[55] Leveraging Other People as a Solo Founder
This is Bootstrap Web episode number 55. This is the podcast for you. If you're the founder who learns by doing as you're bootstrapping your business online. Today, we're gonna talk about leveraging other people, going beyond just yourself in all these different ways. I am Jordan.
Brian Casel:And I'm Brian.
Jordan Gal:Excellent. Brian, nice to see you again. Nice to come back after the New Year. Today's episode is gonna be pretty interesting. Before we dive into it, let's, give a quick update, see what you've been up to over the past, week or two.
Jordan Gal:Happy New Year, by the way.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Happy New Year to you and and and you guys for listening. I mean, is, you know, good good to talk to you again here, and, just excited to to get fired up for twenty fifteen. I'm I'm already hitting the ground running with a bunch of plans that I that I had put in place. So, yeah.
Brian Casel:I mean, a little bit of an update. I am putting together all these pieces for this new kind of sales funnel marketing push that I'm doing with with Restaurant Engine. And I have the exact plans in place, the things that I wanna start doing. But once you start getting into it, it's like, oh, man. There there's just that to do list just gets longer and longer.
Brian Casel:It's like for for everything that I do, whether it's putting up a landing page or or, you know, creating creating like like a a a a drip campaign or something. It's like three more to do lists or, you know, pop up. It's like Oh, you gotta, like, you gotta line that up. You gotta hook this up. You gotta do you know, get the Facebook ad running.
Brian Casel:You gotta do this and that. It's like, ugh. You know? And, and then, you know, with limited time, it's things just move so much slower. I thought I thought everything was gonna literally press go on January 1, but here we are.
Brian Casel:What is it? The sixth today? And, you know, it's still not running yet. But Yeah.
Jordan Gal:These are it's like the web of of to dos. Once you hook up a landing page, you say, oh, I can't actually launch a landing page yet because I have to go make this campaign. Oh, and I can't make the campaign until I publish the PDF to a URL. And I can't do that until it, like, forces you to go backwards.
Brian Casel:But Yeah.
Jordan Gal:I think that I think that's why going through something for the first time sucks. And the next time you do it, it's not surprising, and so you're not, like, as emotionally affected by moving backwards. You just say, oh, this is the next thing I need to do. Alright. Cool.
Brian Casel:Well Of course. And then I and then like everything else that I'm doing, like putting together marketing funnel, I the thing is I have a fully custom designed site. And I mean, it's on WordPress, but the all the themes and all all of our functionality and plugins are basically custom. So everything takes that much longer because I I have this need to, you know, custom code everything for whatever reason. And that kind of brings me to my next update here, and that is I'm starting to seriously think about, bringing on a developer.
Brian Casel:And, so I'm I'm kind of, like, beginning this search for for a developer to come on and and work with me, in some kind of, like, part time capacity, you know, a couple of days a week. And I'm starting to think about, like, the best ways to go about doing this because in the past, I've I've always hired, and we're gonna be talking much more about this in in today's episode of, like, leveraging other people and and working with a team and whatnot. But, in the past, when it comes to development work, like, coding work, you know, I can do a little bit of front end, not so much back end. And I've always kind of hired on, like, a project basis. You know?
Brian Casel:I need a certain x y z thing done. Let's talk to a couple of my preferred developers and get a quote and get it done. But now this year, one of my big kind of goals is to is to bring on a developer and work with me, you know, day to day, week to week on a whole variety of stuff, whether it's hooking up marketing pages or developing a new feature in the app, developing custom plug ins, you know, working with the Stripe API, a lot of that kind of stuff. I'm just looking for someone to to kind of collaborate with on a day to day basis. So, I guess I'll keep keep you guys updated on that.
Brian Casel:And if if you're listening and and you might be interested in this kind of thing, or you know someone who might be interested in this type of role, I'm I'm definitely looking in the next few weeks and months.
Jordan Gal:Nice. Very, interesting to hear that, and potentially interesting for people out in the audience. We'll see.
Brian Casel:What's up with you?
Jordan Gal:Oh, man. I'm just so relieved to be back home in Portland. I, you know, I I lost my mind again, my insatiable need to roam around the country. It kinda went too far. I mean, it was look.
Jordan Gal:It was great to go on vacation and see family and all that and be down, in the sun in Miami. So not a bad thing.
Brian Casel:Hard to complain about being in Miami in December.
Jordan Gal:But No. I'm not complaining about that. But I think, you know, we all get into this mindset of, you know, you're just kinda ready to go, ready to go back to work. And there are definite benefits from being away and thinking differently, and now I'm just happy to be back so I can just, you know, move a lot faster. So it's good to be back in Portland, and I'm just happy about the access to the food here finally.
Jordan Gal:Miami is good, but the food here is better. And There you go. Very much related to today's show and, very much related to what you said in your update, it's it's time for me to find a a full time developer in in a CTO type role. Ideally, here in the Portland area, I think what's happened over the past few weeks is I've I've kinda bought in. You know, I've kinda burned the boats, so to speak, and I'm I'm going all in on Cardhook for 2015.
Jordan Gal:And as I do that, as I just think about Cardhook all the time, There there's so much to do. There's so many different ideas and features and just pushing beyond the initial vision into a, you know, a bigger thing, a bigger business, a bigger offering. And that can't be done with just the the the part time. You know, Charlie, my main man, my my my my cofounder, has a full time job. And now the development needs are starting to stack up.
Jordan Gal:And if I wanna not just, you know, stay on top of what needs to get done, but instead go beyond that and try to reach for the vision that I actually have for the business over the next year, I just do not see a way to do that without a full time developer on board who who shares my vision and works on that side of the business full time. So that that's kinda where where I'm at. And I think that's, you know, as both of us are thinking about this, that's why today's topic kinda came out in our conversations about how to leverage other people, how to go beyond just yourself, how to hire people, attract people, what to do in each phase and how other people besides just yourself can help you. And that's what I'm excited to get into in today's episode. But first, you know, we're gonna take a quick break to talk about very smart people who leave iTunes reviews for a podcast.
Jordan Gal:So what what do we got going on, Brian?
Brian Casel:Who's Yeah. Smart this week? So it's been a couple of weeks since our last episode, and we've got two new iTunes reviews to call out here today. One is from Steve Lee. He says, love your content.
Brian Casel:As you both know man, the the type here is so small, so I gotta, like, squint. As you both know, there are tons of business podcasts on out there and some good ones, some not so good. My first experience was the episode about building a sales funnel. You both did a great job sharing your experience and understanding of the process. I also like the fact that you shared your troubles building your own and what you learned from your challenges.
Brian Casel:I enjoyed my first experience and look forward to many more. You have a good one. Well, thank you, Steve. And, yeah, I I totally agree. It's it's really all about learning from your mistakes more than the things that that work.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:And admitting them
Brian Casel:and and talking about them and, you know, maybe we're a little bit too open here on this podcast. Nah. I don't think we'll be holding back anytime soon.
Jordan Gal:Nah. The the more the more open the the the the more good things happen. So in a world of good podcasts and not so good podcasts, we have officially been cleared a good one.
Brian Casel:Yes.
Jordan Gal:Thank you very much, Steve. It was Steve. Right?
Brian Casel:Yep. And, we got one more from, from Tyler Banfield. He says, subscribe right now is his headline.
Jordan Gal:Yes. Why does that sound so familiar? Why does that name sound so familiar? Maybe I follow him.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I I yeah. Think me too. I I think I've I've probably emailed with him before. If not, Tyler, email me.
Brian Casel:Let's then then that's a true statement. So five stars from Tyler. He says, of all the podcasts in the bootstrapping space, this one is currently the most actionable. Whether it's Brian and Jordan talking or or they're hosting a guest, these guys deliver a a ton of value. I also really like that fifty to eighty minute format allows them to really dig into topics.
Brian Casel:That's good to hear, Tyler.
Jordan Gal:Yes. Seriously.
Brian Casel:Sometimes I feel like we're we're going a little bit long here with these episodes, but but but I I I also like the the long format too. You know? I I don't like to cut it too short.
Jordan Gal:So Yeah. I think we just get self conscious about talking for so long.
Brian Casel:And after the sixty minute mark, I basically just assume nobody's listening anymore. That's that's when the good stuff comes out.
Jordan Gal:Right. Only only the the the true believers. Yeah. And I, yeah, I think, I either follow him on Twitter. I don't know.
Jordan Gal:I just looked him up. He's got a site called inboundwords.com. So a little little plug there for inboundwords.com. Looks like a blog writing service.
Brian Casel:Very interesting. Alright.
Jordan Gal:Cool. Thank you very much, Tyler. Brian, I think, I think it's time. Let's let's let's get into this one.
Brian Casel:Let's get into it. So today, we are talking about leveraging other people. And I think, really, the the way this episode came together as we were talking about it is, like, you know, we always try to start with some kind of problem. Where where are where you're at, you know, in your day to day. And I think the thing that I've run into time and time again, and, you know, it's just an an ever learning experience on this, is getting out of the bubble, getting out of my own head, getting out of my own office, and reaching out to other people and getting them to help with this mission of building something from the ground up.
Brian Casel:And, you know, it's about making progress faster than you're making it today, but then it's also walking that line as bootstrappers and and and the the cash flow of bringing on people. You know? How how do you manage the cash flow and working with people and delegating and all this stuff? So we're gonna kinda talk through a little bit of the high level stuff today. And, Jordan, I think we're we're gonna make this kind of like a two parter episode.
Brian Casel:Right?
Jordan Gal:Yes. Today, we'll talk about a bit more general, but we we won't stay too, too high above everything, in terms of, you know, hiring, partnering, and what what people deal with, what we've dealt with at each stage of the game. And then next week, we'll just go all in on nitty gritty, and we'll take a look at a real situation. Like, I need to hire a support person for Kartok. I am spending way too much time on customer support.
Jordan Gal:And, Brian, you happen to have a lot of experience in hiring the right people. And so we'll just kinda go through helping me figure out all these hesitations and fears about how am I gonna do this and how much should I pay. And what if I don't have that much work to support someone full time? What are my options? How am I gonna transfer all this knowledge to them?
Jordan Gal:So I think it'll be yeah. It'll be a cool two part thing. Today, we'll talk about, one piece of it, and the next week, we'll just get all the way into the the detail of how to get it done.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And, like, in a way, I think next week when we talk about hiring the customer support team, like, that's something that I've I've become a little, you know, much more confident with today than I was maybe a year or two ago, you know, because I I I have, two people working with me on on customer support, and I've kinda got that process nailed down. But today, we're we're I guess, we're in a in a way, we're talking about developers. Right? Like, bringing on development help.
Brian Casel:But this can translate to other people like like sales help, marketing help as well. And this is, this actually gets trickier. Right? And and we're gonna talk through some of the challenges with with getting things done and moving forward. So let's let's get right into it.
Brian Casel:What we like to do from time to time is break things down and structure the episode in terms of phases. Right? So today, we're going to talk about three main phases. The first one is getting to launch or getting something off the ground from from zero to to one, if you will. And then the next phase is kind of that early traction, so getting getting your first 10 or 20 customers.
Brian Casel:And, again, we're not talking about sales and marketing and how to get customers today. We're talking about leveraging the people and resources to help you get there. So that's phase two is early traction. And then the third phase is growth. You know?
Brian Casel:Once like, how do you go from, scrapping your way through getting a, you know, a handful of customers to really growing this thing into into a scalable and and just, like, scaling it up. And then how to kinda peep bringing on people, how does that factor into it there? And the whole the whole time here, it's all about how how do we do this realistically when we need to pay the bills? We don't have big time investors. How how do we actually make this work?
Brian Casel:Right?
Jordan Gal:Right. In right. This is all in the context of bootstrapping your business. You know, a lot of us look at funded companies and we say, you know, obviously, you're getting a lot done. You've got eight people on board and you've got, you know, $2,000,000 of other people's money that you know, I could hire eight people too.
Jordan Gal:In our situations, you you know, you're maybe paying yourself. Maybe you're making a little less than paying yourself or a little more. But to think about how are you possibly gonna hire someone full time, while doing this is a real challenge. But what we wanna do with this episode is basically just open up some of these options because people get into a mindset of they're stuck. They have no other options.
Jordan Gal:They have to do everything. And the truth is there are other options out there. And we'll just kinda take a look at what those options are for each each phase of the business. And, yeah, I think So
Brian Casel:what what about this idea, like, thinking beyond just yourself? Right? Because I I think a lot of people, especially developers and web developers, because we we can do so much ourselves. We have that ability to code something up from scratch. Right?
Brian Casel:Yeah. How do we get out of that mindset of, like, not doing everything ourselves?
Jordan Gal:I I think you look, some people are amazing and some people are lucky. And chances are that you're not one of them. I'm I'm not one of them. You know, most 99 of people don't do everything amazingly well. Right?
Jordan Gal:There aren't many Josh Pigford with biometrics just like, you know, making the whole thing happen. That's awesome. But if I had to guess and we got into more of his story, there are probably people, other people that contributed to that as well. The whole idea of this is you to to bank everything on you doing everything. The development, the sales, the customer support, the marketing, the web design, the outreach, the blog posts, the all these things yourself is just a really, really tall task.
Jordan Gal:And you have to come to terms with the fact that you might have a much higher chance of success by working with other people. So we say leveraging, it's not like we're using other people. It's just admitting there are other people out there in the world, Getting them to help, getting them to contribute, getting them to team up with you, partner, will most likely have a very good effect on your business.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I mean, you know, the thing the the big learning experience for me over the past couple years has been getting out of this mindset of I I can do everything myself, or I can learn to do everything myself. Like, that that was my mindset Mhmm. Early on. And and so what I mean by that is as a as a web designer and developer, I I come from a background of figuring things out, of, like, googling and looking for a solution to a problem, and then just, gritting my way through it.
Brian Casel:However many hours into into the wee hours of the night it takes, I'll just figure it out and do it myself, whether it's fixing a a quirk in I e six for a website or it's figuring out how to how to market a product for the first time. That was my that was my, approach for for many years. And I and I think to a certain extent, it still is today, but you get to a point where it's like, even if you learn it yourself and figure things out and read all the books, it's still like, if if you come from a development background, let's say, the marketing stuff or or the sales stuff is still not gonna be that's not gonna be where you excel even if you learn it. Right. I mean, I think you should learn it.
Brian Casel:I think there's tremendous value in learning all these different aspects as you as you build into becoming a business owner. But, at a certain point, you need to admit to yourself that other people know this way better than you do.
Jordan Gal:Yes. So let's get into the first phase. Right? Before you have a launch product, when you're trying to get to launch, a lot of people in this scenario, whether you're a developer or a nontechnical person and you want to get an idea or a business launched, trying to do everything yourself, it may be impossible. Right?
Jordan Gal:I could never have developed Cardhook. I just it makes no sense to try to learn to do something like that. So I was stuck. I had to work with somebody else. In your situation, right, you
Brian Casel:Yeah. I when I started Restaurant Engine, I was coming from doing lots of of client work the year before and during through the launch of Restaurant Engine. So I had a a decent savings saved up, and I knew I wanted to move into products. So I just decided, like, I have a little bit of cash in the bank. I'm going to allocate this much to bring on a developer.
Brian Casel:And this was a developer that I was, I had already worked with on several projects doing client work. So I I was already comfortable working with him. I knew exactly how how we work together, and and it was perfect. And he kinda just worked with me, on, again, on a on a project basis, which lasted several months, getting the nuts and bolts of of Restaurant Engine launched. Right.
Brian Casel:So this is
Jordan Gal:essentially option number one. Right? Hire people on a contract basis. Whether whether whether you need something technical built and you're hiring someone for that as a project, or you are a developer and you wanna focus on that, and you can hire someone to build out the marketing site and and whatever else you need. So that's option one, is to essentially find people to pay either by the hour or by the project to get your product launched.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And and I think the thing that we need to mention here is, like, in terms of, like, getting to launch before you have any paying customers, of course, we're not saying, you know, go out and invest all this money or all these resources into building a product before it is at least somewhat validated or you know? I I think you should certainly go ahead and and get some kind of landing page out there or do some cold email outreach to potential customers. Do some customer research. That's certainly what I was doing with with Restaurant Engine before I did anything.
Brian Casel:And so it's it's like what we're talking about here is once you get to the point where you're ready to build some kind of version one, so you you've been pre selling it or you have a sizable early access list or or something like that. Now it's time to build something, but now it's time to figure out how are we gonna get from nothing to something that people can start using. We've gotta get people on board or or you gotta build it yourself.
Jordan Gal:Right. Once once you're committed. The the other option is the route I took. Right? Option two is basically finding a technical person to build it for you in exchange for a piece of the business.
Jordan Gal:So I talk to different web shops about, basically, for a contract basis. How much is it gonna cost to build this MVP? And there are a decent number of developers and dev shops popping up these days that will build you an MVP specifically in an affordable range, you know, somewhere between 2 and $10,000 sort of thing, which I think is a great development and a necessary one. I decided not to go that route because I found someone willing to forego the money upfront in exchange for a piece of the business. And and given Cardhook's requirements and the nature of the product, I just thought it's not one of these things that you build and you're done.
Jordan Gal:It's it's constant tweaking, constant improvement, constant integrations. So I thought it made more sense to have someone on board who's gonna be interested in the long term.
Brian Casel:Can you can you, like, define that? So in terms of piece of the business, are
Jordan Gal:we
Brian Casel:talking about giving away equity or percentage of revenue? Or, like, how how does that work?
Jordan Gal:I did I did both because I thought I thought that was the right thing, the fair thing, and the smart thing for for the business and for, you know, for everyone involved. So I basically said, look. You build it. I'll market it and sell it, and you get to, you know, you get to work hard upfront and you come out of it with an asset, a piece of an asset that will appreciate over time. And then I have all the incentive and the motivation to go out and sell it because then then I get to benefit from that.
Jordan Gal:So so it's one of these things like, okay. You invest upfront, and then I'll invest over the long run, and we both benefit. Yeah. And it it has it has worked out really well. And the the way I did it, to get into a bit of detail, is I basically met and had coffee with, someone that I knew was a very talented developer, and I basically just talked with him about business in general.
Jordan Gal:And my philosophies and what I have done in the past, my my thinking about business and what's gonna happen in the web over the next few years and how to acquire customers and how to minimize the risk involved in launching this type of business. This is the you know, I I did that foundation course from Dane Maxwell a few years ago. Mhmm. The the single biggest return I got from the foundation was not the course, but it was a lot of the thinking that goes into, idea extraction and and proving that people want this product before you build it. So in How
Brian Casel:does that translate to
Jordan Gal:So that translated on your your developer. Yes. It sounds a little weird, but that translated in a lot into the conversations with the developer. So I talked to him about, look, this is what I've been doing. I have been emailing these different markets.
Jordan Gal:These are the feedback I'm getting. This is what you can do to ensure you're developing a product that people want. So I basically
Brian Casel:It's like getting him to buy in to
Jordan Gal:Exactly what's right. The truth is I didn't really have the idea for Carthook nailed down at that point in time as my main idea. But before I left San Francisco, which is where I, you know, hung out with him and had coffee, he basically said to me, look, man, I know how to do the technology side of things. I don't really know the business side of things, and I wanna learn them, and I trust you and all this other stuff. So if you wanna do this, then then I'm in.
Jordan Gal:You know, that was kind of it's basically like whatever idea you pick, I'm I'm good with because you handle that sort of things, and I'll handle those sort of things. So that's that's really how I translated, you know, a business experience and mindset to attract a developer, in exchange for a piece of the business.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I think it's interesting because I think there are a lot of developers out there who just never accept that type of thing. They just don't work for equity. I know there are a lot of people like that. And then there are plenty of developers who are looking for some kind of equity, you know, contract or or or some kind of, you know, situation like that.
Brian Casel:And there are plenty of younger developers or lesser experienced developers who are looking to work with someone who who's been at it for a couple years and and and learn something while they get some meaningful work done along the way. And I think it's interesting how you describe there, like, because if if you rewind back to this point when you were sitting down for the first time with with your new developer, I mean, you're starting from nothing. You're you're presenting an idea. It's just an idea. And and you have to sell it to them into you know, sell it to this potential developer or this partner, in terms of, like, look.
Brian Casel:I've done this customer development work. Here's here's the progress being made there. This is the this is the pain and the problem solution that people are responding to. It's like you have to sell that problem solution to the developer to get them to really onboard with the idea that, look, they're not just writing code that's gonna be tucked away in in some product that that never sees the light. They're they're writing code that could go somewhere.
Jordan Gal:Yes. And and so that is what's happening. Right in real life. You are talking about this problem and solution and and how you're, you know, maximizing the potential for success, all that. But in reality, what's happening is that you are you are selling yourself and working with you and getting into this long term business marriage together and you're showing the way you think and, you know, how you approach other people.
Jordan Gal:Are you trying to just like, you know, just screw people over and just make as much money as possible? Or are you careful? Or so so that's that's what's happening underneath the surface. When someone's looking at you and saying, do I wanna work with this guy for a long time for exchange of equity with this guy's company? Am I can I trust this guy?
Jordan Gal:So so that's that's what's actually making making the sale.
Brian Casel:You know, it always and think, like, in your situation, it it's good because he was a family friend of yours. Right? Like so you had some kinda history. You kinda knew him?
Jordan Gal:Yes. My wife is friends with his older brother.
Brian Casel:And so So there's a little bit of a connection there.
Jordan Gal:Bit of a connection, but not not like we see each other holiday sort of thing. Not at all.
Brian Casel:Okay. But then, you know, through meeting with him and and, like, having these conversations, you'd you'd you both came to the conclusion, like, okay. This could work. It it always amazes me how fast and I've made this mistake myself plenty of times. But, like, how fast strangers jump into bed together for the idea of becoming partners on on something.
Brian Casel:And, I I get, like, cold emails from people sometimes. This has happened multiple times. Completely cold email. I've never heard of you before.
Jordan Gal:Do you wanna partner?
Brian Casel:I have yeah. Let let's partner on a a clone of Restaurant Engine for this other industry. You know? And and I'll and they'll write, like, a whole long email. Like, you know, we'll we'll split the equity this way and and, like, what do you say?
Brian Casel:Send. It's like
Jordan Gal:Yeah. One What do they expect someone to say to that? I don't know. You gotta you gotta go one thing at a time. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:And if, you know, this guy, I I somewhat knew through, you know, through a family friend, but other people who are doing this on their own, you just you just have to go slow and get to know people. You know? You gotta go to freaking PHP meetups and talk to people. And whatever will complement your skills, you need to go and meet people. And I think that's I mean, that's whole theme of this show.
Jordan Gal:It's just teaming up with other people that, you know, you if you're gonna do it, then at least try to do it the the the right way.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Totally. And and by the way, think that's a good, like, actionable tip there. It's like, out to the meetups, to the to the local groups, the, the educational workshops, like, where where are developers or if you're looking for a marketer, go to the marketing meetups.
Jordan Gal:Yeah.
Brian Casel:And there's to help out in that area. I mean, like, just get out and start to meet people. Go out to conferences. You know?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. There's a lot going on these days. These startup weekends, right, there there is a lot going on. Online forums, there's you know, because Meetup is there, but I don't really go to Meetups, but there are a lot of other things. Like, Portland happens to have some, like, community message board for the startup community called Switchboard.
Jordan Gal:I'm sure there's there's that in in a lot of different places. But if you just go you just go on there and people just write things like, hey, I just got out of this project and these are my skills and, you know, I'm open to having coffee with people to talk about, you know, what what they're working on. Like, just do it.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Totally. And I mean, like like, something like going out to a meetup or going out or spending on on a on a ticket to go out to to a conference. If your goal is, like, I'm gonna get a ticket to this conference, and I'm going to find my my technical partner for my new app. You're probably not gonna have success.
Brian Casel:But if you get into the routine of networking and meeting new people, you might meet someone who might become part of a mastermind group with you. And then a month, a few months down the road, you know, you're looking for someone and they can refer someone. It's like, that's that's what this kind of stuff leads to.
Jordan Gal:Yes. I think that's a great episode in the future now that we're we're both going to microconf. Yes. I have I have lots of cynical, terrible, horrible dreams about how to how to network effectively. We can definitely talk about that.
Jordan Gal:All these different different issues and setting up dinners and stuff. So that Yeah. Totally. Cool.
Brian Casel:Maybe we should, do an episode from Vegas from MicroCon.
Jordan Gal:Alright. Now we're talking. Uh-oh. Cool. So look.
Jordan Gal:That's you know, I wish we had more about that first getting to launch phase, but that's kinda like this weird hidden thing. You gotta just fit you have to figure out how to find someone that will help you. And Yeah.
Brian Casel:And and the point of going from from one phase to the next is how how are you gonna get to the next phase? And and usually the answer is you gotta bring in help one way or the other.
Jordan Gal:Right. Even if you're a developer and you can do everything yourself and you can code and design and everything, chances are you'd be better off working with somebody else who compliments you. Somebody who has an audience, who knows how to hustle, who does events already, who is in your industry, a partner, something that will help you get there faster.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And by the way, you know, leveraging other people doesn't necessarily mean hiring them.
Jordan Gal:No. No. You know,
Brian Casel:it can mean just picking someone's brain and getting some advice on a certain topic. So if you're a developer and you need a little bit of help in doing customer development because you've never done it before, reach out to someone in your network who maybe you've met met at a meetup or wherever, and ask them, like, how would you go about this? Like, your problem right now is you don't have enough interested potential customers. So how would I go about doing that? Or, or or you know you like, how do you set up your very first marketing funnel?
Brian Casel:Like, maybe talk to someone about that and just get a few ideas. You know? Or, like, the other day, I was talking to someone about, telling them about how I'm getting ready to hire, you know, a developer to work with me. What are some tips on on, like, who I should look for? Should I should I look for a front end guy or a back end guy or or, you know, or gal?
Brian Casel:Or and, you know, he gave me some really great tips on, like, what to include in the job ad and and who exactly to look for with what kind of background. And, like, a ten minute conversation made it can potentially make a huge impact on on the person that I end up working with and you know? So it's just always be open to to reaching out and asking for help.
Jordan Gal:That's right. Now let's say we're launched. Right? Let's say the product is there. You've got a partner.
Jordan Gal:You've got a cofounder. You you paid a contractor to create an MVP for you. Whatever it is, you've launched your agency, your product, whatever it is, you are officially launched. So Yes. In this phase, this is, I think, the classic view, the classic, picture of an entrepreneur who does everything.
Jordan Gal:Like, in this phase, you actually need to do almost everything.
Brian Casel:Yeah. This is like the hustle.
Jordan Gal:This is right. This is the quintessential if you can't make this happen, you you got problems. If if you can't get a few customers, if you can't bang your head up against the wall, hustling, cold emailing, going to meetups, posting things on message boards, if you can't get that done yourself for your own company, then you are in trouble.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I I I think, you know, the theme of this episode is leveraging other people and getting comfortable with outsourcing and delegating. But I think this phase, the early traction, getting getting, like, your first 10 customers, paying customers, that's on you. That's it it's I don't think that you should be outsourcing that. Like, you can't hire someone and say, get me my first 10 customers.
Jordan Gal:Right. You can say you can hire someone who specializes in, you know, Magento and say, build me an integration with Magento for my software. You can do that, but you can't hire someone to cold call cold email a 100 Magento stores and try to close them as your first customers. So Right. Right?
Jordan Gal:There's a differentiation, but now you have no excuse. You finally got your product launch. You have a working product or prototype or an MVP, something that people can look at and use and say, I like it. I don't like it. I'll pay for it.
Jordan Gal:I won't pay for it. So once that excuse is removed, you need to make something happen. And that might take a month. It might take a year. It might take five years.
Jordan Gal:I I would guess that most businesses die in this phase because they can't
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Get to a place where they either attract enough clients that they're making enough money or things don't move fast enough that you just lose steam. You just lose motivation.
Brian Casel:Yeah. This is really where that stamina, comes into play.
Jordan Gal:It's like
Brian Casel:how how long can you just grind it out and claw your way up to, you know, your first ten, twenty, 50 paying customers.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. And and I think two things are happening at the same time that are that are difficult to reconcile in this phase. You are, on one hand, proving to yourself, trying to prove to yourself that this is a viable business that can make money, that can replace your income, that you know, whatever it is you're trying to accomplish. And and that's based on performance, revenue, customer acquisition, whatever the hell you wanna call it. Like, you need to prove to yourself this is a real business.
Jordan Gal:I need I need to continue going with this instead of quitting and moving on to the next thing. Mhmm. At the same time, and I think this is easily forgotten, you have to deal with the fact that what you're doing in this phase that's very lonely and you're just hustling and you're doing things that you're kind of ashamed of, you know, sending 50 cold emails a day for a month, the performance that you can create in this phase will dictate your options a little later on. So you you kinda have to behave as, yes, you're in private and you're doing these, like, down and dirty things, like get partnerships and try to figure this stuff out. But you have to deal with the fact that you almost have to act like you're being watched now because what you do now is going to be looked at later when you try to do when you try to accomplish the next phase.
Jordan Gal:When you try to hire an employee, when you try to find a partner, raise money, get a partnership, get someone to write for your blog, they're gonna look back on what where you are. What what did you accomplish? How longer did you launch us? Where are you today? Am I am I jumping on board of a train that's heading in the right direction picking up steam?
Jordan Gal:Or is this just your little baby that you're trying to get off the ground, but you haven't been able to
Brian Casel:in the past year? I mean, like, during this traction phase, you're hustling. And what you're hustling for is to get to that point where where you have traction and you have cash coming in every month that you can then reinvest in in as we get into the growth phase. But, you know, while we're here on this traction phase, you're hustling, you're getting those first customers, you're doing a ton of things yourself. I think this is probably the biggest investment that you're gonna make.
Brian Casel:And it's even bigger than whatever cash you might lay out early on to get that developer to build the MVP. I think your investment in time and energy and stamina in this first year, if I remember back, like, in in the first few months of restaurant engine, I was doing all the customer support myself, all of the website setups myself, which are huge in I I remember like Sunday afternoons when I'd rather be out like going to a movie or something. I was inputting food menu items from some diner in Utah. Oh, yes. Like 50 plus food items.
Brian Casel:Just doing the website set up myself Mhmm. Because it got me one new paying customer. Yep. You know? And I would just do that again and again and get on these consultation calls for a couple hours every single day, you know, until finally, it got to the point where it's like, okay.
Brian Casel:We have a little bit of traction. It's time to start hiring that first customer support person.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. But that that's the lift. Each of these phases to get out of the phase that you're currently in just feels like climbing Mount Everest, man. It's just to go from inputting menu items to finally having enough customers that you you feel justified in hiring someone to do that for you is just a really hard lift.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And, you know, the the other thing that I continuously struggle with, and I struggled with it back then when I was hiring the first support person, and I'm struggling with it today as I'm getting ready to invest in in the in the next developer position. It's like you're never really I you always kinda wait you wait and wait and wait until it's like, oh, cash flow is just, like, through the roof. Like, what are we gonna do with all this money? We gotta hire people.
Brian Casel:Right? Like, it is not like that in in this kind of bootstrap business. It's you you know, at at a certain point, you have to just give up to the idea that, like, you're gonna need to invest. And, like, key the keyword there is invest. Invest.
Brian Casel:Like Spend. Right? Yeah. And and you're not gonna see the return on that for in until a couple of months down the road. And that means, you know, in this early traction phase, you're probably taking a pay cut for yourself.
Brian Casel:If if you've been used to the 6 figure salary and and the corporate job, it's a different it's a different ballgame when you're building something from scratch on the side or you're taking time away from your consulting work. You know? That's part of the investment is is paying yourself just enough.
Jordan Gal:I know. It's it's a it's a tough thing. This is this is that this is that slow, SaaS ramp of death. This is the so how do I justify how do I justify not investing and going slow, and how do I justify investing and going faster but not not making any more money because it's going it's going back in? Yeah.
Jordan Gal:The the metric I excuse me. I find it really useful to talk internally. Like, when I'm talking to my cofounder, I find it really useful to to say to say to him, like, pretend we are being watched. Pretend there's there's a board of directors and there's somebody out there that's saying, let me see your numbers. Let me see your progress.
Jordan Gal:Let me see your momentum because what we do now will will dictate our options. So, you know, the the big thing I like to look at, obviously, is revenue, but the next thing is how many free trials and how many new customers were added. And if that number doesn't go up from one month to the next, I am not happy. Right? So when you start off with, like, one new customer a month and then you get five, good.
Jordan Gal:And then you get 10, great. If you go from there and then drop back back down to, you know, five new customers, then that that's not acceptable because Alarm. Right. Because even though you're like, oh, but I grew and revenue went up, from an outsider perspective, like, you're you're falling behind. It it needs to increase every month.
Jordan Gal:So that's how Yep. I like to to look at it.
Brian Casel:Alright. So so we have some traction. We have paying customers. We have some kind of predictable monthly revenue. It's it's not much.
Brian Casel:It's it's enough to pay ourselves a meager little salary for ourselves. Right? Mhmm. The next phase is growth. How do we get this thing up to the next level so that it's, like, actually a a business and no longer a little a little project?
Brian Casel:Right.
Jordan Gal:And and so there's obviously a gray area. Right? These two these two steps from traction to growth, there's it's a huge range. So it it admittedly, you and I are straddling one and the other. We we've got traction and things are moving, but we're not at the, you know, big growth phase that things are rock and rolling and how do you optimize and how do you raise money and and how do you do, you know Yeah.
Brian Casel:Hire people. I think for me, I've been reluctant to admit to myself that it's time to get into the growth phase and get out of the traction phase. So because at a certain point, yeah, it takes a lot of stamina to to claw your way through that early traction phase, but then it it starts to become comfortable, and you start to get used to that. And it's like, alright. What at a certain point, you it's like, what do I need to do differently?
Brian Casel:Or or what's new? You know? Because whatever I've been doing has been working to get one customer at a time, but now how do we make that 10 customers at a time?
Jordan Gal:Right. And that's I think when when you start to bump up against reality, you say, okay. So I lifted this gigantic weight off the ground, and there's a business now, and there's money coming in every month. And now if I just keep doing the same thing I'm doing, it's just gonna grow at the exact same rate or maybe a little better, but it's not gonna go boom, five x or or 10 x in speed. And that's when you come across the fact that, you know, what what I'm dealing with and what you dealt with, you know, maybe a year ago and now you're dealing with a different variety of it of, alright.
Jordan Gal:You need other people. And that might be employees. That might be partners. That might be, you know, I don't know, like I talked about before. Right?
Jordan Gal:A CTO, someone who has a real interest in the business. So that's what we're getting into now. So how do you go from, okay, there's a business, people are paying, how do you go faster than you currently are?
Brian Casel:Yeah. So, I mean, you you you definitely know that you need to bring on people. It's in most of the time, and and this was the case for me, the first people that you wanna bring on are customer support people. That may not be the case for everyone. Sometimes, the founder, their their best role is to continue doing customer support while they outsource the development work or while they outsource the marketing work, what whatever it is.
Brian Casel:I started with, I mean, I still have all hourly team. Like, my my team is are all kind of like hourly employees. And I always started them on I think, usually, it was like twenty hours a week each person. So, like, my my very first customer support guy who who's been with me almost two years now, started him at twenty hours a week. And within, like, six months, he was bumped up to he he was, like, thirty hours and then up to forty hours.
Brian Casel:And then the same thing happened for the second customer support person. Started her at twenty hours a week and slowly grew her hours until now so now they're both forty hours a week. And and then the third, person who's in who is in, California, she's still, like, I think, like, twenty, twenty five hours a week.
Jordan Gal:Right. And that that minimizes risk. Obviously, it avoids the hiring issues and health insurance. And, you know, unfortunately, the reality today is that hiring someone full time with salary and four zero one k and health benefits is is extremely it's a big hurdle.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And I I think you don't really need to start thinking about that stuff until until it becomes the the reality. I mean, it you know, you you can really get a lot done with a with a part time hourly employee, and then and then kind of work them up as as the demand comes through.
Jordan Gal:Right. And, yeah, that's that's what I've always done with with anyone I've hired for Cardec or other businesses. It's I can't commit to a salary for the next year and all these other issues that go with that. Let's just start off, you know, dancing a little bit before we go on a date. Right?
Jordan Gal:Let's let's start part time. Let's see where it goes. Let's start, you know, with ten hours a week. Let's see if it gets up to forty. That way, you're minimizing your risk.
Jordan Gal:And, you know, I I think we'll get into this in a lot more detail in next week's episode when, know, you we're faced with, okay. How do you actually hire a customer support person? But I I wanted to ask you about something you said. You said that the first hire, would be customer support. So, obviously, it depends on a case by case basis, but I think the the framework to think about this in is do you hire for the lowest paying, lowest skill work to get that off of your plate?
Jordan Gal:Or do you try to hire someone who can do very high value work like sales or onboarding? Right?
Brian Casel:So I think it's
Jordan Gal:It's kind of it's a dilemma.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I it's a great question, and this comes back to the return on investment or the value of bringing someone on. And it's gonna be different for every person based on your own skills. But the question that I go into when I'm thinking about bringing someone on is what are they gonna do, or what what will it be like from day to day when this person is in their role doing the things that I want them to do, how how is that gonna change what I'm doing as the founder? Mhmm.
Brian Casel:What what new things am I gonna be able to start doing now that I have all this time freed up? And the and to me, was like a no brainer at the time to bring on a customer support person because I was spending, like, 80% of the hours of my week doing customer support, and I couldn't even begin to think about doing any kind of marketing plan. I just didn't have any time.
Jordan Gal:So that presented itself as the obvious that's that's where that's where the pain is, and that's where the biggest impact on the business would be if that was off of your plate.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Like, if if all this customer support work was off of my plate, then I would be able to spend all those extra hours developing a new marketing plan.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm.
Brian Casel:That's how I looked at it. And then and then the same thing happened, like, a year later when I would you know, that marketing plan became, do all these phone consultation calls. And then it was like, that's taking up all my time. So that then I need to get that off my plate, and I hired someone to fill that role. And and then that allowed me to, further develop the marketing and further develop the product and and do different things.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. That's interesting. It's almost like you I mean, that's in effect, you're removing yourself, you know, at hiring for the role that that that should be next in line. Yeah. Right?
Jordan Gal:From the customer support to free you up to do more of x, and then once the next thing starts to get in your way, hire someone to take care of that. So Like,
Brian Casel:I could've I I I could've like, if you if you look at it the the opposite way, it's like, start with delegating just the the lowest level, easiest thing to delegate
Jordan Gal:Right.
Brian Casel:Then I could've just delegated, like, manage our social media accounts. Right? That's something that is so easy to do and so easy to to tell someone how to do or show them or send them an article on how to do it. You know? But that wouldn't add any value, and it wasn't gonna free up any time.
Brian Casel:So so then I'd be stuck with a person that I'm, like, struggling to keep them busy. Mhmm. You know?
Jordan Gal:That's like a right. That's a nice thing to have, but it doesn't make a big enough impact to justify it.
Brian Casel:Right.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I mean, if we
Brian Casel:Like, there were still plenty of manual, like, mundane things that I still did myself. You know. But it wouldn't be a big impact. It wouldn't be a big impact if I delegated them. So I just kept on doing them myself.
Brian Casel:And then the other the other point here that I want to make about working with hourly employees on a, like, a part time basis, you know, ten, twenty hours a week is, yeah, at a certain point, you're gonna run up again up against the ceiling of that as well. Right? So, for a while there, I had someone working I like, when I started them at twenty hours a week, that meant, like, they were working five hours a day. And or what was it? Four maybe four hours a day.
Brian Casel:I mean, I had them, like, four days a week, something like that.
Jordan Gal:You didn't have to worry
Brian Casel:about Then you get to get to the point where, like, oh, they're they're not working these hours, like, half the day. So Now I gotta pick up the slack. Mhmm. Or, like, these customers are are antsy, but my my guy's not gonna be in again until Monday. So I gotta handle anyway.
Brian Casel:You know? Yeah. Like, the you're you're gonna it's, again, it's like that stamina. You're still hustling even though you have a team.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Yes. It's it's it's a tricky thing. It's like, look, if if, you know, if you don't if you don't have a a stack of somebody else's money or your own money that you're willing to spend, you got you gotta you gotta just keep your hands dirty.
Brian Casel:You you Yeah. And I think it's okay to to work in that that friction for a little while. Yeah. And then and then and, like, as three or four months go by, it's like, okay. Now it's time to ramp things up a little bit.
Brian Casel:Let's let's bump them up to thirty hours or forty hours a week, or maybe it's time to hire that next person. You know? Yeah. I mean Just yesterday, I did a a team meeting, and this was actually our something new that I'm starting is these, like, Monday team meetings, and we're actually doing them, like, on Slack. And and just to get an update on on all of our current setups because we just had, like, a huge kind of influx of new customers and, like, some of the setups are falling behind and things are getting a little bit disorganized.
Brian Casel:So I want to
Jordan Gal:Nice, man.
Brian Casel:Get things all organized. Like, who's working on what? When are we delivering what? And and that's, like, one of those moments where it's, okay. Wow.
Brian Casel:We have a big workload. It's time to, figure out, like, are we ready to bring on someone else, or can we just, like, better organize things and better streamline stuff and and work through this current wave? You know? It's it's a it's a ongoing, game that you play.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Interesting. I mean, if we put our business school hats on for a sec, right, what what we're effectively talking about is competitive advantage and and and focusing on what you do best. In in this situation, you're talking just as much about the individual. Right?
Jordan Gal:Me and you, ourselves, the person listening to this with their own business, as you are about the company itself. You're saying, what do I do best? What should I be doing all day? And eventually, that's really the only thing you should be doing. Right?
Jordan Gal:I I remember having this this conversation with my my dad and my brother a few years ago about about their business. There's if you look at the the whole business, there's so much work that gets done. And then if you really took an objective look at it, there's just this shred in the middle of actual strategy that makes a difference. And everything else is it's not busy work. It's it's work that does not need to be done by the company itself.
Jordan Gal:Right? Even writing the copy for the direct mail pieces that go out and doing the mailing and the sorting and the data processing and all these different things. So our businesses are similar. And now with the the web and oDesk, god bless oDesk, we have the ability to to kind of behave that way. We can say, what do I do that I should be doing, and what do I do right now that I should not?
Jordan Gal:And you can start to divvy out these tasks in a very efficient way. You don't have to open an office downtown and hire people full time and do this whole side of business that everyone used to have to do. Now you can have customer support,
Dan Norris:you can get
Jordan Gal:a developer, you can take all these different pieces, in your business and effectively outsource them even though they work for you. It's you're really you're outsourcing
Brian Casel:Yeah. And and again, it it coming back to, like, you have to know how where you as the founder add the most value. And sometimes, you can do something yourself and it's good enough. Like, you can spend an extra week and Google something or figure something out on your on your by yourself, but the business would be so much better off if you just bring someone in to handle that for you while you focus on something that you're truly good at. Like, I look at at myself and, a lot of the back end development work, like writing custom functionality, whether it's writing like a plug in for WordPress or developing a new feature.
Brian Casel:Something usually, can come up with, like, a really, like, hacky solution myself, but I'm not that type of developer. So, really, I should be bringing someone on to handle that kind of higher level stuff while I focus more on the on on the big picture, the user experience. That's kind of where my my strength is. And even with, like, front end design and and front end development stuff, that's really my background. These days, I spend all my time marketing and and working on the business that, like, now I'm I'm actually, like, a few years out of the front end development game.
Brian Casel:And You you know, most most front end devs are way ahead of me, and and, like, I'm I'm now pulling, like, some pretty hacky stuff on the front end. So it's
Jordan Gal:I think that's good. So it's
Brian Casel:time to to get myself out of that as well. Yep.
Jordan Gal:So just to to finish up this piece of the conversation, I I'm going to attempt to do a little bit of both. I'm gonna attempt to do, okay, customer support so that I can do other things and at the same time hire someone for for sales. Because in in my mind, the dream, the the goal that I wanna get to is that I'm acquiring new customers without me doing the acquiring. So content marketing is one way to do it and PPC and all these other things, but that's I I want the customer acquisition to come from a place that isn't me doing the work. Because if if I can get that, then I can I can build on that?
Jordan Gal:And then Yeah. And then you you you start to get into a different phase, a different a different reality. Then you can say, okay. How much money am I willing to spend to acquire this customer? And that might mean PPC or it might mean, right, next week this week, actually, I'm starting to work with a sales guy that I'm hiring, and we're gonna run an outbound sales experiment effectively.
Jordan Gal:And so that's an example of me not, you know, hiring someone, but not for the lower end, like customer support, but, like, the other side of things entirely. Like Right. Can I effectively just take a dollar and put it towards something and acquire customers? Right? So it's like it's like a different type of hire or different type of
Brian Casel:Yeah. Totally. My my thing when it comes to hiring for sales and marketing, and I don't know if this is the right or or the wrong way to do it, but I tend to want to spend the time and figure out the system that's working, do doing a lot of it myself, and then start to hire people to carry out that thing. Yep. Whether it's, you know, up until now, we've developed a system where we've got content and and inbound leads, and then we do phone consultations.
Brian Casel:And I did those for a while, and then I hired someone to take care of the phone consultations, and I hired people to to write the articles and and all that stuff. And I removed myself from that. But now it's like back to me doing it again, you know, with the new sales funnel and putting those pieces in place, and then eventually it'll be removing myself from that. Mhmm. You
Jordan Gal:know? Yeah. I I think that's a smart
Brian Casel:idea. I think it's I think it's longer and and less efficient, and maybe I'm not giving up enough, or maybe I'm I'm trying to keep too much control in turn like, maybe if I brought in someone who's really good at this stuff, they can come up with a better strategy. But I I don't know. I I mean, I think I'm I'm I'm on top of it for now. We'll we'll see.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. And I think it's a lower risk weighted. I think it's smart. I mean, it's it's it's a logical process for someone, you know, bootstrapping in in in our situation. The the truth is, you know, it might sound exotic to hire a sales guy, but he's effectively gonna be doing what what I have already done.
Jordan Gal:So, you know, even if I didn't state it the the same way as you did, that's really that's really what happened. Like, okay. Cool. Figured out how to acquire customers doing this. What if I got someone who's a pro at doing that?
Jordan Gal:He'll he'll hopefully improve it. And if if he can do better than I did, I I'll be happy with the performance. So it's worth it's worth that experiment.
Brian Casel:So so I think, like, the final question that that I think we should try to tackle here Mhmm. In this is, how do we do this realistically? Because now we're we're talking about this growth phase, but we're kinda talking about it like, all of a sudden, you wake up one day and your business has, like, tens of thousands of dollars in the bank, and you're ready to start hiring all these people. But there that is far from reality.
Jordan Gal:Yep.
Brian Casel:You don't you know? So how do you do it? Like, how do you make the how do you make it work financially? How do you get the resources and get these people in to help you when when you're still bootstrapping and and growing. Even though you have paying customers and you're beyond the early traction product market fit, what are some ways to to make this work?
Jordan Gal:Well, the first one, money, I think it's pretty straightforward. You can either use your money or you can use other people's money. That's that's I think it's black and white. Yep. You know?
Jordan Gal:And going into credit card debt, that's using somebody else's money. You know? And investors, that's someone else's money. Your money is pretty straightforward. It's your money.
Jordan Gal:So there might be different shades of gray in there, but the the money thing is straightforward. If you got the money and you're willing to spend it, you can use your own money. If you don't, then you need to use somebody else's money. And that can be an investor. That can be credit cards.
Jordan Gal:That can potentially be your your potential customer themselves. Or I I think that part is, you know, how how much can we really help people on that on that front? You know, the world does not care whether or not you have the money. You can either go figure it out or you don't. And that's what we're dealing with, and I'm doing a combination of of everything, of my own money and consulting and and whatever the hell else
Brian Casel:is Yeah. Is gonna work. I I think that there is that that other option is is the consulting work. And, of course, that comes at a huge cost because in in terms of time. Right?
Brian Casel:And and that's how I and and you and so many people would bootstrap their businesses is they do consulting work on the side. Yeah. And and that's that's a good way to to pad your bank account while you're starting to invest in other areas and bringing on people. So that's that's one way to do it. Yeah.
Brian Casel:But then, of course, all that consult that time you spend consulting is gonna take you away from the marketing work or the building of the business. So then it's like you're diminishing the return on bringing people in. So it's it's just a constant
Jordan Gal:cycle. It is tough. So un unfortunately, while the the money question kinda dictates everything, there really isn't that much to talk about or to do Right. On that side of things. I think the more interesting thing to talk about is our options.
Jordan Gal:Right? I I think oftentimes we get stuck into thinking that our options are very, very limited when in reality, they're they're your options are as big as your creativity and your ability to sell. So, right, to get a bit more into detail, at least what what I try to do and what I've what I've done a lot of over the past few weeks, now that my mindset kinda shifted over to, like, alright, screw this. I'm not going I'm not interested in going slow in 2015. I wanna go really fast, and I can't do that myself.
Jordan Gal:As I start to talk to other people, you know, what you really you have to you have to attract people that you can't currently afford. Right? You you need the caliber of person, whether that's on the sales front, the marketing front, the development, whatever it is, you need to attract people that you can't currently justify paying. So you need to you need to figure out a way to sell them the the dream on on what's what's in it for them, what
Brian Casel:the potential to join you and spend their time working with you and and, of course, they you know, not to harp on the money aspect, but, like, how how are they gonna make it work? Right. Because they you know, they're not gonna work for free either. So, like a few a few ways that that I I think, like, bootstrappers can offer benefits, to potential teammates. Of course, there's like the flexible schedule working remotely.
Brian Casel:That's pretty common place these days. That's not unique to to your company or my company or any like, everyone's working remotely these days. But Yeah. But it's
Jordan Gal:a it's a big deal to be able to say, work for ten hours a week a week with me. You can still make money working on anything else that you want. Yeah. But put in x amount of time with me, and that it's almost it'll be an investment in something for the future for you. So, yes, a lot of people in our world, can work flexibly, but it's still a huge arrow, that that that we can use.
Brian Casel:Yeah. It really is. Especially when it's like a a small chunk of hours. Like you said, like ten, twenty hours a week, you know, like, the flexibility to like, one of my employees has a has a baby at home. Actually, three three out of us, including myself, have a baby at home.
Brian Casel:So having that flexibility to be able to take an hour off in the middle of the day and and and do do whatever you need to do, is great. I mean Very attractive. You know? It it becomes a problem if they disappear for a full day or two days at a time, of course. But, you know, just but if that flexibility is built into the expectation of the position, you know, that's that's a great benefit.
Brian Casel:I think the other thing that's really important, that's really attractive is getting to work on really challenging, meaningful projects. Right? So I think this really comes into play with developers. There are a lot of skilled developers who can just as easily go out and work for a huge corporation, get paid a 6 figure salary, and just man a keyboard and work on some boring shit all day. You know?
Brian Casel:And they're not gonna really improve their skills much. They're not going to get ahead in in their career. You know? They're kind of just a number on on the balance sheet. Or you can come work for much less money for a bootstrapping company and get to work on on, you know, features and user experience that touch, you know, lots and lots of customers at a time.
Brian Casel:You get to build, you know, using the today's best technologies. And and you get to actually have a say in how things are getting built and, like, the strategy of how things are getting built.
Jordan Gal:Right. Hugely attractive. Right? Somebody working at a job that they don't like, and one of the main things I can offer them is you will lead the development in Cardhook. And we're gonna grow this thing, and you're gonna be the guy.
Jordan Gal:You're gonna help make the decisions. You and I are gonna work together to make the technology decisions for this that we're gonna try to grow big. Right? And that's that's one of the things we have. We so we we may as well we may as well use it.
Brian Casel:Yep. And and, of course, there's also the learning opportunity. And I I feel like sometimes, entrepreneurs can, like, overstate this or or try to oversell this aspect of it. Like, oh, work with me for little to no money, but you're gonna learn so much. You know?
Brian Casel:And I think I think companies in all industries, I mean, can really go overboard with this. I mean, I I come from before I got into the web stuff, I was doing music. I thought I was gonna work in, like, recording studios and do engineering. That industry, there's no such thing as a paid internship. It's all unpaid interns who work forty hours a week for $0.
Brian Casel:Jeez. It for on on the deal that they're gonna learn something, which, frankly, they're not gonna learn much.
Jordan Gal:Yeah.
Brian Casel:You know? So I kinda got out of that industry pretty quickly. But Yeah.
Jordan Gal:But but there's something there.
Brian Casel:But I think in this in this what we're doing, there really is, an opportunity to learn. You know? And I'm not saying work for free, obviously, but I'm saying, you know, working alongside, you know, a a real scrappy bootstrapping business, you're gonna learn what works, what doesn't. And you're you're you're gonna grab ideas that you can then apply to your own business, whether it's, something that you're working on on the side right now or something that you might launch in the next year or two or three years.
Jordan Gal:Yes. I mean, imagine you hired someone to work right alongside you. Imagine the just the wide range of things that they would do. And and there's something great about working for someone that you you do things that you probably wouldn't normally have done if it was just for you. Right?
Jordan Gal:If if you hired someone if I hired someone and was like, okay, every single day, want you to email five bloggers and five podcasters to try to get me on their show. And then I want you to find five other, you know, message board things and comment on them. And then I want you to reach out to ecommerce platforms and see if they wanna partner. And then I want you to email customer support. And then I want you to look into Dunning email offerings.
Jordan Gal:Like, you just learn so much. To do that for a few months will really put you in a position to you just have a lot more confidence in starting starting your own business. And
Brian Casel:When you've when you've seen it done before, when you were part of it being done before, and then it comes time to you implementing it for yourself in your own business, I mean, it's so huge to have that kind of experience under your belt. Like, I I looked back like, this is something I've been thinking about lately is I I kind of regret or not regret, but I just wish I had an opportunity to to work in a small bootstrap company myself. But because, like, I look back on when I worked at a web design agency, and it was fairly small, but it was a it was a web agency doing client work. That those three years as a full time employee there was huge for me when I was doing freelance consulting work myself. Right.
Brian Casel:Because I was a part of it being done on a on a large scale, and now I was doing it myself on a smaller scale. And and I thrived for a couple years there doing freelance web design work because of that experience. But now that I'm working in this in this, bootstrap business, I've part of the reason I I feel like I've been slower to do things is because I've I've never really run a marketing campaign.
Jordan Gal:Yeah.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I I wasn't part of it in another company before. Right. So so it's like the experiment is what I'm doing here. And, you know, if you if you get an opportunity to to to be part of it somewhere else before you do it on your own thing, I mean, it's it's really, really valuable.
Jordan Gal:Yes. And my my biggest regret in my career is going to work on Wall Street at a school. Like, awesome. I I made, like, a 100 k my first year out of school at, like, 22 years old, and it was worthless for me. It was like, I should have gone and worked with five or six other people in a business that probably would have failed, and it would have been infinitely better for for my career to see how it works and how it doesn't work and how it fails and what succeeds and what it takes to actually get something off the ground.
Jordan Gal:So I think that's yes. Like, overselling the experience thing is bad, but finding the right type of person that can really benefit from this this type of environment, I I think can be really attractive.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I mean, honestly, I think these days, between the flexible schedule working, you know, just a couple days a week and then having, like, an extra four or five days a week to do your own thing and the opportunity to learn on the job in one place and get paid for it Mhmm. And then apply it to whatever you're working on yourself on on the weekend days. It's like Yeah. That's a per that's a perfect opportunity.
Brian Casel:And, actually, looking back in in the episodes here, if you go back to, maybe episode 30 or something when I was talking to Brad Tunar, and he was, promoting his, new developer position. That's how he structured it was, you know, work with Brad side by side as a developer for, I think, three or four days a week, and then you have you know, it it he designed his his position to for someone who wants to build their own thing.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Smart. Yeah. Attract. I mean, it might cause problems later on, whatever, but but it it can attract the the right person.
Jordan Gal:I mean, right now, I would kill for a smart, hungry, you know, young person to that wants to learn this business that would just freaking help me. You know? A few days a week, a thousand, $2,000 a month, not that many hours. You learn everything. And, you know, from my point of view, it would help so much.
Jordan Gal:And on their end, it would be infinitely it would be phenomenal experience to to try to get your own thing off the ground. So, yeah, I I think that's a real asset.
Brian Casel:Cool. So, I think that's a good place to wrap it up. What do you think?
Jordan Gal:I, yeah, I I think the only other thing that we started talking about that I just wanna finish on is the options. Getting into a place where you think you don't have any options is it's usually self, inflicted and and self delusional. If you own a business, you and if if it's got traction in any form, if you've got paying customers and you continue to add paying customers every month, maybe it's not where it needs to be. Maybe it's not making $10.20 grand a month yet. But if it's starting to move in the right direction, you have a lot more options than you think you do.
Jordan Gal:People want to get involved in web businesses that are showing some signs of success. So as long as you are willing to part with a piece of your business, some of your revenue, anything to that extent, you do have those options. You can raise a little bit of money. You can go to friends and family. You can find an angel investor.
Jordan Gal:You can go out to your customers and ask them if they really love your product. Maybe they'd be interested in investing. You can give away a piece of your business. You can give away a piece of your revenue. You you really have more options than you think you do.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And and if you have paying customers, multiple paying customers, then it's time to start trusting that. Like, trusting that you've you've achieved product market fit, and you may not have the cash in the bank today, or you might. And and then then it's then it's time to start growing and start what what will it take to get to that to to 10 x this next year?
Jordan Gal:Right. If it's just money, if it's, okay. This works. People are joining. People are paying.
Jordan Gal:People are staying on. I just need more money to make it go faster, then then start talking to the people because there's a lot of money out there and a lot of people who have enough money to say, you know what? I will work for free or for a much reduced rate in the beginning in exchange for a piece of what comes later on. Yeah.
Brian Casel:I mean, I guess what I what I'm saying, and I think this is something I just think about constantly, is like, you you look at investing in in hiring someone, and and you're like, well, if they if I bring them on, they're not directly going to impact revenue. It's not you know, maybe with the exception of a salesperson, hiring this person will not immediately result in x number of new customers, but they will be adding value to the business. You know, you have to start to justify it by look. This business has achieved a certain number of customers. So it's not really like like you're gambling on on a a potential throwing money away or throwing time away.
Brian Casel:It's like, you know, it's it's it's already proven that it's that it's viable.
Jordan Gal:Yes. Yep. Help help me get to the get it to the next level, and you will benefit even if I can't pay you right now what what what you're worth or what you expect.
Brian Casel:Cool. So, yeah, let's let's wrap it up. I gotta get home to dinner tonight.
Jordan Gal:Cool. Well, I'm looking forward to to next week where we get to talk to you who are certainly an expert in in hiring people in this in this way. So I think that
Brian Casel:I would be wouldn't call it expert, but
Jordan Gal:I mean, if an expert is someone that knows a little bit more than, you know, than most people, then definitely an expert. But anyway, happy New Year to everyone. Thanks for for listening to the show. 2015 is gonna be a fantastic year.
Brian Casel:Yeah. We're one of my big goals is record and publish 52 of these episodes in 2015. So hopefully, we'll we'll stick to it.
Jordan Gal:Yes. If you wanna get into the backlog of other episodes, head over to bootstrapweb.com. Of course, if you're enjoying the show, head over to iTunes and leave a five star review. We'd really appreciate it, and we'll call you smart at the beginning of the show. And then that's it, Brian.
Jordan Gal:I'll talk to you next week.
Brian Casel:Alright, Jordan. See you later.
![[55] Leveraging Other People as a Solo Founder](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)