If we bootstrapped
Hey. It is Bootstrap Web. Today, we are recording on a Thursday. So, how are doing, Jordan?
Jordan Gal:We're good. It does feel a little different than a normal Friday. I feel like I'm Yep. I'm I'm deeper into the work.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I'm excited to talk about
Jordan Gal:a few topics.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Tomorrow morning, I'm gonna be out of the office. I'm heading down to Norwalk to meet up with the CEO and CTO of the Indian agency that I work with. No. Are.
Brian Casel:They're just They're like on a they're on a US tour right now.
Jordan Gal:That's awesome.
Brian Casel:Going around I I guess meeting with a bunch of their clients in The US and I'm one of them. So they're I I don't know what other cities they're currently in but they're coming into New York tomorrow or today and then I'm meeting up in Connecticut tomorrow.
Jordan Gal:Very cool. Should be fun. I like that. I like online relationships that brew over years and then all of a sudden you meet in person. You're like, it's it's a crazy Yeah.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Should be interesting. But but yeah.
Brian Casel:Today we've got you know our normal slate of random business stuff going on. So what are we talking about?
Jordan Gal:I I have to give a very authentic plug. If you listen to this podcast, there's some conversation happening at ripple.fm. Yeah. That is not happening anywhere else. That is very true.
Brian Casel:Very true.
Jordan Gal:I it has entered my mind as a place that I can go to that's in between a Slack conversation with a friend that I've spoken to for years and public Twitter. It lives right in the middle there for me, and I feel like I can be very transparent and honest there. I hesitated tweeting yesterday about wanting a new headline. I I kinda wanna Right. Get your feedback in general because I have felt You know,
Brian Casel:you get a lot of replies on these questions that you're thrown into Ripple. It's great.
Jordan Gal:Yes. It's great. It's it's it's fun. I I went in and I basically said, hey. I'm I I want a new headline.
Jordan Gal:I'm not happy with our headline. The headline kinda made sense to me for the first, like, you know, few weeks of a product. It was literally meet Rosie, your new AI answering service. Mhmm. But nobody cares about Rosie and nobody cares to meet Rosie.
Jordan Gal:People want their problem solved.
Brian Casel:Right. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:I wanted to like take the emphasis off of the brand and ourselves and start to get into a place where we're focusing on a headline for traffic that's coming in. It's amazing what spending $200 a day on ads will do. It focuses the mind. Yeah. Of course.
Jordan Gal:You know? It is really so I that's where I've been focused. But anyway, I I I genuinely feel that the conversations in Ripple can be better. People have a lot of context and
Brian Casel:Yeah. I mean, that's how I feel with every every comment that comes through on Ripple. I I get a bunch on my private podcast on Ripple, which is called What's Next? Where I it's sort of like what I talk about here on Bootstrap Web, but I go more in-depth and it's also more real time. Like, I just anyway, like there there there's more explanation of of what I'm working on and and the project and I get a lot of good feedback there as well.
Brian Casel:Yeah. The great thing is that like I'm talking to people who I know are actually tuned in and are very like minded. Whereas on on Twitter, yeah, there's just a bunch of crap that's like, this tweet that I'm gonna throw out here, yeah, a lot of people are not even gonna be interested or or really know the context of what this is all about. But, yeah. In in Ripple, it's it's more of a it's not like a closed community because basically anyone can join but we all know that we're sort of tuned into the same things here.
Jordan Gal:Yes.
Brian Casel:You
Jordan Gal:know? It's semi private. It's like isolated. Yep. To just the people who have opted in to be into the community as opposed to the general timeline.
Jordan Gal:Right? Twitter used to have following as a signal of isolation into a group Mhmm. And a conversation, but that's not nearly as clearly defined as it used to be. So now it's it's all over the place.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And actually on the last episode of of what's next, my private pod that I put on on Ripple, the the last episode was me talking through what a business model and like a pricing structure could look like for Ripple. And I have some ideas on that. I'm I'm currently working through the system for podcast hosts like officially claim their show and be hosts on the network and and then that unlocks a whole bunch of benefits. The the main ones being like, if you host any podcast like a public podcast, not only can you bring your your listeners into a community but you could also have you could also like kind of access the contact information for your listeners so they can add them to your email list.
Brian Casel:A lot of people have been asking about the ability to like offer paid communities. So even if you have a public podcast like on Apple and stuff, you can offer like a VIP community, you know, but like a like an extra members only section for your for your listeners. You'll have the public listeners always, but then there's like an extra VIP section that people can either pay for or they can just join for free, but you know, you're also getting their their email added to your list and you're getting them in a community. So that's sort of like the direction of of where a pricing thing could potentially go. I Like, I'm still in a place right now with Ripple where it's like, I like it.
Brian Casel:I'll hack on it. I'll continue to to hack on it and and improve features and stuff and use it as as a user. I I'm It remains to be seen for me if it's really a viable like big business opportunity.
Jordan Gal:It might just
Brian Casel:be like a niche thing. I don't know. But it's a it's a nice little project to Yeah. To keep hacking on, you know.
Jordan Gal:I agree. And maybe that's you know that's a good transition to Thursday. We're more in the middle of the week than we normally are. What Mhmm. What are you working on?
Jordan Gal:I I got a list of stuff. What do you got going on?
Brian Casel:Yeah. So I did so right now I'm working on a a client project, a new SaaS MVP project which is actually a pretty interesting product. I have a second client MVP project that I'll be starting working on on next week. So now I'm starting to get like a little bit like loaded up with with client work. Okay.
Brian Casel:Although today, Thursday, like I've I've already kind of done my client work for the week. So now today and tomorrow, I'm starting to think about like I'm I'm working a bit on Clarity Flow right now. I'm thinking thinking about other product ideas that I'm exploring. You know, I'm still in the mindset of right now, I'm still like, consulting is starting to pick up, especially with this one month MVP service that I've been offering.
Jordan Gal:Are they both that form of consulting? Is that what they came in through or structured
Brian Casel:Definitely that that offer, that site, 1 month .app. Mhmm. I'm offering like an an MVP in a in a month. And you know, to be clear though, and I'm starting to like optimize how I sell that. So in almost all cases, they come in with the idea with a kind of a long list of features that they want, which certainly would not fit in a one month project.
Jordan Gal:Okay.
Jordan Gal:So it's it's sort of
Brian Casel:like my job and they have this understanding that like it's That I'm gonna tell you like, okay, about 70% of what you want, we can actually ship in a month. And the other 30% means we can extend this into a six week product project or an eight week project. Yep. And so, you know, I have like a notion template that I use for like proposals and and I'm I'm turning and I keep honing in on this template and and I keep kind of experimenting with the right approach for dealing with these leads. Right?
Brian Casel:And the best way to actually explain the service and close deals.
Jordan Gal:Right. Set the expectations properly, all that.
Brian Casel:And so what I'm learning is like, okay, like, every we After the initial conversation and then from there, it all becomes like a sync going forward. But I I should've given them proposal like, here's a here's a solid MVP that we can do in four weeks. And then here's the six week version of that and then here's the eight week version of that and you know, which one would you like to commit to?
Jordan Gal:Right. Right.
Jordan Gal:It's like
Brian Casel:And and then there's also the option for ongoing retainers after that to either just keep the lights on or actually continue developing. Running. Mhmm. And so you know, I'm I'm getting kinda busy with all that work. Not only the working on the projects themselves but even the proposal process is there's there's a lot of back and forth and kinda negotiating over scope.
Brian Casel:Yep. So I'm trying to figure out how to make that more and more efficient. And I'm and I'm in this sort of decision point where it's like I could keep leaning into that and really grow it into like an an actual agency.
Jordan Gal:Yep.
Brian Casel:Or I could keep it at the current level of lead flow which is sort of comfortable for me right now. You know, taking down like one or two projects at a time and the rest I can schedule out into the future. And not really plan on growing the team too much. But that keeps me still in it and I'm I'm spending time and I and I would like to shift my time back to like more product focused revenue and more like make money in your sleep kind of stuff, you know.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I know. But pushing that up to I mean, you know, tens of thousands a month with a team and And
Brian Casel:and then I could attract it. And that could sort of accomplish the same thing. Right? If I if I were to scale it up, I would grow a team and then, you know, remove myself from the day to day. But but the business that's essentially what I did with audience ops.
Brian Casel:Right? It became a even though it's a service, it it's still a passive income business for me. Does that That's like the wrong terminology. But you know what I mean. Like I it I'm still operate on
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Right. Look. Okay. So here's a question for you.
Jordan Gal:Audience ops, the end product was was content, written word.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:Do you think you can do something similar in terms of the hand off and not doing all the work yourself? Definitely something design and and development?
Brian Casel:I definitely It's a very different business to deliver for sure. But I definitely think that I I can And I have done this a little bit where I where I hire a developer to work under my direction.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:Right? You would do that first
Jordan Gal:and and hold on to the design.
Brian Casel:Yeah. There's a couple phases of this to to scale this up. Right? The the first immediate phase would be to more often like bring on probably another developer from from the Indian agency to work under my direct direction. Just like I do with Clarity Flow.
Brian Casel:Right. You know. So that you know, here's here's a list of Right. Issues in the queue and and they just wire it up under my direction. That's the easiest low hanging fruit but I'm still in it because I'm managing it and I'm directing them and and all that.
Brian Casel:The next level would be probably to hire someone who's more like myself. Maybe like US based or Europe or some or somewhere that's like a little bit more high level where it's like they could completely own a whole project. And I don't really have to be involved at all. Right. And they can they can do all the design direction development.
Brian Casel:Either do it themselves or they can manage the the junior developer. That's that's the next level of scaling this up. And then there's like another level which is which might be like bring on like a sales person or like a project manager or someone like that to really remove myself from the whole chain of events that happen. But you know, that's That All of that can be done. It's just And it's it's also a question of like can can we drive enough lead flow to support that kind of operation?
Brian Casel:Right now, it's enough lead flow to keep me busy. I don't know if it it would be enough to support, you know, all those extra hires.
Jordan Gal:So Yeah. Well, you know, you have pricing as a variable. Right? Because right now you've made it very attractive.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Right now I feel like it's underpriced. I expect it I plan on raising the the general my general rates by by January. And then even just raising prices though, we still need to have enough leads. So then we can start to turn on things like actual like out outreach and outbound sales and the stuff like that.
Brian Casel:But I don't know. Like that's Honestly, like it's I'm I'm still more interested in doing products. Right. That's why.
Jordan Gal:That's fine. Like, just be honest with yourself on that. Not not a thing wrong with that.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Like, right now it's actually kind of comfortable to to work on these consulting projects. One or two at a time. And I I make good money doing that just myself. So That was the goal.
Brian Casel:And I enjoy it. Like, actually like working on the on the projects but I don't enjoy it as much as working on my own products. There's just no question about that. It's fair. Either.
Jordan Gal:You just can You just set yourself up to eventually be on Lex Friedman's podcast so you can talk about your 45 different products that make you $200,000 a month.
Brian Casel:Just like our boy Levels.
Jordan Gal:Right? I think Levels a hero. I love them.
Brian Casel:I I have it queued up. I have not tuned in to Lex Friedman, usually tune in on YouTube just in in the clips because I I can't deal with a four hour long podcast. But but I I could take it in like ten minute chunks on YouTube.
Jordan Gal:True. True. I kinda just hope the world gives you the best clips in general.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yep. So actually, one more thing on on that front about product ideas. A a little concept. This is like I'm I'm just gonna kinda think out loud here.
Brian Casel:Okay.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. And this is sort
Brian Casel:of goes along with like the the levels thing and the idea of doing the it's sort of
Jordan Gal:I think it's sort of
Brian Casel:like the evolution of building and shipping software products in 2024. As I've talked about, it's becoming so much faster and easier with AI in the tool chain.
Jordan Gal:I would like to ask you about cursor after bring this up.
Brian Casel:Yeah. That that too. But just in general, whether you're using cursor or anything else, the having AI in the chain makes building new software so insanely fast. It's it's just incredible to me. And yes, this has the effect of This has multiple effects.
Brian Casel:Like one is almost literally anyone can spin up and and ship a a new SaaS startup like MVP like so much faster. And and honestly, like it's a big reason why I'm able to even offer that service the way that I'm packaging it. Not saying like I build the whole app using just AI but it just speeds up the whole process. But and it but I started to think about like, what are all the types of products that I could get into? You know, because SaaS itself, like traditional b to b SaaS as fantastic of a model as it is, it's probably like the holy grail
Jordan Gal:of of business I'm very curious where
Jordan Gal:you're going with this. Okay.
Brian Casel:It's also like the hardest and longest road to having a viable business. So if I'm I'm looking if I'm looking to have like like what is the fastest path to move away from services revenue and and grow product revenue. There's the traditional like there's like info products. There are downloadable products like maybe like an app template like I talked about. My hack in the past was productized services.
Brian Casel:Right? So when I launched audience ops, the idea was like, look services can be launched in in a weekend.
Jordan Gal:Right. Generally, much faster business to to build.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And then it's hard work to like grow a team and the processes and deliver it reliably. But all that can be done and and and productized services enabled just a really compelling value proposition both for the customer and for the business owner. I think. That that was the whole concept with productized services.
Brian Casel:Those are still great today. But I think that today adding tech and of course there's like tech enabled services. Right? And that that's nothing new either. You know, where if you think about like bench or like profit well
Jordan Gal:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:Or you know, these these types of businesses have had like a Basically they build a SaaS, but they also offer like a done for you service. And because they have their own tech underlying it, it's it's like a double value and and it gives them a lot a lot more to play with. So I There's still that option, but I'm also thinking about like, since we can rapidly build software so quickly, we we could deliver done for you sort of like productized services, but delivered using software. Okay.
Jordan Gal:First, I thought you were gonna say consumer, and I was like, we we're gonna have an intervention right now.
Brian Casel:No. So you so you
Jordan Gal:you're not talking about consumer. You talk what what is
Brian Casel:It's just a more an even more efficient way of offering, let's say, like a productized service is by spinning up software to power it instead of hiring a team of 30 plus people.
Jordan Gal:Okay. So the end customer comes to you and says, we have this process inside of our company that's a pain. Yeah. We don't wanna go buy software for $500 a month. Yes.
Jordan Gal:Can you just build us a product that does this thing for us?
Brian Casel:Right. Exactly. Okay. But no. Like and do it for us.
Brian Casel:Like build the software to do it and then use that software to do it.
Jordan Gal:Right. So it's not like hiding, oh, this magical service and then I actually can do it very efficiently.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Like, I'm trying to think of examples. Like the one that I'm kicking around is like programmatic SEO. Right? So like Mhmm.
Brian Casel:Companies all the time hire SEO agencies to to to to do SEO. And usually that looks like some on page optimization and writing a bunch of content. Sure. Right?
Jordan Gal:We paid just for link building alone. Just the link building.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And and so like you like you could build software that is specifically designed to generate, programmatically generate content for your particular business in your particular industry. Like, but it would be like built for your website. And so that Then like a a tech firm like mine could like build that for each individual client. Maybe use the same software but like replicate it and tweak it for each individual client.
Brian Casel:And then also have me or like a VA just run that software for each client. And so at at the end of the day, the client is still paying a firm to do their SEO content. But And they're probably paying about the same as they would a high priced agency. But we as the tech enabled agency don't need to hire all those writers or or do it Or or find people with the expertise because we could do it with AI. We could Or we can That that's one example.
Brian Casel:Or like another one could be like There's a few that I know of that I don't wanna share publicly because they sort of There are sort of ideas of other founders that I know that they're working on them.
Jordan Gal:But Yeah. I've I've seen a few things like this. What we have come across at Rosie is there are, like, AI consultants. And companies know that they want to use AI more but they don't know how and they basically hire this consultant to come into their business and look around and say this process, this process, this part of your business, this part of your marketing, this part of your sales process, like I can just make all of that better for you using these tools that I know about. You don't need to know anything.
Jordan Gal:I'll just basically do it for you.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And like also like I'm starting to to open my eyes to this model because I'm doing the consulting work. Right? So okay. I have currently about five different clients in various stages of my funnel.
Brian Casel:Right? Two of them are like active projects and three of them are leads that I'm talking to right now. And these are all these all came through my MVP software. You know, one month MVP service. Right?
Brian Casel:But like two of them are not actual product MVPs. They're just companies that need internal custom software. So and and these types of software firms have have existed for years where, you know, businesses just hire technology firms to build them custom internal proprietary software.
Jordan Gal:That's right. I mean, right. That's where SaaS kind of came out of. Because doing that used to cost $250,000. And then all of sudden there was a business model to do that for, you know, a few $100 a
Brian Casel:month. Yeah. But as the builder, like I look at some of these and it's it's in a way, it's sort of like easier for me to architect a software solution for one business. Because I only need to make it fit that exact businesses specific needs. We don't need to fit the needs of hundreds or thousands of customers.
Brian Casel:We only need to like, they they have a specific set of needs. Yeah. We can build that in a Rails application.
Jordan Gal:That's funny. It's like like a it's like custom software.
Brian Casel:Custom software. Right? But if you but you could there's another like layer to that where I think you can build like custom software for each individual client that comes through your door and you can run that software for them. And especially if you start to offer the same service again and again, but you could just tweak like it's so fast and easy to spin up an instance of a Rails app and tweak it for the next customer and just tweak it for the next customer. Just tweak it for the next one.
Brian Casel:And then it's like and even if you even if you have like a version of your software that you build and then you discard two months later and then you build it again for the next batch of customers, like we can do that. It's that it's that fast now, you know. It they don't have to spend a year building a crazy complicated SaaS solution to do a tech enabled service. We could spin up a SaaS solution in like a month and offer that to 10 paying customers, you know?
Jordan Gal:I'm curious where you go with that because I I get the concept. It's hard to visualize. Yeah. But I I like situations where we are often ahead of the general market on understanding what the tech can do, and there's always an opportunity in that gap.
Brian Casel:I think to put a to put a pin on all this, it's like we are in some I don't you could hear I'm I'm still trying to figure this out and navigate it myself, but I think that we're in some kind of iteration or evolution of because launching a b to b SaaS product is extremely difficult. And it's not impossible. We all still wanna do it. I I'm I'm still trying to do that. But there that combined with the rapid, like, how fast it is to build and launch these things and combined with how extremely competitive it is in every single category.
Brian Casel:And the buying patterns of customers which makes marketing extremely like almost impossible, it it feels like. True. I mean like every marketing channels like customers are like immune to that stuff. I just think that all these all these factors are converging to like, we have to start to open our open our at least me, I have to start to open my mind to like, there are other ways to build businesses using software that don't exactly have to fit into like the traditional b to b SaaS box. There are other ways to to benefit from these advancements that we have today.
Brian Casel:You know? Cool. That that's all I have to say about that.
Jordan Gal:I like it. I'm I'm curious. I forget what it was. I I had a thought yesterday, and it it sounded crazy to me. So I was, like, talking myself out of it.
Jordan Gal:And I tried to remind myself like, hey, that's actually that's the stuff. That's the breakthrough stuff.
Brian Casel:That's the other thing. It's like I'm trying to open my mind to ideas that I only even just recently like felt pretty closed to, you know. I I thought that like I I was done doing like info products after productize. I I still kinda feel that way, but just this morning, I'm like, you know what? There there could be an opportunity with this type of thing if it's done this way, maybe I should reopen my mind to that.
Brian Casel:Mhmm. Or like the app template idea or components library idea. Like, I I was always like, I don't wanna just add another one to the to the ocean of those things that are out there. But maybe there's like a twist and maybe I could offer something unique. Mhmm.
Brian Casel:And just trying to take these ideas that like, even though I've said no for a long time, like, what what if I said yes? And like, I I think that's a really important exercise,
Jordan Gal:you know? Yeah. Cool. I I I like it. What I will tell you on the rosy front when it comes to this this part of the conversation, this doesn't feel anything like the Rally b to b SaaS experience.
Jordan Gal:This feels like a complete different business, different business model, different everything.
Brian Casel:Yeah. What what are like the biggest differences?
Jordan Gal:I think the biggest differences is the horizontal nature of the model, the openness, the Internet can just find us and show up and sign up. So losing that part of the control of like who we talk to, who we give a demo to, who we push away, who we really want to talk to, who we target. So I think the the drastic difference is definitely like my experience because of how different the two, but it does feel like it it has almost a consumer feel to it because SMB in this context is very often like one person.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:Right? So a one person financial adviser, a one person law firm, a one person like chiropractic, like that feels nothing like Rally and and a larger business.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. And I'm I'm energized by it. So I'll I'll tell you what I'm working on this week. At the beginning of this week, I like went into a spiral. I was not happy.
Jordan Gal:And the reason I wasn't happy is because I was looking at all the stuff that I wanna do and I felt overwhelmed by it, and then I started getting mad at myself for not getting it done. And it was like, I was trying to digest too much. So what I did to help myself there was I broke out these projects, initiatives, ideas, whatever. I broke them up into different parts of the funnel. And what I tried to give myself leeway with and like license is to only focus on the next part of the funnel.
Jordan Gal:And anything that falls outside of it, I can write down, I can be interested in, but I'm not gonna really spend any time working on.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:So and what I mean by funnel, mean literally our marketing funnel. Mhmm. So the first part of that funnel is just getting people to the site. Right? Just traffic.
Jordan Gal:That is starting to work itself out with a combination of the SEO that's slowly kicking in and the advertising and the and the cold email. So we have a few things going on that drive people to the site. So it's not that I have figured out that part of the funnel and no longer think about it, but it is more on autopilot than anything else. It's it's running, money's being spent on it, I'm approving new scripts and new, variations of the ads. We just identified our first two winners from the batch of 16.
Jordan Gal:We kept those. We adjusted. We added a new script based on feedback over the last few weeks from users. And after this podcast, I'm gonna approve the next batch and then they'll start to go out. So cool.
Jordan Gal:So it's kinda running.
Brian Casel:Nice.
Jordan Gal:Then converting from traffic to trial. And then after that from trial to paid and then paid to retention. So anything that falls outside of converting from traffic to trial, I have just pushed out. I put a little bullet point, do this, maybe I link to a Canvas or a Google Doc and I just ignore it. So that has helped me tremendously this week and now I feel very energized, very very focused on converting from traffic to trial.
Brian Casel:Okay.
Jordan Gal:What we're what I'm focused on right now is if you go to our site today, what you'll see is a home page with a bunch of information. We added two new sections that show the product and the admin. Now that it's like looking good and ready, I wanted to to do that. But the real issue is that when you when you really the only CTA you have is to get started. And I'm looking at a Google Analytics funnel right now.
Jordan Gal:There's a decent percentage of people that go from the home page to the registration page. So people that click on get started. From there, there's a very big drop off from that registration page to an account actually being created. And I know there are a lot of different reasons for that. The registration page isn't great.
Jordan Gal:The, pricing, you can go from the home page directly to the registration and not see any pricing and then you hesitate because you don't know what the pricing is. You actually don't know what the trial is, so we're updating that part of it. But generally speaking, we are asking completely cold traffic to look at our solution, look at a homepage, look at a website that's it's not that full. Right? There isn't that much on on the website.
Jordan Gal:There aren't any testimonials yet. There isn't that much information. And we're asking them to go from that level of trust to creating an account with a username and a password. And that for me is is is the issue that I want to attack.
Brian Casel:And you're not asking for a credit card with the username and password?
Jordan Gal:We are not.
Brian Casel:Surprising too. It's like I feel like we would usually see a bunch of sign ups that are like that just sign up and then ghost. It's like because I I've seen that happen with multiple businesses where you see a lot of Sure. Email sign ups and it's like, okay, after that, what did you literally didn't click any other buttons after you signed up? Why did you even sign up?
Brian Casel:You know? Or I which tells me like, alright, maybe it's a bot or something like that.
Jordan Gal:But Right. Or it's bot or look, if you if you put registration and then the next page is credit card, you will get a lot of drop off. You know you're getting a lot of drop off Yeah. But you're saying My design. I don't care.
Jordan Gal:Right. I don't care. I want the credit card and at least I have the email now. Mhmm. We don't do that.
Jordan Gal:I think we did a better job at that because we had a blank slate and we were just launching and then we said, well, where should we put the credit card? And we said, you know what we should do? We should let people create an account. We should let them come into the product, do everything they want, train, upload PDFs, add FAQs, connect integrations, and then when you were ready to test it and you wanted your rosy phone number, that's when we asked for the credit card. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:So generally speaking, I think that's that's a What good way to do we're doing now is we're working on a sign up flow that it takes onboarding and brings it out into the marketing experience. Mhmm. So the way we are doing that is instead of having a button that says get started and then the next thing you see is account creation, right, registration. The first thing that we're doing is having the CTA be a field that you put your URL in and then you hit create my agent.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:And then the next screen, you see your agent being created and your website being scraped. And then the next screen after that is you get a sample of rosy voice samples Mhmm. With your business information inside of the sample.
Brian Casel:That's the way to go and and I you know, I'm seeing this as a it's not just a trend. It's becoming more of the norm, I would say.
Jordan Gal:Because it's so competitive.
Brian Casel:It's so it's so competitive. Literally, the the MVP product that I'm working on with a client right now, we're doing exactly that.
Jordan Gal:Like Okay.
Brian Casel:Cool. Like, they're Cool. Like, literally the homepage has a website URL and that starts the onboarding process and like Oh, so we
Jordan Gal:we should compare notes.
Brian Casel:It's a AI and it goes through multiple steps before we even ask them to register. And and Okay. I just built that yesterday with them.
Jordan Gal:I love those. So we should compare notes on
Brian Casel:on that front. It's definitely a pattern that's You know, like there there have been It used to be a little bit more unique with just select apps doing it years ago. And now I feel like it's You know, we we've gone from like a lot of apps doing like credit card up front and then sign up. And a lot of apps doing no credit card upfront and then you go in. And now I feel like it's more and more common to build your app on the homepage of your site.
Jordan Gal:Yes. I I asked Twitter for examples of this and the majority of examples were SEO software. Mhmm. So SEO is right. Perfect.
Jordan Gal:Like give us your URL. We'll give you a free analysis and then if you wanna go deeper, you create an account. So that that made sense. And so that that is the thing that I worked on this week that will likely be published by probably the end of next week.
Brian Casel:Nice. So did you your like your app is not on the root domain yet. Right?
Jordan Gal:No. It's not on the root.
Brian Casel:Okay. So then how how is that So like is it gonna be like they Basically like the button takes them over to like app.hey Rosie and that's where they can start but not register?
Jordan Gal:Yes. That's right.
Brian Casel:Yes. Okay. Yes.
Jordan Gal:Cool. And a lot of this came out because we started working on the landing page that was different from the home page. Right? So we could send paid traffic to a landing page you know that was more binary either sign up or hit the back button type of a thing.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:And as we started doing that we we had like two branches of work. We were like let's do a landing page and let's also fix our onboarding and we realized actually those should just be merged into the same project and then you change the CTA on both the homepage and the landing page to both be give us a URL.
Jordan Gal:Right. Right.
Jordan Gal:Right. Right.
Brian Casel:Sort of on the same topic, some updates on Clarity Flow, an experiment. So I think I talked about this like at the at the August, so about three weeks ago, we started a new experiment on Clarity Flow, which is we removed the free trial. So for the last three weeks, the only way to start using Clarity Flow is to come in and literally pay upfront for any of our plans. Overhauled the whole like buying experience and the pricing page and the and that whole flow. It's all improved now.
Brian Casel:But Yeah. So it's it's been interesting. I'm three weeks into it. I I'll say I'm I'm sort of like on the fence right now of of what to What what call to make on this experiment. When I started it out, it was like, I'm gonna give this like a good two months and then decide what to do.
Brian Casel:And I'm three weeks into it and I'm Mhmm. On the fence of whether I should only If if I should cut off this experiment after one month or maybe give it a second month. But basically, we we've had a small handful of purchases, you know, in the in the first three weeks, which is like probably a little bit less than we would have gotten before with our trial. And it it so it's it's like roughly the same if not a little bit less. We you know, and we so we offer a a money back guarantee with that.
Brian Casel:One of the one of the handful has has asked for the refund. It 'll be interesting to see how we finish out the month. There there's all sorts of like, alright, maybe it's just August and it's summertime and maybe things would naturally pick up in the fall if we kept the experiment going. So I don't know. Like, it's it's at this it's at this, like, sort of gray area where I sort of wish that we only had, like, one or zero conversions, and then it'll be, like, clear, like, okay, that didn't work.
Brian Casel:Let's just go back.
Jordan Gal:We talked about this. This is the issue with these tests is Yeah.
Brian Casel:And it's it's definitely not, like, a clear winner. We're Nope. You know? It's sort of just like the same because you have to figure like, okay, whatever number of purchases that we could reliably expect every month, there's always gonna be some per some percent that that there's like natural churn overall, and then there's gonna be some percent that ask for the refund before the the sixty days. So as of today, I'm sort of leaning toward next month, we return to having a trial.
Brian Casel:And But we have not yet experimented with requiring the credit card upfront. We Mhmm. Before we had a trial with no credit card upfront, like a fourteen day trial. But like you, like, in order to unlock some features, you would you would put your credit card in during the trial. Next month, it would be like a five minute change for me to just switch back on the trial.
Brian Casel:Like, we we did architect it that way. But they would still require the credit card upfront. So I'm like, I'm on the fence about that. I'm gonna see how how we finish out the month. But the the other like interesting twist is that like also now in August, we Some of our traffic has has increased.
Brian Casel:We Some of our marketing activity has has result has has started to drive some results. And so now we have, I would say significantly more traffic than we were getting in the in the months prior. So if we were to go back to trials, the expectation is we should have a little bit more trials than we were getting before so it's just like you know another like little iteration to see how can we sort of unlock growth and it's it's it's generally been like mostly plateaued this year and yeah. Gotta keep hacking on on these experiments you know.
Jordan Gal:So I I We also
Brian Casel:have a big feature that's about to drop which is appointments. Essentially like a Calendly alternative built into Clarity Flow. That's Oh, interesting. That once we announce that that also should drive some activity. It's been a big feature request.
Brian Casel:So
Jordan Gal:Here's here's what I'll my biggest concern around this experiment, and this is this is new for me, so take it with a grain of salt. The the dynamic around people who don't know you at all have never seen your product or on your website for the first time. The fact that that is the competitive environment. Yes. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:You got work to do and retargeting and coming back and then they find you somewhere else and they, you know, they experience your brand multiple touches. Cool. But the majority of people are on the site for the first time.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And we're and it's competitive. Like, we have direct competitors. Right. They are definitely comparing us to or switching from.
Jordan Gal:Okay. So in that environment, the idea of of standing that strong at the entrance, at the gate, I don't I don't know where I you know, look we did that with Cardhook but there was no competition. Me rephrase. There was huge demand and only one other competitor.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:So we felt like we could do that not really because we're so awesome but because the market was like, they don't have any other choice. They have one other choice and and and people have proven that they're gonna refer people to you. To to the idea to do that now with Rosie, oh my I don't I don't have the balls. Not even close.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I I think I think part of my bet with it I mean, I I got some good advice from someone that that pushed me toward like this is work, you know, a worthwhile experiment and I agree. But but part of the thinking also was that like if if we get them to pay upfront, then compared to a free trial with no credit card and no payment, they are much more engaged in the work that's going to be required to get set up and get activated. And we have Kat on customer success, and she's really really effective at helping customers be successful, get all their questions answered. She does live calls with them.
Brian Casel:She does async with them. And so I I do think that new users who are actually engaged and and and also actually have a successful coaching business, they tend to be successful on Clarity Flow and they tend to go on to be great customers. But we do also attract I and I think that's sort of the nature of this type of market. There there are unserious There are both serious coaches, like with serious businesses and there are more unserious
Jordan Gal:coaches. They're full time or they're not
Brian Casel:Full time. They don't have enough business to support You know, this and that.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I mean, it's it's not you've been around long enough. You have enough data to make it a worthwhile experiment.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:But you knew going in, you know, totally reasonable that it doesn't work because it is asking too much too soon and therefore I mean, it sounds like what your next step is and in between. You can create an account but put a credit card. We're not gonna charge it. It's really just a slightly softer version of what you have now.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:Cool.
Brian Casel:Yeah. So we'll we'll see with that. Yeah. But meanwhile, like that is still a business that just it's doing its thing. It's sort of plateaued.
Brian Casel:We we've had some wins here and there especially lately with like traffic and and the product is is in a great place and and it's about to get even better with some new big features coming down the road. Developer is awesome on it And Cat is awesome. And I spend, I don't know, 20% of my week, even less sometimes just answering questions from them. And approving stuff and trying stuff. But spending the rest of my week figuring out how to how to fill out the rest of the pie.
Brian Casel:That is my my business life here. Know? Yeah.
Jordan Gal:I I think you'll you'll fill it just fine. Speaking
Brian Casel:don't know what topic you want to get to. I thought we had a really good question come through Ripple this morning. I don't know if you saw it. It's for you. I'm I'm curious to hear it.
Brian Casel:How would you approach Rosie if this were not a VC backed business? Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:I it is a good question. I thought about it when I read it earlier this morning. Let me think.
Brian Casel:Or would you do Rosie? Yeah. Would.
Jordan Gal:Look. Let me be very honest for a second. Yeah. If I'm being completely honest, I wish I was doing Rosie right now bootstrapped.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:That that's the truth. That's There is something
Brian Casel:Well, if if you were doing a bootstrapped. Right?
Jordan Gal:Yeah.
Brian Casel:How how would you think about funding your product team, the marketing funnels, all of
Jordan Gal:that? Yes. So I would not be doing advertising. By by far the biggest difference and the biggest expense well the biggest expense is people so I would be I would be doing that very differently. I would not have a team of nine and I wouldn't be doing advertising anytime soon.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm. The product itself and the process Yeah. Not not that different. I mean, we are we are early stage in in every way.
Brian Casel:I mean, if you're bootstrapped, you you like, you and Rock could just do this on the product side. I think maybe it was like one more.
Jordan Gal:Yes. Yes. I think a front end with myself and Rock and it would be you know messier and it wouldn't be nearly as efficient from a product point of view and all these other things. We launched too early which I think is right. Like we didn't launch we you know, we launched a beta until we had a sign up flow.
Jordan Gal:Once we
Jordan Gal:launch a sign up flow, we no longer called it beta but it was it was beta. Mhmm. And over the last few weeks, we did exactly what we wanted to which is get feedback and basically tell people, no. Don't cancel. We'll just extend your trial because we're gonna build that exact feature that you just asked for.
Jordan Gal:And now we have a far better understanding of what those features need to be. And if we were bootstrapped, we would we're the exact same process.
Brian Casel:Okay.
Jordan Gal:Launch early, launch ugly, listen to people, adjust, make better. That that that's it.
Brian Casel:Okay. Now, let's step back and start and start to take the same question but like okay. We we just talked about Rosie itself. Right? Sure.
Brian Casel:That what you just described makes total sense. Right? Like, there there is a a bootstrap approach to building what you're actually building. Sure. But it still requires several at least several months of time.
Brian Casel:So It does. So if you were bootstrapped, if you had never raised, how would you be thinking about sustaining like yourself, your salary, and and rocks, and whoever else is is giving their time to this business? Like would you so would you be thinking about it like, okay, had an exit from from Rally, you would be you you would maybe just reinvest whatever you made from that into this. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:I think you do. You you need to invest. You need to invest money.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:You can do it another way and and you know, work on other stuff, but that that's really hard. Yeah. As everyone knows. Everyone doing it knows it's really really hard to figure out a way to make $10.15, 20 k a month for you, your family, all that, and also get a software product off the ground is very very hard.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:So you know, I I honestly I would have gone to TinySeed. I would have raised a few bucks. I would have put in some money myself. I would have gotten a little egg, you know, call it a $100,150 k something like that.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:And give ourselves a few months without any revenue at all. Take as little salary as possible. Right. Like you cobble it together to to see if you can focus on it or if you need to split your focus. Cardhook Yep.
Jordan Gal:I had my focus split for a while then I went full time after we raised money from friends and family. We raised 275 k.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:So I don't even I don't count that in the same category as VC. Yes. It is raising money but it's closer to bootstrapping.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. And the decision making would be very similar as if it was just my money and I was splitting my focus or something than if we raised a $102,100 k.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:The one of the biggest differences would be pricing. There was there's no way I would be doing a $49 a month plan and looking at like how do I get 10,000 customers in the next two years that would not cross my mind at all. I would be doing it for 3 to $500 a month and ask myself how do I get 200 customers over the next six months. Yep. So that I think that is probably one of the biggest changes and that starts to dictate your sign up flow, your marketing, your ICP, it it affects everything.
Jordan Gal:So Yeah. Right now we are very purposely going very wide and very horizontal and I am happy when a real estate company signs up and happy when a doctor signs up and happy when a vet signs up.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Whereas normally if I was bootstrapping I would be like I have a problem. Yeah. I
Brian Casel:The focus being much much more on getting like first revenue in the door.
Jordan Gal:Yes. Yes. So I now the beginning is a horror show but the the middle stage sounds a lot healthier if it's bootstrapped.
Brian Casel:If it's bootstrapped. Yeah. Yeah. Like if if you can get past the the like the hardest part which is like the first year.
Jordan Gal:Right. Something off the ground.
Brian Casel:Something with traction and and MRR.
Jordan Gal:Yes. Getting to 1,000,000 in ARR over the span of a year in a bootstrapped environment.
Brian Casel:Oh, you're golden.
Jordan Gal:Your goal is a dream. You are golden.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:But doing that in VC means phase one, you know, and out of 10. Mhmm. Okay. Cool. We've gotten here.
Jordan Gal:Now, how do we do it, You know, get to 3,000,000. Now how do we go from three to 10? And how do we do it within three years?
Brian Casel:And I've talked I've talked about this but I I made that sort of the what you just described like that that same calculation of like, okay, you you exited a previous business. You you would have taken something like like Tiny Seed or one of these or or friends and family. I did that in 2021 at the start of Zip Message. I I had sold Audience Ops. I took a big chunk, not all of it, like a like a chunk of that.
Brian Casel:I reinvested it and sort of funded the first eight months of of Zip Message myself and then I I took some investment from Calm Company Fund. I I think like looking back at it at the time, I I feel like that calculation was right. You know, knowing or like the from my standpoint at the time because because like like you said, like like how can we just pad the runway to give this enough time to to give us a chance of of getting that traction. But looking back on it now a few years later, obviously like it it didn't pan out to the point where it's like we we we didn't reach a skate velocity with it and now it's sort of just puttering along. I I wish I I could have stayed fully bootstrapped and not taken like any outside investment.
Brian Casel:That that would have been the move. But it would have it would have meant investing a lot more personal cash
Jordan Gal:Yes.
Brian Casel:For a for a much longer period of time. But I think also like just for me personally, I think the decision to I think taking some investment for of any form is what influenced me to to truly be all in on this one sat b to b SaaS bet which was not at traction. Like it had some early signs of traction but we we were not profitable by any means. Like, I If if I had remained bootstrapped, I would have maybe seen the same type of traction while also spinning up some consulting services or spinning up this and that and and having a healthier bootstrapped portfolio than I ended up with, you know.
Jordan Gal:Yes. Yes. Right now, I am comfortable with with the path not only because it's we're already on the path. There's no there's no changing it, but I can see enough the set of options is good enough and wide enough that I do not feel like this becoming the biggest voice agent business ever doing a billion dollar revenue. I do not see that as the only outcome.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm. We didn't raise that much money. Our valuation didn't go that crazy. I'm amazed we didn't talk about the Bold CEO in this entire podcast by the way. I'm proud of myself.
Jordan Gal:So I think there there's still options. Yep. Yep. Yep. The only thing that matters is just getting that initial lift.
Brian Casel:That's it.
Jordan Gal:That's it.
Brian Casel:That is it, man. Yep. I mean, it does have it it it still makes me think right now. I I still feel like I I I had a more clear direction on like what's the thing that I'm going to actually invest multiple months into growing. It it could be any of these like SaaS new SaaS product ideas that I'm Like like Sunrise dashboard is something that I'm still sort of looking at.
Brian Casel:But again, it's still the question of like how do you bootstrap this? You know? Because for that same reason, knowing what I know now, like I'm not interested in taking really any form of investment. At least where from where I stand right now. I'm I'm I'm looking for the most efficient way to bootstrap.
Brian Casel:And for me that's that's that's cobbling together consulting income and product income from a few different sources.
Jordan Gal:I I think you're better off doing exactly what you're doing than looking for outside money or anything and it takes a little longer and you know you have to you have to stretch the attention Yeah. To multiple things. But as soon as one thing one thing proves itself able to grow, you are much better off that you own it, you can decide what to do with it, you can sell it, keep it, grow it, focus on it, keep it as a side thing like that that that is very very valuable that that set of options.
Brian Casel:Do that. Alright. Got a good Thursday episode for you today.
Jordan Gal:Yes. Thanks for listening, everyone.
Brian Casel:Alright. Later, folks.
