Bootstrapped Web

Brian Casel: 00:10

This is Bootstrap Web episode 75. It's the podcast for you, the founder who learns by doing as you're bootstrapping your business online and, good to be back a little bit little bit late on this one but but that's okay. We're we're catching up and, Jordan, good to have you back on the show here.

Jordan Gal: 00:26

Thanks, man. Really good to be back. The, the lateness is my fault. The I don't know how many weeks I've missed. So I I apologize,

Brian Casel: 00:33

but No. I mean, think the both

Jordan Gal: 00:34

of us all in pursuit pursuit of good cause.

Brian Casel: 00:36

Yeah. Both of our schedules are just insane as always with with everyone these days. But, you know, you you see all these, like, podcasters who just really have their shit together where they're, you know, they're putting episodes in the can four or six weeks out. We're we're recording, like, day before it comes out. You know?

Jordan Gal: 00:54

I I look. It's good Which is odd. And bad. Yeah. Exactly.

Jordan Gal: 00:58

It's like, it's more real. It's closer to the, you know, to the actual rub. Yep. But because because of that, we'll we'll fall behind from time to time and if we travel and and and whatnot. Anyway, it's good to be back.

Jordan Gal: 01:09

I'm looking forward to a little update episode. We do have some other, shows coming out soon, with an interview, and we'll we'll kinda try to get back on track.

Brian Casel: 01:20

Yep. Cool. So before we get into today's, updates and and hear we're working on right now, we're just gonna read off a couple of new iTunes reviews. We actually had a handful of new ones, so we really appreciate these. Let me just pull this up here.

Brian Casel: 01:35

We've got one from David Leiserbram, five stars. He says, looking for info on how to grow and scale your business, you found it. Bootstrapped Web is a reliable source for solid info and insight from founders. Brian and Jordan know know how to get right to the key insights on scalability, productization, and all the important turning points in the evolution of a startup. So thank you, David, for that one.

Brian Casel: 01:59

And we've got one more here from Jay Finn, five stars. He says worth its weight in gold. Are you trying to make a living online by developing a web based service? Then stop right now and subscribe. These two accomplished tech entrepreneurs pull no punches in sharing their learning experiences.

Brian Casel: 02:16

They've earned their stripes in the and, transmit their knowledge in a candid, truthful way, and the transcripts to this show should be etched in gold bricks.

Jordan Gal: 02:26

Gold is very expensive these days, so it's high praise. Thank you very much.

Brian Casel: 02:31

So is doing transcripts too, by the way, which we don't really do.

Jordan Gal: 02:34

That's true. That's actually worth it. That's actually worth it's weight in gold

Brian Casel: 02:38

right there. Exactly. Cool, man. Yeah. Thank you guys.

Jordan Gal: 02:41

Thank thank you very much, guys.

Brian Casel: 02:42

Yeah. Thanks for tuning in. We we appreciate it, and we we enjoyed doing it. So so let's get right into it. What is going on this week, mister Gal?

Jordan Gal: 02:52

Okay. So I was in New York last week and worked with my with with Ben, right, my co founder in person. And we find that very valuable. It's kind of a pain, especially, you know, with kids and all that. It's not fun to be away from the kids for a few days.

Jordan Gal: 03:13

But working in person has a very different dynamic and it, like, accelerates things and it creates this, you know, like a bonding experience and the intensity goes up and the optimism goes up. So we have been trying to make sure that we work together in person at least once every, like, four to six weeks. So I was just in New York last week, and that was really, really interesting. And, man, the networking in New York City is just I mean, I'm out here in Portland, Oregon and you think, oh, it's just the web. You know, it's all the same.

Jordan Gal: 03:45

You're kind of networking online. But in person is another thing, man. You establish relationships on another level and New York just put so many people all within a subway ride away. So I just basically was meeting people, you know, all day, having lunch with people from my ecommerce mastermind, talking to potential customers who were who were in the city, working with my co founder in person. And NYC just has that was it was a great experience.

Brian Casel: 04:12

NYC has this energy, man. It's just and I I grew up in New York, and still, every single time I I end up in Manhattan, it's it's this energy that that feels new. It feels exciting. It's it's always, like, bigger than than you think. And It's Yeah.

Brian Casel: 04:29

You it's it's it's

Jordan Gal: 04:29

like the soul. It's the center of American, like, optimism and entrepreneurship and, like, anything is possible. You know, there's there's just there are huge differences between our mindset and other other countries. Like, we just look at the bright side. We see what's possible.

Jordan Gal: 04:45

We try to be optimistic, and New York just encapsulates that at such a grand level. Now we we met with some people. You know, it's like the 38th Floor of World Trade 7. Like, I mean, this it's just like it's made of money. It's just it's so much money.

Jordan Gal: 05:04

Yeah. The offices are ridiculous. That's insane. Like, the whole feel, you're looking out over the World Trade Center area, we're just staring right at the the Freedom Tower. It just gives you so much energy, and it changes your ambition level.

Jordan Gal: 05:19

Like, you you don't wanna play ball at a lower level when you're just surrounded by that, which I just like that feeling.

Brian Casel: 05:25

Yeah, totally.

Jordan Gal: 05:26

So that was great. But now back in the saddle, and now it's basically it's marketing time, baby. So we've got a bunch of initiatives happening at the same time, and I think it'd be cool to just kind of walk through my general thinking being in this, you know, in in this particular situation.

Brian Casel: 05:45

So Yeah. Well, actually, before you before you get Yeah. Get right started, I know, like, just a catch up from a couple of weeks ago, maybe a couple months ago, the last time you were talking about your current marketing strategies for CardHook. Like, I know that you were doing some some cold, email outreach and some cold calling outreach. Like, how much of that is is active, and, like, are you starting up new things right now, or what's going on?

Jordan Gal: 06:09

Yes. So so we did we did a lot of outbound sales. And I think, you know, what I've said previously about it is it was it was effective in a few different ways. Was it the most cost effective way to add revenue? No.

Jordan Gal: 06:25

But it was really great for learning. So you just talk to so many prospects and potential customers all in a short period of time that it just teaches you not only about the market, what you need to say, what they're interested in, but also about the process. Like, what happens when this type of person comes along? What happens when someone's really interested, but they tell you they're not quite interested yet? What happens when someone starts and has this problem?

Jordan Gal: 06:52

What happens when someone starts and everything goes smoothly? Yeah. What needs to so all this stuff develop

Brian Casel: 06:56

the key answers to the common objections, which you can then start to use in in all your marketing.

Jordan Gal: 07:03

Right. Little things and also in the sales process. So little things like, we now have an automated email that goes out to me at at the minute someone captures over $500 in recovered revenue from their card abandonment campaign. Right? So that triggers me, hey, pay attention to this person.

Jordan Gal: 07:22

This is looking like a good potential person to convert to a paying customer. So it's like a heads up.

Brian Casel: 07:27

Yep.

Jordan Gal: 07:28

Right? So and we found that that's really important because that's when I should reach out and say, hey, you're doing great. I'm here for you. Here's my content flow. Do you want to jump on a call?

Jordan Gal: 07:37

So instead of saying to everybody, do you want to jump on a call? Now we're starting to identify who are the bright prospects to do that.

Brian Casel: 07:43

Yeah. That's smart.

Jordan Gal: 07:44

So all that stuff came out of the outbound sales. So what happened was we hit a wall. We when we went for lower end customers, we got demos nonstop. Five, six, seven, eight demos a week. No problem.

Jordan Gal: 08:00

The second we tried to go upmarket a little bit, we hit a wall. We hit gatekeepers. Nobody wants to let people through. So now we're taking a different approach. Now we're doing outbound sales to a webinar.

Jordan Gal: 08:10

So we're adding one layer of value between the our initial contact and asking for the sale. So now instead of, like, come see a demo of our software, it's we're putting on a webinar next week on this. Are you interested in joining? It's just outbound sales for webinar. It's like same thing as Facebook

Brian Casel: 08:28

ads Nice.

Jordan Gal: 08:28

But, you know, my man in The Philippines is is doing the the pulling.

Brian Casel: 08:33

Awesome.

Jordan Gal: 08:33

So that's so what's happening is now we are investing in the longer term assets. So we're designing the marketing site and the copy and the positioning and the pricing and everything that goes with our real marketing site and not like our, like, pseudo landing page with a pricing page attached to it. We're we're we hired a writer for the blog. And now so those two things are long term. Right?

Jordan Gal: 09:00

A marketing site and a blog, those things are not gonna pay off next month. So what we're trying to do is think through if that's gonna be hugely important six months from now, a year from now. That's where most of the inbound leads are gonna be coming from a few months from now. What do we need to do now so that sales don't stall? We gotta keep moving.

Jordan Gal: 09:19

We gotta get revenue up. So on the shorter term side of things, I'm doing two things. And and some of this comes from Rob Walling. I can give him some credit for a conversation that that I had with Rob. Doing podcasts, being a guest on someone's podcast is is an amazingly efficient way to do marketing.

Jordan Gal: 09:39

Right? It's not the most amazing thing ever. It doesn't last forever. It's not I mean, it's kind

Brian Casel: 09:43

of not super scalable or not totally repeatable, but it's something that you can definitely do for for a couple months at a time and and just put an initial jolt in there.

Jordan Gal: 09:53

Right. Because think about what goes into the marketing side. I've been working on this, you know, a lot of hours. Blog posts, funnels, and Facebook campaigns. That stuff takes time.

Jordan Gal: 10:03

A podcast takes about an hour, maybe a little bit of scheduling, but then you show up and you talk about something that you already know and talk about all day anyway. And then that gives us a jolt of leads and some more customers. So right right now, we don't need that many new customers every month to call the month a success. Right? Incrementally, the need goes up over time.

Jordan Gal: 10:23

But in these first few months, we don't need that much. So I'm doing a little podcast tour. The the other thing I'm doing is starting our own Cart Hook podcast. And and we've talked about this previously. We talked about how investing in a podcast is a great idea, but it's also very long term.

Jordan Gal: 10:40

At the same time, when you the same time, when you have someone on as a guest, they they go out and they tell their people also. Yeah. So it does have some short term effect. Yeah. And if you can

Brian Casel: 10:50

engineer the launch of the podcast and those very first few episodes get on new and noteworthy and iTunes, that's a big splash as well.

Jordan Gal: 10:57

Right. So and that's what I'm trying to do with basically just using my contacts and connections and asking people for favors to get as high profile of people as possible as the first five, six, 10 guests. That way, the the magnifying effect at first can can have a big impact. So those that's what we're trying to do in the short term. And the last thing we're trying to do short term is Facebook ads.

Jordan Gal: 11:26

So now that this webinar funnel is set up for our caller to drive people to, now the funnel's also, like, you know, similarly set up for Facebook ads to drive people to landing pages as opposed to my man in The Philippines sending a link by email. So we'll add that in, and that'll be short term while we work on the longer term stuff of the marketing side and the blog. So that's kinda like our marketing, like, mindset over the next, you know, few weeks.

Brian Casel: 11:51

Very cool.

Jordan Gal: 11:52

Yeah. And so that's the the majority of my attention. And the last thing I think is instructive that I think I would have liked to hear a few months ago, we are transitioning our billing. So we are changing pricing on everybody. So I think the lesson here is that nothing is permanent.

Jordan Gal: 12:12

Nothing is forever. No mistake or no decision, you know, lasts forever. It's everything's are fixable. So we started off with a variable pricing. Now we're switching everyone over to fixed.

Brian Casel: 12:25

So So so, you know, for those who aren't totally familiar with with Cardhook, what what do you mean by variable variable pricing? It's based on the the amount of revenue that it's recovered? Correct.

Jordan Gal: 12:35

So it used to be based on the amount of revenue they recover and had a cap. So it'd like 10% of recovered revenue capped at $249 a month. So if you recovered a thousand dollars, you'd pay us a 100. If you recovered $10,000, you'd be capped at $249. Cool.

Jordan Gal: 12:51

So it was a great sell. The problem is to maintain. It started to become a nightmare, and we decided, you know what? We're not gonna be able to grow. There's too much friction.

Jordan Gal: 12:58

There's too much to deal with. So now we went back to all of our customers on the variable pricing and said, we need to let you know we're switching over to fixed. So sounds very painful, and it has been a decent amount of work. But as long as you, a, most importantly, had good solid relationships with those early customers that they know you, they've heard from you, you've emailed them, you've helped them fix things, you provided support, you provided them value, everyone is very, very accommodating because they know you're working hard on that end. And if they have to pay, you know, on a flat basis instead of variable, even though that's what they were interested in first, they'll let you get away with it because they know you're a good business person that's been looking out for them for a long time.

Brian Casel: 13:41

And and well, what are the the new price points and did you base the new price points off of like how how it's really gonna impact those customers like looking at what their new ROI is gonna be and I guess for some customers, it'll be a a slight price increase, some maybe a a decrease. So how is that gonna apply?

Jordan Gal: 14:00

I'm I'm not allowing it to be a price increase is is the short answer. So what I'm saying is, hey. Up until now, you've paid us according to the variable pricing. We're switching over. Over the last six months on the variable plan, you've paid us an average of x, call it, a $100.

Jordan Gal: 14:18

I'd like to offer you $79 a month. I'm basically doing, like, a 20% discount to to go down to the fixed. And we're gonna lose some money because of it, but it's so much healthier for the business that we don't care. So we're switching it, but we're also giving them a better deal than what they've paid over the past six months. So you could see how it's kind easy to say.

Brian Casel: 14:38

Yeah. That that sounds like that sounds like a bonus.

Jordan Gal: 14:41

And and for us, it's it's such a huge relief.

Brian Casel: 14:44

Is that because you're you're seeing you're seeing some customers have they go they go through, like, periods throughout the year where their revenue dips and they that means they're paying cart hook less?

Jordan Gal: 14:54

What was happening was that our revenue was was too much variance. So a customer would pay us $250 one month, and then he'd pay us $40 the month after, and then $250 the next month. And it's just, like, not healthy for anyone. Not for us to maintain, not for us to grow the business with a stable, reliable revenue source. So it it needed to happen.

Jordan Gal: 15:16

So the transition has been incredibly interesting. It's gotten me in touch with everybody. It's gotten me to really think about how much I appreciate these people that came in so early on that, you know, that I want to give them a good deal. It's it's been it's been really interesting. But I think the big lesson from it is you make the decisions you need to make at the time you need to make them.

Jordan Gal: 15:36

And just know as long as you do right by these people, you can change your mind on just anything as long as you're fair.

Brian Casel: 15:42

Totally. Yep. And still, the cost like, it's not even like they're I mean, you've established this relationship. You've given them so much value already. The price increases not I mean it's not a price increase it's it's really a price decrease you know I I think I think we're all I know I I've always been afraid to touch prices and tweak them even even the slightest bit you know?

Brian Casel: 16:04

But I I think it's less scary than it needs to be.

Jordan Gal: 16:08

Yep. Yep. And and the further

Brian Casel: 16:09

because at the end of the day, the the customer is like, look. It still works. I'm I'm not going anywhere.

Jordan Gal: 16:13

And and you're gonna give me a better deal over what I've been paying anyway. So, yes. I'll you know, most people are saying yes. We have very few dropouts, and the people that we have dropping out, very frankly, we are we are healthier and better off for them having dropped out, which isn't cool to say, but, you know, you gotta do what you gotta do. Yeah.

Jordan Gal: 16:34

So that's it. That's my that's my

Brian Casel: 16:36

Good stuff.

Jordan Gal: 16:37

That's my good update. About you? You got you got a few things going on, Brian.

Brian Casel: 16:42

Oh, man. So crazy. So you Too many too many too many things going on.

Jordan Gal: 16:48

Luxury eating in the sun over there in Connecticut. I can see you on Skype, but

Brian Casel: 16:52

Yeah. Well, it it probably looks a lot more like that on the screen, but it's yeah. It's, I hope that it's not too noisy out here on the on the podcast. I'm sitting out in my backyard here, but

Jordan Gal: 17:02

I was saying you look very drunk, but you have a lot you have a lot you're dealing with. So tell tell us about it. Yeah.

Brian Casel: 17:08

Well, this is AudienceOps, about four four weeks in or so since we, like, officially launched, to to, like, paying customers and everything. So as of today, we have actually six paying customers on board with AudienceOps, which is I mean, like, that's, like, five more than I really expected to have in within the first four weeks, which is crazy. Yeah. And it's I mean, it it's it's great. It's exciting.

Brian Casel: 17:36

We actually have two more two more clients who are what I'm calling like wait listed who've like said like we're ready to go and they've agreed, okay, well, we we could wait in like two two three more weeks before we can actually start. You know, I'm just trying to make sure that that I have the team in place and we're getting the systems together to be able to to make sure that we're serving, you know, all all the new customers. So so that's just been really exciting. I I I mean, I I couldn't be happier with how things are going in terms of sales. Sorry.

Brian Casel: 18:10

There's a

Jordan Gal: 18:11

That that is an airplane. Overhead. But So you have the the fabled turning people away. Too too too many sales too quickly that you can't service them. You have to be like, okay.

Jordan Gal: 18:22

You you gotta wait a little.

Brian Casel: 18:23

And and I have been yeah. And I have been quite selective with with who we're actually bringing on as paying customers. Like, there there we've been I've been in touch with, a number of leads who don't quite fit the the target, client which is we're we're basically serving b to b software companies, some product type services as well but it you know b to b audiences entrepreneur, entrepreneur, marketing, freelancer, professional, creative professionals, that that sort of crowd is the audience for most of our clients. And so so that's been working out well. We're we're getting plenty of of leads of that type of person and we're also getting some that are I think they would be good clients and maybe we would expand into other areas later but for now we're just trying to keep it pretty focused.

Brian Casel: 19:15

So, like, the thing that I'm excited about is that it it really looks like sales and marketing is not gonna be, the challenge in this business

Jordan Gal: 19:24

Service.

Brian Casel: 19:25

At least not early not early on. I mean, we literally haven't done any marketing yet. Actually, one thing that's that's kind of bugging me a little bit is that I wanted to launch the audience ops blog and email list by now. But we've just been so busy, you know, getting the client stuff together that it that's getting pushed off. What like actual marketing I'm I'm I'm waiting on.

Brian Casel: 19:48

I I plan to do a bunch of stuff. I there's a lot I wanna do on that on that side of of things but, right now the focus is just building systems hiring. So I have three, writers on board, you know, freelance contract writers who have been great. I'm actually interviewing a few more writers, on Monday. So as, as the, as we're bringing on new clients, need to bring on, you know, expanding the writing team.

Brian Casel: 20:16

At the same time as we're like delivering the service for the first time through for the, this first batch of clients, I'm writing procedures like crazy. I'm refining these procedures. I'm, I'm making sure that the steps and the systems are really dialed in. We're working with, the teamwork.com as our project manager. I've got a lot of templates set up in there now.

Brian Casel: 20:36

So just, just really getting the, the timing and the operation side of things like really dialed in. So I'm, I'm heavily in it right now. Like I'm definitely spending, you know, it's, it's like my full time job, managing this stuff, writing procedures, tweaking this kind of stuff. And the plan would be you know in the next three to six months to to remove myself from that side of stuff and bring in a project manager. So you know the interesting thing here is that, sales and marketing is not the challenge.

Brian Casel: 21:07

The challenge is going to be how to, well, early on the challenge right now is like operations. How can we make sure things don't fall off the rails and, we're actually delivering the quality that, that we're aiming to do. That's the the first challenge. And then later on in the year, expect the challenge will be scaling. And, you know, what does this look like as the team starts to really grow?

Brian Casel: 21:29

And how do we keep that that managed?

Jordan Gal: 21:31

Six six clients to juggle at the same time to produce content for on a weekly basis. I mean, that that doesn't sound easy. That that that's a bunch of bunch of organization and planning.

Brian Casel: 21:41

It's definitely yeah. It's definitely very hard. I think one thing that makes it easier is that this is a product high service, so what we're doing is very streamlined and predictable and we're literally doing the same things for for all the clients. And and very actually very much on the same schedule too. It's like on a weekly schedule, like, part of the of the article production process happens on like Monday and Tuesday and then it goes to a an editor on Wednesday.

Brian Casel: 22:11

The graphics get created on Thursday. It gets queued up in in an email newsletter and WordPress and social posts by Friday. And so we we have this, like, schedule, you know, making it like a like a production line.

Jordan Gal: 22:22

Mhmm. Like, hey. It's Monday. That means we need to start on the blog post for next week for this person. And tomorrow, we start on this one.

Jordan Gal: 22:30

And then the the first draft needs to be done by this day. And

Brian Casel: 22:34

Yeah. And it's it's crazy for for me to be managing six different clients at once, but the individual writers on the team, they each of them, currently has two clients that they're

Jordan Gal: 22:45

assigned to.

Brian Casel: 22:46

So it's not as heavy for the individual writers, but it will as we start to grow the client base and, the other thing that I'm so like I'm juggling a lot of different balls at the same time so the so managing the writers, managing the processes, I'm also in the process of hiring a virtual assistant. I used a, I used a virtual staff finder for that. This is the first time I actually used that service.

Jordan Gal: 23:11

How did that go?

Brian Casel: 23:13

Went great, actually. Awesome. You know, what is it? Like like $500? They they source, three highly qualified, VA candidates.

Brian Casel: 23:23

So I don't have to go through the whole process of going, like, through oDesk and and

Jordan Gal: 23:27

And it'll open for the best.

Brian Casel: 23:28

Yeah. So so two days ago, I actually so they they came back to me after a week. They they sent me the three applicants. And I interviewed all three of them, and they're all all three are actually really, really solid. I I actually might end up hiring two of them.

Jordan Gal: 23:44

And this is for a VA position, basically? Like, what what does that mean for you? Like, just managing and organizing and keeping things?

Brian Casel: 23:51

No. They're they're gonna work in audience ops. A lot of the tasks in in our production process, they're gonna be handling.

Jordan Gal: 23:58

So So not writing.

Brian Casel: 23:59

Not writing, but they'll be handling some of the, image creation, formatting an article, and and putting it up in WordPress.

Jordan Gal: 24:07

Mhmm.

Brian Casel: 24:08

You know, setting up content upgrades, which I'll I'll talk about in just a minute.

Jordan Gal: 24:11

Yeah. I wanna hear.

Brian Casel: 24:12

I'm kind of calling the position like the technical assistant. Yeah. So the writers are are in charge of a lot of the creative work and and a lot of the strategy Yeah. And the research stuff. And this person will be handling the the technical side of things.

Jordan Gal: 24:25

Yeah. There's a a bunch of work that needs to get done on that front. It's scheduling the blog post, know, publishing, posting, letting the the customer know that it's set up, and, yeah, there's just a lot

Brian Casel: 24:35

of stuff to do. And and we're also doing, we're managing the customer's, email newsletter. Like, we're we're queuing that up in in drip and and sending that out and also queuing up some social media posts so that the VA will be handling that as well. Do I sign up?

Jordan Gal: 24:53

Not kidding.

Brian Casel: 24:54

Let's talk soon.

Jordan Gal: 24:55

Yeah.

Brian Casel: 24:58

The the other thing that I'm actually really excited about right now, and this is, so, okay. I'm I'm building another product. You crazy This this is actually

Jordan Gal: 25:09

I like, please help us understand. What's the justification So

Brian Casel: 25:11

here, for god's so, no, this is actually part of Audience Ops. This is so I'm building a WordPress plugin.

Jordan Gal: 25:19

Okay.

Brian Casel: 25:19

And part part of what we're doing for in Audience Ops for our clients is we're setting up their content upgrades.

Jordan Gal: 25:26

So this is we're gonna provide you content, but the point is to get leads. And for that, the content should be married with a content upgrade.

Brian Casel: 25:33

Yes. And and so a content upgrade is an opt in, an email opt in, on an individual article. And there are usually like two calls, calls to action, like one near the top of the article, one near the bottom. Hey, here's an article on, you know, best practices, hosting a podcast. You know, download this extra cheat sheet or this extra step by step guide to help you implement what we talked about in this article.

Brian Casel: 25:57

Here's the opt in for that.

Jordan Gal: 25:58

And are you guys writing are you guys writing the upgrade also?

Brian Casel: 26:01

Yeah. Yeah. We are. And, you know, it's all part of the Wow. The process of what what we do for for clients.

Brian Casel: 26:08

So but, you know, implementing that content upgrade, putting the the call to action in the blog post, having that pop up and and and then, like, integrate with something like Mailchimp or drip or whatever they're using. So I've set that up on my own blog in the past. Basically just did it custom you know set up like a custom call to action and all that but now that we're doing it for clients we need an easy way to do that and I started investigating a few different tools and there there are a few options out there, but I I wanted something that we can really control the the quality and the layout and the text and and all that. Uh-huh. So so we're building our own, building a a plugin, and I actually plan to package this up as as a product of its own.

Jordan Gal: 26:51

So to give away for for free or to sell?

Brian Casel: 26:55

Both. So the like, the WordPress plug in model, there there will be a free version, you know, on on wordpress.org and and a pro version, probably with a few extra integrations, a few other, interesting features, you know, like, I mean, I'll I'll share a little bit more about it in a couple weeks, but but it's actually coming together, really fast right now. I'm actually hoping to at least get the version that we're going to be using for our clients, done and ready to start using within the next three weeks or so. And within four to six weeks, I'd like to have a version that's ready to put out there, at least as a beta version for for users. And, you know, pretty quickly, we'll we'll get to a paid version.

Brian Casel: 27:37

But, really, the the whole purpose of doing it is is just that we could use it for for our within our own process anyway.

Jordan Gal: 27:42

Right. And you you'll build a great product based on based on that, on just what you need in order to set this up. Yeah. I've I've used Leadpages for it, but it's not it's not what you're talking about. Leadpages just provides you the ability to have that pop up opt in based off of anything.

Jordan Gal: 27:58

You still have to create either the text area or the image that is on the blog post itself, and then connect it to Leadpages, and then connect Leadpages to your email provider. So you're just kinda doing it like in one.

Brian Casel: 28:12

Yeah. The bay basically, the way this is gonna work is, like, it it it's a WordPress plugin. So you'll be able to have a short a WordPress short code that you can put in any blog post to create the call to action. There'll be a couple of options to to set, like, the the design of that call to action. And then, whatever text you put in there, you you click the link.

Brian Casel: 28:32

That pop that creates a pop up. You can customize the text of the pop up. That'll have a, an opt in form. And then you define the, the email that gets sent to the user so that you can immediately send them the content upgrade.

Jordan Gal: 28:47

Right.

Brian Casel: 28:48

And that email's, like, based on the the template that you write in the plugin. And then you and then you can, like, integrate it with whatever email provider you're using so that, yes, they get the the content upgrade, and that's sent, you know, through the plugin, but they're also getting added to your list, and you can get them into a sequence.

Jordan Gal: 29:05

Oh, I see. I see. Because that's that's one of these, tricky things that you only find out once you start doing it. Like, you want someone to download, let's call it a PDF, you know, of tricks or tips or whatever the hell it is. And then you actually go to implement it, and you have to send them an opt in email first.

Jordan Gal: 29:22

Like, click here to opt in, and then I can send you the PDF. And like, but I don't wanna do that. I want them to get the PDF right away, but then also add them to the lit Right. It's a it's a tricky interaction between those two things.

Brian Casel: 29:35

Right. Right. If you think about the way that something like Gravity Forms works or any contact form plugin works, you can have a form which automatically sends the user an email back. And that's essentially what this does. You know?

Jordan Gal: 29:48

That Just sends them

Brian Casel: 29:49

We're just it's just a form, and and it and it and, like, it's an entry form, and and it's sending a response back. And in the process, you know, you're you're also passing that there that info onto a list, download as a CSV, or or just integrate it into a drip or a Mailchimp or something.

Jordan Gal: 30:07

Right. Alright. So

Brian Casel: 30:08

that's that's what we're building. So so what I did about a week ago, went so for this, I'm actually working with a developer who I'm hiring through oDesk. And I went the route of I actually hired three different developers to do. So I wrote the specs for the for the whole plug in. I did a bunch of screenshots to use balsamic, but then I stripped that down to like 10% of what the plug in will be.

Brian Casel: 30:37

And that 10% of the plug in is like the trial project. Which should take the developer about five to six hours to to knock out.

Jordan Gal: 30:46

So you can see that

Brian Casel: 30:46

I gave that project. Yeah. So I gave that project to three different developers and and paid them all to build that that super stripped down version of this. And, got, you know, pretty pretty good, versions sent back, and it was just clear that one guy was far and away. I mean, the the the plug in was perfect done to specs, but but what's most important to me is that his communication was, like, spot on, answered my questions, like, to the word, you know, responded back to me within twenty four hours.

Brian Casel: 31:17

Everything was just, like, rock solid. So I'm really excited about that. So now he's, I I've get I've given him, like, the the complete specs document and all the screenshots and everything, and he's he's running running with that right now. So I'm I'm waiting for that to, to move forward.

Jordan Gal: 31:33

Nice, man. Rock and roll.

Brian Casel: 31:35

Yeah. So that's, that's basically the story on audience ops. And then just another, you know, quick update. The Productize course has been doing really well in in the last, so right now we're in early June. I looked at at May, and May was actually the best month.

Brian Casel: 31:51

It it wasn't the best month in terms of total sales, but it was the best month yet for product highs in terms of sales that that came in not through a big promotion.

Jordan Gal: 32:02

Right. That that's the whole thing. It's like If you work your butt off all day on promoting it, you know you can make sales. But can you make sales without that huge time commitment on ongoing basis?

Brian Casel: 32:13

Yeah. Exactly. So about two months ago, I I implemented a bunch of, new email automation stuff. When subscribers get, you know, join the list, and they start to get into different sequences and and tagging and and different different things like that. And I think now that we're two months into that, I'm I'm definitely starting to see that pay off, quite a bit.

Brian Casel: 32:35

I'm I'm I'm really excited about how, I I mean, I think I think that combined with, you know, like, traffic has been increasing and and email opt ins have been increasing. So that, that helps as well, but it's also just, like, targeted people who really resonate with this stuff seem to really, come into my audience now based on, like, some of the podcasts I've been doing and articles and things like that.

Jordan Gal: 32:58

So Yeah. That that smart passive income episode must have attracted a bunch of new people. It's just a completely different audience.

Brian Casel: 33:06

That that did, and that itself generated a a handful of sales, and, you know, we can track that because it's, like, the SPI coupon code. Right. But, actually, there have been more sales in May, not, like, just natural sales, like, not from SPI. It's it's possible that they they might have heard me through SPI, but they didn't use that coupon code.

Jordan Gal: 33:26

Right.

Brian Casel: 33:28

So that's just been really exciting to see.

Jordan Gal: 33:31

So what

Brian Casel: 33:32

And what I'm what I'm looking to ahead to doing, I mean, now, I'm I'm completely focused on audience ops, later in the year what I'd like to do is carve out a month or two to really update productize. I wanna update a bunch of the lesson material with a lot of new materials, especially based on things that I'm learning as I'm building audience ops because now that I'm doing this the second time around I'm number one I'm moving like a 100 times faster than I moved with with restaurant engine

Jordan Gal: 34:00

right,

Brian Casel: 34:01

but number two it's this is much more like a literally a productized consulting business. So there there are a lot of things like even in the way that I write procedures, I'm finding I'm doing things a little bit differently than I used to. So, that and and also especially on the marketing side as well, I wanna get some new lessons integrated into product ties in that sense. Definitely got to do a bunch of interviews with, some product ties people in the community, because some people have been doing some exciting stuff so I want to get some interviews like case study interviews in integrated in there and, you know, maybe a few extra templates and and things like that. So probably end of this year, I'll be looking to to update all all that kind of stuff.

Jordan Gal: 34:45

What what I'm interested in is your update a few months from today on on price price. Because I I know you've already done some adjustment on the price, and you you're just providing a lot of freaking value. And I'm very curious to see if you can make margin that you're happy with based on pricing. The

Brian Casel: 35:12

And I'm Because I think you can can do that too.

Jordan Gal: 35:15

Right. You can raise prices, but you don't just because you can doesn't mean you should unless it starts to not not pay off enough in in in the margin.

Brian Casel: 35:23

Right. Right. Exactly. And, you know, the interesting so so this is part of what I'm really, really focused on right now. Because, again, we're right at the end of the first month, and we're now only be because we do a lot of, like, customer research early on for the for our clients.

Brian Casel: 35:38

So Right. Right now, like, week, we're we're actually starting to publish their articles.

Jordan Gal: 35:42

Cool.

Brian Casel: 35:43

For the first time and and we're getting into the rhythm like this week and next week and and the weeks coming up where, now I'm gonna actually be able to see, okay, what what does it cost us to produce one article for a client?

Jordan Gal: 35:56

Right. All in, not just how much you pay the writer.

Brian Casel: 35:59

Not just the article but it but all the pieces that we provide. Yeah. And so it's gonna take me probably at least another month or or two to, to get that nailed down and to understand what the costs are but I mean so far I think the the margins are definitely working out, but a lot of the early feedback that I heard from people and the indications are you know the prices will will raise at some point but at the same time I you know I do want to make it a strong value proposition. I think it is a strong value proposition right now for it that type of clients that we're working with and the the people who who've come on board now I'm really happy with with them as the target client like I some of them are friends that I've already known some I I'm just getting to know now and, I just I just really like working with this type of of company, this size of company. I think they're a great fit and to in order to get the return on investment, Like, I I think they they would really benefit from something like this.

Brian Casel: 37:06

So Yeah. If we can make the current pricing work, I I like it. And if if if it goes up a little bit, I you know, that that might happen too.

Jordan Gal: 37:15

Right. I also think it's gonna be hard to compete with that value proposition and and that you're positioned rightly to do it because all the procedural work that you did with Restaurant Engine to make that work in terms of margin, now the fact that you're doing that, I mean, I look at your pricing and I say, if I hire a writer to write two blog posts, I'm I'm almost spending as much money as what you offer. That's a lot more than two blog posts. A lot more. So it's almost like, how the hell can he make that work?

Jordan Gal: 37:46

But if you get good at the systems and processes in place, then it becomes a proposition where I shouldn't hire a writer throughout two blog posts. I should just hire you. It's almost like the same amount of money, and you get so much more. And it seems like magic. How could you possibly be making good margin?

Jordan Gal: 38:03

But on the back end, if you get good at it, you build your own plug in to be able to do things properly and efficiently. And you know, that that's how I can see it kind of developing over the next few months. You just get you just get better at it, and you might not necessarily need to raise prices to make more margin. You might just get better at squeezing out more margin.

Brian Casel: 38:20

Yeah. I mean, I think only time will tell at this point. Yeah. I I again, I'm I'm just this is my second time doing this so I'm really understanding now for the for the first time how how beneficial that is like I didn't I was I was nervous you heard me a couple months back on an episode talking about like you know moving on to the next thing I'm not sure if now's the time not sure if I'm ready to do something new but like now that I'm really in it and doing something here it's like what now I realize okay this is what it's all about because I can move a 100 times faster. I am moving so much faster just putting certain pieces in place that took me years to put in place before you know.

Brian Casel: 39:06

I and there's certainly a whole bunch of new things that I'm learning, and figuring out and, you know, kind of the hard way, but it's, you know, I I know exactly what needs to be done now and just kinda trying to execute without running out of hours in the day. You know?

Jordan Gal: 39:26

Cool, man. Well, great great update episode. Looking forward to getting back on track, you know, being back into the the weekly publishing mode. Thanks to everyone for the podcast or the iTunes reviews. I guess we should wrap it up.

Jordan Gal: 39:42

Our our twenty minute update episode turned into forty five minutes, but I think I think it was kind of I think I think it was good.

Brian Casel: 39:47

Yep. Yeah. Good good stuff, Jordan. So we'll we'll catch up next week.

Jordan Gal: 39:51

Alright. See you, everyone. Have a good week.

Brian Casel: 39:53

Alright. See you later.