Dialing In
Welcome back, everybody. Another episode of Bootstrapped Web. It's Friday, June 22. How are we doing, Brian?
Brian Casel:Yeah. I believe it's the twenty first.
Jordan Gal:I knew that. It's fine. You know what? Today is today is my sixteen year wedding anniversary.
Brian Casel:Oh, wow. Congrats.
Jordan Gal:No joke. Yeah. That's the twenty first. The solstice.
Brian Casel:There you go. Yeah. I was I was I was hearing about the solstice yesterday. We had we had a nice date night last night, my wife and I because my kids are are at grandpa's house. We're gonna get them back later today.
Pippin Williamson:Nice.
Brian Casel:So a little Thursday night date night.
Jordan Gal:Nice. Our we did that on Wednesday because our kids were went out. Both of them had a sleepover. We have three kids but our oldest is now at camp. So we have a bunch of 12 year olds running around making a giant mess but it's it's a little quiet without her.
Jordan Gal:Yeah.
Nathan Barry:And the two little ones are still here for another two weeks.
Jordan Gal:So it's like a different dynamic,
Brian Casel:you know. Nice. Yeah. My girls are starting
Jordan Gal:to cast a a big shadow so they're they're kind of it's just like a different dynamic with them.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah. We're we're starting day camp next week on Monday. But, you know, date night these days is we we like to go out to like a Tapas restaurant and get a bottle of wine. And so I am running on fumes today.
Jordan Gal:Oh, so so you you went out last night?
Brian Casel:Last night.
Jordan Gal:Yes. Yeah. The the ability to handle a night out is at an all time low.
Brian Casel:That's right.
Nathan Barry:All time
Jordan Gal:low. And I don't think it's going up from here. I think it's just all all down.
Brian Casel:Just trying to just trying to survive out here. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:That's fine. That's fine.
Brennan Dunn:Okay. Alright. What do we got?
Jordan Gal:So, you know, the last week has been it's been fun. It's been energizing. We launched Rosie. And then over this last week, it's been like launch week basically. Like this is our first week out in the open and it's been a good experience overall.
Jordan Gal:I'm I'm very energized. I feel like I haven't felt like this in a while. Just that like energy. I
Brian Casel:I wanna ask you all about that. Like, I wanna I wanna ask about your obviously, the launch and everything that's happening but also where where your head is at with you know, the startup roller coaster and this being a whole new thing. I actually just launched something today as well. Like literally like twenty minutes ago, I deployed tellermadeui.com. That's that's the new iteration of my consulting service.
Brian Casel:So that that landing page is is out. I was able to kinda hustle and get that put together and and launched. That feels pretty good.
Jordan Gal:Nice.
Brian Casel:Talk more about that.
Nathan Barry:So both of us launching.
Brian Casel:Oh yeah. Yeah. So I wanna talk a bit about that but more about like the I think the power of knowing your customer it comes to writing a landing page and marketing and coming up with a product or service concept. Because I've gone through multiple iterations and this is the most With tailor made UI, it's like the most dialed in and easiest time that I've had in writing a landing page because I know exactly because this It's basically a service that I've been offering all all year long to to SaaS clients where I, you know, design and redesign UI
Jordan Gal:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:And components and I give them their own teller made UI components library. Right? Okay. And and I've had multiple clients like this already. So I know exactly what the perfect client looks like to me.
Brian Casel:I know their characteristics. So like when I'm writing copy, I can write to them or all about them. Know? Okay. Very interesting.
Brian Casel:That's that's been interesting. And then the same thing happened with Clarity Flow. I I Just two weeks ago, I rewrote the entire homepage and just dialed in even even more to coaches and everything else, everything that I know about them and already seeing some pretty good results from that. So anyway, that well, I that that's basically the thing. It's like knowing your customer really really works.
Jordan Gal:Okay. So we we can talk about this from from two different angles because we are launching first and learning second. Mhmm. So whereas TailorMateUI, that new site is is an evolution from starting points and learning and and then gathering more info and then, like, reaching more conclusions. Right?
Jordan Gal:And where you are right now, it's like the most evolved that it's been. We we are just much earlier on there. And I would say probably the most important thing over the last week was was was going from everything being, hypothetical and a bunch of assumptions and then talking to real people. So we've had somewhere in the area of like 15 to 20 demos since we launched. And in those conversations, a lot of the thinking has evolved.
Jordan Gal:What I've noticed is my need to come up with new analogies and new stories. So with Rally, a thirty minute conversation, I have an endless number of stories, analogies, anecdotes, information, data, experiences to talk about why checkout matters, this conversion rate thing, this other thing, this previous experience. And now doing a thirty minute demo with Rosie right now it's, you know, but it's called the demo. It's just a conversation. Yep.
Jordan Gal:You know, maybe one or two of those calls has actually been me picking up the phone and calling the agent and talking about that and the other person hearing it. Other than that, it's been just conversations.
Brian Casel:I know exactly what you're talking about when when you say like these like stories start to bubble. I like, you know Yeah. You you and I both have gone through multiple businesses where we do a lot of sales calls and and demo calls. And yeah, I I totally know what you mean where it's like the early days of that. The the first Call it like the first 20 calls.
Brian Casel:Yeah. You're you're grasping for like for what works. What, you know, you're you're learn you're listening, you're learning, but you're also like trying to explain your initial gut concept for what it is you're selling. And then over time, you just hear someone more so you hear so many stories and anecdotes from the customers Mhmm. That it just becomes easier to and easier to speak their language.
Jordan Gal:Yes.
Brian Casel:And and like pull on like, oh, yeah. It sounds like you care about this point. I've got three stories in my pocket. Yes. That's right.
Jordan Gal:That's right. And and it's it's and you're borrowing their experiences and incorporating it into your talk track.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:And you also feel the lack of confidence around your explanations and articulations around this.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:And so so that that has been a big experience, a big part of the experience over the last week. And this is I think I'll you know, basically everybody listening to this right now is familiar with that feeling of going into something fully acknowledging, I have no idea what I'm talking about. I have no idea what I'm about to say. This is gonna be embarrassing and uncomfortable, and I hope it works out. And then you just go through it.
Jordan Gal:And then it's a bit better, and a little bit better, and a little bit better the more you do it.
Brian Casel:I mean, I think historically still to this day, I'm I'm such a question based seller on these calls. Okay. I just ask a lot of questions. And most of it is it it because to me, most sales calls or demo calls, whatever we end up calling them, consultation requests, you know, I have called different things in different businesses. But like, in all cases, it's like, you booked the call.
Brian Casel:So Right. Why would you spend thirty minutes with me? Yeah. What's what's going on? Tell me.
Jordan Gal:Like Yeah.
Brian Casel:You know, and then and then we go from there. And and and you know, I mean, yeah. So like like So I I'll I'll just ask his leading questions and get them talking. And yeah. How how how are you currently handling that?
Brian Casel:And then and then that inevitably leads to this is why I'm frustrated with how we're currently handling that. And I'm like, oh, okay.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Tell me more. It it yeah. It's easy to dig that way. And I think that's, you know, that's that's the most effective way to sell.
Jordan Gal:To to let them let the prospect
Brian Casel:Like sell themselves.
Jordan Gal:Expand. Right. Sell themselves expand on what they're trying to accomplish and why. I I like to hear myself talk a little bit more than I like but that's just the reality.
Brian Casel:I have a habit of that too.
Jordan Gal:Right. It's fine. And for me, a lot of it ends up being lessons for myself, and then I and then I basically go back to the team and, like, explain my thinking. Like, that that's what I did today. Here's an example.
Jordan Gal:Going into this, I I only knew a layer, maybe two layers deep into what the problem and and how we're solving it. But as I have these conversations, I start to get like a deeper understanding and then mixed in this week was some investor outreach. You know, people like, hey, I cover AI voice agents for this fund. I like what you're doing. Can we talk?
Jordan Gal:So I took a few of those calls partly to practice my explanation and my articulation of the product and the the the idea, the problem, all these things. And that I find very helpful because that's I I I like that part of the conversation. I had a great experience as a quick aside. A few weeks ago, I shared an article from a 16 z about voice agents. I think they talked we talked about in this podcast.
Brian Casel:We did. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Okay. So yesterday, the author reached out.
Brennan Dunn:Oh, cool.
Jordan Gal:Hell, yes. You know, so I share that with the team. Everyone kinda gets excited.
Brian Casel:From this podcast? From listening to it?
Jordan Gal:No. From the tweet.
Brian Casel:Oh, you tweeted? Okay. Nice.
Jordan Gal:I tweeted just just, you know, introducing Rosie.
Brian Casel:Right. Right. Right.
Jordan Gal:And they found that tweet and reached out. So it's like total coincidence on the on the article that I shared with the team.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Cool. Okay. So if let's come back to the example I was trying to give. One of the one of the most unexpected elements is that we thought we thought calendar appointments were gonna be very very central to what we're doing. Right?
Jordan Gal:Explain things, take questions, provide accurate information, elevate to a human when necessary, and like that the next thing in line was set calendar appointments.
Nathan Barry:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:That's what we thought a a very key function of Rosie was gonna be. This week, what we found is that it's fifty fifty. And 50% just wants to provide information to the customer. And I I didn't know how to think about that, but eventually after having a few of these conversations, I started to understand, oh, this is like a speech interface with a database. Okay?
Jordan Gal:Think about what happens when you call we had a moving company. I I think I talked about them last week also, where the person just wanted to understand if their delivery was scheduled and when it was scheduled to be delivered. Okay. Mhmm. Like, that helped me understand.
Jordan Gal:Then I had a few more conversations like it that what Rosie actually does is instead of a human being answering the phone and looking at their screen and explaining, this is basically the technical version of that. So just to get that insight and then be able to explain it to an investor just gave me this next level of understanding and confidence. I'm like, oh, that's what the problem is overall, and we're building solutions that interact with these different databases, different integrations, different APIs, but it's really aimed at getting the human being out of the way because that's low level work for a human being. Looking at a screen and explaining, but like that's the human being should be doing higher level work.
Brian Casel:It's just it's interesting to me to hear how you are you've got like two types of calls going on. You've got like, you know, customer demo calls and they're and they're explaining their these pain points that your product doesn't quite solve today. Yep. And you're having these investor calls where it's like you can sell the the the version of the of the product as if it solves those things. Yes.
Brian Casel:Even though it doesn't quite yet, but but that's what investors wanna hear. It's like They wanna guess. What is this going to be in the future?
Jordan Gal:Yes. Exactly right. What problems are you tackling are those big problems? How big is the market for that set of problems?
Brian Casel:Yep.
Jordan Gal:More so than like, well, what does this product do? How does it how does it look? How much does it cost? It's like, you know, similar sides of the same shape but it's not this is not that straightforward. Yep.
Jordan Gal:Yep. So the calls have been awesome.
Brian Casel:Very cool. It's actually, you know, going back to that idea of like, you were talking about like like launching a version of your site and messaging and then doing the learnings. I mean, the same thing really happened with Clarity Flow. Even though like it existed as Zip Message for like two years before we changed to Clarity Flow, and I and I spent like more than like half a year of just interviewing coach after coach after coach, all these jobs to be done interviews and I I felt like and this was around this was 2022 heading into 2023. I I was that period where I was doing a ton of these interviews.
Brian Casel:I felt like I learned a ton about coaches and it and it was enough to drive the the decision to relaunch as Clarity Flow with an all new website and Mhmm. Messaging on the homepage. And and and then we spent the the upcoming year like building out the rest of the Clarity Flow product. And I thought that I had a really good understanding of like really nailing the headlines and the sub headlines having done all that jobs to be done research. But you know what?
Brian Casel:Like you still don't really really know it what because I Two weeks ago, we launched a new version of the homepage after like a year of being out in the market as Clarity Flow.
Brennan Dunn:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:And I I can't believe it took me that long to do to do like another rewrite of the homepage but you know, just so busy and and I did. But like, as I rewrote all the headlines and all the copy on the homepage, it was like, I I just know these customers so much better than I did a year ago. Because I see them every day and CAT, our customer success deals with them every day and we know what the most important features are and how they use them and why they are important. And like big important features that I thought were important to to put all over our homepage a year ago turn out to be like more secondary than than I realized or like like like things like courses. So when I when I did all the initial research, it became really clear to me that there were a lot of coaches who had some had a bunch of tools that they were using for communicating with their clients.
Brian Casel:And they also used some sort of courses tool to deliver some course like content.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:So that led us to build like course delivery features
Jordan Gal:in different steps
Brian Casel:sequences, automated workflows and stuff like that. And we have that and customers do use that stuff quite a bit. But they don't Like I I thought that we had to market that as if we are a course platform.
Jordan Gal:Okay.
Brian Casel:And we had a whole dedicated page to like course software and the real reality is like we don't even have to market it as a course platform software thing. We're not even really gonna compete with those because those are gonna they're course platforms. Mhmm. You know? But in the way that coaches use them, it's Coaches were using course stuff in more of a coaching capacity to have like templates.
Brian Casel:Anyway, so like Mhmm. It's just a different Like wording things differently, emphasizing different aspects of it and and yeah, it's it's just a much more effective page overall. And so now now we're making a bunch of other tweaks. Been nice to like kill a bunch of pages that were not doing anything for us or attracting the wrong types of customers. Redirected those, so we're literally like reducing the number of pages in our sitemap now.
Brian Casel:And we're starting to see some pretty interesting results in terms of traffic, traction, the types of trials we're getting. Couple more changes to come in the next few weeks, but but yeah. That's been an interesting little experiment.
Jordan Gal:Cool. What what comes to mind for me, we as expected, I think we we talked about this a few weeks ago. As soon as we launch, there is pressure coming from us, but it's it's being sparked by these external conversations to go beyond the niche. I thought home services, I mean, it is a very large niche. You wanna know if you wanna call it a niche.
Jordan Gal:It's like 50 different subcategories
Brian Casel:It's like business.
Jordan Gal:Right. Okay. It's it's a huge term but we are already I would say 50% are not home services that are interested.
Brian Casel:And Well like, I don't know. Like what what's not a home service that's interested?
Jordan Gal:So I had a funny experience this this morning. So one of our investors who's a friend of mine lives in Portland calls me. I mean, we talk on Zoom every few months. He never calls me. I'm like, this this weird.
Jordan Gal:Hopefully, everything's cool. So I pick up the phone. He's like, I I am listening to your podcast and I I have to call. Because yesterday, I'm at the barber shop in Portland and my barber's cutting my hair and the phone's just ringing in the background. He's like, this freaking phone drives me nuts.
Jordan Gal:Everyone's cutting hair. These people call. They just wanna make an appointment and it I can't do anything about it and it drives me nuts. So then he's listening to the podcast and he's like, I I have to call you. So that
Brian Casel:I see. So they're still like in person services. They're just not home services.
Jordan Gal:That's right. They're just businesses that get a lot of phone calls. Yep. So the moving company that I keep bringing up, this dog day care franchise that we that we're, you know, setting up calls with. Like, I don't know what to call that.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I guess what you're saying is like it's not necessarily home services but it is appointment based services.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Local businesses? I I I need to find a term. What I really need to Yeah.
Brian Casel:Because if I Yeah. You're right. Like like like doggy daycare services. Even like things like yoga studios where you're scheduling classes.
Jordan Gal:That's right. It's it's kind of local. It's like geographic based. Like you'd when do you call a company? Most often, it's a local company in your geographic area.
Jordan Gal:Sure. There are other companies that you call on the phone, but not many. Yeah. So so this feels like it feels like I'm gonna crumble under the pressure within like two weeks. You remember I was like, no.
Jordan Gal:We're gonna stick with home services. It's gonna we that you're gonna nail that niche first. Everyone else is going too horizontal and I'm already feeling the pressure on whether or not to to expand. Because right now the site says home services. It's not over.
Jordan Gal:It's not in the h one. It's not gigantic, but it is in the h two and people just ignore it or just like, have this problem. Can we talk?
Brian Casel:Yeah. And I I think for you at this stage, it's still a lot of it's it's it's so new and and it's so based on you tweeting it and sharing it with your networks and your investors that like the mix of leads that you're going to attract naturally. It's not like you're directly marketing to home services yet. You're just you're you're marketing through your network, which is just gonna attract a lot of randomness no matter what you have on your website.
Jordan Gal:That that's right. Totally agree. And and I think, you know, that that's a good segue into what I what I want to ask you. Now that you've made these adjustments to Clarity Flow, how is that gonna change your marketing approach? Your which keywords you go after?
Jordan Gal:Is it kind of like you already have some traffic and now you're adjusting that next step in in the Clarity
Brian Casel:Flow, it's I could I mean, I could talk about this in two ways. Clarity Flow and actually tailor made UI. Okay. Because that that's where it's even more of a it's a more of a strategic change. But the Clarity Flow right now, the changes that we're doing are like a dialing in.
Brian Casel:Like a full okay. Like if if a year ago, year and a half ago, we we changed from Zip Message to Clarity Flow, that was saying like, hey, we're going from being a general messaging tool to being a tool made for coaches. But if I'm honest, looking back, I didn't think at the time, I thought we were going all in on coaches. And we it was but reality was like 80 or 90% in on coaches. Okay.
Brian Casel:And what I mean is like there were still a lot of like leftover stuff both marketing wise and in the product for that was still like hanging around because we have users who are not coaches using it. And pages on our site that we're marketing these use cases that are not quite what coaches really care about. And now, the changes that we're making are like, we're going from 80% to a 100% coaches. Like, really just I don't know how how to describe this, but it it's like a dialing in. It's like making making sure that like, if we're going to I I don't like to use the term like win this space because I I I think, you know, we're a bootstrap company.
Brian Casel:There's there's plenty of space for for a lot of players. There's always going to be
Jordan Gal:in in satisfying
Brian Casel:But just just execute executing at the best possible way that we can do it. Mhmm. That we can do the strategy which is Yeah. It's a mix of SEO. It's a mix of We're doing cold outreach to to coaches which it it's That's also interesting.
Brian Casel:It They seem to respond even a little bit better seeing our current homepage. We're gonna do a few more experiments in terms of the funnel of like how people sign up and buy and onboard. But but the I think still the strat the the big high level high level strategy that I had for 2024 in Clarity Flow has not changed. And that is an investment in customer success. I hired a customer success person and the thing that we care about most is attracting our best customers who are like coaches with active coaching businesses.
Brian Casel:And really making sure that like, if if you're a coach, there's there's no good reason why you should not convert and stick around on Clarity Flow for a long period of time. I know that SaaS is a numbers game and you're gonna have like the most of your leads are going to churn or or not convert, but to me like the like, we're in the game of like this product is made for coaches. If you are a coach, we are failing if you are not converting. Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:You know? So less of a focus on the top of funnel and just put people in but more on, I mean, like you said success which is we should be satisfying your problems. We we've dialed it in.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And and now and so we launched Clarity Flow under the name Clarity Flow in like early twenty twenty three, but we had like less than half of the product that we needed to have to fully satisfy coaches. So we spent the rest of '23 building all these big features Mhmm. Culminating in Clarity Flow Commerce, the ability to sell your coaching services. And so now in '24, we have mostly been focused on refining and smoothing out the rough edges.
Brian Casel:All the UX little improvements and really making it super reliable. Like we've come a really long way on all that. So just making it easier to use because like we have all the big temp whole features now in the product. But actually now, like and this this also gets back to like going to that 100 like going from 80% to a 100% for coaches. We're building a pretty big feature now.
Brian Casel:That's like something that lots and lots of coaches have been asking for that I historically have just said no to because I'm like that's not part of the original product. And now it's like now it's like, yeah, we're doing it because we're for coaches and coaches want it.
Jordan Gal:And that's what Okay. We're
Brian Casel:And and so we're like halfway through building this big feature that that'll be coming out next next month. But like Yeah. So there's there's a couple features that I Like back in when we were Zip Message, I would have been like, yeah, that's not that's not the product that we're building. But now that we're for coaches and I know that coaches like literally are typing an email saying, I'm not signing up until you have this feature. Okay.
Brian Casel:Then we're then we will have that feature. That's it.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Well, just hearing that just makes me reminds me how early on we are because we we we have some back and forth to go and that what I mean by that is the focus on right now we have, the beginnings of a product of of basic feature set. And then we go out to the market, we learn a little more and we start adjusting and then we start to go we'll go out and get traffic and then inevitably the product will not satisfy those people quite the right way and then they have to go back toward the product and then back and forth.
Brian Casel:Wanna talk a bit about tailor made UI because it it goes to that same question you were just asking. Okay. About like, what's different. Okay. So, like, Aaron Francis actually just asked on Twitter today.
Brian Casel:He was like, is this what you're doing with instrumental products? Is is it different? Are you redirecting that? So I haven't redirected it yet, but, like, earlier in the year, I started consulting and mostly with SaaS companies. And I was offering I I I still sort of offer like full stack app development, but in some cases I was doing like just the UI and UX consulting and designing in in the browser, delivering coded HTML, tailwind CSS, some some some JavaScript stuff.
Brian Casel:And I learned over these engagements that like, really the best possible engagements for me are the UI UX engagements. And know, like, for for so many reasons, and I sort of like laid them all out on the on the landing page on on tailor made UI. But the the the what the dialing in here is is like, I've had a handful of these clients already this this year, so now I know exactly who they are. Whereas before, it was super it was so much more like rosy before. Like, when I had instrumental When I launched an instrumental products, the the website, I was writing like theoretically for like who I might work with in the future as a consultant.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. You're conjuring up some ideal customer conjuring
Brian Casel:I yeah. But now, it's like I know who the best clients I've worked with are and and why those projects were perfect, and why those are sustainable going forward. And and it's and it's directly with SaaS companies. Like specifically, like, SaaS companies, especially those who don't have like an in house designer or front end developer team. And tip more typically, SaaS have like a full stack developer or two or three.
Brian Casel:And they're and they tend to lean more back end develop development, which means the front end UI stuff ends up being like, sort of like good enough, like slap it together, grab whatever UI components and stuff and and you can get by with with some rough edges. But ultimately, as as you start to grow, you need something higher quality. But then then it's just slow and time consuming to eat up your developers time with the detailed UI implementation and anyway. So so this version of tell TailorMadeUI is like so dialed in to that. Like, this is something that I could literally go to SaaS companies and be like, what do you think of this?
Brian Casel:And like go do even do like more direct sales. Not that I'd want a high volume of clients. It's pretty it's built it's booked out and and there's limited availability. But but if I wanted to scale this up, this gives me a a pathway to be like, this is this is a direct problem with a direct solution for a direct customer. And I know exactly what that customer looks like.
Brian Casel:I know their characteristics. Even within SaaS, like what types of SaaS companies are perfect for this. It's it's something that I can just literally like send people messages and be like, what do you think of this?
Jordan Gal:You know? Yeah. It reminds me a bit of Sam Hulik and his dialing in around onboarding.
Brian Casel:Exactly. Yeah. Very similar. Yep. Yep.
Brian Casel:I I like it.
Jordan Gal:So so this new site is like a more precise articulation. I saw the site. I like what you did in adding the tweets that have the videos. Yeah. Because it's not just adding the videos on their own.
Jordan Gal:It's like almost like go look at the context around this and what people that know me are saying also instead of just the videos themselves.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yep. And I'm I'm leaning into Twitter or X or whatever because like, look, Us us SaaS people, we still use X. We we might be the only ones in the world still still using X.
Jordan Gal:Oh, no.
Brian Casel:Us us and like the politicians, but like
Jordan Gal:I love that.
Brian Casel:You know, yeah. The portfolio, the samples that I'm showing on there are the tweets that where I build in public and show a sixty second video of the UI work that I've been doing. And I'm gonna I'm gonna continue to to do that kind of stuff. And and it's also like, hey, I'm I'm a SaaS founder too. I'm I'm friends like with SaaS founders.
Brian Casel:We're I'm I'm your people, you're my people. Let's like, this is all the same thing. Let's, you know
Jordan Gal:It's a lot of credibility stacked on top of itself. Prior experience, you know, experience on your own. What I think that so in your videos, you're showing your projects and you're kind of explaining the thinking behind it. Mhmm. One thing that comes to mind as I hear you say it's an as I blend in the Sam Hewlett user onboard positioning, one of the things that he did incredibly well was use zeitgeist to Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Get eyeballs.
Brian Casel:So Just tear downs the
Jordan Gal:That's right. So whatever app was in the news and everyone talked about, that's what he would analyze and show his expertise layered on top of something that was very share worthy because it was already being talked about.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:So I wonder if you don't have to be limited to the work that you're doing, you can also critique in in a in the right way. That would help.
Brian Casel:I've thought about that sort of thing a number of times over the years actually, but the also right now with the my consulting work in general in terms of how much time and energy it takes up.
Pippin Williamson:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:Like, I don't know how much marketing I really wanna do on that. Yeah. I hear you. Other than like just put this page out there, put it on my Twitter profile, tweet about it, talk about it here. It like if I wanted to really engage in a quote unquote content marketing effort or list building effort, like, yeah, that's probably something I would do.
Brian Casel:Like, something like what Samuel has done really really well. There could be a there could come a time when that happens if I'm growing up the if I'm growing up the team and we're really trying to book out more projects.
Brennan Dunn:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:But like right now, like I literally only take one, maybe two at a time. Right. The rest I I book out into the future, know.
Jordan Gal:So I I'll I'll talk about, you know, outbound in a sec but I I have to just add. If your supply is fixed, the amount of time you can dedicate and you increase demand, then prices will go up. Yes. That you know, so that's not necessarily a bad thing to do even if it doesn't result in more projects because it could just result in higher prices.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I'm also like, you know, I I I wanna actually to to get this more back to our like high level like mindset of of where we're at this year. Okay. Here's to kick it back to you where you are with Rosie on on all this. But like for me, I'm I'm in a 2024, I'm still in this like kinda take trying to how do I describe it?
Brian Casel:I'm I'm I'm just much more short term thinking right now. I'm not Okay. I'm not trying to be all in on any given
Jordan Gal:Right. Like ShardyFlow
Brian Casel:is still a long term endeavor. I've Mhmm. You know. That's something that that I'm watering that plant. And this consulting thing, I'm sure it's just gonna keep keep going on.
Brian Casel:But I'm still open to other products. I'm I'm talking about doing other products with other people. And I have other product ideas of my own that I'll do at some point. Like, I just don't I'm I'm not really committing to anything. I'm just I'm still exploring and settling in in different ways and taking my time with it because I can.
Brian Casel:I'm I'm bootstrapped and I And and I've got a pretty good income between the consulting and doing a couple different things. So it's like, I guess, I'm I'm still trying to figure out like what how how much effort for how long am I going to give to each thing until until something figures itself out.
Jordan Gal:Right. Or pulls you in or however you wanna describe that to basically get you off of the slightly more patient, you know, observing things with a bit less emotion. I mean, that's what you said, you know, over the last few weeks. You wanna be in that position and I think that makes sense. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:I I like to run through the scenario like what's basically what's the upside, what's the best case scenario if this thing worked out, and at least kind of understand what that is. But I, you know, I feel like you have multiple things progressing and maybe there's a breakout thing that says, hey, I want all your attention or it doesn't happen for a little bit and you keep going and keep building things.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Like fundamentally, and I think this is where you and I are in different situations now. Fundamentally, I am back to like 100% bootstrapping. That profit first on all fronts. No no matter what I'm doing, I'm doing it sustainably.
Brian Casel:And that probably means slower. That probably means a little bit more split focus, you know. Getting, making sure the bills are paid over here. Mhmm. Watering some long term investment plants over here, but doing it sustainably, not growing the expenses, know, not going into debt or not not working with any sort of runway.
Brian Casel:I'm just pay paying my way as I go. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Sounds healthy. You know, I I have put myself in a position where that that doesn't make sense as the approach.
Brian Casel:But but you're you're in like the in some ways like the optimal version of of the opposite. Right? Like you have you've got the firepower in the bank
Jordan Gal:Yeah.
Brian Casel:To to go all in and and give it all the resources that you possibly can, you know. Yeah. There's Where's your mindset at right now?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. So my mindset is to identify the best case scenario and be 75% aggressive at going at it. Mhmm. Not a 100% as in like burn the boats, don't leave any energy for the swim back kind of thing. I I don't operate well in that mindset, but rather aggressive.
Jordan Gal:So I shared a tweet yesterday. There's a company called HeyGen. So this is a, gen AI company that does videos. And you can create an avatar of yourself, and then you can dictate, let's say, a message to your company or an onboarding video, but the avatar does the talking. So they have you you can you can create avatars from, like, models that they have for, let's say, advertising and content, or you can make an avatar of yourself.
Jordan Gal:It's actually very cool looking product. It's it's impressive looking. This thing just raised oh, this thing. I'm calling it a thing because it it feels like a monster.
Brian Casel:Right.
Jordan Gal:So this company just raised a very large series a. I you know, it's one of these things. Like, it's called the series a, but, like, what's what's a $60,000,000 series? It's just it's just a bunch of investment.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Lots of m's.
Jordan Gal:And and this company went from a million ARR to 35,000,000 ARR over the last twelve months.
Brian Casel:Crazy.
Jordan Gal:And that is a level of growth that I don't think was really possible a few years ago. And you and I have spoken before. What the hell works in marketing? Like what, you know, what are you supposed to do? How do you get attention?
Jordan Gal:How do you get how do you break through? And in some ways, that is true, but in other ways, the the world is so connected. Everyone's so online. There's so many companies that need the same things. It's a global market much more than it used to be.
Jordan Gal:It it it makes me think of Canva. Mhmm. When I first saw Canva, I did not think that that could be a gigantic company, and it is now an absolute behemoth because not only is it such a widespread set of problems that they're tackling, but the word-of-mouth networks are so global that growth right now can happen in in in ways that we're we're just not used to thinking. This like, you know, double double triple triple triple kind of thing or triple triple double double double like a version of the VC growth path that's ideal. That stuff's out the window.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm. These things can grow at an astronomical pace. And so if I'm being honest, my my mentality is in that direction.
Brian Casel:Do you think that's just because how do we
Jordan Gal:incrementally grow? It's how do we explode? Because because the problem's big enough, the market's big enough, the solution is wide enough that we shouldn't we shouldn't go to get to you know a million ARR in twelve months. We should go to a million ARR in three months. It's probably not gonna happen that way but looking at the money in the bank, looking at the product, looking at the market, looking at the competition, look at the investment environment, I think that is that's if you have that as a mentality, it doesn't mean it's gonna happen, but you are looking at investments differently, you're looking at how early to launch differently, You know, so when we do when we do outbound, are we are we gonna send to a thousand customers potential customers a month or we're send to 10,000 a
Brian Casel:month? Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:Right? We should send to 10,000.
Brian Casel:Yeah. You know, the what what I hear you saying though, I feel like because we were talking earlier about, like, do do we do do you niche down to home services? Do you do you niche down to the use case where they're just booking calendar appointments? And I think what you're describing, if you compare the Canvas and the what was it called? Gen AI?
Jordan Gal:Hey, Gen.
Brian Casel:Hey, Gen? Like and that's for like video generation?
Jordan Gal:Yep.
Brian Casel:That that's what it is. Video generation. Canva is like graphic, like simple graphic design. Simple graphics. Yes.
Brian Casel:That's not simple graphic design for home services or simple graphic design for marketers. It's just simple graphic design. Period.
Jordan Gal:Yes. Yes.
Brian Casel:Very That's hard right. So super horizontal. Right? Like my daughter is obsessed with using Canva for her for her creative projects.
Jordan Gal:Okay.
Brian Casel:But they're also selling to businesses, and they've got television commercials and stuff. And and so like, if you're talking about like super fast exponential growth like that, that's what it that to me is like what it is. It's like some some simple category scaled horizontally that lots and lots of people can use and share virally. And I don't I don't know I I feel like I feel like I hear you on like the aggressiveness on like the numbers because you have the resources to do that. But from a product standpoint, it almost requires an even bigger bet.
Brian Casel:I mean, correct me if I'm wrong. I'm just sort of thinking out loud here. But like it it it it sort of requires like a bigger bet to be even more horizontal. Like, I don't know, like like voice just like voice generation for businesses or something like that. You know, like
Jordan Gal:Yes. I I hear you and that's that's the that's the pull, that's also the danger and also the opportunity. Yeah. Because if you right. This is what we've gotten a few a few people, consultants, companies approach us and say, can we white label?
Jordan Gal:We wanna sell to our customer base. Yeah. And my answer has been absolutely not. Because we need the brand to stick. And we need the word-of-mouth.
Jordan Gal:And we want six months from today, we want it to be something that's easily talked about and easily spread. And the problem is widespread enough. Everyone everyone picks up the phone. Well, that's not everyone. A very large number of businesses pick up the phone and don't always wanna pick up the phone.
Brian Casel:Like Yeah.
Jordan Gal:So that's that's a very very widespread, very large TAM.
Brian Casel:It's so weird how that's like so widespread. Everyone is so frustrated with it as customers, but it's still a thing.
Jordan Gal:They just don't. This is my this is my argument around AI, around bootstrappers going after around AI as an opportunity. I have felt more energy and more demand for this product in one week than I felt for Rally for for years. Because people wanted Rally but they it's just it didn't feel the same. And if you think about that exact situation, that okay.
Jordan Gal:What you described, very, very widespread problem, painful, lot of people have it, still a problem. On the Internet, those don't really exist. Not many of them. Yeah.
Brian Casel:Or at
Jordan Gal:least they're not easy to find. So AI enabling a new set of solutions means a new sets of problems get Yeah.
Brian Casel:You're right.
Jordan Gal:And what that really means is these the fields are open. So there aren't established amazing companies. There's no Canva eating up 80% of the market for your new, you know, simple design tool.
Brian Casel:Yeah. It's almost like like really
Jordan Gal:like where the growth comes from. There weren't that you you didn't have the ability to create an avatar video at scale before. So a company can go from 1,000,000 to 35,000,000 a r I've never even heard of them until yesterday. Have you heard of them?
Brian Casel:No. No one even knows them. Yeah. Right. That that that's what that's what sort of blows my mind about these like huge growth.
Brian Casel:I I tweeted this the other day. I was like, who in the who is not in tech do you know who is like using AI tools on a regular basis, like day to day? Because like, literally all the people that I don't know that many people that are not in tech, frankly. Like, I'm not I'm not as socially connected as
Jordan Gal:Your brother's the farmer and that's it.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And he is not using AI. I'll tell you that. But like, you know, but like, I was I was even was in a text chain with a couple friends from from my hometown, grew up with, and and like one of them was talking about how he like hired a designer to create to to create like the uniform graphic for his daughter's basketball team. Okay.
Brian Casel:I like, what do mean you hired a designer? Like, didn't use ChatGPT for that? You know? And it's just like not something that comes up with people who are like not like us. Yeah.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:I'm not worried about that at all because I now run an AI wrapper.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:And in my in my thinking through basically how how to make that sound better, all an AI rapper is is a problem solver.
Brian Casel:It's exactly right.
Jordan Gal:Nobody cares about the tech. Nobody cares at all about the tech.
Brian Casel:The the the tweet I put out, there there were a lot of really good replies from from people like like giving like really good examples. I I noticed actually a bunch in like the healthcare space like that seems to be a space that and like lawyers.
Jordan Gal:Yes. And dentists and doc level of opportunity is is astronomical. Right now in in the healthcare field, I don't wanna be too specific because someone shared a very interesting idea with me that I'm not gonna pursue. I don't wanna go too deep into it. But let's just say there are a very significant number of forms that need to be completed Right.
Jordan Gal:By people. And those forms will eat up an incredible percentage of time of that person's working day. And it is it is solvable. Yeah. It's you can take a one hour form and enter it in five minutes with an AI product that allows the person to just just talk out loud while they're driving in their car between appointments.
Jordan Gal:That that so that that's all gonna happen. It's it's it's great that it's gonna happen and it's mostly gonna be rappers and no one's gonna mock rappers anymore in a few years because it's like what are we what are you an AWS rapper? Like who cares?
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah. It it does seem like I I think you're right. Like, I think that there are definitely like businesses and like sectors where AI is starting to see some real traction. And many things like generating a video, I could I could sort of see why that's like blowing up so quickly because it's like video is everywhere more than ever.
Brian Casel:People need to generate video. But I'm just seeing like just in the real world here in the suburbs of Connecticut it there to me, it's like so surprising how much people are just regular people are still sleeping on AI. Like, I ask my my kids and my my wife works in the school districts. I'm like, does anybody you know, in the public school public elementary schools. I'm like, does anybody even, like, talk about ChatGPT in in school at all?
Brian Casel:Yeah. For anything? For for generating worksheets that that the kids could do? For grading papers? For creating anything?
Brian Casel:Is it just No.
Jordan Gal:Just super total no?
Brian Casel:Like a total no. Like most of them don't even know what ChatGPT is. Like they don't they haven't heard of it. Like how how are you in school? How are you in a school and you haven't heard of ChatGPT right now?
Brian Casel:Like, how is that possible? But I feel like that is still the mainstream. It's it's not quite mainstream yet, but it's going to be very, very quickly. Especially, know, with it once it gets in once the like the iPhone stuff that they just announced, like once that rolls out, that's what that's what pulls it into the mainstream,
Jordan Gal:I think. It's it's almost like very few are gonna go out and find it or be made aware of it in the way that we are. Whereas if it just gets forced downward and then all of a sudden it's this new thing that's great, like, I don't know. What the hell did we do before Waze and Google Maps? I I Right.
Jordan Gal:Literally do not understand
Brian Casel:I remember printing out directions for MapQuest.
Jordan Gal:Like, what? We're old enough that we did that. I I did that. Yeah. But it just got forced fed into us.
Jordan Gal:It just got, oh, it's on my phone now. Oh, my friend uses it. Oh, I'll download it. Okay. I adopted.
Jordan Gal:That's it. I don't care the magic of of how it works
Brian Casel:Yep.
Jordan Gal:Of how it tracks mobile phones and how that's how it knows about traffic. I don't care. I just know that it's magic.
Brian Casel:Yep.
Jordan Gal:So I think it'll just kinda be force fed downward into these different places, and it does make sense that businesses are earlier to adopt because businesses feel pain and pain translates into less money in people's bank accounts. Yep. And people are very motivated to put more money in their bank accounts and therefore they go out and solve problems sooner.
Brian Casel:Yeah. That's it. Yeah. For sure.
Jordan Gal:Alright. So 35,000,000 ARR twelve months from today. Here we go. I started doing some math on that and I was like, yo.
Brian Casel:So yeah. Like, let me
Jordan Gal:Really crazy.
Brian Casel:I mean, how do you feel like overall like on like the optimism level, on on the mindset level? Because you you know, you made a major pivot with you know, going from Rally to to Rosie. Essentially starting over, you know. You you have the resources, you got a great team in place. Yeah.
Brian Casel:Like like, how you feeling overall, man?
Jordan Gal:I you know, there are some some corporate issues, you know, and what I mean by that is, like, it's the same cap table and we have evaluation and we have you know, so so there are some things to deal with that that would have been much easier to deal with if we shut down the company and started over. I decided not to do that. I have my reasons. Mhmm. I did my math.
Jordan Gal:All of these individual potential problems like that, there there is nothing to do about them other than grow revenue. That that's it. So so when when whenever Rock and I are talking, we just come back to that as our North Star. What should we do about fundraising? When should we raise more money?
Jordan Gal:What do we need to get to? Should we go to a profitability? Should there it's just irrelevant outside of growing revenue, and the faster you grow revenue, the more options we have. Yeah. So it's kinda like, alright.
Jordan Gal:We have a good amount of runway that that over the next six months, we don't really have to think about money. Right? And you budget in and you put your spreadsheet together and we say here's this decent sized marketing budget. And once that's established, we're not really thinking about spending because the budget's been set. It makes sense.
Jordan Gal:We we kinda you do it unemotionally. You look at the long term. Mhmm. And then and then it's just like, Over these next six months, this is what our team looks like and our spend there and this is what spend outside of team looks like. And if we swap out one channel or one version of the spend for another, as long as it's within that budget, we don't really have to we don't have to torture ourselves over a decision.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I feel like that's like, you know, again, like like the trying to live the see what it's like to be in the in the in the shoes of like a VC founder and and you and you. Right? With you know, that's not me. So like, I think it's it's like you you have the benefit of having the the margin, you know, like peep Yeah.
Brian Casel:There is like even without even though you're pre revenue, you have plenty of margin and room. Financially, like, team wise, resource wise, like it's all there in front of you. Whereas like someone like me and most bootstrappers, it's like we're literally limited on all fronts.
Jordan Gal:Yes. So
Brian Casel:you gotta be as efficient as possible and you know, like find the fastest path with the least amount of resources.
Jordan Gal:That's right.
Brian Casel:And it's like it's like there there's there's, you know, pros and cons to both sides obviously, but like Yes.
Jordan Gal:It is a it does not mean you're gonna be successful. You cannot buy product market fit, but it is a ridiculous advantage to be able to think that way and operate that way. But that's the that is the agreement that you go into with your investors. You give them a big part of your company and they say, we will give you the breathing room to try to figure it out.
Brian Casel:And what the what the I guess what I'm getting at because, you know, as like a general theme for me mentally this year, it's like, how do I stay sane and happy and enjoying what I do every day and Mhmm. Still having a life with my family and everything. And it's like, having that breathing room get gives you the it it like enables the ambition to go to to fully go all in on something because you have plenty of time for this thing to to do its thing, to do whatever it's gonna do. That's right. Without needing to worry about the day to day needs.
Brian Casel:Mhmm. Like, you're covered.
Jordan Gal:Yes. Yes. And it does force you at least it forces me because because I have a lot of the bootstrap mentality where I wanna wait and see what works before investing, it challenges that. Yeah. And it says, no.
Jordan Gal:Why don't you put $10,000 a month into outbound and $10,000 a month into ads and $10,000 a month into this other thing because you shouldn't sit on your ass. Like you know, hurry hurry up. The competition's coming. Everything everything is more pressure but that that's part of the the trade off.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. So we
Jordan Gal:are gonna go hard at outbound. Yeah. We're gonna yeah. So that I'm making a decision today actually. I talked to two people.
Jordan Gal:It's like a done for you outbound service. So I'm gonna choose one of them. And then emails will start to go out realistically in about thirty days because you have to quote season the domains.
Brian Casel:I know the whole game. Yep.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. But there are there are relatively affordable solutions
Brian Casel:Oh, yeah.
Jordan Gal:Totally done for you outbound to go out and reach between a 5,000 potential customers a month.
Brian Casel:Very nice. That that is still a good channel because it's like like you said, it is like it's it's like kinda complicated to set up initially but it's good when you use like a done for you service. Myself like a couple months ago but but I got some really good advice from from some people and it's nice that it's like sort of like low cost. It once once you have the list building systems and the outreach systems in place, It's sort of like set it and forget it. You you and optimizing and stuff but like But yeah.
Brian Casel:It's it's like a low cost and it's a way to just literally like knock on the door of your best customers.
Jordan Gal:Yes. I have been I've been convinced that we should move that much further up in our priorities. I I saw Derek Riemer. Sup Derek? He had a funny tweet.
Jordan Gal:He basically took a screenshot of a cold email and he and he was like, I don't understand why would this ever work? And I feel the same way. I with Derek. A lot of us feel the same way. What I've been convinced by people who have very direct experience is that not every industry is like that.
Jordan Gal:In software, we get a tremendous amount of email and cold email and cold calls, and we have tuned it out. Not every business in industry is like that. And when your inbox and your voicemail box are where your customers leave messages asking for your service, you take your inbox much more seriously. I look at my inbox as a as a as a pain. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:That is a time for me and there's no really no money to be made there unless I'm fundraising.
Brian Casel:Yeah. It's been interesting to see all the cold emails that are clearly AI generated now and and like they literally I don't know if you've you've seen this, but like, I don't know, like the mark like the the margin or the spacing is always messed up. Just like this just started like two months ago. All the cold emails that I get are now like super small font with like weird line breaks because prob probably they're all using the same like AI generated tool. Right.
Jordan Gal:Terrible.
Brian Casel:You know, but I've been running it daily for Clarity Flow for I think like seven or eight months now. And just high level like we're still running it because we do get leads from it and customers from We do get plenty of people saying like, no, stop emailing me. This is Yep. Annoying. But every single week, we also get people who respond to these emails and say like, that's interesting.
Brian Casel:Send me the link. Mhmm. Like they they just do and and every time still every time they do, I'm like, holy shit. How does that happen?
Jordan Gal:That's great.
Brian Casel:But I I also think that it it is also a function of niching down. When you know exactly who your target customer is, you can only you know, look for those exact customers in their talk to them. And and you know exactly how to speak their language and
Jordan Gal:Yes. What
Brian Casel:what I Like with a grain of salt though, because like even the sign ups, even the leads and the customers who come through, I will say they are just not as good as organic inbound as good. Like, because you're you're still interrupting them and they might be intrigued even enough to sign up.
Jordan Gal:Right. The intent is different.
Brian Casel:But they weren't planning on spending their time on this right now, you know. Yes. But, you know, I I have to think that we're also planting the seed. I I could I could also see we are definitely getting sign ups. We actually have ways to track this now from people who did not reply to the emails.
Brian Casel:Mhmm. I know that they I know that they received our emails and then they signed up like a few months later, you know.
Jordan Gal:It is it does have an element of awareness building. Yeah. A little bit of brand building but you gotta be careful with how you're building the brand in that way. Mhmm. My hope is that it is a kick start and it gets things rolling but it's not what we do forever.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I I I don't know of any I don't know of a better way to kick start. And when I look over the advertising that I really really wanna do, it is a solid five times more expensive.
Brian Casel:Oh, yeah.
Jordan Gal:Five, you know, four or five times more expensive than outbound and that is scary and I you know, it has convinced me to just push that off a little more until we understand more, until the things worked out, and the onboarding works, and all all this. Yep.
Brian Casel:I still think that like even like the cold outreach is like even more about gaining awareness with your best customers even more so than ads because, yeah, ads are also getting in front of more eyeballs than the than you otherwise would have been able to. But if it's like search ads, then then you're still counting on people actually going to Google and searching for something related and then seeing your ad. Whereas a cold outbound is to somebody who was not out there looking for this. You're just going to them. Like, hey, you should be aware of this.
Brian Casel:Like
Jordan Gal:Yes. My optimism around it, my hope for it is the combination of what we talked about before where AI solves a problem that a lot of people have but has not been solved. If you combine that with awareness, making nontechnical people aware, hey, that problem that really sucks, now it can be solved, that might that might make for some magic. Not that it's gonna be easy or it's definitely gonna work or whatever else, but I like the potential there that if we get the messaging right and we we feel their pain and articulate that in the right way to make them aware of a potential solution that they never even thought was possible Yeah. Maybe that maybe that creates, you know, something great.
Brian Casel:And we'll wrap it up. But like just to sort of like tie the tie the knot on like coming back to like my side of marketing and sales and growth. Okay. With all my products, it's still like like, yeah, we're doing a bit of that at cold outreach. We're doing some SEO stuff.
Brian Casel:But at the end of the day, the thing that always works the best for me is customer success and then customers referring other customers. Like, and so like if we can like completely nail it on Clarity Flow with a coach, we definitely see this happen all the time. That coach then tells like five other coaches.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. You penetrate these networks.
Brian Casel:Even Taylor Made UI, that my UI design consulting service, like where where my clients to date have come from are either people that I know or somebody tweeted and recommended me to someone that was a good fit. And so I just put that tweet out there today and and it's like that's what I rely on to get like really good customers for for anything that I do. It's like, you know, it's it's like lower volume but it's much higher quality and and then it's a question of like making that sustainable.
Jordan Gal:Cool. I like a good place to end things off. I'm gonna be thinking about how to build that in to our product and what the right way to do that is.
Brian Casel:For sure, man.
Jordan Gal:It's Friday. Sunny out. Get out there everybody. Hope you
Brian Casel:have Alright. Later, bro.
