2025 Mid-Year Update
Welcome back, everybody. A reunion update episode of Bootstrap the Web. Brian, it's great to be back again.
Brian Casel:Jordan, it's it's great to catch up again. Mean, we were just catching up off air, but you know what? As soon as you said, welcome back, everybody, I I got this sudden, like, rush of, like, nervous energy, like bootstrapped web. Oh, man. Here we go.
Jordan Gal:Yes. Yes. It's great to be back.
Brian Casel:Yeah, dude. This is so we were we were talking. I think it's been about seven or eight months since our last update. And as I said back then, hopefully hopefully, our our listeners kept the feed alive in your podcast player. So here we are with an update.
Jordan Gal:Yep. Yep. It's gonna be funny to open up Spotify and, you know, you hit the podcast thing and the newest ones come up to the top and up. New one.
Brian Casel:Yep. Yep.
Jordan Gal:So it is it's the end of summer. It's August. My kids started school yesterday. I think in your neck of the woods, they start a little later after Labor Day?
Brian Casel:They're starting on Monday. So, yeah, this is our this is their last week off. We we just got back from a quick trip up to New Hampshire. We we had an Airbnb on a lake and, yeah. Cool.
Brian Casel:So we're we're wrapping it up here.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Same. Summer's over. We we are back back. Get the kids off to school.
Jordan Gal:I got the house to myself to get some work done.
Brian Casel:Nice.
Jordan Gal:Let's talk about summer.
Brian Casel:We don't have to.
Jordan Gal:I I've been listening to the podcast. You we are both at the Outer Banks. Brian's wearing an Outer Banks shirt. It's it's kinda cool over there.
Brian Casel:It's great. I've I've never been there, but we so we went down there in June, I think. Drove all the way down there, did a stop in Philadelphia, and then had a great Airbnb on the beach, and that was a great beginning to our summer.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Cool. And I was there in July with family, and I missed the Atlantic Ocean.
Brian Casel:You know? Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Don't Lake Michigan is amazing because it I mean, it's it's an ocean of freshwater, and it's super super close. And I went on a boat recently, a friend's boat. Like, it's great to be able to use almost as an ocean, but the Atlantic's its own thing.
Brian Casel:Oh, the Atlantic is great. Yeah. And same with my my girls. Like, we go to the beach all the time here in Connecticut, but it's the Long Island Sound, so there's there's no waves. So they got some wave action.
Brian Casel:And then on our drive back up, we stopped through Atlantic City, New Jersey. And the town next to it is Margate, New Jersey. My dad came down and and met us down there. That's where my dad grew up. His grandfather or my my grandfather, his father, started Castle's Supermarket in Margate, New Jersey, which is still the dominant suit supermarket in this small town right next to Atlantic City.
Brian Casel:So so we Independent grocery grocery store. Wow. This is so Margate is like a a very small beach boardwalk town. Right? It's literally right down the road from Atlantic City.
Brian Casel:It's where my dad grew up. Castle supermarket has been going for, like, a I think almost a hundred years. And no. Not not sorry. I have that I have the the dates wrong a little bit, but a while.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And so, you know, it's a really a kick, especially for my for my kids to come in and see, their name in in light. Yes. And they've got, like, like, castles, like branded foods and stuff in there. And and so it's pretty cool.
Jordan Gal:Very cool. Different form of entrepreneurship, but still still entrepreneurship. Absolutely.
Brian Casel:For sure, man. Yeah. The real deal.
Jordan Gal:Cool. Did you guys do did you guys chase crabs on the beach at night by chance in in the Outer Banks?
Brian Casel:No. But we saw the little ones crawling crawling around a lot.
Jordan Gal:Yes. It's the first time we did it. We've gone there two years in a row. And this year, we discovered at night on the beach, everyone takes their flashlights and chases these crabs and
Brian Casel:Oh, I didn't know that's a thing.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. We didn't know the first year either. So at night, everyone goes out and you just hear kids screaming all the way up and down the beach, chasing crabs, like putting them in solo cups.
Brian Casel:We saw dolphins swimming around.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. The Shrek or dolphins. Yeah. It's some great core memory stuff.
Brennan Dunn:Just And
Brian Casel:we we missed the horses. So we we, like, we went up there to to Corolla Corolla. To and had a had, like, a tour booked for these horses, and then I realized I booked it for like the following week when we're already home.
Jordan Gal:Oh, damn. We we did the horses, you just gotta go once. It's just a very odd, unique thing, but it's
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Know, it's not that big of a thing.
Brian Casel:Right. Right.
Jordan Gal:So
Brian Casel:What else, man? I yeah, like, I mean, we'll get in don't worry folks. We'll get into the business stuff.
Jordan Gal:Yes. That's right.
Brian Casel:That's right. How's the summer overall, like like work wise with the family, like kids going into camp? Like, what what's that looking like?
Jordan Gal:It it was great. The kids went to sleep wake camp.
Brian Casel:Oh, nice.
Jordan Gal:And yes. And there's an overlap of two weeks. The oldest one goes for four weeks, young ones go for two weeks. So there's this overlap of two weeks where they're all out of the house. And, you know, my wife and I had a a great time.
Jordan Gal:This time we did not go away because we we had a trip planned that we just got back from last week from Croatia. So we didn't feel the need to go add another trip on top of it. So we kinda just got to lay low. Of course, my wife is restless since we like redid one of the kids rooms that hadn't been redone yet or something or other.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Already doing a room here too. Yes.
Brian Casel:My kids, you know, they're they're doing day camp. So they did, like, four weeks at one, and they did two weeks at another one. And then we did this quick New Hampshire trip last week, and now it's now it's back to the grind, back to school.
Jordan Gal:I was in Croatia last week. Very cool place. You know, we we gave my daughter, who's 13, we gave her the option to have a big bat mitzvah party or to take a trip. In in her infinite wisdom, she chose the trip, which I have to give credit for.
Brian Casel:Fantastic.
Jordan Gal:So we went we went to Croatia, hit up Dubrovnik, which is the Game of Thrones vibe. But that's busy in Tursi. Was great. You know, you just need like a day or two there. And then we spent the rest of the week in Havar, which is an island and just lovely place.
Brian Casel:It looks amazing. I I wish I had made it to those microconfs that were there, but I missed those.
Jordan Gal:I stayed at the hotel that microconf was in on Rob's recommendation. Because, know, we just needed a place to stay for for one night while we were in the in Dubrovnik area before we took the boat to Havar. So it was funny. I, like, texted him, you know, photos a photo from the lobby. And I was like, guess guess where I am.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. So that that was cool. Beautiful place.
Brian Casel:You're doing the hallway track, but no one else is there.
Jordan Gal:Yes. Just the solo solo hallway track. Right. But it was cool. It was really nice to see Europe, the the right version of Europe.
Jordan Gal:Europeans know how to vacation and that's kind of the cliche, but it's true. You know, we we like took a boat one time, like the basically what my daughter was after was like crystal clear waters. That's, like, what she had in her mind.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:And I was, alright. Noted. So I did, a sailing trip, and you, park in these little inlets where it's just your boat and maybe another two or three sailboats. And everyone's anchored. Everyone's swimming around.
Jordan Gal:You just bump across like six Italian, like 75 year olds. Like three couples, they're all floating together on a little floaty.
Brian Casel:Oh,
Jordan Gal:yeah. They got wine. They're smiling and tan. It's like that's that's that's how you do it right there. Yes.
Brian Casel:Exactly. It's very cool. It's been a while since I've been to Europe. We gotta get I know, we're already trying to think through what are the next what are the next two or three trips we're gonna make, you know?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. How old are your kids now?
Brian Casel:Nine and 11.
Jordan Gal:Okay. So very similar. Mine are nine, 11, 13.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:And this was the first time that they had experience with travel. Not vacation. Right? You can fly in somewhere and go to a nice hotel and sit around. Fine.
Brian Casel:But you guys travel a lot? We we do,
Jordan Gal:but this was their first challenging travel. Okay. Different languages, very foreign looking, you know, experience and place and roads and people and sweating and you take a three hour boat ride and the bureaucracy's strange and why do they ask our see our tickets four times. And then you get to the port and you gotta walk with your luggage for ten minutes in the heat. So, like, it was their first time like, well, I'm I'm tired.
Pippin Williamson:Like
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Now what? Now what?
Brian Casel:My girls are have been through that. I we we went to The Philippines with them. Okay. We we went to Cambodia with them with a bunch of hops in between and and then getting stuck in Ho Chi Minh City and like no like, no there is no English spoken there and it's a it's a scene. Yeah.
Brian Casel:But I mean, we're troopers at this point, you know.
Jordan Gal:Yes. It's I I think it's really important and and it makes you appreciate your home life. It makes you appreciate America and how easy and relatively functional everything is. So it's cool. The cool growing experience, you know, sitting by the pool, always good for you.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I mean, we're, you know, we're we're big travelers, but we're also very big home bodies, my my whole family. Like, we're we're actually very chill, so we like to we have we're super routine at home. But then even on vacations, we it's literally like we split up every day. It's like half the day of activities and half the day of just chilling, like reading or I'll I'll I'll open the laptops.
Brian Casel:Like, this this week up you know, we did this lake house in New Hampshire where we're hitting the beach half the day. We're going canoeing and kayaking, and then we're chilling in this really nice Airbnb with a lake view. And and so, like, that's been our routine on, like, every trip, whether it's whether we're going on airplanes or Airbnb's or wherever, you know.
Jordan Gal:So you you you balance properly. Were you able to get away from work? I was.
Brian Casel:I were I did work well, this last one I worked a lot. The the Outer Banks I worked less, but but this this was sort of a workcation. Like, released a new AgentOS version while I was there and yeah. Cool. Anyway.
Jordan Gal:Well, May maybe this is our segue right here.
Brian Casel:Here we go.
Jordan Gal:Alright. So let's think. We spoke months ago, and the goal of this update was to be like, alright. Let's catch up in like six months Yeah. And see where things are going.
Jordan Gal:And it's always good to be able to take a little bit bigger perspective than just what happened last week, this week. You know, if we look over a six month period, it always looks different.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Because, know, especially for folks listening like, we, you know, we always used to do these, like, annual, like, end of the year recaps. Like, how how did the year go? What what are we looking forward to next year? On this one, we're we're roughly midway through the year, a little bit past midway.
Brian Casel:So how are we feeling about 2025 from a high level? And then we'll we'll drill into what we're focused on right now.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Cool.
Brian Casel:How about
Jordan Gal:you? Okay. So let's see. I would categorize the last six months as mixed, but in the right direction. Thi things have gone well, for sure, but some real challenges over the last, like, two, three months.
Jordan Gal:So in January, we started growing and the product started clicking and people started using and activating and converting and so like that felt great. So I I wanted to use our key resources which is money in the bank. Let's if if advertising is working and that was the channel that we found that really worked for us, then let's hit the gas. And we got into this into this very, very positive place where if I put in $10, we would grow by $2 in MRR. And if I put in a $100, we'd grow by 20.
Jordan Gal:If I put in a thousand, we'd grow by 2,000. If I put in, you know, 20,000, we'd grow. So it stayed pretty consistent for a while and I just kept ratcheting up and all of a sudden we were growing. I had some of my biggest months of my career by far. It was like cart hook.
Jordan Gal:You know, adding $10.20 k and MRR per month was like, I thought right. So in my mind, I got I could not help myself but get into this space where I was like, up into the right, baby. You know, why should this stop? It's all working. Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:And and then it did stop. And it was like, you know, I just wrote this Indie Hackers article and I talked about we we got to a million ARR in eight months from the first paying customer.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Incredible.
Jordan Gal:Absolutely awesome. Right? I you know, better than I expected, much faster than anything else that that I've done. And right right at a million ARR is when the friction started.
Brian Casel:So, like, the question is, like, what what what did the the the stop come from? Was it, like, the the marketing channel dried up? Like, or like, we know that, like, ads can burn out after a while, or was it, like, churn is catching up with it? Or yeah.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. It wasn't churn, which is great. Right? It wasn't like, uh-oh, you know, we've kinda hit that that equilibrium of how much you're growing and how much you're churning, and now you're kind of stuck. It was not that.
Jordan Gal:Churn stayed pretty consistent on a percentage basis. It got better some months actually. What what happened was it's it's like the advertising, you really don't have that much control and insight. You can control your spend, you can control your creative, but what Meta and Google do, you don't control. So you don't you don't really know what's happening and who's being shown the ads.
Jordan Gal:You can look at your analytics and you can look at your reporting and that gives you guidance. And in many ways, that guidance and that analytics really led us astray. I I'm not a data driven founder. I'm a gut kinda driven founder. And I felt very much like I needed to go toward being more data driven because this is a self serve product and what matters are the individual conversion rates of the points in the funnel.
Jordan Gal:Many people are at the top? How many people are getting to account creation? How many people are activating? How many people are getting to this step and this step and this step? And I really felt the need to become more data driven and work and be guided by that.
Jordan Gal:And what I did not appreciate along the way was that bad data is worse than no data. Mhmm. And we got some bad data, and combined with some inexperience on my part, and it led us it led us astray.
Brian Casel:So was it that, like, the marketing channels more detail. Yeah. I mean, we're we're getting a little bit granular here. But, like, I Yes. Put, like, with the with the advertising channels, is it that like they're start maybe the algorithms are starting to target different users.
Brian Casel:So you might see a lot of engagement on the ads, a lot of sign ups, but maybe those aren't producing the quality sign ups that you were getting earlier.
Jordan Gal:Yes. That's a good way to put it. What we were doing at first was we really focused on sign ups. So how much are we paying per sign up? And the reason for that was because the conversion rate of those sign ups was consistent for a solid two or three months in a row.
Jordan Gal:So January, February, March, that conversion rate was very high, and because of that, I didn't really worry about it. I was like, okay, great. So our funnel converts really well, therefore, add more to the top of the funnel. And that is maybe the first mistake that led us into some of this difficulty. Because when we were too focused on sign ups and the cost per sign up, that led us to focus on that number and optimize that number.
Jordan Gal:And what happened was we were running several types of campaigns. We were running on meta platforms. Right? So this is Instagram and Facebook, and we were also on Google. And Google, in particular, has this type of campaign called the p max campaign.
Jordan Gal:Speaking of granular, let's get into it because this is what really happened. So p max campaign, performance max campaign, you just give it your creative, you give it your copy, you give it your statics, you give it your videos.
Brian Casel:Let Google's robots figure it out.
Jordan Gal:And let that's right. They go get you conversions. And so what happened was that campaign started to work so well, it cut down the cost per sign up by more than 50% compared to all the other campaigns. So in my mind, I'm like, oh my we we hit pay dirt. We found oil.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:And then we started increasing the budget in that campaign, but I wanted to stay disciplined on the total amount that we were spending in ads. So as we increased the budget on that campaign, we pulled budget from the other campaigns.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:And that created
Brian Casel:Okay. So that that's like the the the shift in the Yes. In the type of because if you think about it, it's probably very different people, very different segments of the market are coming through Google as compared to Meta or or
Jordan Gal:And we didn't quite realize that, and we weren't fast enough to move on it. And so three, four weeks in, all of a sudden the conversion rate's not the same. And then we look back and we say, oh, boy. We we not only made a mistake in attracting the wrong people that don't convert, we also pulled money away from the campaigns that were working really well on converting.
Brian Casel:What, like, what do you know about the people and the businesses that are coming through? Like, are are you able to see, like, okay, these types of businesses with the with this these characteristics are great, and these sort of look like them, but there's some red flags that make them not so great.
Jordan Gal:So here's the thing. It got pretty difficult to keep a firm grasp on that when we had a 100 sign ups a day.
Pippin Williamson:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:Right? A 100 account creations a day, I don't really I can't keep track of every single one. Do that every single day for three weeks in a row. I don't you don't know who's in the funnel, you know? Yeah.
Jordan Gal:You're like, I see I see these businesses and I see the names and I see the email addresses and the website being scraped and it feels kinda right like everyone else. But they were coming from a different place with a different context and they they it was wrong.
Brian Casel:I you know, I I I'm also like you, not very data driven. I have data and I use it for some things, but I am much more story driven to to a point like, just what am I hearing from customers? And that comes through different channels, whether it's support, requests, onboarding surveys, you know, things like that. And I sometimes I wonder how if I'm biased toward the people who are just the loudest, and that might not be giving the full picture. Yeah.
Brian Casel:Because that because actually often the the best customers are the quietest. So it's hard to hear from them, you know.
Jordan Gal:They're just right for you and you're right for them and they just go on their merry way and they activate and sign up and convert. Yep. Right? Nice and easy.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:Is this so this combination of things like, right, getting 3,000 sign ups a month almost made it impersonal. Because you can't know everyone, you can't you can't keep track of every support ticket, you're you you start to become a little more disconnected. And so when we finally realized what was wrong, to turn the boat around, it's not you can't just go back to meta and say, that campaign that was working really well, I'm just gonna increase the budget, I want it to work just as well. It doesn't work that way. So we had to find our way back to the same level of performance and ICP and all this combination of things.
Jordan Gal:It took us, you know, it took us two months to kind of get back there. Mhmm. And and that was very painful, because I was I I thought up into the right was just gonna keep going in that direction.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:And when it didn't, it it stressed me out. It creates, you know, changes the vibe inside the company because we were on a rocket ship who everyone's happy when you're on a rocket ship. As soon as the rocket ship stops rocketing, everyone's like, oh, I guess we gotta really do all this work to kind of figure out what to do, and then we rebuilt the funnel and yes. So that's kind of where I am now coming out of it. Why don't I pause there, and let's hear about what's going on on your half of the year, and then I'll I'll come back to
Brian Casel:We'll come back because I know that you were know that you were posting some stuff about, like, like, the onboarding overhaul and stuff. I wanna I wanna hear more about that.
Jordan Gal:Yes. We redid the funnel alongside finding this better targeting at the top of the funnel. So that that's that's what I can talk about. Cool.
Brian Casel:How about you? About Alright.
Jordan Gal:I guess so. February?
Brian Casel:Yeah. I'll start high level. So high level looking at 2025 so far, I feel like you know, I think about it in two halves. And I think that the first half was just not as good as the second half is turning out to be. I'm much more excited and focused on the the business that I'm working on right now is called buildermethods.com.
Brian Casel:And I I can get much more into it, and this is this is like the thing that I'm really finally found something that I feel like I'm taking a a a much bigger swing on, and I can and I'm really digging into this, trying to settle into it for a long time to come. I think it's off to a really good start. One thing that I sort of kicked myself for is, like, I should have been starting this back in January, but I but I delayed because I because I had been thinking about this concept for what builder methods is for much you know, going back to last year. But I, for whatever reason, sort of waffled on it, got distracted with other things. I I I spent the first half of the year shipping instrumental components, which is like this lot, you know, the UI library for Ruby on Rails.
Brian Casel:Launched that, you know, got got about as as much sales as I expected to get from it. They they still trickle in, but it's a it took me longer to ship that and get get it out the door than I had wanted it wanted it to. And I was sort of I it it was the kind of project that was like, alright. I'm in q one, 2025. I had started this back in the '24, and I was like, well, I know that I like, I was already thinking that I wanna get into this builder methods concept, but I don't wanna just jump jump ship.
Brian Casel:I wanna see this first project through and actually ship it and get for customers on that. So I did that. It took me half the year to get there, but I did. So finally, in as we get into around June is when I started to really make the turn to, okay. Now it's time to finally start building what's been floating around in my head for about a year now, which is some sort of business brand.
Brian Casel:Maybe we call it a training company. Maybe we call it a membership or a community. I'm not really sure yet, but something in the space of building with AI. That is what I'm doing here. And what's sort of interesting about this business is that I'm going about it in a very backwards way from from how I've done everything else before.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Can can
Jordan Gal:you get into that? Because I feel like that's the defining characteristic of what you're doing very differently.
Brian Casel:Yeah. So on one level, it's like I'm starting with the distribution first, the marketing first, the audience first. I'm I'm head first into YouTube. That's what I'm spending most of my time on is creating YouTube videos. And the YouTube channel for me has been finally something that I feel is is actually a pretty strong marketing distribution channel.
Brian Casel:Like, went from I think back in January, was at around 2,000 subscribers. It it's over 12,000 now. It really started to click once I started making videos about Cloud Code and Cursor and building with AI and the workflows. And also just putting a lot more effort into my videos and and the writing behind them and the production. But I think it's more about the topic space that there's just a lot of demand in the market for that that I'm and I've I've seen it for a while, but I hadn't started really executing on it until around June.
Brian Casel:What's also interesting about it is that I'm starting this business without a concept for what the product is gonna be yet. So in every other business I've ever started, it's like, I've got this product idea. Let's see if I can build a business around that.
Jordan Gal:Yes.
Brian Casel:Now it's for
Jordan Gal:the marketing engine
Brian Casel:for the product. So so now I'm starting it as, like, a creator building an audience first. I know what space I'm in, and I and I also know what what sub segment of that space that I'm in. A little bit more leaning more toward the professional, the the career software developer who needs to get who needs to sort of stay ahead of the curve when it comes to building with AI. Mhmm.
Brian Casel:I'm also getting a lot of inbound from teams who want to get their teams, you know, up to speed on AI, and I've been working with some teams on that. So individuals and teams, professionals, but professional can mean a lot of things. You can be younger, more junior in your career, but I'm also getting more senior people coming through. So I know the space. I know the I know the the customer.
Brian Casel:I know I'm I'm really digging into what their specific problems and pain points are, and there's a few. So I know all that. And I've been building up this funnel first. The YouTube channel, which is going into my email list, and both of those have been growing really like like, finally, I found some like a marketing funnel that I can actually drive. Feel like everything else that I've ever done before YouTube has been like you know, I've had some wins in my career, but I always felt like from a marketing standpoint, it's been like I I I got lucky, whether it's some word-of-mouth, a little bit from this podcast, some SEO stuff that came and went, some tactics that are short lived, or or I felt like I'm forcing it.
Brian Casel:I'm trying to make some marketing channel work. Mhmm. With YouTube, it's a ton of work. It's insanely hours consuming, but but it is exposing me to new people every single day Yeah. On a consistent basis.
Brian Casel:The algorithm on YouTube to me is is the best channel if you're to to just get in front of your people. Like, it's it's just extremely efficient. And, you know, you you might assume about YouTube that like, viewers on YouTube are just gonna stay on YouTube. They're never gonna come into your funnel. That's not what I'm seeing.
Brian Casel:They they
Jordan Gal:are interesting. How are you making that transition?
Brian Casel:Every video I do, I'm promoting my newsletter, and they're signing up every day. Okay.
Jordan Gal:Know?
Brian Casel:Look, you
Jordan Gal:you used to be I think you're either discounting, or not mentioning, or forgetting. Used to be like a newsletter pro. You had a good newsletter.
Brian Casel:Yeah. So
Jordan Gal:But before, newsletters were a thing, before Substack, before Beehive, before any of it. So this seems to be it looks like I I guess YouTube is the better top of funnel nowadays than ten years ago when you had new
Brian Casel:At least in in my experience for for this space, they are watching my videos, they're subscribing, and then they're coming into my email newsletter, and they're replying to my emails, and they're filling out surveys, and I'm getting inbound leads almost every day for coaching or team coaching or projects.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. So the YouTube is working to build trust with the audience, not just watching the video, but also start to connect with you
Brian Casel:Yeah. And see the users and the audience. So yeah. So now it's like, alright. I've I have action at the top of the funnel.
Brian Casel:Now right now, like, this this week, this month, I am starting to really tinker and and try to figure out, okay. I've got a funnel now. How do we monetize? What what is the product going to be? And I've You do want
Jordan Gal:it to be a product?
Brian Casel:Well, like, the a product or products can look very so this is not like a SaaS business. This is a creator audience first business. My assumption has been it's going to be some sort of training business, like, probably some sort of, like, lineup of courses or maybe one big flagship course. But as we sit here today, I'm starting to change my thinking on that. I might not even go the courses route.
Brian Casel:I'm thinking a little bit more toward, like, a membership. Like, okay. There's all this free content and free resources from builder methods. By the way, Agent OS is a free open source. Mhmm.
Brian Casel:That's essentially the first product, but it's free open source, and that has a lot of really good traction. We can talk about that. So that that's also bringing a lot of action into my funnel, if you will. But maybe it's not courses. Maybe it's more of like a builder methods pro membership.
Brian Casel:I'm thinking more about workshops
Brennan Dunn:Yeah. I was
Jordan Gal:gonna say, I mean, look, companies companies just have money to spend. Yeah. The number of people that I've hired over the last six months that were just, we will help you redo your positioning and give you homepage, you know, wireframe with finalized copy. That'll be 7 to $500. You know, the the number of times I've said absolutely yes, that's so worth it, is is is a lot.
Jordan Gal:I think I've done that three individual times over the last few months.
Brian Casel:I've I've had a lot of inquiries from team leaders, developer team leaders to have me consult and and offer coaching for with their team. And I'm and I'm putting together packages on that front. So that that could be one component of it.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. It's really like a like a stair step of different offers between free, and then the next level, and the next level, and the next level, and then working directly with you as the most expensive.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Exactly. The the main thing that I'm see, I'm try right now, I'm trying to balance all the different variables for what what would it mean? What is the business model behind this business? Right?
Brian Casel:Every option has some trade offs. The the first one where I was thinking about courses, that's, you know, like, that that's a typical path that, like, a that a YouTuber or creator business would would lead into some courses. Right? One of the downsides of that like, the the upside is that it's, like, pat once you have the courses in the market there, it's it's more passive self serve. Right.
Jordan Gal:I'm thinking about Aaron Francis and some of the
Brian Casel:products that he
Jordan Gal:has that just exist there.
Brian Casel:And also, I was I was sort of modeling off of all the traditional coding boot camp businesses. Like, this is this is essentially that except for the AI era of that was my thought. It's like, let's make the next, I don't know, egghead or or treehouse or or whatever that looks like for it building with AI. But one of the problems with that is that these tools are changing so incredibly fast, like, literally month to month. It's it's changing.
Brian Casel:So the idea of creating courses that just go out of date so quickly and also just creating courses in general is very time consuming. So I I'm not sure. And and then also, like, I I don't know that, like, courses are actually going to solve my customers' biggest problems that I'm hearing. So so now now I'm starting to have some hesitations about courses. I do wanna do a membership as, like, the core offering.
Brian Casel:And I like the idea of having just one Builder Methods Pro membership. That's the one thing that I'm always promoting all year round off the YouTube videos, off the email list, like
Jordan Gal:What you see on YouTube, but more in-depth and more direct access to
Brian Casel:If if you consider yourself a professional in building products with AI, then you should get yourself a Builder Methods Pro membership. Like an Amazon Prime for for this space.
Jordan Gal:Right. Tell your company to buy this and they will say yes
Brian Casel:because Exactly. That's the other thing is that I could sell to to individuals and teams. They could buy seats. Yeah. That's great.
Brian Casel:The then the question is, what what do you get as a member? And I'm starting to think about workshops because I feel like that is the most efficient way to actually solve the problems that I'm hearing from my customers. Because it if if I think about it from a, like, job to be done standpoint or product market fit standpoint, I think that live workshops, like, a day all about Cloud Code, and may maybe another day all about leading your team to get up to speed with AI, another day all about my agent OS framework. Because I can do these regularly. I could rotate through these every month in the calendar where it's like, okay.
Brian Casel:Here's here's the October edition of what what we're learning with how to use Cloud Code, which is probably very different from how it was back in September. You know? So it's changing all the time. We want these, like, short workshops where you can join and get get the latest, you know, and and so that's one concept is that, like, it I don't need to spend all this time creating courses. I could just put on these these workshops, and if you're a member, you get access to the workshop.
Brian Casel:Maybe if you're not a member, you could just buy a ticket to a workshop, and it's like, you could either buy the ticket or you can become a member and get full access. So that's an interesting pricing idea.
Jordan Gal:What I'll tell you as, like, the nontechnical decision maker on spending, if you offer a workshop specifically to our developers, because everything is relatively generalized. And then it has to get specific. Well, we use this and this and this, and we host here, like, okay, I I got all the concepts, but help us apply internally given our stack. Right. That's very, very valuable.
Brian Casel:That that's exactly and I've I've had calls, like, essentially sales calls with Sure. Team leads talking about exactly that. And so that would be, like, the upper level, like, enterprise team Mhmm. Engagement. I'm you know, I'm I am trying to be careful with my time, but I but I think that there's an offer where it's, a one month engagement.
Brian Casel:I do some private coaching with your team, maybe create a private workshop just for your team and your stack and everything. I'm I'm getting inquiries around that. Like, a lot of teams wanting to implement my agent OS framework, and and they want guidance from the creator on how to do with it. So that could be something as well. And then and then it's kinda like layering on top of all that sort of like nice to have revenue would be sponsorships.
Brian Casel:So I'm I'm getting inquiries around about that. So
Jordan Gal:Right. Sponsor the audience gets.
Brian Casel:Sponsor the YouTube channel. Sponsor my newsletter. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Okay.
Brian Casel:So You know, but the the the the trade off or the balance is like, AI have, like, financial targets that I wanna hit with it. Like, revenue targets that I wanna hit with this business. And what's the most efficient way to get there. I wanna get it to a sustainable thing where it's predictable every month. But I'm also very careful about my for me, it's always been about my time and what I'm actually doing, what's giving me energy.
Brian Casel:Because already, just just producing on YouTube, which is the top of my funnel, it's extremely time consuming. Like, every video that I'm doing, which is like a fifteen, twenty minute video, that takes me four full working days to create every every time I do one. So it's
Jordan Gal:How often do you try to post something new?
Brian Casel:I like to do it every week. It ends up being maybe every two weeks Yeah. Because of that time commitment. Yeah. I'm I'm getting much more I'm improving with every video, getting much more efficient around the edges, but there are some things that it just takes what it takes, you know.
Jordan Gal:I I think You know,
Brian Casel:at some point, I'll probably hire a I had a a video editor. I'll probably hire a video editor again at some point, but Yeah. The when it started working was when I took it back over under my full control, full creative effort on every detail, that's when it started working. But there at a certain point, like, I'll definitely need to hire help, but I need revenue before I can get there.
Jordan Gal:So Tricky. So it's it's like the monetization piece can't also be very time consuming because then you kinda get bogged down. Ideally speaking, you can continue putting a lot of time into the content to grow the top of the funnel, but then the monetization behind that is is ideally more efficient than the creation of the content.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Like, if if I had to guess how the rest of my year is gonna look or at least how the how this business model is gonna shake out and it completely might change by next week. But my concept of it right now is I spend most of my time or at least at least half of my time every week creating content for YouTube, and I'm building apps. Like, I'm building my own tools, like, in this business. So I I need to do that to stay up on the workflows and and generate teachable material through my actual practice of building with AI.
Brian Casel:Like, I'm building a tool right now to help me generate my newsletter every week, using AI. So that that's like an internal tool that I will release as a small SaaS product. You can actually see see the landing page for it at, at newsletterlab.ai. I'm, like, halfway through building that, but I'm but I'm also using that project as as teachable material that I can feed into my YouTube channel. So most of my time needs to be on that, creating videos and building with AI, like, actually building software.
Brian Casel:And then and then the monetization side has to be, like, something that's sustainable. Like, I could I could probably do these workshops a couple times a month, but I that that's just where I need to figure out. Like, how do I slot in time to actually deliver paid services? I don't want this to be a a 100% me coaching people all the time and having my calendar packed with sessions. So it has to be something that's that's sustainable.
Brian Casel:There there's that's why I think, like, a core membership where people are paying annually to join, and every month, my funnel is generating x number of new members. That's a little bit of recurring
Jordan Gal:and gross.
Brian Casel:Recurring revenue at the base of this thing. There's sponsorship revenue that's a little bit more passive. And then I'm doing these workshops, and I'm doing some high level coaching to to top it off. That that's how I think it this ends up being built, you know.
Jordan Gal:The the only thing I would say around the workshops is coming at it from my point of view with, you know, venture money, not my own money. My guess is that you'd be surprised how much people will wanna pay for that. Yeah. So that's that's the thing. You know, if if you tell me I'm gonna take your engineering team, let's just call it five people, and we're gonna get them from where they are right now to fully caught up on the latest using your stack, that's worth a lot of money.
Jordan Gal:$10.20 plus thousand dollars.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah. And I I just gave a quote for for that, like, with the Okay. With the team yesterday. The you're right.
Brian Casel:I think I do think that that's and, like, there's a lot of overlap. Like, team there can be these private, you know, high ticket company engagements. They they get their own workshop. But there's a lot of material from that that can be presented to members. Right.
Brian Casel:Right. Right. You're membership, then then then you can get on to you you'll see a calendar. Like, these are the upcoming sessions. Join the ones that are interesting to you.
Brian Casel:Mhmm. And it's also I also see workshops as the conversion point. Right? So I've got free people coming from YouTube into my free email newsletter, and the offer on the new newsletter would always be, like, join the next workshop Mhmm. For this, like, low ticket price.
Jordan Gal:Right. But it breaks the barrier from a free
Brian Casel:It breaks the bar it's it's it's a low ticket price to join one free free workshop. And then, like, the offer on that workshop is, like, you can get access to all the workshops for x dollars a year to become a Builder Methods Pro member. You know? Okay. Separately, the I get these inquiries from teams, and we can and I would give them a separate quote.
Brian Casel:But, like, the main funnel is, like, email us to purchasing a a ticket for a workshop to upgrading to become a member, you know. That that's how I none of that exists today. So so
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I would
Brian Casel:say that could all change, you know.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I I would say that there's a key essential ingredient that does exist. And that was born out of an enormous amount of effort on YouTube, which, you know, anyone who follows you sees the trajectory of the quality of the YouTube videos, has reached a point where YouTube's gonna reward it. And and the audience will will will come because there isn't that much incredible content at that level, and it's the right topic at the right time. So it's kind of like, you stick with it for a year.
Jordan Gal:Like, it it it can't not work.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And it's it's already it's already started working. It's been pretty cool for me because it's it's like the first time something like that has actually really clicked. I've had I've had some content wins in the past, but this like, I had a couple videos that that got to 50,000 views within a week, you know. Mhmm.
Brian Casel:And, like, not every video like, some some of them are are duds still, but, like, I'm I'm definitely improving with every video that I do, and I'm starting to figure out my formula. And but anyway, that's
Jordan Gal:that's been fear feels like it's growing in a different way, Where a year ago when you put something out, it was basically to your existing audience. Now that audience is kind of growing and touching completely new people on the internet that you have never seen you before.
Brian Casel:They
Jordan Gal:That's don't follow you. Yes.
Brian Casel:That is what's most exciting to me. Like, this is the first time that I found a channel that, like, every single new subscriber on my list is somebody who just found me for the first time last week.
Jordan Gal:Right. It's like it's like it will get to 20,000, and it will get to 50,000. And beyond, it's just consistency. And I guess you gotta juggling the monetization while while being able to keep consistent with it is this the challenge.
Brian Casel:Yeah. That's the challenge. Like, again, like, you and me have always had this dynamic where, you have this firepower, the, like, the the funds to to do these, like, you know, ad funnels and experiments.
Jordan Gal:Like Yeah.
Brian Casel:For me, my challenge is is always, like, I'm I'm a one person bootstrapped founder. You know? I I don't like, I I I need to, like, allocate my time and energy. Even even if it's not time, it's it's energy. Like, creating a YouTube video wipes me out.
Brian Casel:You know? Even if it only takes me three hours in a day, the rest of my day is shot. So it's like, that's that's the challenge for me personally is figuring out how to how to make all these activities in this business model, like, work work for me. You know? That's right.
Brian Casel:So
Jordan Gal:Well, the if I can yeah. Come back to yeah. Basically, my my second half of the year. So my my goal is it's pretty straightforward. I I wanna get to 2,000,000 ARR by the end of the year.
Jordan Gal:And the reason for that is because that gets us to sustainability. We don't need any more cash. And I think in the market right now, that's the right thing for us to do. I think we we can raise more money and the environment is there for it and our performance is there for it, but I'm not convinced it's the right thing to do for the business. That might change.
Jordan Gal:You know, maybe the market changes or, you know, I I I have rolling conversations with investors to just be aware of what's going on, meet new people, and stay sharp on articulating a larger vision than just, you know, where's the revenue at right now and what are we doing next. But I'm not convinced that that is the right thing. And because of that, I'd I'd I just wanna get to sustainability. Right? So if you think about that plateau we hit for like two months, the stress was around, well, I wanna get to sustainability.
Jordan Gal:And and and the longer this plateau lasts, the more likely it is for us to need to raise more money. And I don't wanna be in a position to need to raise more money. I wanna be able to raise more money from a position of strength if we want to raise more money. So I guess it's all relative. Right?
Jordan Gal:It's not this awful thing, but it it was still very stressful. Mhmm. Fortunately, over the last few weeks, I guess really two weeks, it it unlocked. And it was extremely painful to get the advertising back on track. Now that's back on track.
Jordan Gal:And then I I I would say the other mistake I've made over the last few months was getting too reliant on reporting and analytics. And I made several mistakes underneath that larger umbrella of mistakes. So in the effort to get more data driven, right, I I basically saw this, oh, this is gonna be a conversion optimization challenge. I'm gonna look at this funnel, and I'm gonna identify where the bottlenecks are, and we're gonna jump in and focus on that part of the funnel and optimize it. And the only way to approach that is with good reporting and analytics at our fingertips.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm. And we did not have great analytics before, and so we underwent a series of projects, and I put on a lot of pressure on Rock to get our reporting and analytics in order. And he put a lot of work on it. And that also
Brian Casel:this so much. I remember in early early years of Clarity Flow, I spent so many developer hours of my own and my developer to just get our internal dashboards figured out.
Jordan Gal:If it feels like it gives you power and better decision making, and it just didn't. So one of the real challenges we have is that if we look at our analytics, we can I can be convinced that we should stop advertising? And the reason for that is because it's very difficult to understand which user came in through ads and which didn't. Mhmm. And the analytics gave us a false impression of where the customers were coming from.
Jordan Gal:It showed that, let's just say it's eighty twenty sign ups coming from ads versus not, and then it looked flipped. It looked eighty twenty conversions coming from organic. And and it was wrong. It was just wrong. URL issues
Brian Casel:That's been my experience with it every time I've tried to do it. And and also, like, you really just can't my experience is, like, you can't trust the platforms to give you they'll they'll say they'll they'll have your their tracking pixel and tell you when you got a conversion. Like, no. Like, that's not going to be accurate.
Jordan Gal:That's right.
Brian Casel:Not even close.
Jordan Gal:So I To
Brian Casel:me, like like like, technically, the only thing that has ever worked is just dropping a cookie on the user's browser and passing that along into the analytics to and Yes. So that later later when they sign up, we we store that they came from this.
Jordan Gal:Right. So so we have that now also. Right? We kind of we got there also. And we pass it through to our email provider so that we we have that.
Jordan Gal:Like, we've tried, but really the conclusion I got to was we just need to stop. Just just just be okay with a fuzzier analysis. Just be okay with saying this is the how much we're spending. This is how many people are signing up. This is who's activating.
Jordan Gal:This is who's converting. And, like, stop expecting precision in this decision making process. And what I realized that the the secondary mistake that I made was I looked over at Rock and I was like, I have put you in this terrible position where I've said this matters a lot and I put a lot of stress on you. And we took away one of our two back end developers.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:And so we slowed down on our feature development. And we took Rock and we took his talent and we put it in the wrong direction. We put it internal facing in analytics for a month. Maybe more. More.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:And I just said, enough. Let's just stop. Rock. Let's take your talent and point it where it needs to go. And that is what unlocked.
Jordan Gal:We had we had some issues around our prompting and around our agent quality because we switched providers. Mhmm. Sometime over the next maybe two weeks, you'll see we make an announcement. We have this partner that is awesome, and we you know, we're we're we're making a big bet on. So that transition's not easy.
Jordan Gal:That transition happened at the same time as all the advertising trouble. And I was and then it was really hard to tell, like, is is the transition the thing that's screwing us up? It was really hard to tell everything. Eventually, we AB tested it and and concluded it's not the provider issue, which was very was a relief. And then as soon as Rock got his head outside of analytics and reporting, all of sudden he's creative again and all these series of breakthroughs around the prompting.
Jordan Gal:And all of sudden our agent is amazing now. And, like, now I'm listening to these test calls that people make, and they're incredible. And, course, once you have a great test call as a new user, it builds up enough confidence to say, I guess I should use this thing. Let me put my credit card on, and let me activate. Let me start forwarding calls.
Brian Casel:Yeah. So now that's always the most valuable stuff is is listening to real users, You know? And I, like, I haven't done a lot of I've installed it, but I haven't done a lot of, like, the watching of the video screen recordings of
Jordan Gal:users, which are out. Yep.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I I've tried that stuff. I I don't know. That never really clicked for me as being super useful. The the thing that took I it's always, like, subjective, just like Qualitative.
Brian Casel:Or what do you call it? Yeah. Qualitative. Like, just listening to messages, talking to customers, looking, you know, getting a feel for all the support questions and and requests that are coming in, and and also, like, cancellation reasons. That's always been, like, where I get my most actionable data for better or worse, and it could be worse sometimes.
Brian Casel:But yeah.
Jordan Gal:Yes. But I I went the other way. I went quantitative, and it just led us into a corner. Mhmm. Yep.
Jordan Gal:So so now now I feel more optimistic about being able to get to the financial goal, and then getting to the sustainability goal, and having kind of our, you know, our destiny in our own hands and get to profitability. And and then then there's other things in terms of what the future of Rosie looks like, and what we're doing with it. And that part's been fun. That's the fun part. You know?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Which features? Where are gonna live in the market? How sophisticated should we get? What should we stand
Brian Casel:out to? From a product standpoint, how do you think about Rosie? Like, obviously, it's it's it's voice like like AI voice answering the answering the phones for these small businesses. But like
Jordan Gal:Yes.
Brian Casel:How do you do you have a a more direct way to describe that? What what's the vision of what ROSA could become in terms of like the product in the market?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. There's like a a short term vision and a longer term vision. And the short term vision is in this relief around this phone issue for small businesses.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:That's what the product does. The product creates relief from stress and expectation and guilt and work around the phone for small businesses. So Yep. And that has really split into two, like, key use cases. The first is a service company and the other is a brick and mortar.
Jordan Gal:So brick and mortar, it is a shield to the in store employees. Okay. So one of our biggest customers, 200 unit franchise of oil changes. Amazing customer, our first 100 k per year contract. They had a situation where the people doing the oil changes were responsible for answering the phones.
Jordan Gal:And and that's a disaster because they can't get the work done. Always answering the phone, but then management is like, we gotta answer the phone. That's the next customer. So that was impossible. And this is a company that's operating from a distance and saying, what what do we need to do for these locations to make them more efficient?
Jordan Gal:So then they eventually ended up outsourcing it to the answering service provided by the franchisor, and that's very very expensive. Right? Basically $2 a call, and it's not very good. And they were like, this is this is everything's bad. We don't have any good options.
Jordan Gal:So when they came across AI voice, it creates this shield and we reduce the number of phone calls that get to the location by like 6070%. Because all those calls are, are you open tomorrow? How much does it cost? Where are you located? Do you do motorcycle oil changes?
Jordan Gal:You know, like relatively straightforward stuff that an AI agent does a great job with.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Like, it's filling the need of, like, the inbound phone call based business.
Jordan Gal:Yes. And a human does not need to do that. It is relatively simple. But up until now, a human had to listen to the words, process in their brain, and say the words. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:So AI does a great job of that. That's use case number one. Use case number two is the service companies that for one reason or another can't always answer the phone. It could be a one person dog grooming company and the owner has another job and does you know, drives around on the truck on the weekends. So while she's working during the day Monday to Friday, she's missing phone calls And that that messes up her whole business.
Jordan Gal:This just takes the phone number, takes the message, the person's what they're interested in, their name, and provides a a real message instead of a hang up on a voicemail. And that's extremely valuable.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Like, you think about the phone tag that happens with all these all these companies and then, that those are leads that just go to the next one.
Jordan Gal:Just go to the one. Right? And everyone's frustrated and everything's bad. It's yes. So that's the short term vision is just do an amazing job at that, allow non technical people to get up and running in ten minutes.
Jordan Gal:That's it. That that's enough. That's enough to grow a real business because that problem is so widespread. And our ICP is so wide, this horizontal approach has been super interesting. Now we've kinda gotten to the point where I wanted to get to, which was like the best of both worlds, which is very, horizontal product being marketed vertically.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm. So we have ads for
Brian Casel:Yeah. Very
Jordan Gal:Yes. Industry grooming.
Brian Casel:Vertical. Yes.
Jordan Gal:And we have pages on the site and they go there and it is like, oh, I'm a real estate agent, and I wanna miss these phone these phone calls, and the marketing and the messaging, the positioning is just right for me, and then I get put into a very horizontal product, but it solves my problem the same way.
Brian Casel:I love that. Yeah. Like the, you know, the traditional bootstrapper advice is just like make the make the product for dog groomers or whatever it is. But, like, I I love this how it's, the the product is so simple and universal that, like, every one of these verticals is gonna need have the same product solve their problem. Just have the marketing funnel speak to them, and then they get in, and they're good So to
Jordan Gal:I've gone into the mindset and into the the analogy, and this what I explained to investors also. Mailchimp is what I have in mind. Because Mailchimp, you know, if email gets invented, I don't think you should build Klaviyo or Loops. I think you should build Mailchimp or Constant Contact. So that's my approach.
Jordan Gal:At the same time, if you're Mailchimp, you have to understand, you're going to lose people to verticalize solutions. As as an ecommerce store jumps on, they use Mailchimp, great. As they grow, they're gonna move over to Klade.
Brian Casel:Especially once they want something more Yep. Complex. That's it. You know?
Jordan Gal:So so it has been this exercise in a lot
Brian Casel:of So so then on that note, you're thinking, like, be the
Jordan Gal:The entry point.
Brian Casel:The entry point, the more basic. Like, you don't need the First step. All the all the like, you think about, like, a, like, like, a call center that might have all these, like, if then, like, workflows of, like Yes. These things. Like, that could be, like, the the the HubSpot of of the market, but, like, this is the Mailchimp.
Brian Casel:Right?
Jordan Gal:Yes. They're they're gonna leave us to go there, and we have to kinda run quickly to add features so that they don't because UX commitment is a big deal. Nobody wants to set up a new product if you're doing a good enough job. So it really feels like we we need to internalize this Mailchimp experience of like, be everything for everybody and just admit that you're not you can't hold on to everybody.
Brian Casel:The other nice thing about targeting targeting that side of the market is that your cash you you could be you should be, like, their very first AI calling solution.
Jordan Gal:Yes.
Brian Casel:So the so the game is, like, more like education around the problem and that you have the solution, whereas the game for these other companies is, rip you away from the competitor switch.
Jordan Gal:Like, get
Brian Casel:you get you to switch, get you over that hump
Jordan Gal:of Yes. Who you with, we can do absolutely everything. And we're just saying, we're just gonna nail this thing for you. And then once they get in, they're like, okay, you've nailed this answering service for me. Can you help me with x and y and z?
Jordan Gal:And that is our general strategy of everybody comes in at the base plan. And then we reveal these features and we we show this value curve that you can identify where you live there. Do you have knowledge based stuff and a spreadsheets? Then that's the highest tier. Or do you just actually, I just need to send out text messages during the call and maybe book some appointments, that's this in between thing.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I love it.
Jordan Gal:And then longer term beyond that, you know, I think it's communication channels. So if you have a brain that understands the business, you can have channels relatively easily. Right? Outbound SMS website chat, it uses the same brain, and then you start to build the data over time that understands what is a good response and what's a bad response. And so that's, I think, the longer term version.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Nice, man. I like it. I I I really like that that baseline simplicity and there's so much to build off of that, you know.
Jordan Gal:It it is fun because it's one of the you know, Rallia couldn't take this advice and Kartika couldn't take this advice. And it feels like we are able to take a lot of Basecamp y type of software advice Mhmm. Where you're like, no. My default is just gonna be no more. Yes.
Jordan Gal:That's that's right. Like, oh, do you do restaurants and can you integrate with our POS? And like, no. There's another company that does that and you're better off going there.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah. And because at the end of the day, all these different types of businesses have the same problem with their phones, you know. Yes. And and the solution that you already have, like, solves that.
Brian Casel:It's
Jordan Gal:yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. I think we have we have a lot of work to do.
Brian Casel:I I think, actually, that note, like, ICP, I've been doing a lot of analysis and thinking a lot about the people coming through my funnel, as I was talking about. And I think I don't know. Hopefully, this could be a little bit actionable for our listeners.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I I have something to add to the actionable side, but please go ahead.
Brian Casel:You know, I'm okay. So like my my hypothesis going into this YouTube channel or my pivot on my channel and and builder methods has been, okay, I I wanna help people stay up to speed, stay ahead of the curve when it comes to building with AI. But what does that mean? And there are so many different flavors of this, especially on YouTube. There's a lot of channels that are more like vibe coders.
Brian Casel:Right? Like, you're non technical. You can you can just whip up any slop app in thirty seconds and
Jordan Gal:Yeah.
Brian Casel:It's amazing and blah blah blah.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. That narrative is starting to peak. It's starting
Brian Casel:to peak. Yeah. I think so. And also, like, my whole thing has been, like, I'm speaking to the professional. And if you are serious, meaning, like, you are making a career of this thing, you're not just a hobbyist, you're not just trying to whip up some vibe code or something, then I'm trying to speak your language.
Brian Casel:And I think that that was the first thing that started to resonate with people on YouTube is that, like, they consider themselves a little bit more serious, and I'm I'm sort of a breath of fresh air. Right?
Jordan Gal:So you're talking to them. You're not talking down to them. You're not making promises that aren't real.
Brian Casel:Yep. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. But also, like, I'm I speak in a way that's I I I try to thread the needle where it's like, I'm gonna assume that you have a baseline full stack technical background.
Brian Casel:So there are some things that I can say that I'm just gonna assume you know what I'm talking about. But at the same time, I I've what has always frustrated me as someone learning development and watching YouTube videos over the years, learning Ruby on Rails and whatnot is that it's like sometimes they just gloss over things that are too technical for the beginner coming in. And so I like to try to thread the needle where, like, yes, I'm speaking a more professional tone. I am speaking in some more technical terms, but I am getting more nontechnical people in this ocean of of demand for this topic space. Like, there are nontechnical people who don't know anything about coding.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:But I think some of them are resonating with my content because it's like they get a taste of what the pros do. It's like
Jordan Gal:step up, which is achievable as opposed to someone who started their career and now knows a lot more than they do.
Brian Casel:Yeah. It's like it's like, yes, you could get the vibe coding stuff. You can play around with the n eight n's and the and the Zappiers and stuff and no code stuff. But if you wanna start to actually start like, a lot of them are starting to shift into using cursor. And cursor is a tool used by professionals and vibe coders.
Brian Casel:And so I feel like I feel like there's something here. Like, the the takeaway for people is that, like, you could generally target one side of the market. In my in my case, I'm targeting the more professional serious developer, but it's still going to be attractive to the non developer be because it is like, because they're sort of, like, reaching behind the fence to see what the pros are doing. You know? K.
Brian Casel:And that that that's one thing. And then the other thing is quote, unquote serious or quote, unquote professional can mean a lot of things. And I'm seeing the mix. And and and then this maps to, like, what is each of these problems or their pain points. Right?
Brian Casel:So there is the senior developer who's been in this career for fifteen, twenty years. They need to transition their own skill set from the old way of coding to leveraging AI tools. There's the more junior developer who is employed and they they need to learn the tooling, and they're also a little bit more I'm getting messages from people saying, like, they are afraid that they're not gonna keep their job very longer Yep. At at these junior levels. So they need to skill up to make themselves more valuable either within their current position or to hit the job market or to build something on their own.
Brian Casel:Got it. So so there's that. And then, like, the third the third level is the is the team leader, and their pain point is, like, how do I get my team to adopt the tools? And I've I've tried to do that, and I hear a lot of, like, grumbling from my developers, and and it's a lot of variants. And and so it's it's just been interesting to observe, like, observe and absorb what all the different pain points for the different ICPs are with within this umbrella.
Brian Casel:Mhmm. Right.
Jordan Gal:And so that's for everybody. You're not for the full spectrum, but you're actually not for an individual point. You're for a range in the spectrum.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And it and it's also like, if you're if you're just selling to VibeCoders, then you're gonna sell a course that says, like, how to build your first app in one hour with Right. Cursor. Right.
Jordan Gal:And there's
Brian Casel:a market like that. Sure. Yeah. Know, there's a there's a market for that, and you could sell a lot of courses that way. But I'm I'm thinking about it more like, if you're a professional, you should join this membership, or you should go to many of my workshops because this is what professionals do.
Brian Casel:They're constantly improving. They're constantly trying to stay ahead of the curve. And that that's where I see it as, like, a more long term sustainable. Like, instead of selling a one and done course where you get this thing and then and then I'm useless to you after that, you're it's it's more about, like, networking with fellow professionals who want to stay ahead of it. Like and and that's how that's how I'm starting to think about it.
Brian Casel:Now the question is, how do I build products around that?
Jordan Gal:The right way. My actionable element is send a survey.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:We we have we've been doing a better job of that overall. And a few about a month ago, our SEO team came to us and said, here's the deal. We wanna get you a lot of links. And the best way to get you a lot of links is to have proprietary data. If you can look into your customer public survey
Brian Casel:that you yeah. Could
Jordan Gal:Nice. Into your your data that only you have, and let's come up with a PR pitch based on that data that will go out to reporters and people in the tech world.
Brian Casel:That's a great strategy.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Great strategy. And I was like, think that's really smart. Let's do that. So we we crafted a survey that we don't choose the answers, but we do choose the questions.
Jordan Gal:So we chose the questions in such a way that we hope what comes out of it is a narrative that we can talk about. For us, the narrative is our AI adds jobs and grows businesses not the other way around. Mhmm. Right? Because we free people up to do higher level work.
Jordan Gal:They get more customers. They can do more high level work. They can then grow their business and hire more people. So we're like this positive force in AI as opposed to negative. What I did not really, you know, realize what would come back was gold.
Jordan Gal:Absolute gold feedback. First, people are really willing to fill out surveys. And normally, I think of people I I think we're gonna get no responses
Brian Casel:I know.
Jordan Gal:And we get Every
Brian Casel:a lot. Yeah. I'm like, I I never fill these things out. But then I read them and it's like, oh, man. This is so bad.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I guess people who really care, they they want the opportunity to to tell you.
Brian Casel:It's awesome.
Jordan Gal:Yep. So it it is feature questions, feature issues, churn responses, more pointing toward the road map of what we should do and where we should be in the future and how they're thinking about us and their competitors, and just testimonials for the website. And then along with that, we'll write a blog post, and then we'll go take that blog post and we'll pitch it to tech reporters and say this is our own data. We're happy to give it to you, but you gotta link to us. So it's like Yep.
Jordan Gal:You know, this one thing just created a whole so much value. And, you know, when we hang out Yeah.
Brian Casel:And like, the nice thing about that strategy is like, yeah, you can go pitch it to news, but then then, like, also writers will just start to cite you. Because they they need to fill out their art their articles with, like, data points to support their things. Like, well, this survey from, you know, Rosie Yes. You know, says that this percentage of the market does this and, you know.
Jordan Gal:Right. And then and then the claims that you're able to make on the site are different in nature. Right? Mhmm. 38% of Rozy users have added jobs to their business over the you know, since since starting to use Rozy.
Jordan Gal:It's like now we now with like these honest kind of claims, feel great.
Brian Casel:I love it.
Jordan Gal:Man, we can we can keep going forever. Exactly.
Brian Casel:We could keep I mean, I've been I've been getting a lot of that feedback through YouTube comments that that and and again, that's the kind of thing, like, I never comment on YouTube videos, but, like, people do this. And they're and they're not just, like, bots. They're they're they're not just, like, randos. Like, they're serious developers, like, writing long comments. So that's been interesting.
Brian Casel:And then the other thing, I used to do this back in the day is an email auto response. You you sign up for the email list. You get a you get an email from me that day with a question, and my inbox is full of responses. Just,
Pippin Williamson:Okay.
Brian Casel:You know? That's a really good way to to get a feel.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. May maybe you should send a survey on what product to build.
Brian Casel:Well, I do that too. I I also have, like, sign up for these potential courses because I thought I was gonna do courses. And on the back of that, I have surveys, and I'm getting a lot of those responses as well. So just a lot of lot of messages to sift through and figure out. You know?
Brian Casel:Well So alright. Here we are.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Let's call it, but we gotta do this again.
Brian Casel:As always. Yep. See you. Thanks, folks. Later.
