Bootstrapped Web

Brian Casel: 00:10

This is Bootstrap Web episode 58. It's the podcast for you, the founder who learns by doing as you bootstrap your business online. And today, we are talking about that balance between working on the product versus working on marketing. And it's always kind of a back and forth push and pull up and down, whatever you wanna call it. As always, I am Brian.

Jordan Gal: 00:33

And I'm Jordan.

Brian Casel: 00:34

Oh, Jordan. How are doing this week?

Jordan Gal: 00:37

I'm doing pretty well. I like this topic because, it's what happens internally, right, in your brain all day. What should I be working on? Should I feel bad that I'm not working on the other thing? So it really is a bit of a dilemma, especially for smaller companies for what resources are are limited.

Jordan Gal: 00:54

So I think it's a it's a great topic.

Brian Casel: 00:55

Yeah. Totally. You know, the the thing that kinda comes to mind and is I I think of these, like, huge corporations. Right? And these, like, big companies that I what you you see them get so big, and then you see that they kind of they they kinda start slipping on on their product side.

Brian Casel: 01:15

Right? Like, one thing that comes to mind is, like, Microsoft or, you know, you log in to any of their back end account management stuff, and it's just a mess. Like, forms don't work. Or, you know, the other day I was doing something in in our, like, State Farm, you know, insurance back end account management. And, like, they spend so much money on the on the shiny marketing site and the TV commercials and all this stuff, And then you log into your account, you're a paying customer, and it's like they completely, you know, forgot about you or don't care about about making your experience better.

Jordan Gal: 01:48

Right. It's very straightforward. Yeah. Now you're ours, and now we care a lot less.

Brian Casel: 01:52

Yeah. Exactly. And then, you know, just coming from that experience and and then building my own software thing or building my own service, I always had this mindset of like, oh, I'm never gonna do that to my customers. You know? I'm, you know, we're I'm gonna treat them well.

Brian Casel: 02:07

I'm gonna make sure that it's a beautiful experience and all this stuff. But then you get into it, and then it's like, you know

Jordan Gal: 02:13

You can't do everything.

Brian Casel: 02:14

You can't do everything. You you've got to get customers in the door. You gotta do marketing, and then you need to also focus on product. And it's it is really a a very difficult balance to strike.

Jordan Gal: 02:26

Right. If you go too far in one side or another, nothing will work. So it's not that it's black and white, but you you have to just keep moving depending on where you are in the situation. So, I think it's a good topic before we get a little into it into what we're dealing with. For me, really quick update.

Jordan Gal: 02:45

I'm just hacking the hell out of my outbound sales process. And what I mean by that is as I formulate a strategy for an outbound sales process, and I just think about it all day and I I talk with, with the guy I hired to help me build it out, you just come up with different ideas and come up with different ways to do it and how do you make it more efficient and how do you make it more effective. Should we offer something of value as opposed to, you know, a consultation? Should we, track things differently? How do we measure?

Jordan Gal: 03:20

So really just focused on how to get this right, how to measure it, and then just really excited to to kinda let things run for the month of February and measure along the way. And, you know, I don't expect it to work right right away. I expect some things to work and some things not to work and the hope is that we can identify and measure properly to know what is working so that we can cut back on the other things and double down on the channel, the approach. Right? The people we hire.

Jordan Gal: 03:54

Yeah. One example is, right, we're we're hiring a few people to to make phone calls to do to do some, you know, straightforward telemarketing just to see what that produces. So instead of hiring two people and seeing if they work out, we're gonna hire, like, 10 people and then let them run for, let's call it, ten hours each and then see which two people we should stick with.

Brian Casel: 04:14

Mhmm.

Jordan Gal: 04:14

So it's it's these types of things that I'm just excited to just go out there and execute and then get some results back so we can start to refine from there.

Brian Casel: 04:24

Nice. Yeah. That's exciting. And I think my update today is actually pretty similar doing, you know, different strategies for marketing, but, you know, continuing week week to week right now doing this constantly tweaking my sales funnel and and marketing funnel for Restaurant Engine. Right now, I'm focused on or what I just did this week was changing out that middle step.

Brian Casel: 04:48

And this actually comes from a conversation we were having the other day, where you mentioned, you were talking about Cardhook and you said, you know, once someone starts that free trial and then once they activate it, that conversion rate is is is very high. And and and that just really got me thinking like for like so like for you, your your big goal is to get someone to start the free trial and then activate it. And that's like your

Jordan Gal: 05:13

Launch. Right. Launch their campaign.

Brian Casel: 05:15

That's the step that comes before right before they become a paying customer. They're not paying yet, but they're on their way. And our conversion rate shows that if we get them to this step, there's a high

Jordan Gal: 05:25

likelihood they'll begin. And that's the that's the critical step. Comes in. Right? When they sign up, when they create an account, it's it's just value coming into us.

Jordan Gal: 05:37

When they launch their campaign, that's when they start to get value back. And the hope and the norm is that the value they they get back once the cart abandonment campaign is launched is high enough that when it comes time to make a decision on the free trial and becoming a paying customer, that it's an easy decision for Yeah. So that's like that's like the critical step. So you're you're looking at something similar in in

Brian Casel: 05:58

your funnel? Well, you know, I I think in your case, it's that's pretty similar to most sat like, software SaaS companies who offer some kind of free trials, like, get them into that free trial, and that's like the big middle step that that they focus on doing. You know, Restaurant Engine is a little bit different. We don't have a free trial. We we charge the setup fee on day one as soon as you sign up.

Brian Casel: 06:21

So, you know, what is the step that comes right before that that I need to be focused on in this new sales funnel? And up until now, for a couple years now, that has been we want you to request a consultation. And we we do have pretty good conversion rates on the on the consultation to becoming a paying customer, but there are other challenges that come with that. Like, you know, it's a little bit difficult to scale up, and the sales cycle is very long and and all this stuff. So I'm looking at what can what can my new, like, middle step be or that pre step right before they start becoming a paying customer.

Brian Casel: 06:59

And I've just switched it out to instead of requesting a consultation, now it's register for a live demo, which essentially is a webinar.

Jordan Gal: 07:11

One one on one?

Brian Casel: 07:12

No. It's gonna be a group.

Jordan Gal: 07:14

That's just talking about the same thing, Yeah. Internally here. What are you thinking? Like, once a week, basically run

Brian Casel: 07:22

Yeah. Like, that'll be

Jordan Gal: 07:23

essentially a a marketing demo?

Brian Casel: 07:24

Yeah. I I think for now, it would be like once or twice a month. But eventually, if this starts working, then, yeah, definitely once a week.

Jordan Gal: 07:31

Yeah. I was I was thinking to automate it.

Brian Casel: 07:34

Well, again, like, eventually. Like, right now, I'm just Later. Gonna do it and and, you know, do it myself for a a couple times and maybe eventually have one of my teammates do do the live webinar and then possibly do, you know, an automated version. The way that I actually set it up though is on the the page, and this is like a new page on the site that I didn't have before, but now I've made this page, you know, the the register for the demo page, like that key page that I'm funneling everything towards. Like, all of our call to actions, they used to be pointing to request a consultation.

Brian Casel: 08:09

Now they're pointing to two places. One is either the pricing and then the sign up or get a live demo. And and so on this live demo page, they actually had there's a smaller link there that lets them that says, like, you know, don't wanna wait? Okay. Click here, and now you can watch a a a recorded demo, which they still need to register, you know, like, opt in and enter your contact info to begin watching the live or to begin watching the recorded demo.

Brian Casel: 08:42

So they kinda so so our middle step now is register for the live demo or register to watch the recorded demo. And that's the thing that we're gonna be tracking and measuring and pointing all of our traffic towards. Jordan, you there?

Jordan Gal: 09:08

Yep. Yep. Yep. Lost you for a while.

Brian Casel: 09:13

Okay. I think we're good, though.

Jordan Gal: 09:17

Yeah. I think we're good, but I didn't hear. So I'm assuming we'll just cut out what I'm saying right now.

Brian Casel: 09:22

Yeah. Yeah. So Yes.

Jordan Gal: 09:24

So there's big gap in my in my

Brian Casel: 09:29

you're saying there's there's a big gap? No. Okay. I'll I'll I'll I'll pick up from here. So so that's, you know, kind of my update in terms of the the marketing stuff that I've been working on.

Brian Casel: 09:42

I've got most of that stuff in place now. I just need to start measuring it and getting gathering data and hopefully optimize it from here. The other kind of small update, and this goes back to, you know, and this goes back to, like, those large companies not caring about their customers and all that that I was talking about earlier. Well, right now, I'm going through and updating my credit card on all of of the subscriptions that I subscribed to. You know, my previous credit card expired.

Brian Casel: 10:11

Now I've got a new one. So I'm going through all the different companies, and it's so interesting to me that, like, the the smaller, like, bootstrapped startups that I subscribed to, it's, like, incredibly easy to just log in and find the billing page and and update my billing info. The form is, like, just super easy to use. It's clear. I know exactly where to find it.

Brian Casel: 10:32

Two minutes. I'm in and out. I'm done. Then I log in to a micro, like, update my Skype subscription, you know, a Microsoft site, and they literally told me, like, you need to cancel your Skype subscription in order to update your billing credit card. It's like, are you serious?

Jordan Gal: 10:48

Then and then you see close your account and open a new account.

Brian Casel: 10:52

Yeah. They had it like, you you see all these little details that are that are out of place too. Like Yeah. Know, copy

Jordan Gal: 10:57

They're only worth, like, 7 or $8,000,000,000.

Brian Casel: 11:00

Seriously. Like, the copyright They they don't

Jordan Gal: 11:01

have the resources.

Brian Casel: 11:02

The copyright in the footer of a microsoft.com site is 2012. You know? It you know? Adobe is another one. I I had a really hard time locking into my Creative Cloud account and and updating my Adobe subscription there.

Jordan Gal: 11:17

You know? I I do get I get a little jealous though. I get, like, slightly I roll my eyes and then I'm like, oh, man. They're making so much money. They just don't care.

Brian Casel: 11:26

You know? So Yeah. But, you know, it's

Jordan Gal: 11:29

It's it's kinda pathetic. It's it's pathetic.

Brian Casel: 11:31

Yeah. It's it's I mean, you can't get, like, a I'm sure they have, like, an army of interns there. Someone can can just spend a day and just fix the form. You know?

Jordan Gal: 11:40

Yeah. The the assumption is that it's so complicated because of their legacy systems that they don't even wanna mess with it.

Brian Casel: 11:46

Yeah. I guess

Jordan Gal: 11:47

That's that's that's more likely than they don't care or yeah. But this is, you know, it's it's the later stage of what we're gonna talk about today Yep. Where the the product and marketing Right? So once it tips over into your public and you have to show at least 4% growth per quarter and the only way to do that is more sales, then the decision is kinda made for you by the public markets. Like, no.

Jordan Gal: 12:11

We're not gonna invest in the site because that's after people already buy, and that's good enough. And so we're not gonna focus on that at all.

Brian Casel: 12:19

Yeah. Well well, let's let's bring this back to the to us bootstrappers. How how are we gonna make this make this right both for our customers and for ourselves trying to get something off the ground and and keep it going? And and how do we make strike this balance between working on the product, working on marketing, trying to do it all at the same time, or choosing your priorities.

Jordan Gal: 12:44

Do do you have, like, a general, I don't know, philosophy, for lack of a better word, on it? I know mine is, it's almost like a like a slacker in high school, where it's like you just leave things to the last minute until it's so obvious that you have no choice but to do it. That's at at this stage, I feel like that's kind of the right way to go. I think Where where if if you plan too far ahead, if you say, know what? Three months from now, the product's gonna need to have this, this, and this.

Jordan Gal: 13:13

Let me focus on that and let marketing, pay the price for my attention being elsewhere. I I actually don't think that's very smart. I'd much rather get new customers and then have that bubble up as pressure of like, hey, we want these features. We want these features. We want these features.

Jordan Gal: 13:33

And then say, okay, now I don't really have a choice. I I have to do it.

Brian Casel: 13:36

Yeah. I think today

Jordan Gal: 13:38

But it's like a general

Brian Casel: 13:39

Totally. And I think today, if I were to start something new, that is the approach I would take is do as much as I possibly can manually before investing in the in the product. And and I would certainly invest and and just focus on doing marketing first and build what whatever little thing I can build as possible to start getting paying customers in the door using the service or using the the product. But if I look back to the early days of Restaurant Engine, I spent in that first year, I mean, 90% of my focus was on the product. Now I I did not fully I I didn't make the whole mistake of, like, spending all this money time and money before doing any marketing.

Brian Casel: 14:24

I know that my very first step was to launch a super bare bones landing page, use, the default WordPress theme, just described the service, and then ran a few AdWords campaigns just to get, an early beta list or, like, an early interest list of about a hundred hundred and fifty people. That was the first step. And I and then I got on phone calls with with a bunch of them. But but then after that step, it was, like, all product for a year. You know?

Brian Casel: 14:54

Right.

Jordan Gal: 14:54

Too too heavy. I I assume you you look back on that and say too much. It should have been the split up even if the product needed more than 50%. Almost Unless you're, you know, trying to tackle the education market and powering public schools back end, like, don't have to spend a year or two on product before you sell.

Brian Casel: 15:16

No. And and I mean, I I don't mean a year before I sold. I I did launch. So okay. So from, like, idea to to getting paying customers or not idea, but, like, beginning of beta or, you know, or that first landing page to paying customers was about six months, which could have been like two months or less.

Jordan Gal: 15:39

Right. If you just did it manually and you set up a WordPress site for someone and Yeah. Put a theme in and made modifications yourself and said, cool. Are you happy to pay me $50 a

Brian Casel: 15:48

Yeah. Exactly. And then that the second six months, like, I continued to design and build additional themes and also continue to, like, refine the the lot the the dashboard interface and make it easier to use and the onboarding and all this stuff when and we're getting new customers, like, in little drips and and drabs during that first year when really I need revenue, and I should have been figuring out those marketing channels much sooner than I than than I was. You know? But

Jordan Gal: 16:24

Yeah. This is one of those things that I imagine just about everybody listening to this conversation, you and I and everyone listening, agrees with this approach and philosophy. And everyone nods their head and say, yeah, you gotta sell first. Don't focus too much. You gotta build an MVP.

Jordan Gal: 16:39

And in reality, to follow through on it is really, really hard.

Brian Casel: 16:42

Yeah.

Jordan Gal: 16:43

Yeah. I I think I have done a good job of following it, and not because I'm so smart, but because I don't know how to develop. And so I was so constrained that, you know, how you're supposed to be embarrassed about your, right, your launch? Like, I was embarrassed because I couldn't do anything about it. So it's it's almost like by accident or by, by force that I took this, this approach more closely than I would have if I did have more resources or or skills.

Jordan Gal: 17:11

Yep. Yeah. Once once you have right, if you have two people paying, you're not sure if the product's good enough. Once you have ten, fifteen, 20 people paying, guess what? Your product's good enough.

Jordan Gal: 17:24

You can convince yourself that it's not good enough to attract and you have to do all this stuff on the product, which you probably do, but that doesn't mean it's not good enough to sell.

Brian Casel: 17:32

So Right. Yeah. I mean, I I think you you know, that that whole minimum viable product, I mean, that's how how much do you need to build in order for somebody to get value from it? And and you can start asking

Jordan Gal: 17:48

for viable viable is tricky because in in the bootstrap world, it's not so much I mean, you could use the word viable, but it really means people will to pay for it. Yeah. What's the minimum product that people get enough value that they're willing to pay for it and not cancel after one month that they actually get value out of it and and stay on?

Brian Casel: 18:08

Yeah. Exactly.

Jordan Gal: 18:09

That's that's good enough. That's that's good enough to shift your focus from product and start looking at at marketing.

Brian Casel: 18:14

Yeah. And and I think there's a common misconception with, like, MVP and, like, the minimum viable product, and there's kind of there's too much of a focus on, like, minimum there or just I I I think there's a people mix it up between lack of quality and and a lack of features or a lack of automation. I I think what it should be is a lack of, like, automation and maybe doing something manually or or just focusing on the core valuable feature and not doing everything else, but delivering that in a in a as much quality and value as you could possibly provide. You know? Like, I I don't mean, like I I don't think that an MVP should be a really crappy version of of an app because, you know

Jordan Gal: 19:01

It should be good enough to address the problem that you are saying you address.

Brian Casel: 19:05

Yeah. Exactly. It's it's really comes down to the problem solution. It's not so much like Mhmm. You know

Jordan Gal: 19:11

Yeah. It can be ugly. But if it saves someone, you know, twenty hours a week because they used to do something manual and all of a sudden your software helps them do it in a much simpler way, then that's good enough.

Brian Casel: 19:22

Yep. So, I mean, how do you know, like, in different phases or different times? Like, how do you know when the product or the marketing side is slipping and needs more attention than than you're currently giving it?

Jordan Gal: 19:38

Yeah. It's I think we go by our gut a lot, but that's that's driven by things that are happening externally. Some of it anecdotal and and not healthy. You know, one person complaining and sending an email that affects you emotionally can shift the balance

Brian Casel: 19:56

Yeah.

Jordan Gal: 19:57

Between your product. You you could be, okay. Here's my strategy. The product's good enough. I'm gonna just focus for the next thirty days on figuring out how to do partnerships and, you know, just focus on marketing.

Jordan Gal: 20:08

And then you get one emotional email from someone about the product, and that'll throw you off. Like, oh, I guess I really have to do this feature now. So it's hard not to be driven

Brian Casel: 20:17

by that. That's a really good example. You know, hearing one customer objection or one prospect's objection to your product, that can often you know, if you're a developer and you're and and and you'd love to just, code solutions to things, you know, you've gotta you've gotta double that up, triple that up, get more people voicing that same objection before you before you can really justify it as, alright. That's something that needs to be built in order to sell this product. You know?

Brian Casel: 20:49

Because the question is not whether or not the product is ready to sell to this person, but but maybe the question should be, is this person actually the person that I'm that I should be talking to about this product? You know.

Jordan Gal: 21:00

Right. It's not good enough for them. I've had plenty of that. You know, some bigger stores, they're like, you don't have segmentation? Like, you're not linked up to this thing and to that thing, and we can't use Bronto email software to power most of it.

Jordan Gal: 21:13

Like, you know, we don't wanna talk to you. You know, you're not you can't even talk to us. And if you take that to heart, you might be making a mistake. It might not be necessary. But I I think you I think we're touching on something that's really in this debate.

Jordan Gal: 21:29

I don't think it would be surprising, that I I lean more toward marketing. And it's not that it's self serving. It's that in in my experience, the like, sales just cures everything else. If if you're not getting sales, if you're not getting new customers coming on board, if you're not getting free trials, if if there isn't activity in the revenue realm and new users, new customers, you you start to get in your own head. You start to doubt all these different things.

Jordan Gal: 22:04

But if there are just new people coming in the door every day and every week, you can you take a much more relaxed approach to, like, okay. So this other person isn't happy, and they might cancel. Like, if you don't have five new customers coming in that week, that's gonna affect you one way. If you do have five new customers coming in that week, you just you just accept that and take it in a very different way. So I think in this early stage with limited resources, It's it's that constant validation of new customers, that puts you on an even keel like and then you can look at the product objectively.

Jordan Gal: 22:46

You can say, what would add value to our current customers, and what would add value to our potential customers that are like our best performing customers, the ones that get the most value out of this, instead of saying, how do I make sure someone's happy so that they don't leave?

Brian Casel: 23:02

Yeah. Yeah. That's exactly right. And and I mean, there there are certain indicators though that that that, okay, maybe the product is slipping or maybe it needs to it needs some focus now. So you start to hear the same objection again and again, you know, or you're start starting to see churn rise or or customers kind of complaining.

Brian Casel: 23:25

You know? So these things, you know, can can pop up.

Jordan Gal: 23:30

Yeah. Yep. I agree.

Brian Casel: 23:32

And I I mean, on the marketing side, I mean, you know, it's like like you said, like, if if activity and sign ups and sales are not happening, of course, that's a big warning flag that I mean, if there's a difference between having, like, zero sales and having 50, and it's just not growing very fast, because I think 50 and above your you have validated, you know, that people are getting value from this. But if you're not growing fast enough, then your focus needs to not be so much on the product, more on how can we improve and grow marketing.

Jordan Gal: 24:11

Yeah. In in the beginning phases when you when you don't have enough customers to convince you that your product is good enough to at least make money, that's just really hard because you you don't know which one to focus on. Then it's really everything's anecdotal, and everything is dependent upon one or two conversations. And that's not necessarily a bad thing as long as you try to stay focused on serving the right people, right market, the right type of person so that if you are talking to one person a week and someone says, well, it has to be able to do x y and z before I buy. Sometimes you actually do have to do that Yeah.

Jordan Gal: 24:48

And go back to the product and and just to get people on board.

Brian Casel: 24:50

That's That's what

Jordan Gal: 24:51

that's fine.

Brian Casel: 24:51

Yeah. That's what I mean. Like, if you if you're if you're not at any paying customers yet, the question is, like, are are these objections to the actual core idea of the product? Is it not the right value proposition? Mhmm.

Brian Casel: 25:02

And at that point, you need to question, alright. What am I building or what is the problem that I'm solving and who am I solving it for versus, okay, you've established the value proposition. People have paid for it. They are paying for it. Just not enough of them.

Brian Casel: 25:15

They're not coming fast enough. Then it's a question of, am I doing the right types of marketing activities? Am I investing in the right areas? You know, I I know that personally that there have been times when I was focused too heavily on improving the product and and the onboarding and our theme designs and everything and when I should have been focusing on, you know, new different marketing channels. And then the opposite happened.

Brian Casel: 25:43

You know? In the following year, I was focused too heavily on marketing and and, and clawing my way up to get more customers, and the product started to slip. So it's it's like a never ending balance.

Jordan Gal: 25:57

Yeah. I yeah. I think it's this question between product and marketing is more challenging in this in this second phase, where you could be working on either one, and there's a perfectly valid reason to work on either one. So you have paying customers, and if you improve the product, they would be happier, stay longer, recommend more, you know, increase the the average revenue per user, all all these different things. You could justify both.

Jordan Gal: 26:23

I think the way that I approach it is to look at my strength and say, should spend time on that strength and then look over at the weakness and say that does not mean that the business can continue going on without that weakness being addressed. So I have to figure out a way that that moves forward consistently but without my focus on it, without me putting too much effort on it. And Yeah. It's a tricky thing between marketers and developers. It's it's a bit of an unfair situation to developers because a marketer is not expected to develop.

Jordan Gal: 27:05

They're just not it's just okay. You're not gonna learn. It's it's pointless. But at the same time, if you're a developer, you are expected to do marketing. To to to try to do both is is tricky, but at least as a marketer, it's more clear cut.

Jordan Gal: 27:20

You can't do that if you wanted to. You can't move the product that much yourself. You're still responsible for figuring out where the product needs to go, but it is easier to to put that into its own bucket and say, dear developer, partner Sorry. No worries. Partner, cofounder, outsource, whoever's gonna do the development for you.

Jordan Gal: 27:43

These are the next features and I'll help I'll work with you to get these features done. And that will that's your responsibility. But it is easy easier to compartmentalize that and say, these are the features, but you're gonna go off and do them, and then I'll give input.

Brian Casel: 27:56

Yeah. That is an an interesting comparison that you put there. Like, I think a marketer needs of of course, they have the marketing skills and and and they're able to build something or, you know, sell something. But they need to become good at delegation and getting the right people in place to help them build their thing. Whereas the developer does need to do both.

Brian Casel: 28:18

And and, I mean, they're they kinda need to learn the marketing skills. And when I think of, like, those developer bootstrappers who have who've been very successful or, you you know, they're the ones who were able to say, okay. I'm gonna cross over and become an expert marketer. You know? I I'm already a a good developer.

Brian Casel: 28:41

Now I'm gonna stop being a developer and become a marketer. And that doesn't necessarily completely stop writing code, you know, but at a certain point, it it does. It it it means Yeah. Instead of building this thing, I'm gonna learn how to, you know whether it's run ad campaigns or write blog posts or, you know you know, learn what works.

Jordan Gal: 29:00

Right. It is interesting that it seems to go in one direction, and and that's toward marketing. So some of the developer founders that that we come across and admire and and see what they're doing, they don't develop the product forever. That that that is it's not necessarily a commodity, but it is the skill and the task that is more easily, addressed by someone other than yourself. And the and the marketing and the brand, the partnerships, the blog post, content, all that stuff is really, really hard to to have someone replace you.

Jordan Gal: 29:39

That's that's a lot later on to have someone else come in as CEO or have someone else come in and and and do that side of things. So it is interesting that it goes in that direction. That's not to say marketing is more important, period. It just means, you know, maybe maybe that's where the bigger impact can be made once the product is on its own two feet.

Brian Casel: 29:57

Yeah. Totally. And and I think developers also have a huge advantage if they put their background and skills as a developer toward becoming a killer product marketer. You know, you look at someone like Brennan Dunn or or Rob Walling or, you know, any of these guys who who've built, They're able to build a product, but they're also able to market it. And then they use their kind of their technical skills to become a really great marketer, you know, whether it's developing these, you know, complex sales funnels on their sites and, like, tracking users and and and incorporating different APIs or, just the the the the methodic approach to, to testing and gathering data and and and seeing what works, you know, that comes from the mind of a developer.

Brian Casel: 30:45

I think there's really something to that. If if you're listening and you're a developer and you spend almost all of your time writing code and you hear a problem and your first thought is to go code it up, you're missing out on an opportunity to become like a a, you know, a ninja at this stuff.

Jordan Gal: 31:04

Right. The the double threat and the ability to execute on your ideas on your own without going and finding someone else to do it for you and paying for it and the waiting process. To be able to execute on on your ideas, that's that's such a huge advantage. Yep. Yeah.

Jordan Gal: 31:24

You can see why, like, like, two person teams, like, developer, marketer you could you could see, sure, the the barrier to success is higher because you need to cover two people's salaries, to get profitable. But you can see how you can move a lot faster. I mean, right now, the the thought of having someone full time with me, like, as a co conspirator who who handles that side of things, man, it it sounds like it would be such a relief

Brian Casel: 31:49

Yeah.

Jordan Gal: 31:49

And and unshackling of, like, okay. Now there's someone thinking about this side of things all day and executing on it all day while I do something else. It's a it's a huge advantage. Especially, the other thing about being a developer, it's a lot easier to hire a developer. Yes.

Brian Casel: 32:08

Yeah.

Jordan Gal: 32:08

For, you know, for a marketer, it's just trust. It's, I hope this is good, and I hope this doesn't fall apart, and I hope I can trust them, and I hope it really takes two weeks and not four weeks. So there's a lot of a lot of lack of control. You're kinda handing over a lot of the power in the in the relationship if you don't know what you're doing.

Brian Casel: 32:27

Sometimes I I think that if you have no development skills whatsoever, it's actually somewhat of an an advantage when it comes to hiring developers. Like, in my case, I I'm not I I'm a front end developer. Right? I I can code HTML CSS. I know WordPress pretty well.

Brian Casel: 32:44

Beyond that, I'm not a developer. Right. And I found it kind of difficult to to delegate that responsibility in the past. Like

Jordan Gal: 32:58

For front end specifically because you know Yeah.

Brian Casel: 33:00

Like back

Jordan Gal: 33:00

end Whereas back end is like, okay, you throw up your hands and

Brian Casel: 33:03

Yeah. And and so okay. If I need, like, back end functionality built and it's urgent, I I will absolutely hire a developer because I literally can't do it even if I wanted to. But then other things like See, it's know, coding up landing pages or or or coding a a new marketing site design or something like that. It's something that I know how to do, and I know the ins and outs of.

Brian Casel: 33:25

And should I just spend time and do it myself, or should I bring in someone else? And then the other thing is, like, it's like I know too much about the technical side, so it makes it that much more of a process to to really vet all these different candidates and see who I who I want for for what with which kinda experience and all this stuff. So, you know, I've been talking about how right now I am looking through developer applications and getting someone in probably next month to join me on, like, a part time ongoing basis. But, I mean, I I'm excited about by that. I'm I feel like finally, this is something that I've been wanting to do forever, and I feel like now or this year is is the time I'm I'm going to be doing that.

Brian Casel: 34:03

Bringing someone in to work with me a lot on Restaurant Engine and and building out some other things. You know? And and just for me, just really trying to never touch code again, which, you know, never say never. I'm sure I I was touching code today. But, you know, just moving in that direction, trying to get to the point where it's like, I'm just kind of focusing on strategy.

Jordan Gal: 34:30

Right. Well that's that's where you can have a bigger impact. Yeah. It's a very, very interesting thing. You you mentioned about it being easier to hire for areas that you are Yeah.

Brian Casel: 34:41

I guess I feel like if you don't have the skill or or if you don't

Jordan Gal: 34:43

You don't even know how to evaluate.

Brian Casel: 34:45

Yeah. You don't Right. You don't know enough about it, but you know it needs to get done, you're just gonna go get go hire someone and get it done.

Jordan Gal: 34:51

It's funny and it it does translate to the marketing side too because I want an integration done or development. I am just gonna go and and hire. Right? But then now doing this, this this sales process project, I'm I'm, like, listening. You know, we we hire different people for the for the phone, for out up and email, so I I have people, like, calling and leaving a voice mail to, like, read the script that we want so I get to evaluate how they sound.

Jordan Gal: 35:20

And the thought of somebody else that does not really know the product that well, calling ecommerce merchants and trying to talk about the product makes me just so uneasy. Yeah. And, you know, it's like, it's scary and weird, but on the development side, I'm like, oh, yeah, fine. What what how much does it cost an hour? What can you do?

Jordan Gal: 35:42

What's your experience? Cool. Build it. You know?

Brian Casel: 35:44

Yeah. I mean, I'm always when I'm working with a developer, I'm always kind of worried, especially on the front end stuff. I'm always worried like, alright. They're gonna code up this page or this whole site or whatever, and then they're gonna be done with their project. They're gonna be gone.

Brian Casel: 35:55

And then a month later, I need to go in and tweak something, and then I'm gonna find all this code that was like, oh, they didn't comment it the way that I like it, or they didn't, you know, they didn't format things the way that I like it. It's like, you know, but but I I I can't care about that. That's the point. You know?

Jordan Gal: 36:11

Nope. Not if not if you wanna grow a bigger business.

Brian Casel: 36:14

Yep. So, I mean, how do we how do you cover the product or the marketing stuff when you don't have the the resources right now. And I think that's a constant, friction, especially as you guys just need

Jordan Gal: 36:29

grab it. Money in every direction.

Brian Casel: 36:31

Yeah.

Jordan Gal: 36:31

Like What what can you do?

Brian Casel: 36:32

Yeah. I mean, you know you need more customers, so you know you need to focus on marketing. And maybe you're spending all your time on that. But things are breaking in the product, or there are urgent features that are holding new customers back, or or you're overly focused on building out the product. And and and that's how you're spending all your time, but you need help with the marketing.

Brian Casel: 36:59

Like, how do you balance these resources? How do you allocate enough, resources, whether it's money, time, or investing in skills, like learning the other if you're a developer, learning to become a marketer, you know. How how do we walk that balance? You know?

Jordan Gal: 37:18

I I think the name of the game is is efficiency. Efficiency in time and efficiency in budget. And, right, that goes along with doing things that are good enough and and being happy that something is good enough and done and out there as opposed to perfect. And it's just it's just in every facet of the business. If you try to make your marketing site absolutely perfect, you're gonna end up hiring an agency and spending $20,000 on making it awesome.

Jordan Gal: 37:47

Good for you, but that that I don't think that's very smart, not not at this stage. If you get something out there and you look at it and you say, man, I'm really not that happy with it, it is working, then you're being more efficient. The the whole name of of of the game as a bootstrapper is the efficient use of capital as opposed to slightly less efficient when you're using other people's capital. Right? If you are happy to lose $500,000 this year because that's what your investors want you to do because that means you're growing fast enough and the team's growing fast enough, that's less efficient.

Jordan Gal: 38:24

Not to say that it's completely inefficient because it might work out in the end. But in our situation where we're looking at profit as as, you know, a key metric, you have to be more efficient with capital. So I try to do things like, you know, I call it flirting. Alright? If I if I want to hire someone to write content, I'm not just gonna say, cool.

Jordan Gal: 38:46

I'll hire you for a thousand bucks a month, and you create this much content, and we'll do that for the next six months. We'll see what happens. Like, that's that's not the approach, generally. It's lower your rate for me. This company might be in a really good place a few months from now that you'll be happy that you're involved in.

Jordan Gal: 39:03

Show me what you got. Let's see how we work together. Let's do one blog post for $250 and see how that goes and see how we like to work together. And if that works, then we'll do another one, and then we'll talk about the the monthly thing. Alright?

Jordan Gal: 39:16

And it's the same approach to landing pages, or it's the same approach to development. Like, let's spend x amount of money to move the product this much forward and then stop and see what ROI that brings us back. Is that really moving things? Do people care? If they don't care, then let's go back to focusing on the marketing until people do care.

Jordan Gal: 39:37

Mhmm. So I I think I think that's the biggest thing. It's just how do you make your money and your time go as far as possible.

Brian Casel: 39:44

I mean, like, the way that I kinda combat that that that friction of of, like, what should I be working on? What should I prioritize right now? Because I can only afford in terms of money or time. I can only afford to be doing this thing right now. So so that other thing is gonna is gonna need to wait or just not get done.

Brian Casel: 40:05

The way the way that I've always fought against that is through time management on on the bigger picture. And we talked a little bit about this when we were talking about the year end and what we're thinking about for 2015. So, you know, for me, it really starts with, like, setting big goals for the year, a couple of big things that need to get done and and, like, what I wanna do in, like, quarter one and quarter '2 and quarter three. And and then breaking that down by month and then just really acknowledging, like, okay. This month in January, these are the four or five things that are that I'm gonna be doing, that I'm gonna check off my list.

Brian Casel: 40:41

And maybe that means, you know, investing this amount of money on on this thing or hiring this person for that thing. But that's where I'm putting my resources this month. And I know that those other five things need to get done, but I've I've already slated them for February. That's that's in February's plan. I I know they're coming.

Brian Casel: 40:59

Things are gonna move a little bit slower. This is a, you know, this is not a we don't have tons of money in the bank to to do everything all at once. So we need to be strategic about, alright. A, b, and c get done this month. D, e, and f happen next month.

Jordan Gal: 41:16

Yeah. I I like that. I think that's a great way to manage the the internal stress and internal pressure inside yourself and inside the company that that there's always something in the back of your mind that, oh, man. I really wish I had life cycle emails, you know, perfected and running all over the place, and I should do that right now. I should do that this weekend.

Jordan Gal: 41:35

How come I don't have that up yet? Whereas looking at it a more patient approach and saying, right now, the most important thing I can work on is this. Yeah. And life cycle email, I acknowledge, is important, and that's why I've made time for it a little bit further down the line. So let's not stress and focus and feel bad about not having it done.

Jordan Gal: 41:55

Just say this is more important, and this needs to get done first. But that is it's coming. It's on the way.

Brian Casel: 42:01

Yeah. And I mean, like, for me, I always really benefit from getting it out of my head and and and written down. Like, I use Trello to to to plan out my current month and my upcoming month and even, like, the whole year. All my all those things that I wanna get done are in Trello, and I'll I'll I'll continuously, like, move them around. Like, alright.

Brian Casel: 42:21

February, you know, maybe maybe this gets held off until, like, quarter two. And and then the other thing is is, like, the business journal that I talked about earlier, you know, just getting these different ideas, like, out of my head and and and documented. And then, like, once it's documented or I get it out there, then it's like, okay. I've acknowledged that. I'll I'll I'll fit it into the bigger picture plan at some point.

Brian Casel: 42:49

But I've already said to myself weeks ago that this week, I'm gonna be working on this. And and then you and then you look back at the end of the month, like, okay. I got these five things done, and it really did move the product forward. I I launched a big feature that everyone has been asking for or or we landed, you know, this many new customers, thanks to this new strategy. So

Jordan Gal: 43:13

Right. And oftentimes, you read back the ideas that you had, and you say, I'm really happy I didn't spend a week on that day. I don't that's not nearly as good of an idea as I felt it was at the time.

Brian Casel: 43:22

Exactly. Because before, a couple years ago, I I I did not do any of this stuff. And I as soon as I get an idea, I'd start working on it. I'd start researching it.

Jordan Gal: 43:30

Right. Derailing your plan.

Brian Casel: 43:32

Totally derailing every single day, you know, and it's just like and when you do stuff on a whim like that and then, you know, working like that also reminds you of all the stuff that's not getting done, you know, because you don't have the time or the resources. You know? And Yeah. Like Yeah. When you're just working on whatever you can possibly fit in before you you crash and burn tonight, It's, you know, it's it's just not a it's a recipe for disaster.

Jordan Gal: 43:59

I think this is great advice. I I am taking the advice from you. I know the past two weeks, right, since basically, since getting back from the whole New Year's and holiday and and all all that, I have felt very very frantic in terms of I wanna get everything done at once, and I feel spread too thin on a lot of these things. And so yeah. I I and I feel myself like, okay.

Jordan Gal: 44:30

I know I'm stressed right now. I know I'm trying to get too much done. In one way, I feel good about it because there's progress happening on on a lot of different fronts, and on the other side, I'm thinking to myself, this can't go on. So there's gotta be a break from frantically trying to do five different things to, okay, once those are on their way, the process has been started, I need to figure out a way to kinda come back to normal and execute on a plan in a in a patient approach. Yeah.

Jordan Gal: 45:04

And that that has to happen soon. Right? It's been, like, two weeks of working a lot and trying to do everything at once, and I could see, okay. That's not sustainable. That's you can only do that for so long, and then and then it no longer becomes smart, and and everything starts to suffer.

Jordan Gal: 45:21

So I I think that's that's great advice to be able to document and have it out there. You're not gonna forget about it. You're just prioritizing.

Brian Casel: 45:29

Yep. So, anything else on this topic, or should we kinda leave it there? And and, of course, if if you guys listening have anything to add or any questions, you know, we'd love to hear your your comments, and we'll we'll kinda pick them up, a little bit in the next show too.

Jordan Gal: 45:44

Yeah. There there really isn't a conclusion to this. It's it's ongoing. It is it's just part of the deal. And you can see even if you get to a point where you start to hire, dedicated people for these individual roles and you start to segment yourself into a more specific role, then it'll be where should the company's resources be directed.

Jordan Gal: 46:06

Where should we hire the next person as opposed to where should I focus my time? So it's it's just an evolving issue. I think at the end of the day, the best thing you can do is keep sales rolling.

Brian Casel: 46:19

Yeah. Totally. Well, I guess that wraps it up for today. As always, you can dig into more of the backlog episodes over at bootstrappedweb.com. And if you are enjoying the show, please head over to iTunes and leave us a five star review and tell us what you think.

Brian Casel: 46:35

You know, leave a leave a comment. You could always contact us on the contact form at @bootstrappedweb.com as well. You know, we love hearing from you guys. So so thanks for tuning in, and we will catch up with you next week. Alright.

Brian Casel: 46:48

Cheers. Later, Jordan.

Jordan Gal: 46:48

Take care, Brian.