Bootstrapped Web

Jordan Gal: 00:10

Alright. And welcome to Bootstrap Web. This is episode number 71. This is the podcast for you, the founder who learns by doing as you bootstrap your business online. Big day today.

Jordan Gal: 00:22

Today, we are finally gonna dig into some of the details about Brian's new business. I know I'm looking forward to digging into it, and I'm sure a lot of listeners to the show who've kind of been waiting to find out a little bit more, are really looking forward to hearing from Brian. So as always, I'm Jordan.

Brian Casel: 00:38

And I'm Brian. Today's episode is sponsored by Podcast Motor. So I caught up with the founder, Craig Hewitt. Take a listen. Hey.

Brian Casel: 00:52

If you host a podcast and the editing and production work is taking up all of your time and energy and you just wanna focus on creating, then you've gotta head over to podcastmotor.com. They're our sponsor today and they offer complete podcast editing production service. So here's how it works. Basically, you just hit record and record your episode and then Podcast Motor will edit all the audio, they'll listen to your content and so they'll edit it for all the content and take out the ums and pauses and all that. They do complete audio engineering, get it sounding great.

Brian Casel: 01:25

They write the detailed show notes. They'll actually listen and get all the links in there and your blog post. They'll create custom artwork. They'll publish the episode. They'll they'll sync up the music, get it all sounding great and polished like a real professional podcast.

Brian Casel: 01:38

We actually use Podcast Motor here on Bootstrap Web. We highly recommend them, they've been doing a fantastic job. So if you're interested in this, head over to podcastmotor.com, tell them that Bootstrap Web sent you there, and they'll hook you up. Alright. So if you want to learn more about Podcast Motor, head over to podcastmotor.com.

Brian Casel: 01:57

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 Bootstrapped Web, and it's been fantastic for us. So, thank you, Craig, and on with the show. So, yeah, looking forward to this one.

Brian Casel: 02:24

Finally have some details to kind of share about all this and and we can talk through it all. I'm just happy to finally be able to talk about it only because I finally understand and I finally know where we're gonna head with this thing. Took me a while to figure that out, but but that's part of what we'll talk about here today is kind of that journey that I took over the last couple of months to to work through a couple different business ideas and and weigh the pros and cons, and then finally decide which one was the right fit, the right thing to do right now and and, you know, which one I kinda wanna move forward with.

Jordan Gal: 02:54

Yeah. This is the one of the tricky things about having a podcast or keeping a blog regularly to to make these types of decisions in public is funny. I mean, if you go back three months and listen to something that one of us said and you try to actually hold us accountable to what our plan was back then, it would not it would not look good. Right? These things shift day to day and minute to minute.

Jordan Gal: 03:14

Part of the deal.

Brian Casel: 03:15

Everything changes and it is really hard to kind of, talk openly about what's going on. And I think our other fellow podcasters in this space kinda deal with this all the time, you know. But as as open and transparent as as we try to be, there there are definitely things that just don't make sense to bring up in until we know that, like, something is solidify or or at least some something gets to a point where it's where it makes sense to talk about it.

Jordan Gal: 03:39

Right. Otherwise, you're on the risk of being unbelievably just as flaky as everybody else's. It just so happens to be in public, so you can kinda take the blame for being flaky on decisions in different businesses. But not anymore. Today, finally get to talk about it.

Jordan Gal: 03:54

I think we're gonna forego our boring updates about whatever has been happening over the past two weeks and kinda get right into this. So instead of making people wait, I know we're gonna walk through the decision making process and these other alternatives that Brian, considered and why he didn't pursue them at the end of the day. I think that's useful and valuable in itself. But why don't you just come out and tell us what what what the new business is?

Brian Casel: 04:19

Sure. So, the new thing is called AudienceOps, audienceops.com, and it is a content marketing service designed to help, online businesses grow their audience. And so so that's the concept, and and, so it is a a productized service around content marketing. I think we're doing a a few things a little bit differently in the way that we've packaged the service and as as kind of like an end to end, solution with a heavy focus on audience research and customer research. I think there are a lot of content marketers out there and and, like, SEO agencies turned content marketing agencies who still kinda, you know, work with the the old model of just throw words up on the page and insert some keywords and and, you know, you're you're gonna start ranking and seeing results when, I think we know that that the exceptional content marketers, understand that it's really about knowing who your target customer is, getting inside their minds, and then teaching them what they really need to learn about, not only your product, but the space that your product is in.

Brian Casel: 05:27

And so that you can build trust with them and and build up an audience, get them on your email list. So that's what this whole business is all about, is is helping customers do that, especially, you know, businesses who are looking to outsource and have that whole piece handled for them. So that that's the concept, but it took definitely quite a while to get there.

Jordan Gal: 05:45

Cool. That's right. And I remember when when we first started talking about it, at first, was like, so just a content marketing agency, you know, how are you gonna differentiate? And then as we started talking, I know you kind of put the challenge to me of like, okay, with Cardhook, what are you gonna do with content? And everything that I came back, everything that we talk about regularly, it's it's almost like a given in our mindset that the audience and teaching are the most important thing.

Jordan Gal: 06:15

But the truth is most businesses out there on the web don't think that way. And I love the focus on but this particular strategy, instead of just saying we're just gonna produce stuff, it's working backwards. It's who should we produce it for and then what how are we gonna use that as part of your funnel to bring them in and really focus on conversion. So it's it's just like a more targeted version of content marketing and I think people will continue to drift in that direction as people become more educated on it. So, yeah, I'm looking forward to hearing the details of it.

Jordan Gal: 06:50

You know, bring us back to just the decision to make the switch from restaurant engine and and how that that went and how that led into this little pool of potential ideas that you were looking at.

Brian Casel: 07:00

Yeah. Sure. So, you know, you heard me talk a couple couple weeks ago, maybe a couple months ago now, about how I'm I'm kind of moving on from the restaurant engine business and and looking for something new to focus on for the foreseeable future as like the primary thing. The the primary business that I'm working on. And so as soon as I came to the decision of, you know, whether or not I should I should kind of, move on from from Restaurant Engine, the next decision was was the much harder one to to get through.

Brian Casel: 07:31

And that was, alright. Well, then what's next? You know, what what am I working on next? And I actually went through about four different ideas, the the fourth one being, audience ops. But there were three that that came before it.

Brian Casel: 07:44

And so the first, the the first idea was was actually this this concept that I had in my mind for a couple of years now. And that's building a software product around personalization on your website. So I was calling it like a personalization engine which would allow you to show smart content, like smart call to actions based on who the visitor is, what they've done before on your site. So, you know the concept being like especially around email marketing automation, if a subscriber subscribes to your list and then they get to your site they shouldn't see another opt in for your list. Right?

Brian Casel: 08:24

They should see something else like a

Jordan Gal: 08:25

With the

Brian Casel: 08:26

next action purchase or something like that. So I wanted to build that, but and I still think there's a lot of value in that concept. There are a few companies doing it and have been doing it. But the reasons why I ultimately didn't decide to go with that was that would really require hiring a developer or or a CTO and just, you know, I I'm not really in a position to do that. I thought I was and and and I there there are ways that I can make that work but just

Jordan Gal: 08:56

But it's much more tech focused, you have to build a product before you can launch, before this revenue, it's it's a different path. Yeah,

Brian Casel: 09:03

exactly. And there's just so many so many months of investment before that can even get to revenue. Like, yeah, you could have like a minimum viable product and do some customer's development and all that, but still, you're you're months away from even having an MVP, or or a viable, like, version one that you can start charging for. And and I I just really wasn't in a position to get into that. The other thing about this, like personalization software idea is that as as far as I can conceptualize it and and the research that I've done around this, it it's hard to get an instant ROI from this.

Brian Casel: 09:39

Right? So if you plug this in and and set it up on your website, which which would take quite a bit of work, the user probably needs a a couple of months before that's gonna show returns, and they need an an existing audience before it shows returns. Mhmm. I mean, I I guess the same thing can be said about content marketing. Right?

Brian Casel: 09:56

You know, you need to invest a little time, but I think the the market kind of understands that about about building up content. This this personalization idea is still a little bit of a new concept. You gotta educate about what it is and why it works and who it's for. So that that's just a a very big lift.

Jordan Gal: 10:13

Yeah. There's too much pain. You don't feel that pain every day. You know it would be cool and it could make a difference and it could optimize. I mean, look, there's there's definitely value in this idea.

Jordan Gal: 10:24

It almost makes me think of like this it's like education. You know, the more the more you know, the more the better educated you are, the more you realize how little you actually know. It's like this little cycle of SaaS. Like, before you have a clue, you look at SaaS and you're like, there's no way I can do it. Then once you learn a little bit, you're like, yes, I'm going to do a SaaS because the recurring revenue, it's going to be amazing.

Jordan Gal: 10:43

And once you know enough about how hard SaaS is, you almost look at it and say, that's really hairy. I don't necessarily need to get into that. Yeah. Alright. So you moved away from another SaaS product.

Jordan Gal: 10:54

Where where where'd you go next?

Brian Casel: 10:55

Yeah. And by the way, on that personalization idea, there are a few guys who are doing it and and they're definitely worth looking at. And and I think they're doing pretty pretty cool stuff with this idea. So funneloptimizer.io is Brandon Hilkert. So he's been doing that for a little while.

Brian Casel: 11:11

Personalizationpro.com, which is Julio Barros. I was talking to him at MicroConf a little From bit about documenting

Jordan Gal: 11:17

PDX, that's right.

Brian Casel: 11:19

Yeah. So so what he's up to there looks looks pretty cool. And then our friend Brendan Dunn has wordpressconversionfunnel.com, which is specifically for WordPress and specifically for Infusionsoft and gives you lets your site be be smart if if you use Infusionsoft.

Jordan Gal: 11:34

Right. Based on Infusionsoft tags, yep, great niche.

Brian Casel: 11:37

Yeah. So anyway, so so I kind of put that one down. It took took about a week or two for me to really flesh that out that idea and then say, it's not not right. The next one is kind of a a productized service and and this is this is one that so the idea is basically done for you webinars. When I look at webinars and just from doing a few webinars myself, there are so many steps required to just put on one webinar.

Brian Casel: 12:06

Yeah.

Jordan Gal: 12:06

It's beautiful.

Brian Casel: 12:07

You know, you've you've got like the you know, setting up the webinar software, queuing up the email reminders that go out ahead of time, the follow-up emails that sell your product if you're doing a promotion or something. Know and yes there is like webinar software out there that kind of handles a lot of this stuff but it's pretty clunky, it's hard to customize to your needs, very difficult to integrate with your email marketing software. So the webinars that I've been doing, I've been basically putting all those pieces together custom. You know? So I would just like like queue up broadcast emails for the reminder emails and then queue up follow-up emails and and have like a landing page and and just kind of set up all these pieces.

Brian Casel: 12:51

And then the idea was to do to offer that setup service for business owners so that all they needed to do was, like, give us the topic or we'll even help you research the topic and and come up with the topic and then set up your webinar. And all you need to do is show up at the time of the webinar and present your slides, and we handle all of the rest. All the nuts and bolts of of the lead up and the follow-up, and we help you drive sales if that's what you're doing. And, and I think that was That's compelling. Concept.

Jordan Gal: 13:21

Yes. If you think about podcasting, if you think you wanna do a podcast, it is not just showing up and recording. It is a whole bunch of other stuff that goes along with it. So webinars are the same thing, and webinars better than podcasts. They make they make people money very directly.

Jordan Gal: 13:36

I I I think, you know, this I think it's a great idea for a service. How how come you ended up not not going with it?

Brian Casel: 13:42

Yeah. I I think it's a good one. I think someone should do it, honestly. Yeah. They'll people people do it.

Brian Casel: 13:47

Yeah. And and so, you know, I I think one reason is is I I did a little bit of customer development with this. And one reason is most people who are already doing webinars, they they already have the tools and systems in place. Like, they're already using Leadpages and GoToWebinar and or or one of these other tools, and they're not looking to switch. And then those who are not doing webinars, a lot of them don't really see the value in webinars and they don't really understand what webinars are all about.

Brian Casel: 14:14

I like, I had a few conversations with people who who they they were kind of just like picking my brain, like, well, what, like, what what would a webinar actually do? What what should my webinar be about? You know, they haven't really conceptualized, like, how it would actually fit in.

Jordan Gal: 14:26

Right. So the people who understand the value are most likely the ones that have gone through the pain of learning how to do it.

Brian Casel: 14:33

Yeah. It's almost like you have to try to do one webinar first and see how how much of a pain it is, and then you'd see that this is a this is there's some value in this service.

Jordan Gal: 14:42

Interesting. That that would match that would match my experience. I'm I'm assuming a lot of people have the same type of experience. They say, oh, I'm definitely doing a webinar. I'm doing it.

Jordan Gal: 14:50

And then once you go through it, you can't believe how much more painful it is than you expected. But then you've gone through it, so you kind of have the confidence to say, can do it again. I'm not gonna pay someone, you know, a thousand bucks a month to to do it for me.

Brian Casel: 15:03

Yeah. And and the idea was to eventually, start it as a productized service, get it off the ground quickly, but over time, build it into some kind of software tool that, you know, maybe our processes and our email templates and and all that would be built into some kind of, like, a better webinar software tool.

Jordan Gal: 15:23

Okay.

Brian Casel: 15:24

But then you're up against, you know, GoToWebinar and and all these other guys playing in this space, and it's that that just, you know, didn't really sit, you know, sit as a as a viable option there. So I can see just focusing on on webinars as, a focus of for for a long period of time. I I don't know if that's right for me right now.

Jordan Gal: 15:42

True. Alright. And after that, you went you went hippie on us.

Brian Casel: 15:47

Yeah. This is I I spent about two weeks going a little bit, off the deep end for a little while, and this is I

Jordan Gal: 15:53

think it was a healthy exercise.

Brennan Dunn: 15:55

You know?

Brian Casel: 15:56

I I think I mentioned before that I I come from a background of music, music production, composing music for television and and film and and and video games. I actually so I went to school for that, but then I actually did it professionally for a little while after college. And there's this thought in the back of my mind that like, eventually, later in life at some point, I'm gonna get back into music and actually get back into it professionally. And so as I'm going through this exercise of, alright, well, I'm moving on from from Restaurant Engine and and really just opening up my mind about, like, what what if I just did something completely new? What would that look like?

Brian Casel: 16:36

And I started to do some research into into the music industry again. And I thought about, number one, getting back into composing music and doing that for TV. But but really it would be about launching a new site, like an educational resource for music professionals. And what I mean by that are other people who are like professional music producers and composers, especially those who are composing music for TV and film and video games. Because one thing I learned in looking into this for a couple weeks is that this industry has absolutely like exploded in the last five years.

Brian Casel: 17:14

Like you look at I'm I'm talking specifically music for picture. Right? So you you look at television, Netflix, Amazon, HBO, all like, people are calling this, like, the golden age of of television. There there's more and more content being produced. All that stuff needs music.

Brian Casel: 17:31

Video games have absolutely exploded in the last, you know, five years or so. Not only the console games, but mobile, like iPhone, iPad games are are huge. All that stuff Sound

Jordan Gal: 17:42

is a component.

Brian Casel: 17:43

Yeah. All of that stuff needs music. And I actually found an article that showed that, like, the number one growing occupation in America is music composer, believe it or not. Sorry. Not number one.

Brian Casel: 17:55

Number three. The the the number three occupation, like fastest growing in the last ten years, and especially in the last five to six years, has been professional music composer, because there's just so much more content that needs music. Was pretty kind of surprised by that. But so anyway, the the idea was was to start a an educational resource, like a mixergy for the music industry. It was going be like an interview podcast.

Jordan Gal: 18:27

Right, build up an audience.

Brian Casel: 18:28

Build up an audience, then release courses, maybe a membership component. And the other part of this is that music professionals spend a lot of money on training

Jordan Gal: 18:43

Tech savvy. Money.

Brian Casel: 18:45

They are tech savvy, they're online, they're easy to reach online. They spend a lot on training and equipment. I mean, to be a professional music producer, you're spending thousands of dollars single year on new equipment and software. A heavy dose of software as well. So you you look at opportunities in, affiliate.

Brian Casel: 19:06

If you if you have a a big audience content, you know, like, there there are opportunities for and and I was just thinking, like, I know this this world because I used to really work in it, and I know some marketing and content building and audience building. Like, I could do something in this, but ultimately, the end of the day, I was like, that's too that's too crazy of of a shift to make.

Jordan Gal: 19:27

Now now I think the the the logic behind it being too crazy because look, it is it is a good idea, and and I I love seeing people learn marketing and then apply it to a different industry where people aren't super conditioned to all of the latest marketing and tips and tricks and copy and all these things that don't work on us anymore, still work on other people. And you know it and it's a passion thing. So I think it's a great idea, but I also think that your logic for forgoing it, was was sound. So what what was the core the the core reason behind that?

Brian Casel: 20:05

You know, it it's it happened at MicroConf. Like, was going into MicroConf still thinking like I might actually do this this music idea. Right. And I think I think by the first day of MicroConf, was like, wait a minute. What what am I doing here?

Brian Casel: 20:19

Why? I think just being there, catching up with everyone and and and being in that atmosphere, it kinda reminded me of of of what I what I'm doing and and why I'm here and why I enjoy working in this space with people, you know, in who who are there at at at in Vegas. And it kind of it it just the thing that clicked for me was like, if if I were to go into music and and do a total shift, start to build an audience from scratch again, it's like, I'm not leveraging anything that I've built up until now. You know, it's it's just such a a big shift. Having multiple audiences does not ever really make sense.

Jordan Gal: 21:02

Right. Starting from scratch. That would be the most painful part. And, you know, life doesn't give you that many unfair advantages. When you finally do get them, to to not use not use them, it doesn't seem doesn't seem logical.

Brian Casel: 21:16

Yeah. And it's yeah. It it's there there are just too many open questions about that. Like, even if even if I was still you know, if I didn't have a lot of the leverage you know, audience and and and networking effects that I can kind of leverage, you know, there are just still too many open questions. Like, you know, who knows if this could even become a viable business.

Jordan Gal: 21:40

So Right.

Brian Casel: 21:41

So I I I was happy to kind of move on from that. And then, you know, during that week at MicroConf, that's when the the idea for audience ops started to to really come together. So I I did have it in my mind for a while that if I were to do some kind of productized consulting offer, it would be around content creation. But the thing that I'm that that made it click as as, you know, something that that I'll actually do is that I'm planning to build the team on this from day one and build it as a like really focus on on the business model, the value proposition, the stream how this the operation would be streamlined and and ultimately like scaled up and do all that work from day one. Whereas if I were to do this a few years ago, I would probably do the work myself for a while, do all the writing and all the content stuff myself and then eventually hustle enough to the point where I can hire someone to to take over, you know, piece by piece.

Brian Casel: 22:42

But Yeah. Now I have a little bit of flexibility to to to move faster in that direction and and and get a lot of these, like, fundamental questions right.

Jordan Gal: 22:53

Right. This is the the stair step from from the previous time you did it. Now, you know, a little bit more capital to start off and a lot more sophistication understanding what needs to happen. And if you remove the need to do all the work yourself, I don't know. You can kinda go about building a business more so than let me be a freelancer and then let me make the switch and have someone take my place.

Jordan Gal: 23:18

It sounds more difficult, but you you you mean building a better kind of race car from from the start.

Brian Casel: 23:25

Yeah. And I in in some ways, I think this is easier than doing it the way that I did it before as a freelancer, which was, try to launch products on the side. And then even when I'm doing them, still do a lot of the work myself. I don't have that kind of flexibility anymore. Like, I was younger then.

Brian Casel: 23:41

I was able to work nights and weekends all the time. But now now with a little more experience knowing how to put certain pieces in place faster than I did before, I'll be able to do that quicker. So so here are basically the reasons why I decided Audience Ops was finally the the one that that I am gonna go with. The first one just being that content marketing has been the the marketing channel that that I know best personally. Right?

Brian Casel: 24:05

So I've used it successfully. That's that's how I've been able to build up Restaurant Engine was almost entirely through our content marketing. That's how I built up, you know, a little bit of an audience here and on on my newsletter and sold products through that. So that that's what I know. Right?

Brian Casel: 24:24

Like, I I didn't wanna get into something that I only know a little bit about or, you know, it's Right.

Jordan Gal: 24:29

Just because it's a good business idea doesn't mean you should go into it.

Brian Casel: 24:33

Yeah. Exactly. The other thing is that I I teach I I still really enjoy teaching the the prioritized course and connecting with everybody in there. And this is gonna really be a a great teachable case study as build this step by step and take out bits and pieces of it and apply it to lessons in the Productize course. Like, for instance, I actually already announced this to the productized community, last week, to kind of give them a a like a sneak peek at at what I'm working on and and they got to see an earlier version of the site.

Brian Casel: 25:08

So.

Jordan Gal: 25:09

So they get they get to see you have the idea, you put up a landing page, you start talking to people, you start adjusting the service offering, the pricing, how things work based on what your how your conversations go with people, and then they'll see you get your first customers and how you manage them and how you hire for it. And that's it is it's a great case study for them.

Brian Casel: 25:33

Yeah. And and I've had a lot of really good feedback and helpful feedback from from a lot of people like that. Well, we'll get into the the process that I'm going through to to get it out. But the other thing about this business is that I think it meets a lot of the basic criteria that I that I had been looking for. I I wrote a post about this a while back.

Brian Casel: 25:52

I think we did an episode about, like, business criteria. Right? So so here's, like, the the checklist of that. So it's it's b to b. Right?

Brian Casel: 25:59

Yep. That's a key one.

Jordan Gal: 26:01

Numero uno right there.

Brian Casel: 26:03

Yeah. It's it's a marketing service with an ROI, So that that makes it an easier value proposition to

Pippin Williamson: 26:09

to get your head around.

Jordan Gal: 26:10

And you plan to to measure that?

Brian Casel: 26:13

Yeah. So Email opt

Jordan Gal: 26:15

ins, conversions. Right? Yeah. You can yeah. That that Yeah.

Brian Casel: 26:20

Exactly. That that that would all be part of it. And and, you know, it's about helping businesses grow their audience and grow conversions and get the right leads in the door and get them educated.

Jordan Gal: 26:29

Right. All measurable.

Brian Casel: 26:31

Yeah. So it's it's a high price point. That's another thing that I that I've been looking for and getting away from the lower priced products that that I've been doing. Not that there's there there there are spaces and and cases to do that for sure. But but right now I'm looking for something with a higher price point.

Jordan Gal: 26:46

Right.

Brian Casel: 26:47

And still haven't even fully nailed down the price point. Like, that's that's changing on a week by week basis too. But, you know, that's that that's what we're doing right now. We're in this early stage trying to figure out all these all these specifics.

Jordan Gal: 26:59

Yeah. Anyone who wants to work with Brian should get in touch with them immediately because over the next few weeks, I think your price will continue to get pushed up based on the the leads you get and the opportunities and the the quality of businesses and how much measurable result you can provide to to the businesses you're working with.

Brian Casel: 27:16

Yeah. That's that's definitely the direction it's going in right now. Recurring revenue was another, important piece to this. So I am getting back into consulting here a big way. But it's very different than before, especially around the idea that this is very much a recurring revenue retainer based model.

Brian Casel: 27:37

There there might be some kind of one time project components to it, but it's not gonna be close to what I was doing before as a freelance web designer, which was almost entirely project based. This will be, you know, finding a couple of key clients and and building off of that in in terms of securing retainers. And then, you know, just finally, it's it's just something that that I am passionate about. The you know, education marketing, teaching as as a way to build trust. That's just something that that I do all day, every day.

Brian Casel: 28:12

I've been doing it for years. I think it's I think it's more important today than than ever. I mean, having an audience is more important than ever, I I think. But the the the best way, the most effective way is to is to become a teacher. Even if your business is not education, even if you're selling software or other services, you still need to be an educator, in order to And build that I strongly believe in that.

Jordan Gal: 28:35

I agree. I I think you're right. If if you look back at your own life, your own experiences, your own interactions with companies, it real it really is it's so funny. A few years ago, you'd think you you can't give away that knowledge. How can you what if your competitors look you can't give it away and then it just switched.

Jordan Gal: 28:54

And now the people who teach you the most are the people you're most attracted to and most want to work with and most value and that's whose product you want to use. If I look around the competitive landscape in all these industries, it's the companies that are out in front teaching and just not giving a damn about what their competitors see or anything like that. That's who everyone gets attracted to. It's it seems, you know, it seems obvious now, but it but it was not a few years ago and it's definitely not widespread yet.

Brian Casel: 29:24

Yeah. Exactly. I mean, you know, just just getting back to this being something that that I'm passionate about, like this idea of of education marketing and and helping companies do a better job of that and and help them really be effective with it. That's something that I can talk about and write about and speak about all day long. And and I've been doing that for years through through my blog and and whatnot.

Brian Casel: 29:47

So, you know, like Dan Dan Andrews on on Tropical MBA has talked a few times talking about, like, the stage test, I I think he calls it. An idea that you that you're proud to get up on stage and announce to the world and and talk about and, like, go out to conferences and and talk about this topic about your business. You know, if you you compare this to something like Restaurant Engine, I was not about to go out to the restaurant industry conference every year and and do talks and open up a booth and and like that's just not, an area that I'm ready to it like that just doesn't meet the stage test for me. Whereas this is definitely something that that fits right in line.

Jordan Gal: 30:27

I like that. It sounds like a healthy check on businesses you may or may not want to, to pursue.

Brian Casel: 30:34

Yeah. Totally. And I think there's definitely, I like that this is at least aligned with my audience, like the newsletter subscribers, and it's not necessarily like there are any, or, you know, the vast majority wouldn't actually be clients of the service, you know, maybe some will, maybe not, but I think there's a lot that can come out of audience ops that that would add value to that audience, whether it's education, sharing case studies, you know like the

Jordan Gal: 31:07

And teaching.

Brian Casel: 31:08

Yeah and just teaching. Like for example, you're starting to, you know, I'm starting to think through how our content marketing strategy for Audience Hops will roll out and we're gonna have a blog and there are probably gonna be plenty of blog posts where I'm unsure whether this should be a a post on Audience Ops or should it be a post on castjam.com.

Nathan Barry: 31:27

Mhmm.

Brian Casel: 31:27

And maybe it'll be cross posted to both Right. You know, in in certain cases, like, and and I think that's a good thing. What what if if you if the topic areas overlap in some way.

Jordan Gal: 31:37

Yeah. It's perfect case study, perfect use of education. Right? Everyone wants to know about content marketing. Not everyone is going to be a client of AudienceOps.

Jordan Gal: 31:48

That's like, who cares? How many clients do you need? 10 clients? Right. And and you and you've got a solid business.

Jordan Gal: 31:53

But just to take your expertise and start teaching it, like this is how we plan a content strategy overnight the first ninety days of our client engagement. Like that alone is so valuable to people who are not your clients. You just put it out there. And then the the people who read that and say this guy is going about it the exact way that I wanna go about it, but I don't have the time and I do have the money and I don't wanna hire full time employee to do it, that it's so natural that that leads into, hey, maybe we should work together on it. Yeah.

Jordan Gal: 32:25

As we're thinking through the content strategy for Cardoc, same thing. Like, why am I bottling up all of this ecommerce expertise that I give to people when they're a customer or a free trial or a prospect? And I look at their site and I say, hey. You guys should consider doing this, this, and this, and this. And they're like, holy shit.

Jordan Gal: 32:42

Thank you. I didn't expect those suggestions. Like, why it's it is not smart to keep that private. Put that out there. Not everyone's gonna become a Carta customer, but it helps just show, what is it?

Jordan Gal: 32:57

What is it?

Brian Casel: 32:57

Show expertise?

Jordan Gal: 32:58

Yeah. What what is it? It's it's a

Brian Casel: 32:59

funny thing. It's teaching. It's it's trust. It's it's giving value, and and that does come back in in the form of, growing your audience, grow you know, recommendations, referrals.

Jordan Gal: 33:12

Yeah. And Mindspace. Comes

Brian Casel: 33:13

back. Mindspace.

Jordan Gal: 33:14

Yeah. Yeah. Like Kissmetrics has competitors, but Kissmetrics is just sitting at the top of your brain when you think of that part of analytics because they've just thrown out so much value at you over the past few years that they're just kinda sitting there. They're at the top top of your mind.

Brian Casel: 33:29

Yeah. And when when it's something that you're really passionate about, you feel strongly about, and you have a ton of expertise in, like you do with ecommerce, that expertise just flows out of you naturally. Like, you're just talking to ecommerce owners, you're gonna give them tips. And if they tell you they're struggling with someone something, you're gonna tell them how they can fix it because you know how to fix it. And this kind of gets back to what Patrick McKenzie was saying in his talk, or he was referencing Pell Dee from Balsami, who's saying, you know, you have to choose something that you're passionate about because you're going to be up against competitors who are passionate about it.

Brian Casel: 34:09

And if you don't live and breathe this stuff and you can't talk about it all day and night, you're going to up against competitors who are. And they're at that advantage. And to the customer's perspective, they're seeing someone who's just genuinely, you know, talking about this and clearly that shows that they're invested in doing this the right way or being effective at this.

Jordan Gal: 34:32

Yeah. That's I think that's my favorite argument for for doing something that you enjoy and can be very interested and passionate about. Because on its own, I don't wanna buy that. You don't you don't have to be in love with something just to start a business in it. But if you're gonna be in a competitive space and you're gonna have to go head to head against competitors and they do love what they're doing, then you need to think about that.

Brian Casel: 34:54

Yep. Right?

Jordan Gal: 34:55

If you're just saying, you know what? I'm just gonna do an affiliate site because I'm really good at SEO and I've got a few connections with offers and I'm not passionate about, you know, how to pick up women, but I think I can make a bundle of money doing being an affiliate for it, then fine. That might be a rational business decision. But if you if you're gonna be in a very competitive space and your competitors are all about the industry, that's a completely different thing.

Brian Casel: 35:20

Yeah. Exactly. And this whole idea of moving on and starting a new business, I'm looking for one thing to focus on. Like, one this is my this is my new full time job. You know?

Brian Casel: 35:32

I I I don't wanna go to a job that I don't like.

Jordan Gal: 35:34

True. True.

Brian Casel: 35:35

True. Yeah. So should we I guess we'll talk just for a minute about kind of the the launch plan. And this is I don't have much of a plan developed at this point, but maybe I'll just talk through some of the very early steps that I'm taking.

Jordan Gal: 35:50

Yeah. I think it's interesting, you know, this is this is that alchemy right where it goes from theory into an actual business, an actual offer. So I think it's great for people to hear what you're thinking about. These are potential ways for me to get customers. Right?

Jordan Gal: 36:07

And then Yeah. Over the next few weeks, we'll we'll find out more about which ones you dropped, which ones you doubled down on, and and where you know, what unexpected places clients came came from.

Brian Casel: 36:19

Yeah. So I I think this first part is is what I'm calling, like, laying the groundwork. So this is stuff that I'm doing or have done already. That's not necessarily part of a of a real marketing plan, like, but it's just getting things from zero to to one, I guess, for lack of a better term here. So, it started at at MicroConf, that's that's when I started to really conceptualize, like, This can be a thing, and what would this look like?

Brian Casel: 36:47

And so once that happens with me, it's lots and lots of notes. Like, I wrote pages and pages of of notes and and ideas around pricing and packages and and processes and team, and, I'm just getting all this stuff out of my head and into notes. So a lot of this happened actually on the Wednesday after microconf. I was hanging around in Vegas waiting for my wife to fly in because she she came in and then we we spent a couple more days. But I had about eight hours to myself.

Jordan Gal: 37:15

Eight hours to yourself in Las Vegas, and you hole yourself up in a hotel room and write notes on your next business idea. Ladies and gents, this is the the ambition required to to succeed.

Brian Casel: 37:30

I know. Good for you. I stayed away from the blackjack tables and I, you know

Jordan Gal: 37:33

Away from the the pool with the hard rock. Yep. Just stay focused.

Brian Casel: 37:38

Yeah. Exactly.

Jordan Gal: 37:39

Cool. So that was like a that was like a brain dump. That was just Totally. Let me ask you. Being a microconf, did you look around and and say, this person who's speaking on SEDAR now, their business could find value in in what I'm thinking?

Jordan Gal: 37:52

And this person I just had a conversation with, was it like looking around and saying, wait a minute. These people are are the right type of customers and I can offer them value, or or was it, like, once removed? So

Brian Casel: 38:05

it I wouldn't necessarily, you know, be selling or or targeting the microconf crowd. There there might be a few overlapping target customers there or or maybe not, but, you know, that's to be determined. But But it wasn't that? Did no. It it wasn't like I I see this audience and and I can sell this thing to them.

Brian Casel: 38:27

That that wasn't what I was thinking. But but I I did start talking about the idea right away. Like, I I was thinking about it since the first day of MicroConf, and and at the after party and in the in the hallways and whatnot, I started talking to people about it. And also talking a lot about Restaurant Engine, and people ask a lot about the content strategy for Restaurant Engine and because I've spoken about that before. Right.

Brian Casel: 38:48

I get a lot of questions about that and I was seeing that it's a problem, it's a big challenge for a lot of startup owners and a lot of people just don't really understand the mechanics of how to go about not just hiring a writer but like how do you give them the topics, how do you know what's gonna resonate, how do you build the email list. Get a lot of those those questions again and again. And and this is all topics that can feed into the whole concept behind audience ops. You know, that that really kind of valid not validated, but it that helped energize me more as I started to think through these ideas and write all these notes. It's like, alright.

Brian Casel: 39:29

People are are at least somewhat resonating with some of the challenges around here.

Jordan Gal: 39:33

Right. So those notes basically helped you just lay out, like the the structure, the outer workings. What what does this business entail? Like, there there's a writer here and then this is the right type of customer and this is what we can teach people, just kinda just brain dumping all that.

Brian Casel: 39:49

Yeah. Exactly. And, you know to compare this to the other ideas that I mentioned earlier, the other business ideas, this and this has happened to me many times before, sometimes you just know it's it's right on and sometimes you're forcing it. And with the other businesses, I was forcing it. I I those notes would come out over over a course of, like, several weeks.

Brian Casel: 40:11

Whereas this was, like, so energized and and so clear about exactly what this thing would look like and what and what it would be that all the notes, all the ideas got out in like one day. And I mean, I continue to to write more as I was like on the flight home and and whatnot, but and things are obviously pretty fluid because it's it's so new, but it's like it it's just like the words just just flow. It's like when you're when you're writing a blog post and and sometimes it just like flows right through the keyboard and other times it's like you go through revision after revision after revision and you're forcing it. This just flowed right out. So that's basically what happened.

Brian Casel: 40:53

And then by the first week after MicroConf I had a mastermind group and that's when I kind of presented the details to them. And, you know, they're basically laughing at me at this point because it's like a running joke with me for these last two months because I was presenting all these different business ideas, like week after week I was coming to them like, alright, I've got something new, you know.

Jordan Gal: 41:18

Busting on you for it?

Brian Casel: 41:19

Yeah. They're just like, alright, well, you know, Brian's got a brand new, you know, business concept like every every week at this point. That went on for about two months, but Right.

Jordan Gal: 41:29

If you can't expose your flakiness to a mastermind group, then what good is a mastermind group?

Brian Casel: 41:34

Yeah. I that like, so we talked about, like, how you can share things here on the podcast publicly, and you can share things privately. Like, the mastermind group is it gets to see all the all all the scraps that hit the the the floor. You know?

Jordan Gal: 41:46

Oh,

Brian Casel: 41:46

yes. You know, I I got a real a lot of really good feedback, helpful ideas to you know, from them. I internalized those for about a week or two, and then I started to then I spent a couple of days putting together an early version of audienceops.com. Started, you know, just writing out the sales page and and getting some information up on there. I probably spent about two or three days on that.

Brian Casel: 42:11

And

Jordan Gal: 42:12

Yeah. Looks good. Audienceops.com, right?

Brian Casel: 42:14

Yeah. So then I the next step and I did this about a week ago now. I sent it out to about thirty, thirty five friends and and and people that I know in this industry. A lot of people who are at MicroConf, a lot of, you know, other friends doing doing other things, just to say like, hey, know, give you an update on on what I'm working on. It's this it's this thing called audience ops.

Brian Casel: 42:38

Mainly, I was just passing it around to get their feedback. Tell me what you think of the landing page. Any any and and I was asking them to be critical, and and they were, and which was awesome. Yeah.

Jordan Gal: 42:48

It's helpful.

Brian Casel: 42:48

A lot of really helpful feedback that I've already, changed things around based on that.

Jordan Gal: 42:53

Right. Like, looks great. Good luck is not helpful. Like, actually, I don't understand I don't understand who your target market is and what about your pricing and why would I wanna do it this way. That that sounds helpful.

Brian Casel: 43:03

Yeah. Yeah. Totally. I mean, that's this is one of those things that I feel really grateful for and talking about, like, leveraging the the network. I I was not in this position a couple of years ago.

Brian Casel: 43:15

I I didn't know this many people that I can reach out to who who are entrepreneurs and they run their own thing and they look at things like this all day long, and ask them privately for feedback on something. You know, a few years back I didn't have that luxury and now I feel really just grateful to all these people that I've been able to meet, you know, through different conferences and whatnot and podcasts that have been so helpful. So, you know, I got a lot of good feedback, but then in in that email, I'm also asking like, you know, and if you happen to know anyone who might be a fit for this type of service or if you know any writers, because I'm looking to hire a writer right now, definitely send them my way. Alright. I appreciate an introduction.

Brian Casel: 43:57

And actually out of out of that round of of sending out emails, and a couple of them actually tweeted it. I I didn't ask them to to start publicizing it last week, but, actually lined up about four or five calls with potential leads. You know, people who actually came, you know, visited the site, requested a consultation and that's happening, later this week is is like the first few calls, to start to understand. It's really it's these calls are gonna be more about about about me, you know, picking their brains and understanding how like, the value proposition, what they care about in these conversations. And I'm starting to craft a little bit of the sales pitch.

Brian Casel: 44:38

So that's gonna take a while to really figure out, but I've got a couple of these calls lined up. I mentioned I I I posted it to the productized community. That that was also very helpful. Got a got some good feedback there. And then this week is, like this podcast, and hopefully, I'll I'll get a blog post and and newsletter out to my list, to announce audience ops and and and kind of get this out there.

Brian Casel: 45:01

It's not officially up and running right now, but it but I'm starting to be a little bit more public about about what I'm working on.

Jordan Gal: 45:08

Right. But if someone came to you right now and says I want this, you know, you could probably get started within a few weeks.

Brian Casel: 45:13

Yeah. I'd say you know within like two weeks we can get up and running. Yeah. The the two things that I'm doing that I'm really focused on, like, immediately are I'm I'm finding writers to hire. I've already interviewed about seven or eight different writers to work with me on on audience ops.

Brian Casel: 45:32

And if you if if you're listening, if you're interested, definitely get in touch. Or if you know someone who who does a lot of, you know, writing, content marketing, and and interested in working in this type of thing, definitely reach out and let me know. But I'm also doing these calls with with leads. I I mentioned I have about four or five calls lined up, and and I expect I'll probably get a couple more and get that understand what that conversation is gonna look like.

Jordan Gal: 45:57

And Yeah.

Brian Casel: 45:58

And and then go from there.

Jordan Gal: 45:59

And would would be really nice to start the business off with with a client or two in your pocket before you really start sales and marketing.

Brian Casel: 46:07

Yeah. Exactly. What I'm trying to figure out here is who is the target customer? What are their characteristics? I have a general, too too broad of of an idea right now, which is, basically, you know, online business.

Brian Casel: 46:23

The the leads that I do have are, you know, like SaaS business owners and a couple of, like, development shops and and that sort of stuff, which, you know, doesn't make up my guys

Jordan Gal: 46:35

I think those guys understand the offer, but they're so they're so sophisticated that they're it's tough to find the leverage point where if you think of, like, a, I don't know, a company that builds pools for people that a pool cost 50 or $75 and you do content marketing for them and charge them a lot more. They're just a lot less sophisticated, but you you can charge more because you're showing them great results at the same time. I mean, I I guess that's the whole adventure of the next few months is figuring out who is the right target and why and then starting to focus on them.

Brian Casel: 47:07

Yeah. Exactly. You know, just kinda figuring that out. You know? And there's there's definitely a couple pieces to to that is, you know, the the price point and and who who's gonna align with with that, but then also the the topics and forming our team to to be a core team of people who can write about a certain set of of topics, you know, rather than doing everything and and anything.

Brian Casel: 47:34

So just kinda trying to figure that out and and also just figure out who's who's gonna make up the team here, which I I have a couple of really good candidates that I spoke to. I'm speaking to a few more. So that's that's pretty exciting to to get that together.

Jordan Gal: 47:47

Right. That's like going legit. Like, you're you're actually gonna put these pieces in place instead of just wait till you find the first customer or two and then scramble and do it. You're you're kinda going about it the the more patient right approach to find the right writers, the right people to work with. So if a client signs up, you're not then behind the scenes running around frantically to find the right people, you kinda we'll we'll have it set up.

Brian Casel: 48:09

Yeah. Patient, I I guess you could say that, but I'm but I am trying to get this together, like, in the next week or two. Sure. But because there there's actually, work to be done for audience ops. Like, I wanna get our blog up and running.

Brian Casel: 48:22

Yes. And our and start building that that newsletter and and doing all sorts of stuff there. So that actually takes us into like the next steps of like actually building up a launch plan. Like what I mentioned up up until now is just kind of laying the groundwork and getting getting things off the ground. But the next steps would be to actually develop our content marketing strategy and roll that out, doing customer development like I talked about, finding that that target customer.

Brian Casel: 48:50

I I and then once I have some idea of of who that target customer is, then I then I can get into things like cold outreach, you know, ad campaigns, webinars with with, like, targeted topics, things like that.

Jordan Gal: 49:04

It's a high enough price point that you you you will be able to spend money on bringing new customers in. It's such a huge advantage to be able to do that, whereas lower price services and and products, they just limit you in how much money you can spend to acquire a customer.

Brian Casel: 49:20

Yep.

Jordan Gal: 49:20

Cool. Yeah. It'll be really interesting to see which which ones work for you and which ones you kinda, you know, try but don't work.

Brian Casel: 49:26

Yeah. And then I I I think the last thing, and this is something that I wanna do at some point in the near future, is is come out with some sort of info product, like an educational training product around content marketing. And maybe this goes along with the services that we're providing. Like, maybe we'll provide, like, a self serve training offer instead of a done for you offer that you can upgrade if if you want to or or just use to to help your business. That's something that I wanna develop.

Brian Casel: 49:52

You know, like, the idea I I wanna I wanna get case studies into there and and and and, like, tear down the content marketing that that other companies are doing. So I'm thinking a lot about that and and getting that together in the next couple couple of months as well.

Jordan Gal: 50:06

Nice, man. Well, it's gonna be really interesting to, to watch it all turn into reality. And I'm just glad that you are relieved of the burden of not being able to talk about it and being cryptic about it. You just gotta go with it. Good.

Brian Casel: 50:17

I'm just I'm just relieved that I know what I'm working on because it took me too long to to figure that out. But I'm I'm glad that I spent the time to really, you know, answer a lot of tough questions before I before I figured it out. Because in the past, I've just, like, thrown stuff at the wall. I'm like, let's go with this. And then Right.

Brian Casel: 50:35

And then I spend years on it.

Jordan Gal: 50:37

Better better it takes a little longer and you get it right than than spending three months pursuing the wrong thing and then and then backtracking.

Brian Casel: 50:43

Mhmm.

Jordan Gal: 50:44

Alright. Cool. Look. That's gonna wrap it up for us. If you want to dig into the backlog of episodes, just head over to bootstrapweb.com.

Jordan Gal: 50:51

And, obviously, if you're enjoying the show, we would very much appreciate a little five star review. Be one of those smart people whose names we read out at the beginning of the show who leaves a five star review. It's easy to do on iTunes now. You can just go right on your phone and do it, but we'd appreciate that. That's about all for us.

Brian Casel: 51:06

Yep. And, and and this episode was actually sponsored by Podcast Motor, Craig Hewitt's service. He's been helping us with the editing for for Bootstrapped Web, and he's offering that as a service. If you're running a a podcast, if whether you wanna launch a new one or or get it edited, definitely head over to podcastmotor.com and and let them know that you came there from Bootstrapped Web. They'll hook you up.

Jordan Gal: 51:31

Yep. Very highly recommended. If you're trying to run a business and do a podcast, don't try to run the whole podcast yourself also. That's what Podcast Motors and they're doing a brilliant job of it for us. So it comes highly recommended.

Brian Casel: 51:45

Yep. Alright. Until next