Pressing Questions
Hey. It is Bootstrapped Web. We are back. Today is Friday, September 27. And How are doing, Jordan?
Jordan Gal:We are good. It's Friday. I'm coming to New York this weekend. Oh, you are? Just for one one night, just for Sunday night.
Brian Casel:Nice. I am actually flying to Cabo, Mexico on Monday morning for Cabo Press. Oh. Yeah. Lemma Lemma hooked me up with a with like a last minute ticket for that and how can I say no?
Brian Casel:I'm I'm heading down there for next week. So so we'll be off the podcast next next Friday.
Jordan Gal:Cool. I I think it would be fun to go to Cabo Press if for no other reason
Brian Casel:Oh my to
Jordan Gal:just have have the debate.
Brian Casel:I wonder what people are gonna be talking about down there. It should be interesting.
Jordan Gal:I wonder if there's any topic in the WordPress community right now that dominate all the other topics.
Brian Casel:No. Nothing much.
Jordan Gal:Uh-huh. Which which we will get into. But before we do that, first of all, I I have a I I got a whole bunch of personal stuff. We're just we're gonna make it like a hanging podcast.
Brian Casel:Let's do it, dude.
Jordan Gal:We'll sell my business. First of this weekend, I'm incredibly excited to go see Douglas Murray speak on Sunday. That's why that's why we're I'm coming into New York. And we're we're going with my entire family. So it's like literally my immediate fam.
Jordan Gal:My mom, my dad, and my two brothers. So the the five of us going going to see him speak.
Brian Casel:Oh, very cool.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Kinda That should be fun. Old school. Today, I'm going to see a Rivian.
Brian Casel:I was gonna ask you which car you're looking at. Alright. So I'm actually on the list for that next Rivian coming out. I think it's coming out next year, r two, I think.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I looked at it, got excited about it, then I saw the coming soon in 2026. Know. Car in October.
Brian Casel:Yeah. But there it's like a $100 to get on the list for that. So so we did that, like and I I don't know if we're gonna get it or not, but it
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Well, you have Tesla. You've made the leap on electric. Yeah. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:I I have not.
Brian Casel:Yeah. So we we've had it for almost three like two and a half years, something like that.
Jordan Gal:Cool. Yeah. I I I have not made the leap. My wife's car is hybrid and it gets unbelievable gas mileage, but you know, you're still putting gas in. You you're not plugging it in.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I mean at this point for me, I don't know if it's gonna be a Rivian or something else after the like we are all electric going forward. Really? Really? Trips too.
Brian Casel:Like drive up to everywhere. We drive so much and it's just so much better in so many ways, dude. Cool.
Jordan Gal:Like If you asked me a year ago, I would have said I'm not ready. I'll give it a I few
Brian Casel:would say like we're not gonna do a Tesla again. We're not shopping anytime soon but like Mhmm. The Tesla is nice but I think that there are so many other good options out there now. Rivian, like whatever, like BMW and like all of them have nice options now. So like well, but it's for for us it's got for me at least it's gotta be electric going forward.
Jordan Gal:Interesting.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I I It's so much nicer to drive.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I I don't I don't know what that's like, but I know what my driving life is like and it is very small. I take my kids to soccer tournaments. That's the farthest I drive. I go to the bakery.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I go go get lunch. I run a few errands. I just do not whenever we go on a bigger trip, we we take, you know, the other car. And the Rivian's nice, man.
Jordan Gal:It's
Brian Casel:really nice. Yeah. Those the current ones are are big and pricey. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Like a big SUV. Maybe it's to compensate for my height, but whatever. I like it.
Brian Casel:Yeah. What the actual size of that r two is gonna be. But the the the model y is like pretty spacious inside. But overall, it's like still a pretty small I don't even know if you'd even call it an SUV but it's pretty it's supposed to be like a small SUV.
Jordan Gal:Right. Midsize SUV or whatever that Yeah. Category is called. It's you know what car shopping is? It's annoying.
Jordan Gal:It's such a big decision. It's a so much everything's so much more expensive than you want it to be. You you it's like it's like house shopping. You just look up one level at what you can afford and you're like, damn that Range Rover's nice.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah, man. Before before the Tesla, we always did the like our our routine for buying cars was we buy slightly used. Like we we would buy
Jordan Gal:Two years old, three
Brian Casel:year A owned like Yes. Two two or three two or three years with like 30,000 miles, which means we're going into the dealerships and dealing with the used car lot salesman and that whole stupid game you know. Yeah. Yes. I got like kinda good at it.
Brian Casel:I I started to like we Really? Bought over those I mean, I didn't like it but I got but I I I figured out all their little tricks and I figured little workarounds and like you play off like this the sell value of your last car off of the off of the current thing and like
Jordan Gal:And the good cop bad cop thing of like talk to my manager.
Brian Casel:It's Yeah. Like hey, if you're gonna make me sit here for more than thirty minutes, I'm walking out like just Yes.
Jordan Gal:One of the things I liked So I'm I'm having I went to go see a car yesterday And the feeling, the emotion I had going into the car dealership and and leaving was you're a loser and you can't afford this. What are you doing here? That that was the vibe that I got. And I was like, no. I just don't want the $2,000 a month version of what you have.
Jordan Gal:I don't drive that much. I want the cheaper one. And why are you making me feel like a failure? Because I don't want the super expensive version of it. It's like so and now I don't wanna give that guy business at all.
Jordan Gal:And then you go on to the Rivian website and you and you're you're shopping like an e commerce experience.
Brian Casel:Well, yeah. Like these modern things like the Rivian Yes. The Teslas. You just order it online and you know.
Jordan Gal:Yep. I'm gonna go into the city after this podcast to to look at and test drive it because I think I'm old school enough that I can't buy a car without literally sitting in it for like
Brian Casel:same with the at the time that I bought it, the the Tesla it was like 2021 and the wait was so long. Like we waited like eight months for delivery and
Jordan Gal:Oh wow. A trip.
Brian Casel:Yep. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Yeah man.
Brian Casel:Alright. So we're not Dude, the the just the thing about driving. It it is so much more enjoyable to drive an electric. Like it it has that effect. I still feel it now, like two and a half years in.
Brian Casel:I've always liked driving a lot and we we do take a lot of road trips, my family. But I But two years in, I still feel like, oh, let me find a good excuse to go take a take a ride because it's just fun.
Jordan Gal:It it sparks a little joy?
Brian Casel:Hell yeah, dude. Like And like the sound system inside is great. The pickup is insane. Like the zero to 60 is insane.
Jordan Gal:The pickup is so crazy.
Brian Casel:It's awesome, dude.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Very interesting. Cool. I I like it because I do I do like most Americans. I get I get a lot of like good feeling from the car I drive and and way it makes me feel and the whole thing.
Jordan Gal:Of course. I I like driving in general. I don't like other drivers on the road, but I like me driving.
Brian Casel:Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm like we're we're total East Coast road rage people over here.
Jordan Gal:Yes. I'm I'm anti road rage. I I drive Portland was my home. I have people drive slow
Brian Casel:slow thing. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Now I'm in Chicago. It's something in the middle where people are just too agro.
Brian Casel:I'm I'm still a New York driver. But that hard. I
Jordan Gal:believe. Brian, I'm not done with my personal updates. I have one more.
Brian Casel:Let's go.
Jordan Gal:Okay. I wanna recommend a TV show.
Brian Casel:Okay.
Jordan Gal:Last night, stumbled onto a TV show called Nobody Wants This. It's it's created by two sisters and the show stars Adam Brody and Kristen Bell. Okay?
Brian Casel:Okay.
Jordan Gal:And I had this very rare rare experience yesterday
Brian Casel:I know this one and we watch a lot of TV. I don't know why this isn't
Jordan Gal:will start to bubble up now because the it's first of all, it's very well done. The writing is incredibly good. And the the the two sisters that created it are like, you know, that's just an interesting story. The it's it's about two sisters. It's about a rabbi played by Adam Brody who meets Kristen Bell and all of a sudden they're like, you know, can this actually work type of a thing.
Jordan Gal:But I had such a rare experience last night with it where those two on screen together, they like you you I don't know if you've heard the term wattage around like Hollywood act just like charisma. My wife and I could not believe what these two did on screen. They had the two of us sitting in bed with just giant smiles on our faces. Because like the the what they created in this one particular scene
Brian Casel:Those are too great actors.
Jordan Gal:It was like charisma magic. We couldn't believe it. Interesting. Pretty cool.
Brian Casel:We gotta check this out.
Jordan Gal:Might have been the edible, but whatever. You know, it happens.
Brian Casel:Yeah. We just finished the one like the Nicole Kidman one about the the murder mystery on on
Jordan Gal:Yes. Amazing first three episodes. Brain wreck.
Brian Casel:Super dumb near the end but Yes. But we watch it to the yeah. Yep. Yep. Like Right now, we're watching this super weird one called called Chaos.
Brian Casel:Have you seen that?
Jordan Gal:No. No.
Brian Casel:Oh, it's it's basically about like the Greek gods, but they play out in like mod like they Real life like modern
Jordan Gal:Oh, okay. Okay.
Brian Casel:Life. It's sort of like it The trailer makes it look like a comedy and it's sort of funny, but it's also like just kinda weird and and kinda violent and like it just all the It's just such an It it is like At first, was like, I don't know about this one. But then, now we're like five episodes in and I'm like, alright, this is weird and I can't stop watching.
Jordan Gal:Cool. I like it. In the perfect couple, the one with Nicole Kidman, just just leave Shriver just smoking joints. Just Yeah. One after
Brian Casel:Totally. All the time. Like literally every scene. Yep. Yep.
Brian Casel:Love it.
Jordan Gal:Yep. Alright. Let's You have any personal? Any you wanna recommend?
Brian Casel:Don't know. What do we got? You know? No. I mean Yeah.
Brian Casel:That's For me it's like work and TV. That's all. That's my whole life right there.
Jordan Gal:I like that. Well, used to have some some Knicks games.
Brian Casel:I mean, right now, it's it's on like Mets watch. You know, just the the Mets wild card race is crazy and and it and a huge wrinkle this week with like the the hurricane coming through Atlanta. The Mets and Atlanta are playing each other are like neck and neck for the wild card spot and two of their games just got rained out and postponed to Monday and there's this whole thing happening in baseball and stuff. Okay. But anyway Yeah.
Brian Casel:So Matt Mullenwed, just kidding. Alright. I mean, should we just get into that or are we gonna talk about our businesses?
Jordan Gal:No. Let let's talk about that for a You you have a lot of experience in the world plus world
Brian Casel:I plus do years ago and I've been disconnected and very out of the loop and I try to touch base like you know, and now I'm watching on Twitter just like everyone else. But yeah, like I I've been out of the loop and I haven't really used WordPress in years but I used to be a very happy customer of WP Engine. If I was a WordPress user today, I probably still would be using WP Engine. But they they actually powered all of Restaurant Engine back in the day. Like, they were my hosting provider for Restaurant Engine.
Jordan Gal:Okay.
Brian Casel:This was like over ten years ago.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. They've done very well. Everyone in the Bootstrap community and MicroConf that we come out of is familiar with Jason Cohen.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:I don't even know what what good adjectives to throw on top of his name. He's always been so lovely and smart and like accomplished. I don't know anything bad. I've never heard anything bad out out of of him.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And like WP Engine as a as a whole, as a as a company and product line has been pretty pretty great overall from my experience. I haven't really touched it in years but yeah. And so So what happened this week? What happened?
Brian Casel:What's your take on the whole? It just seems like such a shit show and like man, like it I mean you can't help but but feel like whatever Matt and Automatic are trying to do here, they're in the wrong and the licensing stuff is murky at best. They're they're trying to set some new rules. Like I I don't even know where to think or or like where to go with this or how to even think about it. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:What what are your I think I Okay. The way I look at it is you gotta go from the beginning. Like like like what created the situation to begin with is a very difficult balance between the opensource.org and the commercial enterprise
Brian Casel:It's been dot super weird since the beginning.
Jordan Gal:It's it was always going to be weird because that that nature of that is like contradictory. Right? You have wordpress.org, this open source project that everyone can use and you have wordpress.org literally the website that's like the hub of that activity where plugins are hosted and there's a lot of things that actually happened there. Right? It's not just like this Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Fully open source thing.
Brian Casel:And and using the the trademark word using the name, the word, WordPress has been always such a weird, pretty annoying thing for most businesses operating in the WordPress space. Like the And and I'm actually unclear and I think this is a thing that that Matt has been super unclear about with this current debacle, which is like, is the term WP still okay or not? Because the thing that every comp every WordPress company, every plugin and theme shop and products in the WordPress space, the go to move has been, okay, you can't use the word WordPress in your name, but you can use WP WP. In your name. Can use it
Jordan Gal:in your WP. Engine.
Brian Casel:Hence, WP engine. And like, if you if you ever tried to run ads for a product that's promoting a WordPress product, you can't use the word WordPress in your ads. Have to use WP. Itself
Jordan Gal:makes no sense to me. Makes no it's like it's like don't think about another open source. What's called Linus?
Brian Casel:Linux.
Jordan Gal:Linux. Excuse
Brian Casel:me. Yeah. Or Rails or anything.
Jordan Gal:Right. Imagine if that nonprofit open source foundation was trying to control. It's literally it's antithetical to the whole point of the entire thing
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Was that WordPress, hugely important to the Internet, was this area, this like landmass on the Internet that that ensured a level of freedom that didn't exist in the fiefdoms, in the Facebooks, in the Yes. Spotifys, in the Shopifys, in the Instagrams, which they own and everyone understands very clearly, you're building on my sovereign territory. I get to dictate the rules. Everyone knows that going in. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:In WordPress, it was supposed to be different. Wordpress.com can kinda do whatever it wants, but can't interfere with what's going on on the open source side. And and for me, that's where it falls apart. And the second Matt broke that trust, now it can never be seen as the same again. Because what people assumed, the thing that was so important is that there's a difference between someone promising that they won't do bad and the fact that the person can't do bad.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. And WordPress, you assumed you can't do bad to me because it is open source and I can do whatever the hell I want and you can't tell me otherwise. I might find benefit in playing ball with you, but you cannot compel me to play ball.
Brian Casel:Exactly. And that has reached
Jordan Gal:crossed that border and made it untrue. You you actually can be controlled. You do happen to be in Matt Mullenweg's fiefdom even though you've been told for twenty years that you're not.
Brian Casel:100%. And he's literally using the the WordPress naming like like our trademark issue as a way to go attack other companies who've built businesses on the WordPress open source, you know, software.
Jordan Gal:Yes. And gone so far as to cut off the open source resources of private companies accessing those resources in the name of some trademark nonsense. Like, it is just about money. You're losing to WP Engine. You can't handle it with your ego even though you're sitting on a fucking billion dollars.
Jordan Gal:And I I hope there's a lawsuit and I hope they lose. And I hope it's clarified because if it isn't clarified or if wordpress.com wins, it is the death knell of freedom in the WordPress ecosystem and it means a replacement is on the way.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I mean, again, like just the I don't know how you how you could just use the name WordPress. Like, what what Matt has been super unclear about, I I watched parts of this, I think he did like a Twitter spaces last night.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. That I watched five minutes of that and was like, this is a catastrophe.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Right? I I was just like like, I can't believe he's even doing this. It it it looks so bad. But he was also really unclear about these key questions.
Brian Casel:Like, okay. Like question number one, like, are you receiving licensing fees from any other hosting companies? And he was like super unclear about that. It sounded like the answer was no and he's just asking WP Engine. And and I mean the other thing is like, what is like the threshold for like what Like how big do you need to get before automatic is gonna come after you to get these licenses?
Brian Casel:Like it's just ridiculous, you know, like
Jordan Gal:You're right. There's no logical consistency because the it is being excused after the fact. You're finding an excuse for your behavior and justifying it And you can tell that that's the case because the first instinct, the first complaint is they haven't contributed back to the foundation at all. They're not giving back. They're making so much money
Brian Casel:And there's no clear like there's no clear rule like, okay. If if you're doing business in WordPress, you have to do x y and z, x number of hours, x number of this or that. I I it sounds like you have to just pay x dollars to automatic.
Jordan Gal:I yes. I disagree that it isn't clear on what you're supposed to do. It is clear. You don't have to do anything.
Brian Casel:Right. Exactly. It's like that's That's
Jordan Gal:the point.
Brian Casel:That's the whole point of open source.
Jordan Gal:You know? That's right. You can make a billion dollars a year in revenue and never contribute anything and and take every new template that's that's published and every Gutenberg thing and every bit of value from the open source project and never give back a dollar and never feel bad about it at all and no one can do a damn thing. That is the point of that whole ecosystem. And
Brian Casel:people can like hem and haw about like the little like like the technicalities in the GPL license and this and that. But like the bottom line is, look, this is open source software and the whole play like the business model. Like we should just talk about like what if you decide to build a software company around the open source model, my basic understanding having not really built anything with this model before and I'm not very interested in building in this model.
Jordan Gal:Right. But you could have with restaurant engine, you found value in using managed hosting instead of your own. That's the only difference. That's it.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Okay. So but like the idea is like if you're the the It's just like freemium essentially. Like you're building software that is free for to everyone to use and it And because it's free and it's open source and it's continuously getting better with the community, that is your top of funnel traffic source to have some sort of like paid premium private offering. Right?
Brian Casel:You look at like anything like Tailwind CSS. Tailwind's Tailwind CSS, the project is open source, anyone can use it. And then they sell Tailwind UI, you know? Yep. And and their whole top of funnel is the open source project.
Brian Casel:Right? Yeah. And and that's been the case for premium. And that's been the case for so many WordPress companies including Automatic. And they've they've had their their paid products for the WordPress space.
Brian Casel:But now it seems like the reality is like that's slowing down. Companies like WP Engine are are killing them. So now it's like they're changing their business model to not not using open source as a funnel source of traffic, but as a licensing fee revenue model.
Jordan Gal:That's that's right. And there's you know, I if we go one layer, if we go a little bit toward me actually knowing what I'm talking about in terms of like direct experience, it's around WooCommerce. Right. And WooCommerce, my understanding is is very large. The user base is very large.
Jordan Gal:The payment processing is very large. Their problem is they can't monetize it. And mostly what that means is they can't monetize their payment flow the same way Shopify can. Mhmm. And that has always been of interest to them.
Jordan Gal:And WP Engine has stated that they are considering stripping out the Stripe integration with WooCommerce in such a way that automatic does not get that payment flow activity and payment flow revenue. I am pretty sure that what I just said is directionally accurate even if it's not accurate in detail. Mhmm. But this is this is part of the equation around wordpress.com, woocom WooCommerce and automatic and monetization.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And I don't know the details with all with all that, but I do know that like you you can technically do that. You're allowed to. It's open source soft that's the whole point of open source software. You could take it apart and reconfigure it however you want.
Jordan Gal:Yes. And I I spoke to I spoke to I don't mind talking about it now because Rally's kind of in the past. But I spoke to WooCommerce about Rally and I told them, you you should consider partnering with us or acquiring because right now you give people absolutely no reason to use your payment processing. If I use Stripe with you or I use Stripe without you, it it's a commodity to me. Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:You need to make it compelling and the way you do that is to use the Rally Pay network, turn it into the WooCommerce network, and then if you use Automatic's version of payment processing, it comes with a network of eventually millions and millions of users that can check up very easily. Yeah. They they haven't done anything like that. They haven't done it on their own. Right?
Jordan Gal:They don't need to acquire us. They could do whatever the hell they they they want on their own, but they give people no reason. It's the same thing with the managed hosting. If you don't give a compelling reason, then you're in a competitive environment. And if WP Engine eats your lunch, just suck it up.
Jordan Gal:Don't try to use your underlying power through your association with the open source project. You are poisoning the well Yeah. To such a degree. I mean, what's gonna happen now?
Brian Casel:100%.
Jordan Gal:I hope WP Engine forks it and does two things. I hope they fork it. I hope they do whatever the hell they want with it. And then I hope they release an actual open source version that they continue to maintain that they don't interfere with. I I want them to replace automatic.
Jordan Gal:Has shown itself to be an irresponsible
Brian Casel:That's probably not super easy to do. Not just from like it's a lot to build, but like there there I think there actually are some like licensing things in the g p l. I I don't know about details with all that crap. Either do. Know, one of one of the things that really bothers me and this this has bothered me for years.
Brian Casel:Ever since I've ever been working in WordPress, there and and you're seeing it it come out in the way that Matt talks. Like the the thing that he says on stage, the justification for all this is that like all these other companies, they are contributing enough, whereas WP Engine is not. Like, this this guilt trip They tried to
Jordan Gal:None of your damn business, you I
Brian Casel:I hate this concept of like, guilting people into, if you're successful, then you owe it, then you owe x dollars or hours or Right. Code contributions to You you don't. You know? Yeah. Because there there's this underlying argument there that like, WordPress is only successful.
Brian Casel:It's only as It's only powering half the internet because of the fact that it's open source and so many people have freely contributed to it. That's a factor. But you There there's always been this stance toward businesses that power WordPress. That like they have no part in the growth of WordPress. And in my view, like it's They're sort of like everything.
Brian Casel:Like that's really what what powered WordPress into the leading position. Because if you go back ten years, I I like When I was really
Jordan Gal:Economic incentive to make it better. To grow it, to expand it.
Brian Casel:But but also Yeah. In the market for as
Jordan Gal:a product.
Brian Casel:Bring it
Jordan Gal:to other people.
Brian Casel:When when I was sort of in WordPress, which is mostly around 2009, 02/2011, selling WordPress themes and then getting into restaurant engine and things like that. That's when it was really gaining a lot of steam and becoming the leader in the CMS platforms. Right? Yep. And the real From my view, the driving force behind that was not that like WordPress itself was such a nice piece of software that the open source community is creating.
Brian Casel:No. It's What was actually driving that were companies like WooThemes and StudioPress and you know, the other And like Gravity Forms was an early player.
Jordan Gal:Right.
Brian Casel:And like, you know, these these companies that are selling really quality products and offering quality customer support to customers who because customers yes. You're gonna get a lot of free users on these free open source tools. There was Joomla, there was Drupal Yeah. There were all these
Jordan Gal:premium help.
Brian Casel:But if you want small businesses or large businesses to actually use them, they need to pay money to real companies who are offering real support and real quality products.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Yeah. Was like first. Right?
Brian Casel:Pagely was one of the first hosting providers and then and then WP Engine. But like before all them, there was like StudioPress and WooThemes selling some of the only paid themes and plugins.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. And and they
Brian Casel:were businesses and clients want to buy a print. They don't want the free one. They want the paid one so that they know that they have a customer support, you know? Yeah. That's what actually made WordPress the leader in the beginning and actually But at the time, and this always bothered me, it was like you go to a WordCamp, if you're if you're a little bootstrapper trying to sell a plugin or sell a theme into WordPress and just trying to make a living for yourself.
Brian Casel:You're a small guy. You are not allowed to talk about your paid product at a word camp. Right. Because they're anti business, anti product. It's all about the community.
Brian Casel:It's like, that's what's driving it you know. You go to these word camps, it's all people doing business on WordPress you know.
Jordan Gal:Yes. Yes. And and that should be it it is a bit like you put your baby out into the world and you don't really control how it grows up. That is just a reality And it's part of the beauty. The part of beauty is is is releasing something and then human creativity, self interest, business motivation just takes it into places you don't know where it's gonna go.
Jordan Gal:This is the thing, the experience that I had that sealed the deal for me to not want to bring Rally into WooCommerce. When I was doing my research and talking to everybody in the ecosystem and trying to figure out like who should we partner with, how do we make this entry point, like should we like this was basically do we go towards Salesforce Commerce Cloud up or do we go toward where WooCommerce down for basically more distribution but lower, you know, average merchant? And I got into I got into this Slack group with like basically everybody in this ecosystem. Mhmm. And Matt was in there.
Jordan Gal:And what I saw from him in there, like, shocked me. What I saw was people running a plug in, a one person company from Pakistan being a creative individual on the Internet trying to make a living by selling a premium plugin. And they would come into the Slack group and say, I don't know what to do. My plugin keeps getting stolen. It keeps getting downloaded through the open source and then someone puts up a website and throws a different name on it and they're selling my plug in and I see my source code and they're like, what am I supposed to do here?
Jordan Gal:And Matt's point of view was this is open source and you have to just deal with it. Yeah. And if you're gonna if you're gonna have that stance and then not apply it to yourself, I have no respect for you. Yeah. And I and I went over to some of the people that people that brought me into that Slack group and I pinged them and I was like, is this normal?
Jordan Gal:Like, this is a billionaire telling some individual creative person trying to make a living in Pakistan that they just have to deal with it. Sorry. WordPress has no part in your stuff getting stolen and is not interested in protecting you because that's the nature of open source. And the person in Stack Over was like, this is kind of what what we deal with. And now it just feels like it has bubbled up at the highest level with, you know, with the most competitive company, WP Engine, And it has exposed the internal contradictions not only of the project itself, but of the person who controls it.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And and you know, you and me are sitting here on this podcast as two people doing business on the on the Internet, but we're not involved in WordPress really in any way. So we're here talking freely about this this shit show. Think about all all the WordPress companies right now who are operating products in the WordPress ecosystem. You literally don't see any of them tweeting or talking about this stuff.
Jordan Gal:Everyone's scared
Brian Casel:and one one guy at the head of Automatic in this WordPress you know foundation who can who can literally control Who who's showing the world right now that like, this is this is the level of control that they could exert on this ecosystem.
Jordan Gal:Right. You thought we we didn't have control. Two, you thought you could trust us even if we did have control. And those two those two are both wrong. They're both everything that you that you went in and used as a foundation for the decision to go into this ecosystem and devote your career to it or your company to it or whatever amount of time or effort to it has been shown to rest on foundation.
Brian Casel:And you think about like the the bigger picture of like like those of us in in this audience who are who are building businesses and like we think about like what does an exit look like in the next few years. Like all of a sudden, there's this new factor that a potential acquirer would look at for a business that's built in the WordPress ecosystem. It's like, well, there's there there's a question mark here. What's is this a new form of platform risk?
Jordan Gal:Right. I I don't see a line item in your financial statements that says contribution to w p dot org. Yeah. And if you're doing $20,000,000 a year right now and we're gonna acquire your company, we're gonna try to it to a $100,000,000. Do we need to add a line item, you know, aka bribery as part of our business model?
Jordan Gal:Otherwise, we're we're we're at at a threat? Because I I don't know how to value that.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Because I don't know how to buy it. This whole thing, especially because of the how how unclear Matt and Automatic have have been about like what the actual terms are. It it just adds a a huge layer of unpredictability in the WordPress space if you're doing business.
Brennan Dunn:And it's
Brian Casel:it's pretty ugly.
Jordan Gal:So It's it's ugly. It's Yeah. It is By the
Brian Casel:way, like WordPress also kinda sucks to use. So there's a lot of other tools out there that you could use for your website.
Jordan Gal:It wasn't Right. It was never about the quality of the underlying product. It was about the quality of the underlying community Yeah. And what they did with the product. Yep.
Jordan Gal:Yep. Oh, yes. We'll we'll be we'll be interesting to see how it shakes out. It feels like there's a lot to lose for everybody. So hopefully, that leads into some form of of settlement, but it is not not very easily repaired.
Brian Casel:Yep. Yep.
Jordan Gal:Hey, wanna talk about our own problems?
Brian Casel:Sure. We've got plenty. We do. We do. Yeah.
Brian Casel:Let's see. I mean, you know, we can talk about like Clarity Flow stuff. I've got other other projects brewing like like new business products. What's what's going on So your
Jordan Gal:this week, we I I I'm pretty sure I came to you. I basically went to every one of my
Brian Casel:Oh, yeah.
Jordan Gal:Peers. We are encountering new things that we don't know how to do. One of those is very good analytics and tracking. At Rally, it didn't matter that much. It was like, what's our traffic like and where are our leads coming from?
Jordan Gal:Rosie feels much more like an analytics and optimization challenge. Mhmm. And so we really wanna know where people are coming from. I'll I'll give you a a small example. We are spending a decent amount on ads.
Jordan Gal:Let's just call it a few $100 a day. And let's say that this week we are paying $100 per conversion. Now we talked a little bit about the Facebook ads, the the lead ads that we're doing that gives us the email address. And then on the final panel of that ad unit, there's a CTA. So right now, that 100 per conversion looks only at the people who actually convert directly from hitting the CTA in the final panel of the ad unit.
Jordan Gal:What we don't know because we don't have good analytics yet
Brian Casel:When when you just to be clear, when you say convert, you mean like after they click that they sign up for a like a like a free trial on the
Jordan Gal:Yes. The the ad unit stays inside of Facebook. You put your email and your business name in and then you hit done. And then Right. The success panel, the thing that says we've got your lead also has, hey, if you wanna start a free trial, click here.
Jordan Gal:So there's a CTA that goes to a
Brian Casel:landing page. But what I'm saying is like, this whole conversion flow happens in the same session for the user. It's all happening right now today. I guess I think that the thing that you're getting toward here is like tracking attribution for somebody who finds you today, hears about you, clicks on you today, but then signs up days or weeks in the future.
Jordan Gal:One element of it. The the element that I'm speaking of right now is that a lot of those for every 10 emails we get in the Facebook lead ad, two of them convert directly from the ad in the CTA. The other eight get added to our email list automatically send them an email saying thanks so much for your interest in Rosie. Here's what you need to know about it. Click here to sign up.
Jordan Gal:So right now, I'm seeing it as a $100 per conversion. In reality, it might be half that if not less
Brian Casel:time you can convert.
Jordan Gal:Yes. And now I'm making a decision on how much money to spend on ads based on bad information because I don't know what the actual cost to acquire. If it's at a $100, I'm kinda happy and I'm pushing forward and cool. If it's $25, I'm ramping up my ad spend two x, three x, four x. So that's like a very real example of like, we don't have good data and we are not making good decisions until we have better data.
Brian Casel:So I'm absolutely no expert on this but I spent a lot of hours going down the rabbit hole and trying to solve that problem in the early days of Clarity Flow. Especially the the year where I was changing from Zip Message to Clarity Flow. I was trying to make that huge decision being as data driven as possible. Understanding like which users and where are they coming from. Which ones are most valuable.
Brian Casel:Okay. They are the coaches and okay. Like that's informing my So I spent a lot of those months trying to rig up how we track new users on our marketing site into analytics tools, into we've we've used Mixpanel, we've used tried Google Analytics. We've used plausible. We use custom tracking on stuff.
Brian Casel:Mhmm. I guess the couple high level learnings and takeaways that I've I came from that is I wanna do a shout out to to Ruben Gammas. He he he helped me at the time. This was a couple years ago. Just basically be like, look the ease at the end of the day, the easiest way is to set a cookie on the user coming to your coming to So the first time a new user lands on any site, any any page on my site, they're getting a cookie on their browser.
Brian Casel:Okay. And and in that browser cookie, we are storing you know, which domain sent them, the referring domain, if there's a source attribute, if there's a medium, there's a campaign. We're also storing like which landing page you landed on first. So we just store that information in a cookie and then and then we get the data out of that cookie later whenever they convert.
Jordan Gal:Okay.
Brian Casel:And then we pass that along to to our tools.
Jordan Gal:I use the word cookie in this context all the time. I don't know what a cookie is. When you say that, are you doing anything out of the ordinary? I thought we always set cookies. We use Google Tag Manager.
Jordan Gal:We kind of set cookies. We do retargeting.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Dude, have been setting cookies for
Jordan Gal:decades. Right. Right. So so you're saying that
Brian Casel:ordinary? All the browsers allow you to set cookie. And now, okay. You you can wade into the stupid g p l Sure. GDPR crap and you can put the stupid cookie banner on your website which I haven't done.
Jordan Gal:Said a cookie on their browser that way if they come back three days later, you can identify that cookie is the same as before.
Brian Casel:Yes. Of course, there's a loophole like if they use this browser today, but then they sign up later on their mobile phone or some other computer, then then we can't track them. But like 90% of the time they're using the same browser. So essentially, yes. You know because like the the other thing that I learned at least the the times when I've when I've run ads and stuff is like, the ads platforms, Facebooks and Googles, they they will try to give you some conversion tracking.
Brian Casel:They'll even tell you that they that they track their cookies over a seven day period or whatever it is. I don't trust that. I I've always found, especially on Facebook, that they just overestimate like the number of conversions that they are taking credit for. You know, no surprise. But the That's That has never like actually mapped to like, okay, we can identify these number of conversions.
Brian Casel:The the only way to finally do is to just have your own tracking. And then what I literally do is like we So so the cookie is like literally like a little piece of data that gets stored in the in in the back end of of your web browser as as a consumer.
Jordan Gal:Visitor. Yep.
Brian Casel:As a visitor. And then in that little in that little piece of data, it just says referring domain, Google. First, a landing page, pricing page or home page or whatever it is.
Jordan Gal:If there was a source like
Brian Casel:so so all of our email marketing, we have like source newsletter, you know, and all of and or if we're sponsoring a specific website over there, we'll do like source that website, you know. So that later, it that that little word is passed along. So then later when they sign up, we create a profile in Stripe for that user. And we set metadata in Stripe on the user who just signed up. And and in that metadata, which which is like a key and a value, you can set whatever you want, we we said, hey, does this user have a cookie?
Brian Casel:If they do, what's in it? Let's get that data, store it in the so we can literally look at any customer in our Stripe account and say like, we know that that customer originally found us through Google or through this other website. Yeah. And then we use ChartMogul for our SaaS metrics. And ChartMogul just syncs with Stripe.
Brian Casel:So all that data from Stripe syncs to ChartMogul. So so then in ChartMogul, we can look at MRR graphs and conversion graphs and churn graphs and filter those graphs like, show me the MRR of just customers who found us via Google.
Jordan Gal:Okay. I I have not gotten I feel like if I look all the way to the left, it's the cookie and the browser and the source. And then I look in front of me, I see the sign up process. I see onboarding. I see activation.
Jordan Gal:And if I look all the way to the right, I see Stripe and payments and analytics around cohorts. So I'm I'm starting on the left side, and I'm sweeping through because we're redoing our sign up process right now and our onboarding and we're making that decision between putting the app on the sub domain or the root domain. How do we make sure the cookies go across the entire thing? So we're trying to get this visibility. What you just brought up on Chartmogul is like next.
Jordan Gal:But
Brian Casel:sub domain and the and the domain. We literally did it both ways. We ZipMessage used to be one root domain and now Clarity Flow has sub domains. And it's actually a different sub domain for every account.
Jordan Gal:Okay. Is there any pro and con? We we were for
Brian Casel:other reasons in terms of like managing your websites and all that. Yeah. But in terms of this tracking, if if you take the approach that I've taken which is we set a cookie on your browser Mhmm. It doesn't matter. Okay.
Brian Casel:So so like people land on our marketing site which is clarityflow.com, root domain, we set the cookie. Later, when they buy, they're doing that on app.clarityflow.com.
Jordan Gal:Right. But you can and you can push that data across your Yeah.
Brian Casel:Tool whatever you're using. Because that user has a cookie in their browser. Okay. That's what we check.
Jordan Gal:Okay. And we we just signed up and are starting to use Amplitude Yep. And are very impressed so far. So talk to me in a month. But right now, we are very happy with Amplitude.
Jordan Gal:It's just much easier to set up the Google Analytics, much higher level of confidence. And next up, we'll see how things work across the sub domain and just make sure that we we have that right.
Brian Casel:So I haven't really used Amplitude much. I know it's a pretty good tool. I I've used Mixpanel which is the like the equivalent or or you know, alternative to it. I I think there's a lot of confusion in in these metrics tools overall for for a lot of people. Like I don't see Mixpanel and Amplitude as alternatives to Google Analytics.
Brian Casel:I see Google Analytics and like I use Plausible now. There's also Fathom Analytics. Yep. These are for tracking traffic. Like how much traffic is my website getting?
Brian Casel:Okay. But amp but I see Amplitude and Mixpanel as like these are for tracking funnels and usage and conversions. Okay. Cool. You know
Jordan Gal:You got me a little worried there because my my goal is less about traffic and much more about where do good customers come from? Are we doing a good job in our activation flow? Like so I'm I'm much more worried about that.
Brian Casel:Right. That's what those are for. Amplitude is for like how many people signed up and then activated and then used this feature and then completed this activation goal. Like
Jordan Gal:Yes. Yeah. Yes. It's it's really Because like yeah.
Brian Casel:Like I I wouldn't I wouldn't ditch a traffic tracking tool like Google Analytics or plausible in favor of a mixed panel or they're they're two separate use cases. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. That that makes sense. The the bigger worry, the goal for us was this this visibility across from the time the visitor hits a page because we are what we're sensing is that it's an optimization problem on our hands. It is an activation. It's not so much a top of funnel demand.
Jordan Gal:We feel like we have proven that people want what we've built. And as we all know, that is part of the equation. It is not the entire equation. But people are not having an easy time onboarding and activating and launching because we haven't gotten there yet.
Brian Casel:Also, the other thing, like in my experience, I I look back on that period where I went down the rabbit hole of all these metrics tracking tools and getting my dashboards all perfectly set up and the tracking all perfect. And I I think it was important to have some level of that, but I look back like thinking how I I regret how much time and and hours I actually put into that project. Because knowing what I know now, the things that really impacted my business were talking to the to customers at like so so many conversations that just make it abundantly clear like this is what they care about. They don't care about that, and look, the vast majority of customers, they're coming for us, it's coming from either Google or word-of-mouth. And there's just, you know, nothing more complicated than that.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I I think our challenge will be different because we are we are we are gonna try to go fast to meet the goals of our type of company. And so if we're gonna spend $20.30, $40,000 a month on these different marketing campaigns, like we really need to understand what is going on so that we can refine instead of just aim blindly.
Brian Casel:I think the other thing though like when I was trying to figure it out, that that was back in the Zip Message days when we were doing lots of We were we were trying to be a solution for all these different customers and customer groups. That was one of the things I was trying to figure out like, is it the coaches? Is it the customer support teams? Is it the sales teams? Like who is our customer?
Brian Casel:So I was unsure like what is an activation for us? Is it is it when they send a message? Is it when they create an intake form? Is it when they do this or that? Like I didn't know.
Brian Casel:So that's why we're really trying to track like where are they going in the app? Where are they navigating to? And now like none of that really matters so much. It's just like we know exactly what a customer looks like and what they're trying to do and where we need them to go. So like, yeah.
Brian Casel:At the end of the day, was really just more about and we haven't figured everything out yet. Obviously, but like the It just comes down to like the product and talking talking to customers and what they need, you know.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I I wish there was less time and effort required to just track you know certain things but.
Brian Casel:I hate I hate all these metrics things too because it's like it's it is still so hard to set it up and implement it. It's no nothing is plug and play. You you need custom development to get it working.
Jordan Gal:Yep. That that's right. And I and I don't think like the you know, we use Framer to host our site. I we can't look to them for that. You you really kinda have to draw on your own.
Jordan Gal:It's it's pretty frustrating. And everyone's got a different way to do it. Yep. Yep. Well, that that's like the big theme for for us.
Jordan Gal:What what do you got going on? How's your ongoing experiment?
Brian Casel:Yeah. I mean, with Clarity Flow, it's going pretty well. We we shipped the appointments feature like about two weeks ago and that's been settling in pretty nicely and and customers are really using it and liking it. It's led to I think more convert like more sign ups this month. So we're September is still it's going well.
Brian Casel:So now my developer is sort of in that like cool down period, like where I'm just giving her some small bugs to to work on while and she's waiting for the next big feature to start building. And I think that that next feature is gonna be forms. This is this is another one of those big features that people have been requesting for years and I've just been putting it off and putting it off. It's not as important as the other stuff. Well now that now that we've built all the other important stuff, this is this is that next feature that everyone keeps asking about.
Brian Casel:So we're building a forms builder into Clarity Flow. So my role, like my routine now with Clarity Flow is roughly give or take like once a month. I need a week like this one where I'm spending two or three or four full days scoping out a big feature. Multiple issues in linear, like lots of detail.
Jordan Gal:The next Product deck.
Brian Casel:Like how is it gonna be architected? How's it gonna be designed? Like I I do a lot of hours for like a one week period on that and then I queue it up for my developer and she runs with it for like six weeks. And then Okay. And then like Big
Jordan Gal:thing on the list of like, this is what we now identified is the next big thing that users want.
Brian Casel:Yeah. It's I don't know if you would call this like the Basecamp shape up thing but it sort of takes that shape where it's like, there's a there's an upfront week of like, what what are we actually building? What's the scope gonna look like? I'm the product manager and the and the product designer on this, so I set it all up. I I tee it up and then I hand it off to her and she runs with it for six weeks.
Brian Casel:Mostly quiet, but like every week I'm seeing updates that I check-in on the morning, I answer some questions that come up, I sort of approve things, but I'm not spending a lot of hours generally during during the build phase. Right? It's just sort of like, yep, I'm seeing boxes being checked. This is making progress. I'm seeing Okay.
Brian Casel:And then near the end, like six weeks from now, I sort of come back in and I do a bit Another deep dive week effort where I fully test every little thing and I put the design polish on it and I get it ready to ship and then we do the deployment. But like, that's like the routine now with Clarity Flow. It's like every four to six weeks, I I dive in hardcore and then I and then I'm like stepping back and I'm working on other stuff for six
Jordan Gal:from the outside perspective, I what I hope to see is you just keep that up over an extended period of time and it will just grow into
Brian Casel:And that's what it's been, you know? Yep. And then only recently we sort of figured out some things on the traffic and funnel and pricing sides that's been helping.
Jordan Gal:We talked a bit before we started and I we can end on this. You said there's been a a real change in the way support anyone in your team interacts with people now that are prospects. This has been You going to that?
Brian Casel:This is one of the things I'm most excited about with the Clarity Flow trajectory at this point. We're not out of the woods yet in terms of like MRR goals or profitability goals and all that. But we're looking up. Things are growing. The pricing experiment meaning like we've we've killed our trial.
Brian Casel:That's going well. Our MRR is growing. But the thing that I'm most excited about is cost It's attracting different customers and they are better, more engaged users. Kat, our customer success person, like in her words she said, like, hey, I'm just letting you know that like the customers that are coming through now every week in into support and booking calls with her and doing async messaging with her. She's like, it's a palpable noticeable change.
Brian Casel:They are so much more engaged. She said before, when we had trials, when we would get you know, hundreds of trials and and literally her job, she felt was like chasing them down. Like hey, hey, I'm here to help. Listen to me. Watch my video message to you.
Brian Casel:I'm I'm I'm trying to help you get get activated. And like 80% of those people will just not reply to her messages. And then they would try to use it and maybe convert or maybe drift away, you know. Now, it's like every single customer because they pay upfront like every single customer is ready and willing and happy to talk to Kat and then they have like really great ongoing conversations and she's literally coaching them on how to get the most out of Clarity Flow and even like coaching them on how to structure their coaching business, you know. Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:That's wild. It's it's it's not that it's a small change in terms of the the pricing. Right? But but the impact around the psychology, the relationship.
Brian Casel:And that was my hope for it. That was part of the part of the hypothesis was like Less noise. Let's just attract much more serious customers. And I think the next thing that I'm gonna be looking for because you know, we still deal with a a a level of churn that's not ideal. Right?
Brian Casel:But I I think I think I'm starting to see that like most of the churn is still people who converted to customers like a few months ago. Meaning like it's not the newest customers who came in this month and last month who are churning. It's it's the ones who went through trials
Jordan Gal:so you don't know yet what this cohort of
Brian Casel:I don't know what this current Yeah. Cohort is gonna look like, but my hunch is that it it's also gonna reduce churn. Because Mhmm. Because they are so engaged and so invested upfront, like multiple calls and messages with Kat. You know?
Brian Casel:And the other thing that I'm loving to see here, it's like I know that it sounds like I'm I might be like overbuilding in Clarity Flow in terms of like features and like we we just built a calendar booking system. We just built like Okay. We're we're about to build a whole forms builder built into Clarity Flow.
Jordan Gal:Okay.
Brian Casel:We have video messaging. We have
Jordan Gal:you know, we have Yeah. It's a lot.
Brian Casel:We have so much. Right? But the whole point is that this type of product for this niche customer and the whole bet of moving into being Clarity Flow and being for coaches is like we're trying to be the tool that they run their business on. And we're commerce too. They sell their products through us.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. That's right. Payments too. So A lot of people want all in one. They don't wanna patch together.
Brian Casel:I was looking at a screenshot or a video of one of our customers the other day and I looked at her browser and you know how you can have like bookmarks at the on the top Sure. Bar of your browser? First bookmark, first big folder, Clarity Flow, all caps. Like, it's the first bookmark in her browser. Like, when I come into work and I look at my browser, I'm going to Clarity Flow.
Jordan Gal:Right. I have adopted this as the central element. Yeah. Central tool in my business.
Brian Casel:And I also don't Yes, we're building a lot of features, but it's I don't think that it's like everything. Like it's not like we're being like their accounting system or their I don't know what else. Like like we are really focused on client communication. Like they use Clarity Flow to communicate and run their client engagements. Yes, that's async messaging conversations.
Brian Casel:It's also how they sell engagements with their clients. That's a client transaction. It's how they book appointments to communicate with clients on their calendar, that's a client communication interaction. And now we're doing forms because they always ask us like how can I send my client a questionnaire or a quiz or a survey or an assessment, You know? Like that's a form of communication between them and their clients.
Brian Casel:So like, yeah we're building a lot of features but all these features are aimed at the mission if you will of like Mhmm. It's for communicating with your clients and for all of your communications needs. If you're a coach, you're doing appointments, you're doing forms, you're doing video messages, you're doing you know.
Jordan Gal:Are there are there big items on the list that you still feel like you need to tackle over the next six months that that help create that you know, you're building an island. It's like is
Brian Casel:like the biggest one remaining. I talked about the other the other week and this is still on my mind for the semi near future is maybe like a white label version of Clarity Flow. That's a different strategic move I think.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Different audience and so
Brian Casel:That's more about like fixing a problem with a small segment of the users who who really want a white label version and optimizing the revenue for those customers.
Jordan Gal:You know? Yeah. It feels like a monetization
Brian Casel:Yeah. Feature. But the forms thing and the appointments thing and everything else, that's more about making the core product as perfect as it can be for our 90% of users. Know?
Jordan Gal:Mhmm. Cool.
Brian Casel:So that's that's why I we're out on mean it's you know, it's it's still just a slow ramp SaaS and I'm still doing consulting work which is ongoing and putting me back in a pretty comfortable position overall. But there's still this like hovering layer of stress and frustration around like, I still am trying to build another asset and I don't have the time or bandwidth to do that. So that's that's the that's the thing.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Don't know how people go about that. Do they do they hire themselves? You know, like, no. I'm booked for two weeks at the October.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I I am sort of doing Like like right now, have upcoming client engagements already booked that like like like I told them like, we're starting that one October 20. Another one like it's gonna start in November. So like I have a a calendar that's booked out which is good. But I'm I'm actually now trying to decide like do I start to just intentionally ramp down my consulting or do I keep the consulting going and just really delegate most of it to a developer?
Brian Casel:I would still need to be involved and still do a lot of the work, but I could reduce at least a day or two of my work if I have a developer build out these projects versus me doing it. But the other weird thing that like conflicts with that is that like with every project that I'm doing. So I'm building MVP Rails applications for clients. I've built like a bunch of them this this year. Every time I build a project, I'm getting faster and faster at building MVP projects.
Brian Casel:So like, I'm I'm literally have a library of components and an app template that keeps getting better and better. Like, I've I've built a a couple recently where implemented Stripe payments for these SaaS MVP products. Mhmm. And now I'm doing that on the next one. And it's gonna take me like a fraction of the time because I've already built it.
Brian Casel:I'm reusing it. It's a component. And I have that for basically everything in a SaaS MVP. So it's like, yes, I could take more consulting projects. It's taking more of my time, but each of these consulting projects is actually taking less time to deliver.
Brian Casel:So it's like weighing all these different things.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I I just wanna identify that that internal value that you generate for yourself by implementing Stripe for one app and then going over to the next and having it be really easy. I I wonder if that's a lot of the value that you can offer in the type of community that you have been talking about.
Brian Casel:That's exactly what I'm trying to build. Yeah. Yeah. It's like I I want to I want to sell a app components library
Jordan Gal:product. You're almost selling that I have it.
Brian Casel:Like it's mostly built. I just need to productize it. Yeah. Very But I don't have the time or bandwidth to do it. So so that's the that's the question of like, do I you know, do I ramp it down the consulting?
Brian Casel:I I could financially swing that for a few months, but how much do I want it to dry up and you know.
Jordan Gal:Might have to buy a Rivian at any moment.
Brian Casel:I mean, you know, the the the urge to buy a Rivian could happen anytime.
Jordan Gal:Speaking of, I'm going I'm driving into the city.
Brian Casel:There you go, dude.
Jordan Gal:Time to time to roll. Great episode. Little little ragey in the middle there,
Brian Casel:but it was That was fun.
Jordan Gal:Oh, hell yeah. Thanks for listening, everyone.
Brian Casel:Alright. Have a great weekend. Later.
