[50] Getting First Customers For a SaaS, Pricing Your Product, & Other Listener Questions
This is Bootstrap Web episode 50. This is the podcast for you, the founder who learns by doing as you're bootstrapping your business online just like we are. And today, we're gonna be digging into some listener questions. Things about the sales process, about pricing, and a few other things. I am Jordan.
Brian Casel:And I'm Brian.
Jordan Gal:And before we jump into today's listener questions, if you have issues, questions, topics you wanna hear about, you want covered, we wanna hear from you. Just head over to bootstrapweb.com/ask. That's bootstrapweb.com/ask, and let us know what's on your mind and what would be valuable for us to cover.
Brian Casel:Brian? Exactly. And and if it's a question, you know, always, you know, share your your website, tell us about your business, and we'll we'll actually, you know, look at what you're working on. And if you're okay with it, then we'll we'll talk about it here on the air as well.
Jordan Gal:So Yep. Get some real real specific actionable info from Brian and I. But before we head into that, what's been going on, Brian? Give us a little bit of an update on where you are.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Well, where I am, I'm finally in the new office here. Moved 20 feet across the hall, but it's it's only 20 feet away, but it's way quieter in here. I love it.
Jordan Gal:No more sirens. Very sad.
Brian Casel:That's right. Our friend, the the ambulance, will be gone from now on. So I've been listening to the ask Gary Vee podcast. And, you know, Gary Vaynerchuk, everybody knows him. Right?
Brian Casel:Here on the web, we all know him at least. And he's he's a guy that I think maybe I'm not alone here. Maybe I am. But, you know, you hear a lot about him, like, a couple years ago with all the social media stuff, the wine library stuff. It's like, okay.
Brian Casel:Cool. He's got high energy. He's talking about social media. That's great. And then I kinda tuned out from Gary Vee for a couple years there.
Brian Casel:It's like, okay. I kinda I I know I know his deal. I I like him and everything, but it not really giving me anything new. But lately, man, I've been tuning into his new podcast, ask Gary Vee, and it's, you know, short bite sized episodes and everything. But he's answering questions, just really all over the map.
Brian Casel:And I I feel like, you know, he has kind of evolved in the type of content that he puts out. You know, these days, talking much more about business in general and and thinking big. And the other thing I've been catching of his lately are are these written blog posts that he puts out on on his on his personal website. I they're not they don't come out too often, but, you know, he'll talk about, like, revenue goals for businesses and things like that. So definitely, like, deviating from just talking about, like, Facebook and Snapchat and whatever.
Brian Casel:You know? Yeah. So so really good stuff. And, anyway, I was listening to it today in the car on my way here, and he he said a quote in in this episode 45 saying, people fall in love with the way that they make money. And what he was talking about was, you know, that people get too comfortable with the way that they've always done their marketing and their business, or they've always done anything.
Brian Casel:Whatever works. Yeah. Exactly. Like, whatever's working, people tend to just stick with that. And and as long as it works, it makes them more and more, you know, hesitant to try something new and test new ideas and be innovative.
Brian Casel:So he was saying, like, you've you've gotta do that. You something about, like, five to 10 to 20% of your money or your time. You should you should be investing into testing new ideas even if things are working right now. You've gotta be testing the new stuff. And that that thought really resonated with me, as I think about Restaurant Engine and, the last couple of years of that business, I I do feel that, like, I've been not necessarily stagnating.
Brian Casel:I mean, the business has been growing and everything, but the way like, the way that we do marketing has been basically like, we've relied heavily on content marketing and organic channels. And I've written and talked heavily about this over the last year or two. We that's been our whole thing. It's like our organic, you know, way that we get leads in, inbound leads, and we get on the phone, we talk to them, and then we sign we get sign ups. Now I'm at that point where we need to be doing something more.
Brian Casel:We you know? And I'm kind of trying to put put the pedal to the metal, you know, and and try to, like, do something new, like, add on a new layer of marketing. And what I'm doing by by that is, running some webinars. I've been talking a little bit about this, but so I am preparing to do the first webinar for Restaurant Engine on Monday in a couple of days. And, you know, we'll we'll see how it goes.
Brian Casel:The what my goal here is to is to create a new funnel, like an additional funnel layered on top of all of our organic stuff, something way more predictable that I know, okay. If if we, can get, you know, this many people registered and showing up for a webinar, and then this many people will turn into new sign ups, that will help us scale and talk to more people simultaneously, you know, alongside the the the phone calls and and the inbound organic leads that we've been doing. I I just feel like I should have been doing this a year ago.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. We've talked about this. You know, we're we're in the mastermind together. We've I remember when I first met you, you know, everyone brings their own baggage, own experience in, and I heard what business you were in. Yet to me, the the outbound sales and salespeople and sales teams on the street kinda made sense.
Jordan Gal:I mean, it's really it's amazing that you've been able to make it a success, entirely online and content based when your audience is is not online normally. And so, yeah, it's that's really exciting. So this is a new channel and I I think one thing we have to point out, on the webinar strategy, this new predictable piece, it's not just a way to predict how many people that you'll reach. It's also predictable way. Right?
Jordan Gal:Another way to say I'm going to spend x amount of money per month and bring in y amount of clients.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Exactly. Like, we do spend x amount of money per month on content and and on my team who does the consultation calls, but that's not a predictable funnel. Like, we know that it that it brings us, you know, growing traffic every single month and growing numbers of consultations. And, yeah, I could look at, like, the the consultation funnel, but it's still like, what I what I actually tried to do a couple months earlier, and this is a perfect example of, like, falling in love with what has been working.
Brian Casel:I I made about six months ago, made a decision like, okay. We're gonna double down on content. We're gonna write more posts, longer posts, better posts, do a podcast, like, double down on content, and maybe that will double our sign ups. And that was not the case. We didn't necessarily go all out and double down on the content.
Brian Casel:We probably could have done more, but I kinda came to the realization that, like, look. I'm I'm pushing this button, and and it's not it's not resulting in the increase that I was looking for. And then through talking with people like you and and, you know, lots of other people in in our mastermind groups and and just, like, the more this stuff begins to click, the more it starts to make sense. Okay. I I really understand this kind of webinar, funnel, you know, paid acquisition piece.
Brian Casel:Now it's time to let's let's let's make that work. So
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Awesome. It's, you know, it's a natural evolution. And even if you know that it's coming on the horizon, it's still everyone goes to the same exact process. Right?
Jordan Gal:They launch a business. They try to figure out how am I gonna make this work? How am I gonna get clients? And then at first, you see all these different opportunities. Should I be doing this paid ad or media buys or digital or sales team or outreach or email, all these different options.
Jordan Gal:You really just wanna find one that works and bring it as far as it will take you. But then once once it gets to the point where it becomes obvious that it's not gonna get you all the way where you need to go, then you naturally start to kinda get, you know, agitated or itchy, and you start to say, okay. What's what's next? And now, yeah. It sounds to me like the content channel for you has worked and it's humming.
Jordan Gal:And now to to add an additional acquisition channel, I mean, I think something like this can transform your business. And it it doesn't matter if the webinar thing works. It's just the mentality of, I'm gonna go find another acquisition channel.
Brian Casel:If it's not webinar Exactly. And and, you know, I it's also about figuring out which phase you're in as a boost rapper because that's the constant thing that's always holding us back from doing anything and everything is cash flow. Right? We don't have millions in the bank to just spend on and test everything. So for a while, content was the only thing that really made sense.
Brian Casel:I didn't have the money or the experience to invest in in putting out street teams to go into every restaurant. You know? Like, that just was not gonna cut it to to make a bootstrapped business like this work. I had to stick with what I knew and stick with something that was relatively low cost, that was content. And that and that worked.
Brian Casel:And so now, I'm in a place where I have a little bit more money to spend. The the the business is making money. So now I can I can start to, like, give these things a a real go? Like, I've experimented with with ads in the past, and my whole challenge was I didn't have enough of a budget for it. Now I can actually get some real data and get some real numbers behind this thing and and give it a a real shot.
Brian Casel:And my education around this stuff has improved too. So I I feel like I'm in a good place to to try the webinar stuff. It comes back to, like, just choosing one thing to work on at a time. Like, the other guys in my in my mastermind talk about doing, direct mail pieces, you know, which I think is a great idea. I'd love to do that sometime, but it's not right now.
Brian Casel:Maybe that'll be the next thing that I try. And that costs even more. You know? Looking looking into the cost of doing that really effectively, like Yeah. Many more thousands to get it right.
Brian Casel:So it's, you know, it's it's just like inching up level by level, and this is where I'm at right now. So
Jordan Gal:Yeah. It's great. I always think in terms of what what is the amount of money I need to spend to figure out if this is a viable option or not. Right? And sometimes you do that with a business and sometimes you do that with a little idea and sometimes you do that with, like, marketing channel.
Jordan Gal:Right? Like, how much am I gonna dedicate to Facebook ads going to a webinar before I can say it worked or it didn't work. Yep. Right? And you just need you just need to find a sense of whether or not you're heading in the right direction.
Jordan Gal:You have paid advertising whenever people, you know, ask me about it or how how we made it work at the e commerce store. What I always tell them is to if you expect to be really profitable off the bat, you are guaranteed to be disappointed. If you can achieve anywhere near breakeven at you know, in the short term, you're actually in good shape because you get smarter and you optimize and things you know, your margin will get better, your cost per acquisition will improve. So it's it's always worth a shot and then not to be discouraged if it's not amazingly profitable right away. You just need to find a sense that, yes, this thing can be sold in this way.
Jordan Gal:And now that we know that it can be, now let's improve it so that it's really profitable.
Brian Casel:Yep. Yeah. Definitely. So very exciting. Yeah.
Brian Casel:So that's what I'm mostly working on this month is restaurant engine and and getting this webinar together. But on the productize side of things, on on on Cast Jam and all that, I I have taken a break now now that I'm done with that launch. But the one thing that I did this week was I sent a survey to all of the people who didn't buy. Not not like my entire list. I only sent it to the people who entered their email for the early access for Productize and then didn't end up buying.
Brian Casel:And this was really good. Listen. So this is this is what this is how I'm kind of getting a handle on the key objections to to Productize. And here so I learned, you know, a few things. Here's what I learned.
Brian Casel:So some people actually, a a whole lot of these people said, you know, not right now, but I but I plan to buy it sometime later, which is good to hear. And a common reason for that was that they're currently going through some other course. You know? And they don't wanna kinda take on, like, two courses at the same time along with actually getting work done. Totally understandable.
Brian Casel:You know? And my follow-up to that and and I I like to get into, like, email conversations with all these people. Like, more feedback, the better. Right? Every time someone said that, I I always followed up like, well, what course are you working on?
Brian Casel:And what do you think about that course? Right? Right. And and so a lot of good feedback there. And then another big one was definitely, you know, price is too high.
Brian Casel:And that's always expected. There's always some kind of pushback on price. You know, you can't expect everyone to have the the budget for your price point no matter what kind of product it is,
Jordan Gal:I think. If there's no pushback, you didn't price it high enough.
Brian Casel:Yeah. So, you know, the the interesting thing, though, was that you know, and I asked for open ended comments about this stuff as well. So it it was not, like, unreasonable comments around price. It it wasn't people saying, like, I I wanna buy it for $20 and not not 300 plus. You know?
Brian Casel:I had a lot like, the majority of those people said, like, I'd be willing to buy it between 1 and $200. You know? So so it's like a 102 or 2 off in in their eyes. So, you know, that it it gives me something to think about. I've I also had a lot of people asking about, like, different tiers, and I'm giving some thought around those kind of things.
Brian Casel:But I'm I am pretty happy with the with the price point as it is. And I think a lot of other people were too. So okay. So and then the other points that I learned here, one was, like, I heard a couple people say this, you know, like, they're not in they're not a fan of of of watching video courses. And that's just one of those things that makes me wanna, like, tear my hair out because it's like the whole course is delivered in video, audio versions, which I record separately, and text.
Brian Casel:Like, all the same lessons, same content. All work you did. Yeah. It's like a 180 text a 180 page text ebook. You know, I had one buyer one person say, you know, I I prefer written courses.
Brian Casel:I'm like, it's there. It's written. Right. You know? So, obviously, I I didn't do a good job there of of really driving that point home.
Brian Casel:And I have some ideas and, like, how to clarify that. A couple people said that they already feel like they have a handle on the concept of productizing. Like, it's a little bit too too simple. And, I think this is I I could do a better job of communicating this because, really, the whole productizing piece, like how to pick a service to productize and whatnot, that's only the one part of this course. Two thirds of the course go beyond that, go into, like, systematizing, automating, you know, writing these procedures, bringing on a team or staying solo, streamlining that whole process.
Brian Casel:And then the whole third section is on marketing, like these marketing systems that we've been talking about and how to apply that. So, you know, I I need to do a better job of like like, I kinda use the productized service as the, the theme of the course, the the intro or the hook to the course. But really what I wanted to get across is how to transform from a business own from a freelancer into being a business owner. And, you know, so I I wanted to get that across, and I I could do a better job there.
Jordan Gal:Right. Yeah. That's that's a lot of value, that gets hidden if if the only thing that's talked about is, you know, just the product type service piece. Yeah. What that what that makes me think of, you know, Johnny Dumas' course.
Jordan Gal:Right? Launch, grow, and monetize your podcast. Right? It's like telling you all three pieces that right? So it's like productize, you know, systemize, and market your productized service Yeah.
Jordan Gal:As as as as the message. Awesome, man. So that that's real feedback and hugely helpful for the next time you launch this, next time you market it, new sales copy, new emails.
Brian Casel:Yeah. So I am
Jordan Gal:right there for you.
Brian Casel:You know, I'm like, that gives me a lot of material to work with. I'm planning on slating the a couple things in December. Like, I'll be making some tweaks to the landing page. I'm hoping to have time to redo the whole free crash course, maybe do some videos on that. So a lot of good stuff to work with.
Brian Casel:And overall, a lot of really great feedback, positive and negative, just people engaging with it, which is really good, which makes me feel like, alright. I'm sticking with this product for for a while. And, yeah. So, Jordan, what
Jordan Gal:Very cool.
Brian Casel:What is up on on your side?
Jordan Gal:You know, a lot of it is related to what you talked about in terms of finding additional, acquisition channels. And I think for me, the way it came out was just thinking and feeling much more aggressively on the marketing and sales side. Right? So so CardHook is in good shape. We just had, you know, we're just growing, you know, twenty, thirty percent every month.
Jordan Gal:We just had the best month of, of everything, of revenue, of free trials, of conversions, of of air of traffic, of everything. So awesome.
Brian Casel:Very nice.
Jordan Gal:Right. And it feels good, but I I think I had I had a few moments this week where I just said, you know, that it's good, but I don't like their trajectory. This it's just not fast enough, man. It's it's working, so why not push harder, go faster? So that that mindset, you know, at first, it kinda made me angry and and kinda frustrated by, you know, what what are my options?
Jordan Gal:Why isn't it moving fast enough? And at some point, that kinda turned into, into action. So I I got a Facebook ad campaign launched. I have a a webinar planned, which I think it'll be interesting to kinda compare notes and what worked and what didn't work and share that with the audience. Right?
Jordan Gal:You're Yep. You right. It's both they're both software, but but different categories and different, industries. Yeah.
Brian Casel:It will be interesting. You know, webinars to sell some kind of, like, SaaS service, you know, versus webinars to sell an info product or sell consulting. You know?
Jordan Gal:It's Right. And and when webinars are complicated, not only in setting up and all that, but it's also, you know, what do you talk about? I'm I'm not gonna talk about abandoned cart software for an hour. That's not real value. So, you know, I'm gonna be talking about, you know, optimizing your ecommerce store, but then how does that connect to CartHook, and how do I transition from value to the pitch?
Jordan Gal:And right. And then you're gonna have the same kind of issue. So that'll be interesting. And then just look at at the numbers because if we're looking for predictable acquisition channels, we want to look at numbers and say, this is how much it cost per registrant. This is how much was spent total.
Jordan Gal:This is number registrants. This is attendees. This free trials. This is converted customers, and this is how much it cost me to spend per acquired paying customer. And then is that sustainable?
Jordan Gal:Do you do you wanna keep doing that? Is it scalable? So all these things that that will go into it. Yeah. So a few different a few different fronts being pursued at the same time, but all all based on the premise of just just being more aggressive on the marketing and sales side of things.
Jordan Gal:So Facebook ad campaign, webinar coming up, and I I've been, reaching out and talking to a lot of data providers, that will help me with sales leads. So, right, I work with ecommerce stores, but only certain platforms. So I need to know what sites are on what platform and then contact information. So I just see a really big opportunity. Right?
Jordan Gal:If you recall, the way I got my first 20 customers was from cold email. So I got lists. Yeah.
Brian Casel:I was gonna say, like, how are you using that data? Is it is it still more cold email? Or
Jordan Gal:Well, that that's the thing. When I did the cold email, it was it was the right thing for that point in time to just, like, just hurry the process up. I mean, I
Brian Casel:barely had a website and people getting your first customers. It's Right.
Jordan Gal:Just get your first just talk to people, see if people wanna buy it. Right? So it did the job. But now I see an opportunity to take a more sales, classic sales oriented approach, to to purchase higher quality information and then, go through a a bit more sophisticated sales process. Instead of just cold email, it's cold email combined with a phone call, combined with follow-up emails and follow-up phone calls and a more traditional approach to sales.
Brian Casel:And I guess those are for the higher tier You know? Customers. Right?
Jordan Gal:It it this is all predicated on looking back over the past year and saying what percentage of people that start a free trial turn into paid customers and what percentage you know, what's the churn? Basically, who drops out so I have a handle on lifetime value. And so I know how much I'm willing to spend to acquire a customer. And that might be paying for the lead, paying for the salesperson, paying for the, you know, whatever else goes into it. The, you know, GoToMeeting or the join me or all these things that go into, but it's the same thing.
Jordan Gal:It's pursuing an additional channel of acquiring customers in a predictable way where you can say, I'm going to spend x and acquire y back, and let's see how far that can take us. Yep. Yep. Very good. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:I've been thinking a lot about that. The other thing I wanted to mention Oh, did I? Is I really enjoyed the shit out of a podcast.
Brian Casel:I enjoyed you
Jordan Gal:there. By Brendan Dunn. You still there? Well, we're gonna record, so we're gonna keep going. I really enjoyed Brendan Dunn's latest podcast episode where he had Scott Ewell on.
Jordan Gal:You know, and Scott is the cohost of Bootstrap with Kids. And, basically, Scott took Brennan's consulting master class, and they just have a conversation about how Scott went from his normal 5 to $10,000 projects to the transformation between, you know, basically being an order taker and just focusing on the technology, and how he basically got to the other side. So now he's doing consultative selling, and he's talking about the business' needs and the business' goals and how that really has transformed his business. He just landed a really big client, and it's an amazing, very valuable, very inspiring conversation. So I would definitely urge people to check that out.
Jordan Gal:That's at wfreelancing.com/100kprojects. I think Brennan's podcast is called the business of freelancing podcast. So that is, an amazing podcast that I would very highly recommend. It's, also related.
Brian Casel:Yeah. It is a good podcast. I've I've been I've been listening to all the episodes except for that one. It's queued up in my player, so I'll be listening to that.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. It's it just came out this week. Yeah. So, I mean, I think it just came out a few days ago. Oh, and that is very much related to a post that Brennan wrote on his blog about a new agency that he's launching and basically bringing people along for the ride.
Jordan Gal:So not only is he gonna be disclosing, you know, everything he's doing, but also, I mean, he's solicited for people who may wanna work together in the blog post. And Yeah. Brennan being, you know, who he is and providing as much value as he does, people jumped on it. So and his new agency
Brian Casel:really exciting what what he's doing there.
Jordan Gal:So so interesting. And yeah. I think it's gonna be an amazing thing to watch. Right? It's a hybrid of a productized service combined with, like, a recurring revenue element part of it, like a medium term, engagement, you know, like six months, and he basically helps people, use email marketing and automation to, you know, to optimize their their marketing.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Totally. And, you know, the the really interesting thing about about watching what what Brennan has been doing over the last couple of years and the stuff that he's been consulting with these clients is that, like, everyone out there does this, like, sales funnel consulting kind of stuff. Right? Like, anyone can go into a biz like, any marketer can go into a business and be like, I can set you up with a sales funnel.
Brian Casel:But what he he does and he wrote about this in that article. Like, he he has this unique mix of skills that Mhmm. Like, yes, he he's a a brilliant marketer when it comes to, like, writing and and figuring out the the the pain points and putting the like, an educational course together. But then he's also a developer. He can go into the site or or the app or the SaaS or whatever and and and put and build out these, like, metrics tracking to, you know, to really optimize, you know, and personalize the experience for every lead that comes through the funnel.
Brian Casel:You know, he's done that for his own site. He's done that for client sites. So, you know, packaging that together in a service, it's really high value, really unique. So it'll be it'll be interesting to see how he does it.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. And I think I think one of the most interesting pieces is gonna be how he handles operating this as an owner and and not as someone who does the work themselves. Yep. Right? Because, okay, cool.
Jordan Gal:He has the unique skills personally, but if he wants to run it right? And and in the post, he describes how he wants to run it. He doesn't wanna do all the work. He wants to set the strategy. And so he's gonna have to take what's in his brain and bring it out.
Brian Casel:Yep. Bring it in into a system, into a a standard, like, methodology that his team can carry out.
Jordan Gal:Right. And and very honestly, that's what excites me. Because right. I think most people I'll speak for most people. How about that?
Jordan Gal:Sure. When when you when you read something like this, you say, oh, Brendan, that's awesome for you, but how do I do this for myself? How do I use this type of approach? This right. How do I apply this to myself to improve my, you know, economic situation?
Jordan Gal:To put it in in in nice terms. So what excites me very much is that it doesn't matter so much what Brennan knows how to do himself. It's more important that Brennan knows what's possible and what's right because I I can do that too. I don't have to have the amazing mix of skills and talent that Brennan does. I can look at that and say, but if I knew what needs to get done in a business
Brian Casel:Yeah. Put the I the pieces together. Right.
Jordan Gal:And I think that's, you know, that's that's part of what is very exciting for other people looking in on this. It's the same thing that makes people excited, you know, when you see other people talk about their success. A lot of times, it's like, well, you're just special, and that's awesome for you, but that has nothing to do with me. But in other scenarios, you look at it and say, I can do that because x, y, and z, and that's, it's very exciting.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And, you know, I think that whether you're looking at Brennan or whoever, you know, the people who who've had these successes, the more you're in this world, the more you're in this game of building these these businesses and bootstrapping something, the more you start to realize luck has nothing to do with it. You know? Stars aligning has nothing to do with it. It's it's just figuring out the right strategies and executing them, you know, in the right sequence and just learning things.
Brian Casel:You know? Like, nothing nothing comes easy and nothing comes overnight. And we all know that. And and even these big success stories, you know, all the people that that we all know, you know, what we really see is the highlight reel. You know?
Brian Casel:There are plenty of mistakes and failures that that people learn from. But, you know, it's just it's just putting in the the months and the years of of learning those things. And, you know, it's it's kind of just a matter of time at that point.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I I also think it's very much related in you know, you you've heard the saying before the I'm gonna massacre this quote, but it's basically there's a direct correlation between how successful you are and how much value you provide to the market. Yeah. Right? A bunch of cliche words that mean nothing, but then when you look at real life examples, you look at the amount of value that someone like Brennan or Nathan Barry, they just put out so much value and affect so many people that it makes sense that so much comes back to them.
Jordan Gal:The truth is they're getting a tiny slice, a tiny proportion of the amount of value that they're providing. You know? And maybe a few months ago, I would have heard that and said, that that's bullshit. You know? You know, business is about having something to sell and figuring it out and how to sell it and accelerating that and, you know, keeping the the the margin times the number of units you can sell.
Jordan Gal:Cool. But when we're talking about this type of thing, where it's education and service, there's a huge correlation. I look at the amount of value that I put out into the market, man, that ain't shit compared to some of these guys. And it Yeah. It makes sense that what do I expect?
Jordan Gal:To get the same back as they do? No, man. You you gotta up your game.
Brian Casel:And it's it's that's that's the kind of lesson that I think is sitting right there in front of all of us. And it takes so long for that to really click with so many people, myself included, You know? Yeah. The more that you give Yeah. Look.
Brian Casel:The you know, because it because at the end of the day, marketing anything, especially marketing anything online, is about building trust. And how do you build trust? You give something. You you you build credibility by giving something away. Usually, teaching, you know, some kind of education.
Jordan Gal:That's the new marketing, man.
Brian Casel:That is marketing. That is that is what it is. You know?
Jordan Gal:Yep. Yep. It used to be different. You used to have you used to need a huge budget and have your name known and brand and your logo out, you know, on the Super Bowl. It's just not like that anymore, especially not in our in our, you know, neck of the woods.
Jordan Gal:Yep. Yeah.
Brian Casel:Alright. So why don't we get into some so let's read a couple of quick iTunes reviews, and then we'll get into these questions. That I got a couple couple good ones here. Let's see what those are. Oh, so the first one is let me just pull it up.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Five stars from Phil Dirksen. Phil, I met you at MicroConf. He he says, these guys don't hold anything back when it comes to sharing their journey and running self funded businesses. Keep it up, fellas.
Brian Casel:Cool. Thank you, Phil. And we've got another one from someone who go so five stars, and and the and the headline is a podcast with less fluff and more meat. I like it. Yeah.
Brian Casel:He goes by the name of original p u g. Not sure what that means, but Don't know. Don't know. He says, I'm not got a small type here. It says, I'm not even sure how I stumbled upon these two, but I'm glad I did.
Brian Casel:What I love about this podcast is that Brian and Jordan are like me. They are in the trenches every day building their businesses. They give real honest advice about what they're doing, what's working, and sometimes just as important, what's not. I always come away with some great strategy advice and tools that I didn't know about, and they have a good rapport with each other. So listening is a pleasure.
Brian Casel:Give it a tumble, Andy Rank says. A tumble? Is that a is that a British, like, term? I don't I never heard that.
Jordan Gal:It might be. Clearly, the two the two of us, the two Northeastern Americans, haven't heard that before. But, Andy, thank you very much. And, Phil, thank you. That's, that's cool, man.
Jordan Gal:Love love to hear that sort of thing.
Brian Casel:Alright. So let's get into the, finally, the meat of the of this episode. I feel like we've
Jordan Gal:Well, I think this this whole episode is kinda freewheeling. Right? We we talked about our own updates, but we kinda got into, you know, just more theoretical and other interesting stuff. And, yeah, today, get to talk about, questions, topics brought up by the listeners. And, if you wanna hear your questions and your topics talked about, head over to bootstrapweb.com/ask.
Jordan Gal:So, Brian, where Sure. Where do we start off? What's the first question?
Brian Casel:Alright. Well, we actually have two questions. And we'll do the first one first. This one is from Anthony Frank I mean, Anthony Franco actually sent us two questions, so we'll do his first one first. Cool.
Brian Casel:This one is about sales process. And I think it I think it applies pretty well to what both you and I are doing. So he says, I'm currently working on figuring out the right sales process for my SaaS, which is at bettercater.com. And, being that I'm an engineer, I'm having trouble figuring out the specifics, like what to email leads when they show interest, how to go about an online demo or sales call, how to ask for the sale, what resources did you guys use when figuring out your specific sales processes for Restaurant Engine and CartHook. So Yep.
Brian Casel:Yeah. So, I mean, know, I I have some thoughts on that. First of all, early on well, by the way, so Better Cater, you guys can check that out, bettercater.com. It looks like it's some kind of SaaS tool for, catering companies. Mhmm.
Brian Casel:Very nice. Looks, you know, somewhat related to the restaurant industry, you know, what what I've been working with. So, one thing that I know and I think this goes for any new SaaS app, no matter what industry it is. But get on the phone definitely for for the restaurant hospitality or catering industry. You're gonna need to get on the phone early and often.
Brian Casel:So that's that's just the very first thing. Like, don't be afraid of the phones. If you're an engineer, you know, you've gotta just throw yourself into it. I I don't come from any kind of sales phone background, and I hated it for the first year. But I did it, and now I actually enjoy it.
Brian Casel:So, yeah, just get on the phone. So and by that, I mean, like, have some kind of form, ask for a consultation, require the phone number. If you have, a live chat, you know, first of all, just have the live chat and and be and engage visitors that way and start those conversations. And then you can, you know, sometimes translate or convert those into phone calls. So just get on the phone.
Brian Casel:That's the first thing. In terms of, like, what to send to leads. So after I get on a call or sometimes with an email, I always send a follow-up email. This goes back to my consulting days. Like, after you get off the phone with a new client or whoever, like, you always wanna follow-up with an immediate follow-up email.
Brian Casel:So we have some, canned replies that we use, which we then tailor based on what it was that we talked about. So we'll say something like, you know, great to speak to you today about your restaurant. You you asked about mobile optimization. You know, we we do that using responsive web design. So, you know, we'll we'll kinda tailor it based on what we talked about.
Brian Casel:And then for the past year or so, we also created or I you know, I I created this PDF in Google Docs. I exported it as a PDF. It's we call it the restaurant engine info pack. And it's about three to five pages long. Kinda goes through all the details of our service, you know, the pricing, the setup process, a couple of case studies, links, and and our phone number, like links to sign up and and our phone number and everything.
Brian Casel:This is really good because what what we ran into a lot, and I'm sure you you probably are as well, is you get someone on the phone who is maybe like a partner in the business. Like, they're a co owner, or they're like a lower level manager. Like, okay. Like, everything sounds good. I just need to run it by the team.
Brian Casel:Need to run it by my partners. Need to run it by who are my boss, whoever.
Jordan Gal:Bring it to the boss.
Brian Casel:This PDF, send it send it to them in the email, like, as a as a PDF attachment. That way, they can down and I say in the email, it's like, you here's a printable info pack that you can print out and share with your team, you know, something for them to just, put on their desk and and throw around and and and talk about. That's really important.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. You can bring it into a meeting. That's yeah. That's yeah. I feel the same way.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah. Would yeah. Totally. And then just a couple quick things here.
Brian Casel:Set reminders to follow-up. Like, in the beginning, I used just follow-up.cc. So every lead, I always set myself, like, a seven day reminder to send a follow-up email or give them a follow-up call. These days, we we have a whole, like, sales CRM follow-up system built out in Trello. And I have a really detailed blog post covering everything about that system that you could ever wanna know about.
Jordan Gal:You use Trello for a CRM?
Brian Casel:Yeah. I
Jordan Gal:don't even wanna know. That's crazy.
Brian Casel:We have a it's like Trello plus Zapier plus or Zapier, whatever it is, Gravity Forms. You know, it's all kinda hooked together. Then we've got procedures for my team to follow-up and call everyone. So that's all detailed, on a post that I wrote called a system for selling, and we'll we'll link that up. Yes.
Brian Casel:About, like, resources. Like, how did we learn about this kind of stuff? So, first and foremost, I mean, just learn by doing. You know? In the very beginning of Restaurant Engine, I was following, like, Mixergy courses on how to optimize my website and different things like that.
Brian Casel:And, yeah, those helped here and there, but a lot of those things I like, I remember one was like a PR course for Mixergy. And great course, great lesson, but I kind of followed it out of order. Like, I I I tried implementing it when it didn't really make sense for us, and it didn't really have a a big effect. So the what I found more you know, the my biggest resource was just getting on that live chat, answering those emails, and then getting on the phone on a daily basis with leads. And then iterating and and learning based on that.
Brian Casel:Like, at first, I didn't have a canned email response. And then I figured out, alright. What's most important to put in there? For the first year, I didn't have this info pack. And then we figured out, oh, that might be good to have.
Brian Casel:You know? So you just learn these things over time. You don't have to get everything right on day one. Yeah. And then the other thing is that.
Jordan Gal:I would say don't don't trick yourself into thinking I have to have this stuff before I start selling. Because whatever you create, not only is it gonna be a waste of time and push back your sales efforts, which is always a disaster, but whatever you create isn't gonna be right because it's gonna come from your head as opposed to the actual customer.
Brian Casel:So Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Don't do anything. Just build it as you go and build up the assets used in the sales process based on your experience with real people. So start emailing and get people on the phone. Totally. That is the most important thing.
Jordan Gal:And then they'll ask you for stuff. Hey. I need something to print for my boss for the meeting on Tuesday. Can you send me something? Sure.
Jordan Gal:What do you wanna see in it? And then put your info pack together. Yep. Yep. And my info pack, it's pretty it's pretty good.
Jordan Gal:My info pack is a few paragraphs about what, you know, the benefit, what it does, how it fits in, how it works. A few key features. I have a table. Key features and then the benefit of that feature in a table. And then the next page is the pricing page.
Jordan Gal:The, you know, you know, what the plans include and then like some details. Thirty day free trial, no setup fee, no contract, no credit card. And then pages three and four are screenshots. And then, of course, my contact info, is in the footer of each one.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Very nice. I I guess the one last thing that I would add here and, you know, in terms of, like, resources, how to get better at this stuff, how to learn more, talk to advisers, talk to friends in in who are doing businesses like this stuff, get into a mastermind group if you can, or attend conferences. You know? I we we did a whole episode on on mastermind groups, so you can go back and listen to that.
Brian Casel:But I remember this year, went to MicroConf in Vegas. And this is just one of those conferences that's, like, perfect for us and for anyone else who's listened to this to this podcast. It's like because you're gonna talk to 200 other people who are doing the same thing. I mean, I remember at one of the after parties at master at at MicroConf, I was I spent like an hour talking to talking to Harry from he's from this company called Morawear, and they build software for kitchen countertop installers. Installers.
Brian Casel:Talk about Yes. Talk about niche. Right? Awesome. And they and he was he did a an attendee talk about doing phone sales, like, whole strategy on doing phone sales.
Brian Casel:So that was, a perfect opportunity for me to to pick his brain. Spoke to him a bunch at the after party, and then I actually had another Skype call with him afterward just learning about how to, like, ask questions on the phone and and and get the customer talking and that sort of thing. It's like, you wouldn't really learn this stuff unless you start connecting with fellow business owners and bootstrappers and figure out, like, what's working for you guys. You know? Like, I I still need to do a better job of, like, reaching out and asking for advice.
Brian Casel:You know?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. You always come up on bottlenecks. And whatever issue, whatever bottleneck you're dealing with, someone else has figured out a lot a lot better than than than you have currently. So I always like I always listen for that. Right?
Jordan Gal:If if I were just starting out listening to our conversation right now, I would have picked up on, okay, but how the hell do I get people on the phone? Right? So that's where you zero in if that's your current bottleneck. Right? If, Anthony, is that is that his name?
Jordan Gal:Right? Franco? Yeah. Yep. Right?
Jordan Gal:If his issue right now is he's not getting into enough conversations, then don't worry about what you're gonna send people. Figure out how to get into more conversations. Yep. Talk to people, try different things, listen to mixergy courses, listen to podcasts, try cold email, try cold calling, try whatever it is. Once you figure out how to get into phone conversations, then you come up against the next issue where it's, hey, what do I need to send people to convince them to give it a try once I've gotten them on the phone?
Jordan Gal:Or what do I need to say? And you just kinda figure out each little bottleneck by seeking out the information that's relevant to you. You can pretty much ignore, hey, how do I do the onboarding, you know, if that's not where you are right now? You still need to figure out these things before you get to that.
Brian Casel:Totally. So should we move on to the second question? And I think this is a quick quicker one.
Jordan Gal:Because we're we're clueless on it. So, Anthony
Brian Casel:Basically, because we don't have the answer.
Jordan Gal:Yes. We don't know. Yeah. Anthony asked about insurance. Right?
Jordan Gal:Anytime these these things come up, accounting, insurance, lawyers, legal, privacy policies, you can ignore it. That's what I like to do. But but you, you know,
Brian Casel:you kinda, like, look the other way and do do something else that I enjoy.
Jordan Gal:Yes. But you you have to, you know, at least be aware of these things. So Anthony asked about, liability insurance. Right? He said, I I I read the book, Starting and Sustaining, and it mentions having liability insurance, and I wonder if that's something that you guys have in your business.
Jordan Gal:So he right. He asked more about cyber liability insurance. Basically, what do we recommend for a SaaS business, in terms of insurance? So yeah. You want to take this?
Brian Casel:You know, so I looked into liability insurance, not not in the early days of restaurant insurance, but actually back when I was doing mostly freelance and consulting work. I looked into, you know, protection against liability. So that's like errors and and mistakes on a website, like and that can cost clients business or something like that. Mhmm. You know, that's what that's where liability insurance comes into play.
Brian Casel:When I looked into it, and this was a couple years back, it was pretty expensive to you know, for that type and for, like, technology or web based liability insurance. It was something like, I don't know, like, 1,600 a year. So, you know, it's it it can be significant, you know, depending on where you're at. I ended up kind of just sticking with just forming an LLC. And not not that it's the same solution.
Brian Casel:It's not. But I I did form an LLC just to have some kind of separation between my business and personal assets. So if we we were ever to to be sued, you know, I guess there's I I think and don't take yeah. I'm I'm no lawyer here. But but, you know, I think there's some kind of separation.
Brian Casel:Like, they can't go after our our home, you know, basically. Assets. Presumably. Yeah. Now so I did do the LLC, and this was, like, maybe in my second or third year of of being on my own as a as a freelance web designer.
Brian Casel:The first two two to three years of that, I had nothing. I I did have, like, a I had, like, a DBA, doing business as. So, essentially, I'm just like an individual, you know. I think that's all you need in the beginning. Like, in in the very beginning, if if your business has, like, zero customers at this point and you're just getting off the ground, I hear so many you see, like this is, like, the most common, like, forum question asked in these business for you know, message boards.
Brian Casel:It's like, I have an idea for a start up. I have an idea for a business. Do I need an LLC or an s corp or a c corp? Or what do I need? Like, that is not the question.
Brian Casel:The question is how to get your first customers. Focus on that first. And then, you know, when it starts to make sense and and things start to get traction, then you might wanna start to get some protections in place and whatnot. But, yeah, I mean, the LLC kinda made the most sense for me a couple of years into my business. You know, at some point down down the line, I I might look into more kind of protections and and upgrading these things.
Brian Casel:But, that's that's my take on it.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. As the business becomes more valuable, these things make more sense because there's more to protect. Right? The the beginning stages, you know, anything, a DBA, just so you can accept a check from someone it being written to your your your proper name. That's as much as you need to get started to do, you know, a website project for someone.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And disclaimer, we are not lawyers or accountants or or whatever. Do not take our advice.
Jordan Gal:Yes. The yeah. The the corporation, look, it costs money, and you need to maintain it. And oh my god. Am I not looking forward to moving my s corp from Connecticut to Oregon right now?
Jordan Gal:I have to dissolve. Yeah. Look. This side of the business is not fun, but you do need to just get it straight and then, you know, stop thinking about it. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:But there are significant tax advantages. Obviously, you wanna take advantage of those once you have a real business. Once you have, you know, anything near substantial income, right, the fact that I have an an s corp, has made an enormous impact on my tax implications and how much I take home and health insurance and all these other things. So this shit's annoying, but you have to take care of it. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Good to More specifically on on the liability insurance, yeah, after we got this question, I definitely I did some of my own research, and there are some companies that are catering to web businesses, and it does seem pretty affordable. So I it it is on my medium term to do list on, okay, once I get to, you know, I'm just I just put myself like I put like a line in the sand. Okay. Once I get to, you know, x number of clients or x number x amount of revenue, then no more excuses. Go get that shit done.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm. Yeah. Which which isn't isn't a bad take. But don't do all this stuff ahead of time, man. Just go.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Very nice. So why don't we get into this third question? I think this will be a little bit of a longer one, and it's and it's a good topic to tackle. So this comes from want me to read it, or are you gonna read it?
Jordan Gal:Nah. Go for it.
Brian Casel:Okay. So this is a long one. So here we go.
Jordan Gal:You don't have to read every
Brian Casel:read. Okay. Yeah. I know. I I do wanna get a bunch of his main points in there, though.
Brian Casel:Yep. So Ryan Frank asks us about pricing. He says, I'm on the brink of launching my first SaaS product. It's an automated system that solves a pretty simple problem. So my approach is going to get lots of my approach is going to be getting a lot of users spending a little bit of cash.
Jordan Gal:So Low price.
Brian Casel:I'm getting, like, alarm bells going off here. So should you so a couple questions here. Should you start high and reduce cost until you find that sweet spot that users are willing to part with? Right. Or should
Jordan Gal:you price. Start high and reduce your price.
Brian Casel:Right. Should you start with a low price and raise prices based on features added? And then he goes on to a couple different things here. By the way, he he does give us his site, and that is tosbloks.com. Mhmm.
Brian Casel:That's good. It it really does look good. It looks pretty slick. I think he asked us this question a a couple months back. So so, you know, I think he's come a long way with it since he asked the question.
Brian Casel:It looks really good. It to me, it looks like, so well, the way that he he describes it is it's a utility that helps professionals who work by appointment share their schedule on social media feeds and book one click appointments. So it it does kinda remind me a lot of these other appointment setting applications. I I use and I love this app called calendly.com. Just really clean, really easy to use.
Brian Casel:I think what he's talking about, like, his seems to incorporate some social media feeds or or features, which kinda differentiate it a little bit. And the app has kind of a different workflow. But I'm I'm seeing a a big similarity between Calendly and, like, ScheduleOnce and Time Trade and a whole list of other of these appointment setting apps out there. So he he also asks here, I'm struggling on a decision between $8 a month or $12 a month. And I'm afraid of charging too little, obtaining a set of calm down, Jordan.
Brian Casel:I know. I know. No. It's I'm afraid of charging too little, obtaining a set of customers, and then being stuck unable to raise the price. So, yeah, I I think right right there on that point, $8 or $12, frankly, is there's no there's not not a huge difference between those two numbers.
Brian Casel:They both seem too low. And so that's I think that's the big thing that we need to talk through here is 8 to $12 a month is very low. So it's gonna be an extremely difficult uphill battle to get enough users to make this a sustainable business. And if you're bootstrapping and this is your very first thing and you're doing something like consulting or whatever else on the side, it's going to make it infinitely harder to to make this work at an 8 to $12 a month price point. Now, that being said, this product, it looks like currently on the site, it's it's there's like a free plan or some kind of freemium model, which adds even more of a of a hurdle to get to to get that cash flow in the door and make this sustainable.
Brian Casel:Now, I said that that that's a very low price point, and and that's too low. But it's not necessarily too low for this type of product. Because you look at a Calendly, you look at all these other ones, most of them do freemium too. So that's your competition, is you're up against free, and you're up Yeah, against
Jordan Gal:it's the deal.
Brian Casel:You know? So you you this isn't the kind of thing that says, hey, nice product. Just charge five times more for it, you'll be good.
Jordan Gal:Right. Just raise your prices is not That's not the answer here.
Brian Casel:I think I think there there are some harder questions to to work through. So, I mean, what what are you thinking there?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. So this is this is tricky, man. And, you know, just to start off by saying, we could be completely wrong. Right? There there's no way to to know what the right price is and the right approach and all this.
Jordan Gal:So everything we say here is is just dealing with the information you have at the beginning before you've actually launched. Right? So the way I look at it is I work backwards, and I say, alright, to make this business sustainable so that it can provide a full time income so that you can stop working on everything else and, you know, give this a full go with a 100% of your time, I just call it $10 a month. Right? Nice round numbers.
Jordan Gal:At $10 a month at an average revenue per paying customer of, call it, $10, you you need a thousand clients. And that is very difficult to do on a bootstrap budget Because in order to obtain a thousand paying customers, you're gonna need to get in touch with, come across, make your offer to a very large number of people. Call it 10,000, 20,000.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Even more. I mean Even even more. When you're when it's a freemium model
Jordan Gal:Well, yeah.
Brian Casel:Well, freemium models. What what percentage of of the free users are gonna convert to paid? You gotta you gotta at least assume to be conservative about it, like, 5% or less. Right?
Jordan Gal:Right. And then and then how many what what kind of value can you provide on an ongoing basis that people are not going to stop doing it after six months? Because then all the math goes out the window completely, and everything looks a lot worse than
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Than you think
Brian Casel:it does.
Jordan Gal:So just from that point of view, I just see it as a really tall task for a bootstrap company, one person, maybe two people, to get to 1,000 paying customers. It's just, know, that's gonna take some luck. You're gonna have to get some some mentions in big media and some people sending people to your site, and you can't do that on on a budget. Right? You can't pay there's no way you're gonna figure out a way to pay something like $10.20, $30 to acquire a customer.
Jordan Gal:Like, that's that's not realistic. It's gonna cost a lot more to do that. So you need luck. You need content. You need things that scale and go viral, and and that's just that's risky.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And things like showing up on on Hacker News or getting on like Lifehacker or some big blog, that's that'll be a one time spike in traffic. That's not a sustainable thing that will take you to a thousand paying customers. Right? Yep.
Brian Casel:Like, without a big budget, you would need to get on those front page of those blogs, like, every single month for the next twelve months. It it's a it's just extremely difficult thing to do. Like, just the math really doesn't make sense unless you had, a, you know, venture backed big team, you know, to throw a lot of to do a big land grab. Because there are competitors here. You know?
Brian Casel:And Yes. I yes. There there are some some differentiators here in terms of, like, features, but, you know, it's it's very, very difficult to compete on features alone. You know? You you are entering the same space.
Brian Casel:I mean, the app looks great. The the interface looks looks really intuitive.
Dan Norris:Yeah. The marketing, you
Jordan Gal:know I I could've used this today. I just sent an email today saying, I'm available today at 11:30 and 12:30 and then 3PM and tomorrow at 11AM. You know, that's that's not smart. It would be cool for me to send, here's a link, you know, sign up. So the truth is there are several options to getting that done.
Jordan Gal:And so, I mean, look, when when I started CardHook, I I faced this weird problem. I had competitors who charged $2,000 to set up and then a thousand bucks a month contract for two years. And then I had other competitors who were charging $9 a month and other you know? So there was this it was this very, very large, swing. And I kinda had to just choose a spot, and I knew that my features were not gonna be up to snuff with the other people.
Jordan Gal:Right? If I priced based on the features I had when launching, I would have been embarrassed to to charge $50 a month. But I wanted to position myself as a premium product. So I went, okay, enterprise, not really my competitors. The other guys doing, you know, monthly, no contract, SaaS classic, like, let me see where they are and let me go right to the top of that market.
Jordan Gal:Let my marketing be good and let me get to work on the features. The truth is nobody price is not the deterrent. Nobody's looking at my product and comparing it to someone else's. They're just looking at, should I do your product or do nothing? So Right.
Jordan Gal:I'm happy that I priced myself the way I did, but it's still it's tricky because you, like, don't have confidence in in what you have so far.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And I I think I think you and I have a similar story here, and I think it can apply to what Ryan is doing in that you're up against lower priced competitors. I I'm up I I have competitors who are free, you know, a lot of them. And, you know, in in Restaurant Engine. And I'd I had the same decision, which was I I can't compete with free, so I'm not gonna compete with free.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I'm I'm gonna charge, you know. I'm gonna try to be in, you know, higher than the website builders, higher priced than the website builders, but lower priced than hiring a web design firm to do it. Right. And and so so so I think what Ryan needs to do is find ways to to charge charge more.
Brian Casel:Like and that means, like, add more value or add a different like a like a different type of value to this product. And just to give an example, like, I did in Restaurant Engine, I'm doing this now. Like okay. So forever, the price has been $49 a month on Restaurant Engine, and it continues to be like, that's our core plan. That's what most customers are on.
Brian Casel:Recent so a couple months back so so at some point, we we added the the paid setup fee so that what what I'm saying is $49 a month, which is 5 times higher than what Ryan is planning on charging, still didn't turn out to be, like, enough to get us to a point where where we're really sustaining ourselves. So I had to start adding even more value, and that was through paid setups, which we started charging for it, and then I doubled the the price of of the paid setup fee. And now this month, we're actually starting to add an additional add on service called called marketing boost, which is we'll do some some, like, email marketing and social media marketing stuff for them for an extra $99 a month. Very interesting. To and that's just an another way to add value, productize service, like done for you work that that my team and I can, like, systematize and do.
Brian Casel:But it's also a way to grow revenue and grow lifetime value per customer. Even at $49 a month, I'm looking at ways to boost revenue. And so I think, Ryan, you need to do some kind of change in approach to move that 8 to $12 a month up to $50.50 to 100 a month. And so, Jordan, I think earlier, you know, we we went over this outline earlier. You were talking about niching down.
Brian Casel:That could be a great idea.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. You know? That's look. You you have to you have to just be realistic about your situation and how much risk you wanna take on. If you wanna stay a very generic, this will work for everybody solution and price it low and have the potential to to bring on thousands of customers, that's a high risk plan.
Jordan Gal:And if you wanna go that route, look, you have the potential to hit it out of the park and and get, you know, 20,000 customers and and print money and hallelujah. I personally think that's gonna be very low likelihood. So, you know, my approach with CardHook was if I I'm not gonna depend on luck. I have a family. I have kids.
Jordan Gal:This is not about luck. I need to make this work, period. And so if I just do whatever it takes, I'm gonna bang my head up against the wall and and get 10 customers a month. And if I get 10 customers a month, a year from now, I'll have about a 100 customers. And if I charge a $100 a month, I'll get to $10 a month.
Jordan Gal:And that at least puts the control in my hands. So that's a lower risk, you know, approach to it. And if things take off, cool. But at least I know that it's it's lower risk. So if you're gonna go in that direction, then you need to figure out a way to differentiate yourself and to add more value.
Jordan Gal:The thing that came to my mind is to niche down and make yourself a specific solution for a specific type of customer. I think it'll make your sales easier, your marketing easier, your copy, you know, your marketing site, everything will be clarified if you kinda have the balls to to do that. If you say to yourself, who's gonna find the absolute most value in this? Right? So part of his differentiation is the ability to, I believe, share these types of links, on social media.
Jordan Gal:Right? So who is on social media? Let's just call it let's go the classic route of the real estate agent. Right? So then I would say appointment setting through social media for real estate agents.
Jordan Gal:And those people are gonna connect their appointments to the value of an appointment. And those people you can charge, you know, a $100 a month, $50 a month because it's going to add significant value to their business and you can direct all your marketing and all of your efforts and all of your features for that segment of prospects, and that will make the value and the differentiation. You know, those guys, when they think I need I need a calendar app, they'll go to ScheduleOnce and Calendly, and then they'll go to TossBlox, and they'll say, guys are generic and they have all types of stuff that I don't need. TossBlox knows exactly what I need because they're doing it exactly for real estate agents. And, yes, it's a lot more expensive, but I have more confidence in it.
Jordan Gal:That's that's where my kinda marketing
Brian Casel:thought Yeah. Would go. And the other thing that I would look at is well, I I'm just wondering, you know, what kind of customer research has been done around this, like, media, like, the need to post an appointment slot on social media. I I wonder who has that need. Like, how how did you actually come come up with that need?
Brian Casel:And I'm just, like, thinking off the top of my head here, and I could be completely off base. That's why you need to do the customer research around it. But, you know, this could I'm see I'm hearing some, like, similarities with clarity. You know? Like like, on demand, let me pick your brain.
Brian Casel:Like, hey. I've got I I'm a business coach, and I've got an hour free this afternoon. I'm gonna tweet that out to my followers. Does anybody wanna buy this hour? Like, click here to book it through TossBlox.
Brian Casel:It costs x amount of dollars. Percentage of that goes to TOSBLOX. You know? That you can look at some some kind of creative, solution around that. Kind of like a clarity like a, yeah, like a like a mix between, like, clarity and and like a like a schedule once, but, you know, monetized, basically.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. But what whatever we're dancing around is just a more clearly defined unique selling proposition. And by doing that and having that as your focus and as your purpose, you start to gear everything toward that, the copy, the features. And because it's differentiated, because it's more valuable for a smaller segment of people, they'll find it more valuable. There, you essentially have your excuse to charge more money.
Brian Casel:Yep. Yep. Alright. So I think that, that wraps it up. Three good questions, and, we we tackled them.
Brian Casel:So if you guys have any other questions, you know, let let's hear what's going on in your business. You know, give us the link. Or even, you know, if if you just wanna hear us like, suggest a topic for an entire show, we're all ears. You can, get to us at bootstrappedweb.com/ask. And, that'll wrap it up for for today.
Brian Casel:So, you know, as always, you can dig into the backlog of episodes on bootstrapweb.com. And if you're enjoying the show, please do head over to iTunes and leave us a five star review. We'd appreciate it.
Jordan Gal:Alright. Brian, good stuff. Until next week. See you. See you guys.
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