Building out of a job
Hey. It is Bootstrap Web Friday, November 8. We are we're back. We're gonna we're gonna keep our our eyes and ears off of the news and we're gonna focus on some work and some business.
Jordan Gal:The election is behind us. It's moving forward baby.
Brian Casel:That's That's right. News news detox time. Time to just get back to
Jordan Gal:detox would would really help.
Brian Casel:Yeah. You know it And that's always been my my theme after elections like for the last as long as I can remember. Heavily tuning into it and then really tuning out for a a long period of time afterward. And I feel like that's especially the case for
Jordan Gal:me now. It does feel like a it's like a New Year's, you know. It's like, oh, you get to like turn over a new leaf. Yeah. I was super into politics back in the day, the Obama Romney election, I was able to do the same thing.
Jordan Gal:Okay. It's over. Yep. Out. I didn't really get reinterested and fully engaged until October 7, and I'm hoping this one allows me to also say, okay.
Jordan Gal:I'm actually not participating. I can't make a difference. I wanna be aware, but there's no sense in spending hours a day reading stuff. It's it's
Nathan Barry:too Yeah.
Brian Casel:Yeah, man. And and we just have so many more important things to focus on. Family and life and business and work and that's that's the most important thing.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. So Raising kids, being part of the community, keeping your marriage strong, the whole deal.
Brian Casel:That's
Jordan Gal:right. And today on this podcast, we we're talking business, baby. So Yep. Brian, you and I got into a pretty serious conversation right before we started recording. Why don't I just set the stage a bit by reading the tweet that sparked the conversation and then we can we can get into it.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Actually, I'm just I'm just kinda catching up on the Twitter tweets right now as well. But yeah, go go ahead.
Jordan Gal:I wrote a tweet right before coming on, fifteen minutes or so before that we do every once in a while, and we say, hey, what should we talk about on the pod today? So our our friend Rob Walling responded and said, Brian talked last episode about being pulled into too many directions, sounded stressed, and I'm curious if he thinks it's something that he just has to deal with or, you know, if he thinks it's gonna improve. And we have been talking about this over the last few weeks, and, you know, that that tweet, I think comes from a good place. But it, you know, what does it spark?
Brian Casel:Yeah. I think it's a good good question. I appreciate raising it. So yeah, I mean I think he's right that that I'm stressed this The the past couple of weeks. But really the past year and more than a more than a year, couple years I've I've been The the stress has been really really growing and it's been interesting as I observed the stress how it's changed from being stressed about different things.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Different forms of stress. Can can you get into you know where where it started off and what
Brian Casel:I really try to step back big picture about six to twelve months ago, the the stress was around you know, and I talked at length on the podcast about it like, where is my business going like that it you know, and having to make tough decisions about where to where to focus and and what types of businesses to to get into. But then you know, as the past year went on then then it it just really became about like where is my actual income coming from?
Jordan Gal:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:You know? Because I was I was work I I took a I deviated from the bootstrapped path. Went the investment route.
Jordan Gal:Yeah.
Brian Casel:And you know, like a little bit of investment. And then and then and and just like having to like spin back up the the consulting
Jordan Gal:work. Right? Yeah. The SaaS was starting to you know, look like it was gonna take longer and
Brian Casel:then Right? So Yep. So I had to like reestablish the income and and you know, evaluating different ways to do that. Launching different attempts to do that. Different forms of consulting and the one month dot app service is the thing that seemed to eventually click after after a bunch of months.
Brian Casel:So the main problem, the main stressor for me six to twelve months ago was where is where is my income for the next couple of years going to be coming from? Right? Because the single SaaS bootstrap thing is is not gonna cut it. And then and so now the the stress is actually opposite because I'm overbooked with consulting projects at the moment. Just having to be like more selective about which which projects I actually take on.
Brian Casel:I'm I'm definitely gonna be raising the prices on the consulting in in the next you know month or two here. The the stress right now in at the current moment in in November is okay, I I have multiple active MVP projects going for clients. I've got multiple booked to start in December and I have other leads in the pipeline that are I would say fairly likely to come through. And I just brought on two developers who started this past week to help me out on those projects. I still have a developer working on Clarity Flow.
Brian Casel:I just reached out to my person at at the at the staffing agency to to hire a third person to help on on the consulting stuff. So the the stress right now is my time. Unfortunately, I wish it were as easy as just hire people and we can we can just go. Mhmm. As we all know it's not that easy because I it it really it really actually feels like a plane is taking off but but I'm still kinda standing on top of the plane trying to hammer on the the wings while it's already getting into the air.
Jordan Gal:Okay. Is that a feeling of like, well, it's starting to go faster but it's not really built to go as fast as
Brian Casel:It's just not built to go fast Yeah. Yet. But I hate the feeling of like turning pretty good projects away because we can't deliver on them. Right.
Jordan Gal:You don't wanna slow down. The the the slightly out of control feeling is actually And
Brian Casel:the waiting list can only go so far out. I I I have a waiting list like clients who have actually booked like I'm already pushing them out at least a month. Right.
Jordan Gal:How can push?
Brian Casel:But but you can't like I can't say to someone like, just wait six months because I What I'd Instead, I would just recommend that they go somewhere else. Yeah. Okay. So so there's that stress of like just how do we how do we set up the systems and the process? And that's what I've been working on this past week is like how do I go from Okay.
Brian Casel:So actually let step back answer the question more directly. Yeah. I was
Jordan Gal:gonna say
Brennan Dunn:the the
Brian Casel:juggling. Yeah. The the easier thing to do actually would be to not hire and just do all these projects myself. And be and just be a 100% full time consultant. Right.
Jordan Gal:Good money Right. Your income question mark. Yeah. Okay. Now why why not just do that though?
Brian Casel:Because I I don't wanna do that.
Jordan Gal:I'm Okay.
Brian Casel:I'm trying to build a business here. Yep. And so the the way that I see it is consulting to me I I think people have different views of what consulting is. I view it as a real business. It's not just a thing that you do on the side to earn some cash.
Brian Casel:And so I treat it like if I'm consulting, I'm building a consultancy. A small studio like a small agency you might think of it. Okay. I'm not trying to build a large agency here but I do have a pipeline of leads and we're doing good software product work which is what I wanna be doing in general. So my task right now is to figure out how can we figure out the system and process to continuously and streamline the the development of simple MVP software products for clients and for myself in a very streamlined process oriented way.
Brian Casel:That's what I've done with services, with productized services. We should be able to do the same thing with software products. And and that and it's a really really difficult task and I'm That's what I'm in the weeds of working on right now. Like figuring out how to Like I I I talked about building this components library for Rails and and I'm actively coding and building that. Yes a, it's a product in itself but I think even more importantly, it's a tool for myself to use with my team to rapidly streamline the scaffolding and building out of MVP applications for clients.
Brian Casel:Because that's And and I feel pretty justified in building that system and building these components because I've I've got revenue coming in. Like a pretty good level of revenue coming in for this. And so the question is, this revenue coming in like either I service it myself and that's what I've been doing for the for the first half of the year and now I'm in that transition phase of like this has to work without just me doing all the work. And so now I'm trying to figure out the systems, the tooling, the processes. Can I ask That's where that's where all the time and and and like it's it is stressful right now because I'm spending well above forty hours a week in here in the office?
Brian Casel:Like I I did a late night last night. It's also stressful because I do have these client projects that are actively happening which means they're like deadline oriented. It's not just like we can just take our time just like any other product. This is clients are waiting and they're paying for that so I have to deliver. And and it's like my team is waiting for me to give them tasks to do.
Brian Casel:And it's it's always the question of like, well it would be faster for me to just go ahead and build it instead of delegate it but no. This needs to work with with me being able to delegate and then work on the next thing, you know.
Jordan Gal:Okay. Well, I I was gonna ask in the form of a question but maybe I'll just comment and then you you you can respond. It partly sounds like an entrepreneur building a system to go beyond themselves. Like, hey, this is you know, when success starts to come in the door, you need you have a choice. You could just do all the work yourself or you can expand your capacity and have less reliance on you as the individual, and that's like building up the systems of a business.
Jordan Gal:It partly sounds like that. It also partly sounds like in in the classic inability to enjoy success, and then just be like, well, okay. Let's go to the next step then. Well, okay. So I had a problem six months ago.
Jordan Gal:I solved that problem. I'm I'm not really gonna give myself any credit. I'm not gonna dwell on the fact that I, you know, I'm bringing in all this income that I wanted to bring in now. It's happening. And I'm just immediately diving right into the stress of well, that's not even it's very little satisfaction solving the problem and immediately going to what other problem do I have?
Jordan Gal:I gotta go beyond this.
Brian Casel:Yep.
Jordan Gal:So you know, is it both altogether? Is it one more than the other?
Brian Casel:That's a really good question. So that's actually something that I've been actively thinking about this month as I'm as I'm feeling the the extra level of stress. Because usually I love working.
Jordan Gal:Can you be happy? Are you enjoying it at the same time? There's there's there's something there. Right? It's not just stress wash over everything.
Brian Casel:The the thing that I'm not happy with right now is just the sheer number of hours that I'm that I feel like I'm forced to be in in here. Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:Fair. That's a motivator. That's a good motivator.
Brian Casel:You know, because like there are And I and I often now feel like I'm missing out on other parts of life. Mhmm. Hobbies, family time. I still feel like we I I I make pretty good time with the family and we still take trips and stuff and I You work
Jordan Gal:from home?
Brian Casel:Like like I like all the consulting stuff is always on pause when I'm on trips and stuff like But the reality is this week I did multiple late nights of work. That's These are these are like ten hour plus days, you know. And that's not normal for me anymore. Not not like I'm not like in my twenty's, you know?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. It's well, it's an energy and commitment to other things, but it's also maturity on like, hey, I know that's unnecessary. So I'm gonna find a way to make that
Brian Casel:and like, I don't wanna be doing those kind of days anymore. I I I feel like I shouldn't have to do those kind of And and so I and and I definite like to speak to Rob's thing here like I definitely don't see this as this is just the new normal and I have to deal with it for for the foreseeable future. Right.
Jordan Gal:Like I'm You don't sound like you're pain forever.
Brian Casel:Literally, the reason why I'm putting in these hours is like I'm trying to build my way out of that problem. I'm I'm building the way out of like because because the truth is, the vision for what I'm building here is I should be able to I I could even outsource the the sales. But let's say I'm just doing the sales. Right? So leads for new MVP projects are coming in from clients.
Brian Casel:I talk to them. Brief conversation. We do a little bit of consulting and that's the most fun part for me because I'm talking about like new ideas and the clients new idea and and what's possible. I'll give my input on on how this product should be executed and what's the most efficient path to getting into into customers hands. And and then I can hand that off to a teammate who who handles wireframing and UX and and or UX and and planning out the the the game plan and then and then writing up the issues and then delegating them to the team.
Brian Casel:And then the team is building out the features and maybe a project manager is keeping the client informed week to week. And these projects are just getting built. And I'm and I'm still involved. I'm not completely hands off and and off somewhere else. But I'm involved in in terms of like like strategic like product direction, product design decisions.
Brian Casel:But ultimately, the team is building the features. A team is project managing and and and running a whole project from start to finish. And I'm sort of just there to make sure that things are being done well and and executing efficiently. And and I I think that we can and we should be doing it in a much more efficient way than like a high priced agency and and or just hiring a large team in house to to build your your products. That's that's been That that's sort of the vision for this thing.
Brian Casel:And and like if if that's like the core business and cash flow generating and profit generating center of what I do, I should be able to build my way out of of all the jobs that I'm doing in that business. So so to to get back to where I was in the audience ops days when I when I had a business sort of like that and I had all this other free time to develop new products. And and the the really cool thing about it that I'm working on right now is that the product that I'm developing is directly related to to the same problem. It's not like split. I don't see it as a split focus to be working on the Rails components product and scaling the rails SaaS delivery as a service.
Brian Casel:Like, those are one and the same thing. You know, it it's it is all related in in my view.
Jordan Gal:Don't know. Now that
Brian Casel:I'm sort of just rambling at this point.
Jordan Gal:No. No. The when you when you talk about audience ops, right, there's kind of an extreme case in terms of fear. Basically, your personal revenue per hour worked at audience ops was astronomical. Yes.
Jordan Gal:Right? And right now
Brian Casel:And and that is an extreme that I'm not exactly aiming for. Right. But but something in that to get back to that level of comfort.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Right. That was at the extreme end of the curve. Right now, you're climbing up that curve of how much of each revenue dollar from the consulting business are you keeping personally. You're like moving up the curve on increasing that.
Jordan Gal:Right? So Yeah. Hiring people, raising prices, managing demand, and and really only doing the key strategic work that really only you can do at this stage. It's like it's like like per project maybe right now you're spending forty hours per project just throwing out a number of the 100. It really should shrink down revenue per hour expands.
Brian Casel:That that's absolutely true. Let me speak to couple points there. So you're you're totally right that the number of Like I I really feel like the hours that I'm putting in right now, we're we're going slower to go faster. We're we're we're putting in more work to do less work in the future. But but going back like six to twelve months ago when I was taking on the first of these consulting projects, it was like let me just get some good consulting projects in the door and I'm I'm gonna be a solo worker on them and and I'm gonna take in the revenue myself because that's the number one problem that needs to be solved.
Brian Casel:I'm not looking to hire anyone. Just just do that myself and earn some cash. Now, I have multiple consulting projects. So you know, I'm I'm covered. So now it's like, okay.
Brian Casel:Well, I've I've got some revenue to work with. Some cash flow to work with. So I should be hiring. And the the hard thing right now is is the system and process for for putting the team in place. And and this is this is one of the hardest hiring problems that I've really dealt with I think.
Brian Casel:Because Okay. So for example, the thing that I worked on this week is I I dove into Figma like big time. Mhmm. Because fig The the phase of working in Figma and designing and wireframing and mocking up a new application is something that I for the most part skip in in almost all of my projects. So when it's just me
Jordan Gal:Just go in there and do it.
Brian Casel:I just go in there and because I design and build simultaneously in the browser while I build the thing. Mhmm. And so, if I'm just building an app either for myself or even if it's just me working for a client then I'll just talk to the client about what the goals are and then I'm gonna go ahead and build it and then show them and if we need to make tweaks, we'll make tweaks. But now I need to figure out a way to talk to the client and understand what we're building and then be able to put the idea in a visual format that that can be both used to to show back to the client to confirm the direction but also used to show to my team so that they're on board and they and and they can see and know what what we're all building. And so the process of wireframing out a new application and and all the views and the user flows, that's something that I I usually just don't spend time on because I I don't need it myself.
Brian Casel:But when there are multiple other stakeholders, team members and clients, we do need this like visual like source of truth that we can all like look at and have discussions around and build build a quote and proposal around and all that. So so now I'm I'm trying to figure out like how do I use Figma in the most efficient way using templates and and they have a feature called components that and auto layouts and all this stuff in Figma to make using that very efficient. But even that is something that like I don't wanna be doing. So I'm I'm try right now, I'm trying to hire someone to be that person who can basically set up a new project for our client. So maybe maybe it looks something like they listen to to my initial sales call or they get the notes from an AI summarizer or something like that.
Brian Casel:And and I have a discussion with with my project manager person, designer, developer person and they will then you know, spend a week and work on on wire framing it out and specking out the whole project and and queuing up all these issues for the developer. If if I can find someone else to do all that which is which is really where I spend a lot of time. That is a big unlock. Like that that's really the unlock. Because like handing Like if a if a linear issue, a GitHub issue is already written out with a checklist of what to do.
Brian Casel:Like I know how to hand that off to a developer and have the developer do it and send it and and send me back a PR. I I've been doing that for years. But it's that setup work, it's the design work, it's the UX, it's the and also writing up those issues takes a lot of time. Like being a product lead or a project lead. That's the thing that I'm trying to figure out like how to fire myself from.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And that that's So that that's the thing that I'm currently focused on.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm. I think whether in Figma, hiring, pricing, the the extent to which that you are going faster. Excuse me, going slower in order to go faster is like this this dip. It's like you get the thing off the ground, you're making money, you're doing the work yourself, straightforward. As soon as you wanna go beyond that and do less of the work yourself, expand, scale in a different way more efficiently, you kinda have to go into the negative and just set up all the systems in order to go faster.
Jordan Gal:Now here so here's the right. Look, this this tweet from from Rob, it's it's a little bit like while someone is in that negative space going slower to go faster, basically investing in the systems of the business in order for it to make, like, more sense in the future. To catch criticism at that moment, it's kinda pretty tough. You know, and and it's natural in that someone from the outside actually wants the best for you, but they cannot understand. And Rob, if anyone can understand.
Jordan Gal:Rob understands. Oh, I I know
Brian Casel:Rob and and I know Rob totally means well and I and I know he's been here.
Jordan Gal:What is what is tiny seed if not a a buoy, a a life preserver for people in that dip so that they don't need to suffer through it. That's what tiny seed is. Tiny seed is lettuce Yeah. Just help you through that awful period of going into the negative to come back out into the positive. But it's not an easy thing to to to take criticism in that moment.
Jordan Gal:A lot of people this is now here's I just wanna make this point. A lot of a lot of us have been in that negative moment. In some ways, I am to to some extent. The ability to, in that moment, just not only keep investing in yourself and in the systems and in the people and in the hiring and keep doing the work and the sixty hour weeks and so on, But also to have the unquenchable ambition to also create the components library and the planning to sell that as its own product in the future. I have to tell you I really admire that.
Brian Casel:Alright. Thanks, buddy. I appreciate I appreciate It's it's my natural way of working, to be honest. Like, I don't I I've been out of consulting for a long time. Like I This year, this past year was the first time I went back to having direct consulting clients in like over ten years I think.
Brian Casel:To me this is the natural way of building a business. And I I think I overstated and I maybe overused the word stress earlier in this episode. Yeah. I'm stressed in terms of I'm spending a lot of hours and I'm I'm more tired right now than I would like to be. But man, the I'm The stress that I was feeling six to twelve months ago over money is was so much worse than this.
Brian Casel:Mhmm. Because that was like staring into the unknown. That was hacking on idea after idea after idea and throwing ideas at the wall and savings.
Jordan Gal:You got your family. You got your kids. You got camp coming up. It's it's
Brian Casel:Like that that's why that's why I was like kinda throwing a lot of stuff around and and building some ideas and saying I was gonna build ideas and then not and second guessing and like, what am I gonna do? Like, what's the what's the best path on, like, what's the most efficient way to to get back to a comfortable cash flow financial state? Like, that stress sucked because that was just unknown. Yep. But now it's I'm actually kinda psyched.
Brian Casel:As tired as I am, I'm I'm pretty psyched because I know exactly what I'm building here.
Jordan Gal:It's like success stress.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Because I I really I really feel like right now is There definitely is an excitement level around Look, I've got really good clients and more on the way. I've got And that's been the other really great thing about this is like every single client has been awesome. Know? Just great people, And great and this is not because you know there are a lot of developers who are who are consultants and and contractors.
Brian Casel:But what I'm doing is different. I'm not getting hired by some company to to just be a butt in a seat, you know, taking off issues and and submitting PRs. Like, I'm building brand new MVP products with that excitement of startups for every single client. And that's I'm so psyched about that. And so that's what makes all this really exciting.
Brian Casel:It's like, instrumental. Dev is the company that I'm building here and it's ultimately the vision is MVPs as a service, components to build MVPs rapidly, and that's it. That's that's And and then and then using those things to to do that ourselves with our own products. Know? Like Yeah.
Brian Casel:I mean And and sharing content and building publicly and doing video to to show to show how how we build stuff rapidly and and that you don't need to spend years building software. Know? So like I I It's it's exciting that it's coming together but yeah. Putting putting the pieces on while the plane is already up in the air is is Yeah. No joke.
Brian Casel:Kinda hard.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. No joke. Yeah. I I think this is our version of it online, but this this is business. I I it makes me think about my dad's business when I grew up and success brought a lot more stress.
Jordan Gal:Different stress. You know, but at first it was like, how do I send my kid to college? And then it was, how do I how do I do all this work? How how could I possibly do we doubled from this year to last year, and now how the how the hell do we actually do all of
Brian Casel:it? Right.
Jordan Gal:I think that happens in restaurants. That happens in law firms. It's just like you do get this success thing. The hard part is working your way out of it in a smart way so that six months from today, you're working a lot less and you're making a lot more. And but you're still excited and engaged with all the the best parts of the business and the clients and the work.
Brian Casel:And I think also to speak to what you were saying a minute ago like the thing that What was I gonna say? I I like that what I'm building now is so relate is is all integrated. You know, because the alternative is to just take on a couple of consulting projects here and there to pay the bills, but that's off to the side while I bootstrap some other new idea.
Jordan Gal:I I think that's more common.
Brian Casel:That's probably more common, but I think that that's a lot harder, and that's where the the split focus thing starts to break down. I I I think that like Yeah. When you're just when you're just doing consulting or a job over there and trying to launch let's say a SaaS product for some niche industry over here. Sure. That is quite literally split focus.
Brian Casel:And I've been there and it sucks.
Jordan Gal:Huge context switches. Yes.
Brian Casel:Context switches either. It's it's also like from a marketing perspective like putting that energy. Like if you wanna If you if you're trying to get a new thing off the ground, like you you're building Rosie and you are going all in on small businesses. Right? You can do right now is trying to reach small businesses.
Brian Casel:Yeah. You know. But if at the same time you also need to you need to reach potential clients for some other unrelated consulting thing. Like now you have to market yourself in two completely separate Yeah. Ways at the same time.
Brian Casel:Know. Whereas this is like, I'm building MVP's for clients. I'm building products for people who build MVP's. I'm building I'm building MVPs myself. Yeah.
Brian Casel:It's rails. It's it's all integrated. Yeah. That's right.
Jordan Gal:It's crazy.
Brian Casel:And so like and that's why like six twelve months ago I was I was way more stressed because I was like, I don't know. Should I try this niche idea or that niche idea or do SaaS or not do SaaS or what am I doing here? Like it's it was up all up in the air, you know?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. It's tricky. What I see I think about, you know, I have one person in mind in particular and their freelance, their consulting came out of what they're really good at from their previous jobs. Right. But it's also what they wanna get away from.
Jordan Gal:But it doesn't make the most sense to go out and do consulting on that because they're very good at setting that up and running it for other companies and it's very valuable so you can charge for it. But you're really trying to build you know piece of software over here for a different industry and I I I I think that's very common and and very difficult.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah. Dude, what's happening in Rosie?
Jordan Gal:Okay. I don't know if you saw, I made my debut. I did. Yes. I made a demo video.
Jordan Gal:I put my face on it.
Brian Casel:Yeah. So I saw you tweet about it. So where is that video? Is that like on the homepage or in the onboarding or where is that?
Jordan Gal:It is on the home page and so and so what happened was the onboarding was released. So with the new onboarding being released, we wanted to make sure that we showed it, you know, upfront. Our ICP appreciates a pretty straightforward approach. Don't give me the slick overproduce thing, like, just show like, you could like, their support questions are very straightforward. Can you just show me how this works?
Jordan Gal:Right? Everyone's like, cool. I got impressed by your name and your website. Cool. How is this thing gonna work for
Nathan Barry:me? Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:And what we keep hearing back is this this week was like a turning point in feedback. Like we started getting feedback and I I I got on two sales calls yesterday and I was buzzing, I was high all day. My wife was like, what's going on with you buddy? You know, I went to lunch. I'm like skipping around, listening to music.
Jordan Gal:And, you know, when you get you get this feedback, this little glimpse of product market fit where you're like, you know, these people are so appreciative. They're like, thank you for building this product. I tried everything else. It's all too complicated. It's too complex.
Jordan Gal:The voice doesn't sound like it's it's almost like we're it was a a vote that we were putting attention in the places that matter to them. Because you could put attention in a whole bunch of different places. But how slick your marketing, how amazing your social media is, how beautiful your product is, whatever that range is. But to put the emphasis on the things that they care about feels like that that's how you win. So the marketing all of a sudden felt like it was behind the product, but we wanted to make sure that was, you know, for a day or two at most.
Jordan Gal:So we got everything tested. We released on Tuesday. Yes, Tuesday. And so the next day, we launched a new version of the website. We started sending ad traffic to the homepage instead of a landing page.
Jordan Gal:We basically just updated. And if you go to heyrosy.com right now, what you will find is a smaller product, a smaller feature set, more focused, and the messaging and the positioning is really, really clear. This thing will take your messages better than voice mail and cheaper than an answering service. Right? So we shrunk down the feature set, and all of a sudden the video on the homepage didn't make sense because in the video was the original hypothesis.
Jordan Gal:People want appointment setting automated through an AI. And we adjusted away from that in both the product and the positioning. And so I had to update the video and that's what I did. But I I I thought, okay, I can do a very straightforward demo video. I can hire someone to do a slick video or I can do something that I thought made sense which is basically take the first ninety seconds of the video and connect directly with what we've heard from customers.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. So in that ninety seconds of the video, the first ninety seconds, I am reciting back exactly what we heard from customers. Like, you know, there's a few points in there that I'm making like those are words coming out of our intercom chats. Yeah. So I wanted
Brian Casel:to That's what I noticed about it is like the intro is like just really speaking to like these are the problems that that you you are probably experiencing.
Jordan Gal:Yes. I and I I I think I start the video say, tell me if this sounds familiar.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Right? You do x. You're a small business. You get phone calls. You can't always be so I'm really I want to basically stretch out the problem and identify that first, and then I just jump right into the onboarding.
Jordan Gal:We'll see if maybe we experiment with just jumping on to the onboarding eventually in a in a different version of it. But I think we can be really really proud. You can go from the homepage to a built out AI voice agent for your business. It's like ninety seconds and it's Yeah. It's good.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. So so that that was our goal. Remember our our goal was a 100 self serve sign ups a day. How do we get there? And this onboarding is built for that.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I think I think that these videos like the like onboarding videos or demo videos, I I think it's better to to just think of them as like something you're going to redo again and again. Especially early on in the first year or two, just rapidly. Right? Like don't don't over invest in like the shiniest, most edited, most most perfected thing too early on because you're going to need to redo it based on what you learn from from customers, you know?
Jordan Gal:Yes.
Brian Casel:The product's gonna keep evolving. I mean, on my to do list on Clarity flows to redo the video again. It's gonna be like version number five, you
Jordan Gal:know. Yes. We started laughing about it internally because right when we released, we start talking about, well, what are we doing next week? And then it immediately is like, well, I'll have to redo the video because of what we've released next week.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:So what I did actually with this one is I wrote a script Mhmm. And that make that feels like it makes it really easy to just redo. I don't have to remember or have to perform. You know, it it's always weird that it takes two hours to make a three minute video, but it does. Yep.
Jordan Gal:But now I feel like I can just kind of, you know, tweak the script and then do it again. I realized after the fact that I forgot a few things. I should have asked Rosie while I was on the call, like, what time you open more? Some simple interaction thing. That's the part that's missing.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. But but here we are. We upped our budgets for advertising. We had our first day of 25 sign ups. Oh.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. So like that, you know, that 100 goal is attainable.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Not you're a quarter way there.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Our STO started kicking in and we're starting to get more traffic from there. We now rank number one for things like AI answering service.
Brian Casel:Oh, wow.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. The SEO is kind of paying off sooner than expected. I feel like the SEO companies that we work with set good expectations where they're like don't expect much until like six nine twelve months. But they're starting to happen.
Brian Casel:Hell yeah.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. It's awesome.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Actually speaking of of the demo video, this is something I have no time or bandwidth to do right now but it's on my to do list for sure for clarity flow. And my thought on the next iteration of this, it's not on the homepage like you have it. It's gonna be one click away. Like currently on our homepage, you you click like see a demo and then and then you see it our current version of the video which I did probably only like six months ago, you know, and and we're already have to have to redo it again.
Brian Casel:And my thought on the next one is gonna be a shorter like main video. If you picture the the new demo page is gonna be like one big video near the top and that's like the main one to try to speak to every single new lead who's coming through our website. Say like Okay. This is Clarity Flow, you're a coach, You really care about async. Here's what we're all about.
Brian Casel:Here's what the sign up process is gonna look like. Let let me show you how to purchase this and and then talk to Kat or customer success. You're gonna It's gonna be great. You're gonna you know And here And and at a high level, like these are the big selling points for Clarity Flow but not get into the weeds probably around five minutes. But then then below that is gonna be sort of a grid of let's say five to six additional videos.
Brian Casel:Think like big thumbnails of like commerce. I wanna sell coaching things. Click this, it's gonna pop up the video that I that I already have about our commerce feature. Know, coaching appointment booking. Click this, it's gonna show the video about our appointment booking feature.
Brian Casel:Mhmm. And and so we already have the the individual videos for those big feature launches. So so that's gonna be the it's gonna be a more modular demo. Right? Like the the first big one to try to convince them to to go ahead and sign up.
Brian Casel:But if they really wanna deep dive on the specific features that they're interested in, they can get to those videos. And I I think I think that's good for for the user standpoint because they can click to what they're actually interested in instead of like
Jordan Gal:can't see it.
Brian Casel:Because if I get like too deep into commerce in minute three and they're not actually into that, then we might lose them for good. Mhmm. But also it's more modular, right? So if commerce changes then we could just swap out that video and not have to Yeah. You know, redo all of them.
Jordan Gal:Okay. Very interesting. I just pinged our designer last night and said, now that it's out next week, I wanna get the feature videos. I'm thinking just right onto the homepage. We kind of have a very homepage centric mindset.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. A lot of that came from you. We we keep getting questions in intercom about pricing. Like, there's literally a pricing page, but I think we're just gonna put the pricing bit on the homepage in that same type of effort.
Brian Casel:But, yes, I It's like yeah. You see the link at the top? It says pricing. Yeah. I'm so tempted to
Jordan Gal:just send them the URL. So tempted, but I don't. Last night
Brian Casel:Yeah. Let me send you this URL. Hey rosie.com/pricing.
Jordan Gal:Yes. That's actually where you can find it. Yeah. So if you go to the pricing page now, what you'll also notice is new pricing plans.
Brian Casel:What do we got here? Yes. $49.99 $1.99. Yes. Custom pricing.
Jordan Gal:Yes. Did not put too much thought into those. Just kind of people just kept coming to the chat and saying, well, what about five hundred minutes? And what
Brian Casel:so the the value metric there is minutes included. So $2.50, 500, a thousand
Brennan Dunn:Yes.
Brian Casel:And then custom is that that you say unlimited minutes on custom.
Jordan Gal:It's just like just okay. So a lot of this came from what happened this week was we started to interact with customers. Those two sales calls I had yesterday, one person said how many how much is it for unlimited? Okay. And then when we dug into it, unlimited was like five six hundred minutes a month.
Jordan Gal:So not unlimited. Just more than what we were showing.
Brian Casel:So it's I've experienced the same exact thing with Clarity Flow and I've had the the question come up a lot like where they're like, what what if I go over a thousand minutes of recordings in in a month? And nobody even comes close.
Jordan Gal:Right. Here's the issue. The other sales call I had yesterday was thirty thousand minutes. But he used the same phrase, how much for unlimited?
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:So the same word unlimited was used for six hundred minutes a month and thirty thousand minutes a month, which told me it's time it's time to just put more clarity onto the pricing page because people Yeah. Don't know what I also think that we were unwillingly or unwittingly turning away larger customers because they were like they only have one plan and then it like kinda didn't make sense. So Mhmm. Everyone on the team is a little they're not mad at me. They're just like oh great now we gotta do a bunch of work to kind of catch up cause it's really easy to change pricing on the marketing site.
Jordan Gal:It's a lot tricky
Brian Casel:Yeah. To
Jordan Gal:put it into the UI, put it into the logic and all this other stuff. But that that's fine. We're just kinda going fast in that way. We'll we'll we'll catch up to it.
Brian Casel:Yeah. The whole site is looking super nice, super clean.
Jordan Gal:Thanks, man. One of the most interesting right. We made a trade off. A very straightforward trade off in this switch in onboarding. Before, people were creating an account and then in order to get your Rosie phone number, you had to put your credit card in.
Jordan Gal:And so everyone that had a rosy phone number, maybe 40% of the people who had created an account, had the credit card on file and if seven days went by, whether or not you had fully adopted, Either way, you're getting charged and you're going on to our ProfitWell woohoo number. Yep. Now we've made the switch where 100% of people that create an account get a phone number. But 0% of those have to put their credit card number in. So what we're really keeping an eye on is number one, what percentage of people put in their credit card on their own.
Jordan Gal:Right? We have like, you're 50% through your minutes. We give fifty minutes before you convert. So we have that thing where it's like, make sure not so your service isn't interrupted. Otherwise, that fifty minutes, it'll stop working.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. But you need to put your credit card in proactively. Now, of course, at the end of the onboarding, we have a nice little highlight like recommended. Put your credit card in to avoid interruption.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. So now we are gonna see what percentage of people put in their credit card on their own and what percentage of people do we need to entice
Brian Casel:or What happens so they're at minute fifty one and they haven't put put in their credit card and they're getting a phone call. What's what's happening?
Jordan Gal:I don't know. No.
Brian Casel:I And like I guess their call just goes directly to their business.
Jordan Gal:Well, okay. So here it's it's it's actually a problem that we need to figure out. Uh-huh. Because we don't wanna screw up anyone's business. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:So if you call and you're still forwarding to the rosy number and the rosy number doesn't work, what are we supposed to do? Just give the service away for free? No. So it's it's someone's gonna stop working.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I Now, I don't know the technicalities on this. I feel like it should just forward back to their it it maybe there's some sort of loop there but like That's the that's the thing. If you forward
Jordan Gal:back to their business number, guess what's gonna happen? It gets forwarded to the ROSI number.
Brian Casel:Do you handle the I guess they handle the forwarding? They do. Do.
Jordan Gal:Okay. They do. They do. That's right. So if anyone is like a Twilio expert and knows this the prob the solution to this circular problem we're having, please ping me.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I was gonna say if you control the forwarding then you can just turn it off but it's it's on that. It's just like their domain name. Like if if That's If you're cutting off access to their website and and their DNS has already pointed to you. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. What are gonna do? Like it's your fault. So Yep. So we we we feel comfortable in the fact that you sign up for the service.
Jordan Gal:You're using the service. If you don't pay for it, like it'll stop working. But we also would like to come up with a way to both be nicer about it and at the same time be more conversion focused on it. Like I I would
Brian Casel:I mean, first of it's all, sort of hard to even think about somebody who would go through the trouble of forwarding their phone number and then like and and not put in their credit card at around the same time.
Jordan Gal:That is what we're hoping, but we also should make sure to do the right thing in terms of messaging. Like like, you've received your first phone call, put in your credit card to make sure it doesn't that that that scenario doesn't happen.
Brian Casel:Yeah. We have
Jordan Gal:a few levers of credit card
Brian Casel:at the moment that they are forwarding their phone number.
Jordan Gal:Like That is not in our system.
Brian Casel:I know it's not in your system but like, okay, next step is to forward your phone number and while you're at it, make sure that you have a credit card on file so that you don't lose any phone calls
Jordan Gal:exactly what we do. Yes. Yes. What we what we should do now that I think of it is we have a little like celebration like a celebratory button like I've done this and then some confetti pops out type of thing. Instead of the confetti popping out, a credit card model should
Brian Casel:pop out. Little bit more useful than the confetti.
Jordan Gal:Hold on. Let me just go to Slack real quick.
Brian Casel:Dude.
Jordan Gal:We got there.
Brian Casel:That's that's good stuff. Cool.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. We we will see. I think we'll go through a dip over the next two weeks where conversions will actually go down or likely to go down because we don't have that seven days, hey, it's up and you're converting one way or the other. But I think it will be much better and we will face reality one way or another because people paying will have adopted and they'll be using it. Right.
Jordan Gal:The good news is it's coming right at right when the product is really maturing into like a full like phase one of maturity where people are like, this is awesome. I like it. I tested it. I'm going with it. So least we have like this some level of comfort now that we're facing reality.
Jordan Gal:If we if we did this a month ago, it would have been scarier.
Brian Casel:Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Good stuff, man.
Brian Casel:Excite. I I wanna circle back to the stuff I was talking about earlier on about about the stuff that I'm working on and I feel like there's also a a pretty bright side of of the work that I'm doing right now as as much as as much as it's like putting in a lot of hours and sometimes you know, being more stressed than I than I would like. Yeah. At the same time, I have to say the work that I'm doing right now is probably the most challenge Like the most technically challenging work that I've ever done. And I feel like I'm growing the most professionally and in my craft that than I ever have in my career to date.
Brian Casel:Like, I'm I'm not trying to exaggerate that. I I really feel like that right now. And I I think what I'm no actually noticing is that the three to five years prior to this To to what I'm working on right now, I was stagnating in terms of skills. Okay. Okay.
Brian Casel:And so what I mean by that is And this goes on a number of different fronts. Like especially on the technical front and and the design work but also on the process building and the business building part. But on the technical side like when I was working on Clarity Flow and I I I still am, but like all the work on Clarity Flow in in terms of what I am putting my hands on, it's stuff that I know how to do. It's stuff that I just do again and again. It's designing and shipping of feature in Rails.
Brian Casel:It's specking out a feature and giving it to my developer. And I I know how it should be architected. I I give it to her to build out and then we ship it. And that's great. It solves problems for our customers but what that also means is that like I don't actually have an incentive to increase my my or deepen my my understanding of Ruby on Rails, of design patterns, of architecture, of how things actually work under the hood.
Brian Casel:What's the history of this or that? Like I don't have any incentive to even care about
Jordan Gal:all Sure. Our Building it.
Brian Casel:Because we're just building features and shipping them for our customers. That's that's been the And so yeah, like when I learned, when I transitioned to full stack like I was learning a lot because I because I wanna learn how to build stuff. Then I learned how to build stuff and now it's like I only need to build, know enough to be able to build stuff and ship. But now that I'm building components generating Rails applications, that in itself is a much more tech technically deeper thing that like I'm I'm learning about Rails generators and and Rails engines and just using using Ruby in different ways. And then So there's that.
Brian Casel:But then also like I'm I'm crafting it in a way that it has to be robust and and not only for us to use but for other people to use. So it has to stand up to some, you know, some technical stress and so just learning a lot about like and like and I'm making a lot of opinionated decisions about how I want my components to be designed and architected. And so I'm questioning like, is that actually the best way to do it? Are there other ways that I, I just haven't had the opportunity to familiarize and and and learn about? So I'm going down these different rabbit holes and learning.
Brian Casel:Like, that's been super fun. And then I was talking about like this week with with Figma. Like, Figma as an application, as a tool, is something that I always only very had a very light I use it a lot, but I use it like a total noob. Like not using components, not using auto layout, know, not setting styles and design systems. Like I don't care about any of that stuff because I just need to like whip up a wireframe for my own internal use and then build build something.
Brian Casel:But now that I'm using it with a Now I'm trying to figure out like how do I structure a Figma document in a professional way and use all the power features for what they are intended for which is collaborating with team members and with clients and making design systems that can scale and can be used repeatedly and be able to churn out wireframes much faster than what I would normally do. Like actually deepening my understanding of all that's actually possible when you really learn Figma. That's been so like learn So I'm going down the rabbit hole and increasing my skills on that so that I can hire someone to work with it and and I can still collaborate, you know.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. It makes me think of the the the two levels that we often have to switch back and forth from, like this management strategy owner mature in your forties experience, and then right down to the individual contributor level. And one informs the other very often. And and sometimes, at least over the last, you know, year or two, I felt myself stagnating on the individual contribution. And my management strategy suffered for it.
Jordan Gal:And now that I'm, like, writing email flows on, like, you know, and looking at this onboarding and the copy in the onboarding and what should happen next and making the demo video, I actually feel like I improve at the management level also. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's fun.
Brian Casel:Yeah, man. I I think that there are really two different styles of like of building and managing a business, I think, in our in our industry. And I think one probably the more common style is like even if you're technical, but definitely if you're non technical, you're gonna build a team and and hire experts to to fully own all the technical individual contributor roles. Right? And and that's the more common, maybe more traditional way of building a business.
Brian Casel:But then you see shops like Tailwind Labs. Right? And and Adam has talked about I love this analogy that he that he said on on his podcast a while back, maybe a year ago about he treats his business like a like a band. Like he's like he's he's in a band.
Jordan Gal:Okay. I mean musician.
Brian Casel:He is a musician, but like but he treats Tailwind Labs like it's just a crew of super talented people building awesome stuff and everyone's technical. Everyone's shipping really great products that lots and lots of people use. That analogy really resonates because I I think that from Like I love that model of a It's not a solo person. It's a It's still a team. It's not huge.
Brian Casel:It's not a huge team. But everyone is contributing at a high level including the founder, the CEO, like getting their hands dirty in the areas where they wanna be getting their hands dirty while the business still is able to scale out to lots of customers and like thirty seven signals is another another one in this vein where it's like, yeah, they're a little bit bigger with with more people. Not still not huge, but the founders are like Jason and DHH are in the weeds on product, you know?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Which which is cool. Yeah. That that's interesting. I I don't think of what we do in that same way.
Jordan Gal:Maybe that's what happens. Everyone contributes in their own way. And it's almost like a I don't know if it's like a show or, you know, like a TV show. Like, the the the consumer of it just sees like the end product. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Right. As opposed to the the tailwind band analogy. That's cool.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah,
Jordan Gal:man. Alright, homie. It's Friday. Let's go get it. It's nice and sunny out.
Jordan Gal:Soccer season's over. I actually get to see my kids this week without standing on the sidelines cheering for them.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I'll to go.
Jordan Gal:Enjoy that.
Brian Casel:We are yeah. My my kids are starting up their their basketball season soon, but yeah. We're gonna get outside. We've been hiking a lot, like almost every weekend we go out and find a hike somewhere around Connecticut. I love this time of year for that.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. And I mean, Thanksgiving's coming. It's crazy.
Brian Casel:Things are Oh, yeah.
Jordan Gal:Flying at this point. Yep. Thanks everyone for listening. Another episode of Bootstrap web, baby. Talk to you soon.
Brian Casel:Yes, sir. Later, folks.
