Era of Trying Stuff
Hey. It's Bootstrap Web and we are doing a Thursday afternoon recording unlike our usual Friday thing. Yes. Jordan, you are heading out on vacation tomorrow.
Jordan Gal:I am heading out. This was our chance to to get the podcast done.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And I'm heading out on Monday. We'll take a little break for another at least another week or two after this.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Hopefully, everybody out there listening is planning on some time off, you know. I'm looking forward to it and annoyed by I'm cranky. Okay? You got you got cranky, Jordan, on on on the podcast today.
Brian Casel:I'm psyched. Yeah. Must must be fun.
Jordan Gal:It it might is is several reasons. One, front and center is I'm getting a physical exam done today for for a life insurance. And I haven't eaten in a while. I'm cranky when I don't eat.
Brian Casel:That's Alright. We we got hangry. We've we've got we've got life insurance issues. We're scrambling before vacation. It's a it's a it's a tasty cocktail right
Jordan Gal:yes. That's and and we're we're ready to launch early access accounts on Monday. Mhmm. I am how do I say this? I I was frustrated by a few things this week on the product side and the you know, so frustrated.
Jordan Gal:Yeah,
Brian Casel:man. Alright. We're we'll we'll get into that. We'll we'll do some therapy on air with that. Yeah.
Brian Casel:And I think I'm gonna announce another product idea and a domain and and a new thing today. We'll we'll get into that as well. Yet yet another thing on my on my plate.
Jordan Gal:I like it.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Like Aaron Francis, you know, he he always talked about like the what like the What is it? Like the era of like maximum effort or whatever. Okay. Feel like I'm in Right like now he's on try hard which
Jordan Gal:is
Brian Casel:I'm in some kind of era of like hacking on a bunch of random ideas.
Jordan Gal:Okay.
Brian Casel:To I My my theme now mentally is like forward motion. Just get some stuff going. Get Put some new ideas out there. I'm gonna share another new idea today and and see where it goes. Like stop with the analysis paralysis.
Brian Casel:Mhmm. Stop with the over over strategizing everything and just start building some stuff and take it from there. Learn and go. You know?
Jordan Gal:I love it. I love it. I'm I'm very much in a YOLO risk loving mentality.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:I think that's like a combination of things. I've been reading a few books that have kinda got me into that mindset. I've been talking to my my brother a lot. You know, just that sometimes the ambition bug gets you. And you wanna faster, you get frustrated, you get impatient, and that's kinda how I feel right now.
Jordan Gal:I'm really excited about the Rosie opportunity and I plan to be really aggressive. And I am like marshaling all this energy to to do it.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Especially as you're coming up on this like getting getting the product into the customer's hands right now.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. It feels like I'm almost like pumping myself up because it's about the right. We talked about the baton handoff. The baton's about to get handed off to me in in the go to market side and I'm, you know, right into vacation which is bad timing and also great timing because we're not we're not full general access. It is what we decided to do is take on five ICP accounts.
Jordan Gal:Five. No more. Mhmm. Yep. Right?
Jordan Gal:So that doesn't count like peer accounts. You know, I'll probably send it to you and some friends and say, hey, tell me what's wrong with the onboarding, what's working, what errors you're getting, whatever things like that.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I do wanna see. I want I wanna try it out.
Jordan Gal:Cool. And then five ICP accounts is that's pretty limited. You know, that's nothing crazy. It's really intended to provide good
Brian Casel:good first batch.
Jordan Gal:Right. It's not too much. Really just intended to get a bunch of feedback
Brian Casel:so like these five, are they different? Are they all the same?
Jordan Gal:Or
Brian Casel:like how did you decide on on which five?
Jordan Gal:So we don't have them identified. What we have is a lot more than five that we plan to reach out to. And so basically the people we have the best relationships with. Mhmm. Right?
Jordan Gal:There's one partner I have in mind and then there are a few like dream customers and there's a few people that are really really excited. My assumption is it's gonna take more than five people to reach out to and request in order to turn those Yeah. Into five ICP. Right.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Like we all know like just sending the email like, hey, wanna try it? Like that's they're they're not gonna be ready to just come in today, you know. That's right. They got stuff going on.
Brian Casel:So you gotta a few more than that.
Jordan Gal:Yes. So we got that cold email. Got started this week. We are officially sending our boy Brian that we hired is doing a fantastic job. We we do we got the you know, when you send when you send cold email, you need to be prepared for
Brian Casel:at least least yeah.
Jordan Gal:Yes. It is not without its g f y's. It is just part of it. So we got we got such a funny one and I I'm happy with the way I responded to it because I think this is required for early stage. Like, you're gonna get laughed at, yelled at, all that.
Brian Casel:Of course. So
Jordan Gal:we we had one cold email template that was like talking about missed calls. And first I I love what Brian's done for us in that as soon as we get started because he's a pro, we have multiple versions of of things. If it was just me setting it up, probably just start with one.
Brian Casel:That's been my thing. I just I was like, oh I'm gonna AB test this and like for like eight months we've we've been sending the same email to everyone. Okay.
Jordan Gal:So I look I'm the same way. If I did it myself, we would have at least I would have convinced myself just start with one, just get over the barrier. But because Brian's a pro, he's got you know a whole bunch of stuff and permutations and personalizations like hell yeah. Yeah. So one of one of the versions of the email was like, I tried calling you but you missed the call.
Jordan Gal:Don't you wanna never miss another call kind of a thing.
Brian Casel:Oh, yeah.
Jordan Gal:People responses were just like, no you didn't. Like, oh, okay. Okay. Okay. So, yeah.
Jordan Gal:Fair. Let's let's adjust that a little bit. So
Brian Casel:That's great. Yeah. Oh, wow.
Jordan Gal:Yep. One response was just, don't lie. Don't lie. You know what? I think that's good advice actually.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I've I've had quite a few angry responses.
Jordan Gal:Oh, yeah.
Brian Casel:A bunch like actually asked like, how did you get my information? Like tell me where
Jordan Gal:you. But all this stuff leads into like, you know, we're we're we're getting underway. This week was the first time cold emails went out and one of them responded positively. So while we're recording this, Sam from my team is talking to someone in LA who runs a restoration company. So you know, it works.
Jordan Gal:First day.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I mean, you know, I started to I got really surprised early on when when we did get a handful of positive replies and then they just Every every week we get negatives and positives, know. And it's just I've been amate And the other thing I noticed is is that because I do track the the link clicks with with some source stuff so I could see There are definitely people who come and and trial us who don't reply to the emails but they clearly received one. Like sent them an email. They don't reply to us but they do go to the site and sign up.
Jordan Gal:Is like That's interesting. It is a little bit like broadcast. It it's it doesn't have to be direct response. They don't actually have to respond.
Brian Casel:Oh, exactly. Yes. The whole point is it's to me it's literally going and knocking on people's doors. That's what it because it it like, look, we hate cold cold email. We hate cold outreach.
Brian Casel:We hate receiving it. But the fact of the matter is, it to me, it's like the only way that I know of to go out to your best ideal customers. You know, because you do the research to build the right list with the right people. That's that's the key to making it work. You can't just spray and pray.
Brian Casel:Like Mhmm. So like you do that research upfront and it these are the people who are not searching for you. You're not gonna win them through SEO and maybe not even through ads because they're not searching, but they are perfect. So this is how you go knock on their door.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. That's a good way good way to put it. Especially if what you're doing isn't that well known. I mean, of us, you know, when we launch something new, it's not well known. So they just don't know about you.
Jordan Gal:They might not know about the category, the solution, all that stuff. Yeah. Yes. Yeah, man.
Brian Casel:So You want
Jordan Gal:want me to talk about my my frustration?
Brian Casel:Let's hear it,
Jordan Gal:dude. Okay. I'm gonna try to talk about this in such a way that it isn't pointing fingers because ultimately it actually gets pointed at me. Mhmm. So this this week I had I had several frustrations this week.
Jordan Gal:They're all understandable but they're they're difficult to deal with. We are we are having challenges around design and the reason for that is because the the designer that we've been working with for four years is changing careers. And you know that's awesome for him. I'm very very happy for him. Great dude.
Jordan Gal:Has done fantastic work for us. Has been great to work with.
Brian Casel:Has he he's was a contractor or Yes.
Jordan Gal:Your team? Yes. Always been a contractor but we worked very closely and and it and it worked for everyone. It was like this great situation for everyone involved. But now we have a website that is it's up and published, there's a lot more to do there.
Jordan Gal:And we have the admin, which obviously there's a lot more to do there. So we have a foundation. We have enough to launch a website and launch into early access, but we we need we need more work going into the future. And it is a pretty specific case. Right?
Jordan Gal:You need to hire a designer. We want it to be freelance. We don't wanna take on someone full time, and they need to take over an existing design system and expand from there. Right? It's not go go off and create your own.
Jordan Gal:So you really need to adapt to an existing style and language and infrastructure basically. And I see that as on me. That's my job. Right? If the dev team and the product team are saying we're starting to be slowed down because design isn't getting us what we need in time because he's starting to focus elsewhere, that's on me.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. And so a lot of the frustration I've had this week is because I know it's my fault. So we've had challenges there and we are going into early access. We said to ourselves, early access is an MVP. It's not gonna be perfect.
Jordan Gal:We we should not wait until it's perfect. Therefore, we know it's gonna be, you know, imperfect. So
Brian Casel:yeah. Sorry. Go.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I was gonna say, I always agree with that in principle. And then in practice, when I look at the app and it doesn't look the way I want it to, I get frustrated.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Just in terms of like design standards on apps, even like MVP or version one apps. Mhmm. Me, like, there there always is a there's always a baseline standard of quality. No matter what stage you're at.
Jordan Gal:Okay. Good way to put it.
Brian Casel:To to me, the the whole point of an MVP or or or a limited scope, It's not limited quality. It's limited scope. It's like deciding not to build x y and z features yet. Mhmm. But the features that we are building, they need to work on all screens.
Brian Casel:They need to like there there shouldn't be bugs at least not super obvious ones. Mhmm. You know, it it's like to me it's like a level of respect, like professional respect and building Yeah. With integrity. Mean look we we're we're not the the we're we're professionals.
Brian Casel:Meaning like we're in the big leagues here. Yeah. Doesn't matter how how small our companies are, we are playing in the big leagues. We have to act like it. Like Yeah.
Brian Casel:That that means like not shipping garbage Yeah. In my view you know. Like I I had this thing when early on in my career I I started as a as a web designer at at a web agency. It This was one of I feel like I got really lucky with having a first job in this industry at a web design agency that was working on big globally known brand websites. Okay.
Brian Casel:I was in my early twenties first career first job in my career, right? So that means like I'm work I'm doing like HTML design on these what sites on like Pepsi and like AT and T and Discover card and stuff like that. And you know, like you can't ship like these things are gonna be seen by so many thousands of of visitors like you you cannot ship garbage and so I would I was like still learning. I was an amateur. So I was like I was giving stuff to my manager and she would just send it right back.
Brian Casel:She's like, nope. Got Like keep keep working. And like, a couple years of that just just honed into me like there you cannot deliver anything that doesn't meet a baseline level of quality. And so then after that when I went out on my own, you know, that got drilled into me. So that so then I like I I hired other freelancers and other designers and stuff who don't who don't come from that like agency background experience and they would deliver stuff to me.
Brian Casel:It's like, did you even look at this before you like why do That's what frustrates me. It sounds like it's frustrating you
Jordan Gal:Yeah.
Brian Casel:Where where it's like you you gotta have your own standards like it shouldn't leave your own desk until it meets a high level of quality. You know, because it's because then it's like disrespectful to your manager or your boss or the customer or someone. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Because Your standard.
Brian Casel:They they shouldn't have to spend their time even having to QA something at at that level,
Jordan Gal:you know. Yeah. So it isn't this is a difficult topic because again I don't I don't wanna point fingers but I it's I'm really happy we talked about it because you articulated better than I did around why I was frustrated. So what I did was I wanted to be helpful because look, there are there are circumstances around it. Specifically, we cut down the team.
Jordan Gal:There aren't a lot of people, and that means we're asking each person to do a lot. And then what you're really asking someone to do is functionality and form and the design of it. And it is true that the functionality has to work first, And then you get to decide how much time are we gonna put on the design side before we're willing to push it out into early access. And we told ourselves and we told each other we're gonna we're gonna push it. We're gonna go faster.
Jordan Gal:We're gonna go looser. Yep. So it there's there's some degree of it being my fault. I set that strategy. I agreed to it.
Jordan Gal:I said, yes. That's how we do it. Here's where the problem is. I want it to be helpful. So I opened up a new Google Doc.
Jordan Gal:Right? Simple as possible. And I start going through the app and I start writing comments. Forty five minutes in, I'm like, this is actually not okay. Because this is not not that it's not my job, I'm above it but like Yeah.
Brian Casel:Like why am I spending all this time typing like out why should I have to point out these things that are
Jordan Gal:Right. And and it's not coming from a place of why do I have to spend my time doing. That's not it. It's what you're talking about is actually where it is. It's why did this leave your desk?
Brian Casel:Exactly.
Jordan Gal:Yes. That that's not okay. Funny you mentioned your story. I'm glad I'm glad you told it. I had a very similar experience.
Jordan Gal:My first job out of college was at Solomon Smith Barney and I used to work, know, an analyst there. What you work on is you work on the documents. Mhmm. And so when you work on some $800,000,000 revolving credit facility and you're the one that needs to put the book together to send out to the 40 investors who say yes, we're in on this deal or not. I would do something similar and I would push it out to my boss and they'd be like, absolutely not.
Jordan Gal:Are you kidding me? But what they would say, they would they would have that level of indignance over this table is this wide and the table below it is not the same width. You out of your mind? Make it
Brian Casel:Like how do you not see that?
Jordan Gal:Yes. Make it perfect. Yeah. And I took that with me in my career and I can find a mistake on any document
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Any any PDF, any slide deck, anything immediately and and that I think it actually ends up helping you and the people around you, especially the people that work for you, people that send things to you.
Brian Casel:100. I I think it it it starts to become like a blessing and a curse like for me as as I've gone on to my own products and everything, it you know, it it breeds a level of perfectionism. Like I see every pixel and every detail and and I have to make it right before I'm willing to put it out. But you know, but but I do find like the way to to trim down the scope is like trim down your appetite of what you're gonna build. But the things that you do build have to be have to have a level of quality, you know.
Brian Casel:Like yeah, like going back to that like with the web design agency, it was like The other thing was I just remember over and over again my manager, I I would try to build something that's really challenging to design and build in the browser and and she'd be like, well, it it works on Coca Cola's website and we're we're building Pepsi's website. So they built it that like we have to figure out how to build it. So go back and figure out how to build it. Like I like it. Over and over again.
Brian Casel:And I'm just like, ugh. But I was so frustrated at the time but looking back on it now, I'm so much better overall. And Yeah. And and this and then the muscle of figuring out how to figure things out quickly and you know. Mhmm.
Brian Casel:All that.
Jordan Gal:Well, I I think I properly expressed myself without being a jerk but also effectively pointing at the standards that we have for ourselves and saying, I hear you. We wanna go fast. This does not meet our standards and we're going on Monday to early access so let it reach our standards by Monday.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yep. Yep.
Jordan Gal:Well, that's my side of things unless you wanna talk about, you know, life insurance. What do you got going
Brian Casel:on? Yeah. I got So I'm gonna I'm gonna talk about this new thing that I am finding myself spending a lot of time on this week. Okay.
Jordan Gal:Give us some background.
Brian Casel:At at the same time, know, I I again, I'm I'm hacking on multiple things. One of them being like looking for my next design and and UI gig with with a you know, looking for another client or two to sink my teeth into in August and September. I wonder if there's any SaaS companies who need a designer who needs to build. You
Jordan Gal:don't wanna work with me bro.
Brian Casel:You know, so you know, that that's sort of always like hovering it up and I'm talking to a few different people considering some short term, some long term ideas there but I talked about Sunrise dashboard last time. That that's one product idea that I'm putting out there. But I'm not I'm not building that product just yet. Right now, I'm just collecting feedback from the surveys. I got some pretty good information.
Brian Casel:I wanna start building like an SEO system to to explore that. That that would be like the next thing to do on that one. Clarity flow, there's some projects that I'm overseeing with my team. I can talk more about that another time. There's some we'll we'll be shipping some interesting changes soon.
Brian Casel:Here's what I'm spending every day and the late nights on this week. It's a new thing. You can check it out at ripple.fm. That is the new landing page for something new. The headline that I I just came up with this this morning and I and I got it out there.
Brian Casel:I mean I've been working on this for a while but the the way that I'm communicating it came together today. The headline there is it's it's a new way to grow your network. And this was one of the ideas that I was alluding to a few weeks back on this show where I got really excited and and and kind of fired up about something. And I don't necessarily think it's like a great business idea for me to work on right In terms of like generating revenue or cash in the near term, it's not that but it's something that I can't stop thinking about and I ended up starting to build it. And so ripple.fm is essentially a new way to grow your network.
Brian Casel:And you do that through private podcasts or joining a private podcast community. And and it's it's like a new type of podcasting platform that again like lets you either start a private podcast or a semi private podcast that has a community element where all of your listeners can sign up and join and connect with each other, connect with you, and then also sort of like connect and network into other adjacent podcast communities. There's a lot of different dimensions to this. I I have started to record my own new private podcast. Today, I recorded the seventh solo episode for that.
Brian Casel:I haven't released any of them yet. I'm I'm gonna be releasing it on Ripple FM. I'm hoping to to get like the MVP of this thing built and shipped by this weekend, hopefully. So that I like just enough for me for me to be the first private podcast on the network. Okay.
Brian Casel:And start inviting people to create their profile and subscribe to mine. But the other thing that I'm looking for right now is I would like a handful of other people who would be interested in hosting their podcasts to this network and for them to grow their communities. So you know, the landing page is up there. Ripple.fm. You know, there's an email sign up for it to to request an invite and then there's gonna be a survey.
Brian Casel:Yeah. It's just something that I'm really excited about. I think that I you know, I didn't really explain all of it here. I think another part of it is the connection like the connections between podcasters, their listeners and the listeners with other listeners. Right?
Brian Casel:It Any podcaster will tell you, Jordan, you you and I both know that like we have listeners who who probably don't miss an episode of this show. But we've only met a very small handful of them like in person or actually know who they are. Most of them, they know us but we don't know them. And they have so much in common with us. And they have so much in common with each other.
Brian Casel:And they have so much in common with adjacent podcasts to ours. Like other other shows in our community of startups and podcasts and and tech and and all that. To me it's kind of crazy that these podcasts and their listener bases are not more networked. And I think that Twitter has been failing on that front. Like like our industry is one of the only industries that is still really active on on Twitter.
Brian Casel:And even then, I still feel like it's not only super noisy and annoying but it's like Yeah. Actually pretty bad at connecting like minded people to each other. Right? Yeah. Like Changed.
Jordan Gal:It's changed. It's not a community. It's a news platform more than
Brian Casel:anything else. Essentially. Yeah. Yeah. And then the other thing that that that has been eating at me is is this idea that like, yeah, I am connected to a bunch of people in our circles.
Brian Casel:I'm in a handful of private Slacks and group group chats and some telegram groups and but each of those is like, alright, five people over here, 10 people over there. I'm in a one with a few 100 over there and then and it's like different people and I'm in a few mastermind groups over here, some some private DMs over there. Everything is so disconnected.
Jordan Gal:Yeah.
Brian Casel:Where do I go to connect with anyone who knows me and and is listening to the same content that I'm listening to? Like
Jordan Gal:Yeah. That that's a worthy goal. Like that problem because a lot of a lot of people experience it. I feel the same way. It it takes real work to keep up with my Portland Slack and this business Slack and this other community and this other one.
Jordan Gal:I end up living in Slack but then anyone who doesn't, it just it does keep your world much smaller than it would be normally.
Brian Casel:And so my my hypothesis on that Okay. The the way to solve that problem is podcasts. Like I think that podcasts
Jordan Gal:That's the glue.
Brian Casel:Is the connective tissue that that that a network can be built around in in my opinion. And this is like kind of like a big idea. Like a big hairy problem to solve. It's kind And it's kinda scary to me that I'm even trying to solve it because it's it's not like a bootstrapper friendly type startup idea and I'm not even I'm not even approaching it that way. I'm just approaching it like this is a problem that I really really want to see solved well and I'm really in it and I and I wanna do it.
Brian Casel:So Yeah. Very cool. Let me because the thing is Like one concept here is that the Anytime a Somebody signs up to subscribe to someone's podcast, they're creating a profile and they can list their favorite podcast that they listen to on their profile. Right? Like I don't know.
Brian Casel:Like I might I might put in like Mixergy and My First Million and I don't know a handful of others like Mhmm. You know
Jordan Gal:and Mostly technical and Mostly technical you know. Sure.
Brian Casel:And so I put that into my profile. Other listeners put create their profiles of which ones they listen to and using that database of connection of people and podcasts that they listen to, we can connect people together so that I know who I should follow and who I should be in a be in a community with. So like even if these these large podcasters out there don't come join ripple.fm, there can still be like unofficial communities of listeners who like those public shows. So that's that's one element of it. The other element is this private podcasting idea.
Brian Casel:Like I've I've been in a group where we have a private podcast where multiple people contribute to the same feed and it's a way to stay in touch with it. This is one of my many small groups that I'm still a a part of. Right? Like so I I think it's a really fantastic way to to stay in touch with a small network. Know, that's another use case for a private podcast in a small community.
Brian Casel:Of course, you can do something else where it's like if you're a public podcaster you can have like a VIP community for your audience here. Like
Jordan Gal:Yeah. There's more to go for Yeah. For sure. Yeah. Can can I ask a few questions?
Jordan Gal:Want Please. I'm gonna try to stay high level because the the goals are the most important thing. The exact features on how it gets done is the stuff to be worked out. Yep. But a few a few big questions.
Jordan Gal:You mentioned existing podcast.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:Right? Like ours and mostly technical and okay. Let's just like start start there. You you called it a publishing platform. I don't know if I got that right.
Jordan Gal:Right? Yeah. Right. You I'm assuming you're not trying to pull anyone off of Spotify to go publish on your platform. Instead of Spotify
Brian Casel:Yeah. So I Spotify is is always gonna be its own thing because because they Right. They've they've claimed their own thing.
Jordan Gal:Right. It's an aggregator. It's a platform. You kinda have to be there. Sure.
Jordan Gal:Like a YouTube.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And then there's like big name people who will sign deals with Spotify to go exclusive. Right? Sure. But Okay.
Brian Casel:So that's like its own thing. But let let's look at everything else. And I guess I'm more focused on the on the small and medium sized. And by medium sized, still pretty big.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Still big. Right. But like a podcast like ours, do we publish our our episode there as well as the other platforms? Apple, Spotify and so on?
Jordan Gal:I think Or is it like a like a hosting page where like
Brian Casel:My thought right now is that public podcasts like ours and others, nothing changes. We continue to publish our Bootstrap web public podcast the way we've always had we always always have. Right? If we want to or if other other people want to, they can start they can they can start just a community on ripple.fm and not even have a podcast on the platform. Just use the community feature.
Brian Casel:That's that's one way to use it. And you can And and it could actually be a way for pod For existing podcasts to grow their audience because Ripple is a network of podcast fans who and it connects like, if you like Bootstrap Web, then other listeners of Bootstrap Web also tend to like my first million. So so like there's that recommendation engine that that could grow over time. So they it could be like a way to grow your pocket. That that's one way for the existing podcaster.
Brian Casel:Right? Does that answer your question? Like Yeah. Yeah. Like we don't We Like that's that's one I would say.
Jordan Gal:Right. So so I could jump on the platform and start my own private podcast and then people could listen to it, follow it, subscribe to it.
Brian Casel:Yeah. So here's the other Or
Jordan Gal:I could not but I could still participate in the community and basically jump in there and say, this is what we have in common. You're just using
Brian Casel:the fact that Podcast that
Jordan Gal:you're interested in. That's the thread.
Brian Casel:Yeah. The podcast that you're interested in is the is the way to identify what what and who you're interested in.
Jordan Gal:Right? It's a bit of a personality test. Like my my mix of podcasts, I mean, that's literally what I'm interested in.
Brian Casel:Literally. Right. Yeah. And and it's like if we subscribe to podcasts and actually listen to them on a regular basis, we're not just casually interested in these topics. We're obsessed with these topics.
Jordan Gal:Obsessed enough to hand over hours of your week to it.
Brian Casel:Yes. Hours. Yes. Like your drives, you're washing the dishes like, you you only devote that attention to things that you are super into and you don't only listen to one. If you listen to us, you probably listen to like five other business podcasts.
Brian Casel:It it is
Jordan Gal:expressing your personality in many ways. The things you Yeah. The things you listen to.
Brian Casel:Like I listen to like four different podcasts about the New York Mets. Like, you know, and and and I listen to like and and and I listen to That's tough bro.
Jordan Gal:I'm sorry to hear that.
Brian Casel:Hey, they're not they're not so bad right now. But the the I listened to like another five podcasts about politics, you know, and and news and a bunch about business. And then a bunch about you know.
Jordan Gal:SMB, I listen to franchise stuff, I listen to tech stuff, I listen to Israel, I listen to politics. Yeah. That's like my interests.
Brian Casel:Yeah. What was I gonna say?
Jordan Gal:Cool.
Brian Casel:The other thing about okay. So so I've been recording these private podcasts of my own. I'm I'm seven episodes in. This is also a really interesting thing. Now, posting your own private podcast is not gonna be for everyone.
Brian Casel:Sure. But I'm finding something interesting about it. Right? Like, okay. We are like unusually open here on Bootstrap Web.
Brian Casel:Like we we share a lot about our lives and our business and everything. But it's still somewhat surface level to be to be completely honest. We don't share everything.
Jordan Gal:There's a lot we we have to hold back. We feel like we have to hold back. Sure.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And and there's I think there's also like We still edit ourselves. Not like we're misleading anyone, but we still edit ourselves because we know we're just putting it out there in total public view for anyone to subscribe to. Right? Yes.
Brian Casel:And and I talked about how I've been in this for many years now in this private podcast Slack group with like 10 friend, like 10 or 20 friends. These are like long time friend business relationships and that's where we are completely 100% open and and and like sharing it all because we know it's totally totally private and we know exactly who's in that group and and we're very careful about that's why we're we carefully don't invite other people because because because we share it all in there, right?
Jordan Gal:And that's There's a direct correlation between value and how open you can be.
Brian Casel:Yeah. But the the issue there is that it is so closed and we've shared so much that we can't really open it up to more people.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:So this ripple.fm I see as sort of a middle ground between those two extremes. And I've noticed this as I'm as I'm recording these private podcasts. They're like ten or twenty minutes each. I'm talking about the work that I'm doing but also my mindset. And I'm finding myself to to talk more openly than I do here on Bootstrapped Web.
Brian Casel:Still like I have it in my mind that like, okay, more than just 10 friends are gonna join join this. It could be like 50 or a 100. So I have to I have to be mindful of that. But I'm I'm speaking with a level of openness and vulnerability vulnerability. I can't speak now.
Brian Casel:Yeah. But And sharing details that I wouldn't normally just share on Bootstrap web. Because I know that once I release this, I'm gonna literally have I'm literally gonna see all the people and know them by name on who is actually listening. And they're gonna be one message away or one DM away in the Ripple community once they get access to these episodes. So like I'm I'm finding there's like a level of openness and like a different kind of content quality to the private podcasting thing than than you would normally hear.
Brian Casel:I think that that's an interesting angle and I think it's it like It's so weird to like try to invent a new I'm not inventing anything new here but it's like, think it's a new content medium. I think it's a new way to I I wrote in the headline, it's a new way to grow your personal network because I also think that like, your network is so much more valuable or so much more useful than an audience. Yeah. People talk about like, it's great to have a huge audience. Only very or very few people actually have the luxury of having a massive audience.
Brian Casel:Right? But if you have a network of of 50 people, 20 people even who are so tuned into you and your story, that is worth so much in business, in life.
Jordan Gal:Taps into their networks and their friends and their experiences. Yeah. This is like the stuff. I mean, this is a lot of the value that you and I get out of this podcast.
Brian Casel:100%. Absolutely. 100%. Right? And that and honestly for me, this idea is I'm not treating it like I'm building this and launching it to make money tomorrow from it.
Brian Casel:The the ROI for me is like I want it to exist for myself and my the benefit that I get is the network. Like growing and strengthening my personal network because I know for a fact that when my When I have a strong network, I have a strong lead flow of clients for consulting. I have a strong network to to help me launch my products. I have potential customers for my products. I have partners readily available to work with me.
Brian Casel:Yeah. It The network effects. Like I'm customer number one of this thing. And and if if I get nothing more out of this than just that, then that's great. But I I think that there's something bigger here and I think other people should be able to benefit from from that from that kind of network effects of having a podcast or being a listener.
Brian Casel:Literally just the fact that you listen to podcasts makes you a candidate to get some value out of this if it were to. Like you don't have to start a private podcast but you can join a group where other listeners of your favorite podcasts are and that could be beneficial to you for the network. You know? Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm. Yeah. This week, the designer problem I'm facing, I got introduced to a potential new designer to work with through through this network.
Brian Casel:There you go. That's exactly it. Know?
Jordan Gal:You know what? What what I wanna point out for a sec is sometimes there are products or businesses that we go after and they are maybe help me think through this for a second. They're very problem focused where there's like an existing pain. This is the type of business experiencing it. You know, ecommerce companies off of Shopify have bad checkouts.
Jordan Gal:Let's go get them better checkouts.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:What you're talking about right now, how how do we describe this type of a thing? It is it is a bit conceptual. It is a bit like something I wanna see in the world. I I it's less about this is so painful that people are willing to pay for it. Right.
Jordan Gal:I don't know what you Is this like an aspirational concept? I I don't know how to describe that, but you you see what I'm saying? There's there's
Brian Casel:different I do see This is this is why I don't think this is a good bootstrapper friendly business idea. Okay. I don't because like Sunrise dashboard, I think does qualify as like a pretty straightforward idea for a SaaS product that I can charge SaaS prices for. Maybe there's a consultant component to I can market it with SEO.
Brennan Dunn:Like
Brian Casel:and I plan to do those things. Like that's a project that I I plan to work on. And I'm talking a lot a lot about that on my private podcast. So that is like That's potentially one of my next business ventures is Sunrise Dashboard. Ripple.fm is It's like a It's it's it's a social Like the closest thing I can think of is like a social networking platform.
Brian Casel:I'm not trying to make it like the next Facebook or Twitter, but like I I think it could be like a niche social networking platform. It it it's a marketplace. It's a social network. It There there's not a clear monetization strategy out out out front. Right.
Brian Casel:Like why would why would people pay for this? Like I'm not planning on charging people to to do it, at least not in the beginning. Mhmm. I have ideas for once it is a network, there could be ways to monetize it. But that that that would be so so far out in the future.
Brian Casel:So in short term like, I'm not thinking about how to monetize it. I'm just thinking about how to make it valuable, you know. And that's Cool. That's what it is, you know.
Jordan Gal:It's it's cool that you have these two these two versions, you know, of of of ambitions going at the same time between Sunrise and Ripple. I'm very curious.
Brian Casel:It's it's also interesting how I'm building it because it's like with Sunrise right now, I'm I'm really just in research mode and a little bit of marketing mode. I'm doing some SEO stuff. I'm not building anything just yet. I'm I'm not convinced that I'm going to build it.
Jordan Gal:I'm Sure.
Brian Casel:I'm learning. With this one, I just started building it. Because I because I wanted to build it and I'm and I wanna publish my my podcast. And yeah, you know, I I I could I could hear and I could hear all the people listening like, oh, why don't you just put the podcast on any podcast host and put your MVP this thing in a telegram group and and and and just test the waters to see if you're gonna have like enough interest to then convince yourself that you can go forward with the larger vision. I hear you.
Brian Casel:And I I thought that's what I was gonna do. I I wrote in my tweet like I think I'm gonna do you know, a transistor podcast and then and then a telegram group. And then I started wiring that up and then it's like, oh, I need a form for them to register themselves. I need to put everyone's profile. Do I put that in a Google sheet?
Brian Casel:I guess I need Zapier to hook these up. Now I'm paying for five different tools. And and then it's like, yeah. I know people are interested in wanting to hear my private podcast. I got about a 100 people who expressed interest.
Brian Casel:So like then what? Do I do I migrate them all off of the telegram into this other idea like
Jordan Gal:I mean there like a starting point to use or some of these concepts are well well understood?
Brian Casel:I'm building in in Rails. I I have I've been honing my my own Rails app template. I've got all the basic boilerplate stuff built into it. So yesterday, I built out the ability to post audio episodes and have a podcast feed. That that's working.
Brian Casel:So I think my next thing is to just make sure like there's a user subscription flow. I I gotta build that piece out and that like the MVP in my mind is me as the first podcaster posting episodes that people can join and and people can join my community. So there needs to be a flow for people to create their own profiles and subscribe to my podcast. And I wanna personally recruit a handful of other people who might wanna podcast on this thing as well.
Jordan Gal:I mean, it makes me interested to do a different this other thing. This this private
Brian Casel:Yeah. Like like I would encourage you or anyone else to have your own private podcast feed.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I don't even know what it would be.
Brian Casel:It could be like posted seven episodes It's
Jordan Gal:even like a show. I I guess everyone can do whatever they want.
Brian Casel:They want dude. I like I I posted seven episodes. The first one was like how I came up with the idea for Sunrise dashboard. The second one was the idea for Ripple. The third one was the SEO play and and how I'm doing programmatic SEO.
Brian Casel:The fourth one was how I'm looking how how I'm trying to sustain myself with consulting maybe, you know, and and my thoughts and history there. I'm doing an episode about Clarity Flow and what's happening over there. Like, I did an episode about my tech stack. Like whatever you're working on and whatever's on your mind, know. Some people go even more personal like I I listen to some people's like solo podcasts that they just put out publicly and and some people are just personal lives, parenthood, whatever it might be, you know.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Very interesting because it feels like a closer connection than something you publish on Spotify.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I I you know, I I I know that some companies also use pot like private internal podcasts Mhmm. As as like a company network keeping people in in the loop on things like that's that's another potential use case.
Brian Casel:I don't know. It's it's the idea that I I I thought it's too crazy to even work on and I that's why I went forward with Sunrise dashboard but it but it's something that I just cannot stop thinking about and I and I wanna do it and I'm in this era of hacking on new ideas and getting stuff going and found myself working on it this week. So here we go.
Jordan Gal:I I love it. I'm very happy to hear that. I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes and and trying it if if it gets to that point.
Brian Casel:Well, I'm going on vacation on Monday and my goal is to have something shippable before then. I I don't know if that's possible. We'll I
Jordan Gal:I have found myself, you know, it's summer. I usually think of summer to chill back a little bit. I have found myself really motivated.
Brian Casel:I'm never laid back. I'm always motivated. Really? I I I try
Jordan Gal:to get myself I think my nature is a bit lazy so I I kinda either I let it go or I fight it. It's easy to let it go. Yeah. But I I does not feel like I'm fighting anything. I I I lose track of the time.
Jordan Gal:I'm up reading. Yeah.
Brian Casel:I think We we both have vacations coming up and I'm going into this one in sort of a weird mindset because like I said, I have these ideas that I'm hacking on which like the Ripple FM like I am I'm working on it so that means I'm like really fired up and I'm and I'm spending late nights which means I'm gonna wanna work on it probably during vacation. And also like I'm also looking for my next consulting gig for for August. So that puts me in sort of a stressed mindset of like Mhmm. I feel If if I'm relaxing, I feel guilty.
Jordan Gal:Okay.
Brian Casel:It's like I'm not doing enough to keep things sustainable around here. So I'm I'm going into this vacation with a little bit of nervous Fire. Guilt and fire and Okay. And I don't know. We'll see.
Brian Casel:I I mean, I at the same time I I do need some some relaxation where it's it's sort of like a flying and then driving vacation going to Chicago and then up to Upper Peninsula Michigan. So some air b n b's and then some long driving days and some beach days and
Jordan Gal:all that. The driving is long distance driving is my favorite idea time that I have.
Brian Casel:Oh, yeah. Me too. I don't
Jordan Gal:even do it on purpose. I just really I look around and go everyone's asleep. It's just me in the road for the next two hours. Yep. And just being forced to actually think about something for a while is relatively rare because there's, you know, there's so much distraction at all times.
Jordan Gal:Go get some lunch. Look at Twitter. Yeah. Do work for half an hour then don't do then. So just thinking for an extended period of time is relatively rare.
Jordan Gal:I I that's why I get it's it's bad but like 10:30 11:00 at night comes around. I start reading and I get wound back up. Mhmm. And at 12:30, I'm like, Jesus, I I gotta like go take a melatonin gummy to get get to bed or something.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Our vacations and like most weekend days are we we tend to do a lot in the first half of the day like we're we're all early risers, we'll go hang out at the beach half the day. And then by by the afternoon Hey there. We gotta Hi. Yes?
Brian Casel:Someone's here and she said that she's a nurse.
Jordan Gal:Okay. That's This is Daphne, my youngest and she's letting me know that that life insurance doctor's here,
Brian Casel:so I gotta book him. Alright. Just kidding. Well, Daphne called it. That that came to today.
Jordan Gal:For listening, everyone.
Brian Casel:Alright. Later, brother. Alright. Take it easy. Talk soon.
