"Thank you for solving my problem."
Welcome back everybody. Another episode of Bootstrap web. Brian, how was your Halloween?
Brian Casel:It was it was good. We we we divided and conquered last night. My my older went to her friend's house, like the street over there. My my wife took her over there and I I went with my younger daughter and her friend around our neighborhood here. It was fun.
Jordan Gal:Okay. Yep. Well, we we had a breakthrough last night. Last night was the first Halloween that my wife and I just walked around by ourselves with friends, drink in hand, stopped by a few people's houses.
Brian Casel:Oh, that sounds super fun.
Jordan Gal:It was it was wild. No kids? So our home was home base for all three. But so they would come we we made like a walking taco situation, like a buffet. So kids would kinda come in somehow like this town has like a starting time
Brian Casel:for
Jordan Gal:trick or treating.
Brian Casel:Oh, really?
Jordan Gal:I don't remember that growing up at all. Here it's like, no. It's 03:00. That's when trick or treating starts.
Brian Casel:Oh, that's early. Yeah. We were out there at like six.
Jordan Gal:Okay. So we we started early and everyone was like, oh, it's too early. And it was actually quite nice because everyone was done by 07:00.
Brian Casel:Still light outside.
Jordan Gal:Yes. Yes. So we had all the kids here. We had about 25 kids eating and then they all went out on their own and my wife and I were just free for like two three hours. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Walked on a few friends houses, had a drink.
Brennan Dunn:It was nice.
Brian Casel:Oh, that sounds super fun. Yeah, man.
Jordan Gal:Halloween weird weird holiday. Stresses me out.
Brian Casel:Weird holiday. Lot of lot of Reese's and KitKats floating around my house. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:The candy's awful. Yeah. Regular boring CPG candy is awful. I I I I pay attention to
Brian Casel:some You you cooked your own? What what do got going on over there?
Jordan Gal:I mean, I got Trader Joe's peanut butter cups, bro. That's that's the
Brian Casel:Those are good. We do get those. Those are
Jordan Gal:In the fridge.
Brian Casel:Those are kind of insane. Those legit.
Jordan Gal:But not like having like a Reese's Pieces peanut butter cup at some at this point is is a horror show. There's someone I follow.
Brian Casel:I mean, I still do it too long. You do it?
Brennan Dunn:I can't I can't even
Brian Casel:do it.
Jordan Gal:I just put it
Brian Casel:on my mouth.
Jordan Gal:I'm like, what? Why? Yeah. I see some direct to consumer people on Twitter, like one of them in particular starting like a candy company and I think it makes a lot of sense because I think the old candy that formula hasn't changed other than for the worse in decades is is not good.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Crazy. Mhmm. Yeah. I just put the order in on a new on a new Mac for my office.
Brian Casel:Kinda psyched about that. I gotta wait
Jordan Gal:Which are
Brian Casel:four weeks. I got I went with the Mac mini. Yeah. So I I I've always done or the last several years I've done two Macs. I have a travel.
Brian Casel:I have an m one air. That's my and I love that thing. It's I I just love how light the air is. It's perfect for The best. For traveling and I just carry it around my house and
Brennan Dunn:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:Work with it in the backyard. But then here in the office, this is like quote unquote my power computer and you know. So But I've been waiting years. Like this one that I'm still using right now is a 2019 Intel iMac. Oh, before before it went.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Excellent. And so so I'm finally getting up to the to the Apple silicon on the on the main machine. I mean, the Mac minis the Mac minis used to be like the lightweight Macs and technically they still are because the Mac like the Mac Studios are insane. But the
Jordan Gal:It's flipped.
Brian Casel:I mean, the Mac minis are super powerful now. So I got like the m four pro, all that. And I and I ordered the I I received the the Mac Studio display. I was like to look that up. So
Jordan Gal:So you you bought both of those?
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:So you you broke now? Yes. What is that? $5? $6?
Brian Casel:I think all in it was probably 4.
Jordan Gal:$4?
Brian Casel:Yep. And I'm trading in my iMac which they're giving me a nice $385 for and
Jordan Gal:Okay. Nice. Yeah. I I had a bit
Brennan Dunn:of a like macabre. I think that's the
Jordan Gal:right term in this situation. Experience where I collected all of the all of the laptops of all of the people that I have fired
Brian Casel:Oh. Over the
Brennan Dunn:last year. And now I think everyone left in the company can get whatever Mac
Jordan Gal:they want because of all the trade in
Brian Casel:Yeah. You could just Oh, so you're you're so yeah. What do you do with those machines?
Jordan Gal:Do you just like Not me in the life. We have like a Apple business account and Uh-huh. And representative. So we just email them with a spreadsheet of all the serial numbers and they're like, here's our offer.
Brian Casel:No. But I mean okay. So you you just go ahead and like trade them back in. You you don't like keep them for to give to other employees or whatever?
Jordan Gal:In theory, we could give them to other people. I have never once given a new employee an old computer. Maybe once.
Brian Casel:Right. It always it's not old.
Brennan Dunn:I'm like no. No. They're not not not so old.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I would love an excuse to get a new Mac, but this iMac I have that's four years old is perfectly good. So I I have yet to find
Brian Casel:I mean, yeah. And like this this one that I've it's five years in, still on on the Intel chip and like it still works great. I just But I I was like, you know what? Whenever they come out with this next generation m fours, that's gonna be the time I finally upgrade. And and they did this week so I did.
Brennan Dunn:Yeah. There you go. I saw a lot
Jordan Gal:of lot of talk about it on on the Twitters. Mhmm. What else? I just voted. Got that out of the way.
Brian Casel:Okay. There you go. So that means we I don't want I guess that means I can't spend this podcast trying to trying to trying to win your your vote the other way.
Jordan Gal:I don't think anyone's being no one in the country is being persuaded at this point. Right? I did
Brian Casel:Oh, man. I don't I don't know if we're gonna get into politics now. But I I did press play on that on on Trump on Rogan last night. I I watched like the first like ten minutes of it.
Jordan Gal:I mean It's it's him.
Brian Casel:It's him alright.
Jordan Gal:You know, weird. Overall, was your impression negative of it? Is I
Brian Casel:didn't watch all three hours. I literally watched like about ten to fifteen minutes. Yeah. That's what
Jordan Gal:I did too. It's like a fifteen, twenty minutes. It's like, okay. It's kind of interesting because of how casual it is.
Brian Casel:I thought it was actually interest okay. So I had an interesting observation of my ask the podcaster, Brian.
Jordan Gal:You you Okay. I have
Brian Casel:another point to to make about podcasting and politics Okay. Before we get to that. So so with with, you know, with Trump, I think this is again probably the case for for most people where it's like you just can't stand the other side, so you actually avoid watching footage Yeah. Of the other side.
Jordan Gal:Yeah.
Brian Casel:Right? Not
Jordan Gal:not great, but yes.
Brian Casel:I sort of don't watch a lot. Any anyone's speeches or or most most interviews, but I was like and I usually just can't stand watching Trump.
Brennan Dunn:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:Like, I gotta watch some of this Rogan interview. Right?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Just to see it. As
Brian Casel:Right? Just to and so so alright. I I turned it on like and I was and I'm always interested about like the very beginning. Like, how do they start off? Like, they they just get into the room like like, I would say the first three three to five minutes, I was like, man, that does not come off as Trump as we know it.
Brian Casel:He he seems normal. He seems down to earth. He seems pretty like alert and on top of it. This was three to five minutes.
Jordan Gal:Is that when he got into like the Lincoln bedroom?
Brian Casel:So then the Lincoln alright. So so then I I So, you know, it's just like niceties and and and like just like get settling in. Right? And I was like, this guy actually seems pretty normal. Not like the the caricature that we all know.
Jordan Gal:You're right. Which was the goal of the Rogan interview,
Brian Casel:I assume. Then Rogan's first, I would say like real question was something around like, okay, like it's so crazy that you Donald Trump became president in 2016.
Jordan Gal:Uh-huh.
Brian Casel:What was it like on day one or or what was it like when you when you found out that you are now the president of The United States? Yeah. And that's when Trump goes on like a literally like a ten minute
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Rogan had to like stop him at some point. He's like, okay like
Brian Casel:a ten minute like what what He he started with like the the inauguration and the and and how many people were cheering for him which many people were probably protesting. And then but then like walking into the White House and how luxurious it is. Oh, beautiful. And So beautiful. It's so beautiful and and like and I made my living in luxury and and this is luxury and and and then like and then and and then I gotta see the Lincoln bedroom.
Brian Casel:And then he goes into detail on every little thing that he's
Brennan Dunn:seeing in
Brian Casel:the Lincoln bedroom. Yes. And then it goes on on the on the whole backstory with like Robert E. Lee and and and like, dude, the question was about how do you feel about being the new leader of the free world?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. The question was a green light to talk, my friend. That's what the question was.
Brian Casel:Yeah. But like, but but that so that's when for me as a viewer, it started to go off the rails. Yeah. And I'm like, okay, this is like, think about like because the question was like, dude, you just became the leader of the free world.
Jordan Gal:Right.
Brennan Dunn:What
Brian Casel:kind of impact does that have on you as a person? What are you thinking about the impact that you are personally are about to have on the whole world? And he's talking about how cool the the finishings on the White House are and and, you know Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Our our politicians are not. They're not normal people.
Brian Casel:No. I mean, but like it's it but that's that's one to me. It's like, man, how do you not grasp the gravity of what just happened here? You know? Yeah.
Jordan Gal:I I hear you. But I I think overall, the the podcasting format, I I think Okay. My hope is that this year, it's crossed over until you gotta do podcasts. You gotta let people get
Brian Casel:to You absolutely do have to I I heard a great conversation. I'm a huge fan of the podcast Dithering, which is actually a paid podcast with John Gruber and Ben Thompson. It's all all tech. Okay. You know, tech they they do fifteen minutes every twice a week, the current tech news.
Brian Casel:Big big tech news. Right? So they did an episode, I think couple days ago on this is like the podcast election. Right? Cup like remember 2008, it was like the the Twitter election Mhmm.
Brian Casel:And then I don't know whatever the other ones were, but like so they Ben Thompson made this fantastic point. Really makes makes you think. So you think you think back through the history of presidential elections and there was radio and then television became the medium.
Jordan Gal:Right. The way you looked mattered. That's right.
Brian Casel:The way you looked, the way you presented on television and and so so you know, you you go back to like the Nixon Kennedy debate and and all that.
Jordan Gal:Swedding. Okay.
Brian Casel:So then, you you're in the television era and a Ronald Reagan comes up. And people who are telegenic are the ones who make it to the top and become president and become candidates because they they play so well. So that Ronald Reagan Yeah. I mean Obama
Jordan Gal:The Trump. Trump. Right.
Brian Casel:Like Clinton, you know, all of these people have presence that translates super well on television. Right? Now, you fast forward. This year is the first podcast election and and you could even make the of course, we're still very tied to television, but you can make the argument that more and more people are tuning out of television and tuning into not just social media but podcasts.
Jordan Gal:And I mean Right.
Brian Casel:Trump goes on Rogan and he's reaching 30,000,000 people.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Within within a few days.
Brian Casel:And but but you go on a CNN town hall or or Fox or NBC like even Fox which is I think the highest rated Mhmm. You're what are you reaching? A 100,000?
Jordan Gal:Like Yeah. Like a million at at most Okay. At one of
Brian Casel:the big shows. Like a national debate or something but like
Jordan Gal:Yeah. National debate gets gets a lot but
Brian Casel:But even even that is like not that much compared to like major sporting events and other stuff. Right? Yeah. And and so like but like a podcast, you are literally reaching millions upon millions of of listeners. It and the point that that Thompson was making was that like, what does this mean in the decades to come?
Brian Casel:Right? Because we're talking about long form interview. It's a very different medium. The people like the candidates themselves literally are different when they're talking on the mic for an hour, two hours, three hours long than they are in these like quick hit spots,
Nathan Barry:you know.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. The spots are awful.
Brian Casel:So then you start like So then it's like, well who is We don't know but like, how is this gonna impact the type of candidates that Yeah. That this system attracts, you know?
Jordan Gal:Mhmm. Now the the whole thing with podcasting, I was gonna say audio more than video but the biggest podcasts have a video component. Even if maybe they
Brian Casel:get Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Listened to audibly more.
Brian Casel:There I think that's interesting too. Like like I I catch with YouTube clips.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. But then you're working and you're listening to without watching it because no one, I assume, almost no one is watching Rogan and Trump talk back and forth for multiple hours. I mean, guess maybe some people do. Yeah. But even if it's on YouTube, it's being played on YouTube.
Jordan Gal:It's being listened to. The the interesting thing about that is it favors authenticity. Yes. Which is the opposite of our politicians.
Brian Casel:That's exactly right. That that's what's interesting with this whole trend, you know.
Jordan Gal:I I will I will not challenge you. I will suggest. Watch JD Vance on Rogan.
Brian Casel:Oh, he was just on it. Right? Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Yes. That feels like a peer, our age. It's that one of the first times you get this authenticity of like, oh, that guy is like us. Like our age not far from
Brian Casel:our age. Right?
Jordan Gal:Right. The the the sporadic cursing here and there. Right? You and I, we don't curse a lot, but we throw it in here and there because it kinda makes sense sometimes.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:If that if that type of politician from both sides, from all sides does better than the person who gives a slick speech and then Yeah. You know, does not expand on anything, hopefully that's better.
Brian Casel:I have always favored just in general trends of my Who I lean toward going back. It's always been younger, know, more forward thinking people. I do tend to prefer like governors over or or executives, you know, over like senators. You
Jordan Gal:know? Yeah. There's just a there's just a reflexive, you know, just being repulsed by career politicians. You just you just know you're being lied to. You're part of the game.
Jordan Gal:You're participating in a charade. You're like, I guess I have to hope for the best because I don't trust a single thing this person says
Brian Casel:at all. I mean, in but then at the end of the day for for me, of course, it's there are there are things that that go above those those preferences like Mhmm. Yeah, Trump is the executive and she is the Right. The career politician, but like Yeah. I'm definitely voting for her over Trump.
Brian Casel:Right. Right. That's where I sit, you know.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. It's just ideology too. But even even that's Yeah. Kind of getting mixed up. You know, these things I I saw a graphic once.
Jordan Gal:Phenomenal. You can definitely find it just on Google. It shows the history of the right and left and and how the political parties in The US have swapped over time. So it looked they it's like a I think it's a tree branch or like a snake, but it moves around in the different eras throughout the country's history.
Brian Casel:Yeah. They used to be very much the opposite of like like Yes.
Jordan Gal:What it is now is not static. It's not it was not like this always. Yeah.
Brian Casel:Yeah. My one hope and I really This is this is the the thing where I always feel I'm always very optimistic and hopeful about America in general. I'm But about the political parties is where I feel kinda hopeless. Because thing that I the thing that I want most is to break out of the just the two party options.
Jordan Gal:Oh, don't I'm not sure about that. I I just don't
Brian Casel:see a path to a to a third party getting getting to a level of viability. And I and I would love it and I just don't see a path.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Same.
Brian Casel:You know.
Jordan Gal:Anyway. Well, I'm yeah. Well, next week, we'll we'll be having an interesting conversation barring some legal issues and court proceedings.
Brian Casel:Oh, we're we're definitely gonna be like what is it? The the year 2000 all over again. That'll be fun.
Jordan Gal:And and whenever I think about this stuff, my conclusion is always, you know what matters most? Make a bunch of money for my family. That's
Brian Casel:There you go.
Jordan Gal:That's it, baby.
Brian Casel:Can't argue with that.
Jordan Gal:Speaking of, what do we got going on?
Brian Casel:You on Jordan, are you on Blue Sky yet?
Jordan Gal:Come again?
Brian Casel:Are you on Blue Sky?
Jordan Gal:What's Blue Sky?
Brian Casel:Blue Sky is the the alternative to Twitter right now.
Jordan Gal:Oh. Is it a crypto thing from back in the day, like a year or two ago?
Brian Casel:Well, it's yeah. It's from a couple of years. So Is this Jack? Yeah. Jack.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Okay. I mean, what's great about it to me is like, it He literally recreated Twitter. It's exactly. It is Twitter.
Brian Casel:Oh, wow. It is a clone
Jordan Gal:of Twitter that
Brian Casel:It's a quite literally a clone of Twitter and I don't know, something happened in the last two weeks or so. It's having a moment in our Really? Startup tech circles.
Jordan Gal:People just get sick of all the politics on regular Twitter and are trying to
Brian Casel:Yeah. What I see on Blue Sky in my feed is no politics really at all. It's it's dude, it's it's people in our circles, listeners of this podcast, probably a lot of them are are now on Blue Sky. I started actively using it as much as if not more than Twitter just about a week or two ago and there's there's something I feel like it's having a like I I signed up for Blue Sky over a year ago and then I abandoned it a year ago.
Jordan Gal:I remember seeing it but right. Not doing anything.
Brian Casel:Threads also like I I've been trying to make it work, it just hasn't clicked for me. So we I remain on Twitter x. But I feel like Blue Sky is having a moment right now. Something something clicked in the last two weeks. I think I I I first saw Justin Jackson start to start to pull people over there.
Brian Casel:But there's there is something happening over there. I definitely recommend people check it out because it's like they I think one of the things they did from a product perspective that was so smart is they have this thing. What do they call it? Like lists? What what is it?
Brian Casel:Hold on. Let me just find it. Oh, starter packs. So there are these starter packs and I've been added to a couple of them of like, you know, like bootstrap start start up founders and I just one called like podcasters and then and then there's so there's these starter packs that you can just send a link out to people and like here's a whole long list of people that you could just start following right now. And and so and so so these starter packs have brought in like not bringing over individual users but bringing over circles of users, groups of users.
Brian Casel:Right? So we have you know, there's a couple of these starter packs that are floating around. Start up founders, Laravel people, Ruby people, podcasters like So you get in a couple of these then you start to gain followers and all of your friends are following the same people and so it's like there was a really smart hack for them to pull I think that somebody at at at Blue Sky recognized that the way to get people to to come over Like, they have to come over. They they're not just gonna start fresh on a new network here. They have to bring their friends over.
Brian Casel:And that's why threads hasn't really connected for me because like only, you know, only a a few people that I actually connect with on Twitter are also over there. Super interesting.
Jordan Gal:I'm gonna get myself on to blue sky.
Brian Casel:Yeah, man. Alright. Let's talk about real business.
Jordan Gal:Business? Business y'all. Alright. Alright.
Brian Casel:You you want me Yeah. To Go ahead.
Jordan Gal:Alright. Cool. So something great happened this week. You know, we we are with the new product, you got users, you got paying users. You're not a 100% sure if you're actually doing well or not.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm. You know, like, they put the credit card in, seven day trial went through. We see some usage. MRR is climbing, but you don't really know if you're doing a good job. The truth is I assume we're not doing a good job yet because the product is early.
Jordan Gal:So this week, we had a few testimonials come in and comments on intercom that that's, you know, that show us like the first inklings of, oh, okay. This is solving the problem. You know, we had one of these like, just wanted to let you guys know we've been using it for two weeks. It's incredible.
Brian Casel:Oh, hell
Jordan Gal:yeah. Almost nobody can tell that it's an AI. Thank you so much. You guys are onto something. Like, one of those type of messages.
Jordan Gal:Oh, wow. And I was like, oh my god. That is like, you know, that's Yes.
Brian Casel:And you know, when when when those kind of messages come in, it's so it's so nice because like, you you know you do know that there are people, like really happy customers, but very few of them actually write a message like that.
Jordan Gal:Yes.
Brian Casel:90 the act 5% of the messages are, I've got a problem. Something's not working. Help me. Or yeah. Help.
Brian Casel:Yes. How do
Jordan Gal:I cancel my trial? You know, like these like
Brian Casel:Yeah. Or or there's a bug here or this is not or how do I do this? Or it's a feature request or something because it's not quite solving their problem yet. Right? Yes.
Jordan Gal:Happy people are kinda quiet.
Brian Casel:They are they are quiet. They're they're quiet because they're happy. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. So so in the absence of, like, happy comments, you just fill it with your own doubt along with all the negative things that come in and support and help and I did this or about that. This didn't work. Can I upload this? So that that just felt that felt great.
Brian Casel:Especially unprompted when that stuff comes in like Yeah. Unprompted. Yep.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. It's it's great. I gotta take a screenshot and send it to my investors, know.
Brian Casel:Oh, yeah. Send it to the team.
Jordan Gal:Yes. Send it to the team. Right. Make sure everyone sees it. And we are we've got nice momentum.
Jordan Gal:Sign ups are increasing steadily. Cost of registrations from our ads are decreasing. Overall, I'm looking at things with a blended CAC. So basically, how much are we spending on all marketing activities between all of our stuff, between the writer, the SEO, the ads, the ad format, like all the stuff. And then I just take that divided by the number of sign ups in the month.
Brian Casel:Yep.
Jordan Gal:So say, okay. This is about how much we're spending per sign up. Mhmm. And that's just that's just creeping down which, you know, it started off too high. So it it could not stay where it was and the hope was it it's going down so now it is starting to go down.
Jordan Gal:Yep. Tuesday next week, we launched the new onboarding. It is sharp. It is the best Mhmm. Onboarding that I've created in a product.
Jordan Gal:Because we, you know, we said this gotta be self serve. People have to be able to do this on their own.
Brian Casel:I wanna ask you about the onboarding, but before that, just wanna call attention to the thing that you said, like so the testimonial, they said that, like, their customers can't tell the difference that this is AI? Yeah. That's crazy.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. It's crazy. Because people don't expect AI. People expect two things, a human or voice mail. And and you know voice mail the second it starts talking.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Thanks for calling H and W Pest control.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Of course.
Jordan Gal:We're not available. Leave a mess. Like everyone knows exactly instinctually as soon as the voice starts, you know it's voice mail.
Brian Casel:It's also interesting to me that the business wants their customers to not know that it's AI.
Jordan Gal:It depends on the business. Yeah. And and we are building in the feature to basically we we like to make requests. We'd like to make relatively complex requests into dead simple like options. So like we don't want you to have to train Rosie to talk about whether or not she's an AI or not when asked.
Jordan Gal:We just want you to check this box or not. Do you want Rosie to admit to being an AI, you know, or do you want Oh, okay.
Brian Casel:That's like a setting.
Jordan Gal:It it that's the thing. All these things that are kind of like murky, we just wanna turn it to settings. Yep. So if for example, there's like a legal disclaimer. Thanks for calling you know H and H Pest Control.
Jordan Gal:This call may be recorded for training purposes. Like that's a legal setting and you can just check that off.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:So can have that or not have that. And that's what our lawyers basically said. You should probably have that, but if you give them the choice and mark that in your database, you're you're you're clear.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:So all these different things we just kinda wanna make very very simple choices.
Brian Casel:I like it.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. So all this stuff is kinda happening all at the same time. We'll launch the onboarding and then in November, we expand channels. So that that's like what's coming up in in November to go beyond meta, TikTok, influencers, YouTube, and just start to expand outward.
Brian Casel:Very cool. I like it, man. Trying to think if I have any questions. I think you you
Jordan Gal:were gonna say something onboarding.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Like, what what's like the big change that you're that that's gonna be launching?
Jordan Gal:So the guided part of it. So before you you got to the admin and you got to like, you know, the page that said, what what do you wanna call your agent if not Rosie? What's your business name? Do you want it to be, you know, casual, formal, or professional? Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:Right? The the first thing you saw. And then you had to look on the left hand panel and click on settings and start to explore.
Brian Casel:Alright.
Jordan Gal:And what we did in this is we just made it very, guided. Yep. So it's this, then this, then this, and then step two, and then step three, and then ta da, you're done, and then everything else.
Brian Casel:Now you have like an up and running. Yep.
Jordan Gal:Yes. And what we try to do is we try to insert the things that we believed were absolutely necessary in order to launch a successful agent. Mhmm. And anything other than absolutely necessary
Brian Casel:Yes.
Jordan Gal:We put at the end and said recommended. Like, exploring.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I'd I'd love to hear you say that. That's dead on. I Literally this morning before this call, was working on an app for a client that I'm working with. Working on the onboarding for this app.
Brian Casel:Okay. And that's exactly the strategy in general that I try to do with with these sort of guided onboarding things. Mhmm. You are you are pulling the thing that they need to build, the thing that they need to create in the app, like the core thing that gets them to become an active user. And then just that thing might have ten, twenty different settings and and customization that you can make to
Brennan Dunn:it.
Brian Casel:Mhmm. But really only like two or three are critical. Like what's the name of the thing? And and maybe this or that thing. And then like, if if you just wanna launch it as is, you could.
Brian Casel:So go so so there. But it maybe a smaller link like other customizations, you can you can dive into the menus and the settings and do that. But step one, like what's the name of the thing? Step two, what's this one setting? Step three, click go or activate.
Jordan Gal:Yes. Or publish. Wherever that line is, one side of it is mandatory, required in order to get the value. The other side of it is optional. What happened to us was that we looked over at the side with the optional pieces and there were too many.
Jordan Gal:And instead of saying, well, let's move some of those over to the mandatory, we just remove the features.
Brennan Dunn:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:So this is a bit of an experiment to see, do we have it right that the core of what people want is actually much smaller than where the product was. Yep. And people don't actually care about appointments yet. We just remove appointments. It's a really valuable feature.
Jordan Gal:It wasn't a 100% reliable. So instead of fixing it or jamming it, we just removed it. Our plan is to add it back in when we know it is awesome. And part of my strategy there is to define the base tier and build up a customer base on the base tier. Keep working on the the higher value features, and then introduce them into an existing customer base at a higher price.
Nathan Barry:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:So right. So let's just say for example, let's just use round numbers. We get to $25,000 a month with the base tier. $50, let's just call it right, 500 customers. Let's just round numbers.
Jordan Gal:At that point in time, let's say three months from today, we're there. That's like a nice goal. If we then can introduce appointments when we know it works really well, we've listened to feedback, we know exactly what the feature should do and how it should work, and then we introduce that as a $99 a month tier, my goal is to then be able to pull, call it 10 to 20% of the existing customer base, and then effectively double our revenue. Right? So we can get a 100 people out of the 500 to go to the $100 tier.
Jordan Gal:All of a sudden, we add significant revenue when we add a feature instead of having it in right now when it's actually not necessary for the base tier and it actually doesn't work that well. So actually creates friction to conversion, to growth, to churn issues, all that.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. So that's kind of what I think over the next few months.
Brian Casel:I like that. Kinda like like build it like a think of the the MRR growth as like a layer cake. Like it literally is. Right? Like Yes.
Brian Casel:A base a base tier is gonna have this growth and then and then we're gonna introduce this thing which adds a whole new color to the graph and that's gonna have this higher level of of ARPU and
Jordan Gal:Yes. And then if we take those four or five key features that we removed and if we keep introducing them one at a time to the higher tier, it'll just convert more and more people over the next, right, six or so months as we release those.
Brian Casel:I did that to a certain extent with Clarity Flow. We had we we've always had our core thing, like the conversational messages in the in the base. And then when we introduced Clarity Flow Commerce which you know, our our big Stripe integration to sell coaching stuff, that was a big driver and we only made that available in our middle tier and up. Okay. And so that was a big driver.
Jordan Gal:Identify themselves
Brian Casel:I mean, you can it in the graphs. Like, not only is it converting more new customers, but the expansion revenue. It's it's just like upgrades revenues. Like, that started to tick up when once we launched that. And a few other features too like like custom domains were were like that as well and
Jordan Gal:Just keep making more attractive. Right? Keep making more attractive. Our our problem
Brian Casel:But like we're we're circling back now like we're about to launch forms and we and we recently launched appointment booking. And so with these like we still want versions of those features on the base tier but with limits.
Jordan Gal:Right. You don't wanna leave them behind entirely. You still wanna make that base tier very attractive.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yep.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I I think that's the next year for us is to understand which feature goes where. Is this something everyone needs? Is this something higher tiers? My my concern and my focus around that expansion revenue is because right now we are reliant on paid advertising.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm. And as long as we are relying on paid advertising, any dollar that we can create from upgrades instead of totally net new customers that we had to go out and buy is gonna end up making a huge, huge difference.
Brian Casel:For sure.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. So I I mean, I'm considering, like, lowering the price in the bay. I think that base tier needs to be big, big. Yep. Right?
Jordan Gal:Relatively speaking to the other other tiers so we can pull from it.
Brian Casel:Yeah, man.
Jordan Gal:We'll see. Alright. What do got going on?
Brian Casel:I just typed into my my notes for this thing. I I typed the storm.
Jordan Gal:Okay. Not to be dramatic.
Brian Casel:I feel like I'm in a storm. Like, it's the the rain has begun, and the storm and and we're not even at the at at the at the most intense part of the storm yet, but it's it's it's not just cloudy skies, like now we're in it and it's getting more intense. Alright. Let me There And it's it's all like I I guess pretty good problems to deal with but it doesn't make it any less stressful. I just feel a massive crunch of forces coming at me that I all of them seem like high priority and I just don't have even close to the amount of time in my day that I need.
Brian Casel:So things get pushed off. And and I'm dealing with that by hiring. I have two new developers starting with me on Monday. But that's not even gonna solve the whole problem and even bringing on two brand new developers means that's even more work. Alright.
Brian Casel:So like the the the the list the list of forces right now are number one, the consulting pipeline has started to explode this quarter. Like multiple projects are now booked and happening. Okay. I've got multiple other ones that are in the proposal stage and I would say most of them are pretty likely to like accept the proposals. I told one of those proposals yesterday like, hey, I I told you the start date could be November 15.
Brian Casel:Like now that start date is is December. So now like the projected availability pushes out a little bit but there's a limit on that because I don't want I I don't I don't want it to get to a point where like a new lead is interested in starting a project now and I have to tell them like my start time is three months out. Like that's just Mhmm. That's that's enough for someone to say like I'll just find another option because that's too far out. You know?
Brian Casel:So I I don't like to push out my waiting list farther than like a month, six weeks. So I have a couple that are coming through and then and these are all like really good projects too. Like really really great people as clients, really interesting good product concepts that I'm excited to build that I think really have legs. So they're all really good in that sense. But I have so I I I need a team to start to execute more of these simultaneously.
Brian Casel:That's why two developers are coming on to work with me in on the consulting projects. So there so there's that big force and and the time of that looks like a lot of time invested in proposals and revising proposals and coming to terms. And then the time of actually making sure that each one of these product like my active projects are getting serviced every week and we're and we're still on track in terms of our timeline. And with these new developers coming on, I spent a lot of this past week like just preparing for for their Monday next week.
Jordan Gal:Like Mhmm.
Brian Casel:Like my developer on Clarity Flow, like we we've got a flow, we've got a workflow, we we know how we communicate, we we know exactly how we do things.
Jordan Gal:Sure. It takes time.
Brian Casel:But I need to communicate like, look, this is how we communicate, this is how my development workflow goes. We use these, we use linear, we use we use linear for this, we use Slack for that. We, you know, I need to make all this stuff clear. And and and then they need and then I need to actually assign them projects to work on. So I spent a lot of time like specking out issues to to be their first tasks for them to do.
Brian Casel:You know? And that always takes more time. And and the frustration that a lot of people have with hiring is like, oh, like, in this time, I could have just done it myself, and that's absolutely true. But I need to get this to a point where we are able to execute multiple projects without me doing all the work myself. Right?
Brian Casel:So so there's that. But then, like, at the same time, there's clarity flow happening, so that's going fairly well. Okay. Like we just the forms feature is like my developer has finished her job of building it. You know, I I talked a few weeks back about how the cycles usually go like, I go deep for a week and I prepare a new feature, I design it, and I start I I build the first 10, then I hand it off to her and she spends about six weeks building out the rest.
Brian Casel:And then at the end of the six six weeks, it comes back to me to do deep dive q and a and testing and polishing and finishing up everything. And I probably send some stuff back to her to fix and then we do a deployment and testing and all this stuff. It's now at the end of her six week cycle on that. She has finished all of her tasks, checked off all of her lists, and now it's back to MyPlate waiting for me to even just open it and look at it. And I I should have looked at it like Monday of this week.
Brian Casel:I have not had time. It's gonna push to next week. And so that's like a whole finished That's a major new feature. Forms. Like custom forms in Clarity Flow.
Brian Casel:It's done.
Jordan Gal:But be pushed out.
Brian Casel:And it's just sitting there on a branch waiting for me to look at it. And and so that means we're still at least two or three weeks away from getting that shipped. And then oh, and then like the last thing is is Clarity flows like marketing. So like, you know, we have our our organic channels. We're we're getting customers and sign ups and stuff, but like our demo needs an update.
Brian Casel:Like the video demo for Clarity Flow, which takes a brand new visitor to our website who's trying to get as much information about it as possible before they make the purchase decision because we don't offer a free trial anymore. The the video demo is like critical and we still have a old one from like at least a year ago. I need to recreate that and rerecord it and re edit it and and include all the new features in it and all that. And I have no idea when that's gonna happen. It's not gonna be soon.
Brian Casel:But it but it needs to happen in order to help drive conversions for Clarify flow. And that's important. You know? So all of these things are time sensitive. All these things are important.
Brian Casel:I there's only one of me. I don't Okay. I don't know what to do about that.
Jordan Gal:Okay. What's what's your what's your way out? What what you know, what path do you see to getting out of the storm?
Brian Casel:Hiring so the thing and I also talked about hiring the the video editor which I I mean really good talks with someone. We haven't finalized yet, but that's probably gonna move forward. I I hope it does. But yeah, the hiring thing with the developers is there's there's gonna be it's gonna be more time intensive for a couple weeks but my hope is that we're just gonna settle into a groove. And my hope is that both of these developers really are great.
Brian Casel:And all the developers that I've worked with from this team in India have been have been really good. Some of them have been outstandingly great and they just pick things up and they and they can they can they can be super productive pretty quickly within a couple of weeks. Others were slower to get to that point. Like, it it took them a couple of months to get to a really good productive level. I don't I just don't know what's gonna what what the experience is gonna be with these two brand new developers.
Brian Casel:That remains to be seen. But I know that once I get through Once I can transition from my current state of things where I am a 100100% of responsible for every active client project Yeah. Yeah. That's to to like I have at least two and maybe a growing team of like trusted developers that I can assign to projects. Then it's like, okay.
Brian Casel:Now we're we we were like right now we're still sort of like running and then I'm trying to like lift off the ground and get to like a a flying state with like a, you know, like and and because I felt that with audience ops in the first six months of that, going back to 2015, it was like, okay. A lot of hustle right now. A lot of figuring out our processes, getting the right team on board, a lot of learning experiences there. But then eventually, we got to this state where we're just at like a cruising altitude. Like, okay.
Brian Casel:Now we've got projects coming in. We've got team executing. We've got sales happening. And I could see that at the at the end of a road. It's not too far in the distance, but we're still on that like lift off stage right now with this.
Jordan Gal:As an outsider, outsider, it feels unlikely to be solved without one higher level higher.
Brian Casel:That'll be the next that's the next thing that I'm that I'm that's on my mind and I don't even know what that's gonna look like.
Jordan Gal:Right. Is a PM? Is that a that
Brian Casel:Like I don't know. Of some type. That's what I've been thinking. So like, you know, I can't help but think like two or three steps ahead. The the first step ahead is just go from me to a couple of junior developers working under my direction.
Brian Casel:Right? Yeah. But yeah. Definitely the next step after that is somebody more senior and I don't I don't know if that's just somebody who's good with talking to clients and can be more of just an account manager and like a project manager.
Brennan Dunn:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:Or do I need work at the top. Or do I need like a full stack developer who can own a whole project? Someone more like my my skill set. Yeah. I
Jordan Gal:mean, the good thing is you seem to have enough demand that there is some room to raise prices in order to absorb the expense Yeah. Of an additional person or two. And and
Brian Casel:that's that's gonna happen. And just to be And this is another thing like like with the sales on this, I It's promoted as 1month.app. That's that's the website. Right? I do offer a proposal for a one month project.
Brian Casel:But that's the starting point. Like almost every project that I end up doing ends up being more than a month. Or or even signs on at the very beginning for it to be two or three months. And like part of my job and part of the service is like, let me hear out your idea. Here's my take on what a four week version of that idea looks like.
Brian Casel:We're gonna cut a lot of scope and focus just on these things first. That's your four week. Here's your six week. Here's your eight week and so and sometimes it's like a twelve week, you know. And and so like that's that's been my method of logistically extending the time frame but also it it adds the cost, you know.
Brian Casel:Mhmm. But the Yeah. At at some point in 2025, early twenty five like the next wave of leads is gonna have a higher rate than what I have right now for sure, you
Jordan Gal:know. Cool. Alright. Well, we're we're gonna see you through the storm. Doesn't
Brian Casel:Sorry. Sound I I didn't even I didn't even talk about the other thing that that I'm that I'm because like part of part of servicing all this is building my components library for Instrumentl.
Jordan Gal:Okay. Longer term. It's longer term
Brian Casel:but I'm I'm I'm building it right now because I'm using it in my current projects.
Jordan Gal:Do you find that it's taking longer to Yeah. Do?
Brian Casel:I'm literally slow I'm I'm slowing down to speed up essentially. Yeah. Right. I could I could keep building the projects like I've been building the projects all year, which would be fine. But look, it's a it's a goal to have this components library a, as its own product.
Brian Casel:I do want to I it's it's definitely a high priority for me to have a more digital self serve product and not just build an agency here. But it's also something to power the agency, to to make it easier to delegate to developers, to spin up Rails applications with a components library. Like, that's a high priority. So so like the projects that I'm actively working on right now, like, I'm building them, I'm building the components for these products. Like, so I was talking about the onboarding thing.
Brian Casel:One of the generators, one of the components in this thing is is an onboarding flow. Like a simple starter onboarding flow for your Rails app. I I built that yesterday and it's it's a it's a component and it's a thing in my client's project. Modals, buttons, know, tailwind configurations, you know, like all this stuff that like I happen to be building the features for and I happen to have components, I'm productizing those and working on like, and so I've I've been building the rails generators for these things and making it like a product that a developer could use. Anyway, so that's that's also taking a lot of my time.
Brian Casel:I don't I don't know how like it's it's crazy to hear me even talk about it out loud.
Jordan Gal:Oh, Hold on. I forgot this other thing. That's 25% of my my brain.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Right. Like the to to try to help listeners understand what this actually look like in practice, it's like obviously not all those things are happening in any single day. Usually, one of those things happens in a day and everything else waits. And then tomorrow, I work on one of those things again.
Brian Casel:And then everything else is on hold and
Jordan Gal:separate separate out by days? Like Monday, Tuesday, I'm gonna focus on this like morning or
Brian Casel:Yeah. By days I I usually like to know like there's one most important thing. This has to be done today. Like I know what my thing is today. And usually, I can usually, a couple other things fit into the day or make their way in.
Jordan Gal:But Intrude.
Brian Casel:Or at least like emails about those things or messages or, you know, give give someone an update on this. But I don't finish my day until that one thing is checked off, know. Because like the last thing I want is like what I was supposed to do today gets thrown over the fence to tomorrow. Like that's that's the thing I try to avoid.
Jordan Gal:That's how everyone else works so congratulations on on that discipline.
Brian Casel:Yeah. It's just like but but a lot of stuff is just sitting there waiting. Nothing's happening, you know. Oh. That's that's what happens.
Brian Casel:Yes. Yes. What else you got?
Brennan Dunn:I don't know, man. I think that's it.
Jordan Gal:I look I got something I got a board meeting coming up in two weeks. Starting to think about that. I I don't know if it maybe I talked about this last week, but maybe it was this week where I had a funny moment where we're trying to minimize meetings, and we relooked at all of our regular meetings because we have six people on the team now. So let it's worth looking at everything and making sure, you know, we're not just doing things because we used to do them that way. And so the go to market side started joining, the Tuesday engineering meeting and because it was there were already four people on there, product plus engineering.
Jordan Gal:And so Sam and I started joining on Tuesdays. And so Tuesday came around, we like Zoom opens up and there's six people and it like hit me like, oh, it's just us. This is the whole team right here. Yeah. You know?
Jordan Gal:And I like said something. Was, hello.
Brian Casel:How does that feel? You like it? You like the smaller team Yes. Versus versus like, if you think back to when you had like, I don't know, like, Cart Hook, like a a huge team.
Jordan Gal:Not not huge huge,
Brian Casel:but like you had a lot more people than you have now.
Jordan Gal:Yes. It's definitely, you know, 2025 is still there's distance between people, there's distance between myself and there's there's more distance.
Brian Casel:Yeah. What do you like better?
Jordan Gal:I really this is more fun. I like the the 20 plus because it gives me this superpower feeling of, oh my god, look how much is happening without me. Right? Like that is that aspect and seeing people form relationships on their own and seeing inside jokes that I'm not a part of and like that that is the fun of the twenty twenty five people. Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:But the six people is literally just more fun like, okay, it's just us. Like, it's just casual. So before that meeting started, was like, I just wanna say, this is awesome. Yep. Thank you for being here.
Jordan Gal:You know? If this was not the right thing, you would not be here. Maybe there was some pain in getting there, but some good, and I just kinda saw everyone's, like, face just like a little smile. Like, yes, this is fun. This is like Yeah.
Brian Casel:Yeah. For sure.
Jordan Gal:Combination of the smaller tiny team and the little beginnings of momentum and, like, excitement and, like, this slow we might be on to something. Let's see what happens here. It keeps growing. The numbers keep going up. Like, that combination.
Jordan Gal:I was like, oh, man. I I haven't felt that in a long time and that's that's as good as it gets. Just optimism. Nice.
Brian Casel:You know, yeah. Like I like when I was working on audience ops, had around 25 people on that team and now I'm down to like three or four of us on Clarity Flow plus two more coming in on the consulting stuff and maybe a video editor soon. But like the I I do like the smaller team better I think. But it was it was also great for me with with the larger one. But but we are super different in how we interact with our teams, I think.
Brian Casel:You're much more in touch personally. I think and and you're doing you're doing a lot more face to face. Even if it's remotely but still like, I'm just so leaned into async that like sometimes I forget that I have all these people like being productive for my businesses that like, you know, like it's not like I'm completely out of touch with them because I I do communicate with them Mhmm. On a daily basis. But it's either text messages or the occasional video message.
Brian Casel:We're not really hopping on on meetings. Mhmm. But it yeah. In audience there was there was the level of management where I there were most of those 25 people like I did not interact with at all on a daily basis. It was their managers who did.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I I feel like I have a bit more paranoia now around if everyone's happy.
Brian Casel:Yep. I I have that sometimes too with my best team members. Right.
Jordan Gal:Like, I
Brian Casel:really don't wanna lose them, you know.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Do you wanna lose them, and then I'm not sure like what will if it's too async, then I haven't seen them, and they haven't seen me, and we haven't formed that bond, and we can't go out to lunch together. And so I there's some paranoia there. I don't know if it's like a people pleaser thing or a middle child thing, but I live in a little a little of paranoia around. Are they happy?
Jordan Gal:Is this good for them? Mhmm. Like, I need to do anything else? Can I do anything else? My conclusion is usually the best thing I can do for them is success.
Jordan Gal:Not like giant outcome by a house success. I mean, just momentum and energy and excitement and sign ups and revenue growth and that is what keeps people engaged and happy and interested and motivated much more than me giving a good speech or me seeing them more often. So that's kind of how I usually end up like, alright, don't go tell them to, you know, buy lunch on the company kind of thing. Get more sign ups. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Yeah. People wanna be part of that much more than anything else.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah, man. For sure. I guess one more thing that that this was actually the thing I was gonna talk about.
Jordan Gal:Was I got a hard stop in in in just a minute.
Brian Casel:Okay. Yeah. This is like a quick one. I just wanna call attention to I'm I'm such a fan of 37 signals and and especially Jason Fried's thinking and writing on concepts and I thought he had a really good one this past week. I think it was called like he put it like sort of like a blog post.
Brian Casel:V one is for us. And it it's talking about dogfooding your own Mhmm. Or scratching your own itch with with brand new products getting off the ground. And they talked about their experiences with like different like like how Basecamp was very much scratched their own itch and and some new product that they're working on like it almost wasn't and now it is and like
Jordan Gal:The email is for them. It's interesting concept.
Brian Casel:Yeah. He's been like good. They really talked in-depth about like what it what it feels like to like in terms of like deciding what goes into your v one, what goes into the the first version of what you're building, like you it's it's so true that it's so much easier and more powerful and you're probably gonna be more successful if you are literally solving your own personal problem because you are customer number one. And I it it just resonated with me a lot because what I'm building with instrumental dot dev feels like the most I am the customer for this. Like Yeah.
Brian Casel:I'm building it for literally quite literally for myself more so than any other product that I've ever done. And that means it's gonna be super opinionated. At least the first version of it. Because I because I I know exactly how I want this type of product to be and how I've been unhappy with similar products. But just hearing them talk about it DHH and Jason on their podcast talking about the same idea like it just really hit home.
Brian Casel:I I think it's a good listen. It's a good reminder like what because they were talking about how it really dictates your roadmap. Like you know exactly where you what you need to build next because because like they were talking about how they use their their tool internally at at thirty seven signals and their team got really upset that they were being forced to use their own tool because it's not quite good enough yet to solve their own prop problems And that's your road map. You know? You know how to solve your own problems.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. And I I I agree what you're doing now is the closest. For me, the closest thing would be open a schnitzel restaurant in town because I want good schnitzel. And my mom's not around right now.
Brian Casel:Yep. Hey. I'll I'll be customer number one. Hell yeah.
Jordan Gal:Alright, brother. Have a
Brian Casel:great weekend. Alright. Thanks for listening. Later, folks.
