Bootstrapped Web

Brian Casel: 00:09

This is Bootstrap Web episode 67. It's the show for you, the founder who learns by doing as you bootstrap your business online. Today, we're talking about the story of some of our failed startups from from years past. And, you know, I'm sure we're gonna uncover a few things that we haven't talked about much Oh, yes. From from back in the days.

Brian Casel: 00:31

But we're gonna see if we can pull out any any lessons from from what we learned about these things as we were as we were kinda getting started in all of this. So as always, I am Brian.

Jordan Gal: 00:41

And I'm Jordan. I'm looking forward to the the comedy and the tragedy of of past failures. But we'll do our best to to to laugh at ourselves, not take it too seriously.

Brian Casel: 00:50

Yep. And we had a couple of new iTunes reviews in the last week. I'm gonna pull out two of them here. The first one comes from IT Sniper. Love that name.

Brian Casel: 00:59

Yes. Five stars. He says episode 57 about sales funnels was pure gold. I'm building my first info product, and I'm hoping to stair step towards a full software product. And I'll see you guys at MicroConf.

Brian Casel: 01:11

Very cool. You'll have to identify yourself as IT sniper when we're out there And at the after Derek Kuntz, five stars. He says, Brian and Jordan are excellent at exposing the myth of overnight success. Instead, they focus their discussion around real world solutions. They rarely go off on tangents.

Brian Casel: 01:32

Your time won't be won't be wasted, and I don't know how to read today. I'm I'm sure you I'm sure you'll appreciate how open they are, and thank you for the coaching and inspiration. Well, thank you, Derek. Thanks for tuning in.

Jordan Gal: 01:44

And Derek Derek is my my homie on Skype. He and I just randomly

Brian Casel: 01:49

Oh, you know him?

Jordan Gal: 01:49

Yeah. We just randomly chat. I don't know him. We just randomly chat on Skype every few, like, weeks or months and, like, give each other an update and, like, psych each other up and, like, give each other some ideas and, like, alright. Talk to you in a few months.

Jordan Gal: 02:01

Nice. That's great. Cool. So thanks thanks for the reviews.

Brian Casel: 02:15

Alright. I'm here with Craig Hewitt. He's the founder of Podcast Motor. Craig, how's it going?

Speaker 3: 02:19

Doing great, Brian. How are

Brian Casel: 02:20

you doing? Good. So, you know, I as we've actually been working with you on and you've been handling all the editing and posting for Bootstrap Web, which has been absolutely awesome. Why don't you tell us, you know, how did you actually get into podcasts, and how did Podcast Motor come about?

Speaker 3: 02:37

Yeah. So, you know, for the last few years, I've been a huge consumer of podcasts. I listen to a couple dozen shows every week, it seems like. And over the course of the last year or so, I started thinking, you know, hey. I should really start my own show.

Speaker 3: 02:48

I feel like I've I've listened to enough good podcasts now that I know what a good one look looks like and sounds like. And so I did. I started my own podcast, just before the end of the year last year. It's in the startup space as well. And, you know, Brian was one of our first guests on the show.

Speaker 3: 03:02

You guys can check it out if you'd like. And from there, I started thinking, man, this audio editing stuff is is really challenging. There there's a lot to it. It's it's easy to slap a few things together and and make a recording, but to make a good recording actually is really difficult. So after I learned some of those skills over the last, you know, handful of months, I decided to put it together and offer it as a productized service.

Speaker 3: 03:23

And and, you know, Podcast Motor basically does everything from the time you hit stop on the recording to when an episode goes live. And so we're really kind of creating a solution for our own problem with podcasts that I do, but also something that I think a lot of people would value as well.

Brian Casel: 03:40

Very cool. And, you know, I mean, as you know, I'm I'm, like, very big on on the whole productized service idea. And this is one of those things that I've just been thinking about for years that someone should offer this, like a done for you, you know, podcast editing setup posting service so that the podcaster can can just focus on recording. So that's actually my next question here. Just like how how does Podcast Motor actually make the podcast hosts their lives easier?

Speaker 3: 04:10

So we know the most important thing for you as a podcast host is to create great content, and creating great content on just like online in a podcast is the most important thing. And so what we're doing is we're just freeing you of all the extra work you have to do aside from booking good guests, doing background research, and and doing those recordings, we're doing all the legwork aside from creating that content to allow you to focus on what's really important for your show. So we take we take an episode after you finish recording, you'll upload a Dropbox. I'll take all those files and all the background music, all the transitions, all the ad spots, and mix those together, do a lot of audio engineering on it, upload that to your media host if you use SoundCloud or Lipson or whatever you use. We'll create a a WordPress post and with a complete with show notes and links and mentions and Twitter handles of your guests, and we'll do custom custom art for your WordPress post, and and we'll publish everything for you.

Speaker 3: 05:07

So all you have to do is create that killer content. I'm a podcaster myself, and I know that the most enjoyable time I have through the course of creating an episode is doing the recording, interviewing a guest, or talking with one of my cohosts. And and that's what we try to do is just free you guys up to do the part that you love.

Brian Casel: 05:25

Yeah. And you've actually been, like, writing our show notes and writing creating, you know, the image that goes with the post. And those you know, for those that don't know, I mean, that actually takes a lot of time to to make sure that all the links are getting included and all that kind of stuff. I mean, what I love about it is that Jordan and I literally just hit record for an for about an hour and then we drop our recording right into Dropbox and everything else is just handled by by Podcast Motor, which has been great. So, know, last question here.

Brian Casel: 05:51

As a as a listener and and since you're kind of in this space, through your work and just as a fan, you listen to a lot of podcasts. So what would you say is like one one or two tips that you can give other podcasters out there to help them make a really good program?

Speaker 3: 06:07

So I'll give two different suggestions, and one is on content and the other is a little technical. On content, I would just say just be true to who you are and listen to your own voice. John Lee Dumas and Pat Flynn have already created those shows. Right? So Entrepreneur on Fire and Smart Passive Income are already there.

Speaker 3: 06:25

Don't go replicating them. Don't even try. You can't do it. But there's gonna be someone and a whole bunch of people probably that love everything you have to say because you have a very unique perspective on things. So just go with that and embrace it.

Speaker 3: 06:37

And then from a technical perspective, I would say just invest in a good mic. The one I like is the Audio Technica ATR 2,100. It's a great mic. It's $50 on Amazon, and it gets you most of the way to what a studio quality recording will sound like. So I would just say investment a good mic, you won't be sorry you did.

Speaker 3: 06:56

That's awesome. Yeah, I

Brian Casel: 06:57

really like both of those tips there. Well, Craig, thank you so much. And I'll talk to you soon.

Speaker 3: 07:01

Thanks so much, Brian.

Brian Casel: 07:03

Alright. So if you want to learn more about Podcast Motor, head over to podcastmotor.com. Be sure to mention Bootstrap Web when you sign up, and Craig will give you two free episodes fully edited, published for you. It's a great service. We use it here on Bootstrap Web, and it's been fantastic for us.

Brian Casel: 07:21

So thank you, Craig, and on with the show.

Jordan Gal: 07:30

Alright. Cool. So before we jump into the topic, let's do a little bit of an update. Brian, you did the intro. I go on and I I go first on the updates.

Brian Casel: 07:40

Go for it.

Jordan Gal: 07:40

Nothing nothing too long. So the one of the things I've noticed over the past week or two, I am a pile of procrastinating shit. That's just like naturally speaking, that's that's what who I am. But if you inject deadlines, like real deadlines, I'm I'm amazingly productive. So now with a new cofounder, I'm like setting these deadlines like we need to finish this by Friday.

Jordan Gal: 08:09

You have to do your part, I have to do mine. And all of a sudden, because it's like a deadline, it's almost like I'm back in college, you know, like writing the the eight page paper the night before. It all all of a sudden, magically gets done. So Yeah. Yeah.

Jordan Gal: 08:23

So I've I've found that to be very, very useful. The next thing is I've I've been struggling with time management. So the team is growing a little bit. Our our Slack is, like, busy. And because I am, like, the original founder and I kinda know more about ecommerce, whatever the hell it is, I'm all of a sudden getting inundated with, like, requests for my time.

Jordan Gal: 08:48

Like, I have a question on here. Have a question on this. This sales prospect has this question, and what I'm trying to build this new feature, but how should this work? And so that's, like, throwing off my rhythm severely.

Brian Casel: 08:59

Yeah. That's that took me like at least a year or two to really break out of that when I started growing the team on restaurant engine. And like yeah. Especially this bringing on the salesperson because she has so many presales questions that needed answers. And it took like a full year of me answering all these like relaying answers to her and then getting them all documented before that started to really cool off in terms of pulling my time.

Jordan Gal: 09:25

Yeah. Fortunately, one thing that we're doing the right way is we we we have one sales guy who's freaking phenomenal. He is like a gem that we found him. And we are now hiring other salespeople, and we're having him train them. So not only is it from his point of view, it's it's also other other people in The Philippines, so he can talk to them, you know, from a local perspective.

Jordan Gal: 09:54

And we're having him train, and we're just kinda watching and overseeing certain things. So at least that's working. But yeah. But it's a it's a tricky challenge, but it feels good. It feels like things are, you know, alive.

Jordan Gal: 10:06

Yeah. Cool. And and that's it, man. Just getting pumped up for, for MicroConf in Vegas. I was up late last night writing my, my slides for the for the talk.

Jordan Gal: 10:15

Just, you know, get gettin' excited to

Brian Casel: 10:17

Yeah. Looking forward to that.

Jordan Gal: 10:18

Yeah. Be in the same room with a lot of people in the same boat. It's It's be good.

Brian Casel: 10:22

Yeah. I can't wait for microconfidence. So you and I are both doing attendee talks this year. And and we were just talking about this earlier. It's gonna be cool because your talk is about outbound sales Yep.

Brian Casel: 10:32

And and your whole system there. And and my whole talk is basically about inbound sales and how we've done that in Restaurant Engine.

Jordan Gal: 10:38

Yeah. Nice to get both perspectives. How about you, Brian? What's going on?

Brian Casel: 10:43

So I guess at a high level, right now, like, I've been in this weird mental state over the last few months. Some things have been going on both in my business and kind of in the personal life as well. But not going to get too much into that here. But I will say that I'm now kind of like breaking out of that. Breaking out of a lot of it was kind of like decision fatigue.

Brian Casel: 11:06

I was making a few pretty big decisions. We spoke about that on the podcast last week, and I wrote an article about that on the blog last week as well. Got a whole bunch of thoughts out there, but I did kind of come to a few big conclusions. And so now that I'm like, you know, the thing about the decision fatigue is that it it just really paralyzes you. And like, know, you talk about like time management and trying to be productive.

Brian Casel: 11:31

That is the killer when it comes like, when you're trying to like decide one way or the other on something or multiple things, it's like, what where did this whole week go? I didn't do anything this week. I just sat around thinking about stuff. You know, that's kinda how I felt for the past month or so. But but now I've got things moving along.

Brian Casel: 11:49

I just moved into to to a new office within the within the same building again. So this is kind of one of those decisions, but I I'm now kind of like deciding to get back into making music this year, believe it or not. It's it's actually been like eight to ten years since I was pretty seriously into the music industry. I actually went to school for it, audio audio engineering and music production. I I was getting into composing for television and film, and I'm actually looking to get a little bit back into that this year as as some of my time is starting to free up.

Brian Casel: 12:24

And, you know, I like, to a serious extent, like, I actually kind of build build this into some kind of professional business direction. But, you know, for right now, it's it's just a lot of, like, exploring all this and really doing a heavy dose of research into this into this industry and kinda catch up on the things that I've that I've missed out on on on the last couple of years of kinda being out of the loop. I used to be so heavily into it when I was a little bit younger, but I I missed it too. I I missed the the creative process of of of producing music, but also the business aspect. And and it's been really cool to see how much of an online community there is of of these, like, music professionals.

Brian Casel: 13:04

Basically, people, like, composers, audio engineers, you know, people working in studios, working for film and television and video games is a huge, huge part of that industry now, which was not the case eight to ten years ago. So I've been really excited about that, doing a lot of research and reading up in that world. That's been taking a lot of my time. But the other thing, back to the stuff that I've been doing these last few months and years. On the productize course and my newsletter and everything, I've been working so today and yesterday, I've been working on really dialing in the email automation that I do with the newsletter.

Brian Casel: 13:42

So that mean I think I spoke a couple podcasts back about the the weekly newsletter. I I still try to send out and write a new article every every two, three weeks or so. But I have a a now I have, like, a queue of about three months or so of weekly newsletters that go out to new subscribers, before they get kind of put into the general pool who gets my latest newsletter. So it kinda, like, cycles through a bunch of stuff that I wrote over the past year, and then you get into the the new stuff. So that that's like one automation that that's now in place today.

Brian Casel: 14:14

But the other thing that I'm working on is kind of up updating the funnel to lead into the productize course. I've had the the productize crash course, like the free course in place for a while. That's still there, but now I'm working on a webinar, but like a recorded workshop to kind of present as as a middle step between the crash course and and and and then the full productized course. And so I'm, like, working on different automation setups and sequences to to get that stuff going. So that's been kind of fun.

Jordan Gal: 14:48

Nice. That'll be interesting to see that start to get laid down. And, you know, if you can get that working and running on its own, you know, that's that's the dream, baby.

Brian Casel: 14:57

Yeah. And that's that's really my focus on it now is trying to remove myself as much as I can from that, but really automated and and boost sales at same time using the automation tools that that we have at our disposal, you know, using like Drip and and and on the website and and things like that. So that is about it on my update.

Jordan Gal: 15:19

Nice, man. We got a lot going on. I'm I'm excited to see what happens with the with the music side of things. Yeah. That'll be that'll be cool to watch over the next few months.

Brian Casel: 15:28

We'll see. I just I just dropped a whole bunch of cash on some new studio gear here here in the new office, so I'm I'm diving back into it. We'll see.

Jordan Gal: 15:35

Oh, yes. Nice, man. Well, today's topic is it's like funny and not funny at all. So previous failed businesses. Obviously, it sucks to fail, and I like what what the guys at thirty seven signals say about it where it's you know, lot of people say failing is like a learning experience.

Jordan Gal: 15:59

The truth is you can really do without that experience. If you could just skip the failure, it's really a lot better off.

Brian Casel: 16:05

Yeah. If only you can just, like, get those lessons and get those learnings, you know, faster than having to like waste all this time or not waste, but spend all this time on something that just never even launched. Yeah. But Or,

Dan Norris: 16:18

you know

Brian Casel: 16:18

That's not how it works.

Jordan Gal: 16:19

Yeah. I think you

Brian Casel: 16:20

have to get through it. Like, to me, the only way to do it is to learn by doing, and that's kind of what we're talking about here.

Jordan Gal: 16:27

Yeah. But looking back, I really could have done with without some of those some of the mistakes that that were pretty obvious, at least at least in hindsight. So today, I guess we could just kind of have a good laugh at looking back at some of our failed businesses. And this is when I say some, I mean only some.

Brian Casel: 16:45

Yeah. And I think we're gonna be talking about so we each picked out three things Yep. From our past. And I'm so I I mean, I guess I did kind of blog about some of these things in in years. But I think for the most part, people are not gonna really even know what these are or have heard of these things.

Brian Casel: 17:02

Because these are things that actually never well, at least in my case, they never really launched.

Jordan Gal: 17:07

Okay. So mine mine are launched and and filled.

Brian Casel: 17:11

Well, I should say actually one of one of my three kind of launched.

Jordan Gal: 17:14

I can't even help but, like, get giddy and just just laugh at this going back because it's either that or or cry, and I don't wanna cry in a podcast. That's awesome. No. Cool. So why don't we,

Brian Casel: 17:24

why don't get in the first one? I guess we'll go, back and forth. Do wanna start?

Jordan Gal: 17:27

Yeah. Let's go back and forth and just you know, we'll just kinda talk a little bit about some of the lessons we learned from each one and maybe ask a question or two and riff off of it. But alright. So here's my first one. Right?

Jordan Gal: 17:38

So I I was in the banking world. I left. I joined the family business. That was cool. And then at some point, I was like, it's time.

Jordan Gal: 17:44

I need to go out on my own. I'm obsessed with the Internet. I gotta go that way. I I that that's where I want my career to go. Cool.

Jordan Gal: 17:52

My first foray was primetimepolitics.com. Now, this thing was awesome. It's just that it didn't make money. So besides that, it was it was a great business. So what what this was, this was right I guess this is, like, February.

Jordan Gal: 18:10

So this is the height of politics insanity, You know Right.

Brian Casel: 18:15

But because 2004 was a presidential election year.

Jordan Gal: 18:18

It was presidential election. It was Bush. It was Iraq. I mean, it was it was nutty, and there was a lot of energy, and I had gone full. I I I got really into it.

Jordan Gal: 18:28

I I I got really into politics and ideas and ideology, and just I got really, really interested in it, and that was my passion. And here's the lesson.

Brian Casel: 18:40

I I guess Passion. Before we get into the lesson, I'm curious about this this this site.

Jordan Gal: 18:46

Now, Brian, don't ask questions you don't want answers to. Okay?

Brian Casel: 18:49

No. No. No. We're not gonna get into the politics part of it.

Jordan Gal: 18:52

Right.

Brian Casel: 18:53

I think we're on two ends of the spectrum there. But I am curious, like, were you were you like heavily into politics yourself, and that's what led into this idea? Or were you into the idea of starting, like, a news website business and then picking a topic, let's go with politics, or what were you thinking there?

Jordan Gal: 19:15

So I was really into politics and the Internet. And so I was just inhaling, devouring opinion pieces, learning who the best writers were, reading books, reading magazines. I was just full blown really, really into it. I would I was arguing with friends. I was arguing online.

Jordan Gal: 19:38

It was I was just super, super interesting. I, like, felt like myself come alive in this whole thing.

Brian Casel: 19:44

And what what going into it, like, what was your plan? Like, were were you going to hire writers and journalists or opinion people, or were you gonna be creating the content, or what was that?

Jordan Gal: 19:55

So so what happened was I was I was watching what was happening online and and where I was consuming content, and there was there's one website called Real Clear Politics. Okay? They're they're now very successful. You see them everywhere now because they have the RealClearPolitics, like, combination of polls. They take all the big polls and they combine them into the RealClearPolitics poll.

Jordan Gal: 20:18

That's like basically an average of, like, the 10 most recent big time polls. Okay. So if you're into this stuff, that's what people pay attention to and that's it's very, very accurate because it's basically compiling all results from all these polls. So what they did was they listed out, like, the best article pieces of the day, best opinion articles of the day. So I was going in there every single day and consuming the stuff, and what I started to notice was I like certain writers, and I'm always looking for their names.

Jordan Gal: 20:48

I don't really care what the title is. So I actually

Brian Casel: 20:50

I the same thing today. Yeah. I only read like two two or three people,

Jordan Gal: 20:53

you know. Right. You get into someone's style, their tone, you agree with them, you disagree with them, whatever it is. So I just started to kinda notice what was happening online, and I came up with the idea to create a website that had the best of both sides. Basically, the left side and the right, and I was gonna match up opinion pieces up against each other.

Jordan Gal: 21:15

So I we had, like, a section for the war, and it was just the best opinion pieces from the left of that day and the best opinion pieces from the right. And then it would be politics, then it would be something else, like the home front, you know, like broken up into categories. Mhmm. I thought it was cool. It was cool.

Jordan Gal: 21:31

What I learned very quickly is that nobody wants to hear the other side.

Brian Casel: 21:35

Right. That business is is so polarized that

Jordan Gal: 21:38

you It's so polarized.

Brian Casel: 21:39

You see that in in news today is is it has to cater, like, that that's why I hate watching things like MSNBC or or Fox News is because it's like whatever side you're on, it's like, you know, only people who are thinking just like you are. It's just, you know, they're just talking to each other.

Jordan Gal: 21:55

Right. It's just the the nature

Brian Casel: 21:56

of it. Yeah.

Jordan Gal: 21:58

So, you know, not not to lose the entire podcast episode on on just this, but some of the things I learned were, people are opinionated and trying to satisfy both sides was a bad idea. When we picked one side, we did a lot better immediately. We we used we used the energy around politics to drive a lot of traffic. So we'd post things on Reddit, we'd post things on Digg, and then we got into a dangerous place where we we were looking at vanity metrics that did not matter to the business. So we'd look at, you know, 50,000 uniques in a month and we'd say, we are getting somewhere.

Jordan Gal: 22:36

In reality, we were making, like, $250 from AdSense, but then we we thought, hey, we're gonna build this up and then expand into sports and expand into this and expand into finance and then we're gonna start selling ad space. The the problem was we were we weren't going for the money first. We weren't going what I now see as the preferred route. Go b to b, offer something of value, ask for money. Instead, we were saying, let's build it and then we'll monetize later.

Jordan Gal: 23:05

And we weren't in a position to do that properly. We didn't have connections to VC, and we didn't have enough technology. So it kind of after a while, it

Brian Casel: 23:15

started to Well, to that point, I mean, go for money first. I mean, I guess what you're saying is like, you kind of chose the wrong business, the wrong business model. Business model. Because the content business is, like, you have to get the traffic numbers first before you can really monetize that. But if you were to, like, build a build a software product, then, yeah, you can get money from day one.

Jordan Gal: 23:37

Exactly. And content and advertising is cool if you know what you're doing in that game and if you have the resources to spend before the business starts to generate money. We had neither, and so I let the passion of the project, dictate, and then we looked at these vanity metrics that led us down the path of believing that we're actually getting somewhere. And then it all basically came crashing and burning down with one investor meeting, with the founder of mp3.com, very cool, very smart guy. We got connected with him through a family connection, and he basically just destroyed us and lit us on fire over a lunch.

Jordan Gal: 24:17

And it was not being a jerk. He was just being honest because it was through a family friend, and he was like, guys, I'm not gonna bullshit you. I'm gonna be honest because I care about the person who introduced us, so I'm gonna be honest. And he just lit lit the whole thing on fire, and we went back home, looked at each other, and we're like, What do we do now? Maybe that's exactly when we looked over to my older brother who was like, hey.

Jordan Gal: 24:41

You have an ecommerce store that you're kinda getting bored. You mind if we take over that ecommerce store? And that's that's how that happened. Mhmm. There's there's my first debacle.

Jordan Gal: 24:52

How how about you? What do you got?

Brian Casel: 24:53

Well, the first one is, it's kinda similar in in that it was also a content site. It was it was a blog, which I guess is no longer up, but it was called serve the song. And like I mentioned, I used to be very into music and music production. So that was actually like a blog all about music production, kind of like tutorials on on using popular music software, like engine audio production software. Also, it's like song I I was writing a lot about about, like, the craft of songwriting and composing music.

Brian Casel: 25:28

And that was kind of the first time I I learned about blogging as a business. And and I think I was just inspired by the idea of of, oh, you can actually build a blog and you can make a business out of it. Like, that was like the fur I think what happened was I discovered problogger.net, Darren Darren Rouse's site. Right. I don't remember how I got it.

Brian Casel: 25:54

I came across it. Maybe it was like through a connection from like, I don't know, Envato. I was reading, you know, freelance which a lot at the time. Right. So this was in my very first year of being a freelance web designer.

Brian Casel: 26:05

I had recently quit my job, went freelance, was doing my very first kind of freelance client projects. But then I came across this idea of blogging for a living, and just got really interested in learning all about that. And I was like, alright, well, I gotta like launch something just to kind of cut my teeth at this. And I was like, well, what am I into? What am I doing?

Brian Casel: 26:26

And at the time, I was still doing a lot of music. So I was like, alright, I'll I'll start a blog about music. I just that that was a really good learning experience for me because I learned all about the mechanics of blogging. Like, I I think that was a really good foundation for all the writing and all the content that creation that I that I did over the years that followed was mostly comes back to the stuff that I was researching then on, like, how how to blog, how to write for the web, how to start to build an audience and connect with readers. And and actually, that blog started to gain a little bit of traction.

Brian Casel: 27:00

I remember I was doing a couple of, like, video tutorials about some pretty popular music production software. And and those were doing pretty well on you like, fairly well on YouTube, getting, you know, random hits and whatnot. And what I learned there was number one, YouTube as a search channel is way bigger than I thought it was. And the other thing that I learned about was kind of building on top of the popularity of of of an existing software or an existing tool. So if you're writing about a very popular but niche tool or or software that can get that can attract very targeted readers and and that can do pretty well.

Brian Casel: 27:44

Nice. Especially if you're teaching how to use it. So I I really learned I guess the reason why it eventually fizzled out in less than a year was just that like any other business, like any other blogging business, was I lost steam. I was very much caught up in a lot of client work. And back then, it was like my early client work.

Brian Casel: 28:02

So still learning a lot on that end as well. Kind of lost focus. And I wish I had actually stuck with that one because that one actually started to gain traction, get a little bit of a readership. I wish I had known about things like building an email list at the time, but I I didn't. I was kinda focused on social media and stuff.

Jordan Gal: 28:20

Yeah. How many how many years ago is this?

Brian Casel: 28:23

This was this was 2008. This was like the beginning of 2008.

Jordan Gal: 28:27

Right. Blogging has has changed the the arsenal of weapons to to monetize in different business models, and it's just it's just matured. Yeah. There's there's a there are a lot more options now.

Brian Casel: 28:40

Totally. Totally. And, it it really changed a lot. And I think back then, it was it was it was big at the time, but it was not what it is today. So that was that that was a good learning experience.

Brian Casel: 28:52

I ended up actually selling that site to someone for practically nothing. But, yeah, that was interesting.

Jordan Gal: 28:59

Yeah. That is interesting that you but it's not up anymore.

Brian Casel: 29:04

I I just checked the website. Guess I guess the the person kinda took it down or stopped working on it or whatever.

Jordan Gal: 29:09

It's funny. I I checked the domains of the site of the businesses we're talking about now too. One of them one of them is just like don't even know. It's like a bootstrap template or something. Alright.

Jordan Gal: 29:21

Cool, man. Should we should we move on to the the next shame for me?

Brian Casel: 29:24

Yep. Absolutely.

Jordan Gal: 29:26

Alright. Cool. So the next business, that didn't work out so this is this is after selling the ecommerce store. So I'm randomly reading I don't even know. I think I got an email from Inc Magazine.

Jordan Gal: 29:46

So I'm reading they had, like, a highlight. You know, they they, like, generate interest in the Inc 500 before it comes out. So they have, like, these features of, like, interesting companies that are that are coming out, that are going to be in the Inc 500 in when the issue comes out. Cool. So randomly, come across this article.

Jordan Gal: 30:05

I read about this kid in New Orleans who has a company that does on hold messaging. Okay? These are the recorded phone things when you call your doctor or call, I don't know, anyone. And they put you on hold and you hear a recording telling about how cool the business is and to ask them about this and Yeah. Everyone everyone knows what I'm talking about.

Jordan Gal: 30:27

Okay. This kid managed to build up a client base of 4,000 customers in a span of, like, two years, paying him $50 a month. So I let I took out I'm reading this. I took out my calculator. I go, 4,000 times 50.

Jordan Gal: 30:46

This motherfucker is making $200,000 a month. And it's like, it's just him. So I read that and scratched my head, and I was like, I need to talk to this guy. So I reach out to him, and he's like, yo, I have gotten bombarded with people after this article came out, obviously, but you're the only one who's, like, my age and isn't some weird stiff, like, old businessman, and I can, like, talk to you, so I'm willing to talk. I basically said, like, look, man.

Jordan Gal: 31:23

Teach me what the hell you're doing, and let's see if we can make money together on it. He was like, alright. Cool. So I I finagled my way into a partnership with this guy, and we started an on hold messaging company. My

Brian Casel: 31:36

Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. I I gotta hear it.

Brian Casel: 31:38

Like, what what's happening here? Like

Jordan Gal: 31:42

right.

Brian Casel: 31:42

So just You're you're just randomly emailing this guy, happens to be getting, like, thousands of emails from other readers of Inc. Magazine right now. Mhmm. First of all, how do you connect with him? But then what are you saying to him when you're on the phone with him?

Brian Casel: 31:54

Like, how does that turn into a partnership?

Jordan Gal: 31:57

Okay. So I think I we said this a few episodes ago. The the the power of a convincing email should never be underestimated. You can do anything if you can write a convincing email. So I wrote a convincing email that convinced him to respond back and then get on the phone with me.

Jordan Gal: 32:17

Essentially, what I

Brian Casel: 32:18

said So, like, short, concise

Jordan Gal: 32:20

Yeah. In other words, you are the most

Brian Casel: 32:22

Connecting, like, with, like yeah.

Jordan Gal: 32:25

Yeah. Like, you are the most amazing person in the world. I am slightly less amazing. We should talk, you know, in in in so many words. Like, flatter and then build myself up and then say, hey.

Brian Casel: 32:36

But he has this established business. You're a stranger. What what happens next?

Jordan Gal: 32:40

I basically said, look, man. I am very interested in what you're doing. I just sold a business. I have some resources. I'm not, like, wasting your time here.

Jordan Gal: 32:51

What in God's name did you do? How how you know, tell me what what is happening here. Tell me how this works. So it turns out this business is beautiful. This business is beautiful, and I wanted in.

Jordan Gal: 33:03

So it's not difficult to start because what you're doing is selling. That's all you're doing. All I wanted after, if you'll recall, after selling the ecommerce business, all I wanted was a recurring revenue business. I had just sold something like, I don't know, several thousand people convincing them to buy, like, solar lights and hammocks and, like, electric fireplaces for me. Okay?

Jordan Gal: 33:26

At at the end of it, if you shut off advertising, there's, like, a trickle of money that comes in. So I felt like an idiot. I was, if I had just worked this hard and worked on something that has recurring revenue, I would be in a much better position right now. So I said next business must have recurring revenue.

Brian Casel: 33:44

Oh, that recurring. Yep.

Jordan Gal: 33:46

Right. I'm not a technical guy, so I don't think software and only software. So I came across this guy and, like, holy shit. This is recurring, and all you have to do is sell because all the work is done by, like, voice studios and voice actors, and it's all, like it's a piece of cake to to to set up. Mhmm.

Jordan Gal: 34:05

So I see this, and I'm like, yo, I I can set this up. I I, you know, I can be creative enough to set this thing up. So we throw together a website, launch it, and start selling. And now

Brian Casel: 34:18

But I I thought he had an established business, though.

Jordan Gal: 34:20

He does have an established business, but the beauty of this business is that there's nothing there. It's just a salesman and then Oh,

Brian Casel: 34:28

so he was just selling like, he got those 4,000 customers from just, like, in person sales?

Jordan Gal: 34:34

This is the thing that that blew my mind. And and the reason one of the reasons that we went into the business is because I thought I had the secret sauce because this kid taught taught me what he did. And here's what he did. This is the the beauty of leverage through through alternative sales channels. Right?

Jordan Gal: 34:52

That's the big lesson from this business, the big positive lesson. This guy, instead of trying to sell businesses, what he did is he'd go to conventions and conferences and meetups and whatever of people who install phones, Phone system salespeople and installers. He'd say, hey, you're going into this office anyway. You're dealing with their phone system. They trust you.

Jordan Gal: 35:12

They like you. Here's the deal. You and me, we're boys. All you have to do is recommend my service. Anytime someone signs up through you, I'll give you $400 in cash.

Jordan Gal: 35:27

So this blew people's minds. These guys who are making $22,000 a year, God bless them, but holy you know, it's a real opportunity for them to make a lot a lot more money. He had dozens and dozens and dozens of people out there installing phones, doing work on phone systems, and selling his product for him. Genius. Would just genius.

Jordan Gal: 35:48

He would just sell hundreds of these every month.

Brian Casel: 35:50

I was going straight to the resellers. Not not even resellers. They were like affiliates, I guess.

Jordan Gal: 35:54

Affiliates, but this is like ground level affiliate, man. Like, I will send you a check for $400, and we just met. We just went drinking after the conference. Like, we're boys. So the kid was a genius in in that way.

Jordan Gal: 36:05

So he built up an army that everyone does the sales for him. He had, like, two part time people doing the customer service, and then everything is outsourced to the music and voice studios that do all the actual work. So this is, like, the most efficient thing I I it blew my mind. Was like, good god. I I will do anything to be in that position.

Jordan Gal: 36:24

So that's the negative lesson of this. Just because someone else is doing it, just because they're successful at it, just because you can enter the business does not necessarily mean that you should or that you'll be successful in it yourself. And I learned that the hard hard way and basically wasted six months of my time.

Brian Casel: 36:41

Yeah.

Jordan Gal: 36:41

We had come in after the recession, and he had come in before. So whereas people beforehand, before the recession who were flying high, for them, $49 a month was like, yeah, whatever. You know, everything's gonna be great forever, so why not? And then after the recession, $49 was like, wait a minute. This is a real decision.

Jordan Gal: 37:01

I have to talk to my boss. So it changed the mood significantly. And we also were not nearly successful as at making real relationships, connections with people.

Brian Casel: 37:13

Right. You're you're the relationships with the installers, not not the end customers. Right. Or So the the business did.

Jordan Gal: 37:19

Yes. So what what ended up happening is we ended up getting, you know, a number of clients. I don't know. A few dozen or something. And then at the end of it, when we wanted out, we actually sold the customers back to him.

Jordan Gal: 37:31

He was like, cool, man. I understand it didn't work out. You know, best of luck. I'll just buy your customers for $500 a pop. You know, send it over to him and and call it a day.

Jordan Gal: 37:42

So it was I wish we could have made that work, man. Yeah. That is a

Brian Casel: 37:47

that that's a great business he's got there. Right. Freaking amazing. Cool. So the next one Yeah.

Brian Casel: 37:52

This one was a little it was going to be I guess this was probably my first attempt at building a web app. And this was, I think, around 2010 02/2010. At the time, I was so this was called Skipper. And

Jordan Gal: 38:11

I I have not heard of this. Tell us tell us more. What what did it do?

Brian Casel: 38:17

So at the time, I was doing a lot of client work, like, heavily into client work at at this point. And I was starting to scale up beyond just myself, starting to not hire full timers, but I was very much into assembling small teams of other freelancers on project basis. I had a network of at the time, started growing up to like five to 10 other contractors working with me at any given time.

Jordan Gal: 38:42

Oh, wow.

Brian Casel: 38:44

So, you know, for for like one website project, it would be like me plus a designer plus a developer and sometimes bringing in like a copywriter. And I would have like five of those going at any time. And I was doing pretty well with with that. But it started to get the the thing was there there wasn't a whole there wasn't a very clear problem that I was trying to solve here. I was just kinda interested in building some kind of solution.

Brian Casel: 39:10

But it was at the same time, I was kind of scratching my own itch because I was looking for a way to

Jordan Gal: 39:16

Yeah, that sounds that sounds messy.

Brian Casel: 39:18

Well, I was it was it was basically what I was what I was calling this was like a a team relationship management app. I was trying to play off of, customer relationship management, but for your team. And basically, you're you're it's like an interface where you're keeping, profiles for the people that you work with. And then and then that's kinda as far as I I got with it in terms of the concept. And I was like, well, if we just kinda build this interface, then all these other like killer features are gonna just magically appear somehow from from just using it and figuring out how we wanna use it.

Brian Casel: 39:52

And then magically, is gonna get into the hands of customers and they're gonna tell us what to build. And I was just assuming all these things with I I had this was before I learned anything about anything when it comes to building a a product online, you know.

Jordan Gal: 40:06

Right. Skipping over the most difficult parts.

Brian Casel: 40:10

Yeah. Right.

Jordan Gal: 40:10

I was We've done that.

Brian Casel: 40:12

And I you know, I'm I'm a designer developer, so I got really excited about designing and developing this thing. We we went so I I I dove right into designing wireframes and then full on HTML mock ups of the pages. But I did not have the skills to code this thing by any means. So I actually partnered up with a guy. How did I meet him?

Brian Casel: 40:36

There was like a website. It it's not founder dating.

Jordan Gal: 40:40

That's what came that's what came to mind.

Brian Casel: 40:41

It's not that, but it's something just like it. I I forgot the name of it. Where, you know, you so I I found someone who was, like, saying, like, they're a developer. They're they're looking for for projects to partner up on. Reached out to him, and and we kind of just had a call and then just decided to partner up, like, fifty fifty in this thing.

Brian Casel: 41:01

And and I actually worked with him on it for it must been a good five or six months we were working together. You know, he's a cool guy, really skilled developer, but he had a a full time job working for a big corporation as a developer. And so he was basically we were doing calls like on maybe like once or twice once a week, once every two weeks, we would do a call at night after after he gets home. I'm I'm still balancing client work as well. The the problem aside from the problem that that this thing was not like a a problem solution fit and all that, we're just building basically nothing.

Brian Casel: 41:38

The the other problem was that we were just not making progress. Like, I I had all these ideas. Like, let's just build out these screens and then go forward. And I'm trying to give him everything he needs. He was just coming back with like little tweaks happening over like a two week period.

Brian Casel: 41:52

I'm just like this momentum is just so, Like so nothing is happening here. And so that kinda just was, like, grinding to a screeching halt after five or six months to the point where I don't even remember if we decided to kinda just call it quits. We were just like, alright. This is not happening.

Jordan Gal: 42:09

Stop stop responding to each other's emails.

Brian Casel: 42:13

Yeah. I mean, you know, maybe maybe we did. I I forgot. But That

Jordan Gal: 42:16

that, I I have to tell you, that sounds like it sounds like with with more experience and more knowledge and kind of maturity, whatever the hell you wanna call it, that that you might have been able to figure something out there. Because there there there is an issue. It's just that maybe you guys were too insulated instead of talking to people and having them put you on the right track. Like, you it was too it was too isolated building something that wasn't quite right, but there's something there. I mean

Brian Casel: 42:47

You know, now now that I think about it, I actually do remember getting on the phone with a few other founders of agencies, to ask them about how they manage their their remote contractors. Right. And I now that I think about it, I think I I was actually talking to a few people about it. And I was just trying to ask them, like, how do you handle hiring? How do you handle, like, managing who's available?

Brian Casel: 43:10

And that's around, like, what I was trying to work on here was like, because I always had an issue with, who's actually currently available? And then it And how much needs to What are their skills? Yeah. Because, then I'm going out and writing proposals for projects. And I need to know, like, alright.

Brian Casel: 43:25

If I'm gonna write a $20,000 proposal for this, I need to know I've got people lined up, you know, without having full time employees.

Jordan Gal: 43:32

Right. And knowing that the guy who costs $18 an hour is available and the one who costs $9 I mean, there is an issue there to be dealt with. Yeah. But that's interesting.

Brian Casel: 43:46

Yeah. So that's basically it. I think that the thing that I learned there, number one, is partnerships are hard. That was I I believe that was the first partnership that I that I had taken on as in, like, my freelancing self employment career. Great guy to work with, really talented, but I realized that we were just not moving fast enough.

Brian Casel: 44:13

And and and I was much more driven to move faster than than he was, especially since he had the full time job.

Speaker 3: 44:18

Yep.

Brian Casel: 44:19

So I I learned that, like yeah. There there are so many different things that need to align. It's not just getting along personally. It's

Jordan Gal: 44:29

Personal situation and, like, income need, and it's amazing this shit ever works. Yeah.

Brian Casel: 44:35

It is.

Jordan Gal: 44:35

The number of possible things that can go wrong. I mean, there's there's a lot of luck involved.

Brian Casel: 44:39

Yeah. And the other thing is, like, scratching your own itch is not always enough. I think it's important. I you know, I think

Jordan Gal: 44:46

It's a good starting point.

Brian Casel: 44:47

It is a good starting point. It doesn't have to be a scratch your own itch, you know, but I I think a scratch your own itch product can work. But you need to go the extra step of really validating the problem and then really validating the solution. And I didn't really know enough about that at the time.

Jordan Gal: 45:02

Cool, man. Very interesting. Alright. Wanna get into my, my third one?

Brian Casel: 45:08

Yep. And then

Jordan Gal: 45:09

and then we'll we'll close it out with your, with your third. So this is the company that I I worked on right before Cardhook. So the the frustration from this experience is what led me to say, okay. I've had this idea in my head for Cardhook for two years. Enough already.

Jordan Gal: 45:29

Let's let's actually get it built. So I don't even know how to make this long story short. I'll try. I'm from Israel originally, and there's there's a lot of very interesting innovation in Israel around agriculture. Right?

Jordan Gal: 45:43

You basically have a small slice of desert and a bunch of Jews on it who are, like, trying to figure out how to make it work. So inevitably, there's gonna be a lot of, like, innovation engineering. They they do amazing stuff with, like, water and sprinkler systems and, like, bio, you know, genetics and all this other types of stuff. A family friend, a serial entrepreneur in Israel, came across this new technology for aquaculture. So this is raising fish on land.

Jordan Gal: 46:12

Right? It's a big business. It's one of these things that is an inevitable monstrous industry because there are only so many fish in the ocean. You you overfish, then there's a growing middle class. Demand for fish is not only outweighing supply, it is increasing at an increasing rate.

Jordan Gal: 46:34

So the only place to make up for it, here here's here's my pitch in case you can't tell that I've practiced this, is is through aquaculture. So we came across some technology and acquired it to to produce saltwater fish on land fully recirculating, meaning no discharge. Okay? So you set up a farm in the middle of the desert next to MicroConf in Vegas or you do it in Canada or Mexico or Namibia. It doesn't matter.

Jordan Gal: 47:02

You can produce high value saltwater fish. Wow. In theory. Okay? I'll I'll add that at the end.

Jordan Gal: 47:08

Alright. So so really interesting business, very large potential. So I joined. We put money in and took a stake, and then I joined the management team. And I was tasked with US and North American operations and raising money and finding partnerships and and all that.

Jordan Gal: 47:29

Cool. So very cool, very interesting, very big opportunity. It did not work for me. The the business is still up and running, and it's doing stuff with the EU and, like, building the first big farm, but it didn't work for me. And and the big lesson that I got out of it was a, go with your gut.

Jordan Gal: 47:51

I I kinda knew it wasn't the right situation for me, but it was so exciting and the potential so big that I stuck with it anyway. And that was that was the real mistake. The big reason it didn't work is, you know, culture is such a fluffy word that I despise, but in this situation, it was culture. So I am from Israel, but I am I'm American, man. I moved here when I was six, so I think like an American.

Jordan Gal: 48:19

And people here, we're legit, man. Americans are nice, proper, honest people. Okay? And dealing with cultures from around the world. And in Israel, they're they're cowboys, man.

Jordan Gal: 48:32

They are cowboys. They are risk loving. And, you you know, your ducks don't need to be all in a row before you move forward. In Israel, you you go and you figure that out on the way. There's an unbelievably interesting book called Start Up Nation by Dan Senor, about why Israel is so innovative, why businesses come out of this little tiny sliver of land, so many inventions, so many patents, so many startups.

Jordan Gal: 48:58

And in that, there's a a lot of talk about the culture and the army and the need for, quickly making decisions on your own instead of waiting for superiors. So all this stuff created a situation where I had no idea what was happening and could not function in the same team as my as my colleagues, as my cofounders.

Brian Casel: 49:21

Yeah. So, were you were in America. So, I mean, were you gonna was this based in Israel?

Jordan Gal: 49:27

It is kinda. It's based wherever money will be put into building a farm.

Brian Casel: 49:33

But, like, was your your involvement in it, were you gonna stay where you were?

Jordan Gal: 49:38

No. I was gonna move to San Francisco, which is what I did. So I moved I moved to San Francisco not only to to raise money, but also to we we were looking at a location just South Of San Francisco to build a farm. So I came to San Francisco.

Brian Casel: 49:55

This was, like, not too long. Like, I I knew you when you're doing this. Right?

Jordan Gal: 49:59

This was

Brian Casel: 50:00

because I remember you you were going out to San Fran, like, early on. I don't know.

Jordan Gal: 50:05

Right. So so I was looking exactly. By that time, I was already had one foot out the door, like, this might not work out. Let me start to look at other avenues. Mhmm.

Jordan Gal: 50:15

Yeah. So Cool. Yeah. So it just ended up in a situation where it was very obvious that this was not gonna work out, and that's when I said, okay. I'm already out here in San Francisco.

Jordan Gal: 50:25

My shit's already in storage. I got my my one year old with me and my wife, and we don't have a house, and we have no rent. It's like, screw it, man. Let's go let's go travel while while we have the opportunity. And that's that's that trip to San Francisco is what led to the coincidental meeting of my cofounder, the developer in in the laundromat in San in San Francisco.

Brian Casel: 50:49

Amazing.

Jordan Gal: 50:49

The family friend and that's a month later launching the first version of or two months later while in Germany launching the first version of Kart Hook.

Brian Casel: 50:58

Very cool. So Wow. Yeah. Yeah. I think we've we've both been all over the place.

Brian Casel: 51:05

The year, like the subject matter, like the industries that you got into in some of these businesses, like really literally all over the map.

Jordan Gal: 51:13

I told you agnostic my friend. Just just the money. Yep. Alright, cool. How about you?

Speaker 3: 51:20

What's the

Brian Casel: 51:20

what's the question? The last one and I can't believe I can't remember the name of of this thing. But it was basically a so this was something that it was a partnership between me and a friend Brad Tunar, who I think is going to micro conference here as well. I think so. You know, WordPress developer.

Brian Casel: 51:43

And he and I were had been friends, and we we had been working together a little bit on various client projects together and and doing a few different things. So we were taught he he kind of approached me with this idea of what what freelancers should do with their overflow work. People like, freelancers constantly get, like, like, completely booked up, and then they kind of pass on incoming work to other freelancers. And so his idea was to build some kind of like referral network. We weren't sure if it was like a marketplace or like a mailing list that you get in on.

Brian Casel: 52:19

And then when you get an incoming lead, you would kind of like pass it on to someone else in the list. But everyone in the list has to be kind of approved as like being high quality and reliable and all that. Interesting. And then we were thinking about something a lot. I think what part of the problem is like we weren't totally clear on how exactly this thing should work.

Brian Casel: 52:41

And we knew the area that we wanted to work in, but I can't say that it was totally like solving a problem again. I think basically we were just looking to have some kind of, like, referral fee from from a past pro like, a project that you would pass along.

Jordan Gal: 52:59

Right. You just knew that there was value there. Like, you're saying no to money and having it walk away, whereas there might be some value there somewhere.

Brian Casel: 53:07

Yeah. And it's also like a kind of a lead gen service for freelancers who need leads. But it's also a way for freelancers to earn money if they're giving away leads.

Jordan Gal: 53:16

Right.

Brian Casel: 53:16

So I think we weren't totally clear on exactly how that business model would work. Another thing that we learned there was well, I guess we would have learned this because the thing that never actually launched, we didn't get very far with it, but it would have been a two sided marketplace, which is not totally ideal.

Speaker 3: 53:35

So much.

Brian Casel: 53:36

Know, meaning it's not only has value if there are leads coming through it. And the only way to get leads coming through it is to get a lot of freelancers involved in it. So, you know, that makes it kind of a two sided marketplace. You know, the partnership was solid working with with Brad. Like, he and I actually still kind of partner up on our annual, you know, Vermont big snow tiny conf, which I'm sure we'll do for a third year next year.

Jordan Gal: 54:01

Yeah. That's a good sign. You guys you guys worked together on something that didn't work and still buddies and still work together. You know? That's

Brian Casel: 54:08

Yeah. Totally. You know, I think it was just the product wasn't quite right. I think he and I both got super busy with our other stuff going on. I was at the time this was a couple years ago.

Brian Casel: 54:17

I was still very much into client work. I think he was doing client work. And and, yeah, we just got pretty busy. Think we just another another one of those cases of, alright. We we made a few mock ups of this thing.

Brian Casel: 54:30

We we talked about it for a couple months, then, yeah, nothing happened.

Jordan Gal: 54:34

Yep. Plenty of those in in in everyone's background.

Brian Casel: 54:38

Yep.

Jordan Gal: 54:39

Nice, man. So what's what's the big lesson? Is it like I don't even know what to tell you. Part of me says, you know, learn something from each experience and bring it on to the next. The other piece of me is, like, just try not to fuck up and, skip that whole learning experience and learn while succeeding instead of while failing.

Jordan Gal: 54:57

But I guess the truth is we don't really have much control over it. So I think the important thing is to not be discouraged, not give up.

Brian Casel: 55:05

Yeah. You know, and and I think you and I definitely come from very different places and and and backgrounds and experiences. I think for me, these things represent my my education. Like, I never I never went to business school. I never thought about entrepreneurship really before I was in my twenties.

Brian Casel: 55:26

I was again, I was very focused on on music. I I went to school for it. I thought I was gonna work in studios my whole It wasn't until I actually became a freelancer that I started even coming across the whole idea that you can make products online. Like, I never even thought of that as a thing. So I I look at these things like building up my first blog and music and, like, doing, you know, Skipper.

Brian Casel: 55:50

And also in these years, which I I didn't list it here because it it didn't totally fail, is I I created, like, WordPress themes. And that's actually still going today on the side. I think these are things for me, like learning how to build products, build digital products that people pay for that don't require your time. Mhmm. You know?

Brian Casel: 56:09

And every time you you learn a few things, you learn about the mechanics of, like, what does it take to create something of value that's actually worth my time? And and, you know, I sunk a ton of time into all these things, making $0 from any of them. And I don't really regret that time because I I truly looked at it. I even looked at Restaurant Engine this way. The time that I spend on this is I'm I'm investing in my education.

Brian Casel: 56:33

Just once I go through the act of of creating these products, I'm gonna be better on the other side because the next one that I create will be even even better. I'll get there faster. You know, that's that's the whole idea.

Jordan Gal: 56:45

Yeah. I mean, I I don't like to think of it that way because it sounds exhausting, but that's that's the truth. You you you learn from it and oh, I don't I don't even know, you know, I don't even know what to say. For for me, I think I I look at it as, like, you know, people say it's, like, ten years of hard work before you're an overnight success? Yeah.

Jordan Gal: 57:09

That's that's that's what I see this as. Like, this is banging your head up against the wall, trying different things, learning, getting better, making mistakes, learning from them. And then when, you know, quote, success comes and it looks easy, it looks like, hey, you started this, this card hook thing and one thing led to another, and then three years later, you had this big success thing, this exit, whatever the hell you happens. It just would not have happened the same way and would not be nearly as likely to happen without all this tunneling around, fumbling in the dark that that happened beforehand.

Brian Casel: 57:48

Yep. And, hey, I mean, you you never would have found your your cofounder for Cardhook if you didn't get into the saltwater fish in the middle of the desert business.

Jordan Gal: 57:56

That's that that's how it all works, man. Alright. Cool, man. Well, that wraps it up for us. I hope you

Brian Casel: 58:01

guys got a kick out

Jordan Gal: 58:02

of this. I hope you learned something from it. I I hope people who have, you know, shameful, broken down failed businesses in their in their closet don't feel quite as bad anymore. Like, this is this is normal. It's not not a big deal.

Jordan Gal: 58:17

Yep. That that wraps it up for us. Today's episode was sponsored by Podcast Motor. So to learn how Craig at Podcast Motor can take the pain out of podcasting like he's done for us. It feels so good, to just record and then have it everything taken care of.

Jordan Gal: 58:36

To learn more about that, head over to podcastmotor.com. Tell Craig we sent you over. Craig, we love you. The the amount of stress and work it's taken off of our, our backs is amazing. So podcasting is just more enjoyable, and I'm looking forward to it much more.

Jordan Gal: 58:51

So to learn more about that, head over to podcastmotor.com. Yeah. That's it.

Brian Casel: 58:56

The the audio editing taken off our plates and and the the work that he's done on the blog has been awesome. Know? So, yeah. Really, really cool to have him on.

Jordan Gal: 59:05

Cool. And to check out previous episodes, head over to bootstrapweb.com. If you're enjoying the show, head over to iTunes and leave us a five star review. Poor favour. And you can sign up for email updates for whenever a new episode is launched at at bootstrapweb.com also.

Jordan Gal: 59:23

That's it, Brian. Until next time. Hopefully, it won't be filled with nearly as much shame and regret and and embarrassment.

Brian Casel: 59:30

Yep. Yeah. Talk to you next week.

Jordan Gal: 59:31

Alright. Cheers.