Bluesky.
Welcome back everybody to Bootstrap Web. It's been a few weeks. Mister Castle, how you been?
Brian Casel:Yeah. Doing good. It it has been. I don't know. It's been like three or four weeks now.
Brian Casel:So we gotta do we gotta do some catch up here.
Jordan Gal:Three weeks. I think yeah. I went to DC for Thanksgiving but I went the Friday before. So it was like those two weeks, you can hear my voice. I'm just getting over some strep throat that knocked me out while in DC.
Jordan Gal:That was not fun.
Brian Casel:Rough. Oh, man.
Jordan Gal:But we're back.
Brian Casel:Good time out there. What's What'd you do do a bunch of sightseeing?
Jordan Gal:We did a little sightseeing. So my my sister-in-law and her husband family lived there.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:So we've got, you know, we're hanging out kids. It's it's it's a family vacation, vacation, but it's in DC. First of all, I like DC.
Brian Casel:I love DC. I really do.
Jordan Gal:Very impressed. Yeah. Just overall food's amazing. Yeah. People cool.
Brian Casel:There's really cool neighborhoods.
Jordan Gal:Really cool neighborhoods. It's like this mixture of like what feels like a smaller neighborhood but everything's at at like an urban big city level. Like the delis, the stores, the shopping, food. It's just part of
Brian Casel:it, they they must have some regulation there that that caps the height of the buildings. Right? Yeah. Like, it's a it's a major city but no building is taller than what? Like five
Jordan Gal:Yeah. You know? Right. Unless you're downtown and there's a big besides that
Brian Casel:There's a couple but like even that like it's it's like a it's like a flat like vertically city.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. It feels like a lot of like overlapping cities. So like from DC to Baltimore to Bethesda to all these things that may not Baltimore but Bethesda, they're all kind of interlinked. Yeah. But we did do a little bit of sightseeing.
Jordan Gal:I am a sucker for it. I'm an immigrant. You you put me in that with the constitution and the bill of rights. I was like, damn. This is something try to teach my kids that rolling the rice at me.
Brian Casel:I'm a sucker for it too, man. And DC is is one of those things that like, you know, I've only gone there maybe a few times in my life. But every time I'm there, it it it still hits me like the sheer size of some of these monuments and and the whole area and like and like what do they call it? Like the like where like
Jordan Gal:The mall.
Brian Casel:The mall and Mhmm. The White House and the memorials like You see it on all the pictures everywhere, but then when you're there, it's like, man, this place is huge and
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Makes me love this country which is why I hate blue sky. No. I'm just kidding. Yes.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Should we get into it? Yeah. Let's let's get into it. We were we're talking on Twitter a little bit about Blue Sky and feeding off of Ian.
Jordan Gal:Ian and Aaron. Yeah. And and Aaron talking about it. Now, they did like a proper good.
Brian Casel:I was listening to them this morning talking about it.
Jordan Gal:Me too. They did kind of a proper product breakdown and and I think for me I'm I'm more on the vibes breakdown.
Brian Casel:Okay.
Jordan Gal:Like I I hear you on the product basis. I'll explain where Blue Sky sits in my mind and I'd like to hear where it sits in like how you think about it in terms of like a position in your attention.
Brian Casel:Yeah. It it's High. Alright. Let's let's hear yours first.
Jordan Gal:Okay. Mine is that Twitter started off as like a place to gather with friends, acquaintances, and a few like concentric circles out from there. And it had this very flat feeling where I could just ping someone incredible. Right? It felt so close.
Jordan Gal:You were like you could just at know, like if you had a bad experience with I don't know some airline, you could just like at the airline and they'd like get back to you. It just felt very flat and amazing communication. Then it got bigger and gnarlier and then it became a news site and then it became an instant news. All these like metamorphosis like these changes in Twitter and now where Twitter is it's like for me it is news. And I'm like Aaron, I go to the For You tab.
Jordan Gal:That's my home on Twitter and I'm learning about politics, news events, what's going on in Israel and tech and all this other stuff. And when I thought about blue sky I thought of it as an escape and almost like a reset back to where Twitter used to be where I could go and talk about my favorite peanut butter. Right? Like Justin Jackson. At that level, this happy, friendly, personal
Brian Casel:For me, I'm I'm team almond butter for the record of here.
Pippin Williamson:Almond butter.
Jordan Gal:Jesus. This this is what should be talked about online. That makes no sense and we should argue about that. Peanut butter is one of the great things in life. Anyway, so so I think that's where I saw blue sky.
Jordan Gal:I was like, oh, a reset into like this friendlier, more personal you know, I I want honestly, I wanna get away from like death and destruction and war and politics. So I I saw it as an escape. And my my vibes analysis right now is that I went over there and I I feel like, it's the other silo. If Twitter turned more right wingish, blue sky is like a left wingish silo. And I was like, I'm gonna be entirely honest.
Jordan Gal:That's even less interesting than the right wing for me. You know? Yeah.
Brian Casel:Okay. So let me start with that last piece first, the political stuff. I totally agree with you and Aaron. And I And and what's different I think with you and me than Aaron, you you We seem to be more interested at least in our private lives and like following like politics and news and stuff. Sure.
Brian Casel:But I That's what I don't like about Blue Sky right now is is the is the left leaning vibe over there.
Jordan Gal:I know. I I wished for like no politics. I wanted a space online in my life that didn't become saturated in politics. And people can say whatever they want but I thought it would be easier to, you
Brian Casel:know And also what I don't like is is that is that because of that, it does turn off a lot of people who who are just naturally right leaning and I want those people in. Or I don't I don't wanna turn off anyone. I I because because to me, this is the main point I wanna make about Blue Sky and why it feels like old Twitter and why I'm spending more time on Blue Sky right now than Twitter is I'm I'm there for the community. I'm there for our community. Our people.
Brian Casel:Our circle, startup circles like. Yeah. That's what I'm That's what I go That's what I used to go to Twitter for. Mhmm. And that's what I go to Blue Sky for.
Brian Casel:I think I am getting that now. Now that there's more of a wave of our of our community
Jordan Gal:Yeah.
Brian Casel:Joining it. That's that's what has me kinda psyched about Blue Sky. And so Mhmm. That's the thing because because yeah. You talked about the metamorphosis of Twitter over the years.
Brian Casel:Like I I had a Twitter account back in 2008, you know, when it was super early. And and and I think since the very beginning, I still went to Twitter to connect with my community, mostly a professional community. Like in the very earliest days, was connecting with other freelance web designers and WordPress people. And then and then as my interests changed and and I was also connecting to So you know how like the people people talk about community on Twitter like there's tech Twitter, and there's Nick's Twitter, and there's politics Twitter Sure. And and there's whatever, design Twitter, there's art Twitter that you know.
Brian Casel:So I always went I always sought out my interest Twitter. Right? Mhmm. So music production Twitter. Nick's Twitter.
Brian Casel:Mets Twitter. Right? Sure. Sure. And I would and I would start to follow a lot of those accounts and I still do.
Brian Casel:And and those are some of my most followed accounts. Like I I paid the most attention to them. So I always go to Twitter not so much as a news feed but more as like a a way to tap into the pulse of what my circle of people are Mhmm. Are up to.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Through multiple communities. That that is Twitter at its best. That's the ideal.
Brian Casel:Yes. Yeah. And I and I do the same on Blue Sky. Like, you know, Blue Sky has a bunch of feeds. Right?
Brian Casel:So, my following feed which is where I spend all my time, which is the default feed Mhmm. That is basically all of our tech friends. Like that's who I'm following and I When when I look to a feed from from these kinds of of platforms, I want the feed of like updates and building in public and and and that kind of stuff in my feed. Yeah. But then I do have other like I have a Nick's feed and a Mets feed in in Blue Sky.
Brian Casel:So there's a little bit of that starting to bubble up. There's like a design feed that I do have a news feed but I don't really look at it much. Yeah. So It's
Jordan Gal:it's tricky. I think a perfect example of what you're talking about is the so we've been doing a lot of you know admin work and design work and UI decisions and that used to be my favorite thing to share and talk about and it feels a little off when I share that on Twitter. I still kinda do it but it feels like
Brian Casel:Well, yeah. That's
Jordan Gal:It feels like conversation about one thing and then you're like, but also here's this other thing that I really like and it feels like incongruent with what's going on.
Brian Casel:Well, I wanted
Jordan Gal:Blue Sky to do that and it's not I
Brian Casel:mean, I I share more building I've shared building public stuff on both places and I do get much more engagement on Blue Sky than on Twitter. And and I think also because it's The the other thing that has turned me off for the last couple of years with Twitter is the algorithm. Now, I spend my time reading the the following tab. Not the for you tab Right. Because because I don't like reading the algorithm.
Brian Casel:But it has the effect of like, if I tweet something, the algorithm is most of the time going to bury it. Like most I would say, more times than not, my tweets are are They're they're just less and less to my followers.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Same. You know? And of your followers like me who are on the for you tab instead of on the following tab?
Brian Casel:Yes. Right. That Yeah. Like most of my follow most people I think probably use for you.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. It's it's annoying because it's a revealed preference of everyone looking to the for you tab Yeah. But then as a user and poster, you want people to be looking at the following tab so can you actually have a conversation with the people that you're you're there for.
Brian Casel:Exactly. Like Yeah. It's a and and like the thing and a lot of my tweets are like not intended to go viral. I just wanna start a conversation. I just wanna show my work to fellow designers and developers and product people and and and I I, you know, I just wanna show updates and and maybe get some feedback or questions and stuff and But like, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't and and it's like, never know and and the and the algorithm just pushes stuff down whether it's like and especially and the whole it's so stupid about links like you can't put you can't put a link in your tweet.
Jordan Gal:That makes no sense.
Brian Casel:Please, James. You know, you you have to do the stupid like tweet it and then reply with your link because
Jordan Gal:Yeah. It makes sense.
Brian Casel:The first one can't have the link.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Links are off. The the fact that the Internet's open. I mean, come on. What are we doing here?
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Maybe they're incompatible. Maybe a for you tab and a following tab are incompatible inside of the same product. And what I was looking for to Blue Sky was a following experience. I wanna talk to people that I follow and I want people to follow me to see what I post so we can talk about our stuff.
Brian Casel:That that's right. That is the following.
Jordan Gal:Know but as soon as you introduce a for you tab
Brian Casel:They call it Discover.
Jordan Gal:Right. As soon as you introduce a discover tab, it will be optimized because people's actual preference as a passive reader is the discover tab, not the following tab and then you end up in the same place.
Brian Casel:Yeah. So like, I actually don't spend much time on the discover tab in Blue Sky. I Most of my time is on the following, but I also go over to popular with friends. I don't know if that's on for everyone or maybe you have to add it. But I go with popular with friends.
Brian Casel:And that's basically stuff that people that I people that I follow must have Oh. Liked or
Jordan Gal:That or something. That's like an in between. Yeah.
Brian Casel:Like so I like that. But then the other thing, I think the other tip maybe a tip for Aaron because he was talking about how he goes to it to discover feeds of of new links and new and like if you if I I totally hear hear the argument that like if you just stick to the following then you're sort of in your own bubble and you're not really exposing yourself to new potential like the upside of That was a really good point that Aaron made. And I think the tip on Blue Sky that's a little bit different is that you do You probably should add a bunch of these other feeds. These other algorithm feeds. So like I have Again, have like one called Design Sky.
Brian Casel:One for Metz. One for Nicks. You can you can add a bunch of stuff and then I find that Blue Sky actually pushes stuff from those into my I I guess they pushed it into the Discover tab. Because they have a little thing where it's like this this post is from Designs Guy but we're showing it here because you should check it out. You know, so like I think that's the way to start to tailor your own algorithm.
Brian Casel:You know, like your main algorithm is to is to subscribe to a bunch of these other ones.
Jordan Gal:I hear you.
Brian Casel:It's dude, the of the day, like the thing the thing that I come here for is like because I think I I happen to think that we are so incredibly lucky to work in this industry as tech startup people. No other industry is so well connected to each other the way we are. I I think that's unique to us and maybe some other a few other industries out there. But like Mhmm. We are super connected and for years that we were connected through Twitter and now the Twitter algorithm has just blown all that up and now it's
Jordan Gal:I know. I don't know.
Brian Casel:I I think that our our circles are going to are gonna be continuing to go to blue sky as like the the watering hole or the what do you call it? Like the water cooler.
Jordan Gal:I I hope so. I just I just end up I end up with some form of negative experience every time I go. And that that's probably my fault tolerance level. Yes. I I just went to Blue Sky right now as you're talking to see if I have the you know, something by friends, whatever that you mentioned.
Jordan Gal:And I go to my notifications and I see someone following a thread that I started and I click on her profile and it is all politics, watermelon, Palestine. And I'm just like, goddamn it. You know, I don't I don't want that. I don't I don't want that here.
Brian Casel:Yeah. When I see stuff see, I don't get much of that in my feeds. I I But I see a lot of like the, you know, the Just like the the left left leaning stuff that's just I I just unfollow them. And I I For some reason like, I For me, in my experience on both Twitter and Blue Sky
Jordan Gal:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:It it hasn't been that bad on either place. Everyone, at least in my opinion, makes it seem so much worse than it is, or at least what I'm seeing for whatever reason. Maybe my mix of followers and following doesn't doesn't result in all the all the same noise that everyone else sees, but like
Jordan Gal:Yeah.
Brian Casel:You know, on on Blue Sky, there is a bit of the of of the left wing stuff that I don't like so I unfollow it and I end up not seeing a lot
Jordan Gal:of it because of that anyway. I'm muting.
Brian Casel:Or I mute. But then on on the on the right side or on on Twitter, I don't see a lot of right leaning stuff either.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I mean And I don't I don't see
Brian Casel:a lot of like the people talk about like random like porn shit showing up on Twitter.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. See that.
Brian Casel:You know? The thing that real that's super annoying on Twitter is the DMs. It's it's overrun with spam now.
Jordan Gal:You don't find that your spam filter does a good job of it?
Brian Casel:Well well, no. So, they they show up in the So like a a new person who who's never DMed me before Mhmm. They're gonna be in the whatever they call that.
Jordan Gal:Like Yeah. They give you a notification and then it's like a it's like a spam folder but you still kinda have to open the spam folder.
Brian Casel:But every Yeah. Exactly. You still have to open it because it might be someone real.
Jordan Gal:Yes.
Brian Casel:Yes. But 99% of the time it's spam.
Jordan Gal:Yes.
Brian Casel:And that sucks. Yeah. It's Like the the only time they end up in my main DMs is if we've DMed before, you know? Mhmm. And on Blue Sky, the DMs are usable.
Brian Casel:And it's good to see our people are are now on Blue Sky. So like, I I know that I can go to basically anyone in our industry as as long as they've joined Blue Sky and I can just reach out, you know. And it's that's that's the place, you know.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. It's tricky. I I just wanted the world to work according to my preference and have Twitter be an insane news feed which is what I want and Blue Sky to be a nice happy startup community Yeah. And just can't can't have that.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I don't know. It's I so just in terms of like observing my own behavior with it, it's like, at first I I sort of just signed up and it was sort of like half and half like Twitter and Blue Sky. And now, I'm just literally finding I I happen to be opening Blue Sky like twice as much as I'm opening Twitter. And yeah.
Brian Casel:I just seem to be getting more like my time there is more valuable than on Twitter. Like like the Cool. And also reading Twitter. Like I'm not it's not giving me anything interesting anymore. I don't know.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I'm I'm about to publish videos about our features. So we just finished our admin redesign. Like, we are we are officially out of the ugly MVP admin to a good looking v one. Everything's polished.
Jordan Gal:The account like, there's other stuff to do that I I wanna talk about. Mhmm. But it all looks good and it's consistent and isn't just like this ugly MVP. So now I feel like, okay. Great.
Jordan Gal:Now I can make a bunch of videos basically for support docs, but why not post them on Twitter and Blue Sky and YouTube. Right? Why not? Mhmm. So I'm very curious to see where I get better engagement on the actual topic and like, you know, fun stuff.
Jordan Gal:Why'd you choose this? Oh, that's that looks good. How are you gonna get people to upgrade? You know, like the actual conversations that we wanna have.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah. I like it.
Jordan Gal:What what have you been up to?
Brian Casel:Yeah. So last couple of weeks, let's see. Since the last time we talked, I I mean I I've been pretty much focused on instrumental products is how I think about the name of of like my company. And that instrumental products is like the service the service arm of what I'm doing with clients. Okay.
Brian Casel:Which is MVP's as a service.
Jordan Gal:Okay.
Brian Casel:I've been promoting it through the site, 1month.app. You know, that's like that's like the landing page for it. But it's Most projects are about three months long. And now, I have three developers on board working with me. The third one just came on full time this week.
Brian Casel:So it's I've been in this transition phase and we have three active projects going on, like for three different clients. We're we're building three different apps at the same time. And so it's The chaos was building a lot about a month ago. And and I was trying to get a handle on it. And and bringing these new developers on board at the same time.
Brian Casel:So now I'm about a month into having these developers on the team. And I think we're the like they're starting to learn my style. I'm starting to learn their capabilities and and our communication stuff. And we're starting to click. And so I'm in that I'm in that transition phase, know, going from me doing everything on all the projects to now, most things have to be done by them and I have to direct them.
Brian Casel:And because that's the only way logistically that we can even work on three projects at the same time. I can't do that myself.
Pippin Williamson:Yep.
Brian Casel:So so now, it's like everything Like, I'm at that point now in this business where like this business can only possibly work if I'm not the one building the apps.
Jordan Gal:Okay. Does that feel like progress?
Brian Casel:Yeah. It does. And while we're building, I'm actively building instrumental dot dev which is our components for Rails product. So I'm building that as it's gonna be a product that is coming along pretty It it I should be shipping it probably around New Year's, maybe early January.
Jordan Gal:Oh, you're getting close.
Brian Casel:Pretty close. Yeah. But the the It's challenging but it's cool because like, I'm building it while we're using it for these projects. It We are we are customer number one on this. And we're we're already actively using it in all of our projects.
Brian Casel:So every time we need a component that we don't have yet or we need to tweak it, I'm in I'm building that or I'm improving it in instrumental.dev. So that's my job. Okay. Is like, I'm building our component system while my team is working on client stuff. And I'm still I'm still managing and and and delivering that work to clients and stuff.
Brian Casel:But yeah, it's been a process. And I mean, I I guess one more note on the whole team flow here. The the thing that really was a good step forward I think was Okay. That that third developer that just came on, he's the more senior guy. The the two juniors are like junior developers.
Brian Casel:So before, like phase one of the of the of this transition was like me writing up linear tickets. Like GitHub or or linear issues. Lots of checklists. Like, I would literally spend a whole week. Like five days of a week just just drafting out these tickets to scope out a whole project so that I can hand those off to the to the junior developers and then they can take them and build them.
Jordan Gal:Now Is the new person also playing the product role?
Brian Casel:Now, the senior person is playing that planning role. Okay. So, only spend one day now giving him like the brief of like, here's the whole project, these are the big features we need to build. Now, you figure out how to how to architect it and write up all the linear issues and get it all set up for the for the developers. That's been a big transition.
Brian Casel:Really good.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. It sounds like they took over a big part of your job there.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I mean, I'm still like collaborating with him and reviewing every ticket and making sure that things are being built the right way and then I still do the final like QA and and polish it up and I deliver it to the client. So I'm I'm active every week but I I've I'm starting to like carve down like the number of days and number of hours that that actually require me in in it. Oh, yeah. Yo.
Brian Casel:Alright. So, this recording is just starting again. So, I don't know where we cut off. Are you on the same recording?
Jordan Gal:It still shows that it's it's showed that it's been recording the entire time for me.
Brian Casel:Okay. Because I I think mine was sort of like
Jordan Gal:I just saw your camera freeze and that's it.
Brian Casel:Okay. What was the last thing you heard me say?
Jordan Gal:I heard you the whole time. Yeah. Just the
Brian Casel:Like, it totally kicked me out. Like, I had to refresh Riverside.
Jordan Gal:Oh, okay. I thought it was just the camera froze. Yeah. I if it recorded, I heard the whole part the whole conversation on, you know, hiring the the new senior dev and them doing more of that role.
Brian Casel:Okay.
Jordan Gal:And now you're still, you know, guiding them and consulting with them, but you don't have to write up all the
Brian Casel:tickets. Okay. Sweet. Yeah. That's that's where I was.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Hell yeah. Alright. We'll we'll see you at at the end of this. Maybe maybe some of my my thing kinda dropped out, but yeah.
Brian Casel:Okay. Cool. What what do you
Jordan Gal:got? Alright. What do we got going on? I guess the the the defining of, you know, piece of place to focus for us is we're trying to figure out if we're on the right track when it comes to our funnel and conversion path. So when we first started, we had a seven day trial with a credit card required upfront.
Jordan Gal:And so what that meant was someone comes in. If they're in the app, that means we have their credit card on file. That's not true at all. Let me backtrack a little bit. If they're in the app and they have a phone number, we asked you needed to put your credit card in to get your phone number, your Rosie phone number.
Jordan Gal:So if they were actively using Rosie, that means we have their credit card on file and seven days they're converting one way or another. We wanted to do a few things. We wanted to get more people in the app. We wanted to not require a credit card upfront. We wanted more people using it, giving us feedback, and that meant giving the phone number away before the credit card.
Jordan Gal:So right now, it's really self serve. It's a great onboarding experience. I've made a video of it actually over the last few weeks on the home page. It's like a full a full four minute demo. So we switched from a seven day trial, right, time based automatic conversion at the end of the trial, we switched it to fifty minutes.
Jordan Gal:You got your first fifty minutes for free. So the downside of that is the uncertainty around timing. I don't know if that takes seven days, fourteen days, thirty days, ninety days. We just don't really know yet. Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:But on the upside, it let more people in, got us more feedback, more people using the product. We're up to it's almost a thousand minutes a day now. So it's starting to you know starting to grow. And the part that I really liked is everyone that converts has adopted. If you're fifty minutes in, you're beyond testing, you're sending people to this phone system that really call your business and I wanted it to be And these
Brian Casel:are businesses that are getting a lot of phone calls.
Jordan Gal:They're getting phone calls, they're sending it to us, and then they're getting notifications in their inbox and in their texts saying, Rosie picked up this call, here's the transcript, here's the recording, here's the summary. Now now you have shifted your behavior in how you handle your phone calls.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:And if I'm right that this is a this is a, you know, severe pain killer. This is not a vitamin product. This takes away the Saturday morning you're with your family out at pancakes and you get a call on your phone and you don't know if you should pick up the phone because it might be a $2,000 job for your business.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:That pain is actually pretty severe for for our customers. So solving that, I wanted to solve that before they had to make the decision to convert or not. Because I wanted it to be like, do I want to reintroduce this pain in my life or do I just wanna pay this company $50 a month to take it away from me forever?
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Alright. So so now we're in this place where we don't we knew that there would be a slowdown in conversions. Right? You make this switch that you had this cohort that automatically converted at the end of seven days. You know, our revenue grew kinda quickly from that.
Brian Casel:Yep.
Jordan Gal:Now you make this big switch and then everyone that walks in the door has not put their credit card on file. Right? You're you're you're kinda confident about adoption and people using it but you don't really know in in the same way. And so now we're a month in and we're starting to look at data. And so that's where we are right now is we're trying to look at the data and say what's the right decision?
Jordan Gal:How patient should we be? Should we make any changes? Is there anything obvious? Are we learning anything? So now we're like building up these internal systems to reveal that data.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:Right? So now we have a list of people and and you see how many minutes. And Yeah. You know, have Slack messages that come in and so we have thresholds. When you hit ten minutes, when you hit twenty five minutes, when you hit forty five minutes, when you hit fifty minutes.
Jordan Gal:Yep. Okay? So ten minutes tells us you've gone beyond testing. You might be sending real phone calls. We wanna know that.
Jordan Gal:And then you can see
Brian Casel:one minute it'll be just that's just testing.
Jordan Gal:That's like
Brian Casel:ten minutes like that's somebody real.
Jordan Gal:Yes. But even even that, like all of this stuff, all this data gathering, it it feels like it is impacting our analysis of our customer base and once we have a better understanding of that data and how it plays into conversion then we can start to use those events to start to automate and provide people the experience and the content that we think they need in order to convert. Right? So here's an here's an example. If someone comes in and uses creates an account and uses two minutes, So we get a Slack notification.
Jordan Gal:It used to just say this user two minutes. Then we added the phone number that they called from. So if we wanted to we can just call them and say hey I just saw you did a test call, how can we help? Then we added in when they signed up. So is it the same day of they're doing their first test call like you know five minutes after?
Jordan Gal:And then we added notification on whether or not they include their credit card if their credit cards on file. So now all of a sudden we can see if you create your account, if you use two minutes of time and then you put your credit card in, we know that the test call got you to a point where you pulled out your credit card in the next step in onboarding and you put your credit card in. It's not required. It is optional. We position it as make sure not to have your service interrupted.
Jordan Gal:Put your credit card on file. Yeah. Yeah. So if you did a test call and then you put your credit card in like in some way or another, you're generally happy.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Do you think that they're Reverse.
Jordan Gal:If you don't.
Brian Casel:Do you think any of these any of these businesses have like a second phone number that they treat as like their testing phone number?
Jordan Gal:So people have very different behavior around around a lot of stuff. We see a lot of people come in and they run the initial query in the sign up flow, and then a day later they come back and run it again and then they create an account. Right? So what is that really telling you? They saw the ad on their phone.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm. They clicked on it. They did the initial scraping. They listened to a clip about from Rosie about their business and then they said, oh, I like this but I'm not about to create an account right now on my phone. And then they come back the next day and they
Brian Casel:do it. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. So all these like like little behaviors, you start to kind of identify like, oh, here's what you're doing. So phone calls, where you're calling from, how many all this stuff we're starting to learn and and we're trying to anticipate what's happening on the user side.
Brian Casel:Yep.
Jordan Gal:So for example, we really wanna understand who has adopted versus who is testing. So at first, it's rudimentary. It's like if you're over five minutes, maybe you're done testing. I don't know. If you're 20, then you definitely but some people are like super testers.
Jordan Gal:Some people test for thirty minutes. Mhmm. So now we're starting to build in, okay. Let's allow the user to identify phone numbers that they're gonna call from that are their phone numbers that should not count against their minutes. So we have a more accurate view of these are testing minutes, these are real minutes.
Brian Casel:Oh, yeah. That's a good one. Yeah. Because right.
Jordan Gal:The most important thing for us is to understand who who has actually adopted, who is sending real business calls, and what we're what we're learning from it is like there's there's all these individual touch points and events that we need to be aware of. For example, if you hit forty five minutes, we send a Slack message in. Along with that now we see the date that they signed up. So it's like if they signed up three days ago and they just hit forty five minutes, that's a blinking light for us. This is a potential great customer that's gonna be on a higher plan.
Jordan Gal:But now right along with that Slack message we see have they put their credit card on file or not. So if you hit forty five minutes, you're four or five days into the product, you don't have a credit card on file, we need to trigger something.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Yes.
Brian Casel:Like how do you even get that far without putting your credit card?
Jordan Gal:Well, I mean, I know
Brian Casel:you but like but like why would they why would they not, you know? If if they're putting if they're sending real phone calls to their business through this thing.
Jordan Gal:Right. Because you know what happens if you hit fifty minutes and you don't have your credit card on file.
Brian Casel:Exactly.
Jordan Gal:Then all a sudden your your, you know, your phone stops working.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. So so we're learning about the activation and the conversion path at all these individual events that we need to be aware of. At what point should we inject ourselves? At what point should that be automated versus manual? We're just it's fun, man.
Brian Casel:I know I know you've been going for this like self serve glow. Sounds like it's it's kinda coming together. Like do do these do these business owners like just want to talk or do or do they wanna be more hands off?
Jordan Gal:You know what they want.
Brian Casel:Does your team try to reach out? Do they respond like
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Yeah. It's you know you know what they do? They text. That's what
Brian Casel:they text. Yep. Yep. So what That's like ideal.
Jordan Gal:It is it the whole thing is super interesting because it really feels like look. Overall, it feels like we're on to something because there's real demand. Like Yeah. You know, from from all over the place. It's just a huge range of businesses.
Jordan Gal:And it also feels like we need to we need to have a little, you know, we have a slide in our all hands and the last two months, the slide had a little graphic with a little like evil looking raccoon holding his fingers together saying all according to plan. I And was feeling pretty good about myself and I was like everything's going exactly according to plan. This is great. And this this month, I put a giant like like sticker over it that said humble pie. And I was like relax.
Jordan Gal:Relax. Maybe it's going according to plan, but we have a lot to learn
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:About everything that you mentioned. How they communicate, how they prefer to communicate. What's really fun is to having a very small team and just being able to huddle and be like, know, we should try. Let's inject the phone number into Slack and then let's just call them and then what you learn is people don't pick up the phone and then they text you back. Like,
Brian Casel:oh Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:We we learned something. We failed and we learned something. And now what we're trying next week is as soon as you sign up and start your testing, I'm not gonna call your number. I'm gonna call your Rosie number. Because if I call your Rosie number directly, you're not gonna hear a phone call, but you are gonna get a text message saying Rosie's got a new call for you and it's gonna be the founder of Rosie Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Saying this is Jordan. I saw you did a test call. Your business looks awesome. Welcome. What can we do to get you from your test call to actually flipping it live because the biggest mystery of all is how people feel after the test call.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:We don't know.
Brian Casel:That's I mean we do that that with Clarity Flow. Kat, our customer success, she sends a Clarity Flow message to to all of the new customers. And like Cool. That a lot. Because they they too have to go through a testing phase before they're they're comfortable enough to start inviting their clients into it.
Brian Casel:Mhmm. And it it is the kind of thing that like just communicating asynchronously through Clarity Flow. Like you have to start to experience it to start to be like, oh this can be, this can work really well if I embrace the async concept. Yeah. And and like the the conversation with Cat is often like their first real experience with like sending a thing and getting it back and like and getting real support over over the course of two or three days asynchronously.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm. You are you are creating a light bulb moment.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yep.
Jordan Gal:Our challenge, and I wonder how you handle this at Clarity Flow. Our challenge is understanding when they've adopted, when they've gone live because we don't have control over when they forward the phone number. So I think the most obvious thing for us to do is ask them to identify which phone numbers they're going to test with. That benefits them because it doesn't work against their minutes and it benefits us by identifying when there's a phone call that's outside of those numbers because that might be our best indicator of that's a real business call. That that's adoption.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Or
Jordan Gal:activation whatever you wanna call it.
Brian Casel:It used to be I mean, I I think a big one is have they mapped their own domain name. You don't you don't have to do that but a lot of our customers do. And if if you've set your DNS to point to Clarity Flow like you're you're adopting. Okay. You know.
Brian Casel:A lot of our customers do that. But now we we charge on day one. So we don't even have a trial. They're they're converting when they come in.
Jordan Gal:So it's different form of adoption activation you're looking for. Yeah. You kinda jump right into retention.
Brian Casel:Yes. Exactly. Like that's that's actually now what I'm most When I think about Clarity Flow, I'm thinking about retention now. And it's We're only about three months into this experiment with no trial and charging up front. But it's been working well enough that I wanna stick with it at least for now.
Brian Casel:I'm I'm still not totally convinced that it'll be this for the long haul but we we have to keep going on this path. I I I feel like it would be premature to cut the trial at this point. Or cut our test of this Yeah. Approach. I'm with you there.
Jordan Gal:My conclusion is that our data's inconclusive and we should just stick with exactly what we have right now.
Brian Casel:I think the hardest thing about what you're talking about and and I think about this too is like these changes that we make in the in the onboarding flow or even like the pre sales flow. Like in my case, I'm I'm not seeing how these changes impact conversion. I mean, okay. So like for example, we shipped I think since our last recording, we shipped two big things. One is we shipped our forms feature in Clarity Flow.
Jordan Gal:So that that's
Brian Casel:a big We we have a whole forms builder now built into Clarity Flow. But the other one is I rerecorded our demo video which is shown on the on the marketing site. You you just click like get a demo and you can watch that. It's like, I don't know, six or eight minutes long or something like that.
Jordan Gal:And and that's used a lot? Like people who convert really use I mean, they're making a buying decision before even. I
Brian Casel:think almost every customer is gonna watch that before they sign up.
Jordan Gal:Okay. Makes sense.
Brian Casel:And we even made it our primary call to action button, not the sign up button. Like the the big button is watch a demo.
Jordan Gal:Right. You're not gonna sign up until you learn more.
Brian Casel:Yeah. You can. There's a smaller button that you can go sign up. But we want you to come to the demo first. Watch it.
Brian Casel:Really see what it's all about. So so the update on the demo thing is I rerecorded the whole demo. And that's and and by whole demo, like, the the main thing is like eight six or eight minutes overview and and it includes like an overview of all the newest features like our forms feature, our appointments booking feature, our Stripe connect, all this stuff. But then below that, we have we now have links to like individual feature videos. This is all on our demo page before you even sign up.
Brian Casel:So you you get the overview from me at the top and then whatever feature you're most interested in like our commerce feature or our appointments or our forms, you can just scroll down and and click to watch another five minute video just on that feature.
Jordan Gal:Oh, interesting. Okay. I'm gonna the hell out of you on this.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Because it's good because every new feature we do, we have a video for it. Where we do a deep dive on that on that one feature. I can't do a deep dive on everything in one demo. You'd be sitting there for an hour Sure.
Brian Casel:And would and we'd have a ton of like drop off if if I did that.
Jordan Gal:That's right.
Brian Casel:That's right. So You put on the
Jordan Gal:app or page, not not on the home page. My my thinking is put to it right on the homepage.
Brian Casel:It's not on the homepage, but all of our big call to action buttons point to slash Okay. Demo. Okay. And on the demo page, I've got that my big one at the top and then the feature videos below it. A lot and I I also added some new social proof on there.
Brian Casel:So that's like our
Jordan Gal:See that.
Brian Casel:That's like our second sales page. After after they're sold on the homepage, they go to our demo page to sort of like close the deal. Right.
Jordan Gal:Key key part of your funnel. If I was gonna give you any Yeah. Bit of feedback at all right now, it would be to get some thumbnails.
Brian Casel:Thumbnails on the videos?
Jordan Gal:On the demo videos.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah. Right now, they're just sort of like a logo and a text. Yeah. Yeah.
Brian Casel:That's a good idea. Okay.
Jordan Gal:The Alright. So so you make these individual like deeper dives. So you're really giving Yeah.
Brian Casel:And these are just videos like the feature ones I've done months ago for each individual feature. Sure. But the new one is the one at the top. And the other thing that I did on that on that video, on the new one is I purchased Like I walked through the whole purchase process on the video. Like, so I'm I'm gonna show you how to get started with Clarity Flow.
Brian Casel:I'm gonna click to the plans page. I'm gonna pick my plan. And then I'm gonna put my credit card in. I do that. After I do that, here's exactly what I see on the next page.
Jordan Gal:And now
Brian Casel:I'm in. And like I show them like this is what's going to happen when you pay us Mhmm. Right now.
Jordan Gal:This is like an e commerce mindset.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Like, Take away all the unknowns. Yep. Let them know exactly what's next.
Brian Casel:Page Exactly.
Jordan Gal:What they need to do.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Then on the next page, you're gonna see a message from Kat. She's our customer success person and you can you can get started from there.
Jordan Gal:Very interesting. I think that would work really well for our audience. So They just want things explained straightforwardly.
Brian Casel:So the interesting thing is Alright. So I launched that I think a week or two before Thanksgiving I launched that. And at first it was a little quiet like I think it was like a day or two of no conversions. I was like, oh shit. What did I do?
Brian Casel:You know, so so then finally like you know, purchase or two came in and then and then I think it was it was weird because we are not running a Black Friday sale, but starting from Black Friday forward, we've been having like a string of new sign ups.
Jordan Gal:Yo. Me me too. Yeah. The last week went crazy and we're like, did we change something? What is going on?
Brian Casel:Think some people my hunch on it is because we had a bunch of people write in and ask us like, are you going to run a Black Friday? Okay. We just tell we just tell them no. And then when they realized that we're really not doing a Black Friday, they they were sort of like waiting around to see if we would and we're not. So they'll just go ahead
Jordan Gal:and buy it. For us from from November 26 to December 3 was a combination of the best sign up numbers with the best quality of sign ups. Yep. And I would love to say, oh, we changed the model and the voices but but like no. I think people just had a chance to think.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I'm also seeing a slight uptick in annual purchases. So people coming in and paying for a year upfront and Cool. And and that that must be like a December thing like at the
Jordan Gal:Yeah. That's the taxes thing. Yeah. I have extra Why why would I pay to the government?
Brian Casel:And the But So the hard thing about all of this, circling back to what you were talking about and all these different changes in the in the funnel is I am focused on retention. So I won't know the impact of this until a few months from now. Like I'm looking at I'm looking at retention of people who So August 1, going back to August 1, that was the beginning of our
Jordan Gal:That's switch.
Brian Casel:Of of our no longer having a trial. So I'm very focused on the people who've purchased since August 1 and what is the retention on those cohorts.
Jordan Gal:Okay.
Brian Casel:And it's interesting from month to month. Right? So like in there's August and then there's September. I think we shipped appointments during September and then there's October. And now in November, these are people who saw the new demo.
Jordan Gal:So On their way in.
Brian Casel:On their way in. Mhmm. And and I think that is going to create hopefully, the the the hypothesis is like a better demo, a clearer demo giving you better expectations is going to create more is gonna create customers who, okay, my expect expectations are met because this is exactly what I saw in the video. I purchased. I'm getting that so I'm not going to churn.
Brian Casel:Right? So like that danger is
Jordan Gal:the expectations issue. If I thought I was getting something and I bought with that set of expectations and it didn't quite hit what I expected, that's when I
Brian Casel:cancel. Exactly. Yeah. But the hard I think the hard thing about my about Clarity Flow and the thing that that really just drags down its growth frankly is I think it's the market, man. It's like I I've tried everything to to like We we've shipped all the big features that that they want.
Brian Casel:I've I've optimized the hell out of our purchase flow. We have some marketing channels that are starting to work for us. But we still get a good number of coaches who are totally sold on the product. They love it. But their coaching business is not working for them.
Brian Casel:You know?
Jordan Gal:So that's what you mean by market. Not not your competitor landscape and what people are doing in the market that way but like We literally have of users.
Brian Casel:Yeah. We we have a lot of customers who who they themselves have amazing businesses and they do great with Clarity Flow. And then we get a lot of customers who do great with Clarity Flow for a couple of months and then they're like, my business slowed down. I don't need it. Maybe I'll come back.
Brian Casel:Mhmm. We get that a lot.
Jordan Gal:Interesting. It's almost like you need more established or professional or Mhmm. You know, more longevity but those people are more likely to have more stuff stuck in other platforms. Okay.
Brian Casel:Yeah. No. That's I think that's just one of those things. It's like I've I've tried I I know I know that the the thing that's that's hampering growth at this point is churn. But there's just always like a steady state of of customers who are just they are becoming less active.
Brian Casel:And and then at the same time, we see new customers sign up every day, we see expansions and upgrades every day.
Jordan Gal:Okay. For those succeeding.
Brian Casel:People are succeeding and they're upgrading. Like they're going from our low plan to our high plan all And the then and then we also see people just kinda drop off. It's just a constant. And it's Mhmm. You know, I I I think that some of the top of funnel stuff has helped.
Brian Casel:But even that, like some some of these I don't know. It's like And and all of that adds up to just a slow slow slow grow slow growing SaaS that I can't afford to just be focused on and that's why I'm building instrumental products. Interesting.
Jordan Gal:It what it makes me think of is the problem that ConvertKit had in their growth where the best users are already established and already have big lists somewhere else. And you kinda have to make an offer to them that takes away the friction around moving. So we will do everything for you. Contact us and we will get everything sorted for you.
Brian Casel:Do it I for I just to it's it's I think it doesn't map exactly
Jordan Gal:It doesn't map.
Brian Casel:To that market or any market. Mhmm. And I don't I don't think any market will map to like, because I look at an ESP, an email service provider as a utility. Like, I pay for a water bill here. I'm always gonna have a water bill.
Brian Casel:I'm always gonna have an electric bill. Sure. And I I I've tried to make Clarity Flow as much of a essential utility to a coaching business as we possibly could. We we now run their payments, we run their calendar, we run their forms, we run their messaging, like we do all of that. Yep.
Brian Casel:But I can't run your ability to keep a steady client flow in the door, you know. And so that's that's the thing, man. It's like It's it's also not just like, it's not It's been four years on this business. So like I I know everyone I know people like listening and I get these messages from people like, oh, have you have you tried this? Have you tried that?
Brian Casel:Like, chances are we've probably tried it. But the the thing is like, it's not the kind of tool where we can just offer a done for you setup service, and we will set you up and make you successful. It's the kind of tool that they have to personally adopt and use every day for a con for a long period of time. So our our form of a done for you service is more of a done with you training which Cat provides. You know, so it's like, and it's not like a migration either.
Brian Casel:It's not like, oh, have a big list over there? Now bring that list over here. No. It's it's not that. It's just like, are you going to decide to structure your whole business on this tool?
Brian Casel:I didn't I didn't like, I didn't even intend to talk this much about Clarity Flow because I'm not even working on it that that much. I I work on my team works on it. I I kinda oversee them. I give them what the next thing to work on is, but I'm spending my time on instrumental products.
Jordan Gal:Very interesting. Bit of a puzzle.
Brian Casel:Yeah, man. I would like to don't know. Do you do you have another thing?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. So yes. Let me let me bring up this topic. It's it's almost like I I don't know where to go on this topic a little bit. So feedback is good and just kinda throwing it out into our universe.
Jordan Gal:I'm I'm trying to figure out how to blow this thing up. And I'm trying to think about how to use leverage more than we currently are. And and it's not that I'm stumped on it. It's just like I I don't wanna. I'm willing to be kinda wasteful.
Jordan Gal:I I think the position that we're in is one to be aggressive and be willing to be a little wasteful. We are a decent amount ahead of our projections when it comes to cash. And when I looked at that, I didn't want to see that as great. Let's go nice and slow. That means we can make this last a little longer, and and the runway is a little longer than it used to be.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm. I wanted to look at that and say that means I should be more aggressive. And so I immediately said, okay. Well, what what can I do that has real leverage? And what I mean by leverage is like we have a decent onboarding email sequence but that onboarding email sequence is hugely important because we we are getting a significant number of sign ups now.
Jordan Gal:I think it's going to go up significantly over the next call it ninety days and improving the conversion to activation by 10 or 20% is huge. And so I look at that and I say well I should I have that on my to do list to improve for the next four weeks and then do like a decent job at it or should I find someone and pay them you know $7,500 to do a really good job and talk to a bunch of customers and talk to our team and write an incredible 10 part email sequence that does a better job? And then how do I think that way in a lot of other places also? So I I I we we open an affiliate program. We have affiliate software.
Jordan Gal:It's that's not like a small thing. You can't just throw out an affiliate page and just have affiliates coming to you. You gotta go do stuff. So who can I hire as a freelancer to do that? I am not happy that we are not posting videos on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube every single day, every single week.
Jordan Gal:And should I just kinda feel guilty and put it on my to do list and and kind of try to do it? Or should I find someone for you know $5,000 a month to create videos for us?
Brian Casel:Creating videos like showing off the product, showing use cases like what?
Jordan Gal:A combination of things.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:Content for our ICP that has to do with our product and that doesn't have to do with our product. I mean, I'm seeing some pretty interesting innovation in the b to c space on TikTok. And so you might have a product. Let's just say, I don't know, some, like, pill you take that makes your, you know, stomach feel better. I don't know.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:But you can come up with hundreds of video ideas for that.
Brian Casel:Yep.
Jordan Gal:So we have this phone call thing that's very universal to small businesses. You can come up with ideas forever.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I feel like they're they're so yeah. Like running a running a local small business is there's that's like a that's gotta be like a a gold mine of just like little content ideas. Like dealing with customers every day like
Jordan Gal:And funny things, small things, show the product, show the phone. I mean, there there's an endless number of things. So that I feel like
Brian Casel:there are people that do this like video content All out there. Freelancers. Right?
Jordan Gal:I I almost feel like I'm back in my cart hook, like, hustler days, like, before we even, like, raised any money where I just kinda sat in my house. I was like, how do I just make things happen?
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:And that's kind of the mindset I'm trying to take because we we are now on a consistent growth path, but we'll talk about next week, you know, twenty twenty five goals. But I have a very specific goal of a million ARR by June. And if we just kinda go according to what we're good doing right now, maybe we'll get there. But I I wanna double it. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:You know, what are we doing here? I I should really. So that's where my head has been at. Like, okay. Things are kinda working.
Jordan Gal:We've got a bunch of stuff to figure out, but then it feels like it's my job specifically on the team to be like, how do we manufacture
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:Luck. One to many distribution. You know, I got introduction to the CEO of one like these home service software companies and I'm just kinda grinding in that way. Like, how do I make something pop?
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah, man. I could talk about so many different things. Like one one is video. Like I I am recording more videos now, because I just hired a video editor to do handle all the publishing.
Brian Casel:So that's been So right now I have like a queue of probably like seven new videos that are now handed off to him and they'll be rolling out this month.
Jordan Gal:Clarity flow related?
Brian Casel:No. Okay. No. Instrumental. Okay.
Jordan Gal:Instrumental attracting people to to do projects, to build their apps? Or are you starting to get more into Most
Brian Casel:most of these videos are showing the instrumental dot dev components library. Okay. And show showing what I'm building there. Some of them are a little bit more generic like how to build stuff in Rails. So like one of the things in in the components library is we have an authentication component.
Brian Casel:It's it's built on top of the new Rails eight authentication. So I have a video on like how to do Rails eight authentication. Now I have a second video on like how to upgrade it with instrumental authentication. Right? And so then I've got a cup a bunch of other videos about our instrumental scaffolds.
Brian Casel:I have a video course now called Uncommon Tailwind CSS.
Jordan Gal:Okay. You're teaching how
Brian Casel:I build It's teaching but it's more like showing. It's more like Okay. Check this out. Here's my approach to to designing and building this type of thing and here's why I think it works like this and look how easy it is to implement using the instrumental components library. So that Okay.
Brian Casel:I have a bunch of that video content recorded and and starting to roll out this month. But yeah. The the goal there is to is is a just to have a steady flow of of content coming out of my channel which should hopefully grow the audience, which should bring leads into an email. It like that that tailwind course is gonna be like an a lead magnet. So that's like one mini course which hopefully over the course of the next year will be one of five or seven of these mini courses that are lead magnets for emails.
Brian Casel:Okay. Grow the email list, grow the YouTube channel. That that brings buyers for the components product which should be launching by January. That's what I see as like the low end product offer Mhmm. From Instrumental Products.
Brian Casel:Buy that for a few $100 and and you get our awesome tool set. You can upgrade from there to May maybe like a middle tier which might be like a coach, like a done with you, like async product coaching. Like use our components but you're building and I'm giving you some feedback on it.
Jordan Gal:I mean in between that and and hire.
Brian Casel:But the main upgrade is like, hey, you you just wanna build a a product and you see how how we build with components. Mhmm. You can hire us. It's you know, projects are three months long and let's do it. You know?
Brian Casel:And I and by the way like I'm booking those for q one right now. And and so like So that's that's the service that that we're doing actively now. That's been all the revenue in 2024 is is doing that service. The MVPs as a service. And in 2025, I want to build this business out with like not just getting leads from my network of word-of-mouth and people that I know but getting leads from an audience funnel that that drives that, you know.
Jordan Gal:So these videos are entry points and together they can create these courses and you can create additional courses over time. Just just more entry points.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Courses like not selling. Like these are free email lead magnets.
Jordan Gal:Know? Right. Value. Yeah. Value.
Jordan Gal:In in a bucket. Yeah.
Brian Casel:But the For the most part of the content is just gonna be like YouTube content. We're gonna reap and and my editor is gonna be cutting clips out for shorts for YouTube, shorts for TikTok, shorts for whatever else. Like, that's that's all the legwork that I don't wanna be doing. So so I think it's actually working well. Like like right now, this is week one of of him of his retainer.
Brian Casel:So like, I've already been able to record like three new videos this just this week because all I need to do is I got the camera right there. I just flip it on, record something, and I spend like less than an hour doing that and dropping it to Dropbox and he and the thought is everything else is he's gonna take care of it. So
Jordan Gal:So YouTube is YouTube is the home base, the the hub for the main video. And then the snippets that come out of it, the clips that come out of it, those can be put onto the individual networks, Instagram, TikTok, what Blue Sky, whatever.
Brian Casel:That's the thought.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. So so it sounds to me one of the things I feel like I'm behind on, I use YouTube. I don't I don't use YouTube. I watch YouTube videos
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:When they're embedded on sites and that's how I come across YouTube. But I very rarely go to YouTube and I discount on my mind and I feel like that's a mistake.
Brian Casel:Oh. Yeah. It's okay. First of all, I I I spend a lot of time on YouTube. Like at home.
Brian Casel:I I like That's my When I'm not watching entertainment? Well, when I'm not watching like a Netflix show or something? Yeah. Usually at the end of every night, like I flip over to YouTube and I just watch YouTube shit.
Jordan Gal:Cool.
Brian Casel:Because I don't have cable, you know? Yeah. Interesting.
Jordan Gal:I feel like I should have more confidence in YouTube and just centrally in our in our mind.
Brian Casel:And and for that reason, I I use different accounts. Like my personal Gmail is where I watch NBA highlights on YouTube and and watch my favorite bands live performances on YouTube. Right? Mhmm. But then my work account is where I'll see like coding stuff and marketing stuff and tech and all that stuff.
Jordan Gal:Cool. Cool. Yeah. I have I created a Rosie account on YouTube and I post there, like, the demo on the homepage is there and it's just yeah. It's just interesting.
Jordan Gal:People comment on it. They're asking questions.
Brian Casel:I I've been saying it for a year and I've been disappointed in myself for not executing on this because I I really believe that if if you want to be doing content marketing, I feel like that has to be video content marketing now. Like, yes, people will be successful with their written form blogs and their newsletters. Yes, that stuff, you can certainly build an audience. But I think if you I Like, if you think about it like a discovery platform, the way to to expose yourself to more new people who who have never heard of you, people who have never heard of our podcast, those people are not going to just find our podcast. This podcast is not a lead magnet.
Brian Casel:We're not attracting new people. We have this we have like the same like 1,000 people who just listen to us every week.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. This the end of the line.
Brian Casel:We we've hit the ceiling, you know. And and we love you, 10,000 people, but there's not gonna be like a second thousand, you know.
Jordan Gal:This is it. The the road from here. You know, just talk
Brian Casel:about a plateau, mean. But but the the discovery platforms, I think I think the it's YouTube, man. Like that's where people because YouTube is so algorithm driven and that's where the algorithm actually works well is on YouTube. Yeah. That discovery there.
Brian Casel:You know? It's discovery. When you go on when anyone Alright. Like and also people think about YouTube like, oh, it's a search engine and you should have all these videos that optimize for keywords and like, yeah, you might get some drive by views from keywords, but the game on YouTube is the algorithm. And the algorithm is smart.
Brian Casel:Like, it it just serves if you go on your on your homepage on YouTube, it's going to serve things that you are interested in.
Jordan Gal:It doesn't devolve into fist fights at school cafeterias.
Brian Casel:Like if you it's it's literally based on what you watch and then it's just gonna give you more of what you want and it and it's like and and if you're publishing quality content, that that's the other thing that I sort of love about conceptually about investing in YouTube is that like it literally rewards quality content. Not just production quality but like it has to be interesting. So if you put a lot of creative effort into serving people well with your content.
Jordan Gal:It actually works.
Brian Casel:You you It's actually works but you have to do it consistently over a long period of time and it's very difficult to do and that's that's why it's hard. Not That's why not everyone does it.
Jordan Gal:But Yeah.
Brian Casel:The people who do do it, like they have large audiences. And that Mhmm. And and But that's what I'm saying is like, you could write really good tweets all year long or really good blog posts all year long and you're not just gonna be discovered. But you could create really good videos and YouTube will expose you to more and more people, you
Jordan Gal:know. Interesting.
Brian Casel:That's why I think it's worth investing in in video and that's that's why I am,
Jordan Gal:You know? Cool. I love it. So we got one more episode next week. We'll talk a little bit a little bit about end of year Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Goals for next year. We've talked about this. I think you and I are relatively on the same page when it comes to, you know, setting goals. Have a
Brian Casel:good one for for 2025. I'm I'm gonna this is gonna be a cliffhanger for next week. But I know what my goal is. It's it's different for 2025 and I'm pretty excited about it and nervous about it. So.
Jordan Gal:Okay. I like it. Hell yeah. Until next time.
Brian Casel:Thanks Later, bro.
