[82] Growing Our Teams, New Initiatives, and Your Questions
This is Bootstrapped Web episode 82. It is the podcast podcast for you, the founder who learns by doing as you bootstrap your business online. As always, I'm Brian.
Jordan Gal:And I'm Jordan.
Brian Casel:Cool. And so we're back. We're gonna do another, might be another shorter episode today. We're gonna do a quick update. What's going on in each of our businesses and then we're gonna take a couple of questions that we've received over the last couple weeks.
Brian Casel:Good to be back on with you Jordan.
Jordan Gal:Likewise, nice to speak with you. I don't know if we missed last week, Just feels like a long time. I don't know what it is.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Think we did miss last
Jordan Gal:Maybe it's because I just got a Mac finally and it feels like so long ago when I when I didn't have one.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Good good to know that you joined you joined the rest of the the online world here in the with the
Jordan Gal:the rest of the modern world. Feels good. Yeah. Cool. So let let's get started with some up with some updates.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah. Sure. You know, I mean we we kind of skipped last week. We've been skipping a couple weeks here and there.
Brian Casel:It's just really tough with with so much going on but yeah, let's kinda catch catch up on what's going on here. So my first update today is contentupgrades.io. I have spoken a bit about the plugin that we're developing at audience ops. It's a plugin for WordPress to handle content upgrades, basically email opt ins that you can put on any post or page, and then it automatically sends the user back some kind of extra bonus PDF, worksheet, template, whatever it is. That's kind of really hard to do especially if you're a Mailchimp subscriber because like existing subscribers can't opt in for additional content, that's always been a problem.
Brian Casel:Of course, I use it integrated with drip and that's how we've been doing it, with our clients on audience ops. Most of them are on drip so we kind of integrate with that so so that that plugin is in development and we're actually using it live for our clients now in audience ops. Still a couple weeks away from releasing it to other beta users to start using but that'll be kind of the next step but for now this week I did finally launch a landing page for it and that's gonna be up at contentupgrades.io. Got an early access email list there if you wanna, you know, be one of those first beta testers for this plug in, get on the list there. So what else?
Brian Casel:Audience ops, you know, kind of continues to grow. We added a couple of more clients in the last, couple of weeks, which is which is nice it feels good because we kinda opened back up for sales. I had shut down things on the sales front for about a month there because we had to really get our systems in place and our team and make sure that we can kind of handle the capacity as we were growing but things are really feeling pretty good now with the systems and the team and so we went ahead and signed a couple of additional clients. We've got a few more that are probably gonna come through in the next week or two So that's that's pretty exciting.
Jordan Gal:It like begs the question, are are you gonna do the open transparency, let me show you how much money I like having in my bank account at all times sort of thing? Or are gonna just kinda let it, you know, be a normal business that that doesn't do that?
Brian Casel:I, you know, I don't think so. I I think it's gonna be it's not gonna be the kind of I I've just never been one to do, monthly revenue reports or anything like that. Right. I just don't see a whole lot of value in it. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:It just make it just make sense to me either. I was just curious.
Brian Casel:Yeah. No. I mean, I'm all for transparency but at the same time I've never been totally comfortable with releasing numbers. I do release numbers here and there for uncertain things but or at least give you know ballpark estimates but I I don't feel totally comfortable just talking totally open about numbers but then the other main thing is that I don't think that it adds a lot of value. I I like being really transparent about process and about strategies that we use and tactics and things that I'm learning because I I think that's the stuff that actually helps people if you're if you're tuning into, you know, what's going on in our businesses.
Brian Casel:So
Jordan Gal:Yeah. The only thing the actual dollar amounts do is breed, like, envy, jealousy, motivation, like it it yeah. I I agree. I think that's I think that's the rational
Brian Casel:approach. Yeah. That that's probably, you know, what'll happen. But I I do like that I'm pretty focused right now on audience ops and so the last couple of weeks really the last few months I've as I've been saying I've been really focused on creating these systems and getting our our processes and our tools and our our systems just really nailed down so that we can have this production line every single week you know. At this at this point we are producing 10 to 12 high quality articles every single week and that's that's a lot to to process, and make sure you know we're we're meeting all the deadlines number one, but also meeting our our like quality standards.
Brian Casel:We do a lot of like internal review and, enhancements and custom graphics and email opt ins and content upgrades and newsletters like all this stuff gets scheduled every single week for all these clients and we're growing the client base right now. So I think I've gotten it to a pretty good point now now that we're about three or four months into it. Systems are running pretty good. As we add new clients, you know, things are not falling apart which is good. The the change that I made recently is in the team and kind of refocusing what each individual team member is is responsible for within our production line because early on I I had a a bunch of really great team members and I kinda had them all doing a little bit of everything.
Brian Casel:That kind of worked but now I I shifted around where a couple of of the team members are strictly writers. Like they are responsible for writing new drafts and making any revisions to them and then I've got two other team members who are kind of considered project managers and one of the one of those project managers is like the client facing project manager and then the other one is like internally managing things with the team and making sure the the production line is is in order and that person is also our editor. So he he's like solely responsible for editing and doing all the copy edits and then I've got another guy who he's just a designer. He does he creates custom graphics for all the articles. I've had a VA on board since the beginning and starting next week we'll have a second VA joining the team so I'm so they're basically like the technical assistance.
Brian Casel:You know the VA has been handling like setting up every blog post in WordPress and queuing up the email newsletter in in drip and doing and doing like social media posts and whatnot, creating monthly reports, like all that kind of stuff. So now I'm gonna split up those tasks a little bit between the two assistants. So so it's just becoming more focused where each person kinda has their role and the whole thing becomes more more streamlined and and and running efficiently.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. That sounds like a fantasy. Everything you just described, I have done myself over the past twenty four hours. It is not cool and not smart to do. Because if you don't you don't actually ever get good at anything.
Jordan Gal:I go into Drip, and I try to figure out how to connect you up with Leadpages, and it takes me a while. And then I try to figure out the double opt in thing, and then I'm tired. And then you have to edit your blog posts, and then you have to find a graphic, and it's like to to specialize and differentiate each each person has their own role they could get good at is is beautiful.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, especially once we define the process for each thing, like figuring out how to how to how to set up DRIP initially, like, I'm I'm still kind of involved in a lot of that initial setup and and the strategic choices, like when we set up automation rules or or or things like that, but but once we define a standard process for how how we do that with each individual with with like all of our clients, like we we basically serve the same types of clients with the who are serving pretty similar audiences so we implement basically the same solution for everyone. So that makes it a lot easier to do again and again.
Jordan Gal:I'm seeing a joint audience ops get drip webinar just appearing because that that process and how to set up a drip account the right way is a really valuable piece of information. Yeah. Yep.
Brian Casel:Well, that's actually like the missing piece so far right now in audience ops. I I've been talking about this but we I I've not get gotten up to it yet and that's basically creating our marketing plan. I do want webinars to be part of that. I want I wanna have a blog, I wanna have an email list like all this stuff that we do for clients, we still don't have for ourselves on on Audience Ops.
Jordan Gal:That's okay. I don't think any of them have any doubt that you
Brian Casel:know how to do it. Yeah. And and I think and we still get I still have leads coming through, you know, just from from like network effects and whatnot and and even like that's not an excuse not to do that stuff. Like even though sales are coming in I I think we should still be teaching what we do. I think that's an important that you know value out of just having the company you know exist is to is to get out there and kind of spread this stuff.
Brian Casel:So let's see in other news, the family travel update. We are you know we're still here in Norwalk Connecticut but things are moving along it looks like we are you know a couple things falling into place now that that we will actually be leaving our our home in September. So pretty pretty excited about that. Nice.
Jordan Gal:I feel like this needs a name. We need, like, the the castle crawl across America.
Brian Casel:Something My wife and I have been calling it, like, like, our our tour. Yes. We're going on tour.
Jordan Gal:Yes. Yeah. We we called it city interviews. Oh, there you go. You know?
Jordan Gal:The the the tour. That's good.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Because, you know, I like like we spoke about with with Brett and everything, we're not really in this like, our motivation is not necessarily to find a new home. It's it's more like we just want some adventure we wanna do Yeah. We we just love to travel so we just wanna do it indefinitely for a little while. So so yeah the the the castle tour will be starting in in September but even before the the tour begins I've got a couple trips coming up.
Brian Casel:I've got MicroConf Europe and Barcelona. That's at the end of this month.
Jordan Gal:You're make us jealous.
Brian Casel:About three weeks.
Jordan Gal:So good.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Can't wait. So my wife and I are taking a couple extra days before the conference. And then the week after that, my family, my my brother and his wife, and and we're we're going out to, Cape Cod. We're doing like a family kinda get together for a couple days out there.
Brian Casel:And then the week after that, I head to Norfolk, Virginia for Brennan's w freelancing conference speaking down there. And so it's like three weeks back to back with like three different trips. And then the week after that is basically when we're gonna begin our long term.
Jordan Gal:Oh. So you've you've lost you've lost your mind.
Brian Casel:So yeah. Pretty much. Yeah. So I've I've already written off like the month of September. Like nothing is going to get done that month.
Jordan Gal:Just maintain. Yeah. Exactly.
Brian Casel:So that's it. And then the other thing that I I've been pretty busy, but I'm starting to put together notes and slides and whatnot for my MicroConf Europe talk, which I you know, that's gonna be about productized services and
Jordan Gal:I was gonna say what's what's the topic, but
Brian Casel:Yeah. It's all about productized services. I think the topic is gonna or the title is gonna be productizing to 10 k a month in revenue. It's gonna feature a couple of case studies from my work and probably a couple of other productized service businesses. And I'm I'm putting together some some, I think, different angles on the product high service thing than than what I've taught and wrote about in the past, which I'm I'm I'm getting into right now.
Brian Casel:So that'll be fun.
Jordan Gal:Nice, man. That's a solid update right there. Keeping busy.
Brian Casel:Always. What about you, sir?
Jordan Gal:Oh, man. I got a lot going on. So this week, I have Ben, my co founder in from New York. So we've just been rocking. Just sixteen hour days for a few days in a row.
Jordan Gal:Just making so much progress feels amazing. Let's see. We launched a new marketing site. We launched the vlog. Launched podcast.
Jordan Gal:We hired a Nice. Yeah. We have a new customer. I think the podcast will be launched by the time this episode airs. And right now, it's it's just edited and and ready to be uploaded.
Brian Casel:Awesome. What's the name of that The
Jordan Gal:Cardhook Show. Cool. Yeah. Hired a new customer success team member, doing all these standard operating procedures for both the the sales and onboarding side and the support side, switched over to Help Scout from Groove, and and much happier for it. I should've listened to it in the first place.
Brian Casel:Yeah. We use the Help Scout
Jordan Gal:lot. It's it's excellent. Yeah. Launching our first advertising campaigns. And I think the thing I'm absolutely most proud of is I wrote a goddamn blog post.
Jordan Gal:I have been thinking about this and talking about this for like six months, if not more. And yesterday, I finally sat down for two hours and just wrote a post, and it felt so good to just get over the hump and break the ice, and now it's up there. So you go to karthook.com slash, excuse me, blog.karthook.com, and we have a few blog posts and one that I, like, fully wrote out instead of just like, hey, here's a quick interview, but it's actually a blog post. And I think that's the thing I'm I'm most proud of. Of all this stuff that we've been accomplishing, it just feels like enough with the talk and now with the action.
Jordan Gal:And now I'm like, I've crossed over from talk to action.
Brian Casel:Totally, man. Is that is that called the 10 foot test? Yes. Awesome. Yes.
Jordan Gal:And we got the product hunt sugar high this past week, had a thousand visitors in in like three hours, something Really? You know, it's just a whole bunch of traffic. And that
Brian Casel:was How that how did that come about? Because I've I've actually never submitted anything to Product Hunt and none of my stuff has ever been submitted. But I'm curious. I feel like Product Hunt is is one of those sites that I see I see it talked about all the time. I check it out here and there, but I still don't know what it is and how to use it.
Jordan Gal:I I think what it is that there are there are a large subset of tech people who are really crazy about it. And so I'm the same way. I check it out from time to time. I know about it. I see it.
Jordan Gal:I'm aware of it, but I don't go there every morning, but there are a lot of people that obsess over and really into it. So I think that's where all that energy comes from.
Brian Casel:What's the what's the strategy? I mean, I know that that Justin Jackson had a had a small ebook about it. Like, what how do you how do we as entrepreneurs, how do we use Product Hunt?
Jordan Gal:So it's discovery. It's it's if you have something interesting and it's new, that's the whole thing. It has to be new. It can only be submitted to Product Hunt once. And it you you get discovered.
Jordan Gal:You get seen by thousands of people.
Brian Casel:Like, what what can what can I do with, like, the productized course? Because I've I've never submitted that to to Product Hunt. Like, is that too late now to to submit that?
Jordan Gal:No. As long as it hasn't been submitted. Look. Cardhook, it how it's been up for over a year, but it just got submitted. So what happened was we launched our new website, and I think someone maybe that listens to this podcast, I'm not sure, saw it and was like, that's new enough, and put on Product Hunt, and we were in, like, the top 10 for a while.
Jordan Gal:Nice. And of course, I was in meetings all day, so it was like dealing with everything on the phone. Oh. But it was awesome. It just brought a jolt of kind of energy and momentum into the company, and we got like emails and tweets and people on Facebook saying, hey.
Jordan Gal:I saw you. It so exciting. So it was kinda like it was a sugar high. It's not our target market. It did we did create it did create a handful of free trials.
Brian Casel:I was gonna ask that. Did did that traffic convert?
Jordan Gal:Some of it converted, and and it also a few a few potential partnerships from it. And I think it helped elevate status and credibility a little bit from people seeing it. Mhmm. And a whole bunch of sign ups from Japan, like eight free trials from Japan. I I don't know what You're huge basic.
Jordan Gal:Exactly. The best thing about this week is working in person. There's nothing like working in person. So we all work online. You know, Ben and I are remote.
Jordan Gal:I'm here in Portland. He's in New York. But you get together and magic happens. You just talk things out. You you hash things over.
Jordan Gal:You argue. You debate these little points, and you make decisions, you make progress, you push each other. You know, I don't normally stay at the office until midnight
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Let alone three nights in a row, and you just you just get a tremendous amount of work done.
Brian Casel:That's awesome. You know, actually speaking of that, like, kinda teamwork collaboration, one thing that I'm starting to do like alright. So with the team on audience apps, for the first couple of weeks and months, I held like team meetings on Google Hangouts. And at first, it was like three of us and then the next one was like five of us. I think we had one where it's probably like six team members on the call and I just found that those were very unproductive and I I did like they it's not like we just called a team meeting with nothing to talk about like there were definitely things that I needed to have everybody on a meeting about and and I get on board with or or get their feedback on something, but I still found that the scheduled time and all of us being on a call together just was not productive like people were not submitting ideas or feedback or, you know, it was like who's talking next and kind of thing.
Brian Casel:It's like it's just like just the there was no flow there. I mean, I guess you that's one of those things where it's still like, alright, video call versus in person. It's still still a little bit more comfortable in person. But, you know, the one thing that I I was actually doing today, I I I was like, you know, instead of doing these calls, let's have a team meeting over email. And so today so there were like three topics that I wanted to get the entire team's input on.
Brian Casel:We're developing some new aspects to the service in audience ops like around promotion and and we're gonna start doing like customer case study stories type of type of pieces. And so I wanted to get the team's input on that before we even hash out, like, the process for doing these things. So
Jordan Gal:Over email though, there's such a lag over email. Well, why not do it in like a Skype group? Excuse me. Slack channel.
Brian Casel:Well and we do have a Slack channel for for audience ops and and but I don't know. I I didn't want that to get mixed up with all the other updates that go through Slack because it's like super active every day with, again the production line but but then it like the team is like just chatty about like what are you guys doing this weekend and things so Yeah. I didn't want the Yeah. Team meetings And we kinda do that a little bit too but like I don't know. I I always feel like with Slack it's good for like quick one sentence questions and answers but long form conversation, it doesn't it doesn't work for that and and I think email is really good and it actually worked out really well today with this with this email chain because I wrote the initial email it's like maybe four or five paragraphs long, you know, a couple different topics, here are my thoughts, what do you guys think?
Brian Casel:And then each individual team member replied like later in the day on their schedule. Like, we don't all have to, like, juggle our calendars and everything, but they all each each of them reply with, three three paragraphs or so. So I get, like, their thoughtful input on something, and they have a little bit of time to, like, think through how they wanna, you know, contribute to this conversation. Whereas I I think a video call, you're kinda put on the spot. You're not sure if you wanna jump in and and and talk.
Jordan Gal:And it's Social social pressure.
Brian Casel:Yeah. You know? So I I and I think, you know, Jason Fried has talked about this idea of, like, eliminating meetings and having like, I think he calls them, like, what, like, slow meetings or something, like meetings that happen over email over a couple of days. You know? And I just really like that, especially when all of us are so busy.
Brian Casel:I Yeah. You know, it kinda works.
Speaker 3:Yeah. That's yeah. It's a it's
Jordan Gal:a tricky thing. The truth is we rarely find the need that we have to get everyone to talk at the same time because you're kinda working on different things with you know, Ben and Charlie working on something that I don't have that much to do with, and then Ben and I are working on something that Charlie doesn't have that much to do with, and all all these different things happen. The group, like, call, I end up just, like, being dictatorial. Like, okay. Get everyone on the same page.
Jordan Gal:I'm gonna talk, and this is what we're gonna do. And then it's like huddle break. And then everyone goes to and does their own conversations, but getting everyone on the on the same page, but almost not even asking for input. Not like I don't care about input, but it's impossible to get anywhere with with everyone trying to put, you know, put their 2¢ in.
Brian Casel:My approach lately, and this is kind of a difference between, like, when I was working on Restaurant Engine versus working on Audience Ops is, like, Restaurant Engine it was very much like I'm I'm creating the system, I'm creating the procedure, now here's the task, here's the procedure, please go do it. And in Audience Ops there there are plenty of procedures that I just you know this is how I think we should do it, but I'm trying to work in the the team's input as much as I can early on in the process like even before I create the procedure and then even let them you know create procedures or change them or improve them and things like that so you know because a lot of these guys have been like on the team who do a lot more blogging for like, they're they're kind of like freelance contractors and working kind of part time for audience ops and they've been doing this stuff for a couple of years for a variety of other clients and and things and they've seen things done in different ways. So, you know, I I think it's good to get different, like, inputs and and experience and yeah.
Brian Casel:So I I try
Jordan Gal:to It requires creativity.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Like, I I try to I try to, like, ask for for feedback and thoughts, and then I'll come back and develop it into a process, and then I'll, like, kinda delegate it as, okay. Here's here's the new plan.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. That makes sense. And then that gets people invested in in the process also. Yeah. They had something to do with it from the beginning.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. It's good. Well, I think you just you're dealing with you're higher up on the knowledge chain, the requirements, the creativity, the thought, the experience is just higher level with audience ops. And so why why wouldn't you take other people's experience if they if they have it?
Brian Casel:Yep.
Jordan Gal:Cool, man. So that's good. We got we got a lot going on, and I I hope it's kinda useful to listen to some of these things and, you know, where the focus is, where the struggle is. I know my single biggest challenge right now is just choosing the priorities. I have I had I had a call today with an ecommerce platform.
Jordan Gal:Sounds amazing. Hundreds of thousands of ecommerce stores. They wanna make us their official partner. I'm not gonna do it. I don't we don't have the bandwidth.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. And it's like that's an opportunity, but it not yet. That is two months from now because right now we have other priorities. So that that's my challenge. I do my to do list.
Jordan Gal:I have 25 things that are important, and choosing four of them to do today, that is my single biggest struggle every every single day.
Brian Casel:Yeah. That's something, you know, when these opportunities, like, come to you, whether it's a potential biz dev partnership or, lately, I I've I've had, like, writers and and other and and developers, you know, approach me and say, you know, I'd I'd love to work with you or I know someone who'd be a great person for your team. Here here's their information. And I I wanna give them my attention and appreciation, but it's like I'm not in a hiring mode today. So I'm not gonna change my my, you know, task list to to interview someone, you know, just because you referred them to me kind of thing or or like, you know, and and it's not that I won't talk to them sometime in the future.
Brian Casel:It's just like when that becomes a priority, it's like, I've got these names on a on a list. And same thing can be true of, biz dev opportunities, you know. You know, it's not like that opportunity is necessarily gonna go away two, three months down the road if if you decide, okay. That that's gonna be a priority in December is to, you know, develop new partnerships. Let's see who I've been in touch with in the past year.
Brian Casel:You know?
Speaker 3:Yeah. But it's it's a shift that you need to
Jordan Gal:get used to, and I think we're we're gonna start talking about this in in some of these questions.
Brian Casel:Yep.
Jordan Gal:I very much remember when no one had a clue who or what Cardhook was, and I would send them an email and nobody would respond. And so now all of a sudden you like go on Product Hunt and then someone reaches out to you from an e commerce platform to partner, I very much am still the same person that didn't get any love and any attention a year ago, and so now I don't wanna let it go. It's like, wait. I finally have something in my hands, and you still have to say that's just not the priority. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:But it's it's a tricky thing. Alright. So let let let's jump into this. You you got a few questions on Twitter and and over email.
Brian Casel:Yeah. So these are a couple questions that I've heard recently. Someone emailed me recently saying, see alright. So I don't even know really what her idea was, but that's the whole point of this question. Right?
Brian Casel:So she's asking, I have this idea for some kind of new software startup, but I need to find a technical cofounder or at least someone to consult with me on the technical aspects, but I don't wanna discuss anything with someone like that without an NDA. You know, what do I do? And and and you know she kind of went on and I'm paraphrasing here but saying you know even if I'm just consulting with someone like I don't want to share the idea with someone who's clearly more capable than than I am because they have the technical chops that they could go out and build something like this if I share it with them when really I just wanna ask their opinion of like what what technical platform should I use and and whatnot. Right And course
Jordan Gal:how I get this done?
Brian Casel:Yeah. And I mean I I sent a pretty quick answer which was like don't worry about an NDA, don't worry about sharing the idea. Just the more you can get feedback on it, the better. I mean, and and there's two sides to that, right? Like, one is feedback from potential customers.
Brian Casel:I was saying, you know, you should be talking to potential customers early and often and get that feedback and get and and go from there. Even discussing with potential partners or or just a consultant, just be out in the out in the open with it. Most most technical consultants are not going to to sign an NDA anyway and they probably shouldn't, you know, because it's I mean, how do you sign away an NDA, you know, and that you have no idea what's behind that?
Jordan Gal:And Yeah. Have you have you ever signed an NDA?
Brian Casel:I don't think I I
Jordan Gal:don't think I've ever asked someone to sign it, and I've I don't even know anyone who has. Yeah. But it's something that exists in, you know, in people's minds. I think it's hard to answer this question without sounding like a complete douchebag. Right?
Jordan Gal:It's like, it doesn't matter. You don't need an NDA. Nobody cares about your idea. Have the abundance mindset. It's like, it sounds like such bullshit.
Jordan Gal:I don't know. I think the answer for me, the answer that I would want that would actually work for me is the pragmatic one. The fact that people are really busy, and to think that someone's gonna listen to your idea, stop everything they're doing, and push all that aside to work on your idea is not realistic. It's unlikely. Just the fact that you talk about the idea gives you this weird credibility that people think you're doing it.
Jordan Gal:I know when I talked about CardHook before it even existed, people were like, alright, cool. You do card abandonment even though I had nothing. So that doesn't hurt you. And then in reality, if you do have a good idea and it works, people are gonna copy you anyway. It's Yeah.
Jordan Gal:So it's really
Brian Casel:And people are probably already doing it anyway.
Jordan Gal:And I would hope so. If they're not doing it, you may not want to go down that route.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:So the it's the pragmatic approach to it is really at least for me, that's the way I would think about it. There's just no benefit to to holding onto it.
Brian Casel:You're you're making it so much harder on yourself by being so close to you know, keeping it so close to the vest because, that that whole idea of it's all about execution and the ideas are worthless and that that really is true because I I think what gets lost in this question when when when we hear this again and again is that you think that just by sharing just having like possessing this idea, that's like a guarantee that the idea will succeed and there is no guarantee and chances are that it won't succeed even if it's a great idea, even if it is validated. Chances are the the execution won't happen. You know, it's just it it is just so hard to get customer number one or customer number a 100. You know, the a mind a small minority of startups actually reach that point so to put any kind of barrier in your way between between yours between where you're at right now with just an idea and getting paying customers like one big big barrier would be like having an NDA or or being worried about these kinds of things. It's you know, they like, there are so many other hurdles that you're gonna have to get past that, you know, don't don't add additional ones.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. You could you could set up meetings with 20 consultants and share the full idea with every single one and not one of them will copy you, And it's gonna be fine. And you'll you'll gain a lot more from talking to them. I know I know for us, for Cardhook, for most businesses, the idea of the business changes and moves around and is affected by things, by conversations, by coming across, by seeing what a competitor does, by hearing a response from customers. So to think that your idea is fully baked, it's like, you really just have the seed of an idea, and talking to other people starts to add and shape it into what it actually ends up being as, like, your first offering.
Jordan Gal:And you know know who it makes me think of James Altucher, where he just talks about sharing your ideas. Just give your ideas away. And sometimes I read that and it sounds good, but then I don't know how to practice it. Yesterday, I had a conference call, not a conference call, just a normal phone call with someone who's looking into the ecommerce world, And I just shared I just gave them everything. All the intel I have on all of my competitors and what other consultants are doing and how people are making money and where people are frustrated.
Jordan Gal:I just vomited just all of my knowledge of what I live and breathe every day in the e commerce world. And after like half an hour, he was like, holy shit, this was the most, you know, this was the best freaking thing I could have gotten from someone who actually knows e commerce. He was so grateful. He was like, What can I do for you? And it turns out he has like this amazing connection that could boost our business significantly.
Jordan Gal:And he came to me with an idea, like, what, am I gonna steal it? I'm gonna stop working on CardHook and start up on this new thing? No. But what he got out of me was knowledge that can help him shift his idea just a little bit to the left and a little bit to the right and just keep figuring out exactly what he wants to offer people. He doesn't have a business yet.
Jordan Gal:He just has an idea, and my him sharing his idea and hearing what I have to say, and he'll do it with another bunch of people, he'll come out way ahead because he did that.
Brian Casel:Cool. So let's move on to the next one here. Another another email question. I'm kinda paraphrasing here to shorten it. Basically, how much work is too much work before the idea is validated and this person was asking me specifically about productized services and he was kind of comparing like productized services versus other types of startups software and and whatnot You hear like the the lean startup and you know the stuff that like Dane Maxwell talks about and like you know go out there and do customer development to truly validate the idea before doing any sort of work on it.
Brian Casel:And my answer specifically about productized services was that one of the nice benefits of doing a productized services that you can launch it very very quickly and it and it's unlike software like you don't have to build something, down the road you know before you can start delivering value to customers. You can literally charge from day one and and you know create the offer, and and present it to potential customers whether they're your existing clients or people in your network or you know whoever it is, launch the the offer, charge from day one and start delivering the service from day one. You know these kinds of things can actually be launched in a weekend and so that's what I replied to him with and and then he came back saying but even that sounds like a lot of work. Like, to put up a landing page or to think about pricing or to think about process and how it would be delivered and things and, you know, I'm just thinking to myself, like, you know, you you can't do nothing. You have to do a little bit of work to to get something off the ground or to get to the point where you're ready to present an offer and that could that could be as simple as an email but even a landing page is nothing.
Brian Casel:You can do that in in a couple of hours. There's just too much of of this idea that like you you have to give validation validation validation. Don't do any work whatsoever. I don't know. There's it's just too much on on that side, think.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. The the concept of validation is smart, makes perfect sense. Perfectly logical. Don't invest, don't build, don't hire without knowing that there's something there first. Right?
Jordan Gal:Makes sense. But even even if you want to do nothing. When I started CardHook, I did nothing at first, but I still did work. I contacted every card abandonment offering that I could find, and I got on the phone with all of them, and I said, Hey, I'm interested in card abandonment, and I wanna sell for you. I wanna be a salesman.
Jordan Gal:How does your business work? Do you want me to sell it? How much money can we make together? So I did nothing, but I still had to do work. I still had to find them, call them, and get on the phone.
Jordan Gal:And that was, at least, was a start. So I think look. If you're not technical and you see a landing page with copy and pricing as a lot of work, then just go backwards. Just simplify. Just just send an email.
Jordan Gal:Just send a tweet. Just just make cold calls. But you are gonna have to do something. The whole point of validation is in the response. That's how you get the validation, by someone responding.
Jordan Gal:So you have to have a stimulus before you get a response. So whatever that's that stimulus can be minimal, but you you have to provide the stimulus.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And, you know, I guess, there there's the argument that, like, oh, the the pain point that you're targeting is so painful and your solution is so valuable that you can literally almost almost do nothing and people will will will give you money and that's your green light to go ahead and and create a website and get a domain name and build something. But I I don't know. I think there there is a middle ground. You do need to have some kind of presentation of of value proposition and and sometimes you need to communicate things in a certain way to really, touch touch a nerve with something before before you're gonna see any sort of response or or you know or validation as we talked about before there's like there are different levels of validation.
Brian Casel:The and and then you know just the customer development in itself. Right? Like just calling up customers, getting on the phone with them or taking meetings or whatnot. I've heard this I've seen this happen quite a bit is like where okay. I know who my target customer is.
Brian Casel:I'm gonna go talk to three of them. And if I don't get a good response from these three people, then I'm gonna get discouraged and maybe not proceed with this idea or I mean, three is not enough. I like, people kinda stop at three or five or even ten. It's not enough. You gotta send 50 cold emails just to talk to to 10 people.
Brian Casel:You know? So you have to spend time to to really dig up and do the research to find 50 solid names. You know? So, like, that takes work. You you could spend an afternoon on that.
Brian Casel:Spend a whole day on that. And and even if they even if you do end up talking to the most perfect ideal customer and they just tell you, well, I can see some value in this but I'm not going to spend money on it right now because I'm pretty much set in in our current solution, that that does not mean that there are plenty of other very similar ideal customers who just happen to be in that position to to make a change. This person just is it's it's the cost of switching. They don't wanna switch right now especially to a brand new player. So, you know, a couple of no's.
Brian Casel:I I I think you have to get past a couple of initial no's, you know, people saying no before you start to see traction or or maybe shift the way that you communicate or, you know, don't just completely give up on a on an idea so quickly, and don't think that, it, you know, it it takes, you know, zero work before you're quote unquote allowed to to work or or create anything. Yeah. That's my take on it.
Jordan Gal:I I agree with it. I I see this as a matter of expectations. If you expect that you have an idea, you communicate to people and they give you a yes or no, that's just unlikely to happen. It might happen, but it's unlikely. The much more likely thing is that you'll try it with a few people, and then they'll give you nos, and then you'll adjust a little bit and talk to the next three people, and you'll get nos but slightly differently, and then you adjust again, and then again, and then again, and if you know that that's the process and that's what you set as your expectations, after you get the first three no's, you're gonna look at it as part of the process.
Jordan Gal:Alright, clearly, real estate agents don't want me to do this for them, and so the next three agents I call, I'm gonna change it up slightly based on what I just learned. And and always realize that when you get those three no's and you wanna quit, that's where most people quit. And if you keep going, you you get closer to, you know, the chances that that you'll get the reward. Yeah. Of the deal.
Brian Casel:Totally. Alright. So we got one more question here. This one came in about an hour ago. I put it out on Twitter asking for, you know, questions for us to talk about here on the show.
Brian Casel:So someone said this is kinda like a follow-up question from last week's episode or our last episode. He said, how about content marketing when you're targeting small businesses that do not necessarily read blogs or they're not really online? And so I've I've heard that question quite a bit especially when I was running Restaurant Engine who you know restaurant owners are notoriously not you know necessarily reading RSS feeds or they're not on Twitter so much so my take on this the the quick answer is that I think it's I think these days it's it's less about reaching people through Google searches when it comes to content marketing. That's one part of it. That's one side benefit that comes with publishing content over long term, but the key to content marketing I think is email list and we talked about this last week quite a bit.
Brian Casel:If you can grow leads into your email list, whether it's through paid ads or, even like for for an offline industry going to going out to conferences or doing sales or whatever it is, growing that email list and then nurturing that that email list by sending them the the content, by sending them these educational valuable stuff whether it's client case studies or lessons that that are really, you know, pertain to their industry. If they're already on your email list or if you can find a way to to consistently bring in people into into the email list, then you can send the content to them and and keep that relationship going, get into their email inbox. That's much more valuable than reaching these small businesses who just aren't really on Google or or on Twitter or on Facebook as much as as other like online marketers might be.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I I think that's the ideal and if that doesn't work for you, then go offline. Direct mail still works. Direct mail followed up by phone call works even better.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I I think I think if you're if if you are going with with because they are an offline market, an offline kind of small business, do those strategies but as part of those strategies, get them onto an email list, you know, direct mail to a coupon that they have to opt in for or, you know, go to conferences and and give out a free guide that they have to opt in for or send a text message with their email or something like that, you know.
Jordan Gal:Right. It's not like they're unwilling to use email just because they don't live online during work.
Brian Casel:Well, I think that that does it for episode 82.
Jordan Gal:82. We're getting closer to a 100, my man.
Brian Casel:That's right.
Speaker 3:Should be should be there
Jordan Gal:by by the new year.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Crazy. Cool, man. Well, that wraps it up. We will as always, you know, you can head over to Bootstrapped Web, dig into the backlog of episodes and if you're enjoying this one or any of the previous episodes please head over to iTunes give us a five star review we'd really appreciate that helps us you know find other listeners on iTunes.
Jordan Gal:Sounds good Brian. Good luck in your travel.
Brian Casel:Thanks, man. Alright. Talk soon.
Jordan Gal:See you.
Brian Casel:See you.
![[82] Growing Our Teams, New Initiatives, and Your Questions](https://img.transistorcdn.com/LDB_Cv9bHAA2vtoSPkZCpkdHPF6fAqfl7PL-PG7_c-M/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:800/h:800/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9jMjkw/MDYxZDQ0MWIxYTUw/NTMzMGI2NTExZWMx/MWQ1Yi5qcGc.webp)