Bootstrapped Web

Brian Casel: 00:10

This is Bootstrap Web episode 84. Wow. I can't I am that jet lagged. Okay. It's episode 84, and it's the podcast for you, the founder who learns by doing as you bootstrap your business online.

Brian Casel: 00:22

And, I just got back about, half a day ago from MicroConf Europe. So as you can hear in my voice and in my half of brain that I have right now, I'm pretty jet lagged. But, this will be this will be a fun episode. Jordan, how's it going?

Jordan Gal: 00:38

It's great, man. We will see you through it, and we will we will extract whatever value we can from your experience in MicroConf before we let you go to bed. But it's nice to nice to be back together, my friend.

Brian Casel: 00:49

Yeah. So this will be the, MicroConf Europe twenty fifteen recap episode. I I jotted down some notes, from from the conference on during the flight home that, that we can talk about here on the podcast. So we'll we'll kinda, like, run through some of the key takeaways that I heard from from the different speakers and just thoughts on MicroConf Europe in general. We'll we'll get into all that.

Jordan Gal: 01:12

Yeah. And it's a one-sided recap because I didn't get to go. So I will be playing the role of audience member listening in on the podcast saying, I didn't get to go to MicroConf. Tell me what you learned. Tell me what you found out.

Jordan Gal: 01:23

Tell me who you saw. So I'll kind of be able to very honestly ask the same questions as people listening want to ask.

Brian Casel: 01:30

Yeah. Cool.

Jordan Gal: 01:31

Well, man, how about some some updates before before we do it?

Brian Casel: 01:34

Yeah. Absolutely. Well, what's going on on your end, dude?

Jordan Gal: 01:38

That's what I do know. When someone asks me how things are going, I take a deep breath.

Brian Casel: 01:44

Why do I why is it like every one of our calls usually starts with with that? Yeah. Like

Jordan Gal: 01:48

You know why? Because you bottle it up. You experience a lot of freaking stress and worry and anxiety and planning and ambition and all this stuff, and you just don't share it that much. So when you talk to a peer who asks you how you're doing and you're actually able to be honest, you you get to drop the guard and say, oh, man. Let me let me tell you how it's actually been.

Jordan Gal: 02:12

And I I think that's why when we talk and like, how are things going? It's like, oh, I can finally Yeah. Not hold everything in.

Brian Casel: 02:19

Yeah. Totally. That's that's definitely true.

Jordan Gal: 02:22

Yep. So we've got a lot going on. We worked on a very big development project, the biggest update since launching the app. Up until now, the app that sent out abandoned cart emails, the email itself, the part that interacts with our customer's customer, right? It's obviously a huge part of the business because it determines the actual performance of the abandoned cart campaigns, which determines the success of our customers, which in, you know, therefore determines the success of our company.

Jordan Gal: 02:56

So those emails that were going out were very rigid. You really couldn't do very much at all. And we had all this built up demand, all these built up potential partnerships, all this stuff waiting on our ability to be able to send out much more customized emails, new templates, just that was the single most important advance advancement for the business. So we worked on a new email template builder, and we hired an outside contractor, really talented guy, but this thing went sideways, man. It was supposed to take a month.

Jordan Gal: 03:32

It took three, and it started sapping energy and motivation. It were kinda playing with fire for a while. So we basically just we needed to get that done, And we just launched it last week, of course, with a few bugs and dealing with some customer service issues to make sure things are are going right and apologizing for some things that aren't going right, but it's done, and we moved forward. So that's kinda what's been brewing in on my mind for, I mean, for three months now.

Brian Casel: 04:01

Yeah. What was the process of of rolling out a major update like that? Because I know that in the early days of Cardhook, it was basically just you and your cofounder, and your cofounder was basically in charge of the the tech side of things. But now you brought in Ben who who was not involved in the beginning stages. So you've got Ben and you've got this contractor and, like, how is it how is it with that process of rolling out a major software feature update now?

Jordan Gal: 04:28

It's it's increasing complexity at a exponential scale. So it's one person's complex, two people is, like, four times as complex, and and so on. And so we had Charlie, the original cofounder, who kinda understands the whole thing from the beginning, and Ben, who came in and has been on board for a few months, so he understands the system. And then we hired an outside contractor to do the development work, and so now it was three people. So the process really looked like me on Slack from the sidelines, like, with pom poms on, like like, with little emojis.

Jordan Gal: 05:04

Like, I love you guys. I'm sorry. It's so difficult. But the value that I added was was as the customer. Guys, actually, it shouldn't work that way because this.

Jordan Gal: 05:15

Actually, I just wanna upload my logo once, not for all three emails, so make sure it carries through. And when I resize it, make sure that carries through also. So I was like I was like playing the role of user.

Brian Casel: 05:27

Yeah. Like user experience. Yeah.

Jordan Gal: 05:29

Yes. Because because I was I was like the ecommerce merchant. So that was like my my role. The most value I added was not peacekeeping. It it wasn't like we were arguing, but making sure the dynamic and positive energy main was maintained.

Brian Casel: 05:45

And I'm guessing well, and I'm guessing, like, Ben's role is kind of to be like the middleman between you and and Ben and and the contract and the developer contractor to, like, kinda translate the technical aspects. So, like, oh, you know, to carry over this resizing of the logo from emails one to three, that's actually gonna require twenty extra hours of development time and here's why. Like, is that

Jordan Gal: 06:11

Right. So it it got tricky and it wasn't an easy thing and we learned a lot from it, from the experience. It was painful and it did it did it hurt the company. At the end of the day, it slowed our growth. This is this is a real challenge, I think, that nontechnical founders face.

Jordan Gal: 06:28

You just want something to sell. Just give me this thing that I want and and give me this other feature and let me just go sell it. But it if you're a tech company, it's just not that easy. It's it's more complicated. And as a nontechnical founder, you kinda have to learn not how to code, but the reason things are gonna be complicated and why and all the all the human dynamic.

Jordan Gal: 06:53

You know, when you say, hey. I just want this other feature. Oh, by the way, forgot to mention this thing. Like, you just you just fucked somebody up for hours.

Brian Casel: 06:59

Yeah.

Jordan Gal: 06:59

And and that isn't gonna make them happy with you. So you you kinda have to you gotta be careful.

Brian Casel: 07:04

So now that you guys released this this major feature, and I know that, know, it's still kinda new and and you guys are, like, ironing out bugs and all, what does this what what does having this email template builder enable you to do now that you weren't able to do before?

Jordan Gal: 07:19

So exciting. I mean, first of all, the one of the most important things that allows us to do is move on to the next thing. So that's huge. Our next thing is a Shopify app, and we think that that has the potential to really have a very big impact on the company. So just the fact that we're done and that we can finish our Shopify app, that itself is really big.

Jordan Gal: 07:39

The the actual new technology itself, we wanted to get it done before Shopify because if you think about a Shopify user, they're very design conscious. That's one of the the big selling points of Shopify. When you sign up for our app, you kinda had a bit of disappointment where, oh my god. This thing's so easy. It works so well.

Jordan Gal: 07:58

I can I just change the email though to make it look the way I want? And and more design conscious ecommerce companies are going to want to do that, and all of sudden, now we can offer that. We can we can also use it as a selling tool. So if you're a bigger company and you sign up, we can create a custom template just for you. We're also gonna build out, like, a marketplace.

Jordan Gal: 08:18

It we're not gonna charge for them. A gallery, I guess you'd call it, of templates, and we're gonna we're gonna employ the Leadpages strategy. You know, the way they built their big list is they gave away free landing page templates. They said, hey, here's a great landing page template you can use for this scenario and this scenario, and go off and use it on your own for free, or you could do it really easily with Leadpages. So so we're gonna do the same kind of thing.

Jordan Gal: 08:44

Hey, here's a new abandoned cart campaign template. Go off and use it on your own in Mandrill or whatever SendGrid or you can do it really easily and then use that to build you know, so it it creates all these opportunities.

Brian Casel: 08:56

Nice. Yeah. That's interesting. I never thought of email templates for for card abandonment like that. It it almost seem when you first described it, it it seemed like a nice to have, because really what more do you need than just showing the product that you need to check out and like maybe the company logo.

Brian Casel: 09:12

But now that I see all these all the all these opportunities to use, like, custom templates and Right.

Jordan Gal: 09:17

You can use them. And what I've been doing is when I now when I'm talking to a big prospect, I just go in and I create a template for them. And I send it to them and I say, here's a screenshot of how your template would look and now it's awesome. And it's super impressive and it shows off the app and it's responsive and we have the little, like, desktop, iPad, mobile phone view. It's like it's just an asset.

Jordan Gal: 09:38

And the other the other key thing it does is it opens up the potential to go beyond e commerce because we couldn't work with hotels before because we had this shopping cart section that was hard coded.

Brian Casel: 09:50

Oh, And a I

Jordan Gal: 09:50

hotel reservation or a WordPress theme, it it kinda it doesn't work the same way as, like, item, quantity, price, total. So now that isn't a requirement. So a whole bunch of stuff that I should probably stop revealing, but needless to say, kind of exciting on on on the potential front.

Brian Casel: 10:07

Very cool. Well, any other any other updates?

Jordan Gal: 10:12

Well, right along with that, and I I can't resist, what happened during this process is we realized we need internal development resources. Hiring a contractor who has other things going on regardless of how talented they are is not the same thing as having someone internal that only cares about CardHook and has their incentive and life tied into it. So we have decided to hire a full time developer. So if there's anybody out there listening or know someone listening and they want to make a few million dollars, I mean, be lead developer for for Cardhook, then they should get in touch with me, jordan@cardhook.com.

Brian Casel: 10:48

There you go.

Jordan Gal: 10:48

Employee number one.

Brian Casel: 10:50

Yep. Awesome.

Jordan Gal: 10:52

Alright. Cool, man. How about you? We wanna hear some updates on what you've been doing besides flying on airplanes and heating. How was Barcelona, man?

Brian Casel: 10:58

Oh, dude. Barcelona is amazing. It's it's definitely one of my favorite up up there in my top favorite cities now. And so my wife came with me on on this trip and it was awesome. We had about three days or so to to kind of explore the city before MicroConf and we really kind of jam packed all of the all the sites you know seeing like the the Gaudi work and, Segrada Familia.

Brian Casel: 11:23

Yeah. And,

Jordan Gal: 11:24

you know La Rambla and the food.

Brian Casel: 11:27

Yeah. Just kind of walking around those little neighborhoods and eating a lot of paella and seafood and tapas. It was really Bocadilla.

Jordan Gal: 11:34

Right? Boca? Those little sandwiches they have. Is that what they're called?

Brian Casel: 11:38

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was it was beautiful. Mean, you know, we went and ate down by the beach area a couple times and, man, it was awesome.

Jordan Gal: 11:46

Nice, man.

Brian Casel: 11:47

And then and then the the conference was great and I'll I'll we'll get into all that in a minute.

Jordan Gal: 11:51

How did your business do while you were away? I feel like that's always

Brian Casel: 11:55

It did. Yeah. And and this was probably the the very first test for me with audience ops. And I've been through this test a number of times with Restaurant Engine where I go away for a week or you know whatever and I'm out of out of the picture and I need the team to kind of really run with things. And this was a a very good first test for audience ops.

Brian Casel: 12:15

Things ran very smoothly. I was, you know, the the team basically handled it and we, you know, we published a bunch of blog articles during the week I was gone, you know, for for our clients and everything. So all of that went went really well. There were no major issues. I mean I I did I was in touch with the team, checking in you know kind of every day but I I didn't even have I didn't even get a SIM card or anything for my cell phone so I didn't have data service when I was running around Barcelona.

Brian Casel: 12:44

So I had WiFi like in the hotel. I wasn't in the hotel very often. We were basically out all day and most of the night every day. So when we go to like a a restaurant or something, you know, I was like, oh, do they have free WiFi? You know, I'm sort of like, you know, just trying to check-in wherever I can, and really, like, quick, like, one, two minute opportunities to check-in and and Nothing's on fire.

Brian Casel: 13:03

Like, any, like, urgent Slack messages or emails. Yeah. I definitely I I had to let a bunch of emails kinda pile up and I'll get to them later because they're not urgent. But, yeah, everything went went pretty smoothly. And I was pretty happy with that.

Jordan Gal: 13:16

Three months in and you have like a functioning business that doesn't rely on you. Yeah. You have to teach me about this one day.

Brian Casel: 13:21

Yeah. It was good. It it felt pretty good. And and, you know, I I also went into this period of okay. So, like, last week was the first of three back to back trips that I have this month.

Brian Casel: 13:34

And so I'm home right now for about three days, and then next week, I'm going out to Cape Cod. It's like on on the coast, on the East Coast Of The United States and my family, like my brother and his wife and, you know, my my my mom and what, you know, we're doing like kind of an extended family get together kind of thing out there for a couple of days. So that's happening next week. And then after that, I'm home for another couple of days, and I'm moving out of my condo for goods. We're moving furniture and all this crap.

Brian Casel: 13:59

And then we drive down to Virginia for Brennan Dunn's double your freelancing conference.

Jordan Gal: 14:04

You guys are driving down there as, like, the first leg of your trip? Yep. So you're pat between Barcelona, Cape Cod, and Brennan's conference, you are traveling, packing, and and hitting the road.

Brian Casel: 14:19

And hitting the road. Yes.

Jordan Gal: 14:20

Alright. So this will be the last podcast for about a month. Sorry

Brian Casel: 14:22

about that. Probably. Yeah. But, you know, so I I go into this month of of September knowing that I've got back to back trips, moving out of the place and everything, so it's gonna be crazy. I'm not gonna get any real work done like producing new assets or new building new things in the business.

Brian Casel: 14:40

It's mostly on maintenance mode and, you know, staying in touch with the team and making sure everything's getting every everyone's getting served but I know that I have a lot of time like going to Barcelona, had a lot of time on the flight, and I'll be driving a lot in the in the next couple weeks. So I have a lot of time and like hanging out at Cape Cod, I'm just basically just like sitting on the beach for a couple days. A lot of time to kinda think and do a lot of strategic planning work, and I think that this is a good time for that. A good month in in where AudienceOff is at right now because I feel like now we we have the service basically complete. All the service processes and and all the systems that the team is in place, got a really solid team together, and every every aspect of the service from like from like the new customer onboarding to the weekly blog production line that we have going and then the the content promotion piece that we're just refining and finishing up now.

Brian Casel: 15:40

The service is basically done. So now my focus turns to sales and marketing and really getting ready to like drive hard and put all of those pieces in place starting with our content marketing for audience ops which, know, we're in like the fifth month of being a content marketing company and we not even we're not even doing it for ourselves. So I actually spent a lot of time on the flight to to and from Spain mapping out the next steps for getting our content in place, ideas for for for the types of topics and themes that we'll be covering on the blog, lead magnets, publishing schedule, what that's gonna look like, who's gonna be writing the posts. I know that I will be writing a lot of these articles about content marketing and then thinking through like webinars, that'll be like kind of a step two and building the building the email list. We're gonna incorporate some paid Facebook ads and retargeting in, you know, integrated with our content marketing.

Brian Casel: 16:39

So putting all these ideas in place on paper so that we can really hit the ground running probably by like the September into October and hopefully start publishing stuff in in early October. So that that's kinda like the next thing that I'm working on. At the same time, we're getting this content upgrades plugin ready to launch. Right now, it's in private beta, and I've already invited a handful of of users. All of our clients are using it now.

Brian Casel: 17:06

We're we're we're using it and creating content creating content upgrades for our clients, so that's in place and running. But I'm also inviting other people. So if if you are interested in in using the the content upgrades plugin for WordPress, it's in private beta right now. You can get on that list by going to contentupgrades.io. And then we'll aim for a public launch of that hopefully by October, that's that's kind of the plan.

Brian Casel: 17:30

It'll be kind of a crunch but, you know, working hard to make that happen. So that's that's all kind of happening that and a lot of it is kinda in my head and jotting down notes and plans and things right now. The other big announcement that I wanna make today is, Big Snow Tiny Conf twenty sixteen. So if you've been, tuning in for the last couple of years, you know this is something that, my friend Brad Tunar and I have have been organizing every year. So we'll be doing the third annual Big Snow Tiny Conf trip in January 2016 and this year, this well, time around for the first time there's actually gonna be two big snow tiny comps and there's gonna be big snow tiny comp west also happening in Colorado.

Brian Casel: 18:14

So there's gonna be two trips and you can find out about the one in Vermont which is the one that Brad and I are organizing. That's happening January 2016 and all the info and details are at bigsnowtinycomp.com for that one and then the Colorado version, Big Snow Tinyconf West is happening on February and that's actually being organized by Dave Rodenbaugh. I don't know if I'm pronouncing his last name correctly but, but Dave's, you know, long MicroComp attendee and he's been, you know, running a successful WordPress plugins business. So he's the guy kinda behind that one. Info for that is at bigsnowtinycompwest.com.

Brian Casel: 18:55

So both of these trips we're gonna be selling spots to on September 24. That'll be about two weeks from today's date, the date of this episode goes live. So if you wanna get in and these are really really limited spots. There's

Jordan Gal: 19:11

Yeah. That that's the best part in in my mind. It's not a conference of I mean It's called micro hump is small, but this is like, what, 10 people?

Brian Casel: 19:19

That's like Right.

Jordan Gal: 19:20

That's like a a mastermind

Brian Casel: 19:21

Each each house is 10 to 12 people. And so you know they're very limited spots and a couple of spots are kind of reserved for people coming back from last year so yeah if you wanna kinda get in on that that they will sell out like immediately so if you wanna you know get your name on the email list and that'll be going on sale in two weeks. Hope you can, join us. We'll do like what we do is basically half day skiing and snowboarding and then half day hanging out, talking business. We do some kind of attendee talks.

Brian Casel: 19:49

We, you know, we do dinner. It's a it's a ton of fun. This will be the third year and I just can't wait. I'm excited for myself because I'm actually you know, my family is gonna be traveling, doing some long term traveling. In January, we're gonna be living in Austin, Texas.

Brian Casel: 20:03

So I'm gonna I'm gonna fly to Vermont and go to the Vermont trip and then by February, we're actually gonna be living in Colorado. So I'm gonna be nearby and I'll be going to both both of these trips. So it should be a lot of fun. Jordan, we gotta get you on on a snowboard and get you out there.

Jordan Gal: 20:18

Oh, good god. I I keep trying. I keep going, and I just end up miserable every time. I don't know what to tell you. I'm like I'm like a short brown Jew.

Jordan Gal: 20:28

I'm like I'm made for the sun and the water, you know, not not the snow.

Brian Casel: 20:33

Yeah. Cool. That's Content been a hit

Jordan Gal: 20:36

upgrades looks good, man. I I want I want that that fade away feature so people can keep reading the article. That that is a killer feature in my mind because it doesn't break up the flow. Someone got the value and then they didn't leave the post they were reading and get disrupted and have to go to a landing page that said, hey, go check your email. Like, that's that's not the ideal experience.

Brian Casel: 20:56

Yeah. Yeah. And right now, we're integrated with Mailchimp and Drip, which makes it really easy especially for for Mailchimp folks who who always say that like if they have existing subscribers on their Mailchimp list, they can't send them something new or they can't get them to opt into something new because they're already on the list. There there really isn't an easy way to do that and and this plugin kinda kinda makes that easy. And then, of course, with Drip, you can get them subscribed and tagged up accordingly and and all that.

Brian Casel: 21:23

So

Jordan Gal: 21:24

So, I mean, just for a minute before we jump into the MicroCon stuff, when you think about the next step for audience ops, does does does outbound sales like, does that enter the picture for you? Is that just down the road? Is that just not your preferred method? Because I've kinda been obsessed with this for a long time, and I've been listening to a bunch of great interviews, one on Saster with the guys from what the hell is this company called? GuideSpark.

Jordan Gal: 21:52

And then I've been listening to that Growth Everywhere podcast with Kyle Porter from SalesLoft that I I probably mentioned previously. I've been talking to a few other guys in a different mastermind group. Justin McGill from LeadFuse. We we talk about time to hire, hiring salespeople. So it's kinda like that's always on my mind.

Jordan Gal: 22:11

And and the the challenge is is the average revenue per user. It's like if you're selling a $100 a month project product, it's really hard to afford a salesperson to hit the phones. But if you're selling something for 500 to a thousand bucks a month, all of a sudden, you can meet that threshold. You can pay that salesperson 500 or a thousand bucks for every close, and they can go off and make $10 a month, and you won't go broke doing it. So I look at your service, and I'm like, there are a lot of people who would want this, and it is in that price point of you can afford a salesperson.

Jordan Gal: 22:47

So that's just something that would come up in my mind. So I just wanna just put it out there.

Brian Casel: 22:50

Yeah. That's a good question. I was actually thinking about that. Well, I was thinking about the cost to acquire a customer. This is one of the as I'm thinking through a marketing plan, was sitting on the plane yesterday and yeah, that is something that occurred to me that you know at at this price point, 1,000 to $2,000 a month and that's actually low, we'll probably raise that at some point, we do have a lot a lot more money to spend to acquire each customer but my thinking on that right now is also that we don't need that many customers and so at first we're gonna start with an inbound approach, get the content marketing rolling, get get some ads rolling to get them into the content so we'll be kind of cold ads outbound to in in that sense to get them into the email list and into a sequence that would lead to a pitch to request a consultation, but it it would be mostly inbound consultation requests which is what it what it is now and we still get consultation requests even with no marketing right now.

Brian Casel: 23:52

To meet our targets for for what I'm I'm targeting for the next six to twelve months, you know, we really only need to to bring on two to three new customers each month and that'll increase as time goes on but it's but so we're gonna kinda slowly scale up the the number of customers and the other thing is that we are very selective with the types of customers that we accept. Like we actually have been turning away quite a few leads who who are basically ready to sign up but but the problem is that they don't really fit our the they don't fit the the type of clients audience that we work with. We we basically work with b to b software companies. You know, we'll get leads from, like, consumer brands and things and and it's just not the the right fit for what our writers write for. So

Jordan Gal: 24:38

What what do you mean by we don't need them as in to fulfill the plan that you have kind of going

Brian Casel: 24:45

Well, I mean I I mean, at the at the price point that that we sell, we don't need hundreds of we don't need hundreds of customers this year, you know. So so if we have an inbound sales funnel and we're building an email list and building traffic which we are kind of starting from ground zero, I mean, of course, I'll I'll give it a little bit of a jump start by announcing it to my existing audience and network, but if you, you know, you you figure you only need like one or two to three of these of these visitors to end up converting to customers each month. That kind of sales funnel is if if I can work like one webinar a month and get 10 to 20 people even just attending that webinar and get one of them to to sign up. I mean, that works. Right.

Jordan Gal: 25:36

You know? It's just different math. You know, software company, it's thirty, fifty, a 100 customers a month which means, you know, 200 trials a month which means it's just a different a different different set of math.

Brian Casel: 25:47

And the other the other thing that that I'm thinking through right now and this is all just I just in concept stage right now is like what is the bigger bigger picture of audience ops? And the service is only one part of it and we're already starting to release a software product, a WordPress plugin. I think there are gonna be a couple of more WordPress plugins over the next year. So we're gonna be like part console part productized service offering with a with a set of clients driving that side of the revenue and then we're gonna be part, you know, selling tools and that would be another set of the revenue. And then eventually, I I also wanna get into info products, teaching about content marketing and teaching our process for for doing it.

Brian Casel: 26:33

So ultimately, the the goal of Audience Ops is to be, you know, the done for you service, selling the tools, and educating about content marketing. Yeah.

Jordan Gal: 26:41

Yeah. I like that. I I have to it reminds me of of a podcast I was listening to recently with Laura Roeder. You know? Really, she's sharp, man.

Jordan Gal: 26:51

She's she's she's impressive. I think it's also on Growth Everywhere, that podcast that I'm clearly into these days. But she talks about, right, they had a services based business for handling social media and they just released Edgar, which which is a tool and and that's that's at a 150 k a month already. And it's because they had the experience and audience from one thing that transferred really nicely to another thing. But she talks about they're they're doing cold ads, and it's just because they know they know it so well, and they built the tool the right way because of their internal knowledge.

Jordan Gal: 27:27

So it kinda starts to sound a little bit like that. Like, you know, Audi Audiences Top has customers and then an expertise, and then you can release other things, info products and software.

Brian Casel: 27:38

Yeah. And and that was exactly what my talk at MicroConf was all about was making this transition, well, first from like freelancing to owning a productized service business, but then using that to drive revenue really quickly, get customers, get an audience, and then start to release software and I had a bunch of case studies of people who've done that. You look at like Justin with LeadFuse, what what I've done with with AudienceOps and Restaurant Engine and, you know, so many others just kinda like Craig with Podcast Motor selling the serve the productized service first. And then I I know Craig is working on a software product for podcasters, so it's, you know, making that transition and then funding that through the revenue from the service. And that's Yeah.

Jordan Gal: 28:20

That that makes sense. We are customers of Podcast Motor, and Cardhook is a customer. And I I basically buy any software he releases because I know it'll be according to the way we wanna do things. Nice, man. So let's let's dig in a little bit.

Jordan Gal: 28:35

We we went on a little longer than expected, but you're still awake. So let's talk MicroConf.

Brian Casel: 28:41

Yeah. Sure. So

Jordan Gal: 28:42

So how was it? How was the feeling in general? You know, I don't know if you wanna compare it to our experience in Vegas, but, you know, what was the overall feel of it?

Brian Casel: 28:50

Great great microconf. I mean, it's hard to say a lot of negatives in general. You know, going into it, especially so this is my third microconf. You know going into it that it you're you're gonna enjoy all the conversations that you're gonna have and and and the talks are gonna be great. So it definitely didn't disappoint.

Brian Casel: 29:08

Differences from Vegas to MicroConf Europe, I mean, on first impression, know, you you notice right away that MicroConf Europe is it's noticeably smaller in attendance. I think it's I think it was something like a 150 thereabouts attendees, maybe a little bit more. Vegas, especially this year 2015 Vegas seemed much bigger than than Europe. And the way that I that I saw that was, I mean, I spoke to a lot of people at Europe. I mean, I didn't speak to everybody in the room, but I felt like I I kept I I had multiple conversations with some of the same people.

Brian Casel: 29:47

Whereas Vegas, it was like new people all the time that I Yeah. You know? That was one thing. The other difference there's definitely a difference in the stage of of people at at Europe. There are more people who seem a little bit so Vegas people seem to be a little bit farther along in in their stage, and it's not the case for everyone.

Brian Casel: 30:12

There there's still new folks and still kind of people midway and and and you know further along in Vegas. In Europe, it seemed like the majority were still freelancing you know consultants by the hour or working a full time job and and aiming to build a products business in in the next year. Some people who who are a little bit farther along and and and doing it, they were they seem to be in the minority in in Europe. Whereas in in Vegas, I had I had conversations with people who were who were running 7 figure businesses and they're completely unknown, but they're but they're attendee attendees at MicroConf. I didn't see too many of them at at at Europe, which was cool.

Brian Casel: 30:56

It was it was really, I I enjoy talking to those people, and and meeting and and hearing just hearing where people are at that that's mostly what I'm asking people is like what you know what are you working on right now, where where are you at. I don't know if it just happened to be my experience this time around but I feel like this year and and in MicroConf Europe for some reason people seem to be more open, more transparent and people are really transparent in MicroConf in general.

Jordan Gal: 31:22

Right. It's like how how is that possible?

Brian Casel: 31:23

Yeah. But it it seemed even more transparent in Europe. In terms of you hear you hear talking about numbers and revenue but but I think more so about like stories and and behind the scenes strategies and what people are working on and what people are planning and some of the talks, know, were really really pretty revealing and and people really opened up. So I it was just something that really struck me at this year's MicroConf which is which is great. I I thought it was really cool and it's I think it's one of the things that just makes MicroConf so unique in general as a conference is that this this community is is in a way it's so tight it's so tight knit and there are people who are who are friends and we see each other again each each year, but then there are other other people who are new but they're following along with all these different podcasts within the community and it's and it's like this it's it's this thing.

Brian Casel: 32:21

It's it's really cool. It's it's much different than any other kind of conference.

Jordan Gal: 32:25

Yeah. It's more accessible. It's like I don't know. It's just easier to get to people, email people. Everyone's like a nice, normal person.

Jordan Gal: 32:32

No one's got a crazy ego. It just doesn't have any of those elements.

Brian Casel: 32:37

Yeah. And people's goals here are, you know, for lack of a better word, like to build a lifestyle business. And by that, I don't mean like a passive income business. I mean, people just wanna do their own thing. People just wanna have freedom to hang with their families and work on a on a really cool business that they enjoy working on, you know.

Jordan Gal: 32:58

Yes. And best of all, you don't hear the phrase, I wanna make the world a better place.

Brian Casel: 33:02

Yeah.

Jordan Gal: 33:03

If I hear that fucking phrase one more time, I'm gonna freak out. Exactly. The the microconf crew is much more grounded in, I wanna make a successful business, and I'm gonna do it my way. And, yeah, I think it'll be interesting over the next few years to see where things go and what changes and what funding does to that where people get to different stages. Alright.

Jordan Gal: 33:24

Cool. So let's let's talk some specifics. How about, like, these individual individual talks?

Brian Casel: 33:29

Yeah. So I I kind of have the list of of speakers. I think it's somewhat in the order that that they went through. The the conference opened up with Justin Jackson. Great talk here, you know, great energy.

Brian Casel: 33:41

I really like I I like Justin's stuff in general. I'm a fan of his podcast and and and his ideas especially when it comes to marketing, and I really like his approach to just understanding the the customer and having empathy for for the for the problem that you're trying to solve. I think he got that across. He had some really interesting and kind of fun examples in there. He used Iron Maiden, the, like, the progressive metal band, as a a marketing case study, believe it or not, which is really cool.

Brian Casel: 34:14

It had some, like, classic video games in there. Like, back in the day before there were any kind of, like, online purchasing of video games, you had these games who literally have a screen in the game that says, send me cash or a check to this address in Texas, you know.

Jordan Gal: 34:28

In the middle of the video game.

Brian Casel: 34:29

Yeah. For for like $38 and Justin was talking about how he paid that and people do it. So, you know, getting the point across, like, don't be afraid to ask for the sale, you know. And so just really fun examples. So I followed Justin's talk.

Brian Casel: 34:47

I was the second speaker and I was just what part of what really made me nervous was that I was following Justin Jackson who

Jordan Gal: 34:53

Didn't we do that last time also?

Brian Casel: 34:55

Did we? Yeah. Indeed.

Jordan Gal: 34:56

I think it was Justin Jackson, and then me and you went right after

Brian Casel: 34:59

him. Yeah. So he's he is a tough act to follow, man, because he's got he's got the energy. He's he's a really great public speaker, you know, fun and and like positive and so I I felt, and I'm generally, you know, pretty nervous and when it comes to public speaking, it's not something that I do very often. So I it was a little tough following following his act but but, you know, I I think my talk went went pretty well.

Brian Casel: 35:25

I I was talking about productized services obviously and, you know, making the transition from freelancing to building a productized service as I talked about a bit and I think that I think it resonated pretty well with with the attend with the audience there. I got a lot of good feedback, a lot of really great questions afterward. I think it went pretty well. I I was happy with with the slides and and how I put the presentation together but then when I was up there on stage, I kinda went off my presentation notes a little bit which caused me to kinda repeat some some parts and kinda lose my place a little bit. I'm not sure if the audience actually noticed that but you know, I I knew it but I don't know.

Brian Casel: 36:06

I I was pretty happy with it overall and and I was happy that I finished my talk early in the first day so I can just like enjoy the rest of the of the conference. Let's see who else was on the first day? Sherry Walling gave a really good talk. That was that was really good. She had she had some interesting examples.

Brian Casel: 36:26

I forgot the exact title of her talk but it was it was about our our timelines and our our personal stories and being aware of our stories, and how how everything in our past makes up who we are and what we put out to the world today and I think there's a lot for entrepreneurs especially, we're constantly thinking about the future and thinking about the current situation at hand and and looking ahead and what what do we need what do you need to plan and what are the next steps, but, you know, she kind of reminded us that it's important to remember where you come from and and why your story exists and how how all this kind of fits together. I liked her examples because she she talked about the backstories of of founders that we all know, people in this community and and well known founders and kind of, you know, who who they are and where they came from. So that was that was really interesting.

Jordan Gal: 37:20

Yeah. That is interesting because we end up looking at other people a lot too, and we also end up measuring up against them. And we say, oh, when once I get to where they are, then I'll feel a certain way. But you it's hard to just think about yourself and like, okay. Where am I, and should I be happy with where I am, and what how come I'm doing this a certain way because of my experience?

Jordan Gal: 37:45

You know, all this stuff adds up. Your experience in high school, your experience in college, and your social experiences and yeah.

Brian Casel: 37:52

Yeah. You know And I'm just gonna skip ahead here because that brings up an interesting point that I thought about while I was at MicroConf Europe and that's you have all these different people who are at different stages in in their progress of building their business and building really they're building their career, right? You got guys who are just starting out and and learning things and and new tactics that are coming out and then you got guys like like Rob and like Pelby and and Patrick McKenzie who've who've who've been around and and have done a couple of businesses now and have really progressed, you know, advanced in in their in their stair stepping if you will, right, To take Rob's, you know, Rob's framework there. And and I think everyone definitely definitely me, I'm able to relate to something in their story even if they're at a completely different stage than than where I'm at right now and the the guy who had the most impact for me listening to these talks was Pelti who gave a really really fantastic talk and he's, you know, miles ahead of where where I'm at right now in my business.

Brian Casel: 39:01

Right.

Jordan Gal: 39:01

And he he runs Balsamiq?

Brian Casel: 39:03

Balsamiq, yeah. Which I've I've been a huge fan of of his company and and a really big fan of using the software for years too. But he was talking about he talked about a lot of a lot of awesome things but but one little tactical thing that that stuck out to me was like how he handles employee reviews and and and how he how he communicates with his employees and how he in in incorporates them in his decision making process, and that's something that I'm that I'm kind of working out right now in in audience ops. So I was able to let like take little tidbits of ideas and and think like, how am I gonna apply that? And then the other thing that comes to mind here is Patrick McKenzie's talk and Rob Walling's talk and they both gave basically the same presentation that they gave at MicroConf Vegas this year, which was what, like four four or five months ago.

Brian Casel: 39:53

Basically, the same slide, same talk. I think they they probably changed a few things and updated a few a few things from from then to now and I remember watching both talks this year but for some reason at MicroConf Europe, I kind of received them a little bit differently and that's because I'm at a different stage right now than where I was four months ago. I'm just working on different things. I mean, I was literally working on a different business four months ago than I am now so that that definitely plays a role in it but like listening to Patrick's talk back in Vegas four months ago, was talking about he was talking a lot about the the the sale of, of appointment or not appointment, his, bingo card creator. And at the time, I was going through MySellUp Restaurant Engine, so I was really relating to that part of his talk.

Brian Casel: 40:37

And and then he has a whole other section talking about, how once you once you've been through it once, you can kinda go so much faster and learn all these lessons and really apply them in, you know, much faster the next time around and and now I'm seeing that like where I'm at right now and that's what I related to this time. So it it was it was really interesting and and the same deal with Rob, know, he gave basically the same talks and, you know, updated a few things but different things kinda jumped out at me. Think last time it was more about the early progression of of drip and and how they how they changed their their positioning. That really resonated with me last time, but this time it was more about how he's he's recently converted from working with like contractors to to hiring full time employees. And that was an interesting and he talked a bit about that and and and that made me think a lot and and that's something that I've been thinking about for audience ops.

Brian Casel: 41:38

I know at some point, I'm gonna need to make that transition.

Jordan Gal: 41:40

So And Pelti and Balsamiq, are they distributed?

Brian Casel: 41:45

Yes. Because

Jordan Gal: 41:46

I I think that's

Brian Casel: 41:47

I believe they are.

Jordan Gal: 41:48

Yeah. That's one of the one of the next things for for people like us to figure out. Like, you know, the the normal everyone works in the same office thing has been done for decades, and a lot of it's been figured out. And then all of a sudden, remote started kinda growing, and it makes more sense. And, you know, we have Philippines, New York, Portland, and Chicago right now in CardHook, like our customer success.

Jordan Gal: 42:15

You know? So and and there isn't all this laid down foundation of best practices. We're all kind of trying to figure out. Everyone looks to 37 signals. And so there's just a lot a lot to be figured out Yeah.

Jordan Gal: 42:27

On how

Brian Casel: 42:28

to this stuff. One little thing popped out to me from Pelvis talk. He so they are remote, and they are distributed, and the and one thing that they that they do to manage that is they have something called, think, the balsamic golden hour. And that's the one hour in the day where I think all employees are expected to be online. And Interesting.

Brian Casel: 42:49

And other than that, they can be on their own schedules, But there's this one hour, whatever it is, the way where they need to be online.

Jordan Gal: 42:57

And I wonder I wonder what they do in that hour. Are they just all on Slack? Are they chatting? Or are they in, a group video?

Nathan Barry: 43:03

You know, is it?

Brian Casel: 43:04

I'm I'm not really sure. But, you know, another conversation that I had at at MicroConf was with Anthony Eden, founder of DN Simple. And he gave a really great attendee talk too. And and I I I was able to actually have breakfast with with him and and he was there with two of his employees on on DN Simple. So we were all chatting about having a remote team and one of the questions I asked him was I think they're a team of like 10 distributed at this point and I was like, how do you manage how do you create like a company culture being a remote distributed team and you you know, because that's something I'm also thinking about especially because my my team is growing really really fast, like we're up to about eight employees within four months, went from like zero to eight.

Brian Casel: 43:56

So we're we're growing really fast and I'm trying to make sure that the team is working together really really well. Everybody uses Slack. We use Slack. It seems like almost every every remote team that I know of these days is using Slack. He and so so he, talked about this one little idea.

Brian Casel: 44:17

This isn't necessarily related to culture but about how they manage distributed stuff like we use Google Docs for all of our procedures and he was talking about how they use GitHub for procedures like not just code and I and I thought like I use GitHub to manage our code for the WordPress plugin that we're developing but but they actually use GitHub to manage like internal documentation and procedures and all the all these other kind of, HR documents and all this all this stuff and and they have, you know, a record of of of commits and and a change log of these things and, it's it's really helpful. So that was just like a little tidbit like these are these little actionable ideas that that you take away from from these little random conversations that you have at MicroConf. So that that was a good good chat.

Jordan Gal: 45:06

Nice, man. The, yeah, the attendee attendee talks are always interesting. It's like the talks are good and then the attendee talks are like one step closer to your current experience, at least for for the majority of people there.

Brian Casel: 45:18

Yeah. So I'll I'll just kinda highlight a couple of the attendee talks that that stood out to me. Anthony Eden's talk was really good from DN Simple. He had like good good energy, you know, speaks from some pretty good experience there. And there were like, I think six or eight attendees and they all gave pretty good presentations, but the other two that were stand out to me were, Jane Portman gave a really great, talk about, doing a UI audit, which is kind of an audit of your of your user interface, your design, and she made a good point early on about how the design and the look and feel of your app is kind of like an afterthought, but it still has such an important impact on the success of your app, and she kinda went through this, an exercise that you can go through to step by step evaluate the UI in your app and and find ways to improve it.

Brian Casel: 46:11

And I I believe she's, she's coming out with a book, that kind of goes through this exact audit process that you can actually use in in your app. So she's her site is uibreakfast.com.

Jordan Gal: 46:24

Yeah. She's gonna follow her on on Twitter.

Brian Casel: 46:26

Yeah. Really solid designer. Great great teacher on that kind of stuff.

Jordan Gal: 46:31

Yeah. This it's such a huge challenge because what what we've experienced is that you really care about the UI and design once. And then you take care of that page or that feature, that section, and then you're like, okay, we got it right. And then you move on. And then you don't think about it, and you don't think about the entire experience and not just that one page that you got right.

Jordan Gal: 46:55

You just have too much to do. So, yeah, what I try and do is I try to sign up for our service, like, once a week.

Brian Casel: 47:01

Oh, nice. I just

Jordan Gal: 47:02

I just I just go through it.

Brian Casel: 47:03

I like You

Jordan Gal: 47:04

know? And and sometimes also now that there's more people on the team that something's changed that I either knew about or forgot about or didn't someone didn't tell me or something. Like, I just wrote a blog post for Karthoek about the 10 foot test. Basically, like, make sure you use color the right way to highlight the buttons you want people to click so they don't look like the rest of the page, that they stand out.

Brian Casel: 47:24

Yeah.

Jordan Gal: 47:24

Then I I go to our sign up page, and I'm like, fuck. Yeah. It looks like the same as that color. I'm like, you know, and I I wouldn't have looked at the sign up page a few months ago for weeks because I'm just doing other stuff. So now I'm I'm trying to do it more as we're making more changes, but it's a hard thing to keep up with.

Brian Casel: 47:40

That's a really good tip. I never thought of that. Just just go through your process once a week, you know, or on a regular basis of some kind but because I know that I I don't do that at all. Don't I don't you know, and then and then these things kinda come back to bite you. The other attendee talk that that stood out to me was Anders Peterson from timeblock.com who, they create like a time not a time tracking software, like a time management software and he creates these physical time blocking, notebooks which are really solid, really beautifully designed, nice to work with.

Brian Casel: 48:17

So he was talking about yeah, he made a joke and it I think the title of his talk was something like how I tripled my revenue in the last year and he was like, was basically just clickbait to get you to vote me into the attendee talk. But the point was that he that he was making in his talk there was that the reason why he tripled revenue was was that he he actually asked for advice and asked for help at the last year's micro comp and that advice led to a triple in his revenue and so and so he like so many of us and I know for myself are always a little bit afraid to ask for help from people but MicroConf of all places is such a great place to kind of pull someone inside, ask and try try to pick their brain for for a minute, and that's exactly what he did and he kind of talked about the importance of that and I I thought it was really great, really solid solid talk there. Let's see kinda going down the list. I think we're getting into day two here. Alex Yumachev, I hope I'm pronouncing his last name right.

Brian Casel: 49:22

I spoke to him for a while in the hallway too. Great guy. It was good to meet him for the first time. I like that, you know, he talked about like kind of bootstrapping his company and and and sticking sticking with it for years on end, and just like describing like how he how they kinda tried lots of things and learning as you go and and kind of a reminder that it it really is, all about learning by doing and figuring out your own little tricks that maybe you read about them somewhere, maybe you don't, probably you don't, you're really gonna actually learn it and internalize it once you do it yourself. That's kind of what I what I took away from from hearing Alex talk which is which is pretty cool.

Brian Casel: 49:59

He he was focusing a good part of his talk on SEO and different SEO tactics that these days, you know, there's a lot of talk about how SEO doesn't matter or it's or it's, kind of, or about how like you can't really do SEO anymore, but you you can and he talked about different tactics that actually, you know, are still in play. So that was pretty cool. Rob, you know, again, Rob Walling talked about, you know, same same talk as last year as I said, and, and that really stood out to me. I I kinda covered that a minute ago. PELI, PELI opened up day two in the in the morning and for me that this talk made the biggest impact for me.

Brian Casel: 50:42

This is really the standout talk from my experience this year. He shared some really, unknown stories about the history of balsamic which I'm not gonna get into here, but, it was really, really interesting to to hear the stories, but but also really moving about how he handled it and how he handled his thought process and his decision making process through it all, and how he asked for feedback and how how, and his relationship with with the team. But most mostly, the his talk I think was about his evolution of becoming a CEO of of the company and really kind of what he was getting at was like becoming a boss and embracing that idea that I'm the boss and I have to make these decisions and people rely on me. And and what I kinda took away from that and is it's something that I continuously think about now is that after you get past the early stages and after you've done a couple of things and and you start to see progress, there begins to be, like, a total lack of guidance out there and lack of education and lack of workshops and books and and podcasts and, like you you just can't really get the same guidance that you can when you're just starting out.

Brian Casel: 52:11

When when you're just starting out and you're and you're start and you're getting customer number one or you're building your first product or whatever, there's so many books and courses and and podcasts and people you can follow to learn. I'd I'd say half of what you need to learn and then the other half you gotta go do it, but once you get a little bit farther along and into these years that Peltie was describing, there's so much that you have to just learn on the job and and and for every person, it's gonna be completely different, so even if you get the advice from a mentor or from an advisor or your, mastermind buddies and and things which are so important and so crucial I think once you get a little bit farther along, still their their advice and their perspective is still gonna be different than yours and everyone is gonna come at something in a different way, And the other thing that that made me think just listening to Peltier talk there was was that I'm I'm constantly feeling like as as as the owner, as the sole owner, the sole founder, I like I don't have any co founders, right?

Brian Casel: 53:18

Like I'm the only, I don't have any partners or anything so I'm all of the decisions come back to me and as as far as I'm I know, I think I think Pelby is in the same position with with Balsamiq. I'm I'm constantly thinking about, like, well, what what am I supposed to do here? Like like, what what is the correct decision? Like in blackjack, when you're at the casino, you you know, in the game of blackjack, there is a correct move for every every hand. Like, based on what the dealer is showing and based on your cards Right.

Jordan Gal: 53:47

Regardless of what your emotions are

Brian Casel: 53:48

emotions, you know, you're you're supposed to double down when when you have 11 or you're supposed to do this, you're supposed to like, statistically, that is the correct decision. But but running a business is not that way like there

Jordan Gal: 54:02

It's a more a creative enterprise.

Brian Casel: 54:04

Yeah. And and like so I'm constantly thinking like, well, what am I supposed to do here and and what would be like the most statistically correct decision in in given this scenario, but then that that doesn't always align with like what my gut is telling me, You know? And and I think

Jordan Gal: 54:20

Everyone has different advice. Everyone says, well, you should listen to your gut. You'll be write more often. Some people say, no. You should really do a different way.

Jordan Gal: 54:27

And I I think it's a function of the fact that fewer people get to that stage. Fewer people are at that stage at any given time. And it increases in complexity as you get further along that the situation becomes more unique and less less susceptible to advice and best practices. Right? So there are, like, management books and but at the end of the day, you have to be creative and interpret the information you have at hand.

Jordan Gal: 54:53

Then yeah. It's I I hope I hope the talk gets published, you know, eventually because I wanna see

Brian Casel: 54:59

I don't think it will. I mean, I know that he he he he he's he said and and a couple of people who are who are speaking at MicroConf, you know, say at MicroConf when they when they give the talk, like, we don't want like, please don't don't tweet this out or tweet any of the things that I'm sharing in this talk out. It's really just for the room, which I I totally understand and and respect that.

Jordan Gal: 55:20

Yeah. And I think everyone respects it. I

Brian Casel: 55:21

mean Yeah.

Jordan Gal: 55:22

People did in Vegas and, you know, a lot of that information, haven't seen anywhere because people respect it. I mean, person's going out on the limb to do it.

Brian Casel: 55:30

Yeah. And it and it go again, it goes to the the uniqueness of of MicroConf and and the value of of being there, to be honest. Yeah.

Jordan Gal: 55:36

Yeah. That's awesome. Look, it's it's always inherently interesting to to listen to someone who's really successful doing something somewhat similar, but it's it is another level of experience to have that person be, like, humble and open and it not just being like, look how awesome I am and here's how I got here, but it's a this sucked at certain times and it was brutal and this is how I handled it and

Brian Casel: 56:03

Yeah. Oh, so so one more little thing that stuck out of me about Pelti's talk and then I'll kinda, you know, jump through the the last couple of talks here. He had this concept of so this part I'll I'll share. He this concept of thinking about the natural size of the company that you're building

Jordan Gal: 56:22

and Okay. Explain.

Brian Casel: 56:24

Yeah. So by that and this is the first time I've ever really heard this described this way, when you're just starting out and you're saying this is the problem that I wanna tackle with my with my problem. I I wanna start this company to solve this problem. Right? Like in your Okay.

Brian Casel: 56:41

Case, like I wanna solve the card abandonment problem.

Jordan Gal: 56:44

Right. And optimization. Okay.

Brian Casel: 56:45

What what is the logical size of the company? Like, people how

Jordan Gal: 56:50

how could you possibly know that?

Brian Casel: 56:51

Right. You you can't exactly know that

Jordan Gal: 56:54

Okay.

Brian Casel: 56:55

But but it's a good exercise to start to think through the next steps of of where this might progress to. You know, for example, like if if your goal is to just have a one person company or a two person company and you don't want to grow your your your company any bigger than that, like you you prefer to stay really small, then you have to think about, alright, well, the problem that I'm solving here, does it is is this problem completely solved with just a two person company or is it going to actually eventually require a 20 person company? Mhmm. And you kinda have to get your head around that because I 20,000

Jordan Gal: 57:32

person

Brian Casel: 57:32

company. Yeah. If you think about Balsamiq, what he was saying was that at first, he really only wanted to be a one or two person company, but but they had so many users and the demand of customer support became so out of hand that he had to grow the company and then he had to embrace that and and be a bigger a bigger company.

Jordan Gal: 57:50

So if he's tackling a problem that a lot of people experience and if you're at all successful in solving it, then I guess the the it will push the boundary of what whatever you want to wants to be.

Brian Casel: 58:04

It's gonna get bigger.

Jordan Gal: 58:05

Yeah.

Brian Casel: 58:06

And so so you have to start to kind of embrace that mentally and I think it works the other way around as well, you know, like if you if you I don't know, like being ambitious about growing like a huge massive you know 50, a 100 employees is is the market really there? Is is that is the size of the problem really big enough for for you to tackle that? So just like thinking about, like, what is the natural size of of the company that you're building? Maybe you won't know that from day one, but you start to develop that concept as as time goes on.

Jordan Gal: 58:36

Yeah. It's an interesting concept that I remember reading something this previous week. I don't know. Mark Entreesen or one of the VC guys on Twitter was like, the law of something, expansion. Basically, a company raises in funding will be spent in twelve to eighteen months.

Jordan Gal: 58:55

If it's $250 or 25,000,000, you you expand to to whatever the the capacity in front of you is. So this this is kinda going about it in a slightly healthier way and saying, look at the problem and what that requires.

Brian Casel: 59:13

Yeah. So I'm just gonna cover two more of the talks and Rachel Andrew gave a gave a really good talk. It was cool for me to meet her for the first time. I've been following her for for the last couple of years, and she runs she co runs a content management tool called Perch, and she, runs that with her husband and it was interesting to hear her talk about a little bit about what it's like to run a company with your husband, you know, to run run something with like, you know, someone in your family. Mean that that either that really works for you and we were talking about this and and it and it really works for them, but like in in my experience, I've always tried to completely separate my family life from my work life, you know, but and just, you know, really what she was talking about in her talk was this longevity running a small bootstrapped company and I know that they've been at this something like five or six years and and she was kind of talking openly about what their next strategic steps to kind of begin growing their team and what the next steps look like marketing wise and and one and she was talking about how she speaks at like 30 conferences a year and that's like one of the key drivers of of their marketing for for Perch.

Brian Casel: 01:00:38

So so she tends to speak at a lot of web design and development type conferences because that's their audience and their customer base and that it really works for for driving most of their customers and and so that kind of got me thinking about audience ops a little bit because as I was thinking about our marketing plan which I'm in that mode right now, I had never truly considered the idea of comp speaking at conferences as a piece of of a marketing strategy. I I always see speaking, as kind of like a something that I happen to do on the side anyway and it and it might have some network effects that that have an impact on my business but it's not like something that I optimize and and be strategic about, it's just something that I do, but I I could see a point at some point, you know, actively seeking out opportunities to speak at conferences to other founders and things about content marketing and best practices and things like that and and kind of, you know, relate that back to audience ops.

Jordan Gal: 01:01:45

Yeah. I love it takes someone up on stage talking about it. For you who is currently at a conference to speak at that conference to, like, hit you upside the head like, wait a minute. What I'm doing right now could actually, you know, if I did it a different way, more systematic. Yeah.

Jordan Gal: 01:02:01

I I love the strategy. I mean, going onto other people's podcasts is a version of that same thing. Like, it's a very straightforward way to give people value, a lot of it at once with you and your voice attached to it. Obviously, in person up on stage, there's nothing more powerful than that, but podcast kind of does does does a similar thing.

Brian Casel: 01:02:24

Yeah. So just one more of the talks that I'll just kinda quickly highlight here as we wrap up is there was an interesting new format of a talk with John Indegue and he was so he's a founder of a of a bootstrapped app that I think does, you know, over 100 k a year in revenue. The the app is for like financial advisors, I believe, some some kind of management tool for for them and it was an interesting format because Rob Walling was on stage with him and kinda sitting down doing like an interview style talk. So pretty similar to what to the format that it was Rob Walling and Jason Cohen at last year's MicroCon Vegas. The difference here is that Jason Cohen is pretty farther, you know, much farther along running these big companies, WP Engine and everything.

Brian Casel: 01:03:14

So it was kind of an open dialogue between him and Rob. This one was John and Dege giving basically a presentation about things he learned bootstrapping this, you know, 100 k a year, startup with so he had a bit of a presentation and then Rob was kind of like interjecting with questions and with, you know, key takeaways as the talk was going going on and that was interesting to to watch. So I I really, I liked the format and I I could see that being an interesting format in future micro comps with different types of of founders and and Rob or and someone else having, an open dialogue on stage. That was pretty cool.

Jordan Gal: 01:03:55

Very cool. Yeah. I think I think I've seen interviews with him. I think he might have gone to the foundation and did the whole idea extraction thing on financial planners and yeah. So there's a lot out there to in terms of interviews and stuff to learn from him.

Jordan Gal: 01:04:11

Nice. Yeah.

Brian Casel: 01:04:13

Yeah. So, I mean, like, overall, it was a really really good MicroConf Europe. I I hope to make it out to Europe again for for another one. It was it was cool to meet everyone out there and yeah.

Jordan Gal: 01:04:24

Yeah. While you were out there and I saw all tweets about it, I just wanted I wanted to be back. I wanted to, like, see people and just learn more from what they're doing and talk and hang out and, like, actually feel that sense of, oh, there are a lot of other people trying to do the same thing. And it's like, know, it's normal and the struggle is normal and you're not alone doing it. It's it's important.

Brian Casel: 01:04:46

Yeah. Totally.

Jordan Gal: 01:04:47

Nice, dude. Well, good to have you back. I guess we'll talk to you in about a month. Yeah. No.

Jordan Gal: 01:04:51

We'll figure it out. We'll get you, like

Brian Casel: 01:04:53

We'll squeeze something in in the next couple of weeks, but, you know, we might have an off week or two and as as we do

Jordan Gal: 01:04:58

some I'm in Chicago this weekend and New York next week and so on and so on. Yeah. And I'm doing Miami in the winter again.

Brian Casel: 01:05:06

Oh, yeah.

Jordan Gal: 01:05:08

I'm doing Miami in the winter. I think it might be I'm doing the winter in Miami. I think it works either way.

Brian Casel: 01:05:12

You're you're wintering in Miami? Very cool.

Jordan Gal: 01:05:14

I am. Cool, bro.

Brian Casel: 01:05:18

Alright, man. Alright. Talk to soon.

Jordan Gal: 01:05:20

Alright, everybody. How do we close the show out again? If you like this episode Oh, yeah. Bootstrapno.web.com for all the episodes. We love you.

Jordan Gal: 01:05:28

Hook us up with some five star reviews if you haven't yet, and we'll talk to you soon.

Brian Casel: 01:05:32

Yes, sir. Alright. Later.