[40] Doing Customer Research
Is Bootstrap Web episode 40. This is the podcast for you, the founder who learns by doing as you bootstrap your business online. I am Jordan. And I'm Brian. Alright, Jordan.
Speaker 1:Let's get into it. Excuse me.
Speaker 2:Brian. What's your name again?
Speaker 1:I just spoke to myself real quick. Yes. Brian, let's let's get into it. But before we do, why don't you give us a little update about what has been happening on your end of things over the past week?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Sure. So so last week, I spoke about how this month in September, things are just extremely hectic for me. You know, just full speed ahead working on this course product highs. You know, I have, like, employees out doing a lot of sales calls for Restaurant Engine.
Speaker 2:Just things are so crazy. Meanwhile, you know, kinda caring for a six month year old at home half the week. So what I've been really trying to do is I'm trying to optimize my day so that I can be as productive as possible, especially with with my schedule with my wife and I, you know, trying to take care of the kid. It's like it's it's just hard to, you know, make sure that I'm getting enough done in every day. And I I feel like as I'm not that I'm super old, but as I get older, I'm much more conscious of like, when do I have the most energy, and how can I best utilize my time?
Speaker 2:And I'm definitely finding that in the morning, especially the early morning, that's when I can get the most creative the most productive creative work done. So any kind of writing that I have to do, whether it's like writing articles or blog posts or right now, I'm writing a lot of lessons for this course, that stuff has to get done in the morning. If I if I try to squeeze that into the afternoon session or in, a night session sometimes, it's like blinking cursor. Nothing's getting done. I'm deleting.
Speaker 2:It's like it's just a total waste of time. So I'm trying to better utilize that time by pushing all of the emailing and all the calls and all the random crap and customer support stuff and talking to my team, like, all that stuff gets pushed till after lunch. In the morning, it's create stuff. You know? And and it's and when I was younger, I could have done more of these, like, late night sessions and weekend sessions, but now it's like, I can't do that stuff anymore.
Speaker 2:I I you know, I've got a couple of hours a day to get work done, so I've gotta be smart about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I often plan on a night session. Like, oh, this is I'm gonna leave this tonight. Gonna get it done. And then you make dinner, and you put the kid to bed, and you have one beer, and then there's no motivation left.
Speaker 1:Yeah. But you need to you need to know yourself. Yeah. For me, I don't get things done in the morning. The morning disappears on me.
Speaker 1:So instead of being stressed and feeling guilty and trying to pack it into the morning the way most people do, I just see the afternoon as, you know, a nice, big open field. So I just kinda leave one to 5PM. That's that's my productive time. In the morning, I I don't I don't know what happens. I have no idea.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I get up. I get to the desk at like 08:30, and next thing I know, it's like 11:15. I'm like, okay. So there goes the morning.
Speaker 2:Yep. I mean, the other nice thing about doing calls in the afternoon for me is the time zone thing. Like, I'm on the East Coast and calling customers and even talking to one of my teammates who who's in California. You know, it just makes sense to do that in the afternoon, whereas in the morning, it's, like, not even an option to call people halfway across the country. So Right.
Speaker 1:That's a that's a bigger deal than expected. I'm I'm on the West Coast now in Portland, and I didn't think it was gonna be that big of a deal, but it it really makes a huge difference, especially if you're an afternoon person. By 2PM, you know, all the people on the East Coast are checking out.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay. So optimizing the day, not an easy thing, something that everyone, everyone deals with. Anything else going on?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Actually, just today, like, literally minutes ago, right before we hit record on this podcast, I pressed send on the email to let folks know that we have just got to sell tickets for big snow tiny comp, which I mentioned it before. We're going to Sugarbush, Vermont in January. We're only releasing 10 spots. So if you guys are interested at all, you know, spent half the day snowboarding and skiing on the slopes.
Speaker 2:The other half, it's kind of like a business mastermind group. It was a ton of fun last year. We've got, some really fantastic people coming back this year. So, that is on sale now at big snow tiny conf dot com. If you wanna, get details and and get in, now now is the time because they're gonna go, pretty quickly.
Speaker 2:That's it.
Speaker 1:Nice. Yeah. That sounds like fun. Ski trips are always fun. And, you know, being in person with people for an extended period of time is such a rare opportunity, especially with, you know, people in the same wheelhouse and people who are, you know, a little further ahead, a little further behind.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It sounds like a really valuable weekend if you can get that done. And you like skiing. Yeah. Sounds sounds great.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's it's awesome. And we talked before about, like, the value of mastermind groups. Yep. That that's what this has really turned into is, like, it's it's a fun getaway, but it's also like a mastermind group.
Speaker 2:And we had, six or seven of us last year, and this year, it's looking like 10. But, again, a lot of those spots are even, like, spoken for right now. So we're just, like, just opened it up. It'll probably only be open up for, like, a week or two. So, anyway, what's up on your end?
Speaker 1:So I got the, the info product. I got the course done, which was it was great. You know, and it felt, it felt really good to to finish something like that. It was supposed to be a four week course. It ended up being closer to six or seven weeks.
Speaker 1:But I think people got a lot out of it. I'm really proud of the content, and I'm been working with people, one on one to help them get their sales funnels up, and helping them figure out what content they should write and why and how to present it, what narrative to use. And it felt, you know, it was very rewarding. And now I feel very confident in the quality of the content. And I plan to re release the course, I guess, some sometime in October.
Speaker 2:That's awesome.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So that that was, that was nice to to get it done. It's also off my plate, which feels good. And, you know, completing a big project like that feels great. So that was the the first piece.
Speaker 1:The second piece of the update, and it's the reason maybe my voice is a little sore or or sounding a little less strong, my Mixergy interview published this week, and it's been it's been a little rock and roll. It's been fun. But talking to a lot of people and emailing, and it's very interesting, the, the things that come out of something like that. Obviously, you know, this isn't, you know, NBC, but in our little world, it's it's pretty high up there.
Speaker 2:Oh, it's a big deal for sure. Right.
Speaker 1:And and so it's interesting what comes out of it. It's not so much clients as it is just exposure and opportunity. So a lot of people from Portland reaching out. So I got coffee and meetings set up just to meet people. And, you know, you you never know where those things go.
Speaker 1:A lot of agency people reaching out and then also some sign ups and a lot of interested people and potential integrations. So, it's been fun, and I did take a minute to, you know, just kinda feel proud and share that with my family and, you know, be happy about it before I kinda dive right in and try to make the most of it sort of thing. So, yeah, it was fun.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I I I watched it the other day, and I told you, it it really was a a fantastic episode of Mixergy. I've been watching almost all thousand episodes by now. And it's not just because I know you, man. It it's like, it was really an awesome episode, you know, with with Andrew there.
Speaker 2:And, you know, you you got into, like, detailed case studies, very tactical, very clear about about the story. It was just a really enjoyable interview to to listen to. I
Speaker 1:know you
Speaker 2:you guys definitely gotta check it out. We're gonna link it up in the show notes, here today. So
Speaker 1:Thank you. I I really appreciate that. Mixed use is one of those things that I've kinda looked at for years now and always wanted to get on there. And I know you've done a MixtureG interview before, and, you know, I I Well, did a course. You know?
Speaker 1:Right. Which is awesome. I'd love to do that. Yeah. So it was, it was really nice on the personal side.
Speaker 1:It was good on the business side. And then just trying to take that momentum and, you know, keep keep moving forward. And speaking of moving forward, let's jump into this week's topic where
Speaker 2:we're gonna Well, actually, you know, before we jump in, we did get a pretty awesome, email from someone. Excellent. Elliot. Good weekend, Neil. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Elliot listened to last year's last last week's episode where we talked about what are we talking was that thinking big?
Speaker 1:Right. This is this is no. This is doing manual.
Speaker 2:Oh, that was doing doing things manually. So Elliot, he he said the subject line said, you guys saved me for for making a huge mistake. He said, guys, just listen to your latest podcast and left you left you guys a review in iTunes. Just wanted to personally say thanks for being transparent about the non automated parts of your businesses. You guys saved me from making a huge mistake and automating the sign up process prematurely.
Speaker 2:Big thanks. Have a good weekend, guys. So thank you, Elliot, for tuning in and the kind words. Always Yeah. Awesome to hear
Speaker 1:Thank you, Elliot. And, yeah, saving people from making big mistakes by talking about the mistakes that we've made, you know, that's what we're here for.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:Excellent. So great to hear that you got that value out of it, Elliot. And thank you very much for the review and for emailing us. And everybody else out there, if we're saving you from making big mistakes, let us know. Write us a check.
Speaker 1:Make a donation. Any anything to that effect. Or send an email in an iTunes review. Same thing.
Speaker 2:Worth, worth almost just as much. Same thing. Alright. I like I
Speaker 1:like what some other podcasters have been doing about buying a beer. I feel like
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I feel like I I could go for that. That's that's interesting. Guys.
Speaker 2:I I kinda like might have to steal that model. Yes.
Speaker 1:Alright. So this week's topic, something I'm really interested to talk to Brian about because he he does a really good job of it. I personally have failed disastrously.
Speaker 2:I don't know about that.
Speaker 1:Well, because we're we're not talking about the businesses that failed disastrously that I failed to do this on. Those remain in anonymity where nobody really needs to know the details there. Yes. So this week's topic, doing customer research. Right?
Speaker 1:If we were passe, if we were in San Francisco right now in a really hip coworking place, we call it customer development, otherwise known as just talking to your potential customers. So why don't we jump into it? Brian, why don't you kick things off by just telling us, you know, what is this and why is it important?
Speaker 2:Yeah. You know, I I think and this is something that it's been a constant, education for me as well. You know, in in the early days, I didn't even know what this what this meant to do customer research. And then I and then once I started hearing about it, like, Mixergy interviews and courses and whatnot, it's like, oh, you gotta talk to your customers. You have to interview them, or you have to do research somehow.
Speaker 2:Would hear that kind of thing and be like, oh, yeah. Yeah. I'll I'll figure that out later. Or and it's not as important as the as it sounds or as it seems. Big mistake.
Speaker 2:Once I started to really obsess over this part of the process, I feel like things really started to gain traction, and that's when things became much easier. So, you know, what we're talking about when when we say customer research, we're really talking about the very first few days and the phase one of starting something new. It's about understanding who that customer is, and is this thing going to really be a fit for them? Or maybe you don't even know what that thing is yet. You just kinda know who the customer is, figure out who what their really core pain point is, what they're trying to do, and kind of the the why behind, the product that you will potentially build.
Speaker 2:It's it's putting in all this work and research upfront so that you don't waste a ton of time and energy and money and go down a rabbit hole for months or years that could set you back.
Speaker 1:Right. This is applicable to different phases of a business. It's really important before you start a business, right? And this is what Dane Maxwell calls idea extraction and understanding and uncovering pains and validating them before even starting a business. It's also important while you're in business and and as you're trying to figure out the positioning and the pricing and the copy and how to sell it and who to sell it to, it remains important throughout the process.
Speaker 1:So more specifically, Brian, how how do you use this, in your businesses currently?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I mean, you know, before I get into kind of the process that I've been working through, and and by the way, this is kind of just, you know, melding together all the things that I've learned from hearing interviews with Dane Maxwell to, you know, listening in on ideas shared by, like, Amy Hoy and the Sales Safari research kind of stuff and a host of other different different people talking about this. I've kinda taken different ideas from here and there and and figured out a process that I think kind of works for for my style, and maybe maybe others can kinda relate to this as well. But, you know, before I really get into this, I I still wanna stress this one point about why it's so important to invest all this time early on in doing the customer research, and that is it makes everything easier. So when you're trying to design your landing page or your sales page for your product, it's so hard to figure out, like, oh, do I have the right headline?
Speaker 2:Or, you know, am I did I price it correctly? Or is the is the value proposition right? Or am I am I building this product with the right features? Is this the killer feature, or is it that killer feature? Or what is it?
Speaker 2:You know? These things are so hard to figure out. But once you start doing the customer research, all of these things become so much easier. It's like it's like these questions just answer themselves. You know, once once you start doing these these interviews and and background research, it's like, okay.
Speaker 2:It's obvious where where this needs to go. And and, actually, I didn't need to do that, or I didn't need to do that. So, anyway, let's let's get into the process that I've kind of done a a few different times here.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I I want I wanna hear it.
Speaker 2:And I've I've run through this. I I did this a little bit on Restaurant Engine in the early days. I then did it again with my cofounders when I was working on Sweet Process. And more recently, like last week and the week before, I've been doing this quite a bit as I'm preparing to do this this educational product productize. So I've laid out, like, an eight step process here.
Speaker 2:And, basically, the first step is to create a prelaunch landing page with some copy, and this is based on kind of my own assumptions using my gut, kind of going off of a hunch. So at this point, I haven't spoken to really anyone. It's really just based on, like, look, I have some inkling of an idea of what I wanna do, And I I think I know where where this is heading, so I'm just gonna put something out there, create a landing page, like, very bare bones. Like, only spend a day or less on this. Write a write a bit of copy and just based on my own assumptions.
Speaker 2:So, like, if I were a customer of this potential product that's in my head right now, how would I write the copy? How would I speak to myself? That's how I'm writing the big headline. That's how I'm writing the the sales copy. The call to action at the end, of course, is to, request an email address.
Speaker 2:You know, what what this is is, like, we're saying what what is the product? So so for example, I right. As of today, there's a prelaunch landing page up at castjem.com/productize. That's my early access thing that I've put up for for customers to to get notified. The course is not launched yet.
Speaker 2:The product does not exist yet. I just put it up there. So now the the next step in this process is to start promoting it. Get peep get eyeballs on this page as soon as possible. You know, I I hear people say, oh, I I have this idea.
Speaker 2:I wanna go and build the product and not show it to anyone and gotta keep it secret and, you know, it's not ready for the world to see yet. No. No. Yeah. You got it?
Speaker 1:Anytime anytime someone tells you I'm I'm almost ready to show it to people, you you know it's
Speaker 2:a Right.
Speaker 1:Very unlikely that that it that it's gonna work out. But I just wanna get the the context right. Yep. So you have productize in mind. You say to yourself, I wanna sell a product that does x for y audience.
Speaker 1:Right? Solves this type of problem for this type of person and then you and then that's where the process starts off. Like, okay. Now that I know I wanna create this product and sell it to them, instead of waiting two or three months until it's done, now I'm gonna take these steps, and that's when you create the prelaunch landing page with basically your guess, your assumptions
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Of what what will be important to them.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Exactly. And I think I think this first step is a little bit different from the from some of the conventional wisdom that's out there. I know that Dane Maxwell I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but it's kind of, you know, like, out who your audience is and then and then, like, extract an idea that you'd never even thought of before. Yes.
Speaker 2:And I mean
Speaker 1:And I I can go through that process and how I did it, after you go through yours. Yeah. It's it's similar. It's just that creating the the landing page, would be a few steps further in.
Speaker 2:Yeah. But I guess what I'm saying is, for me, it's it's always been like look, it's okay to have an idea to come from your gut and from your own intuition. You know, I think a lot of entrepreneur Some people just say, right. Like, don't don't build something based on just an idea. And and I think there is in a sense, there's a lot of truth to that.
Speaker 2:And and you need to go through the next few steps to to validate and to make sure that you're kinda going down the right path.
Speaker 1:But I think I I think you can.
Speaker 2:For example, like, with productize, it's it's not exactly out of thin air. It's kind of based on two things. Number one, my own experience of building a productized service. Number two, seeing others who are starting to have success with with productized services. And number three, I I do have a growing audience now, so I have a sense of of what they care about and what they need.
Speaker 2:They've been emailing me things over the past year. And so putting those things together, I'm starting to have a hunch of of of what would be something that can really serve this audience well. And that's when I came up with the hypothesis of productize.
Speaker 1:Right. But that hypothesis isn't coming from thin air. It's coming from real contact with people and your experience. So I think I think you and people in your situation almost have that right to come up with an idea and launch it this way because you are you're in the market. You are you're interacting with people.
Speaker 1:You're seeing things. You're talking to people. You know you can get this done. I think the idea extraction avenue works better for people who are, maybe they're not entrepreneurs at all right now, maybe they're working a full time job and they wanna start a business online and they don't wanna do it in the same field that they're in currently. Those people in that situation, and I've been there also, I think they are genuinely better off not coming up with an idea.
Speaker 1:I think it's less likely that that idea out of thin air will work for them, whereas you coming up with an idea is it's it's not out of thin air. I So think you're, yeah. You have, like, a better place to guess from.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Now I I mean, the thing that I wanna make clear, though, we're still on step one here, and I have not established that that anyone is willing to pay for this or has expressed interest in potentially paying for this in the future. So far, it's still just a hunch based on what I know about my audience, and and and that's that. So I've so I've put up this landing page. It's based on assumption, kind of a hunch.
Speaker 2:Now, the next step is get get traffic to it. I've been doing that through content, through my newsletter. I have a a free course on the same topic that leads into sending people to the to the landing page. I in the past, I've also done this with PPC. So for instance, when I on on the very first days of starting Restaurant Engine, I had a a temporary landing page up.
Speaker 2:This was before I built anything on Restaurant Engine. I think it was even a different name. Right? I didn't even come up with Restaurant Engine at the time. I just for for a couple like, a a couple of weeks, I ran some AdWords campaigns to this landing page explaining what the service would do.
Speaker 2:It's launching in a few months. Enter your email address. Doing the same with product ties today, and that and that's also what we did with SuiteProcess. So so so we're we're sending traffic to the page, asking for email addresses, offering some kind of early access or be the first to know, or something along those lines, the next step is to email all these people and get on Skype calls. So two weeks ago, I sent out an email to everybody who has entered their email to for early access to productize.
Speaker 2:And by entering your email on a on an early access page, you're not saying, I'm definitely gonna buy this, but you are saying, like, I acknowledge that this is a product. It's being created. You're going to be selling it. I'm giving you my email because I might wanna buy it. That's what these people are saying.
Speaker 2:So those those people who have said that by entering their email, I send all of them an email, you know, just a personal email saying, let's hop on a Skype call. Here's my Calendly calendar that you can book a time. Let's let's talk. My goal is to schedule at least 10 Skype calls. I've done now for product as I've done about 10 or 12 of them.
Speaker 2:Doing a few more in the next week or two. You wanna get at least 10 of these calls done because that's that's the amount that I I start to see patterns in in the interviews. The other thing the reason I use Skype is because it's very easy to record the conversation. I'll tell the person up front, you know, I'm recording the conversation. It's totally private.
Speaker 2:I'm not gonna share anything here. It's just for my own research so that I could refer back to it later. So I record the conversation. Conversations tend to last, like, twenty to thirty minutes. And and so, you know, I have a a number of questions that I run through, and I'll get into that after I go through the whole process.
Speaker 2:But, you know, just really asking a lot of questions, asking a lot of follow-up questions, asking a lot of why is that? Why do you think that is? What's you know, where are you going with that?
Speaker 1:These conversations must be it it's it's gold, and it's it's not just for the marketing. It's also for the product. Exactly. Right? It gives it gives you a chance.
Speaker 1:Like, the worst thing you can do is get a whole bunch of people signing up for early access and then don't email them again until right before it's ready. Right? That that would be a mistake.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But talk talking to them as you're creating the product and you can adjust it before it's done and you get the intelligence of what do they care about. So what features do I highlight first? What headline do I use? What pains do I talk about? So it's really I mean, it's it's the best thing you can do.
Speaker 1:Whether it's you've already decided to create the product or you're not sure if you're gonna get into this business at all, talking to people directly. I mean, 10:10 Skype calls for half an hour each, that's that's infinitely better than, than what's in your head and guessing and seeing if maybe people will buy it or.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Exactly. And and it gets really exciting once you start to hear patterns. And and also just the fact that people are willing to spend thirty minutes of their time on on a call with me, and multiple people are, that that in itself is like, okay. People are interested.
Speaker 2:They're willing to talk to me about this thing. Now, the next step is, of course, I am recording these conversations. So then I'm gonna go back and load these m p threes onto my iPhone and listen to them. You know, just like I listen to podcasts all day, I'm gonna listen back to these episodes while I'm driving in the car, walking in the park with my dog, whenever. I'm now, like, kind of, like, marinating in these in in the in the voices of potential customers, just really internalizing all the things that they're saying and and understanding, like, their pain points, but also, like, how do they describe that pain point?
Speaker 2:Like, in their own words, like, what are the analogies that they're using? That's that's something that's been really popping up for me quite a bit. So I'm taking notes. I'm just internalizing this stuff, think you know, thinking it over and over again. Now that I have all this intelligence from from listening back, now I can go back to that original prelaunch landing page and rewrite all the copy.
Speaker 2:And as we speak today, that's kind of where I'm at with this productized landing page. I've I've now done a bunch of calls. The copy right now, I don't you know, this might change by the time this publishes next week. But in the next few days, I'm going to be going through that whole page and rewriting the copy, the headline, the first few paragraphs, the sections, because I'm I have learned now that what I had assumed is the most impactful way to to get this message across is a little bit different from from what really resonates, like the the core pain point and the and the reason why. So I'm gonna tweak the copy to speak more to what people have actually told me.
Speaker 1:Right. The the effect that that little tweak can have on the success of the product is is enormous. If if the first thing people see doesn't hit home, as opposed to if you nail it and the first line they read is, oh, that's just like me. That's how I feel. I mean, not that it can make or break the product, but it can have a very significant impact on the success.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Exactly.
Speaker 1:Nice, man.
Speaker 2:So that's kind of where yeah. Like like, that's kind of where I'm at. I'm gonna rewrite the the prelaunch landing page. Of course, that will eventually turn into the sales page once the product is is released in a few weeks. And then from you know, I'm also using this intelligence as I'm writing the course too.
Speaker 2:You know, like, making sure that we're covering exactly the material that people need to learn, or that they're asking to learn more about. You know? So that's that's basically it. And I I this doesn't only apply to info products or edgy of course, it it applies to anything that you're that you're launching, whether it's a productized service, an SaaS product, even like a WordPress plugin or anything. Going through some kind of customer research process doesn't have to be exactly this.
Speaker 2:It could be a variation of of what you hear elsewhere and whatnot. That's kind of what I've done is, you know, putting together different ideas. So so yeah.
Speaker 1:I I I think it's an ongoing necessity regardless of the stage that you're in. It's just applicable in different ways. Today, I was on the phone with the a customer who had just finished up their free trial. They did great during the free trial, so I was calling to convert them to paid. They were all for it.
Speaker 1:They're all happy to go. And in the fifteen minute conversation, you know, I could have just been like, great. Give me your credit card information and, you know, cha ching, now you're a customer. Instead, we we got into it. What do you think?
Speaker 1:What can be better? And the words, the the things, the feature requests. You know, I have a policy. My policy is I do not add a feature until someone says more than once. Can you add this feature?
Speaker 1:I want this. I want Without that, I just don't add the feature. I don't I don't think, oh, this would be cool, and so let me do it and then announce everyone. Guess what? Now we have this, you know, amazing new feature.
Speaker 1:But it has to come from people's mouths and the the phone's just the the best opportunity.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Or
Speaker 1:Skype calls that way. Yeah. It's the same reason why, you know, a lot of people reaching out after the Mixergy interview, they they're like, hey, I saw the interview. Thanks so much. I thought it was great.
Speaker 1:Learned a lot. And I reply back like, cool. Here's my my Skype. If you ever wanna talk, let's jump on it. Because you don't know, you know, you you can never tell, what you learn, and it it just it it tells you a ton.
Speaker 1:So I think we're all really excited to see the results you get. I think for, you know, your previous book and for other things, you didn't you didn't go about this process in nearly as sophisticated a way. And I think, this is a real opportunity to see the power of doing this research upfront. And then when you launch, you know, the your launch emails will talk about the right things. The pricing will be right.
Speaker 1:The product will be aimed toward the right people. The pain points you talk about. So That's really excited to see to see.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean, I'm I'm glad you brought that up. You know, I I did release the book last year, Design for Conversions. And, you know, again, it it did okay. It didn't exactly live up to my expectations in terms of sales and and reach.
Speaker 2:Wasn't a complete failure, you know, I have to admit, but it was it was okay. I mean
Speaker 1:I I think for a guess, it was it was relatively successful.
Speaker 2:Yeah. But exactly. So what happened there was I kind of did step one. I created the prelaunch landing page. I, know, announced it early.
Speaker 2:I did a plenty of, like, letting my letting my list know, like, we're this is coming. This is coming. And and then launched it. But I didn't do a whole lot of getting on the on the calls with those customers who because customers did sign up for early access, and I had an early access list. It wasn't huge, but people were were showing some early interest in the product, and some people bought it.
Speaker 2:But, I didn't all of the copy for all the sales copy for the page and everything that I wrote about in in the articles and emails leading up to it was just based on my own assumptions and hunch. And I didn't I didn't match that up with what people were actually telling me because I didn't do enough of those calls.
Speaker 1:That's And this is That's
Speaker 2:since changed quite a bit.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Def it's definitely changed. And this is one of those dangers, if I could just come back to a good standby argument with you. I think one of the dangers of having an audience, in that people like you so much when they're in your audience that some people will buy mostly based on that because they trust you and they like, what you create. And if you do that and you and it's still a guess and it's not this work that Brian has done for, for productize, then the sales won't go beyond your audience.
Speaker 1:Right? If you nail it for your audience and you really listen to them the way you're doing now, I think the product can stand on its own regardless of whether or not people know you. And then you can use PPC and affiliates and these alternative methods that do not require people to be in your audience before they have an affinity to you and then are more likely to buy. But if it's more of a more of a guess and and you haven't nailed the pain point, and I think it's very limited to the people in your audience, those are the only people that are really likely to buy.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And I just I also kinda wanna reiterate as well that as of today, I'm I'm at this point now where look. We're we're talking about productize as if it's already a success, which it most certainly is not. It has not launched yet. I don't it could be a total flop for all I know, but I think I think that given the the amount of customer research that I've been doing and that I continue to do and the emails and and things that I'm receiving from people, I I am going into this with so much more confidence than I was a year ago going into that book.
Speaker 2:Going into that book, it was a total question mark. This time around, I I feel fairly confident that it will at least, you know, do okay, I I think. But there I have to be honest, there there's still that that thing in my gut that that questions yeah. As, you know, we're we're in this prelaunch phase. We don't know what's happening or what will happen, but things feel good right now.
Speaker 2:That's that's the whole point of this exercise, I guess.
Speaker 1:Yes. And that that's all you have to go by. I think you'll be nervous no matter what up until launch, and then those first few sales come in, and then you'll you'll start to calm down. But
Speaker 2:Yeah. I I might wanna come back to this episode and trash it and bury bury it. You know?
Speaker 1:This doesn't work. Do not do not listen.
Speaker 2:Yeah. You know? And then, you know, when it comes to running these actual interviews with with customers so what are we actually asking them? What should we ask them? I have a document that I put together just for this current product.
Speaker 2:It's about 15 questions long, and I'll just share a couple of them right now. Of course, you'll wanna adapt these questions to your own situation and the type of product and and your customers. So
Speaker 1:Do you do you follow this? Like, when you're on the calls, I I've tried this before, and I ended up asking the first question, then it kinda goes off wherever it's gonna go.
Speaker 2:It's not it's not so rigid. I I do have the list of questions in front of me just so that I don't get, like, what do I wanna talk about next? But
Speaker 1:it's Right. You have something to go back to.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. I'm I'm totally jumping around. But I I
Speaker 1:do Depending on the
Speaker 2:Yeah. Like so okay. Like, the first few questions before I really get into the ones I wanna ask them is just to talk and, like, build rapport. And it's also, like, just tell me about what you do. Because I've been talking to web designers.
Speaker 2:I've been talking to developers. I've been talking to I talked to one accountant. I talked to a copywriter. So everybody has a slightly different business model and what they do and and experience and background, and some people are farther ahead. Some people are just getting started.
Speaker 2:So I'm just trying to get a feel for where they're at. And then I really get into the important questions. So I'll I'll start to ask things like, you know, tell me about something that's frustrating or challenging you right now. And that usually starts to get them talking about something. And then I start to dig in.
Speaker 2:Why is that? What oh, you said you said an interesting thing there. What can you can you expand more on that thing? You know, just really asking a lot of follow-up questions like that. Another way to to to get into these pain points would be, you know, what do you spend the majority of your time on these days?
Speaker 2:Because people value their time. Typically, their their the solution is something around this will save you money or this will save you time or both. Mhmm. So I'm asking, what are you spending the majority of of your time on, and what do you think that you should be spending more time on? Or what do you wish that you could spend more time on?
Speaker 2:You know, what's not getting done? Thing things like that. Again, why is that? What you know, what did you say there? Then I'm I'm also asking I'm trying to figure out, like because everybody has a vision in their mind of where they wanna be in the future.
Speaker 2:They're everybody's aspiring towards something. Everyone's moving in a certain direction, or they're hoping to get to a certain destination. So I'm trying to ask questions like Right. What would you say is your biggest goal over the next year? Like, where do you hope to be twelve months from now?
Speaker 2:I'll I'll say that a lot. Right.
Speaker 1:I think that's the maybe the single most important thing to understand in marketing. If you understand what they're actually trying to do, and that's both I wanna get to a million dollars in revenue along with so that I can spend more time with my kids and Yeah. My wife who's not healthy or something. Right? If you get to what they're actually trying to accomplish and why they're trying to accomplish it, then everything in your marketing goes toward that goal.
Speaker 1:And, yeah, it makes much more sense to them. Okay. So you so you you build a little rapport, then you jump into, what they're working on. I mean, what are you working on is a magical question because it it just opens the door. I would like you to talk about yourself.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And and then people are like, oh, like this guy. This is this is great. And then, you know, people love to talk about themselves. So, yeah, what are you working on is one of those things I throw out immediately with people, whether it's on chat, Skype, Twitter, whatever it is.
Speaker 2:I that's my favorite question to ask no matter what this like, email newsletter. I I sent out a tweet earlier today that I I send an autoresponder to all new subscribers to my newsletter get, like, what are you working on right now? What's your biggest challenge in the next twelve months? What's your biggest hurdle, to getting there? And that's another question I'll ask on these, interviews.
Speaker 2:And, like, even when I'm, like, out at a conference or, like, getting drinks with other people in the industry or whatever, it's like, yeah. What are you working on right now? You know? I I love that question. And
Speaker 1:it it also it elevates what they're doing because you're not saying what business are you in, what title, what job do you do, you know, what it leaves it open because people don't see what they're working on as as very concrete these days. People could be working on, you know, charity and philanthropic and environmental issues and a business or something to do with art or helping kids. So leaves the door open, doesn't offend anyone, elevates what they're doing. Yeah. What are you working on is like a it's like what you do for a living, but upgraded upgraded and updated for for these days.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Exactly. So, I mean, that that's basically my piece of of this whole customer research thing. I'd like to hear about you because you you did the foundation with Dane Maxwell, and and you've Yes. Been through a number of different businesses.
Speaker 2:I'd love to hear, you know, kinda how how you've gone about this.
Speaker 1:So I think the idea extraction, just the concept and the tactical, strategy of idea extraction is the is the single most valuable thing that I got out of the foundation. I think it's the single most valuable thing that people can get out of Dane Maxwell's whole shtick. I think people who are a little younger or not as far along in the entrepreneurial game get a lot more out of his course and a lot of out of his content because it's a lot about mindset. And it's hugely important when when you're starting out or you don't have the confidence. You know, if you listen to Brian talk and as you're listening, you said to yourself, but why would anybody wanna talk to me on Skype?
Speaker 1:Then Dane Mackwell stuff, that's that's perfect because that's the mindset stuff, you know, of of engineering that to say, people should be happy to talk to me for half an hour because they're gonna get a lot out of it. So I think that's kind of one of those difficult to define things. But for for me, the idea extraction and process was eye opening. So here's instead of just trying to explain what Dane suggests or teaches, I'll just tell you how I
Speaker 2:did it. Yeah. Exactly. How did it how did you kinda put it into action?
Speaker 1:Okay. So I look right. This is this is approaching starting a business without having an idea. So it's ignoring your own ideas, admitting that the idea that you come up with for an industry that you don't know much about is not a good idea. And so that idea for business should come out of the pains that you hear from the people themselves.
Speaker 1:Okay? So you're going into this open minded. So I have a lot of experience in real estate and appraisal valuation of real estate. So I chose appraisers as my market to go after. So I said to myself, okay.
Speaker 1:Let me go through this the right way. Let me not assume and let me do this idea extraction process. So here's what I did. I needed to find a way to contact a lot of appraisers and I wanted to do it over email and then from email to the phone. Okay.
Speaker 1:So I found a resource. I found something called the Appraisal Institute. And appraisers are one of those great industries that their contact information is readily available because they want you to contact them. Right? A very important thing for this type of, of research.
Speaker 1:So I go out and I hire someone on oDesk for $4 an hour to just go through the entire Appraisal Institute website. Actually, was too big. I just said, give me, you know, a few states. Give me Colorado, Texas, Florida, Illinois, or I pick a few states. So she went in there and grabbed me the first name and email address of several 100 appraisers.
Speaker 1:Then I took that and I went to Tout app, which is a great little app, and I uploaded different lists, I think a 100 at a time, and I merged their email template so that it said, you know, hi, Brian. I did Dane Maxwell's strange question dot dot dot as the as the subject line.
Speaker 2:Right. I think was like that kind of subject line from a complete stranger is like It's just weird. It's gonna get it open, and that's the whole goal.
Speaker 1:That's the whole goal. So it's just strange question dot dot dot. And then it was a very, very simple, straightforward, innocent sounding email. Hi, Brian. I'm Jordan.
Speaker 1:I'm doing research on the appraisal industry. I'm hoping to speak with experts such as yourself to figure out what I could potentially help you with as a software product. Do you have I I think of it as something very straightforward like, what are the biggest frustrations that you deal with on a day to day basis? I'd love to speak with you. Here's my contact information.
Speaker 1:You know, answer me even if it's just one line. Thank you, Jordan. That's it. So I sent out a 100 of these a day for, I don't know, ten days. I sent out, call it, a thousand emails.
Speaker 1:Not many people respond, but it shouldn't be discouraging because let's say 20 people respond, a tiny response rate. 10 of those are f you, don't ever talk to me again. 10 of those are real genuine answers. So out of those 10, you start to get a sense of what people are frustrated with because you asked, tell me what you're working on that's frustrating you. What do you hate about your job?
Speaker 1:Something to that. Okay. So I got a few, call it 10 answers. And out of those 10 answers, I got something very similar three or four times. Something that talked about I hate doing the manual inputting on my appraisal software.
Speaker 1:Okay. So I said to myself, that's interesting. So the next thing I do is I try to get people on on the phone or on Skype. So all these 10 people, I know their phone numbers because, you know, it's in the Appraisal Institute. So I call all of them.
Speaker 1:I got into real conversations with maybe five or six people, like good thirty to sixty minute conversations, same type of thing. What are you working on? How's your day? How is the appraisal industry going? What sucks?
Speaker 1:What do you wish was different? What does your typical day look like? What's the most annoying part of your day?
Speaker 2:You know, I think for a lot of folks out there, that that in itself, getting on the phone with a perfect stranger and this is, like, not even, like, a cold call, like, you're trying to sell something. You don't have anything to sell. You're just like, hey. I'm a complete stranger and let's talk.
Speaker 1:Yes. Like if think that people don't wanna talk to you, just realize they're talking about themselves and everybody loves to talk about themselves. And the other part of that is just don't be a pussy. You wanna be a millionaire? You can't be a pussy.
Speaker 2:That's true, man. Just And like Just do it. You know? Yeah. Like, it's something that, you have to just break yourself out of that comfort zone.
Speaker 2:Look, I I'm a very shy guy in in real life. You know, when I'm out with people that I don't know so well, I don't talk so much. But over over time, you know, I I've been able to, like, learn how to just, like, force myself to break out of the shell, especially when it's, doing business or or getting on the phone with someone. Like, early on, I never wanted to do that, and I was reluctant to. But then you start to learn, like once you do it, like, even just two or three times, you start to figure out, like, oh, if I just this could be, like, the first question I asked them.
Speaker 2:Like like, you know, tell me about what you do. Again, like you said, if you ask them about them, make it all about them. People love to just talk about themselves, and all of a sudden, they become so much more comfortable, and that makes you more comfortable Yeah. As you're talking to them.
Speaker 1:It's amazing the transformation both with you and with the person on the other side of the phone when you're not selling anything. I've done cold calling to sell. It sucks. It sucks. You feel weird inside.
Speaker 1:It's it's not good. Yeah. Some people are good at it. Hallelujah. I think it's a great skill.
Speaker 1:But this isn't really that. This, you know, I I I've had people on the phone say, you know, what do you want? What are you selling? And you just say, I don't have anything to sell. I just wanna talk.
Speaker 1:If we come up with something that might help you, then maybe I'll create that product and it would help you. But other than that, I just wanna talk. I just wanna hear about what you're working on. So okay. Now you've talked to five or six people for thirty to sixty minutes each.
Speaker 1:Now you're starting to get some the goods. Now you're starting to see some patterns. So I wrote down what I heard on the phone, what I saw in emails that were consistently brought up. Okay. So it was a few problems.
Speaker 1:It was something about regulations and that that one thing kept coming up about data entry. I hate spending an hour doing data entry before I created each appraisal. Okay. So interesting. So now I'm still in guest mode.
Speaker 1:So what I do is I take an email at I take an email and then I instead of saying, you know, would you talk to me? I just put those problems directly into the email. I say, hey, it's Jordan again. I've spoken with a bunch of people in the appraisal industry. These are the common problems that I heard.
Speaker 1:Number one, data entry. Number two, this. Number three, that. Are you experiencing any of these pains? If so, let me know.
Speaker 1:And now you send it out to the thousand people again and your response rate will be very different.
Speaker 2:So that that those are the same thousand people. So they're getting a second email from you.
Speaker 1:They're getting a second email, you know, and I said I'm doing research. So now I I title this email like update on research. So people, you know, I think people get more interested in something like that. And now instead of asking them to come out of their shell and just blankly fill in a blank canvas and say, what are you you know, what's frustrating you? Now you've identified three or four things that it's very likely that they have a problem with.
Speaker 1:And if you if you nailed exactly one of them, they're gonna read it and then they're gonna say, oh, shit. That is that is exactly what I hate. And now instead of getting 20 responses, I got like fifty, sixty, 70 responses.
Speaker 2:That's amazing. I mean, that this is that gold. Right? It's taking what people have actually told you and then reapplying it. In your case, you know, in in in the foundation method, it's reapplying it to the email blast or, you know, really, they're, like, personal emails.
Speaker 2:Putting that copy in the email. In in my case, it was like talking to customers and then rewriting the landing page for, you know, using that intelligence.
Speaker 1:Right. So I'm rewriting the email instead of rewriting the landing page. And this this piece about, like, the recycled what you hear send out, I think it's my little wrinkle. I don't know if if they actually teach that, but that just made sense to me. That that's
Speaker 2:what I did. Sounds brilliant to me. So that's awesome.
Speaker 1:Then you get on the phone with more people and then you narrow it down to one problem. So I narrowed it down to data entry. People were having trouble. They were looking on one screen and looking at their appraisal software, and one program didn't talk to another, and they had to manually input the data from one to another. And that right there, that's software, baby.
Speaker 1:That that's what software does. That's the value of software. So I said, I might have an idea. Then I sent out another email to the people who were in touch with me and said, this is what I'm focusing in on. If this is a problem you have, let's talk.
Speaker 1:And then, you know, then the foundation process goes deeper from there.
Speaker 2:You know, what I wanna know is maybe listeners wanna know. We we know that your business today is Cardhook. Yep. You you know, your SaaS product that you ended up building and ended up selling with paying customers and it's growing is it's not that real estate appraisal software. So so you went through that process.
Speaker 2:How did you make the the jump?
Speaker 1:Okay. So I may as well just finish out the process Okay. And I'll I'll tell you where I hit the the roadblock. Mhmm. Okay.
Speaker 1:So I was onto a good idea. People were having trouble getting data from one program, whether it's MLS or anything else, into their appraisal software. That sounds like a little bridge to me, little bridge of software. I looked around. I saw competitors.
Speaker 1:I saw competitors charging a $102,100 bucks a month for it. I said, I'm on to something. So the next step, I went into my lab. I you know, I'm not a developer. I just use landing page software to make a thing that looked like a product.
Speaker 1:I went to, Themeforest. I bought an admin, like administration back end theme. I grabbed all the images from there. I used Unbounce. I put together what looked like a piece of software.
Speaker 1:And then, you know, it showed like, okay, here's your data from this thing. And when you you choose what fields you want, and when you hit this button, you get to the next screen. Right. This is what people do with Kenotopia and all these all these other things. So then I had that and then I went and showed that to people.
Speaker 1:And I said, alright. Is this what you're talking about? Does this address the the problem?
Speaker 2:The same people that you've been cold emailing.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Some of those people are like, dude, be in touch with me. I wanna know when this thing launches. I'm dying. I'm spending ten hours a week on data entry.
Speaker 1:If you're telling me you can do this automatic, like, I'm I wanna go first. I'm in. So I knew I was on to something good. I showed it to a bunch of people, and I had people, you know, I had people wanting to pay immediately. The the problem I ran into, a lot of what I heard over the phone, was people in in bad financial condition.
Speaker 1:The businesses were not healthy. Regist regulations are out of control. The government's all the way into the re industry. They can't make money. So I started hesitating.
Speaker 1:I didn't wanna offer a a 20 or $30 SaaS. I wanted to offer a 100, 200, $500 SaaS because, you know, you just you need a 100 clients instead of 500 in order to be successful or or breakeven. And I ran into the roadblock of, oh, I I I can't pay a $100 a month for that. I could pay I could pay 30.
Speaker 2:So you started running the pricing by these people, and that's where there was the the disconnect?
Speaker 1:Yes. Because they they weren't making enough money, and they were getting squeezed, and they're making less money every month and less money every year, and that's not the type of industry that I wanted to sell into. I wanted it growing, expanding. I don't care how much it costs because I'm killing it right now.
Speaker 2:Right. And even if this was like the first product of of many products down the road, it's you're entering the wrong industry.
Speaker 1:Yes. And and I adjusted at that point and I pivoted toward commercial appraisers who make more money and were doing better. And I started looking into a piece of software that helped them manage their data. And then I started kind of getting discouraged and lost a lot of the interest. But you know, it's not a bad thing to decide not to build a product because a product is a lot of money and a year, two, three years of your time, and if it fails, you can't get that time back.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So going through that for two months and then saying no was painful. It would have been more painful to go into it and fail.
Speaker 2:Now okay. So, I mean, let's let's kinda fast forward real quick to to Cardhook because what I'm what what my sense is and correct me if I'm if I'm totally wrong here. But you previously worked in an ecommerce business. You you you built up and then you sold an ecommerce business. By the way, the whole story is on your Mixergy interview.
Speaker 2:It was awesome. You guys gotta check that out. Cool. But the, so your cart hook, of course, is a tool for ecommerce owners. And so that's something that you just know so well, and you must have had some kind of hunch or assumption, Eric.
Speaker 2:Like in like in my case, like, knowing from experience, like, there's a need here. I've experienced it myself. I know that others need it. Let's explore this option. Is that am I onto something there?
Speaker 2:Or
Speaker 1:Yes. I just did it a little differently and a little dirtier. So may maybe people wanna hear about it. So Cardhook, I didn't do the same research because the idea didn't come out of nowhere. The idea came from when I ran an e commerce business.
Speaker 1:I wanted to use a product like Cardhook and I couldn't because the products weren't good enough and they didn't work with anonymous checkout. You had to be a registered user in order for the email to be captured. So the products weren't good, but it was so obvious that it would be a great thing. And I used a product that had card abandonment in it. I couldn't use the card abandonment piece because of the anonymous checkout piece, but we did use a different part of their product that's automatically sent out emails to people after they purchased soliciting reviews.
Speaker 1:So come back to the site. We hope you like the product. Would you please leave a review? And that blew up blew up our reviews, blew up the conversion rate. You know, if you get a product page that does well and then you add 85 star reviews to it, it's gonna do really well.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So so that was like a SaaS that you, as an ecommerce business owner, you were subscribed to, you're happily paying
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Hundreds a month for it, and and you wanted something like that.
Speaker 1:I wanted something like that, and I wanted to be in that guy's shoes because I paid them $50 a month, and they not only were they getting us a ton of reviews and a better conversion rate, the people that came in to write reviews, they bought again.
Speaker 2:Right. But I mean, like, the idea like, you you knew you wanted to get into a SaaS recurring revenue type of business, but the idea for the product, cart hook, cart abandonment Yes. That came from your own experience. Right?
Speaker 1:Yes. So that came from my own experience and also looking at competitors. And and so this process was a little different. And look, it it was it was innocent. The the way I went about it was, I don't wanna build this thing unless I I feel really confident.
Speaker 1:So the way I'm gonna do that is I'm gonna approach all of my potential competitors, and I'm gonna talk to them. And I'm gonna say, look, I don't wanna build a SaaS. I just want recurring revenue. So why don't I just sell your SaaS? I'm an e I'm a former e commerce store owner.
Speaker 1:I know how to talk to e commerce. I know how to sell your product. It's awesome. I know it's gonna recover money for people. I just wanna be a salesman.
Speaker 1:Let me sell it. Let my company sell it for you, and I want a recurring piece of the action. So I went out and I talked to all of my competitors. And I got a ton of information from them. And I, you know, I was I was in talks with two of them to sell the product for them and get a piece of the action recurring.
Speaker 1:And as far as I'm concerned, I mean, I don't really care about software. I just want the money. So I was gonna be totally happy to be in the background as long as I got a piece of the action. I mean, that even sounds that sounds even better to me to get a piece of recurring revenue without having to deal with the actual software. Right?
Speaker 2:Yeah. We'll have to I mean, we'll have to kinda talk about this more in another episode, reselling versus building your own and and and being dependent on other companies and working that in. Because we, you know, we deal with that in restaurant engines as well. It's like half more than half of our product is our thing, but then we do online ordering as well, and that's a partnership with with another company. So it's Right.
Speaker 2:And it's worked out fantastic for us, but it's it's also there there's a lot of give and take there that we should we should talk about sometimes.
Speaker 1:Yes. So to wrap it up, basically, I was trying to white label. And what I said to myself is if I'm successful at selling it, then I'll consider building one myself. And I figured I'll deal with the awkwardness then of, I'm sorry, I'm gonna launch my own competitor. What what ended up happening was that's right when I met Charlie out in San Francisco, my cofounder.
Speaker 1:And when I told him about what I was thinking, he was like, look, man, let's just build it ourselves. That's when I called everyone back and said, look, it's a very real possibility that I'm gonna build something like this myself. So we, you know, we should now start talking like friendly competitors and the right thing to do is not not get any further further into the relationship, you know, before I started working for you under false pretenses and all that. So I just came out and told them, exactly what's happening and they appreciate it. I'm I'm still buddies with with some of the guys that are, you know, in in the landscape.
Speaker 2:Very cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So that was the validation, you know, in on on that angle.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Nice. Of course, you've been doing a lot of manual, customer acquisition, talking to every customer as they as they're coming on board on CardHook. So you're getting tons of you know, you're doing this customer development as you've been building up the the customer base, which has been awesome.
Speaker 1:Yes. And I I just built a sales funnel based on those challenges that people deal with. I'm just about to redo the marketing site. And, you know, it's in all entirely informed by real customers and what they're like and who they are and what they deal with and what what they wanna see in the product and in the marketing.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So why don't we kinda round this out? Did you wanna talk about your your sales funnel course that you've you've just released and you're, like you said, you're planning to rerelease it again? Yeah. Customer research play into into that?
Speaker 1:That's I I maybe for another episode because it's a bit more a bit more involved. I think I spoke about it a few episodes ago, but it was it was similar to what it's similar to the, you know, the way the process of a landing page and then talking to people. This was just me offering the service for free, seeing if anyone was interested, then seeing if people will pay for And then, you know, moving step by step, and then offering the course once I knew people were both interested in it and willing to pay for it. So we can get, you know, further into the details on that.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Totally. But I you know, I think there's I guess if there's, like, one big takeaway of this episode, I think it's if you have some kind of educated guess or a hunch or an assumption of of of something that you wanna do or or group of customers that you wanna serve, start there. Like, you don't have to avoid all ideas. I think there's some there there there's some kind of, you know, talk in in this industry where, like, ideas are the devil.
Speaker 2:You have to your customers have to tell you what the idea will be. You have to trust your gut and your own intuition at a certain level, and then you have to do the work to to make sure you're you're speaking to the right people and you're communicating in the right way, and that's where the customer research really comes in. But the initial idea, it's okay if it comes from your gut.
Speaker 1:I think it's tricky, and, there's no right way
Speaker 2:to do it. Of course.
Speaker 1:I right. The the truth is everything right? Everyone's a little different. If you are gonna have an idea completely on your own, just make sure you validate it or you're or you're in much riskier territory than if you don't validate it. Yes.
Speaker 1:The other way to go is to not have an idea and extract it. And the other way to go, which I love, is to just copy the shit out of other people. You you yeah. That's that's a genuine business strategy.
Speaker 2:And look, I mean, that's really a variation of just under looking at an opportunity and coming up with a unique, you know, value added, alternative to what's already out there. You know? Yeah. Talk like One of
Speaker 1:my favorite competitors and
Speaker 2:you know?
Speaker 1:Yeah. One of my favorite examples of this that boggles the mind. I I I love it. You see a question about it on Quora and people are are baffled. So you know that little exit intent pop up?
Speaker 1:You you know, pick real hazard, opt in monster.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:The Right.
Speaker 2:Balance Right.
Speaker 1:Balance exchange wasn't first. There I don't I don't think they're any different or better unless I'm unless I'm misunderstanding something. But all it is is a pop up that comes up when your little cursor leaves Right. The browser window and goes toward the top. They charge five grand a month I for
Speaker 2:mean, like, to me, when whenever I see their pricing, it's like, is that real? Is that is that for real? Like, come on.
Speaker 1:It's It only boggles our mind because we're we're, you know, we're peons, man. We're we're not dealing with corporate budgets here. We're not dealing with public companies.
Speaker 2:I guess. I mean, what what kind of value can they actually add? Okay. Like, a a personal consultant will help install this widget on your site and
Speaker 1:I think I think they add the exact same value that my enterprise competitors add. They have a sales process that goes along with the way the companies that they're dealing with expect a sales process to go. Yeah. I I really think they have an account manager and you have to do a demo before you can try the product and they can tell you that their customers are the Gap and Banana Republic and you know, all these other big brands so people feel comfortable that they're not using something that's rinky dink. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:It's really it's mumbo jumbo, but goddamn $5,000 a month for a SaaS is a beautiful thing.
Speaker 2:Cool. Well, should we, should we leave it there and, and wrap it up here?
Speaker 1:Let's wrap it up.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So You guys wanna
Speaker 1:dig into some previous episodes? And Brian, I have to say, I I think we're we're getting a little better and better at this, this whole thing.
Speaker 2:Totally, man.
Speaker 1:If you wanna go backwards in in quality to see how things used to be and progressively get worse up until the point where I joined, and then behind that, it's all all good because it's
Speaker 2:just I'm not gonna head over. You know, I I do I get I gotta note. I mean, it's really I I feel like this podcast is totally picking up, especially since you joined the show. It's been, like, totally quiet, like, reviews, no feedback for the first, you know, twenty, twenty five episodes. And lately, not only am I having a ton of fun getting on these things, you know, every Friday talking talking shop with you, but we're getting emails.
Speaker 2:We're getting feedback. We're we're seeing the numbers jump up. Things are good here at Bootstrap Web, and it it's Hell, yeah.
Speaker 1:Let's do it. Join us join us for the ride. So head over to bootstrapweb.com to see any, previous episodes and to sign up for our list so you'll be notified whenever a new episode is released. And don't forget to email us. Let us know what's going on.
Speaker 1:Let us know what you like, what you don't like, what you wanna hear about. And if you're happy, head over to iTunes and leave us a five star review. It really helps. Yes, sir. That's it for this week.
Speaker 1:Brian, I guess you can you can take it away.
Speaker 2:Well, that's it. I got I got nothing else. So we'll see you guys next week And have a great weekend.
Speaker 1:Alright. Cheers to you.
![[40] Doing Customer Research](https://img.transistorcdn.com/LDB_Cv9bHAA2vtoSPkZCpkdHPF6fAqfl7PL-PG7_c-M/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:800/h:800/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9jMjkw/MDYxZDQ0MWIxYTUw/NTMzMGI2NTExZWMx/MWQ1Yi5qcGc.webp)