[49] Allan Branch Joins us to Talk Less, Life, Focus & SaaS
This is Bootstrapped Web, episode 49. It's the podcast for you, the founder who learns by doing as you bootstrap your business online. And today, we've got Alan Branch on the show from Less Everything. We'll be talking, about a whole whole bunch of stuff. SaaS, building a different staying focused, staying not focused.
Brian Casel:Who knows? We'll we'll see where things go. I'm Brian and as always
Jordan Gal:I am Jordan. Nice to speak with everyone and Alan, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3:Thanks for having me.
Brian Casel:Cool. So Alan, for those who aren't familiar with with you and and what you guys do, why don't you kinda introduce yourself real quick?
Speaker 3:Oh, man. So we do we the the parent company is less everything. I have a business partner, Steven Bristol, who's one of the smartest people I know. Eight years ago, we formed Less Everything and started working on Less Accounting. We used to do a conference called Less Conf.
Speaker 3:We've done workshops about running consultancy because we were consultants up until probably 2011. We've written a few little ebooks and yeah. So we do we do lots of little things.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Very cool. And think, you know, what you guys have really built up over the years is your less accounting product, which is kinda really, you know, grown very big, you know, bootstrapped, over the years, taking taking a long time. And so it's so we'll really be kinda like diving into that story and how how things go. Yep.
Brian Casel:But you know, what we usually do here is we start off with like a quick update, like what what we're working on right now. So what are you guys doing right now here at the 2014? You know, what's happening at Less Everything?
Speaker 3:Well, yeah, this is our busy season. You know, it's we have a seasonal bus account against anytime there's quarterly taxes due and then at the end of the year, it's our busy season. We'll actually have the majority of our growth happen in the next three months. And so we're working on, like, I just released some stuff to get in front of the I wanna get in front of, like, accountants is my is my goal in the next few months. And probably about this week, we launched a little HTML five game called Accountageddon, which is like it's a little simple stupid game.
Speaker 3:It's at lessaccounting.com/game, and it's like a little shoot them up game for accountants. They're they're shooting paper clips with with pencil guns and they're shooting p and ls and It's really simple but we just and so off of that, we run retargeting and we run ads to get in front of accountants and then retarget them later, and those sorts of things. And we just do the weird things like that. And it's always looking for the next weird thing is what my job is.
Brian Casel:That that's awesome. Like it's it's such a creative, you know, idea to to get to get something out there and and and like, you know, very cool. So like, I mean, it was interesting that you said you actually go through like busy seasons. I mean, why is that? You know, due to like the tax schedule and that sort of thing?
Speaker 3:Yeah. There's a lot of inertia in bookkeeping and accounting apps where people will get in them and once they kind of get a little bit of data in there, they kind of get stuck and rolling and they don't really wanna switch mid year. I don't I mean, I don't blame people. But no one really wants to switch mid year with book keeping Although it's not really that hard now, you just upload a few QIF or CSV files and you're kind of you're already kind of running. People just I have don't know if it's a procrastination thing or it becomes more important during a certain part of the year.
Speaker 3:Also, it's kind of like probably gym memberships. It's like this year
Brian Casel:Right. This is the year. I'm gonna get it together.
Speaker 3:Not like last year. And then, you know, they start with high hopes and then, you know, by March or, you know, May, they're like, I'm busy doing this project and that sort of thing.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. That's what I would say. It's more of a mental thing and I mean, I've I've done it before. I've know, and and I think accounting is one of those categories that you look at and you wanna ignore and then at some points in the year, you can't ignore it anymore and you wanna just address it so that you can ignore it for the rest of the year. You know it's set up and you're happy about it.
Speaker 3:Exactly. Yeah. It's like anything. As long as you're consistent with it, I do our own books and it takes me about an hour every other week. I mean, but if I let it pile up for a few months, it's a lot more work and a lot more stressful.
Speaker 3:And then I just once it piles up, you try to start resenting it. Like, Oh, But if you're kinda keeping up with it, it's almost like, damn, when I knock it out, I'm doing great.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I
Speaker 3:feel better about it. Even though it's the same tasks.
Brian Casel:Yeah. So what what is the less account well, less everything team look like today? Like, what what is the operation and and like, how is that all what's
Speaker 3:the Yeah. We have it's Steve and I and developer and a support girl. And then we have support girl. I shouldn't call her girl. Annette is support lady.
Speaker 3:Then it's we have a Lust Films team. It's a lot we have a video crew that does their own they're of their own separate company. It's Eric and Danny. And then I have a handful of contractors that do stuff with me, random things, illustrators, and we have we pretty much keep a writer on full time. It's it's really three different people but I send them enough work where it would be one person full time.
Speaker 3:But they do different kind of style projects. One's actually an attorney that helps them write sort of legal articles. So we've kind of, over the past few years, we really shifted the team over from lots of developers, lots being, you know, four or five or six over this past few years as we're now a product company to being more focused around marketing. Most of our money spent doing sort of marketing content development kind of stuff now.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting how I mean, I I would think in the early years, you you do need to develop the product and need those developers on board. And then, you know, it does shift into into more like marketing focus. That that's certainly been the case for me with with Restaurant Engine.
Brian Casel:Kind of a smaller team, but at least my my focus has been, like, in the early days development, and I had a team around that. But now, it's like sometimes I kinda feel like the the product gets put on the back burner too much when I start focusing too much on marketing, which has been like the past year or so. Have you found that with with less accounting? Like,
Speaker 3:you know No. Most of
Brian Casel:the product is built. So
Speaker 3:Yeah. I mean, there's there's, you know, thousands of of feature ideas and, you know, with accounting, at least it's a Pandora's box. Every time you build something, there's nine more features you can build off of it. But I I don't necessarily for us at least, we have such clear competitors with QuickBooks and Xero and Wave accounting, and they're all huge companies with huge budgets. I mean, Xero has taken a $170,000,000 in funding.
Speaker 3:We we can't compete with them on features. They have hundreds of developers. And so you just you just can't compete on a with a feature set like that. So we you know, they're they're trying to be the next QuickBooks of 900 features and we can't race with them on that that path. So instead, we focus more on doing weird stuff, doing weird marketing, talking like normal human beings.
Speaker 3:They can't move as fast as I can and with just me and a couple writers with my content.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And there's a benefit to doing this, They you
Speaker 3:to go through too much approval. Someone's gonna shoot down a good idea. They can't be as creative as we can.
Brian Casel:Exactly. We
Speaker 3:can move fast. We're more nimble. Or nimbler, is that even a word?
Brian Casel:Yeah. I I mean, I think there's a benefit to not having all of those features that anyone and everyone requests. You know? I mean, there's I think people, you know, choose a simple product because because it has less bloat, you know.
Speaker 3:The the problem, and I'm sure you've seen this with with restaurant engineers, you'll have buy in from an owner or someone who's in charge of the books or in your case, a website. And someone like their well, for us, it's an accountant that's like, oh, well, I want this app that does 974,000 things and works for every business in the universe. And they literally we'll have accountants take people off of less accounting. Some accountants love less accounting, but ones that kind of get it. But I had an accountant a year or two ago for me.
Speaker 3:Years ago, they'll say, Why would I move my clients less accounting? I've been on QuickBooks for twenty years and I just figured it out. I'm like Yeah. That's great point. You should stay on QuickBooks because you're fucking crazy.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. But it's a it's a difficult thing to to to say no, especially if it's a if it's a good potential client. Right? I've I've got some some bigger stores, that would be, you know, bigger clients in, the $250 a month tier, which I want that, but but then you start to go off track and then asking your developers to spend too much time on it, but it's not easy to say no. Sure.
Jordan Gal:Generally, I I'd like when I feel very imbalanced toward marketing so that I know the product is good enough because people keep paying for it every month. So it's it's definitely good enough, and then I almost I almost only address the product when it's, like, very obvious that, okay, something else needs to move forward. Right. But besides that, it's yeah. As long as it's more focused on the marketing, I I think that's a healthier balance or anti balance for people in our situation when you don't have the giant the giant budgets.
Brian Casel:You know, I I think in the pet for me, I I think in the last year or two, I've been really heavily on the marketing side and and the sales side and getting those systems turning and and refine those as much as possible. Like, kind of to allow to allow myself and my team to get back into the product someday. Like like, now we're finally starting to add new design templates and things like that. But it's like, we need the cash. You know, we need we the you know, this is a slow bootstrapped SaaS business.
Brian Casel:Like, if we're not getting customers first, we don't have enough time or money to to further develop the product.
Speaker 3:It's hard to sell someone on everyone's looking for the ideal app exactly what I need for my situation. And everyone thinks, you know, they're they're it's hard to convince someone to go with the closest thing that's maybe not perfect, but that, you know, it hits nine out of your 10 on the wish list. But I, you know, I and we've had to address those customers. I'll say, they'll say, hey, you know, you don't integrate with Constant Contact and Salesforce and you don't you don't support this currency and that. I'm like, well, who are you gonna use that does that?
Speaker 3:And they're like, nope. Nothing. I'm like, well, use the next best thing. Right? Like, we try to make it clear to them that like, you're either picking for the most situations to use nothing instead of using the closest thing.
Speaker 3:Right?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Which is often.
Speaker 3:Set to have.
Jordan Gal:Right. It's often your real competitor. Not not the other software, but doing it the same way you've already been doing
Speaker 3:it. Sure. Yeah. Or I can't do nothing. A lot of people just go like, I won't do my books at all and then I'll wait till April 15 and be like, here's some spreadsheets or something.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yep. So how many years has it been? Like when did you actually launch Less Accounting and started growing that?
Speaker 3:Yes. So it was fall two thousand six when Steve and I started working on it. And we've actually we were two contractors working just kind of on client projects together, web apps. And we both had a similar idea for an expense tracker. And we started working on this accounting before we had no agreements drawn up.
Speaker 3:And then later, we actually formed the company less everything when we've actually launched the property. Launched like December 2006 or early two thousand seven ish or something like that.
Brian Casel:Yeah. So you guys have been been at it for for the long haul. So, you know, there there are so many people out there who are making this transition from client work to doing a product and supporting yourself with with client work and consulting for for a while before the product gains enough traction to kinda replace that. I mean, how did you guys make that balance and make that transition? And like, how many years went by before you were able to phase out the the consulting work?
Speaker 3:Well, it was years and we didn't do it right. So I I think there's a a a right way to to kind of merge out of consulting and there's a wrong way. We did it the wrong way and we didn't know. We didn't money better. It's and it's hard saying no to money.
Speaker 3:So we have client possible clients coming in and saying, hey, we'll pay you $200 an hour. And it's like, oh, we've got this app that makes no money. Where should we spend our time? Right. I can make, you know, $15 next week or make nothing.
Speaker 3:And so our I think our biggest mistake was in 2000 it was either I think it the 2009. No, was 2008. We had $290,000 in cash after taxes, after gigantic bonuses, and we had a team of like 12 developers for the for consulting. And at that moment, we should have said, everybody's fired. And just got and just worked on the product for years.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. All in.
Speaker 3:That would have gotten us. But instead, we said, oh, we're making money with this client stuff, and we're making we're not making money with this account. Let's keep let's keep the party going. Because you know, when you cut yourself an $80,000 bonus, it's hard to say Right. No to those $80,000 bonuses.
Speaker 3:So, you know, the money was just fantastic.
Brian Casel:It is That is the hardest thing about it. I mean, I I know, in in my case, first year or two of Restaurant Engine, I I had to I I had to take a pay cut those years. Yeah. I made more the year before doing all client work.
Speaker 3:And Oh, yeah.
Brian Casel:And it's Yeah. It's tough, but then it's, you know.
Speaker 3:Every employee that you have on your consulting side of the company makes it harder for you to be a product company. It brings that line of success up. If you're by yourself, a freelancer doing like freelance design or something and you have a product, all you need is enough money to support you on a product. So $3.04, $510 a month, whatever that number is, you add. But then you have employees over here on this other side of company that's like this monster, and you have to keep feeding it with clients and making the clients happy and figuring out how to market that company and sell.
Speaker 3:When you have this other product, your product company, and you have this product, you have to keep all this problem space and connections and business development. For me, and I think a lot people, every little initiative you do, like every sort of like revenue stream, revenue stream, is another problem space you have to devote part of your brain to, brain cycles to. Yeah. And it wears you down and thins out your creativity and you'll literally be like, when was the last time I worked on my product? I'm so busy on this consulting side selling the clients and managing this stuff and making it profitable.
Speaker 3:I don't have any time for this thing over here. And so true. It just kind of wears you. People realize the bigger your consultancy is, the harder it is. And I would fire everybody.
Speaker 3:Become a these ways, become a freelancer and just kind of slowly move it over.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Know, it I'm I'm so glad you brought that up because it it's so true, you know, that that focus idea. Right? So, even if you're a master at managing your time and saying like, from eight to ten, I'm working on the product, and from ten to twelve, I'm doing this client project, and like, got it all optimized, getting things done apps left and right. Like, it's all it's all good.
Brian Casel:But there's still that, like, mental space. Like, you're devoting this creative energy toward all these different things, and you're not gonna get done in in that two hour block you give yourself. Unless you're focused on one big thing at a time. Know? Very hard to manage.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Totally. Like, how have you guys done that over the years? I know you you know, you're building the the product, you're doing client work, then you do like less comp, and then you you know, branching off into these different things. Like how do you balance branching off versus focusing and trying to grow the app?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So we stopped doing less conf because it was just too much. And it really isn't that much work to throw at Invent. It's hard to throw at Leskampf. Leskampf was the last event was about 300 and something people.
Speaker 3:We had it we had had a party at my house. We had 300 people in my backyard with tight rope and circus acts and knife throwing. People teaching us how to do knife throwing and moonshine. How did I miss this? And people in my hot tub and in my pool.
Speaker 3:And you know, so we're bussing people around town and we had, you know, just it was it was crazy. You know, we had an open party. We had a lady bring an alligator. Know, so everyone's gonna put it on a kangaroo. Unless you're a concert at a kangaroo, no you haven't.
Speaker 3:So, I mean, it's crazy. We we actually shot a rap video. We had a we had a white rapper named Andy D write a song about the conference that people are attending and with the things that they're gonna do. And then we shot a video through the conference about the song. So
Brian Casel:It's amazing.
Speaker 3:That is a lot of that's a lot of work. I mean, that that's I mean, throwing a event at a hotel is a is probably about 20 phone calls with somebody. But let's come that our version of a conference was months of work and $80,000 in sponsors and, you know, $220,000 of expenses. Yeah. We rented out a whole entire hotel.
Speaker 3:So it's just
Brian Casel:So what happened that year? I mean, as you as you planned that conference and did it, like, happened to to less accounting? Like, how did that impact the business?
Speaker 3:I just didn't we well, I ignored it. It was mostly me planning the the event, which is a lot of fun because you get to spend other people's money, like spot like, oh, sure. I'll pay for a circus act. Yeah, whatever. I'll just find a sponsor for that.
Speaker 3:That's fun. Know, writing designing profit and loss reports is not quite as fun as, you know, doing a great conference. And then you go to and everyone's like, oh, conference is so much fun. You feel like the prom king.
Jordan Gal:Right.
Speaker 3:But it's really a it's an emotionally and for the business, it's a very big roller coaster of cash and a roller coaster of emotions. You're, you know, people don't think about this. When you when you don't even I work from home. And I live in Panama City, it's not a big tech community but when Leskamp comes around, I'm the coolest dude there, right? Because there's 300 people there at our event and I'm on stage and I'm the coolest and then two days later, everyone's gone.
Speaker 3:Yep. Yeah. It's crash. Alright? Of cool.
Speaker 3:Right? Back to working at home in Mandalay. Yeah. So that that's a big mind mind fuck and then just the stress of it. And unless accounting gets ignored, and that's our real moneymaker.
Speaker 3:But we made money from LessComp too. That was the other kind of part we couldn't give up. We were making $6,070,000 dollars a year from LessComp. So it kind of paid for itself with my time, but it didn't pay for itself. The return on the stress was not worth it.
Speaker 3:It was way more stressful than anything that, like I can't probably like probably as stressful as like running for a local office or something.
Brian Casel:So And
Jordan Gal:now, are you, you know, predominantly focused on less accounting?
Speaker 3:Yes.
Jordan Gal:Right? I know you've got you've got a few other things but is that that's the main focus?
Speaker 3:Yeah. We do we have a film company called Less Films. So if you ever need like an explainer video for your site, they do, you know, motion graphics and live. They're doing a video right now for Salesforce. You have a lot
Brian Casel:of awesome stuff on there if you check out Yeah.
Speaker 3:Clips and everything. So have little to do what they do. I'll I'll get to write the occasional script, which is fun Because it's really fun to have trying to like trim down people's like marketing message and how they explain their product.
Brian Casel:How did that come about? Like, how did how did you guys how did Less Films start and how did it become part of what you guys are doing?
Speaker 3:Three or four years ago, I met a guy here in town named Eric Darnell. And just Eric was funny, and I saw some of his video work, and he was just so creative and could illustrate and and do these videos. And he was doing working for a local ad agency, and he was doing commercials for, like, you know, Smith, Smith and Buckland attorneys at law. Just the most uncreative stuff, and he was like, dude, I hate my job. I'm like, you can do animated stuff like these videos you see on these big ones?
Speaker 3:Like, yeah, I can do all that kind of stuff. I was like, I can can keep you busy. And so I emailed a bunch of my friends in Grasshopper, grasshopper.com, Seamac, the founder said, yeah, dude, I'll pay for 10 videos, but they're gonna be cheap. I'm like, all right. So we had enough work for a month and I was like, quit your job.
Speaker 3:I got you I got you a client. And they kinda just kept rolling.
Brian Casel:So I mean, just like that, you you kinda started this video consultancy Yeah. On the side, but it's Yeah. But then folded it into less everything.
Speaker 3:Yeah. It doesn't make I mean, they're self sustaining. There's actually three there's another production guy that's helping them now. They're not like it's not a huge moneymaker. It's it's fun and it's a nice resource for us to have and I really love Eric and then Danny who runs the runs the company, is actually Annette's husband.
Speaker 3:So we really like having that sort of connection in there. But it's not a big moneymaker. It's nice kind of keeping connections up. But and so I say stay focused, but little things like Les Films popped up because because of, like, connections of Leskampf. Right?
Speaker 3:I I knew Seamac from Grasshopper because of Leskampf. And so it's and so, it's hard to say, stay focused, when all these little little things that we do and most people do kind of eventually, if you drew back the connection, they kind of point to these little weird things.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Exactly. I I mean, I think that there is still something to be said for for branching off and doing these little side things when you're when you're putting the years in of growing a SaaS app. Like, you need that break. You need you need that refresher.
Brian Casel:Right? I mean Yeah.
Speaker 3:It's a it's a trudge.
Jordan Gal:Most people need nice
Speaker 3:to have people blake every once in while. You just have to balance or look for when it becomes, you know, its own sort of beast. And if maybe that's the new business, right? But when we said less comp, I can never, I didn't want to be an event company, and we couldn't sell or shut down less accounting because it made money. And we didn't want to shut that down, that'd be crazy.
Speaker 3:And so we just kind of the events just really were just too stressful. It was just too like, I would lose sleep. Event planners that we wanted to get to run the event couldn't do it like I wanted them to do it. So, just stopped doing it.
Brian Casel:Yeah. But, you know, there's also something we set up for events. Maybe not necessarily conferences, but I you you guys also do this workshop thing. Right? So Yep.
Speaker 3:We do.
Brian Casel:It's an event based side project that it comes and it goes. You can you can put a month or two into the into working on this, and then and then put it aside. Like, it it's not like starting a second SaaS that
Speaker 3:Oh, right.
Brian Casel:You know?
Speaker 3:Even still though, you can let email list go cold. There's still something to be said about people keeping up and you know, having say having a blog. You're talking about less money workshops, which are usually online based website or workshops where we talk about consulting. And, you know, those email lists get cold, but it's something that we can kind of like we did one in the fall. We made, well, $7.08, $8 from it in two days, which is not gonna, like, save our company or or you know, launch us to millionaires or anything.
Speaker 3:But it's always like, oh, let's do another I'll find an advertising place where the advertising Steve will say, we'll find the money. Okay. We'll do a we'll do a less money workshop, we'll find the money. We'll put that into advertising.
Brian Casel:Cool. And I guess that's kinda tied in with accounting, you know, and
Speaker 3:Well, it's small business owners and, you know, for us, we do a lot of writing about being consultants. It's kind of nice keeping those conversations going and remembering what that's like and cause if you disconnect yourself from what you're writing about, you're essentially just making those sense and people will stop listening to you.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I mean, I I have to ask though, if looking back, I don't wanna say if do you regret, but would you would you have stayed if you had stayed very focused on less accounting from the time, right, that from the time you transitioned out, do you think you'd be in a much better place or is that just, you know, is that just not human to to focus that much without giving your your your brain a break?
Speaker 3:I don't all these little things we did, I don't really necessarily regret them. Jason Fried one time said like, he was like, I don't ever regret anything. I was like, that's weird. So I don't regret not trimming down. The things I do wish we had done was not build a consultancy.
Speaker 3:We were trying to hire people and get more and more clients which did not help less account. I wish we would have picked one or the other. But I think we could have had a, you know, a thought bot size or Pivotal Lab size consultancy right now if we wanted to if we had done it from the beginning. And I wish we would have not built so many features in Less Accounting through 02/2011 because we had so much money consulting. We had we'd hired our own team to work on less accounting.
Speaker 3:We kept two full time guys on it just and it was losing money. We just paid them, paid them, paid them. Building features, building features, and we wasted so much money. So even though it was nice having that cash, we wasted a bunch of it and we could have, you know, the constraint, my thought, the constraint of money and time would have made less accounting a better product and we're now having to rewind some of those features and take them out and those sorts of things to get where we should be.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I think it's really anytime you look back, and I have you wanna call them regrets, mistakes, whatever. Right? I just know if I had done things differently, I assume I would be in a better situation. I know, right, the three of us are right.
Jordan Gal:We have SaaS businesses in different stages. So right when I when I heard you say when you had money in the bank, you you wish you would have focused entirely on the product, I I did that, but then my product didn't get to the point where it needed to fast enough. So then I had to say, wait wait a minute. Before I get to zero here, let me let me go back to the other thing. Sure.
Jordan Gal:There's really no telling what the right path is, but it's interesting to hear at different stages, like, how to make the decision and then looking back, like, should have done
Speaker 3:it a little bit differently, should
Jordan Gal:have done it a little bit better or for longer. So I think it's good for people to hear, right, your your situation. And with less accounting now, where where are you guys and what's, you know, what's working? What are you doubling down on and what are you winding back on?
Speaker 3:What's working? I think we've always had a really great customer support. Like Annette does such a great job of customer support. She's just she's insane. She's insane.
Speaker 3:Like she'll she'll check tickets at like three in the morning because she can't sleep. And then like, she's she's great. And so and I read every ticket and we're getting better and better at building community. Like, we've just been bad about sending newsletters in the past and those sorts of sorts of things you just don't think about doing, at least I never do. And it just I think there's never there's never like one thing.
Speaker 3:There's never like, oh, you should be doing this and you'll get it's just like 900 little things that we're doing that, that seem to be working. You know, writing good content in your blog, it sounds as dumb and generic as that sounds. It works. When we have 500 articles on our site, that we've written over years and years and years of work, you know, just optimizing your articles to have better SEO titles. You know, not changing articles and not making them all SEO spammy, but, you know, changing them like unpaid how to get how to get paid for unpaid invoices or flipping it around to like your late invoices getting paid faster.
Speaker 3:You know, one ranks you, one doesn't. Know, just those little kind of things, doing those things and just being ourselves, you know. Going with our gut just always seemed to work out well. Like when I try to start emulating our competitors or looking at what they're doing too much is when I start to like, I think regress and and and are sort of like the voice of the company. But it's never one thing.
Speaker 3:Like, you look at Google Analytics and you'd be like, wow. There's fucking old story. Yeah.
Brian Casel:So looking back to, you know, like 2,006, you guys start this thing. You've got this whole vision for what less accounting could be, you know, or the SaaS this new SaaS product. I mean, how did things turn out? There there's gotta be a couple things there that that are like completely different from what you had envisioned early on. Right?
Brian Casel:Like, how how did any any examples that come to mind there?
Speaker 3:I didn't know it would be so emotional. Like, it's it's it still hurts when someone says like, your product's shitty. It's still like, oh, fuck. And still, like it's very emotional. Someone says like, this is the greatest app ever, blah blah.
Speaker 3:And you're like, oh, I'm a genius. And so it's it's that's emotional. I never Congratulations. Still
Brian Casel:still hurt for sure. Yeah. Somebody
Speaker 3:It's like still a trudge and there's years ago, we asked we got on the phone when Jason Fried had open office times we could call him. Like, Jason, when did you see a spike? He was like, there was no spike. And we're like, bullshit. But there's never been a spike for us either.
Speaker 3:It's not that we're like billionaires like they are. But there's just it's just slow, short of trudges. As long as you're doing this and not this, you know, we're just looking for, you know, 10 to 20% growth every year is all I want. And just kind of in the and I never really thought about I guess I was, you know, I'm 30 I'll be 34 this year. I never really thought about until this year like, I've always thought about building a company that you want to run or building a product that you love, but no one says build a job that you want.
Speaker 3:And so, like, if you love designing, you may not want to become a manager because if you grow a company, you're going to become a manager. And so I've had to kind of realize like, what do I want to do for the next ten years? Do I want to be doing these things? Like, should I be thinking like, you know, to getting rid of the tasks that I don't really like and doing tasks that I do like, and sort of building a job that I really enjoy.
Brian Casel:Yeah. So how have you done that, like, the last year or two? Or where where would you like to be going in, like, you know, this?
Speaker 3:Yeah. I I don't do as much customer support. I read the tickets. I don't engage as much. It's too emotional for me.
Speaker 3:It just it'll bring me down too much and brings me up too much. And I because I have such a connection with the product. Annette doesn't. Right? So she somebody can say, oh, I don't like this app.
Speaker 3:It's shitty. And then she's like, oh, well, tell me more about that. And I'm just like, I can let me, you know.
Brian Casel:You know, when it comes to customer support, I kinda feel like I I've I'm like, I don't look at the tickets enough. And then the tickets that do get escalated to me are all the bad ones. Like, people are about to cancel or something's wrong with this credit card or like Well, then you need
Speaker 3:to train those employees back.
Brian Casel:What's that?
Speaker 3:Because those are ones that should be taken. Mhmm. Like, Don't be getting your hands dirty. Don't wanna hear the kind of good ones and the ones that have good feedback.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 3:But I I also you know, my skill set's a designer and I'm doing less and less design now. I'm also kind of gonna be starting doing a lot more content marketing around just, like, weird things. Like, if you look at Mailchimp, Mailchimp doesn't do a lot of, like, well, that makes sense for email marketing. Right. It's like weird hats and shirts and things and, you know, they'll they'll a video of their, like, someone dumping they had printed their logo out and and, you know, three d printer.
Speaker 3:They dumped paint on it and they did like a slow mo video. I was like, that's their marketing? That's so weird. But that's what I wanna do. I don't wanna be writing articles about, you know, unpaid expenses and shit for the next ten years.
Speaker 3:So like, I built a backyard office this summer and I'm writing I'll have content ready in the next week or two about how to build your own backyard office. Like what is code for me at least? And like, where do you get your stuff at? How do you find plans? And what does an architect tell you?
Speaker 3:And what all those little things on how to build a backyard office.
Brian Casel:Nice.
Speaker 3:And so it doesn't really make sense for an accounting app kinda, but I don't wanna write a, you know, ebook about saving money with tax advice. And who wants to read that shit?
Brian Casel:Well, think that's the whole thing with with content. Right? Like, there's that that that misconception that if you're an accountant accounting company, you have to be writing about accounting. But, really, it's it's that overlap of what's interesting to the same group of people. Sure.
Brian Casel:Right? If you're if you're self employed and you're working at home, you know, set up a backyard office, that sounds awesome.
Speaker 3:And and Yeah.
Brian Casel:Gotta get the taxes done too. So, you know,
Speaker 3:it's like It's getting problems. You can still kinda say like, oh, backyard office. Office, that makes sense. I'm building a rum still. So I'm gonna start making my own rum.
Speaker 3:And so that I'm gonna have the company pay for that too.
Brian Casel:There you go.
Speaker 3:So
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I I as long as there's some overlap, I guess. I I think my instinct when I see something like that from Mailchimp is that's nice. You guys have too much money. You don't know what to do with.
Jordan Gal:But but then if you if you go if you, you know, stop being cynical as my nature is, you look at it and you say, you know, that's that's actually the type of person that they want to attract.
Speaker 3:Look at look at the right brothers. Right.
Jordan Gal:Let let's just be ourselves and our people will find us.
Speaker 3:Yeah. It's just a creative they just put up creative things and other creative people kind of just yeah. It's like a magic flies like moss towards like a light or something or flies toward the light. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:I mean, I'll I'll tell you. I I tried to get my father's company on less accounting because I have that affinity, you know, for you guys and the conference and the style and, you know, it's just like that makes sense to me. I'd rather do that and and they couldn't get into it because they're they're they're too old school, so they don't have the same type of Sure. Thing. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Right.
Brian Casel:Right. I
Speaker 3:like, I don't wanna be I don't want people that like are gonna be getting mad about our email newsletter when I say like, smiles or something or something, you know, like well, that's a bad example. Like, the less comp side, we had some language that was like, our conference is the bomb. And one guy said like, I can't come to a conference where they say the bomb. I was like, thank God you're not You're allowed to
Brian Casel:get a ticket.
Speaker 3:I can't make it. I don't like I'm gonna feel like scared to send a newsletter because I'm more like worried about offending you. So you know, as much as marketing is like a gathering, trying to gather in people, you're also trying to brush up the people that you're going to offend when you answer your email and you're like, dude, we screwed up and there was a bug and we fixed that and it's fixed.
Jordan Gal:It's a ballsy decision. It's it's not that easy always. It's really it's much easier to look at your competitors and say, be more like them and be safe and know, I think that's a lot of people's natural inclination. It is a bit
Speaker 3:of a
Jordan Gal:gutsy thing.
Speaker 3:Think that's it for most people. I am not that way. I'm not that way at all. Like, I've never really given a fuck if you like me or not. Now, I wanna be liked but I don't I I'm not I'm gonna be myself.
Speaker 3:I used to run in high school, played football in college, and I used to make all football players run and track. We're run the two mile. And it's all these fat people running the two miles. Just so they wanna keep us in shape. I had this is during the Michael Johnson Olympic stuff.
Speaker 3:I got some Delcro shoes and painted them gold. And we were would just I don't care. I do stuff because I think it's funny. And like if someone's offended by like, you know, our tagline is all accounting software sucks, we just suck the least, I don't care if they're making that. Don't use our product.
Speaker 3:Yeah. You know, I don't need everyone's business. So
Brian Casel:I mean, it's awesome what you guys It's it's a differentiator, you know?
Speaker 3:Yeah. As much as I don't wanna make people I don't wanna hurt anyone's feelings. Right? I'm not gonna be like, be offensive. I guess I could be offensive because I said sucks or something, but, like, I don't wanna, like, I don't wanna make anyone feel terrible about themselves, but I also don't wanna, like, change who I am, what feels natural.
Speaker 3:Like, whole business is based around decisions where you just feel what feels natural, what like, just going with your gut. Like, there's there's no there's very little scientific reason. Any of our decisions is always like, yeah, that sounds cool. That sounds weird. Let's do that.
Speaker 3:Okay. Let's put mister t in some of our advertising. We might get sued. Who cares? All right.
Speaker 3:Let's do
Brian Casel:it. Yes. Totally. And think I think your personalities like really come through in in everything that that you guys do. I mean, obviously, us here in in this little, you know, bootstrap bootstrapping like web community, we, you know, we hear everyone on podcasts and whatnot.
Brian Casel:But like, you know, your personalities also come through just in the product and in the copy on the website to the accountants out there and the small business owners who aren't really in this little community. So how do you like, what what are some examples of, like, how do you guys get your personality across, whether it's talking to customers or your website copy or emails or, you know, how how do you kinda get that, like, you know, that fun, like, you know, personal nature through?
Speaker 3:Well, I never like start out with anything to where I'm like, oh, how can I get my personality in this thing? Like, I just I don't I will catch myself I I have to pull up this book or hang on. And and the people that are listening to the audio aren't gonna see this, but, we were designing stickers or I was designing stickers like a year or two ago. And it was just like less accounting stickers. And I was like, who wants a less accounting sticker?
Speaker 3:Nobody wants an accounting sticker. Like, that's so weird. So then this is not some we didn't make million dollars from this. I mean, I don't even know if this was any good. Right?
Speaker 3:But I you know, and I had these books. These are Jack Passion's beard handbooks. I had a bunch of them left over from WestConf. So I made these stickers and it says it's like a kind of a riff of a Harry Potter. It has nine out of 10 wizards agree, lessaccounting.com is magic.
Speaker 3:Right? And so like, I could have just done a sticker on here that said like, less accounting, 20% off, be great. Simple bookkeeping. But and I probably started to and I was like, oh god, that's gonna suck. Right?
Speaker 3:What kind of sticker would someone might wanna have on a on a on a laptop? It's certainly not a less accounting sticker. I don't even want less accounting sticker on my on my laptop and I own the company. Know? So we do stuff like, know, quit your day job shirts instead of less accounting shirts.
Speaker 3:Right? It's not really there's no one there's no like, let's get across the the company's personality. It's really just like, what would I wear? What do I want to hear? It's really not like blah blah accounting jargon, send invoices.
Speaker 3:Here's a shirt that has a logo on it. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:And and does that flow through the product as well or right there is there some point where there's a transition between that and okay, this is accounting software and and this gets more serious.
Speaker 3:It's a lot harder. And we can and I think we can do a better job. I think most software, has no personality. And as much as like to joke about it, do you remember Clippy from Microsoft Word? The little Oh, yeah.
Speaker 3:I think Clippy was the closest thing to a personality that software's had. People like to make fun of that Clippy little thing. I think it was genius because it brought a lot of personality into software, like word processing. Come on, seriously. Like how do you have personality in word processing?
Speaker 3:Well, Clippy was this cute little help tip thing. We need to do a much better job of that. But yeah, it's it is harder to when you start getting those little, little voices that are like, this is accounting software and people are gonna listen. They want a little more serious and we have to constantly sort of refine our language to be friendlier and make more sense and more conversational. Like, we just wanna stop talking to our friends.
Speaker 3:Like, how would you explain any anything to a friend is how you wanna write?
Brian Casel:Yeah. Exactly. You know, was just yesterday, I was just listening to the product people podcast. Justin Jackson was talking to Samuel Hewlich Yeah. About onboarding, you know, user onboard.
Brian Casel:Right? And they're talking about just that, like putting that personality baked into the app and the software itself. You know? And it it it's so important. Like, that that first experience when when someone first logs in, like and especially for accounting, you know, like we were talking about, you know, turn of the year.
Brian Casel:Alright. This is the year we're gonna get it together, get everything organized. Alright. Today, I'm gonna sign up for less accounting and get in there and and set my set up my books and everything. Like, that experience has to be awesome.
Brian Casel:You know? Can't it can't be this cold, confusing.
Speaker 3:Because all you need is one excuse just to go, I'll do it later. Yep. Mhmm. Now they're going back to it. I dream about people are like, I almost think that I dream about it.
Speaker 3:People are like, I'm a UX designer. Like, what do you do? And they're like, oh, we do a photo sharing app. I'm like, oh my god, that's not UI. That's so easy to do.
Speaker 3:You just authenticate Twitter and start sucking in pictures and shit. Come on, that's not UI, that's easy. Like design a word processing processing app or something like that. That's to me, that's tougher. It's just, you know, accounting software.
Speaker 3:This is real software. This is like, people are just, will look for any reason to procrastinate on it. So you have to be super, super friendly and no mistakes, which we're not good at. And then when I look at the app, just like anyone else, and when you look at your own products, you're just like, Oh God, look how terrible that is. So Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Very easy to be critical of your own yeah. I I go into my back end. I'm like, how do I expect people to get this right right away? Like, needs to say so much more. It needs to help so much more.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm. Yeah. I've been looking at different solutions like app queues, right, different types of software that I can add easily to the onboarding process, like, almost like a a layover on top of it like, give people cues and little tips and here's what's next and guide them through the process. Yeah. I imagine it's very similar for for you, Alan.
Jordan Gal:There's a difference between a free trial and an and an activation, like, huge gap. Sure. People who people who activate and use for a certain amount of time, like, the likelihood of them turning to paying customers is astronomical compared to people who create an account. Sure.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I think
Jordan Gal:that's why, you know, Sam's whole user onboard thing is just really important because you don't think about that until you start getting people flowing in and you're like, oh, shit. This actually isn't working because I'm not getting them to the next level.
Brian Casel:Yeah. So, like, over the years, like, what are some of the things that that you've done to to convert more of those free trials to paying customers? So, they've already signed up using it, like, how do how do you improve that whole period of time?
Speaker 3:You know, for us, it's and our sign up wizard changes probably every three weeks. And every three weeks, we're like, we figured it out. And then three weeks later, we're like, this is dog shit. And so, you know, right now, the battle we're having is we want you to to connect your bank accounts to us. So we'll start sucking in data.
Speaker 3:And at that point, we can start showing you like what your data looks like as a P and L and like spinning reports and things like that. But people start saying, oh, we just want to skip the bank stuff and go around to the app and see what you can do. But then it's like, well, you're gonna come to an app and there's really not much there to show you besides, like, dummy data. And then, you know, so right now, our current our current theory is that people aren't willing to set up their bank accounts. They're just really they're really tire kickers, and they're not really taking it very seriously.
Speaker 3:And so we're trying to you know, I I don't want 200 people signing up for this accounting a day and converting one. I want a 100% conversion, even if it's a few people. I want every like, I don't wanna be I don't wanna waste any time on people that aren't ready to take accounting seriously and start using our bookkeeping application. And so we do things like put a credit card form up before you see the app. We're doing something right now.
Speaker 3:I think it was on the blog. I wanted people to realize that if you use Los Angeles County, it will save you time. And so right before the billing form, it says, you know, I I I understand that Los Alam County will save me time up to 80%. And you click a button and say, I agree. And the next thing comes up and it's actually increased conversions.
Speaker 3:It has, three different statements and it's like, I can reach out to support and they will help me as much as I need.
Brian Casel:Oh, that's great.
Speaker 3:Which they
Brian Casel:Harry, I'm gonna add that to our form.
Jordan Gal:I like that.
Brian Casel:You know, when you get a cancellation from someone and we're we're doing the proactive outreach, we're here to help. We're here like, do you need help? Like, and they don't ask for help and then they cancel. It's like, ugh. Yeah.
Speaker 3:I mean, it it doesn't take much for you to be, very kind in the way you speak to customer support and and give very good feedback than to run your own product and not get that and have someone be rude to you. You're like, and then from now on, I am never gonna be rude to customer support. I am never I it's about deleting my account or I always give as much feedback as I can.
Brian Casel:That's true.
Speaker 3:Because I just feedback, man. I beg for it. Just give me tell me tell me where we suck.
Brian Casel:Yep. You know. It's tough. So what else do you do during that during that free trial period? Like, do you do, personal outreach, like phone calls and all that?
Speaker 3:Yep. Day three, you get a phone call from a net. We have intercom, messages set up. We just set up one email per day, kind of a drip email campaign in in intercom that's themed. We call it become a bookkeeping Jedi, and we're just waiting to get, like, a cease and desist in George Lucas.
Speaker 3:I'd frame it. It'd be awesome. But all the emails doing this, you know, three or four days are like, what's an expense? Oh, and Han Solo, you know, charges up the Millennium Falcon and gets gas. That's, like, an expense for travel.
Speaker 3:And he pays Chewbacca, he's a contract labor payment, you know, that sort of thing. We're we're always I I always hate to sorta, like, tell people, like, this is what the way you should do it because I don't even know. It's we're always testing something new, and it's you know, you never thought you figured it out. And I also get, like, pissed at people that act like they figured it all out. It's kinda like, dude, I've been doing it for eight years.
Speaker 3:I have no clue what I'm doing. Every we change the sign of wizard constantly. It's yeah. It's hard. That's all I gotta say.
Speaker 3:And I don't think the things that my sort of lessons and takeaways work for a lot of people because Less Accounting is an accounting app that has a lot of inertia and it's not an impulse buy. Know, it's not three clicks and you set up and pay $6 a year. It's $36 a month and it's accounting software. So
Brian Casel:Yeah. So so where are things going next? I mean, what what are you guys working on, you know, in the next couple months going into 2015? Where where do you see things going for for less accounting and and less everything overall?
Speaker 3:Yeah. Millions of dollars.
Brian Casel:Of course. Goes with that name.
Speaker 3:Sparks puddles all over my desk every morning. Now, the same old, same old. I don't really, you know, we always want more users and we wanna get, you know, obviously more revenue and and and if we want to and need to hire more people. But it's real we really focused and have been, Steve and I and the team, was on that, like creating jobs that we like. And you know, taking off ample time and not working crazy hours and kind of keeping stress kind of flat and keeping cash in the bank for the business and all those sorts of things that kind of lower down stress.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Know, actually that's something I wanted to ask you about. I saw your your work, you know, like the lamp design work. That's awesome, know. Like how do you mean, that that must be one example of, like, how you're Mhmm.
Brian Casel:Taking time away from work Sure. And doing something else. Right? And I think so many of us, I mean, certainly my myself Yeah. Like, get so wrapped up in in building up this this business and bootstrapping it and and, you know.
Brian Casel:You know, I'd love to do things on the side. I got
Speaker 3:I just
Brian Casel:wanna play music, whatever it is. Like, how do you How how did you come to to the point where you kinda give yourself permission to to do that and and to split that time, that work time and other stuff.
Speaker 3:Right. So And and I never Even when I worked eighty hours a week and when I worked When I still Right. I only work thirty five hours a week now or thirty. The the the guilt was still there of like, I can't get stuff done. I can be doing more.
Speaker 3:And the company doesn't grow any faster no matter how much I work. Unless you're billing hours, time does not equal money than SaaS. And from what I found, that extra time that you spend on the product is not creative time spent. Like, it's much better for me to try to like to to not try to force out an article, but to go cut my grass. Because when I go cut my grass, I'll come back and be like, dang, I thought about doing this, and we can write about that, and then this.
Speaker 3:And I should contact this person. So for me, it's like, I I just had to give myself permission to like, stop being a slave to my company. And you know, it's I stopped work I'll stop work right I'm super done with it. I'm done working. I have to shut my laptop.
Speaker 3:An open laptop is like, come talk to me. Let's get on the internet and start typing away. Yep. I don't carry my cell phone around very much because it's just distracting. If somebody needs to get a hold of me, they'll call my wife.
Speaker 3:You don't care yourself enough. I actually resent my iPhone a lot of times because it's so distracting. But it's there's I and there's never like a time where I'm like, I gave myself permission. It's always like every week, you gotta like you're not working past I I get it at 05:30. I work till two in in the afternoon because it gets so dark so fast.
Speaker 3:I don't have time to play with my kids outside. So I at 02:00, I don't give a fuck. I'm stopping work. You know, it's I'm I'm done.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Yeah. In many ways That's an ongoing battle. Yeah. I It is an ongoing battle.
Jordan Gal:I I hear that a 100%. And think it's not only good for yourself at at the end of the day, it's also good for the business to just not get into a bad place mentally. Yeah. Find the best ideas for my business when I'm walking the dogs. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:You know? And your brain is off wandering, looking at trees and you're like, oh shit. Maybe I should make that connection that you don't think of when you're staring at the screen like, where's my to do list? How far behind am I?
Brian Casel:Yeah. It's true.
Speaker 3:Shit you don't really even need to do. Right? Is you it's most of the stuff that we think is so important, it's like, doesn't really matter. And the other reality is like, software launches we do, in two weeks we're fucking tearing them up anyways. So it's like, nothing's it just we freak out and it's just not worth it.
Speaker 3:And I've been listening to like, I listened to a organic farmers or like a low a small farming conference online the other day. It was awesome. Like, these these are farmers talking about their problems. You're gonna this it's so like, oh my god. We I have the same issue.
Speaker 3:I could do something like that, you know. It's talk to another business owner and go for a walk like but don't walk with like a podcast with Seth Godin in your ears. Right. Like, go and like when I walk when I walk in my neighborhood, I'm like, I try to listen for the wind. Like, it relaxes you and you come back, I'm a better dad, you know.
Brian Casel:Well said. Well, you know, Alan, thanks so much for joining us today. I think that's a good spot to leave it. Yeah. Yeah.
Brian Casel:You know, great to finally meet you and
Speaker 3:Me too.
Brian Casel:I'll have to do it again sometime.
Jordan Gal:Thanks for joining. Thanks for the the insight, you know, from from years of figuring it out and pushing along and succeeding and failing and succeeding and failing and succeeding
Speaker 3:succeeding and figuring out, you mean we're making lots of mistakes and wasting lots of time. Mhmm. It's the way
Brian Casel:to do it.
Speaker 3:But I'm still here. We're still here.
Jordan Gal:Hell yeah.
Brian Casel:Cool man. Alright. So, yeah. See you guys next week.
Speaker 3:Cheers.
![[49] Allan Branch Joins us to Talk Less, Life, Focus & SaaS](https://img.transistorcdn.com/LDB_Cv9bHAA2vtoSPkZCpkdHPF6fAqfl7PL-PG7_c-M/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:800/h:800/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9jMjkw/MDYxZDQ0MWIxYTUw/NTMzMGI2NTExZWMx/MWQ1Yi5qcGc.webp)