don't need like Yes. The dot ai or any of that.
Jordan Gal:Well, if we were selling to tech companies, I feel like Yeah. The AI would make sense, but we are not. We're selling to the end consumer. It's b to b, but it's still the end consumer. They don't care about the tech.
Jordan Gal:So we're going.com.
Brian Casel:Yep. Yep. It's been
Jordan Gal:a long This week has felt like three weeks. It was so long. But man, felt great to hit publish. Hallelujah.
Brian Casel:Yeah. So I saw your You know, we all saw your tweet. That that was really well written. I thought it was like positioned really well.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Want to talk about the problem. You know? Yeah. What are we solving?
Jordan Gal:And not not linger on the tech too much other than basically say, we want new tech and we wanna keep it dead simple.
Brian Casel:Right. Right. That's that's
Jordan Gal:the goal. The goal is don't care about the tech. And I would say so far that response has worked when it comes to, you know, people interested in the product. Yeah. The tweet got more love than I expected, which is awesome.
Jordan Gal:I got a bunch of likes and a bunch of responses and you know, some fun stuff people listen to the pod friends that sort of thing.
Brian Casel:Sure.
Jordan Gal:And then submit really interesting DMs. I think, you know, I gotta love the DMs. I like what Elon's doing. I like the like button. I I I like this like feeling of freedom on Twitter.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I don't really understand that one actually. We can talk about that too.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I I am a huge fan. It's probably
Brian Casel:what the difference is. It's not It doesn't seem like as big a deal to me as most people think it is. Okay. So maybe I'm missing something.
Jordan Gal:My assumption is you're not quite as deep in war Twitter as I am because my country is at war.
Brian Casel:Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sure.
Jordan Gal:So what happens is when you wanna show support, sometimes you are emotional in that support and you like things that maybe a year from today, you would prefer people not see that you liked.
Brian Casel:Yeah. But how would they see that you liked it?
Jordan Gal:Oh, you just go to the profile and hit the likes tab and you see everything the person likes.
Brian Casel:But like do people do that? Who does that?
Jordan Gal:People who wanna cancel other people do that. Yeah. Yep. Yep. On on both sides.
Brian Casel:I mean, I I could totally see if I were if if we were like celebrities that, you know, and and that that maybe maybe that's why like Elon cares so much about it but like that's something I never think about. I don't think about who's checking
Jordan Gal:person. Pete. Most people don't but but activists and people who wanna police what people are saying and they try to use it against them based on where they work. So they're they're among people who are involved in more controversial topics on Twitter, there is a an element of self censorship. Even if you wanna support something, you know that hitting like effectively puts it on your Twitter record.
Jordan Gal:And maybe right now in the moment, you're okay with that, but maybe six months from today or two years from today or five years today, you're less okay with it. And so there's just a little removal of this of this little bit of internal mental friction.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And I mean I like that. Know, and I think I've I've tried to make an effort to like more things that I actually personally like across all different topics. It's just It's it's become a habit for me and I don't even think about who's seeing my likes. Yeah.
Brian Casel:It's also like it doesn't even matter because I never look at the for you tab. I'm I'm all about the the following tab. I I want no algorithm. I just want the out the the chronological
Jordan Gal:My guess You know. Is that you are My guess would be that you're in the minority. And if minority, you will be very soon.
Brian Casel:Well, I think that a lot of I think a lot of us tech folks tend to I'm guessing tend to prefer the following tab and not the for you tab immediately. You
Jordan Gal:As soon as they came out, was like, let me see how this thing is. And it's it's it's good and then obviously the more you like things, the better it gets.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I get that.
Jordan Gal:You'll be there very soon. It's too good.
Brian Casel:I feel No. Well, I mean, I I think I used to be on the four u tab for for a long time and then I sort of got annoyed with it because it's Yeah. Like you know, it it plays into all your all your worst addictions when it comes to you know, social media. And I I didn't really like that. And I I do like the how the following tab is sort of like boring in a way.
Brian Casel:Yes. You know, like it's it it it does factor on like, alright, I've I've seen enough for now. I'll I'll check it again later on, you know.
Jordan Gal:Yes. Yes. It it turns down the temperature a little bit.
Brian Casel:I also found that like by sticking to the following tab, I am more intentional about literally the people who I'm actually following and a few people who I mute. Like, because if if you're watching the four u tab, I noted I used to be on the four u, maybe this was like a year or two ago. And I noticed that like, I'm I keep seeing the same small handful of people in my Just
Jordan Gal:I mute and block relentlessly.
Brian Casel:But like, by by staying in the following tab, I see everyone's tweets. But if I don't like it, then I'll just unfollow and I'll it's like a reminder of like, you don't belong in my feed.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. You know? Yes. I control that. I hear you in that.
Jordan Gal:I I think that's what the the following tab is for. The issue around that is that you are very limited in your discoverability of new people.
Brian Casel:Sure. That's Yeah. That's probably true.
Jordan Gal:It's just trade off. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, where were we? Yeah.
Jordan Gal:The tweet that it's it's exactly as you would expect. Friends reach out, say, you know, awesome congrats, you know, go for it. People reach out about, hey, I was thinking about building a competitor, maybe I could white label, you know, what what that's the
Brian Casel:one that yeah. Oh, we see. Oh,
Jordan Gal:sure. Like and and I respect that. Absolutely. You know Yeah. Solo founder bootstrapper like, yo, how do I shortcut?
Jordan Gal:Hell yeah. Some people digging around for what tech we're using, of course. Mhmm. And then of course, you know, couple of couple of big name VCs. Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:And when I said that to a few people on the team, they were like, oh, that's awesome. We're getting interest already. And I was like, no. No. No.
Jordan Gal:No. No. That that's not it. It's that AI is so competitive that the only reasonable thing to do if you're a hardworking VC is reach out and make sure everyone knows you as soon as they launch so you can build up a relationship. Because if you happen to be one of those companies that takes off like some companies are taking off, you need to be involved in that.
Jordan Gal:That that's literally your job as a VC. So I said that is more of a reflection of how competitive VC AI is right now
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Than than us. Give us some time. We'll get some traction then we'll say, oh, it's us. That's why they're reaching out. Right now, it's more of a market dynamic.
Brian Casel:Okay. So like, I I I have so many questions to unpack with the with with the revealing of of of Hey Rosie. So what what went into the actual launch? We we saw the tweet. Was it basically just the tweet or or was it like other other activity to to get the name out there, the website out there?
Jordan Gal:So what we did was we put together a thirty day plan. First thirty days from the time the website launches. What are we doing in the first thirty days? The launch of the website really kinda kicks off a lot of those plans. A lot of those plans are dependent on a website.
Jordan Gal:Even like the SEO agency that I hired is like, cool story, you know, we we something yes. On So so we didn't put a it's not the type of launch that we're like you know, if you're launching like a consumer credit card product and you want 10,000 people on your waiting list, That's a different form of launch with PR, with ads, with building up all this energy around it. It's not that.
Brian Casel:I think that it I feel like there's like two launches in in terms of how we tend to work. There's there's one launch which is this one just like announcing to our peers like this is what we're working on now.
Jordan Gal:Yep. Yep.
Brian Casel:And then there's the actual launch to customers.
Jordan Gal:That's right. And this was this was a little bit of both, but Yeah. If you're going on Twitter and saying it, you're not, at least my assumption was that we're not going for our ideal customers. They're not really following me on Twitter.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Right. Our peers are, partners are, some service providers. One dude in my DMs right now was like, hey, who are you using for, you know, this part of the stack? I go look at his service and I was like, holy shit. That's really impressive.
Jordan Gal:So there's some partner stuff. Few agencies that have the same end customer. Right? Like that's kind of an ideal, hey, we do marketing for home service companies. Let's introduce this to our 50 clients kind of thing.
Jordan Gal:Like that type of thing is perfect for a tweet. Like as an end result of a tweet, that's ideal.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Sure.
Jordan Gal:A little bit of investor stuff just because I've raised money before and there are investors in the orbit and so just kinda letting them know. I've got I got a few calls next week with some really good investors that I've spoken to and why why not build the relationships? I I think that makes And then we we have we have some people on on the newsletter and that was like a last minute thing. Like, should we just add a newsletter thing to the footer? Sure.
Jordan Gal:Very happy we did that. And and we've got, you know, we've got demos. I did two three demos yesterday and
Brian Casel:that that's the most interesting thing to me. So who is booking the demos? Who are these people?
Jordan Gal:Okay. So so that it's actually a very interesting experience.
Brian Casel:With currently, your your button get started points to a calendar booking.
Jordan Gal:Yes. And I'm happy to share a lot of this stuff because you know, I'm thinking a lot about the funnel and how to do it and what to do it and why. So launching the website right now is before the product is ready. So we're doing demos because we wanna learn. We don't have the ability to take on accounts just yet.
Brian Casel:Yep.
Jordan Gal:It's it's actually pretty close. Things have gone very fast. If, you know, if I'm being honest, I'm really happy with the team and our progress overall. We'll be ready in a few weeks to take on accounts so it makes sense. Let's start talking to people now getting feedback and it was really interesting to hear and feel people's reaction on a demo.
Jordan Gal:So we had two And
Brian Casel:the demo is with you?
Jordan Gal:Demos with me and and I got nothing bro. I I got a call. I can call Rosie on the phone and that's the demo demo. That's like, hey, this is how it actually works. But I'm not showing I I have some screenshots but I'm not showing an admin.
Jordan Gal:I'm just having a conversation.
Brian Casel:Sure.
Jordan Gal:Yep. So so two of the people were not ideal customer, but the way they were leaning in was like, not that I don't care that this isn't built for me, but I want this value. How do I get it?
Brian Casel:So like can you share like who what kind of businesses they are? Like who are they?
Jordan Gal:Sure. One's a listener of the podcast. What up? Thank you for reaching out. So one for example was like a moving company.
Jordan Gal:Uh-huh. So they move furniture and they get a lot a lot of phone calls because not all of their customers have their system set up in such a way that it's automated. Right? These like like b to b moving. Like, okay.
Jordan Gal:I ordered something on this store and then this company takes the piece of furniture from our warehouse and delivers delivers it to the end customer. Okay? Like b to b moving. Let let's
Brian Casel:call. Sure.
Jordan Gal:So they're they're missing calls
Brian Casel:and the Why I mean, why why aren't they that that seems like a good fit for this sort of thing.
Jordan Gal:No? So here's the thing. It's very interesting use case actually because what it what it what they want out of it this is interesting on the tech front. They just want information pulled from a database. Okay?
Jordan Gal:Let's say someone calls you and is like, has my shipment gone out? That information's just sitting in a database. So a person can look, you know, at an app while on the phone and say, yes, it shipped and will arrive tomorrow.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:But a phone call can't do that. But then when you mix in an API with a voice, it can. Right. Yeah. So that is
Brian Casel:That's that that seems like a like like something that you could do in the future where it's like, you start with the calendar appointments and then you move into more complex configurable actions.
Jordan Gal:Yes. Different use case. That that's right. So like an API connector database and so so that's it's just like literally the first call is try it tries to pull you away from your focus. Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:Literally the first call. You know, and you're like, it makes sense but we have to stay strict and we have to kind of keep focused. So the use case that we wanna go after right now is information, escalation to a human when necessary, schedule appointments. Like, those three things. Like, have the right info, easier said than done.
Jordan Gal:Don't give wrong info. Second, escalate to a human if and when necessary. And for that we have all types of things like the person can just say, you know, I don't wanna talk to you anymore. Can I talk to a person? If they say that, we will understand it.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. And we also have like emotion detection. So like if we hear frustration in the voice, we will we will recommend. We'll say, sounds like you're getting frustrated. Do you wanna talk to a human?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. You know
Brian Casel:That's good.
Jordan Gal:And and and also like let's say it's a plumber and the calls at 11PM, we have to understand that context and say this is 11:00 at night they're calling a plumber. This might be an emergency and if it is emergency, let's offer do you want us to forward this to the person on call right now and then do that. So that's that's a that's wide enough of a set of use cases
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:For home services. Yeah.
Brian Casel:Yeah. For sure. It's like it's like it it can basically do what what their current phone number answering solution can can do plus a few nice things like remove the human from from needing to actually book the appointment, you know?
Jordan Gal:Yes. That is a good way to put it. It is it sits above voicemail.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:Right? Voicemail's dumb and and one way. Yep. It can take a message then a human needs to take that information and process it.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:So it is a step above voicemail in that it gets people to actually talk instead of just hang up because no one wants to leave a voicemail. Right. And it can take in the information and set appointments, but really what it can do is it can convince the person to provide the information where voice mail fails at that. And that's kind of where it needs to live for the time being. It doesn't need to be as good as a human.
Jordan Gal:The human is like that's where if it if and when it gets there, that's when it tips over and people are like, well, why am I wasting my employees time picking up the phone?
Brian Casel:Just as a consumer, I think there's even me who I I and I use AI. I'm a tech person and I use it in my day to day. I'm still very skeptical of me talking to a robot on the telephone. Like any any company or thing that I need to call, like I try to skip to a human as quickly as possible. Even though like the AI stuff out there, you know, is much better now.
Brian Casel:It's like, I I feel like there's still gonna be like a level of like like Skepticism? Or just like, you know, because if again, like if you are offering the option to skip to a human, which I think you should. Mhmm. Like, you know, like I I think there's there's gonna be like some some convincing of customers to actually accept the fact that like like because even if you're telling me that I could book an appointment and I can say to it and it can confirm to me like, yeah, your appointment is booked. And I'm still thinking like, is it really booked?
Brian Casel:And like What if
Jordan Gal:text message?
Brian Casel:Is this person really gonna show up at my like like I don't Yeah. Even fully trust Yeah. The that that the the home service guy is even checking his messages from Rosie and he's gonna actually show up because because that has definitely happened like to me in the in the past. Like I thought I booked online and they don't they didn't even know about it.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. It said it was booked. Yeah. There's a whole there's a whole set of issues around skepticism and trust and Yeah. And I I hear you all of us have experiences with phone trees.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. So if I call American Express, I had to call them last week for a chargeback thing. In total, it was under two minutes that I had to deal with the phone tree before I get to someone. Those two minutes seem like a hellscape of eternity. You you cannot believe the frustration that that they put you through and that's two minutes.
Jordan Gal:Yep. So it's like can you beat that? Can you improve on right. There's all this stuff is like incremental ton of skepticism. It's just It's gonna take time to get all the way to where some people think it should be now.
Jordan Gal:It's it's not there now.
Brian Casel:It does make me think of like because I I think that you Again, I'm just totally speculating on I know your your market at all. But it does make me think of a parallel that happened in in the in the transition from Zip Message to Clarity Flow. Because one thing that I learned was like the the thing that I'm talking about is like your direct customers, the the the small business owner will probably get very excited about the value proposition that you're offering. Like you know, we're Like you won't miss you won't you won't miss appointments. You can like your phone
Jordan Gal:calls and
Brian Casel:and it's fantastic in theory. But then, there's like a second level of sales which is like their end customer. So if Right. Their end customer isn't receptive to it or it backfires in some way Then
Jordan Gal:they'll cancel.
Brian Casel:Then they will cancel. Right? So Yep. So I mean, I definitely found that with like there were a early on with Zip Message, it was not focused on coaches. It the the actual very very earliest version of it was a customer support use case.
Brian Casel:Like I I thought I was gonna have people send their zip message link Mhmm. To their SaaS customer support or or whatever and and have them record their videos and send them in. And like 95% of of their customers just did not do that. And that was like a high cancellation reason. And then Right.
Brian Casel:And then even and then like there were all these other use cases that I was looking at like sale and a lot of people started using it for sales. Right? Like, oh, I can use this as a way to send videos and receive videos from sales prospects. The reality is like when you don't have the relationship there, they're they're much less willing to record themselves on video to send you a message. Right?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. But then can get the b to b right, but then this the b to c, the second part
Brian Casel:The b to b to c is is hard. Right? And then Yeah. And then the the pivot to coaches was like, oh, they have a relationship with their clients. So their client is fully bought in Differently.
Brian Casel:To the fact that like, hey, I'm paying to communicate with my coach. I'll communicate however
Jordan Gal:Tell me how you wanna communicate.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And and then and then they start to see the value of of it that way. Like Mhmm. I I'm wondering in your case if there's any Like even that that moving company you were talking about like Mhmm. Their customers are already paying customers of their moving company.
Brennan Dunn:True.
Brian Casel:So you know, in order to get the information they need, like sure. If if you're telling me I have to get it from a robot, why not, you know. Yeah. Just like one like who knows? Like that that's just my the first parallel that that
Jordan Gal:The reason the reason that right now the CTA on the site opens up a Calendly immediately. Right? Like there's If we just wanna talk. Today we had a demo and they have their own reasons for looking for value from this product that we just would not know. So this company this morning in particular, the the guy we talked to owns multiple home service companies.
Jordan Gal:Insulation company, roofing company, construction company, you know, a a bunch of things. Mhmm. One of his companies is super seasonal, and having a receptionist full time is a is a waste of money. And he doesn't know what to do with it. So that's that one business goes to voicemail.
Jordan Gal:The other ones have receptionists. He's spending money all over the place. And he knows he's losing money on the leads that are hanging up on the voicemail. So that for him he's like, hey, if you can help me solve this that that's the first place I wanna try it. And if it works then I'll spread across.
Jordan Gal:So he's thinking in this very skeptical realistic way also. Mhmm. But on that business, if you beat voicemail, I will I will find value. So that's like the the the beginning of it.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah. Can you speak to at all like the pricing and and or at least like the pricing model? How are you thinking about that?
Jordan Gal:So the pricing model is pretty interesting for for people in software. What we are used to is variable expenses being negligible. Meaning, if I'm gonna spend a thousand bucks on AWS, I can I can make $10,000 a month or I can make a $100,000 a month? That variable expense is gonna up a little bit. Maybe it'll go from a thousand to $2,000 a month for AWS, but your revenue will go from 10 k a month to 100 k a month.
Brian Casel:Sure.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. So they're not that directly connected. In this case, at this time, they're connected.
Brian Casel:Yeah. You mean like like the cost of AI?
Jordan Gal:That's right. Yeah. So, the our cost is per minute and so doing anything other than charging per minute gets pretty weird. Now, I don't like that. I don't like usage.
Jordan Gal:I don't wanna charge per minute. I think better off to do buckets. So that's my current thinking.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Know, first that kind of We have sort of the same thing with like video cost and everything but And we do have like a a very high upper limit and at which point we'll start to charge overages. But like almost nobody hits that, and currently the costs of In your case, the cost of AI is probably a lot higher than my cost for processing and storing video, you
Jordan Gal:know. Yes.
Brian Casel:The the interesting a significant factor that that I've Mhmm. I've like run so many different calculations on like on what cost and based on average account usage and all that. Yeah. It's something to keep an eye on for sure.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. So we it's something to keep an eye on the what I I think is the most likely didn't happen is that is that the those costs are gonna go down faster than traditional like AWS for example. Mhmm. So that at least that's good. So our margins can expand over time.
Jordan Gal:So look. This thing is a self serve product is is where it's gonna be when it when it launches. And so the price, I don't want it to be too low, but it can't be too high. So, you know, a $100 a month, $200 a month, $300 a month, something in that range is where we'll likely come out. You know, $50 a month starts to make it difficult to make sense.
Jordan Gal:$500 feels like I don't know if people are gonna sign up self serve for that. Okay. You know, seven day trial, the credit card requirement will be there, but where it lives in the funnel, I think is the interesting question when it comes to credit card. Do you put Yeah.
Brian Casel:For sure.
Jordan Gal:Front you can't see the app? Do you put it in the onboarding process? Do you allow someone to create the account fully but then not launch launching in this case is us generating a phone number for you. And then you forward to that phone number so so that might be a natural point to put the credit card to be able to come in, address your skepticism, impress you with the product, and then right before you get the phone phone number to actually go out and use it, maybe that's where we put put the credit card.
Brian Casel:The other question that I that just occurred to me is like, can you can you process con concur like simultaneous calls on a on a single number? Yes. So that could be another tier able factor. Right? Like you That's can right.
Brian Casel:Like the the low plan is like you can process one caller at a time. The higher plan, 10 callers at a time, you know?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. What I've seen in in competitors is that that that's kinda table stakes. Like your human number can handle one call at a time and then it goes to voicemail. This can handle, you know, a 100 calls. That doesn't really matter because it's, you know, it's Twilio and it's telephony tech and it's Interesting.
Jordan Gal:Not not hard. Yeah. So we got the website up. I have a list of things that need to be improved on the website. I think the website looks great.
Jordan Gal:It was really important to me, because our competitors are relatively immature overall. Like, some big gnarly companies with big beautiful websites. And I thought it was a real opportunity to kinda leapfrog the competitors in terms of design. Mhmm. And much more important than than design is the positioning.
Jordan Gal:Because most in the space are super horizontal. We can do everything. We can replace every phone call you've ever received. We can do sales. We can do customer support.
Jordan Gal:And I didn't wanna do that. I wanted to say, here's this problem for this set of customers.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:That's where we wanna be.
Brian Casel:I like it. So like in terms of like next steps, you gonna do any sort of like direct outreach to businesses or anything like that?
Jordan Gal:So, one of the surprising things from the tweet is how many people responded and said, oh, this would kill it using cold outbound, cold email. Yeah. And I I in that thirty day plan, I have a bunch of things on that list. SEO, ads, partners, notify the investors to ask them to amplify stuff, LinkedIn. Look, this whole list of things that seem obvious that I can do over the span of a few weeks.
Jordan Gal:Cold outbound was at the bottom of the list and I pointed it out to the team. This thing is at the bottom of the list. One, because it should be on the list. Two, because these other things are more important and I don't want us to rely on outbound and sales. So Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:And and then as soon as I put the tweet out, I get a bunch of responses and DMs like, yo.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I feel like
Jordan Gal:This is what you need to do and and it definitely made me rethink.
Brian Casel:I I would also, I don't know what else is is really filling up that list, but I feel like I would wanna bump that up in priority. Not just the tactic of cold outreach specifically, but the idea of getting some signal directly from a small business owner who is definitely not looking at Twitter. Mhmm. Like because I I feel like whoever's whoever's filling up the the demo calendar now as a result of the tweet or even LinkedIn post or whatever, is the most tech savvy. Even if they are a target customer Mhmm.
Brian Casel:It's it's the most early adopting tech savvy version of the of of your customer.
Jordan Gal:Yes.
Brian Casel:Like to start to get to some some feedback of like, what is Yeah. Is the local business even like? Like like getting to the question of like, what is AI? You know, like like seeing how that conversation goes a little bit, you know? Yes.
Brian Casel:I feel like you're gonna learn a lot.
Jordan Gal:So if if anything over the last few days, what it's made me do is rethink how valuable that signal that you're describing can be and maybe we should push off the advertising in exchange for getting more first.
Brian Casel:And that's Yeah. I guess ads would be like another way to do that, but even ads sort of just sort of pre assumes that the person is actually on the internet and clicking on ads. A cold email is going to someone who It's interruptive or it's you know, it's coming to their inbox. And then of course, there's like actual cold calls. You know, there's there's that too.
Brian Casel:But like
Jordan Gal:Yeah. There's Yeah. Getting out of
Brian Casel:the building.
Jordan Gal:Help me come up with some some pretty clever stuff. So so the interesting thing is that these types of businesses have their information online on purpose. They want to be contacted. Exactly. So all their information is there.
Jordan Gal:They're all on Google Maps. Google Maps is scrapable. Angie's List is scrapable. So you do all of a sudden get into this situation where if you are a self respecting entrepreneur, there is a way to reach out to a lot of people very efficiently. So it does make sense that it that that's worth the effort.
Jordan Gal:That's worth the try.
Brian Casel:I feel like the other thing that I would be thinking about this year is conferences for these, you know, the the I don't know. Accurate. Insurance agency conference. There's like a lot of that kind of stuff. The trade shows.
Brian Casel:Yes. Absolutely. They Those industries like eat that stuff up. Yeah. And there's so many of them.
Brian Casel:And like there's like it you know, I think in our industry there's like every conference has like one national thing that happens every year, but a lot of these industries have like statewide conferences. So you could literally have people go to like forty forty of these conferences a year for one industry, you know.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. There's an endless number. You know, once you start looking at home services, I mean what we do, we literally just went to chat GPT. We're like, here are you know five or six industries. Give us more like it around home services.
Jordan Gal:It's it's 50 categories. Lawn care Yeah. Pool care, pest control, roofing, restoration. It's it's a bit endless.
Brian Casel:We just hired gutter cleaning and power washing for our house the other day. Been you know cold emailing us all year long and it's like springtime, we finally need it. Let's do it.
Jordan Gal:Yep. Yep. Makes sense. And my guess is a lot of people in your area are doing the same thing.
Brian Casel:Sure.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. So I feel like eventually we'll we'll we'll shoot for having one channel and really focusing a lot of our efforts there. But what are you supposed to do when there are 10 potential channels, you don't know which one right? How else do you do it other than spray and pray a little bit? I know we don't we gotta try a bunch of different different
Brian Casel:stuff. I think that's just like any really, I think like any niche down see like, there I feel like there are two pathways that many of us SaaS people get Like take to to reach the the totally niched down vertical SaaS. Right? One is you're already in the vertical. Either you personally have experience in it or your brother-in-law is is a carpenter and you and you make a thing for carpenters.
Brian Casel:Right? Or it's it's like you or or like me and and just finding lists of random industries to try to target. And then that's more of like it starts like a spray and pray, and then you start to dial down, dial down, dial down until you realize like these respond in a way that's different from all the rest, you know. And that could be like maybe they all respond but then these are the ones who don't cancel because it just works because the use case is perfect for them. That's exactly what happened with me with with Zip Message into Clarity Flow.
Brian Casel:And I actually remember back when I was doing Restaurant Engine years ago, this is over ten years ago now. I did the same thing. There wasn't ChatGPT then but I I remember writing in my notebook just a list of like 20 random industries that could possibly need better website design. And like restaurants was one of them. So I was like, yeah, I'll just go with them.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. The right. There's a difference though between industries to go after and and channels to use. And I think my concern is around channels. I like the philosophy of make one channel work before moving on to the next.
Jordan Gal:I like that. But how are you supposed to start other than take a guess at a three or four channels that you think are likely to work and then whichever one works that's when you we focus on it. But it does make sense to do SEO feels it feels passive honestly, SEO.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Right. So that's like, okay. Just get that train rolling. It's not gonna pick up speed or momentum for a while. So just get it started on day one, which is what I did.
Jordan Gal:Literally, I published the site and went and found the link that the SEO provider gave me to sign up and signed up. I was like, alright. You know, why not check that off? Yep. Then then there are certain things that feel like they just take a little bit of effort from the founder or a few people internally.
Jordan Gal:So me sending email like making a list of potential partners and then trying to network into them over the next few weeks feels like that just feels like my job. That's why I get paid
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:You know, Monday to Friday. So may as well do that. Ads feel more intense and more focus required and I do I feel good about the decision to just push those back a little bit. I I really want
Brian Casel:I like that too. I I would push those back.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I was gonna start this week and then launch launch them like realistically in about three weeks. But it feels a little premature.
Brian Casel:I mean, as like a early test just to see what's what. I I think it's fine to do that in the But I I think of ads is like you start dumping money into ads once you know you have a market that somewhat works. Let let's start to scale it. Right?
Jordan Gal:Yes. The the the guy at the ads company, a really really impressive young dude. He was like, look, I think you should look at this as going from one to 10, not zero to one.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Go zero to go figure out the pricing, the the onboarding, the pitch, the just all that stuff and then we are the fuel on the fire. Mhmm. And I kind of blocked that out last time I talked to him a few weeks ago. I was like, cool story but I wanna get I wanna be really aggressive and and I think he's right.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yep. Good stuff, man.
Jordan Gal:So we're underway,
Brennan Dunn:bro. That's it.
Brian Casel:Pretty exciting, dude. I I like it. Yeah. Congrats on the whole pivot. I mean, it's it's quite a pivot.
Brian Casel:Totally. It's it's not just like a rename. It's like a completely new company. It's like same company but like totally new product, you know.
Jordan Gal:Yes. Pretty much. Heard that. That's exactly what like one of the investor replies was like, now that's a pivot. Yeah.
Brian Casel:It's like way more than just a pivot. That's like a totally like restarting of things.
Jordan Gal:And it's you know, there's some confusion do it.
Brian Casel:And I That's it. You gotta do it. It's great. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. There's a little There's like some like internal chaos that just needs to be dealt with that we ignored because you're not gonna not do it just because of that. So like my calendar right now, I don't even know what to do with myself. I'm I got two calendars. My Calendly is linked to Rally.
Jordan Gal:I need to update that like my email's all over the place. So it I gotta sort that stuff out. Mhmm. We we did a DBA. It's like Rally Commerce Inc.
Brian Casel:Oh, yeah.
Jordan Gal:Doing business heads roasting.
Brian Casel:I mean, my my company for Clarity Flow is still Zip Message Inc. Yeah. That's like There you go. There you changing that. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Whatever. But it feels good. It feels great to just be underway and out there and I can talk about it and get to work.
Brian Casel:There you go.
Jordan Gal:That's the truth. This is a this is a starting point.
Brian Casel:Yep. Yep.
Brennan Dunn:What's up with you? How's the week?
Brian Casel:Yeah. Pretty good. I I guess the only two so I've got like two halves of what I do. One is Clarity Flow land and there's there's been a bunch of developments there. Nothing huge, but like we're I'm I'm hacking on some some projects there for once.
Brian Casel:And then and the other half is it's it's my other corp. It's my it's my consulting business. And I'll probably talk more about that next week because I'm I'm starting to really dial into a way to position and sort not niche down but like productize in a way. And even that's probably the wrong word for this. But like taking what I've been doing with which is like UI design and development for SaaS companies essentially.
Brian Casel:Mhmm. And really packaging in like what is the value prop exactly of what I'm delivering and and niche and and I'm actually working with a new domain name. I'll reveal that next week. But that's what I was writing copy for last night at 3AM. Okay.
Brian Casel:Okay.
Jordan Gal:I'm pretty curious about that. I've been watching your tweets.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I'm starting And that's the thing that I'm starting to make an active effort. Because now that I've worked with a a handful of good clients and I have a bunch of projects that are visually done and able to launch. I'm I'm actually making an effort to to build in public more and actually share my work that I've been doing. So so I've been recording these like sixty second quick walk throughs of the interfaces that I've designed and built and and just showing them off.
Brian Casel:So I I did a couple of those tweets. I'm gonna do a few more in the coming weeks. There's there's a couple more projects that I've been working on that I haven't shared publicly yet. The the tricky thing about that and what I'm writing cop what I'm working out like the sales copy for right now is trying to convey the value profit. Because I know what the value is for the clients who have hired me.
Brian Casel:Mhmm. And I'm trying to to to you know, word it in a way that's that's easy. Universalize? Well like Generalize? Make it kinda sticky and crunchy that works in a headline and speak to the benefits and also Mhmm.
Brian Casel:Something that that people in our circles can latch onto and talk about and recommend me to other clients. And that that's how the first handful of clients have come.
Jordan Gal:Okay.
Brian Casel:So the what I'm talking about here is like, okay. I I'm a UI designer essentially. Okay. But most companies think about when when you hire if you're gonna hire a designer, you're thinking about hiring someone who might design an an interface in Figma or design a mock up in Figma, and then hand you that Figma file. Mhmm.
Brian Casel:Then and then you have to hand that Figma file off to your developers. Right. What I do is sometimes I wireframe things in Figma, but I'm taking it a a bigger step further, which is I deliver my designs in coded HTML and Tailwind CSS. And so I'm completely the the goal here, the main value is I'm trying to remove the whole front end coding piece of your of your stack. Because the the people who have found the most value in my work are this are the smallish SaaS companies who are who who already have their back end developers dialed in.
Brian Casel:They're they're awesome. Maybe they're the founder is is a developer or they have like a CTO or they have a small team of of back end developers. And they are technically labeled full stack developers, and because they are full stack, they they never actually hire someone who's like really specialized on the front end. It it really wouldn't make sense for most Sure. Small SaaS companies to like hire a full time salaried person to be your pixel perfect front end UI designer.
Brian Casel:And instead, they task their full stack developers with the task of you you not only have to architect the the thing and the database and do the business logic, you also have to To them, it's a slog of taking Right.
Jordan Gal:The Paying the admin.
Brian Casel:Yeah. The admin
Brennan Dunn:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:The the end customer's experience, making it pixel perfect, making sure it's mobile optimized, implementing dark mode, making sure the the the pop out menus all work the way they they should, like all the little you know, nitty gritty details Yes. That are really pretty annoying for most back end developers to have to do and they're really slow at it. So this service I'm finding is really really value valuable to the actual developer to like the back end developer to like remove that whole piece of the puzzle. And then also kinda selling it to the founder or the CEO of like why it makes sense to separate the front end from the back end in terms of like where who you're investing those dollars with. Mhmm.
Brian Casel:So those are some of the things that I'm thinking through. And then the other piece is like, yes, there are lots of component libraries out there, know, like Tailwind UI is is a great one. There's also these like starter templates like you know, bullet train and jump start and and things like that. But even those, and I I've used those, lots of teams have have used them. Even those don't completely eliminate the the workload, the burden, and even like the level of quality that you get.
Brian Casel:Like to to take those component libraries and then adapt them and actually implement them into your app. What what I'm Like the value that I'm bringing to these companies is like, I'm I'm helping you design I'm I'm designing for you your own personal private UI component library tailor made to your SaaS.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:You know, like One of
Jordan Gal:the reasons we like Framer so much is because you design in in Framer Mhmm. And you don't have the Figma to reality gap.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. That that gap sucks in a in a front end. I wanna push back on your description as a UI designer for just a sec because when a designer hands over a Figma, it always looks amazing. Yeah. And then between that and being implemented in the app with all these issues around
Brian Casel:fall apart.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. It it just doesn't quite live up to the Figma
Brian Casel:and of like, okay, like kinda doing it quickly, kinda you know Right. Maybe like front end people are it's not their specialty. It ends up being a little bit slapped together. And the other thing that happens over time is like, you're even the app that you ship might look and feel great on day one, the version one. But then a year later after you've added 20 features, the features start to feel disjointed, things are sort of like bolted on and they're not quite consistent with the original UI.
Jordan Gal:See all the time.
Brian Casel:That's where having your own component library. Like every time you're doing a menu, it should use this coded component that that was tailor made for your SaaS. Or like, you know, I I've been working with these SaaS companies who eventually you're gonna have specialized UI needs. Like one was doing they need to they need like a bulk product importer system, and these products are very complex with many options. So you you can't just pull any UI components library off the shelf and expect that to fit a a need like that.
Brian Casel:It it really needs to be worked into the actual interface that their customers need. So that's where someone like me can come in and and say like like, yeah, I have my go to patterns, my go to components that I can start as as you use as my starting point, but I'm gonna teller them and give you like like in some of these cases, I'll actually spin up a like a fresh Rails app just for their team to be able to pull these components out of when they when they implement them in the final production app. So that they're they're configurable and and anyway, like it So I'm All of all of those words that I'm describing here, I'm trying to consolidate into like a sales page that like sells the value to the back end developer, but also sells the value to the CEO on like why it makes sense to work with me for like some period of time to set up your your company's UI, you know, components library.
Jordan Gal:Right.
Brian Casel:You know.
Jordan Gal:Like fix it. You know, for the future, not just this one project and this one screen.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. When I see your tweets, the UI looks good. What I what I end up being most impressed by is the decision process on why things are where they are and where the consistency is. That that sounds like more UX. Right?
Jordan Gal:It's this combination.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And and that's actually a big part of what I do when I'm working with clients that although that part is a little bit more difficult to show in a tweet. But like Yeah. What I'm showing what I'm showing in the tweet is like the end result. But a lot of the time, it's like, I'm taking maybe either they just described to me their end goal for this new feature that they're building, or they're showing to me their their current admin interface or whatever it is that was pretty much like slapped together by, you know, maybe it was like a back end developer, or or maybe they were just adding features after feature for years and things became a little bit disjointed.
Brian Casel:So I'm going in there and I'm saying like, alright, well if I were to think about this fresh as as if it were like one of my own products, here's how I would think about it logically from a u x point of view and and maybe you know, try to improve things you know, fundamentally.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. We were looking at a competitor's integration page yesterday and you can understand how things go wrong. Right? One integration you click on it and there's a modal. One integration you click on it this is a new page.
Jordan Gal:One integration, there's like a modal that looks like a new page and you're like this just happens over time. Yeah. It it requires like this this UI vigilance that can be exhausting and you cut corners. Yeah. Sometimes you you you need to.
Brian Casel:I'm also trying to tie and and like I'm like I'm describing all this copy that is not live yet. I'm gonna hopefully push it live next week. But I'm also trying to tie it back to like what is the actual value. Like investing in front end UI, UX experience. Like to I'm I'm I'm playing around with with headlines like go from good enough to growth lever.
Brian Casel:Like turn your UI into an actual growth lever because your customers It's so easy to use that they that they can't help but rave about it to other customers. Right?
Jordan Gal:Right. More likely to convert, more likely to refer.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Or like make your competitors jealous is is another is another headline that I'm playing with you know.
Jordan Gal:That's a powerful one for founders.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Because it it is super competitive. Like everything is competitive.
Brian Casel:So for your customers, it it's a lot we all we all love to assume that like when our customers run into trouble or run into friction or get confused, they're going to reach out to customer support. More likely, they're gonna go find the the other 10 competitors and see who's easier to use, you know.
Jordan Gal:Yep. Yep. Sadly.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Actually of websites though on on Clarity Flow, did launch a new version of our homepage this week too. That that was the other thing that I worked on the past week. I got some really good advice and and really Not repositioned, but like really dialed in. It's actually funny because like, I realized like I hadn't actually changed the homepage at all, like like really any of the copies since we launched Clarity Flow, like over a year ago.
Brian Casel:Which is you know, I I should have been updating and optimizing pieces of copy as I learned but we I've been so busy with with everything. Mhmm. So now, it's like an all new h one. Like most of the copy on the page is all new. I I also killed a bunch of pages and redirected them.
Brian Casel:So specifically what happened there was it used to be we so this is no longer live but it the the previous version was at the top navigation, there was like a thing that said product. You open that and under that, there's like five links that go to five sub pages, which are essentially five different versions of the home page. Each of those pages was like optimized for a different part of the product, like we had one talking about our courses feature, another talking about our payments feature, another page talking about our our communities feature, our async communication feature. Like all of like some people navigate to those and they might click around but like it's not like those are driving like search traffic and frankly they're just confusing. So it's all on the home page now.
Brian Casel:Like now the home page is like our one and only sales page. It We have a demo video as well.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Pricing page but everything you need Home
Brian Casel:page, demo page, pricing page.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:Are essentially the three parts of the funnel now. And that you know, we've got the other stuff. We've got the integrations. We've got the comparison pages and stuff like that. But that's That that was like one big step.
Brian Casel:I've I've got a bunch of other projects that are in progress right now. It it's all really in an effort to simplify and just better optimize the website and the and the buying funnel. So so this was like the the tippy top of the which is the homepage. Like what they see first. Another thing that I did was I removed the email opt in from the demo.
Brian Casel:So now, you click demo, you are going straight to the video to to just watch it. We're we're not even asking for your email address anymore.
Jordan Gal:Okay. Interesting. And Can we talk about that for a sec? Yeah. Okay.
Jordan Gal:In the past, that was that was behind an email. Mhmm. Okay. And what that allowed you to do obviously is collect contact information.
Brian Casel:Yep. And we had an email sequence that would like remind them to sign up for a trial if they didn't do that and
Jordan Gal:Was that not working or not working well enough or you want more people to be able to see it?
Brian Casel:I think I think that was working fine but but I I think I think two things. It it probably prevented a lot of people from even looking at our demo in the first place, because they just don't wanna enter their email address. And and frankly, the the main goal is to simplify and streamline the way that people come in and buy the product. So we we there's more changes coming in in the next couple of months on this front, but the the goal right now is to sell you on the value proposition on the homepage and I want you to dig in. I want you to spend time on the website like looking in and consuming as much information as you possibly can.
Brian Casel:So making our demo readily readily available to you, that's like a twenty minute video. The other thing that we're in the prog process of doing right now is we're moving our help docs off of Help Scout onto the main domain, onto the main marketing site. Okay. And it's it's going to become like a a main part of the whole website is like our help docs which have a lot of videos in them are serving two purposes. One is to is to support our existing customers.
Brian Casel:The other is to educate new customers because they wanna find out and dig into every nitty gritty detail to And I I want you to come to our our website and spend thirty minutes. Spend an hour digging into our stuff and then it gets to a point where it's just like, alright. I have to sign up for this thing. Now, let's go. Okay.
Brian Casel:So if person
Jordan Gal:on the site, then just give them everything they
Brian Casel:want. Yeah. And and from an SEO like time on-site, I'm learning is is more important than we might think.
Jordan Gal:On on the SEO front?
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. So go stick around and watch a two three minute demo. Not not a bad thing for SEO either.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And also not a bad thing for that to happen on your main domain and not a kb. Your domain.
Brennan Dunn:True. True. True. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:The then one of the next steps that we are gonna take right now, we have just you click the CTA, you go to a Calendly link. Next up, I think we'll do a type form
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:Survey on the way to a calendar link. Shout out to Ruben for helping me think through that process.
Brian Casel:We've had that forever. We And and same thing. We we've had a form, a survey form. Yeah. Even on the demo, we we had email opt in into a survey form into the demo.
Brian Casel:And then we also still have it in our app onboarding. So you sign up for the app and then you answer a quick survey question and then you're into the app. And so I've I've removed it from the demo and now and next time I'm actually gonna be removing it from the app. And you know, because it's been in place for well over it's been three years really but but I'll Mhmm. You know, for the past year.
Brian Casel:And now, it's like, okay. Like I've learned a ton. Now, it's about like streamlining and getting them into value as quickly as possible, you know. Like I I think I think it's definitely the right move to have it for a long period of time and collect the survey.
Jordan Gal:Just more info.
Brian Casel:More more info and and we did have it for for forever. It's all in a spreadsheet like it's it's coming in.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I think it'll be temporary because we we want people to sign up self serve. So we don't wanna put too much in the way. So right now maybe it goes to see to calendar then it'll go type form to calendar and then it'll go type form to self serve and then it'll just go straight to self serve. One of the things I'm wondering about is email collection and we want people to be able to use to test the product.
Jordan Gal:So we can just put a phone number. Right? That's the most straightforward thing. You wanna try it? Give a call right now.
Jordan Gal:That that makes us pretty susceptible to to bad actors.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Phone number to call your AI.
Jordan Gal:Yes.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Yes. And and we're gonna pay for that and I've spoken to some other people in the space that were like, that's dangerous. You know, it's a normal thing to kinda wake up and say someone just hammered us for a thousand bucks. Yep. So that's a little tricky but we do want people to try it but I wonder if I wonder if putting that experience behind an email field
Brian Casel:I I was just gonna say
Jordan Gal:make sense.
Brian Casel:Like like register to get a demo. To try. Or to try it.
Jordan Gal:That way we we can add demos like what's on there now is basically the first demo.
Brian Casel:Right? Yeah.
Jordan Gal:That's basically the worst demo we'll ever publish. And it's not bad. So we'll we'll end up having a bunch of those and as soon as we have customers using it, the best thing the best marketing we could possibly do are successful real recorded phone calls. Yeah. Don't don't tell my lawyer about But that's that's the best thing for the marketing.
Jordan Gal:So maybe if we have enough of those available, then we can put the try it for yourself behind behind an email.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Yep. That could work.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I mean, your your demo video looks looks great right now. I Yeah. I I Even like I feel like you you could even just create some like You you did do it with your current demo video, but like maybe create more that are Maybe they're not actual real customers out in the wild, but like Right.
Jordan Gal:But that's
Brian Casel:actors like rep, you know, re replaying a support interaction that could that could very well be real, you know.
Jordan Gal:That's my lawyer thanks you, but I think we could we could we could take a transcript and basically just have a real human Yeah. Talk to the AI. Because what's on the site now is is not fake. That's someone on our team talking to the Rosie service.
Brian Casel:Right.
Jordan Gal:And and and the text message came through. It's all, you know, it's actually it's it's an interesting conversation internally. Right? Because it's like, okay, how do we put our best foot forward? The the unethical thing would be to have two people record it.
Jordan Gal:Right? That's not okay. That's easy to point at and say, oh, that's too far. Then you get into a situation where you're like, okay, well, do we wanna talk about things that aren't available now but will be available? Do we wanna show exactly what's available?
Jordan Gal:Do we wanna like not mess with the recording in any way? So we ended up going as safe as possible with it because my worry if we messed with anything, we'd get called out immediately. And that's
Brian Casel:the correct me if I'm wrong, but one thing I noticed from watching the video, there did seem to be like a delay.
Jordan Gal:Latency, baby.
Brian Casel:It's latency.
Jordan Gal:That's Yeah. That's the thing.
Brian Casel:And just a couple seconds, it was totally tolerable, but I but I was thinking like, man, since they made this a video, they could have easily just cut out those extra seconds and made it faster.
Jordan Gal:That was I think an acceptable conversation to have and I think we ended up in the right place where we did not wanna cut because it would have given it would have given a false impression. The latency is still an issue. It's getting better with every model, with every service, with every optimization. But what's really happening under the hood Yep. Is speech to text, text submitted into an LLM, LLM responds with text, Text turns back out into speech.
Jordan Gal:Like that Right. Is what's happening. It's amazing that it that there's only two seconds of latency, but the the more we can shrink that, the better and more natural.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:It's it's always one of these situations that all of us deal with. What's in development right now is so much better than
Brian Casel:Of course. Production. Yeah. I know. It makes me like not even wanna promote the current thing.
Brian Casel:Right?
Jordan Gal:Right. But I I you know, we we are forcing ourselves to basically say no blockers. Like what the app isn't ready, doesn't matter, launch the website. Yeah. It's better in development, doesn't matter, launch what we have now.
Brian Casel:You know, I'm such a fan of of of tech news and following you know, especially lately with AI and everything. And obviously this week, Apple you know, launched like Apple Intelligence. But what what we're talking about here kinda reminds me of Google from a few months ago. They I think one of their earliest rollouts of Google Gemini
Jordan Gal:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:They did these recordings which were clearly doctored. They they got a lot of flack for like, you guys are like it's it's it's obviously fake, whatever like whatever their demo was, like it you saw camera cuts, you saw like you saw all this different stuff. And then like somebody would watch the video and then like, you know, and we're talking about Google. So obviously, there's all these like tech reviewers who are like, well, let me try it. Yeah.
Brian Casel:It's nothing like the video, you know.
Jordan Gal:Yes. But you know, Google's still gonna make $5,000,000,000
Brian Casel:Of course.
Jordan Gal:Next week.
Brian Casel:I mean that being don't care. Yeah. Like that being said, like I feel like we should be a little bit more We we have more leeway when it comes Yep. To Yep. You know, rounding the corners a little bit.
Brian Casel:But That's right.
Jordan Gal:Yep. Yeah. It's all it's all tempting and all bad news. Bad news.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:What else? We did get some questions on Twitter. I think I answered most of them. Ian asked about demos. Yep.
Jordan Gal:So far so good on that. Cesar wants me to call Rosie. Maybe on the next pod, I'll just call. Yeah. Put on put on speakerphone.
Brian Casel:Maybe it'll just be me and Rosie and and we'll we'll leave you out of it.
Jordan Gal:There is an element to dogfooding like in marketing and sales.
Brian Casel:So Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:A lot of my ideas are like how do we use the product to do the sales to to to confront the skepticism. That is the thing. It's skepticism.
Brian Casel:That it Yeah. That is something we You know, now that Kat is doing customer success for Clarity Flow, a big part of what she does is she everyday she does what I used to do which was I send Clarity Flow messages to all the trialing customers. You know, so she she's doing it. And it does help. It's a different scenario than yours but it like in many cases like she's like the first actual clarityful conversation that somebody is gonna have.
Brian Casel:And that's great. Real person, you know.
Jordan Gal:That's great. Yeah. You know, we we have features for outbound in development. Think about a we talk to a salon and they were like phone calls to, you know, take in when when the two of us aren't available. That sounds good and valuable.
Jordan Gal:Can you call the day before or the day of an appointment be to reduce the no shows? Because right now either we're doing it or we forget to do it. Maybe we send a text but we would love another touch point. Mhmm. And that's something that's you know, it's it's just programming.
Jordan Gal:It's just like x amount of time before this thing is on the calendar then send this message.
Brian Casel:I mean, I look at Rosie and I definitely think like, man, I I wanna use this for SaaS. I and you know, like I wanna put a phone number on on Clarity Flow's website, like a a support number. But I but I'm very hesitant to I don't I don't I don't have the the funds to like hire somebody to to man that that phone number.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. You know. It's it's pretty interesting to to the training is wild. The training is wild and the prompt engineering that we talked about last week is super super interesting. And I feel like I need to be, I don't even know, selectively flexible on these other potential categories.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I mean, I don't think it would One
Jordan Gal:person with a Shopify store reached out and was like, this is awesome. Can I cook this up with my direct to consumer company and and answer questions on whether my shipment has gone out and and can I get a re what's your refund policy and just whatever else? But I'm I'm scared to open up too broad.
Brian Casel:I definitely like the focus early on especially on like a use case of like if you take phone phone calls to book appointments, this does that period. Like Yep. That's great as a But I could definitely see a a world where you expand into, okay, you could feed Rosie your set of documents or instructions.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Our onboarding was like create a name and an account and then put give us a URL and when we we ingest Yeah. The URL.
Brian Casel:But even like feed it like your 50 most frequently asked questions and the answers that it should that it should know about. And Mhmm. It doesn't even have to and since it's it is a a since it is AI, it's not like programmatic where it's like it's going to just recite those word for word. It it's just like that's the training data that it has so that when a customer asks one of those questions in whatever wording they choose to use for that, it's gonna know how to answer it. Right?
Jordan Gal:Yes. Yeah. I think what's, you know, what's scary is that all of these little areas will get crowded. I think Apple intelligence
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Horror show of a name. But
Brian Casel:like it. I mean, it's Apple. Like it's
Jordan Gal:I know.
Brian Casel:I I
Jordan Gal:think it's easy to hate Apple at least for me. But I think we're all gonna have, you know, consumer AI in in our phone. Yep. Like soon. I think they just did the partnership with with OpenAI.
Jordan Gal:Like it's all it will be incorporated. Mhmm. And what scares me the most about that type of a use case, even though it sounds interesting, it's that the the behavior isn't currently established.
Brian Casel:Biggest thing. I feel like that's be the biggest blocker really, is is consumers just getting comfortable with talking to AI and trusting that it can that it that it has the same capabilities as a human does.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I'm less worried about that than I'm about the behavior of the business. My software company, your software company, we don't have phone numbers right now for customer service. And people don't call. They don't expect it.
Jordan Gal:So that's a new behavior and I would be very worried about betting my business on creating a new behavior like replacing your checkout when you're not on Shopify. Really really hard. Yep. Getting in the way of an existing behavior and established pattern of I look around for plumbing companies and then I pick up the phone and I call that feels it feels easier.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I behavior. Yeah. I think that's I think that's key.
Jordan Gal:What do you got going on? What what's what's this weekend like? I'm going to see a band. Have you heard of Band of Horses? Great band.
Brian Casel:I've heard of them. Yeah. I don't I don't know if I listened. Maybe I heard some of their songs, but yeah.
Jordan Gal:The lead singer has the voice of an angel. I don't even know how else to describe it.
Brian Casel:You're going to Chicago? Like, where where are you seeing them?
Jordan Gal:Bro, it's it's in the burbs. It's in the next Oh yeah. Town over in Winnetka. So when I saw it, I was like band of horses in Winnetka. Clearly, that's a different band of horses because why would those rock stars come to the burbs up here.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Yeah. But it turns out, guess it's like a big thing. So it's really them. So I'm going tonight with all the other nerds in the suburbs and no one's gonna know this band except me.
Jordan Gal:I'm gonna be singing along to every song.
Brian Casel:There you go. We got tickets for next month. We're we're going to see Iron and Wine.
Jordan Gal:Oh yeah.
Brian Casel:That's good. He's playing in in New Haven which is like ten minutes away from me. So it'll be like us and a bunch of college students in there.
Jordan Gal:Okay. Yeah. Get a good good crying with with Iron and Wine.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Only know like some of his music but I think good good songwriting. Good good thing for me and Amy to go to.
Brian Casel:And then Pearl Jam tickets, I've been eyeing forever. They're playing at Madison Square Garden later in the year. Got my eye on those. I've never seen them live. I've I've been a fan for years.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I haven't either. The one concert I considered, I guess it might be past tense. I don't think I'm actually gonna do it. But but Dead and Company at the Sphere.
Brian Casel:Oh, at the Sphere. I I have a friend who went to that and he he showed me some videos with this were unreal.
Jordan Gal:Look, it looks unreal.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I mean, I'm I'm a huge fish fan, a long time fish nerd and and they did the spear like two months ago and I've just been consuming those YouTube videos like crazy.
Jordan Gal:Yeah.
Brian Casel:I was thinking about getting tickets and going out there.
Jordan Gal:I like I feel the same way. Like, I'm an adult. Yeah. I have credit cards. No one can tell me what to do.
Jordan Gal:I I
Brian Casel:would go see fish again if they do it again next year. I'll I'll do it. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:I I like fish but I I've always liked liked the dead a bit more so that that sounds Yeah. Fun. Besides besides that, man, I don't know what's going on but I feel not old. My youngest daughter excuse me. My oldest daughter is going to camp on Tuesday for a month.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. And I feel like a sad dad. I'm like, I barely see this kid. She's 12. She's got her own life.
Brian Casel:That's a that's a big step, the sleep wake Oh my god.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. We did it last year for it's two weeks feels very short.
Brian Casel:I'm Did you go you were a kid? Like, can't Oh,
Jordan Gal:man. I I got a I
Brennan Dunn:got a story there. I think we wanna touch it. Okay.
Jordan Gal:I went I went one year for a month and I cannot tell you when it was because I blocked it out because it was such a traumatic experience.
Brian Casel:Oh, wow. Okay.
Jordan Gal:Oh, my god. My my poor parents had no idea. We it was like right after we got to the, you know, to The US, parents didn't have money and this religious Jewish camp, the guy was like, yo, you guys are from Israel. Let's do a mitzvah. Let's get your kids there for free.
Jordan Gal:My parents are like, that's amazing. Thank you. You know, let let's do it. We're not a religious household, bro. I didn't go to temple growing up.
Jordan Gal:I didn't know what I was doing. I got to this camp. Everyone was so religious.
Brian Casel:Oh, wow.
Jordan Gal:It was like three prayers a day, dovening. I was like, I don't know where I am. I don't know what's happening, what I'm doing. I was an alien. I did not know what in the world was happening around me.
Brian Casel:I actually I I did go to summer camp and it was a Jewish camp or I I went for like ten years, ten eleven years summers in a row.
Brennan Dunn:Which one did you go to?
Brian Casel:I went to Okay. In Adirondacks in New York. The the So that's the boys camp and then their their sister camp is Camp Shanawha. So I I would go for two months every summer for like most of my childhood, me and my And you know, we're you know, we grew up Jewish but like very unrelenting. We never went to temple temple and like, I'm not Yeah.
Brian Casel:Religious today at all and But yeah. It it was mostly sports camp and like a very light service every Saturday. That was it, you know? Yeah. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:And it was not not the case for me. Yeah. But no, my my my kids are going and then wifey and I are going to Mexico City yes. Oh my god. So excited.
Brian Casel:Nice.
Jordan Gal:Anyone has good restaurant recommendations, let me know. All I know is supposedly you need reservations for like dinners everywhere. So I'm I'm I
Brian Casel:hear so many good things about Mexico City. That should be awesome.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Same. So a few weeks from now, no pod, I'll be in Mexico.
Brian Casel:That might be around the same weeks that I'm heading to to your neck of the woods. We're we're flying out to Chicago and then, and then doing a a trip around the lake. So that'll that'll be fun. That's right. Northern Michigan.
Jordan Gal:Good stuff. Alright, everyone. Thanks for listening. Later.
